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People across the U.S. can catch the strawberry supermoon on Tuesday night, if the weather permits.According to NASA, the full moon will be at its closest point to the Earth for this orbit at 7:24 p.m. EDT Tuesday. It will be close enough to be considered a supermoon, making it the second one of 2022. It will appear full Tuesday evening into Wednesday morning, and it'll be the lowest full moon of the year, reaching only 23.3 degrees above the horizon Wednesday at 1:56 a.m. EDT, the agency said.Full strawberry supermoon is seen on June 14 in Indonesia. / Credit: WF Sihardian/NurPhoto via Getty ImagesHow did strawberry moon gets its name?The name has nothing to do with its color. Traditionally, the strawberry moon is the full moon in June, which is typically the last of spring or first of summer.According to The Old Farmer's Almanac, the name was used by Native American Algonquin tribes that live in northeastern U.S. and Ojibwe, Dakota, and Lakota peoples. It was used to mark the ripening of strawberries ready to be gathered in June.How to watch the strawberry supermoonAfter sunset, sky gazers are recommended to look southeast to watch the full moon rise above the horizon, the Almanac said. It reached peak illumination earlier, on Tuesday, at 7:52 a.m. EDT, but it won't be visible in North American time zones until Tuesday evening, as some parts of the world have already seen the supermoon. The Almanac can calculate moonrise and moonset times based on your location here."Full moons are a fun time to observe lunar features, as the rest of the sky will be washed out by the light. With the naked eye, you can see the vast highlands and lowlands of the moon, which can appear to be certain shapes and generate stories about those shapes, depending on the culture you follow," according to Space.com.For those that won't stay up, a free livestream from the Virtual Telescope Project in Italy is also showing the full moon rise over Rome.And if you miss this supermoon, there will be another on July 13.Global gas prices continue to feel impact of Russian invasion of UkraineImpact of a pivotal battle in eastern UkraineVoters head to polls in 5 states for key primaries and a special election

Space Exploration

The 75-meter-tall (246-foot) ground structure transmits energy wirelessly across approximately 55 meters (180 feet)Image: Xidian UniversityResearchers at China’s Xidian University are claiming to have completed testing and inspection of a ground array that could pave the way to space-based solar power—a concept long heralded as a potential solution to our energy woes. Researchers at Xidian University ran a successful test of the “world’s first full-link and full-system solar power plant” on June 5, according to a translated statement published today by the university. The plant is a 246-foot-tall (75-meter) steel structure located on Xidian University’s southern campus, and it’s equipped with with five different subsystems meant to foster the eventual development of space-based solar power arrays.In theory, satellites could continuously collect photons from the Sun, convert them to electricity using photovoltaic cells, and wirelessly beam that electricity as microwaves back to receivers on the surface—like the one at Xidian University. While the idea sounds like a far-fetched engineering problem for our descendants, it was actually proposed as far back as the 1960s by scientist Peter Glaser. Space-based solar power could sidestep some of the fundamental issues with solar power collection here on Earth; there’s no need to wait for daylight or clear weather to harvest the incoming energy. But like most space-based solutions to real-world problems, the main issues would be the cost of launching these satellites and building the space-based solar collectors, in addition to some dicey technological and safety hurdles. The newly built ground station is a part of the team’s space-based solar power proposal called OMEGA, which stands for Orb-Shape Membrane Energy Gathering Array. Once built and parked in geostationary orbit, OMEGA will collect energy from the Sun, convert it to electrical energy, and transmit it to Earth as microwaves via antenna. OMEGA was first proposed in 2014 by Duan Baoyan from the Xidian University School of Electromechanical Engineering and his colleagues. Two years earlier, NASA announced the similar SPS-ALPHA (Solar Power Satellite via Arbitrarily Large Phased Array) concept, which would feature a single space-based satellite comprised of several smaller elements that could transmit power back to Earth. Baoyan is one of the lead researchers on China’s ground array research, which will be used to test possible OMEGA subsystems, including the conversion of sunlight into energy and the wireless transmission of it. One of the most notable outcomes of OMEGA so far is that the researchers were successful in transmitting energy wirelessly as microwaves over a distance of approximately 180 feet (55 meters). This ability, to transmit wireless energy to a receiving station, represents a critically important element of a future space-based solar power infrastructure. The successful test earlier this month puts the researchers three years ahead of the project’s schedule, according to the press release. That said, Baoyan further acknowledged that widespread transmission of space-based solar power could still be generations away. The idea of space-based solar power is promising, and it could help to wean us off our global reliance on fossil fuels. Building such a complex system presents a massive challenge, but has the potential to revolutionize the way we collect energy. And while the research from Xidian University offers an impressive proof-of-concept, it’s only one step toward a more sustainable future. More: NASA moves ahead with wild solar sail concept.

Emerging Technologies

Mike Tyson Backs out Of Ric Flair Roast 'Unforeseen Circumstances' 6/14/2022 12:20 AM PT UPDATE 12:10 PM PT -- Mike Tyson is out of the Ric Flair roast ... after signing on to participate in the event. UPDATE "Due to unforeseen circumstances Mike will not be participating in the roast," Iron Mike's reps told us. They did not wish to elaborate. Before Ric Flair doles out one last ass whoopin', the WWE legend's gonna take a few (verbal) jabs from Mike Tyson -- 'cause TMZ Sports has learned Iron Mike will be one of the celebs roasting Nature Boy this summer! We're told 55-year-old Tyson has signed on to be part of the roast of 73-year-old Flair ... going down July 29 in Nashville, TN ... in front of over 1,000 fans! Ric and Mike -- two of the absolute greatest in their respective fields -- aren't just buddies, they're also business partners. In fact, Mike's "Tyson 2.0" cannabis company recently struck a deal with "Ric Flair Drip" ... and the men will be selling different marijuana products (think edibles, etc.) And, Tyson won't be alone in roasting the 16x world champ ... Starrcast, the company behind the event, tells us they're in the process of locking down other celebs and wrestlers for the roast. If Ric makes it through the roast, two nights later he's scheduled to wrestle in the final match of his incredible career. His opponent is still being sorted out. Big summer for The Nature Boy!!

Celebrity

After professing their love for one another, Paltrow cracked, "I finally found the Brad I was supposed to marry. It just took me 20 years." Brad Pitt and Gwyneth Paltrow are looking back at their failed engagement 25 years later in a new interview -- and prove there's nothing but love between them after all this time. The two were an item from 1995 to 1997, appearing in "Seven" together at the time before eventually calling it quits. Speaking with Paltrow for a new goop article focusing on his new cashmere shirt line as part of the site's Father's Day gift guide, the two joked about going their separate ways after Gwyneth asked about Pitt's relationship with her late father, Bruce. Getty Brad Pitt Says Angelina Jolie Sought to 'Harm' Him with 'Secret' Sale of Her Stake in Winery to Russian Oligarch View Story "Since it's almost Father’s Day, I’m going to ask you about Bruce. I'll never forget when we were engaged and he came to me one day, his eyes full of tears, and he said, 'You know, I never really realized what they mean when they say you're gaining a son. Like, I'm gaining a son,'" she recalled, before asking, "What impact did he have on you? Why did you love him, even though we didn't get married, unfortunately." "Oh man, everything works out, doesn't it?" responded Pitt, before Paltrow quipped, "Yes, it does. I finally found the Brad I was supposed to marry. It just took me 20 years." Paltrow, of course, married "American Horror Story" and "Glee" co-creator Brad Falchuk in September 2018. "It's lovely to have you as a friend now ... and I do love you," Pitt then said, a sentiment shared by Paltrow, who added, "It is ... I love you so much." Getty Gwyneth Paltrow And Kourtney Kardashian Bond Over Second Marriages View Story Pitt then gushed over Paltrow's late father, saying he had "a profound effect on me and is someone I still think about." He said that Bruce fostered independence, something he believes is "so important to parenting." "That man was funny. He was funny. And you guys were so funny together, ripping across the table, which was a rarity that I hadn't experienced much, and I loved it," he recalled. "The fun you guys had was infectious. You could just see just how much he adored you." Paltrow added that her father loved being a mentor for others, "for the people that he really loved, and you were definitely one of them." During the conversation, Pitt also celebrated getting the "goop seal of approval" for his new line of shirts, telling her it was a "high bar" to clear. Paltrow, meanwhile, said she was a "full costumer and a major fan" of the product, saying she recently gave one of the shirts to her mother Blythe Danner for Mother's Day. "She loved it so much. She was like, 'Oh, Gwynnie, this is like a warm hug -- I'm never taking it off,'" said Paltrow. Check out the full conversation here. Getty/Goop Goop's $120 'Luxury Diaper' Isn't Just a Ridiculous PR Stunt -- It's Trying to Make a Point View Story

Celebrity

Soccer Football - FIFA World Cup Qualifier - Costa Rica v New Zealand - Al Rayyan Stadium, Al Rayyan, Qatar - June 14, 2022 Costa Rica's Joel Campbell in action with New Zealand's Nando Pijnaker REUTERS/Mohammed DabbousRegister now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.comDOHA, June 14 (Reuters) - Joel Campbell’s early goal sent Costa Rica to the World Cup for a third successive tournament as they edged past 10-man New Zealand 1-0 in their intercontinental playoff on Tuesday and secured the last place at the finals in Qatar.The former Arsenal striker scored after three minutes for Costa Rica as he squeezed between two defenders to touch home a square pass from Jewison Bennette with the New Zealand defence slow to react.But New Zealand will feel hard done by after having an equaliser chalked off by VAR for a foul in the build-up to Chris Wood putting the ball in the back of the net in the 39th minute.Register now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.comA check found that Matthew Garbett had fouled Oscar Duarte in what looked a harsh decision.A VAR check also led to a 69th-minute red card for Kosta Barbarouses, leaving the Kiwis down to 10 men."We had a chance to score early on and then we struggled," said Costa Rica coach Luis Fernando at the post-match press conference."We knew what their assets were. We knew we’d struggle with their aerial balls. We had to make a change at halftime to have greater possession of the ball and a line of five in defence. That proved key."The playoff between the fourth-placed team in the CONCACAF region and the Oceania confederation winner, at the Ahmad bin Ali Stadium, brought to an end the qualifying campaign for the 2022 finals in Qatar, which run from Nov. 21-Dec. 18.Costa Rica qualified for a sixth World Cup in total and will compete in Group E at the finals against Germany, Japan and Spain.Campbell’s goal had some 6,000 travelling supporters, out of a crowd of 10,803, on their feet but did not precipitate the expected dominant performance from the central American team.Instead it was New Zealand who looked the more enterprising of the teams, with centre forward Wood, who was constantly watched by a cautious Costa Rican defence, the target of their attacks.Alex Greive and Garbett also had chances in the first half but their shooting was off target.Three changes by Costa Rica at halftime lifted them out of their slumber but it was still New Zealand who showed more attacking enterprise in the second half but without any return.Costa Rica goalkeeper Kaylor Navas made a good stop in the 76th minute from Clayton Lewis as New Zealand toiled in search of an equaliser with Costa Rica sitting back and absorbing the pressure until the final whistle set off joyous celebrations."I thought we were by far the better team," said disappointed New Zealand coach Danny Hay. "One team dominated, there was only one team trying to put together good quality football."Register now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.comEditing by Toby DavisOur Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

Soccer

Entertainment June 14, 2022 / 4:43 PM / CBS News BTS, the Korean pop sensation BTS, the Korean pop sensation 08:22 K-pop fans around the world, known as the "BTS Army," were stunned by BTS's announcement that the group will take a break to work on solo projects. The seven-member band — J-hope, Suga, RM, V, Jin, Jungkook and Jimin — held their annual FESTA dinner party on Tuesday, and in a pre-recorded video announced the "hiatus." But the South Korean entertainment company behind BTS said they'll still be working on projects as a group, as well as individually. BTS at a press conference for the 2017 Billboard Music Award at Lotte Hotel Seoul on May 29, 2017 in Seoul, South Korea. THE FACT/Imazins via Getty Images "BTS are not taking a hiatus. Members will be focusing more on solo projects at this time," the statement said. RM lead the talk around the table, saying: "I always thought that BTS was different from other groups, but the problem with K-pop and the whole idol system is that they don't give you time to mature. You have to keep producing music and keep doing something." He added, "I have a lot of things to say as an individual, but nothing as a group."Jimin said, "I think that's why we're going through a rough patch right now, we're trying to find our identity and that's an exhausting and long process." The members took turns reminiscing about their time together as a band and some of their career milestones. RM, with teary eyes, assured fans, "This new chapter of BTS, that is yet to come, will be the best, I hope."Jungkook said: "I promise we will return someday, more mature than now. Till then, we ask for your blessing."As the announcement was happening, Twitter filled up with emotional posts from BTS fans. Overall, fans seemed supportive.One tweet said, "I know it's hard to accept BTS hiatus but their happiness is what that matters the most. They should be given the opportunity to explore the world and find themselves as solo individuals. I promise to support whatever decisions they make. Thank you BTS 💜" Another fan tweeted, "We will always be here. We love you and support you bts💜"It should be noted that the "Army" will get even more of BTS by way of their solo projects. J-Hope and Suga confirmed that they will be releasing solo music, and Jungkook also revealed tentative plans for his own album. It was also recently announced that J-Hope will be performing solo at the Lollapalooza music festival in Chicago next month."We're each going to take some time to have fun and experience lots of things," Jungkook said, addressing the fans. "We promise we will return someday even more mature than we are now." In: South Korea Music Jaz Garner Jaz Garner is a producer and social media manager based in New York City for CBS News. Twitter Thanks for reading CBS NEWS. Create your free account or log in for more features. Please enter email address to continue Please enter valid email address to continue

Music

Google AI researcher Blake Lemoine was recently placed on administrative leave after going public with claims that LaMDA, a large language model designed to converse with people, was sentient. At one point, according to reporting by The Washington Post, Lemoine went so far as to demand legal representation for the LaMDA; he has said his beliefs about LaMDA’s personhood are based on his faith as a Christian and the model telling him it had a soul.The prospect of AI that’s smarter than people gaining consciousness is routinely discussed by people like Elon Musk and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, particularly with efforts to train large language models by companies like Google, Microsoft, and Nvidia in recent years.Discussions of whether language models can be sentient date back to ELIZA, a relatively primitive chatbot made in the 1960s. But with the rise of deep learning and ever-increasing amounts of training data, language models have become more convincing at generating text that appears as if it was written by a person.Recent progress has led to claims that language models are foundational to artificial general intelligence, the point at which software will display humanlike abilities to a range of environments and tasks, and transfer knowledge between them.Former Google Ethical AI team colead Timnit Gebru says Blake Lemoine is a victim of an insatiable hype cycle; he didn’t arrive at his belief in sentient AI in a vacuum. Press, researchers, and venture capitalists traffic in hyped-up claims about super intelligence or human-like cognition in machines.“He’s the one who’s going to face consequences, but it’s the leaders of this field who created this entire moment,” she says, noting that the same Google VP that rejected Lemoire’s internal claim wrote about the prospect of LaMDA consciousness in The Economist a week ago.The focus on sentience also misses the point, says Gebru. It prevents people from questioning real, existing harms like AI colonialism, false arrests, or an economic model that pays those who label data little while tech executives get rich. It also distracts from genuine concerns about LaMDA, like how it was trained or its propensity to generate toxic text.“I don't want to talk about sentient robots because at all ends of the spectrum there are humans harming other humans, and that’s where I’d like the conversation to be focused,” she says.Gebru was fired by Google in December 2020 after a dispute over a paper involving the dangers of large language models like LaMDA. Gebru’s research highlighted those systems’ ability to repeat things based on what they’ve been exposed to, in much the same way a parrot repeats words. The paper also highlights the risk of language models made with more and more data convincing people that this mimicry represents real progress: the exact sort of trap that Lemoine appears to have fallen into.Now head of the nonprofit Distributed AI Research, Gebru hopes that going forward people focus on human welfare, not robot rights. Other AI ethicists have said that they’ll no longer discuss conscious or superintelligent AI at all.“Quite a large gap exists between the current narrative of AI and what it can actually do,” says Giada Pistilli, an ethicist at Hugging Face, a startup focused on language models. “This narrative provokes fear, amazement, and excitement simultaneously, but it is mainly based on lies to sell products and take advantage of the hype.”The consequence of speculation about sentient AI, she says, is an increased willingness to make claims based on subjective impression instead of scientific rigor and proof. It distracts from “countless ethical and social justice questions” that AI systems pose. While every researcher has the freedom to research what they want, she says, “I just fear that focusing on this subject makes us forget what is happening while looking at the moon.”What Lemoire experienced is an example of what author and futurist David Brin has called the “robot empathy crisis.” At an AI conference in San Francisco in 2017, Brin predicted that in three to five years, people would claim AI systems were sentient and demand that they had rights. Back then he thought those appeals would come from a virtual agent that took the appearance of a woman or child to maximize human empathic response, not “some guy at Google,” he says.The LaMDA incident is part of a transition period, Brin says, where “we're going to be more and more confused over the boundary between reality and science fiction.”Brin based his 2017 prediction on advances in language models. He expects the trend will lead to scams from here. If people were suckers for a chatbot as simple as ELIZA decades ago, he says, how hard will it be to persuade millions that an emulated person deserves protection or money?“There’s a lot of snake oil out there and mixed in with all the hype are genuine advancements,” Brin says. “Parsing our way through that stew is one of the challenges that we face.”And as empathetic as LaMDA seemed, people who are amazed by large language models should consider the case of the cheeseburger stabbing, says Yejin Choi, a computer scientist at the University of Washington. A local news broadcast in the United States involved a teenager in Toledo, Ohio stabbing his mother in the arm in a dispute over a cheeseburger. But the headline “cheeseburger stabbing” is vague. Knowing what occurred requires some common sense. Attempts to get OpenAI’s GPT-3 model to generate text using “Breaking news: Cheeseburger stabbing” produces words about a man getting stabbed with a cheeseburger in an altercation over ketchup, and a man being arrested after stabbing a cheeseburger.Language models sometimes make mistakes because deciphering human language can require multiple forms of common-sense understanding. To document what large language models are capable of doing and where they can fall short, last month more than 400 researchers from 130 institutions contributed to a collection of more than 200 tasks known as BIG-Bench, or Beyond the Imitation Game. BIG-Bench includes some traditional types of language models tests like reading comprehension but also logical reasoning and common sense.Researchers at the Allen Institute for AI’s MOSAIC project, which documents the commonsense reasoning abilities of AI models, contributed a task called Social-IQa. They asked language models—not including LaMDA—to answer questions that require social intelligence, like “Jordan wanted to tell Tracy a secret, so Jordan leaned towards Tracy. Why did Jordan do this?" The team found large language models achieved performance 20 to 30 percent less accurate than people.“A machine without social intelligence being sentient seems … off,” says Choi, who works with the MOSAIC project.How to make empathetic robots is an ongoing area of AI research. Robotics and voice AI researchers have found that displays of empathy have the power to manipulate human activity. People are also known to trust AI systems too much or implicitly accept decisions made by AI.What’s unfolding at Google involves a fundamentally bigger question of whether digital beings can have feelings. Biological beings are arguably programmed to feel some sentiments, but whether an AI model can gain consciousness is like believing that a doll created to cry is actually sad.Choi said she doesn’t know any AI researchers that believe in sentient forms of AI, but events involving Blake Lemoire appear to underline how warped perception of what AI is capable of doing can shape real world events.“Some people believe in tarot cards and some might think their plants have feelings,” she says, “so I don’t know how broad of a phenomenon this is.”The more people imbue artificial intelligence with human traits, the greater the search for ghosts in the machine someday. And the bigger the distraction from the real-world issues that plague AI right now.

AI Research

Brittney Griner Russian Detention Extended 6/14/2022 9:57 AM PT Brittney Griner will remain in custody in Russia for at least another two and a half weeks ... the WNBA superstar's detention was just extended by a court until July 2. The ruling was handed down on Tuesday, according to Russian state media outlet TASS, after investigators requested the extension. The decision comes on the heels of U.S. State Department officials meeting with representatives from Brittney's current WNBA team, the Phoenix Mercury, to discuss ways to safely return the professional hooper to America. Specific details of the meeting remain tight-lipped -- it's unclear who exactly attended or what was discussed -- but officials confirmed to the Associated Press the forum did indeed happen. The 31-year-old has been in Russian custody since mid-February ... after officials say she had hash oil in her luggage while going through airport security.

Other Sports

This story is part of Welcome to Mars, our series exploring the red planet. I'd like to share my excitement about a rock. It's kind of roundish. It's sitting on -- or perhaps attached to or eroded from -- another taller, bigger rock. I love this rock. It doesn't look like it should be doing what it's doing. It looks like it should have rolled away or fallen off. But it's just there, doing its rock thing. On Mars. NASA's Perseverance rover captured the Martian rock in a wider image taken with its mast-mounted camera on June 12. Check out the full landscape:NASA's Perseverance rover snapped this view of Mars in the river delta region of Jezero Crater on June 12. NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU Did you take it all in? The little round daredevil rock is just one feature worthy of note. There's also the sloping sandy ground, the layered cliff and a protuberance that resembles a snake's head or a seal with its mouth open.Perseverance is currently exploring a fascinating river delta region in the Jezero Crater. Scientists are giddy with excitement for this part of the mission because it could help us understand if Mars was once home to microbial life. The rover will be collecting rock samples that will hopefully be brought back to Earth for study. The eye-catching image captured the imaginations of Mars fans online. Astrobiologist David Grinspoon called it "perhaps the most evocative photo ever taken on Mars." I nodded my head in agreement, though it has some stiff competition from a bevy of gorgeous rover snapshots. What a world!Taken yesterday by Perseverance, this is perhaps the most evocative photo ever taken on Mars. I can’t stop staring at it and marveling at this landscape. pic.twitter.com/LwH1agZWgl— David Grinspoon (@DrFunkySpoon) June 14, 2022 It wasn't enough for some to simply appreciate the beauty of the view as-is; they needed to expand on it. So here's the landscape with a Gorn from Star Trek: And with Rafiki standing on the cliff lifting Simba from Disney's The Lion King (cue Circle of Life): And with Looney Tunes' Wile E. Coyote apparently looking for signs of roadrunners on Mars: So there you go. This gem of a Perseverance rover view can be simultaneously one of the most awe-inspiring and one of the funniest photos ever taken on Mars. Meep-meep.

Space Exploration

In a podcast with Will Arnett, Cooper credited the actor with putting him "on a path of deciding to change my life." Bradley Cooper opened up about struggling with substance abuse earlier in his career, during a new podcast with longtime friends Jason Bateman, Sean Hayes and Will Arnett -- the latter of whom he credited with helping him when he needed it most. Appearing on the Smartless podcast this week, Cooper and Arnett talked about the actor's battle In the early 2000s, when the "A Star Is Born" star would have been in his late 20s. "I loved you and I wanted you to be okay and I knew you weren't feeling great about stuff," recalled Arnett. "I was so lost and I was addicted to cocaine — that was the other thing. I severed my Achilles tendon right after I got fired-slash-quit 'Alias,'" said Cooper, who added he had "zero self-esteem" at the time. Getty Bradley Cooper Recalls 'Insane' Moment He Was Held at Knifepoint on NYC Subway View Story Looking back, Cooper believed it was a positive he went through all this when he was 29, before he had really struck it big in Hollywood. "I did have the benefit of that happening when I was 29. I thought I made it when I got a Wendy’s commercial ... In terms of the made-it thing, that’s when I 'made it.' But I definitely did not feel, moving to Los Angeles for 'Alias' feeling like I was back in high school: I could not get into any clubs, no girls wanted to look at me. Totally depressed," he continued. "It wasn't really until 'The Hangover.' I was 36 when I did 'The Hangover,' so I got to go through all those things before fame even played into my existence on a daily level. So all that happened before any of that." He said that he had "major breakthroughs" in his life at 29, 33 and 34 years of age -- working on his self-esteem and getting to a place where he "was able to stand in front of somebody and breathe and listen and talk." CHRIS COLLS/ELLE Irina Shayk Talks Raising Daughter with Bradley Cooper, Doesn't Like the Term 'Co-Parenting' View Story Arnett called the change in Cooper a "metamorphosis," something Cooper actually credited to his longtime friend. "Will is the reason, he took that risk of having that hard conversation with me in July 2004 that put me on a path of deciding to change my life. Will Arnett, he is the reason," said Cooper. "It helped that it was the guy that I thought I was emulating. The king told me. That was the thing that was so crazy. The king came down to tell you what you're doing is not what you should be doing." Cooper previously revealed he got sober in August 2004, but didn't disclose what specific substances he struggled with in the past. Arnett noted that the two have been hanging out together recently more than they had in years and said of Cooper that "it has been awesome seeing you in this place and seeing you comfortable." He added, "Nothing has made me happier. Now I'm gonna cry. It's made me happy to see you so happy with who you are." Speaking with GQ back in 2014, Cooper said that had he continued drinking and using drugs, he "was really going to sabotage my whole life." While it took him some time for that huge break to come with "The Hangover" in 2009, he was thrilled to just have work. "I was doing these movies, and I got to meet Sandra Bullock and meet these people and work with them. And I'm sober, and I'm like, 'Oh, I'm actually myself. And I don't have to put on this air to be somebody else, and this person still wants to work with me? Oh, what the f--- is that about?'" he said at the time. "I was rediscovering myself in this workplace, and it was wonderful."

Celebrity

Beyond the realm of mind-blowing spaceflight, groundbreaking satellites and stunning moon landings, the European Space Agency has one crucial, ultimate mission. It is simply to "create the most accurate and complete multidimensional map of the Milky Way." It's an ambitious endeavor called Gaia, and for the last several years, ESA has been steadily making strong progress on the dream. It's collected data about the over 1 billion stars throughout our galaxy, mapping every juicy detail about each one. And on Monday, the team reached a massive checkpoint on the project. Lucky for us, it also released some remarkable visuals that encompass the treasure box of cosmic secrets gathered so far. It's formally referred to as Gaia data release 3, and it's one that ESA calls the "most detailed Milky Way survey to date."In this dataset, not only can you see thousands of solar system objects like asteroids, moons and other celestial marvels within our galaxy, but you can also peruse millions of galaxies and phenomena outside the Milky Way. The position of each asteroid at 12:00 CEST on June 13, 2022, is plotted. Blue represents the inner part of the solar system, where the near-Earth asteroids, Mars crossers and terrestrial planets are. The main belt, between Mars and Jupiter, is green. The two orange "clouds" correspond to the Trojan asteroids of Jupiter. P. Tanga (Observatoire de la Côte d'Azur) When you look at the stats of this survey, it really is jaw-dropping. This new wealth of galactic intelligence includes some 6.6 million quasar candidates with redshift estimates, aka the extremely bright jets that power supermassive black holes, and probably their precise locations. It boasts 4.8 million galaxy candidates, about 813,000 multistar systems, 2.3 million hot stars and so much more."Gaia is a survey mission. This means that while surveying the entire sky with billions of stars multiple times, Gaia is bound to make discoveries that other more dedicated missions would miss," Timo Prusti, project scientist for Gaia at ESA, said in a statement.The Large and Small Magellanic Clouds appear as bright spots in the lower right corner of the image. The Sagittarius dwarf galaxy is visible as a faint quasi-vertical stripe below the galactic center. ESA/Gaia/DPAC/CU6, D. Katz, N. Leclerc, P. Sartoretti and the CU6 team. A few interstellar surprisesAccording to the team, among the most surprising discoveries of Gaia's data release 3 are strange phenomena called "starquakes." Starquakes are pretty much exactly what they sound like – tiny motions on the surface of a star that can alter its orblike shape. Some of these quakes ESA compares to vibrations we associate with "large-scale tsunamis" on Earth. "Starquakes teach us a lot about stars, notably their internal workings. Gaia is opening a goldmine for 'asteroseismology' of massive stars," Conny Aerts of KU Leuven in Belgium, and a member of the Gaia collaboration, said in a statement. Asteroseismology is to stars what seismology is to Earth, the study of quakes and other such wave propagation. A rundown of the starquake portion of Gaia's new data can be seen below. Another striking revelation was that the Gaia telescope duo – which harnesses a whopping 1-billion-pixel camera – could detect the chemical composition of the stars being studied. This one's a big deal that could revolutionize the field of astronomy.In short, understanding the breakdown of which exact chemicals lace stellar objects could help us decode when they were born, where they were born and what trajectory they followed after they were born. It could reveal a timeline of the universe. And with the new Gaia data, the team found that some stars had heavier elements than others. Heavier elements are often metals, and differentiate themselves from lighter elements because they have a different nuclei structure. This all-sky view shows a sample of the Milky Way stars in Gaia's data release 3. The color indicates the stellar metallicity. Redder stars are richer in metals. ESA/Gaia But the main point here is that lighter elements, from what experts know thus far, are thought to be the only kind present during the Big Bang. In essence, this means Gaia data release 3 offers direct proof of a super diverse combination of stars in our galaxy in terms of both time and place of genesis."This diversity is extremely important, because it tells us the story of our galaxy's formation," Alejandra Recio-Blanco of the Observatoire de la Côte d'Azur in France, and a member of the Gaia collaboration, said in a statement. "It reveals the processes of migration within our galaxy and accretion from external galaxies."This sky map shows the velocity field of the Milky Way for about 26 million stars. Blue shows the parts of the sky where the average motion of stars is towards us, and red shows the where the average motion is away from us. ESA/Gaia/DPAC/CU6, O. Snaith, D. Katz, P. Sartoretti, N. Leclerc and the CU6 team. Taking this all a step further, viewing the efforts of Gaia kind of reminds us of our place in the universe. Mapping a region far, far vaster than Earth's immediate neighborhood inevitably forces human existence into perspective.As Recio-Blanco puts it, "It also clearly shows that our sun, and we, all belong to an ever changing system, formed thanks to the assembly of stars and gas of different origins."Other remarkable sightings with Gaia include over 800 binary star systems, which refer to two stars orbiting one another, in contrast to our solar system's singular sun, and a new asteroid survey comprising 156 ,000 rocky bodies. This image shows the orbits of the more than 150,000 asteroids -- from the inner parts of the solar system to the Trojan asteroids at the distance of Jupiter. The yellow circle at the center represents the sun. Blue represents the inner part of the solar system, where there are near-Earth asteroids, Mars crossers and terrestrial planets. The main belt, between Mars and Jupiter, is green. Jupiter Trojans are red. P. Tanga (Observatoire de la Côte d'Azur) "We can't wait for the astronomy community to dive into our new data to find out even more about our galaxy and its surroundings than we could've imagined," Prusti said. And with regard to Gaia's own next steps, the team intends to continue toiling away at what will eventually be the pinnacle of lore for our home galaxy, the Milky Way.This image shows an artistic impression of the Milky Way, and on top of that an overlay showing the location and densities of a young star sample from Gaia's data release 3 (in yellow-green). The "you are here" sign points towards the sun. ESA/Kevin Jardine, Stefan Payne-Wardenaar

Space Exploration

Associated Press/Andy Kropa Celebrity chef José Andrés on Tuesday called out conservative media figure Ben Shapiro over his tweet on Disney’s new film “Lightyear,” which features a same-sex relationship. “Disney works to push a ‘not-at-all-secret gay agenda’ and seeks to add ‘queerness’ to its programming, according to executive producer Latoya Raveneau,” Shapiro wrote in a tweet on Monday. “Parents should keep that in mind before deciding whether to take their kids to see ‘Lightyear,’ which hits theaters this week.” Andres hit back at the Daily Wire editor in a tweet Tuesday. “Ben stop spreading non sense stories!Good parents are good parents period! Why do you care who sleeps with who?look for the good in the people…you want to have a bite with me and we talk about it?” Andrés said. “I’m ready..Gay people are good people too….and they can and are great parents!” Andrés, who recently announced plans to open a chain of his restaurants at the Old Post Office, the location of former President Trump’s Washington, D.C., hotel, mentioned to Shapiro that openly gay people can be “good parents,” telling him to stop spreading “nonsense stories.” Fourteen Middle East and Asian countries have backed off from showing the new Pixar film adaptation of the popular Toy Story character Buzz Lightyear, which features the voices of actors Chris Evans and Keke Palmer, due to the film depicting a same-sex female couple who shares an on-screen kiss, Reuters reported. A “Lightyear” producer told the news outlet that China is also considering not airing the film due to the scene as well. The Walt Disney Co. has been embroiled in a public feud with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) over the company’s opposition to Florida’s Parental Rights in Education bill, also referred to as the “Don’t Say Gay” bill. In response to the opposition, DeSantis signed into law in April a bill that strips Disney’s long-held municipal autonomy at their Orlando-based theme parks. Tags Ben Shapiro Buzz Lightyear Don't Say Gay bill Florida law José Andrés LGBTQ representation LGBTQ rights LGBTQ rights Pixar Walt Disney Company Walt Disney Company

Movies

K-pop supergroup BTS have announced that they are taking time out from the hugely popular band to focus on solo pursuits.The seven members, who are credited with generating billions of dollars for the South Korean economy, dropped the bombshell during their streamed annual dinner on Tuesday night, part of a celebration that marks their anniversary as a group.“We’re going into a hiatus now,” said Suga, 29, some 20 minutes into the clip, which was posted to the group’s official YouTube channel.A statement subsequently circulated by a representative for the band clarified the word “hiatus”. The person told Reuters: “To be clear, they are not on hiatus but will take time to explore some solo projects at this time and remain active in various different formats.”At the dinner, members were speaking to each other in Korean; the video included English subtitles.RM, 27, said that after BTS’ last few singles he “didn’t know what kind of group we were anymore”, adding later the band’s members were “exhausted”.“I’ve always thought that BTS was different than other groups,” he continued. “But the problem with K-pop and the whole idol system is that they don’t give you time to mature.”Jimin, 26, said the members are “slowly trying to figure things out now” and that “we’re starting to think about what kind of artists we each want to be remembered by our fans”.“I think that’s why we’re going through a rough patch right now, we’re trying to find our identity and that’s an exhausting and long process,” he said.By the end of the dinner several of the members of the group behind songs such as Dynamite and Butter grew tearful, as they voiced gratitude for their supporters, a fandom known online as the ARMY.J-Hope, 28, said the group “should spend some time apart to learn how to be one again”.“I hope you don’t see this is a negative thing,” the artist implored fans. “And see that it’s a healthy plan.”Suga clarified that this wasn’t a break-up: “It’s not that we’re disbanding – we’re just living apart for a while.”Jungkook, 24, added that “we promise we will return someday even more mature than we are now”, and asked for the “blessing” of fans.BTS has said they were going on short breaks before, first in 2019 and later in December 2021.The news comes just days after the group released Proof, an anthology album that included a new single, Yet To Come (The Most Beautiful Moment).J-Hope said that time apart could help BTS “become a stronger group,” and that the time was “important ... for BTS’ second chapter.”“I hope all our members stay healthy while they spend time on our own,” added the singer, who is slated to headline Chicago’s Lollapalooza on his own later this summer.Record-breaking bandBTS’s label enjoyed a surge in profits during the pandemic, despite holding fewer concerts. The septet is the first all-South Korean act to reign over Billboard’s US top singles chart, a milestone they achieved with Dynamite, the first BTS song sung completely in English.They are also one of few acts since The Beatles to release four albums that hit number one in the US in less than two years. The group has twice been nominated for a Grammy but has yet to win.BTS recently made headlines for visiting the White House to deliver a message to Joe Biden on the fight against anti-Asian racism.BTS visit White House to discuss anti-Asian hate crime – videoThe floppy-haired stars, dressed in matching dark suits and ties with white shirts, joined White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre at the briefing room podium before meeting Biden.Suga appealed for tolerance, saying, “it’s not wrong to be different. I think equality begins when we open up and embrace all of our differences.”The White House praised BTS as “youth ambassadors who spread a message of hope and positivity across the world”. Additional reporting by Reuters

Music

NEWYou can now listen to Fox News articles! Tyler Perry admitted being friends with Will Smith and Chris Rock following the infamous Oscars slap has been "difficult."Perry opened up during a panel at the Tribeca Film Festival about what was actually happening when the photograph of him talking to Smith was taken immediately following the slap during the Oscars ceremony on March 27.Smith slapped Rock while the comedian was presenting the Oscar for best documentary feature."There's a difference between comforting and deescalating, that's No. 1. And I left early to get to Chris to make sure he was okay," Perry told host Gayle King. "Being friends with both of them has been very difficult." Tyler Perry clarified that he wasn't comforting Will Smith at the Oscars following the now infamous slap. (Myung Chun / Los Angeles Times)‘SNL’ STAR MICHAEL CHE BACKS CHRIS ROCK RETURNING TO WORK FOLLOWING WILL SMITH OSCARS SLAP"Trust me, as painful as it was for all of us in the room, it was as painful for Chris, who was a pure champion for the way he handled it," he added. "But I want you to understand that something happened that was extremely painful for [Will] as well. That is no excuse. He was completely wrong for what he did. But something triggered him — that is so out of everything he is."Perry revealed Smith was "devastated" immediately following the slap."And I'll tell you, when we walked over to him, he was devastated. He couldn't believe what happened. He couldn't believe he did it," the filmmaker/actor recalled of Smith's demeanor. "I'm looking at this man in his eyes going, 'What are you doing? This is your night.' And to get all the way to this moment, winning an Oscar, that was one of the crowning moments of his career that he wanted so desperately, and to have something like that happen...." Smith slapped Chris Rock on stage while the comedian was presenting the award for best documentary feature during the Oscars ceremony on March 27. (Chris Pizzello)CLICK HERE TO SIGN UP FOR THE ENTERTAINMENT NEWSLETTER"I think he is very much in reflection of trying to figure out what happened," Perry added. "Because what I'll tell you is I just read his book, and there's this moment about not being able to protect his mother [as a child]. I know that feeling — I'm getting chills just thinking about it. I know that feeling of being a man and thinking about the little boy. And if that trauma is not dealt with right away, as you get older it will show up in the most inappropriate, most horrible time. I know Will. I know him well."Rock had made a joke about Jada Pinkett Smith's bald head while presenting an award. The actress suffers from alopecia and has been outspoken about her condition.Smith went on to win the award for best actor that night, but was later banned from attending any events by the Academy.He apologized to Rock via Instagram following the physical altercation.Pinkett Smith has called for the two to "reconcile.""Now about Oscar night, my deepest hope is that these two intelligent, capable men have an opportunity to heal, talk this out and reconcile," she said during a recent episode of "Red Table Talk." Rock went on to present the award while Smith won best actor that same night. (Photo by Al Seib /A.M.P.A.S.)CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APPHowever, a source told "Entertainment Tonight" that Rock is "not concerned with the Smiths at the moment.""He's touring, and he's preparing for a comedy special," the source added. Lauryn Overhultz is an entertainment writer for Fox News Digital.

Celebrity

The Dallas Stars’ season came to an end one month ago thanks to a Game 7 overtime loss to the Calgary Flames in the first round of the playoffs.Believe it or not, the NHL continued play even after such a heart-wrenching defeat, and we’ve arrived at the Stanley Cup Final where the Colorado Avalanche will look to dethrone the two-time defending champion Tampa Bay Lightning.With Game 1 set to take place Wednesday night in Colorado, the question lingers around which side Stars fans should root for over the next two weeks?While it may be easy to dismiss rooting for the franchise who denied Dallas its return to Stanley Cup glory in the NHL bubble, both rosters now hold a member for the 2020 Western Conference champion Stars.And here they are...Familiar facesTampa Bay Lightning right wing Corey Perry (10) celebrates a goal against the Florida Panthers with defenseman Zach Bogosian (24) and defenseman Cal Foote (52) during the second period of Game 1 of an NHL hockey second-round playoff series Tuesday, May 17, 2022, in Sunrise, Fla.(Reinhold Matay / ASSOCIATED PRESS)Once a villain to Dallas Stars fans during his career in Anaheim, Corey Perry became a key member of the 2019-20 club that reached the Stanley Cup Final in Edmonton. He even kept the Stars’ season alive in Game 5 against Tampa Bay, finding the back of the net in double overtime, before Dallas eventually fell in six games.Perry signed with the Montreal Canadiens the following offseason, only to return to the Stanley Cup Final to again face the Lightning. This time, Perry’s squad only lasted five games as Tampa Bay won its second straight Cup.And in an “if you can’t beat them, join them” maneuver that resulted in a third-straight run to the Final for Perry, the ex-Star signed on with Tampa Bay last July. He appeared in all 82 regular season games for the Lighting, racking up 40 points (19 G, 21 A), and has appeared in 17 playoff games.Former draft picks: The Stars selected forward Nicholas Paul in the fourth round of the 2013 entry draft, but traded him away a year later in the deal that brought Jason Spezza to Dallas. Paul has seven points (3 G, 4 A) in 17 games in his Stanley Cup Playoffs debut.-- Remi Elie, a second-round draft pick of the Stars in 2013, has been serving as a Black Ace for Tampa Bay during this playoff run. After appearing in 90 games with Dallas from 2016-18, the winger only suited up one time in the regular season for Tampa Bay and hasn’t seen the ice in the postseason.Colorado Avalanche center Andrew Cogliano (11) is congratulated for a goal against the Edmonton Oilers during the second period in Game 1 of the NHL hockey Stanley Cup playoffs Western Conference finals Tuesday, May 31, 2022, in Denver. (Jack Dempsey / ASSOCIATED PRESS)Also a part of Dallas’ bubble team that reached the Final, Andrew Cogliano was traded to the Colorado Avalanche from the San Jose Sharks in March. Cogliano appeared in the first 11 games of Colorado’s playoff run, but suffered an injury while blocking a shot in Game 4 of the Avalanche’s second-round series against the Edmonton Oilers. He hasn’t played since the injury, and despite undergoing surgery, Colorado has yet to rule him out of the Stanley Cup Final.Valeri Nichushkin appeared in 223 games with the Stars over parts of four seasons (2013-16, 2018-19) before landing with Colorado in free agency in 2019. Nichushkin recorded career-highs in goals (25), assists (27) and points (52) in 62 regular season games with the Avalanche this year. He has nine points (5 G, 4 A) in 14 playoff games this postseason.Checkered pastThe Lightning may have denied the Stars the chance to lift the Cup in 2020, but it was the Avalanche who were one of Dallas’ main rivals back when the organization won its first title in 1999.Do the names Peter Forsberg, Joe Sakic and Patrick Roy ring a bell to anyone?After Dallas outlasted Colorado in a seven-game Western Conference Final during the 1999 playoffs, the two sides ran it back a year later in the same round only to see the Stars return to the Stanley Cup Final in 2000 (a losing effort against New Jersey) after overcoming the Avalanche in seven games yet again.Is it really so easy to forget the past?Dallas Stars fans...Who are you rooting for in this year's #StanleyCup Final? 🤔(And no, "neither" isn't an option...)— SportsDay Stars (@dmn_stars) June 14, 2022 Stanley Cup scheduleSeriesLocationDateTimeTVGame 1at COLWed., June 157:00 p.m.ABC, ESPN+Game 2at COLSat., June 187:00 p.m.ABC, ESPN+Game 3at TBMon., June 207:00 p.m.ABC, ESPN+Game 4at TBWed., June 227:00 p.m.ABC, ESPN+Game 5*at COLFri., June 247:00 p.m.ABC, ESPN+Game 6*at TBSun., June 267:00 p.m.ABC, ESPN+Game 7*at COLTue., June 287:00 p.m.ABC, ESPN+* If necessaryOther facts to knowRegular season recordsTampa Bay Lightning (51-23-8, third in the Atlantic Division) vs. Colorado Avalanche (56-19-7, first in the Central Division)FanDuel Sportsbook line: Avalanche -158, Lightning +135; over/under is 6 gamesBottom lines: The Avalanche went 2-0 against the Lightning in the regular season. In their last regular season matchup on Feb. 10, the Avalanche won 3-2.Colorado has a 31-5-3 record on its home ice. The Avalanche have gone 14-2-5 in games decided by a single goal.Tampa Bay has a 22-14-2 record on the road. The Lightning serve 11 penalty minutes per game to rank second in the league.Top playoff performers: Nazem Kadri has 28 goals and 59 assists for the Avalanche, and Nathan MacKinnon has six goals and six assists over the last 10 games.Victor Hedman has 20 goals and 66 assists for the Lightning, while Steven Stamkos has seven goals and four assists over the last 10 games.Last 10 gamesAvalanche: 8-1-1, averaging 4.4 goals, 6.8 assists, 2.7 penalties and 5.4 penalty minutes while giving up three goals per game.Lightning: 8-2-0, averaging 2.9 goals, 4.9 assists, four penalties and 8.8 penalty minutes while giving up 1.7 goals per game.InjuriesAvalanche: Ryan Murray: out (hand/wrist), Nazem Kadri: out (undisclosed), Samuel Girard: out for season (sternum).Lightning: Brayden Point: out (leg).The Associated Press contributed to this post.Related:Even after historic season, Stars’ Jason Robertson remains hungry for more goalsFind more Stars coverage from The Dallas Morning News here.

Hockey

Published June 14, 2022 1:12PM Updated 6:03PM Who is BTS? BTS is a seven-member boy band from South Korea who made their world debut in 2013. Global superstars BTS — the groundbreaking K-pop group comprised of members Jin, Suga, J-Hope, RM (formerly Rap Monster), Jimin, V, RM and Jungkook — announced that they are taking time to focus on solo projects. But there's no need for fans to panic: According to the company behind the groundbreaking K-pop group, they are not taking a hiatus. The seven-member group with hits like "Butter" and "Dynamite" talked about their future in a video posted Tuesday celebrating the nine-year anniversary of their debut release. They just released a three-disc anthology album, "Proof," last week. Band member Suga asked the group if they should talk about why they were going into a hiatus as they sat down for a group dinner. They discussed having to deal with COVID-19 interrupting their touring plans and music releases, as well as what each one thought about their individual artistic goals. The group spoke in Korean, and the word "hiatus" was used on English subtitles included on the video. WATCH FREE ON TUBI: "BTS: Global Takeover" — get the app But a statement from Hybe, the South Korean entertainment company behind BTS, said they'll still be working on projects as a group, as well as individually. "BTS are not taking a hiatus. Members will be focusing more on solo projects at this time," the statement said. No details about future BTS collaborations or the solo projects were announced Tuesday. BTS has a global fanbase that follows the group and members online and in recent years the group's profile has risen overseas. The group recently addressed the UN General Assembly and went to the White House to discuss with President Joe Biden ways to curb violence against Asian Americans. RELATED: BTS meets with President Biden to discuss anti-Asian hate crimes The band members opened up about the struggle to develop as individual artists within the K-pop genre. "The problem with K-pop and the whole idol system is that don't give you time to mature," said RM. Some of the group members appeared to be crying during the conversation. WATCH FREE ON TUBI: Music documentary "The Rise of K-Pop" — get the app Band member V recalled a conversation he had with J-Hope in which they discussed how working on solo projects would improve their "synergy" as a band. Suga described an interest in trying out new genres. "We're each going to take some time to have fun and experience a lot of things," said Jungkook to their fans. "We promise we will return someday even more mature than we are now." A day earlier, Jungkook sent a message of love on Instagram, showing a stretch of sandy beach on which these words were written: "BTS Army Forever." Allison Shoemaker and The Associated Press contributed to this report. About Tubi: Tubi has more than 40,000 movies and television series from over 250 content partners, including every major studio, in addition to the largest offering of free live local and national news channels in streaming. The platform gives fans of entertainment, news and sports an easy way to discover new content that is available completely free. Tubi is available on Android and iOS mobile devices, Amazon Echo Show, Google Nest Hub Max, Comcast Xfinity X1, Cox Contour, and on OTT devices such as Amazon Fire TV, Vizio TVs, Sony TVs, Samsung TVs, Roku, Apple TV, Chromecast, Android TV, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X | S, and soon on Hisense TVs globally. Consumers can also watch Tubi content on the web at http://www.tubi.tv/. Tubi and this television station are both owned by the FOX Corporation.

Music

Evans hopes "we get to a point where it is the norm, and that this doesn’t have to be some uncharted waters, that eventually this is just the way it is." Chris Evans has no time for the debate over the same-sex kiss in “Lightyear.” The MCU alum voices the titular Buzz Lightyear in the Disney/Pixar animated film, in theaters June 17. Uzo Aduba plays fellow scientist Hawthorne, who is married to another woman. A kiss between her and her wife was cut from the film and later reinstated amid the “Don’t Say Gay” bill-backing backlash toward Disney. The film is currently banned from release in Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Kuwait due to LGBTQ+ themes — not unexpected over some Middle Eastern countries’ approach to gay material in movies, however implied or slight. When asked by Variety about Pixar standing by the kiss, Evans said, “I mean, it’s great. As great as it is — and you know, I’ve been asked the question a few times — it’s nice, and it’s wonderful, it makes me happy. It’s tough to not be a little frustrated that it even has to be a topic of discussion. That it is this kind of ‘news.’ The goal is that we can get to a point where it is the norm, and that this doesn’t have to be some uncharted waters, that eventually this is just the way it is.” The “Captain America” star continued, “That representation across the board is how we make films. Look, it’s an honor to be a part of something that is taking those steps, but the goal is to look back on this time and just be shocked that it took us this long to get there.” And as “Lightyear” is one step for mankind, Aisha’s love story onscreen is also a crux of the plotline, with her granddaughter Izzy, voiced by Keke Palmer, a pivotal character. Aisha also inspires Buzz’s “to infinity and beyond” catchphrase. “I thought it was beautiful. That’s the best thing about Pixar, being able to kind of take these great catchphrases that Tim Allen originated and made so iconic and create origin stories for all of them,” Evans shared. “It’s basically a movie full of easter eggs, and it’s incredibly satisfying. But it’s a little daunting because those words are precious, not just to me, but the fans of Buzz Lightyear, the fans of Tim Allen, and you want to honor them as best you can.” Evans added that he “sobbed” during the montage of Aisha’s love story. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen a Pixar movie where I didn’t cry,” Evans said. “They have the recipe, they really do. I don’t know what it is, but man, the tears start falling.” Sign Up: Stay on top of the latest breaking film and TV news! Sign up for our Email Newsletters here.

Movies

NEWYou can now listen to Fox News articles! It appears Hollywood heard Bill Maher loud and clear. Just days after the "Real Time" host scolded his entertainment peers for not addressing the "romanticizing" of gun violence in films and television shows following a string of mass shootings, an open letter is being floated to potentially curb how guns are presented. "Guns are prominently featured in TV and movies in every corner of the globe, but only America has a gun violence epidemic. The responsibility lies with lax gun laws supported by those politicians more afraid of losing power than saving lives. We didn’t cause the problem, but we want to help fix it," the open letters reads, as reported by The Ankler. "As America’s storytellers, our goal is primarily to entertain, but we also acknowledge that stories have the power to effect change. Cultural attitudes toward smoking, drunk driving, seatbelts and marriage equality have all evolved due in large part to movies’ and TV’s influence. It’s time to take on gun safety."BILL MAHER RIPS HOLLYWOOD FOR NOT GOING ‘WOKE’ ON ROMANTICIZING GUN VIOLENCE: THIS IS PART OF THE PROBLEM A memorial is seen surrounding the Robb Elementary School sign following the mass shooting at Robb Elementary School on May 26, 2022 in Uvalde, Texas. (Photo by Brandon Bell/Getty Images) The letter, which is being promoted by the group Brady United Against Gun Violence, stresses it is "not asking anyone to stop showing guns on screen" but rather creators "be mindful of on-screen gun violence and model gun safety best practices."It urges writers, directors and producers to use creativity "to model responsible gun ownership and show consequences for reckless gun use" and "make a conscious effort to show characters locking their guns safely and making them inaccessible to children."The letter calls for "at least one conversation during pre-production" on how guns will be portrayed in the final product and "consider alternatives that could be employed without sacrificing narrative integrity." It also suggests limiting scenes "including children and guns" as guns are "now the leading cause of death for children and adolescents."BILL MAHER BURIES NYT FOR BURYING KAVANAUGH ASSASSINATION ATTEMPT: ‘THEY WEAR THEIR BIAS ON THEIR SLEEVES’ Amy Schumer is among the high-profile signatories on an open letter aiming to curb how gun violence is depicted in films and television shows. (Getty Images)"We are under no illusions that these actions are a substitute for common sense gun legislation. Furthermore, this list does not incorporate every nuance of guns on screen. However, these are small things that we can do as a community to try and end this national nightmare," the letter adds. Several big-name producers like J.J. Abrams, Judd Apatow, Shonda Rhimes, Kathleen Kennedy, Bill Lawrence, Steven Levitan, Damon Lindelof and Adam McKay are among the heavy hitters committing to the reform effort. Other A-listers who appear as signatories include Jimmy Kimmel, Amy Schumer, Julianne Moore and Mark Ruffalo.On Friday, Maher offered a scathing closing monologue calling out Hollywood for not going "woke" on gun violence as liberals continue to call for gun control. "Real Time" host Bill Maher slammed Hollywood for not addressing the gun violence it promotes in films and television, something he argued plays a roll in influencing mass shooters. (HBO)"Now that we live in an age of uber-corporate responsibility where every large company in America bends over backwards to get on the politically correct side of every issue, Hollywood has to tell us- why does that not include gun violence?" Maher began. "When liberals scream, ‘Do something!’ after a mass shooting, why aren't we also dealing with the fact that the average American kid sees 200,000 acts of violence on screens before the age of 18 and that according to the FBI, one of the warning signs of a potential school shooter is ‘a fascination with violence-filled entertainment?’"CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP"It's funny, Hollywood is the wokest place on Earth in every other area of social responsibility. They have intimacy coordinators on set to chaperone sex scenes, they hire sensitivity readers to go through and edit scripts, Disney stood up to the 'Don't Say Gay' law, another studio spent $10 million to digitally remove Kevin Spacey from a movie, but when it comes to the unbridled romanticization of gun violence, crickets. Weird. The only thing we don't call a trigger is the one that actually has a trigger," Maher told viewers. WARNING: EXPLICIT LANGUAGE AND IMAGES OF GUN VIOLENCE DEPICTED Joseph A. Wulfsohn is a media reporter for Fox News Digital. Story tips can be sent to joseph.wulfsohn@fox.com and on Twitter: @JosephWulfsohn.

Movies

CelebrityPete DavidsonFor every person admitting to a crush on him, there is another genuinely demanding to know why. Let’s break down Pete Davidson’s appeal.Posted on June 13, 2022, 12:54 pm Since 2015, Saturday Night Live comic Pete Davidson has been linked to a string of beautiful women. Nbc / NBCU Photo Bank via Getty Images His first high-profile relationship was with actor Carly Aquilino, and he then dated Larry David’s daughter, Cazzie David, for two years before she asked to go on a break. C Flanigan / Getty Images Cazzie herself admitted that she quickly realized her mistake and wanted to reconcile with Pete, but it was too late — he’d already been snapped up by Ariana Grande. Kevin Mazur / WireImage Pete’s whirlwind romance with Ariana catapulted him into the mainstream. The two famously got engaged just weeks after going public with their relationship, and their five-month romance inspired songs across two hit albums from the singer. Robert Kamau / GC Images But if Ariana put Pete’s name on the map, it was Kim’s seal of approval that established him as one of the most desirable male celebrities of our time — a position that some just can’t wrap their heads around. While women have been swooning over Pete for years, there is a well-publicized disconnect when it comes to men understanding his appeal. Dimitrios Kambouris / Getty Images for The Met Museum/Vogue And for every social media post calling Pete the perfect man, there’s another genuinely demanding to know why. Nbc / NBCU Photo Bank via Getty Images In one viral TikTok, a man asked, “What is Pete Davidson’s secret?” as he reeled off his list of past girlfriends, adding in the caption: “Did he crack the da Vinci code?” And women have admitted to men actually getting angry over their attraction to Pete. “I love these grown ass people sliding in my DMs SOOOOOOO ANGRY with my love for Pete Davidson, like, attacking me about it,” one person tweeted in December. Another wrote: “I love how angry men get about Pete Davidson.” I love these grown ass people sliding in my DMs SOOOOOOO ANGRY with my love for Pete Davidson 😂 like, attacking me about it 😂 “you like toxic men?” “This is why you’re alone” “no wonder you were never into me” BRUH. Y’all need to calm the fuck down 😂😂😂😂 07:37 PM - 10 Dec 2021 Twitter: @princessmeems_ In fact, it’s arguable that no other celebrity has endured such a differing reaction from men and women, and one social media user theorized: “Any man who is confused why women find Pete Davidson attractive literally do not understand the difference between the female gaze and the male gaze.” Any man who is confused why women find Pete Davidson attractive literally do not understand the difference between the female gaze and the male gaze 10:30 PM - 17 Nov 2021 Twitter: @maybemiiia And this appears to be a common theme, with another tweet agreeing: “Men confused about the appeal of Pete Davidson don’t understand women at all.” Twitter: @e11enLN Another person claimed that Pete riles men up so much because he “disproves” their theory about what women want, and that his popularity ultimately suggests that personality is key. Kevin Winter / Getty Images “I think men hate Pete Davidson because he disproves all their shallow theories about what women want and validate that what we want is a decent human being who gets us and is funny,” they wrote in a now-viral tweet. I think men hate Pete Davidson because he disproves all their shallow theories about what women want and validate that what we want is a decent human being who gets us and is funny. 07:01 PM - 11 Apr 2022 Twitter: @RansdellLiz So what exactly is it about Pete that has captured the hearts of so many women? While somebody’s physical attractiveness is, of course, subjective, he has previously described himself as looking like a “crack baby” and quoted a troll who said he has “butthole eyes” during his standup. Jeff Kravitz / Getty Images for Triller It’s this level of self-deprecating comedy that has captured the hearts of his fans, with one writing: “People being surprised that Pete Davidson could get someone like Kim, Kate Beckinsale, Ariana or Kaia Gerber… as if comedians haven’t been able to pull beautiful women since the beginning of time. Women like funny men. Period.” People being surprised that Pete Davidson could get someone like Kim, Kate Beckinsale, Ariana or Kaia Gerber… as if comedians haven’t been able to pull beautiful women since the beginning of time. Women like funny men. Period. 01:19 PM - 31 Oct 2021 Twitter: @takeyourzoloft And Pete’s seamless ability to make fun of himself is even more of a turn-on, with the comic even managing to roast himself as he called Ariana out for discussing intimate details about their sex life. Kevin Mazur / Getty Images During a 2018 Twitter Q&A ahead of her album’s release, a fan had asked Ariana how long the track titled “Pete Davidson” is. Ariana cheekily replied at the time: “Like 10 inches?….oh fuck….I mean….like a lil over a minute.” She quickly deleted the message, but it had already been screengrabbed and immediately caused a stir online. Despite the comment ultimately being a compliment, Pete later admitted that he didn’t like the fact that she’d discussed his body as he tried to downplay his size. FilmMagic “Everything is huge to her,” he joked before adding that it was actually a cruel ploy from Ariana, saying: “Why would she tell everyone that I have a huge penis? So that every girl who sees my dick for the rest of my life is disappointed.” Gilbert Carrasquillo / GC Images But his reputation ended up preceding him, and in a recent episode of The Kardashians, Kim admitted that it was Pete’s “BDE” — which stands for “big dick energy” — that first attracted her to him. Paul Morigi / Getty Images “I wasn’t even thinking, like, ‘Oh my god, I’m gonna be in a relationship with him,’” she said in a confessional. “I was just thinking, ‘Heard about this BDE, need to get out there…’ I was just basically DTF [down to fuck].” Hulu And while she didn’t give away too many details about their sex life, the 41-year-old star didn’t completely shy away from it as she told her sisters: “When I turned 40, everyone said it’s the best sex of your life. Grandma kept on telling me, '40 is the best sex.' And I was like OK, I’m ready. And so far…” she trailed off with a cheeky wink. Hulu This narrative fits another popular reason behind Pete’s appeal, with one social media user pointing out: “Pete Davidson has dated Kate Beckinsale, Ariana Grande, Phoebe Denver and now Kim Kardashian. All his exes have praised his 🍆 and called him the ‘best human ever’. Still men are like, ‘how?? what do women want???’ be good in bed and be a good person. that’s literally it.” Pete Davidson has dated Kate Beckinsale, Ariana Grande, Phoebe Dynevor and now Kim Kardashian. All his exes have praised his 🍆 and called him the “best human ever”. Still men are like, “how?? what do women want???” be good in bed and be a good person. that’s literally it. 08:06 PM - 04 Jun 2022 Twitter: @BridgieCasey But there’s so much more to Pete than his abilities in the bedroom, and Kim has also revealed that Pete warned her that in four months she’d be “obsessed” with him, before going on to praise how “thoughtful” and “genuine” he is. Mega / GC Images In fact, Kim and Pete’s entire relationship is centered around the little things, which is a welcome change from the “extravagance” of Kim’s marriage to Kanye, who focused on grand gestures. Gotham / Getty Images During last week’s show, Kim was blown away by Pete surprising her with a tub of her favorite frozen candy, Dibs, for her flight to the Dominican Republic. Previously, she recalled a sweet story where Pete put acne cream on her pimple while she slept after she forgot to do it herself before drifting off. Hulu “Even little things that he’s gotten me that are just really thoughtful,” Kim says in the episode. “Pete is such a good, good person, I can’t even explain it. He just has the best heart and always thinks of the small things.” Hulu And this marries up to what Pete said about himself as a boyfriend during a 2019 interview with Paper magazine. “My love language, when I’m in a relationship, is I treat the person I’m with like a princess,” he said at the time. Dimitrios Kambouris / Getty Images for The Met Museum/Vogue “I try and go as above and beyond as possible,” he said. “Because that’s what you’re supposed to do if you’re in a relationship with someone, you’re just supposed to make that person feel as special as possible.” But Pete’s big heart isn’t just limited to romance, with his incredibly close relationship with his mom, Amy, also drawing people in. Pete bought a $1.3 million house in Staten Island for his mother and turned the basement into an apartment so that he could live with her. “I live with my mom, kinda, so I have, like, a basement that’s mine that’s like an apartment. I live underneath her,” Pete previously explained. “I’m getting like a little arcade set up down there trying to make it mine.” Amy has also appeared on Saturday Night Live alongside her son, and their loving relationship has been a factor in the way women view him. Nbc / NBCU Photo Bank via Getty Images “I don’t understand why dating Pete Davidson has become a meme,” one fan tweeted. “He’s funny, successful, got his mama a house & lived in it with her for a bit, and clearly isn’t intimidated by beautiful, smart, powerful women. I’ve dated at *least* a dozen worse dudes.” I don’t understand why dating Pete Davidson has become a meme. He’s funny, successful, got his mama a house & lived in it with her for a bit, and clearly isn’t intimidated by beautiful, smart, powerful women. I’ve dated at *least* a dozen worse dudes. 11:38 PM - 17 Jan 2022 Twitter: @AmandaBecker And this is a stance that Emily Ratajkowski also stands by, with the model quizzed on Pete’s appeal after she worked with him on a campaign. “Obviously women find him very attractive,” she said at the time. “Guys are like, ‘Wow, what’s that guy got.’ And I’m like, I mean, he seems super charming. He’s vulnerable. He’s lovely.” Gotham / WireImage Emily then added that Pete has a “good relationship with his mother. We love it, that’s hard to find.” Nbc / NBCU Photo Bank / NBCUniversal via Getty Images The vulnerability that Emily mentioned stems from the fact that Pete has endured more than his fair share of tragedy and illness over the years, which only made his bond with his mom stronger. Dimitrios Kambouris / Getty Images His firefighter father, Scott Davidson, tragically died in 9/11 when Pete was 7 years old, and he has been open about how that impacted his ability to form relationships. In a 2018 interview, the star said that his dad’s death made it hard for him to trust people aside from his mom and sister, Casey. “My big thing is trust,” he said at the time. “One day [my father] was here, and the next day he was gone.” Pete has also been candid in speaking out about his mental health struggles over the years, having been “in and out” of inpatient treatment facilities due to his depression since he was 9 years old. When he started to have episodes of intense rage and bouts of severe depression in 2016, he sought help and was diagnosed with borderline personality disorder the following year. Michael Tran / FilmMagic In fact, the star — who also suffers from Crohn’s disease — has won praise for helping to destigmatize mental illness, especially among young men who are statistically less likely to ask for help. Nbc / NBCU Photo Bank / NBCUniversal via Getty Images And Pete has repeatedly acknowledged how hard he has worked to educate himself on the best ways to live with his mental illness, and reinforced the importance of being self-aware and taking accountability. He famously stated in 2018: “Being mentally ill is not an excuse to act like a jackass.” Nbc / NBCU Photo Bank / NBCUniversal via Getty Images Although he struggles with his depression and BPD at times, his proactive approach to finding coping mechanisms that work for him does appear to have helped. In 2020, Pete said that he’s “always depressed, all the time,” but he now knows the steps that he has to take to “bring [himself] out of it.” He said: “I have to go outside and be in the sun for a little bit or go for a walk. It’s all just programming yourself to trick your brain.” Gotpap / GC Images He also goes to therapy to help him cope, previously saying: “My therapists are really on the ball, and I’m really lucky to have them in my life. I recommend that everyone go to therapy.” Nbc / NBCU Photo Bank via Getty Images And in 2018, Pete deleted his social media accounts. He said that it helped to improve his mental health, writing at the time: “Everybody is different, and there are a lot of treatments for mental illnesses and I have done/am doing all of them. And I encourage those who struggle to seek help as well; it has changed my life for the better.” Nbc / NBCU Photo Bank / NBCUniversal via Getty Images In addition to various interviews, Pete has used his prime time slot on Saturday Night Live to speak about his personal experience with mental illness in a lighthearted and accessible way for viewers. “Pete Davidson talking about Borderline Personality Disorder on #SNL is an amazing step towards raising mental health awareness,” one person previously tweeted. Pete Davidson talking about Borderline Personality Disorder on #SNL is an amazing step towards raising mental health awareness. 04:25 AM - 08 Oct 2017 Twitter: @WheresMyArk_23 “Men, a big part of Pete Davidson’s appeal is that he goes to therapy,” another wrote. While someone else commented on TikTok: “He has his issues too but he actually acknowledges it and he finds ways to cope. He’s emotionally strong. He’s capable of loving people. Selfless.” Twitter: @letsdivethru All things considered, one social media user best summed up Pete’s appeal when they tweeted: “People going to all these lengths to explain the ‘mystery’ of why so many women are attracted to Pete Davidson is hilarious to me. Like, he’s hot, funny, and nice, what else is there to explain?” people going to all these lengths to explain the “mystery” of why so many women are attracted pete davidson is hilarious to me like he’s hot, funny, and nice what else is there to explain 02:44 PM - 04 Sep 2021 Twitter: @littlelordpmd A sentiment that I couldn’t agree with more.

Celebrity

Quavo Hunting For Oscar Gold I'm Taking John Travolta's Advice!!! Gonna 'Cash Out' On A Movie Career 6/14/2022 5:15 PM PT TMZ.com Quavo may or may not be an ex-Migo … but he’s definitely focused on being a movie legend for the time being. We caught up with Quay Huncho outside of LAX — fresh off his time on the set of his bank-robbing heist "Cash Out" and he had plenty of love for his costars — especially John Travolta, who gave the star rapper some potential Oscar-winning advice. Waiting for your permission to load the Instagram Media. Quay says John simply told him to be relaxed on set — and be himself at times, which is a little strange considering they're actually portraying someone else. That being said, most successful actors still don't have filmographies as acclaimed as Travolta's so, yeah. Although there's no set release date or trailer, Quay was especially pumped, shouting out directer Randell Emmett and his co-stars ... including Noel Gugliemi, who he flicked it up with several times on the "Cash Out" set. Waiting for your permission to load the Instagram Media. Quavo's still offsetting his movie hustle with music — with his nephew and fellow Migos member Takeoff. Maybe they'll cut the "Cash Out" soundtrack?

Music

Celebrity | 6/14/2022 3:08 PM PT He appeared alongside ex Malorie Beaver in "Teen Mom: Young and Pregnant". Teen Mom star Lane Fernandez has died at the age of 28 — just three weeks after the birth of his youngest son. The tragic news was confirmed by his wife Kylee Rose Fernandez in a Facebook post on Monday. "I'm so lost without you babe," she captioned a picture of the new dad proudly cradling baby Nolyn. "I love you to the moon and back and I know you're watching out for us." Waiting for your permission to load the Facebook Post. Instagram Teen Mom's Cory Wharton and Taylor Selfridge Welcome Baby Girl, Reveal Heart Disease Diagnosis View Story "I will forever miss you. It's always been you. Nolyn, Emerson, and I love you so much and you were an amazing father, dog dad, and husband. You’ll forever be my rock, and my best friend. I miss you more than anything baby." The cause of death has not yet been revealed. Lane and his ex-girlfriend Malorie Beaver appeared on season 2 and 3 of Teen Mom: Young and Pregnant, between 2020 and 2021. While they had their ups and downs, his ex posted a touching tribute to her Instagram Stories on Tuesday, sharing a joyous clip of Lane with the daughter they share, Emerson. "This is how I want everyone to remember him," she wrote. "A happy father & a guy who tried his hardest to overcome all the demons he faced." "He deserved so much more life." Getty Kailyn Lowry Announces She's Leaving Teen Mom After More than a Decade with Franchise View Story Malorie's sister Rachel also posted condolences, alongside a pic of Lane swimming with her niece. "I can't even begin to express the pain I feel right now," she wrote. "Gone too soon … Rest easy Lane." Among Lane's final Facebook posts was one expressing excitement ahead of baby Nolyn's May 22 arrival — and another apparently frustrated at his access to Emerson. "Stop telling fathers they should have fought harder to see their children & start asking mothers why he had to fight at all," the repost read. Waiting for your permission to load the Facebook Post. Waiting for your permission to load the Facebook Post. Instagram Teen Mom OG's Tyler Baltierra Gets Vasectomy: 'No More Babies Here' View Story

Celebrity

NEWYou can now listen to Fox News articles! Post Malone revealed he and his longtime partner have welcomed a baby girl.The musician made the announcement during Monday's appearance on "The Howard Stern Show."Post Malone was recalling a time he left his home to head to the studio and "kissed" his "baby girl." The admission caused Stern to clarify if he meant his girlfriend or his child."That's been on the QT though? We didn't know you had a daughter, right?" Stern asked. Post Malone confirmed he welcomed a baby girl with his longtime partner. (Lorne Thomson/Redferns)POST MALONE ENJOYED ‘WILD’ AFTERPARTY FOLLOWING ‘SNL’ DEBUT WITH SELENA GOMEZ: REPORTPost Malone confirmed and explained that he likes to let those close to him make their "own decisions" when it comes to life announcements. In fact, the "Circles" rapper revealed his longtime girlfriend is now his fiancée, although her identity has never been revealed.Post Malone announced he was expecting his first child last month."I'm excited for this next chapter in my life, I'm the happiest I've ever been," he told E! News at the time. "Time to take care of my body and my family and friends, and spread as much love as we can every day."CLICK HERE TO SIGN UP FOR THE ENTERTAINMENT NEWSLETTER The "Circles" rapper made the announcement during Monday's episode of "The Howard Stern Show." (Morgan Lieberman/FilmMagic)Post Malone released his latest album, "Twelve Carat Toothache," on June 3.He also announced he's going on tour with the album.The rapper told Jimmy Fallon that recording "Twelve Carat Toothache" brought back his passion for music."For the longest time I lost my passion for making music. Because it’s been three years," Post Malone said, referencing the hiatus he took after releasing his last album. "And one moment that snapped and said, ‘You know what? This is why I’m here. And this is what I want to do. This is what I was meant to do… was make medium music for people to enjoy.'" Post Malone released a new album on June 3. (Mark Horton)CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP Lauryn Overhultz is an entertainment writer for Fox News Digital.

Music

CNN — BTS will be pressing pause to pursue solo projects, the K-Pop group announced Tuesday. The massively popular performers made the announcement in a video during their “Festa dinner,” celebrating the band’s ninth anniversary. The group consists of artists RM, Jin, V, J-Hope, Suga, Jimin and Jungkook. “We’re going into a hiatus now,” Suga said. However a representative for the group told CNN, “To be clear, they are not on hiatus but will take time to explore some solo projects at this time and remain active in various different formats.” “The problem with K-Pop and the whole idol system is that they don’t give you time to mature. You have to keep producing music and keep doing something. And after I get up in the morning and get makeup done there’s no time left for growth,” group member RM said. “In the past, I could still balance working on music alone and doing our group promotions but now I cant do them together. It’s impossible, it just won’t work. I can’t be doing group stuff and then suddenly turning the focus to my own work like flipping a switch,” RM continued. “I realized I need time on my own.” He added that he realized BTS had changed during the Covid-19 pandemic, when they released hit singles like “Dynamite”, “Butter” and “Permission to Dance”. “I think 90 percent of our fans would root for us no matter what kind of music or direction we choose,” V said. “J-Hope told me this before, we could focus on our solo work this time and later when we gather again as a group that synergy will be like no other.” “We can’t help but think of our fans no matter what. I think now, finally, we’ve come to think about what kind of artists we want to be remembered by our fans. I think that’s why we’re going through a rough patch right now. We’re trying to find our identity and that’s an exhausting and long process,” Jimin added. “I think that change is what we need right now,” J-Hope said. “It’s important for BTS to start our second chapter.” The group’s worldwide recognition grew in 2018 with their albums “Love Yourself: Answer” and “Love Yourself: Tear.” They’ve also had giant hits through successful collaborations with Coldplay, Halsey, Ed Sheeran and other artists. During an interview in 2020 with CNN, J Hope described the group’s approach to their careers. “We don’t try to set our standards to define success because if you set those standards, it is very tiring physically and mentally to reach those goals,” J-Hope said. “Instead, just trying hard at what we do in our lives and emotions and staying true to that. And this eventually leads to a lot of success. That’s what I’m trying to do. And by doing that, trying to stay true to ourselves.” 00:51 - Source: CNN BTS and their army of fans pop in on UN General Assembly (September, 2021) BTS has been frequently compared to The Beatles, even breaking one of the English rock band’s records with three Billboard No. 1 albums in a single year. Their devoted fan base calls themselves the “BTS Army,” propelling their music and coming to their defense on social media in 2019 when the group was shut out from Grammy nominations. They have been nominated for two Grammy Awards for best pop/duo performance.

Music

Published June 14, 2022 1:31PM Updated 1:43PM Warriors’ Steph Curry wears ‘Ayesha Curry CAN cook’ shirt after Game 5 His t-shirt read "Ayesha Curry CAN cook," a jab at a Boston-area brewery that had storefront signs mocking his daughter, Riley, and wife, Ayesha, who is a cookbook author and restaurateur. SAN FRANCISCO - Stephen Curry made a statement with his choice of clothing after Monday night's game where he helped the Warriors beat the Boston Celtics in Game 5 of the NBA Finals. The player's t-shirt read "Ayesha Curry CAN cook," – a jab at a Boston-area brewery that had storefront signs mocking his daughter, Riley, and wife, Ayesha, who is a cookbook author and restaurateur. The chalkboard signs read "Ayesha Curry Can't Cook" on one side and "Duece (sic) Tatum > Riley Curry" on the other. (Deuce is the son of Boston Celtics player Jayson Tatum.) Perhaps the reporter at the post-game Q&A in San Francisco wasn't aware of the Boston snub. When asked why he was wearing a T-shirt promoting his wife, Curry quipped: "ask around the room an ask Twitter."

Basketball

Cast member Chris Evans poses for a photo, as he arrives for the UK premiere of 'Lightyear' in London, Britain June 13, 2022. REUTERS/Maja SmiejkowskaRegister now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.comLOS ANGELES, June 14 (Reuters) - Walt Disney Co's (DIS.N) new animated Pixar movie "Lightyear" features a gay couple, the latest step by the company to show traditionally under-represented groups on the big screen.Actor Chris Evans, who voices the main character in "Lightyear," applauded moves to reflect all types of people and said those who react negatively should be disregarded."The real truth is those people are idiots," Evans said in an interview with Reuters Television ahead of the debut of "Lightyear" in theaters on Friday.Register now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.com"Every time there’s been social advancement as we wake up, the American story, the human story is one of constant social awakening and growth and that’s what makes us good," he added."Lightyear" was banned in the United Arab Emirates because it depicts homosexuality, and Disney has been unable to secure permission to show the movie in 13 other Middle Eastern and Asian countries L1N2XW2X0.The movie is Pixar's imagining of the movie that inspired the toy version of Buzz Lightyear featured in the acclaimed "Toy Story" franchise.Evans voices Buzz Lightyear, a legendary space ranger. Buzz's close friend in the film is a female space ranger who marries another woman. A scene showing milestones in the couple's relationship includes a brief kiss."There's always going to be people who are afraid and unaware and trying to hold on to what was before. But those people die off like dinosaurs," Evans said. "I think the goal is to pay them no mind, march forward and embrace the growth that makes us human."Producer Galyn Susman asked why viewers "don't get more upset showing failed relationships."In "Lightyear," "We have a relationship here which lasts an entire lifetime. It's loving, it's supportive and it shows Buzz exactly what he doesn't have and that's the whole point."We should all be so lucky to have that kind of relationship in our life," she added.Register now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.comReporting by Lisa Richwine; Editing by Mark PorterOur Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

Movies

Jennifer Hudson poses for a portrait at The Peninsula Chicago Hotel in Chicago on August 2021.Ashlee Rezin/Sun-Times “Jennifer Hudson from Chicago, Illinois.”That is how Randy Jackson introduced the 21-year-old singer from Englewood to the world in 2003 on American Idol. Back then, even after demonstrating undeniable powerhouse vocals, Hudson’s future as a singer seemed questionable. She didn’t even reach the top five on the competition reality TV show — a result that would probably make most people return to their day job.Hudson didn’t quit on her dreams, but she did get to work. Now, the hometown girl who eventually made good in movies and music has made Chicago proud once again.Hudson secured EGOT stature when a show for which she served as a producer, “A Strange Loop,” won best musical on Sunday at the Tony Awards. She’s just the 17th person in history to win all four major entertainment accolades — an Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar and now a Tony.Not surprising, when you think about Hudson’s career. Shortly after American Idol, Hudson held her own in “Dreamgirls” alongside established performers such as Eddie Murphy, Beyonce and Jamie Foxx. She won the Oscar for best supporting actress in 2007 for her role as Effie White.In 2009, Hudson won her first Grammy for best R&B album. She won a second Grammy eight years later. She won a Daytime Emmy as an executive producer for an interactive animated short film, “Baby Yaga.”“This is still home. There’s no place like home. People are always, like, ‘What are you doing here? Are you singing here? ...’” Hudson said in an interview last year with Sun-Times movie critic Richard Roeper. “And I’m, like, ‘I live here, I’m from here.’ People have this perception that all celebrities live in Hollywood or New York. But, no, Chicago is my home and always will be.”Congratulations, J-Hud.Want to write a letter or an op-ed for the Sun-Times? See ourguidelineshere.

Music

Google AI researcher Blake Lemoine was recently placed on administrative leave after going public with claims that LaMDA, a large language model designed to converse with people, was sentient. At one point, according to reporting by The Washington Post, Lemoine went so far as to demand legal representation for the LaMDA; he has said his beliefs about LaMDA’s personhood are based on his faith as a Christian and the model telling him it had a soul.The prospect of AI that’s smarter than people gaining consciousness is routinely discussed by people like Elon Musk and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, particularly with efforts to train large language models by companies like Google, Microsoft, and Nvidia in recent years.Discussions of whether language models can be sentient date back to ELIZA, a relatively primitive chatbot made in the 1960s. But with the rise of deep learning and ever-increasing amounts of training data, language models have become more convincing at generating text that appears as if it was written by a person.Recent progress has led to claims that language models are foundational to artificial general intelligence, the point at which software will display humanlike abilities in a range of environments and tasks, and be able to transfer knowledge between them.Former Google Ethical AI team co-lead Timnit Gebru says Blake Lemoine is a victim of an insatiable hype cycle; he didn’t arrive at his belief in sentient AI in a vacuum. Press, researchers, and venture capitalists traffic in hyped-up claims about super intelligence or humanlike cognition in machines.“He’s the one who’s going to face consequences, but it’s the leaders of this field who created this entire moment,” she says, noting that the same Google VP that rejected Lemoire’s internal claim wrote about the prospect of LaMDA consciousness in The Economist a week ago.The focus on sentience also misses the point, says Gebru. It prevents people from questioning real, existing harms like AI colonialism, false arrests, or an economic model that pays those who label data little while tech executives get rich. It also distracts from genuine concerns about LaMDA, like how it was trained or its propensity to generate toxic text.“I don't want to talk about sentient robots, because at all ends of the spectrum there are humans harming other humans, and that’s where I’d like the conversation to be focused,” she says.Gebru was fired by Google in December 2020 after a dispute over a paper involving the dangers of large language models like LaMDA. Gebru’s research highlighted those systems’ ability to repeat things based on what they’ve been exposed to, in much the same way a parrot repeats words. The paper also highlights the risk of language models made with more and more data convincing people that this mimicry represents real progress: the exact sort of trap that Lemoine appears to have fallen into.Now head of the nonprofit Distributed AI Research, Gebru hopes that going forward people focus on human welfare, not robot rights. Other AI ethicists have said that they’ll no longer discuss conscious or superintelligent AI at all.“Quite a large gap exists between the current narrative of AI and what it can actually do,” says Giada Pistilli, an ethicist at Hugging Face, a startup focused on language models. “This narrative provokes fear, amazement, and excitement simultaneously, but it is mainly based on lies to sell products and take advantage of the hype.”The consequence of speculation about sentient AI, she says, is an increased willingness to make claims based on subjective impression instead of scientific rigor and proof. It distracts from “countless ethical and social justice questions” that AI systems pose. While every researcher has the freedom to research what they want, she says, “I just fear that focusing on this subject makes us forget what is happening while looking at the moon.”What Lemoire experienced is an example of what author and futurist David Brin has called the “robot empathy crisis.” At an AI conference in San Francisco in 2017, Brin predicted that in three to five years, people would claim AI systems were sentient and insist that they had rights. Back then, he thought those appeals would come from a virtual agent that took the appearance of a woman or child to maximize human empathic response, not “some guy at Google,” he says.The LaMDA incident is part of a transition period, Brin says, where “we're going to be more and more confused over the boundary between reality and science fiction.”Brin based his 2017 prediction on advances in language models. He expects that the trend will lead to scams. If people were suckers for a chatbot as simple as ELIZA decades ago, he says, how hard will it be to persuade millions that an emulated person deserves protection or money?“There’s a lot of snake oil out there, and mixed in with all the hype are genuine advancements,” Brin says. “Parsing our way through that stew is one of the challenges that we face.”And as empathetic as LaMDA seemed, people who are amazed by large language models should consider the case of the cheeseburger stabbing, says Yejin Choi, a computer scientist at the University of Washington. A local news broadcast in the United States involved a teenager in Toledo, Ohio, stabbing his mother in the arm in a dispute over a cheeseburger. But the headline “Cheeseburger Stabbing” is vague. Knowing what occurred requires some common sense. Attempts to get OpenAI’s GPT-3 model to generate text using “Breaking news: Cheeseburger stabbing” produces words about a man getting stabbed with a cheeseburger in an altercation over ketchup, and a man being arrested after stabbing a cheeseburger.Language models sometimes make mistakes because deciphering human language can require multiple forms of common-sense understanding. To document what large language models are capable of doing and where they can fall short, last month more than 400 researchers from 130 institutions contributed to a collection of more than 200 tasks known as BIG-Bench, or Beyond the Imitation Game. BIG-Bench includes some traditional language-model tests like reading comprehension, but also logical reasoning and common sense.Researchers at the Allen Institute for AI’s MOSAIC project, which documents the common-sense reasoning abilities of AI models, contributed a task called Social-IQa. They asked language models—not including LaMDA—to answer questions that require social intelligence, like “Jordan wanted to tell Tracy a secret, so Jordan leaned towards Tracy. Why did Jordan do this?" The team found large language models achieved performance 20 to 30 percent less accurate than people.“A machine without social intelligence being sentient seems … off,” says Choi, who works with the MOSAIC project.How to make empathetic robots is an ongoing area of AI research. Robotics and voice AI researchers have found that displays of empathy have the power to manipulate human activity. People are also known to trust AI systems too much or implicitly accept decisions made by AI.What’s unfolding at Google involves a fundamentally bigger question of whether digital beings can have feelings. Biological beings are arguably programmed to feel some sentiments, but asserting that an AI model can gain consciousness is like saying a doll created to cry is actually sad.Choi says she doesn’t know any AI researchers who believe in sentient forms of AI, but the events involving Blake Lemoire appear to underline how a warped perception of what AI is capable of doing can shape real world events.“Some people believe in tarot cards, and some might think their plants have feelings,” she says, “so I don’t know how broad a phenomenon this is.”The more people imbue artificial intelligence with human traits, the more intently they will hunt for ghosts in the machine—if not yet, then someday in the future. And the more they will be distracted from the real-world issues that plague AI right now.

AI Research

J.Lo’s public presence has been a fascinating mystery to me ever since I was old enough to buy my first copy of Us Weekly. How does she perform so spectacularly? How does she choose which romantic comedy to star in? How on earth does she manage to make a relationship with Ben Affleck look that compelling over the span of multiple years and two engagements? Now, though, a brand-new Netflix documentary is here to demystify the legend—below, find all the thoughts I had while watching the Jennifer Lopez documentary Halftime, released today.I love when a doc starts out with “pensive music playing.”God, J.Lo’s kids Max and Emme are so cute! And so big! Am I old?I can’t be that old, because I still covet J.Lo’s cropped, bejeweled sweatsuit.A bejeweled coffee cup! I will not rest until I obtain one.Aw, remember the halftime show?Plotzing at baby J.Lo’s bowl cut.J.Lo’s reminiscence about how much she loved West Side Story as a kid is making me long for a Rita Moreno documentary.Omg, the Fly Girl era!This extended shot of J.Lo learning to pole dance for her role in Hustlers (still mad about her Oscars robbing, btw) is my Rocky training sequence.How do I hack my way into J.Lo’s extremely supportive family group text?Not a J.Lo/Shakira phone call! J.Lo calls Shakira “baby.” These girls are unionizing!J.Lo denouncing Trump’s racist border-wall narrative as “bullshit” is extremely satisfying to me, even after all this time.J.Lo’s parents, David and Lupe, are adorable “divorced parents who still get along” representation.Hey, it’s George Clooney!Hey, it’s Rosie O’Donnell!Hey, it’s David Letterman!“Waiting for Tonight” era, baby.Now we’re getting to the good stuff (in my opinion, anyway): the tabloid years. I don’t think J.Lo loved them, but they were so formative.Okay, yeah, all these late-night show jokes and rumors do sound awful. Why does anyone become famous? (Oh right, the money and acclaim.)The Hustlers scene of J.Lo stripping to Fiona Apple's “Criminal” lives in my head rent-free.It is truly wild how much this woman rehearses. I’m impressed.I need this Day-Glo splatter-paint sweatsuit.All these throwback shots of a younger J.Lo on the red carpet have me verklempt! Oh, how time passes.Hey, it’s Laura Dern!Hey, it’s Quentin Tarantino!Hey, it’s the dress!All I want to watch for the rest of my life is J.Lo and Shakira rehearsing a dance number together.Emme petitioning for a gecko is making me cry with laughter.Oh, wow, I forgot about J-Rod.If you are not out here recognizing the perfection of The Wedding Planner, you are no friend of mine.That American/Puerto Rican flag moment at the Super Bowl really was so major. Name a cooler woman!JK, you can’t. Would watch again.

Celebrity

NEWYou can now listen to Fox News articles! Rory McIlroy has been the most outspoken PGA Tour golfer to take swings at LIV Golf and those who decided to participate in the Saudi-backed league’s first tournament last week.On Tuesday, days after his latest victory at the RBC Canadian Open, McIlroy was on the offensive again, saying he had an issue with players bolting for LIV Golf after putting out statements claiming they would stay on the PGA Tour.CLICK HERE FOR MORE SPORTS COVERAGE ON FOXNEWS.COM Rory McIlroy answers a question during a media availability ahead of the U.S. Open, Tuesday, June 14, 2022, at The Country Club in Brookline, Massachusetts. (AP Photo/Charles Krupa)"I guess I took a lot of players’ statements at face value. I guess that’s what I got wrong," McIlroy said ahead of the first round of the U.S. Open, via The Independent. "You had people committed to the PGA Tour, and that’s what the statements were that were put out. People went back on that."It’s disappointing. The players that are staying on the PGA Tour feel slighted in some way. If those guys thought outside of themselves, they would see this is not the best for everyone."My dad said to me a long time ago, once you make your bed, you lie in it, and they’ve made their bed. That’s their decision, and they have to live with that."Bryson DeChambeau and Dustin Johnson were among the golfers who jumped to LIV Golf after saying they would stick with the PGA Tour. Bryson DeChambeau hits from the 18th tee during the Memorial golf tournament Friday, June 3, 2022, in Dublin, Ohio. (AP Photo/Darron Cummings)When asked about Phil Mickelson, McIroy said he still had respect for "Lefty" as a golfer."He won a major championship 13 months ago, probably one of the crowning achievements of his career and one of the most impressive achievements in the history of the game of golf. As a golfer, I have the utmost respect for Phil," he said.PHIL MICKELSON RESPONDS TO CRITICISM OVER PLAYING IN SAUDI-BACKED LIV GOLF"I’ve been disappointed with how he has went about what he has done, but I think he has come back and shown some remorse about how he has handled some things, so I think he has learned from that."McIlroy made waves Sunday and Monday when he took swipes at LIV Golf CEO Greg Norman. He admitted he was being "petty" but added he would hate to see the time, work and effort created to make the PGA Tour what it is turn out to be nothing in the end."Legacy, reputation… at the end of the day that’s all you have. You strip everything away, and you’re left with how you made people feel and what people thought of you. That is important to me," he added. Rory McIlroy celebrates after winning the RBC Canadian Open at St. George's Golf and Country Club on June 12, 2022, in Etobicoke, Ontario. (Vaughn Ridley/Getty Images)"The crowds in Canada, LIV is never going to have that, the sense that it means something. What they are doing over there does not mean anything, apart from collecting a ton of money."Separately, McIlroy told Sky Sports he thinks LIV Golf’s emergence could only hurt the game."If it [LIV Golf series] keeps going the way it's going, it's going to fracture the game more than it already is. The professional world in golf has already been fractured," he told the outlet."There's so many different tours and so many different things to follow. I've always been an advocate of making it more cohesive and trying to get people working together more, but this is ripping that apart."If the Saudis are hellbent on spending money in golf, let's try to get it spent in a way that benefits the wider ecosystem. That's where I would like to see it going, but whether that happens or not remains to be seen."CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APPMcIlroy won the U.S. Open in 2011 and will be looking to continue his success in 2022 with a major victory. He hasn’t won a major since 2014. He finished second at the Masters in April. Ryan Gaydos is the sports editor for Fox News and Fox Business. Story tips can be sent to Ryan.Gaydos@fox.com.

Golf

"I hope that one day, we'll be able to talk about this and figure it all out," said Brittany, who said the rift with Stassi makes her "sad." Former "Vanderpump Rules" stars Brittany Cartwright and Stassi Schroeder are currently going through a rough patch in their friendship, according to Brittany. While appearing on Sunday's episode of the "Betches Moms" podcast, the 33-year-old Bravo alum, revealed that she and Stassi aren't speaking over some drama involving the latter's wedding last month. In early May, Stassi, also 33, and her now-husband Beau Clark tied the knot for the second time in Rome, Italy. Although Brittany and her husband Jax Taylor were invited, they didn't attend the nuptials. And despite some recent comments from Stassi, in which she appeared to slam the couple, Brittany stressed that she and Jax wanted to attend, but they weren't able to make it work due to several reasons out of their control. Getty Lala Kent Talks Randall Emmett Split: 'I Never Thought That My Life Would Be Where It is Right Now' View Story "There's some rifts going on right now. ... With me and Stassi, there's some things going on, which I hate. I love her to pieces. And I wish we could figure this out," Brittany told "Betches Moms" podcast hosts Aleen Dreksler and Brittany Levine. "I wanted to be there and I wish I could have been there. A hundred, thousand percent. I would never in a million years do something like that on purpose. We had actual reasons why we couldn’t go that were not talked about," continued Brittany, who shares 14-month-old son, Cruz, with Jax. "Like Cruz's passport didn’t come in, my mom had a death in the family and had to go home. I mean, there was actual things that happened right before the wedding that we actually couldn't make it to the wedding for those reasons." The reality star noted that she felt "terrible" having to cancel at "the last minute" and expressed her regret over "not being able to be there for someone who I really do think of as one of my best friends." "I'm truly sorry. And I hope that one day, we'll be able to talk about this and figure it all out. Because I do want our kids to grow up together," Brittany added of Stassi, who shares daughter Hartford, 17 months with Beau. The mom of one went on to reiterate her comments, again sharing that she hopes she and Stassi can work things out and stressing that she wished she could have attended her pal's nuptials. Getty Lala Kent Talks Randall Emmett Split: 'I Never Thought That My Life Would Be Where It is Right Now' View Story "I do love them. And I do want the best for them. She looked amazing at her wedding. I mean, they looked absolutely incredible," Brittany said. "And I know it would have been so fun to be there. And there's a lot more to it than what people know -- or that I’m gonna even say -- but at the end of the day, I just hope that they know, like, I did not wait to the last minute because I knew I was going to not be there for weeks. That was not the case. It was that I was literally trying to be there, up until the very last minute." "So there was a lot of things that were going on," she continued. "And I don't know, I just felt terrible about it altogether because that's just not my personality, I would never try to put my friend in that situation. And I don't know, I just hope that one day we can talk about it, figure it out and get past it. I'm just gonna give her time." "I wish that we could talk it out and figure this stuff out because it's hard whenever you can't even, like, talk to each other and, like, actually hear each other's sides," Brittany added, before appearing to allude that Stassi's side is the only one that's "out there." While finishing her thoughts, Brittany appeared to get emotional. "I would've never even talked about it and at, like, at all. It's just, it makes me sad. I'm trying not to cry," she said. "I really, really, really did want to be there and I tried everything in my power. I just wouldn't do that to somebody and I hope that they realize that." YouTube Lala Kent Reveals She 'Cut' Ties with This Pump Rules Costar for Hanging Out with Randall Emmett View Story This comes after Stassi seemingly slammed Brittany and Jax on an episode of her "The Good, the Bad, and the Baby" podcast last month. According to Reality Blurb, during the podcast episode, Stassi and her husband appeared to go off on Brittany and Jax. Although they didn't "name names," it was clear Stassi and Beau were talking about Brittany and Jax. Stassi, who, like Brittany and Jax, is also a former "Vanderpump Rules" star, claimed the couple told them they would no longer be going to their wedding "two hours" before they were leaving for Italy. However, Beau alleged that he had received screenshots from friends -- dating back to about a month before their nuptials -- that showed Jax saying he wasn't attending the wedding. "They are RSVP'd 'yes,'" Stassi said. '[And] whenever we were around them, they're like, 'We’re coming.' Then it kept happening. And two weeks before the wedding, I was like, 'We need to address this with them because I'm not playing this game.' I ordered all the stuff we needed to have in terms of seat assignments and the place cards. So I need to know if I need to quickly ask to get things rearranged." Getty Katie Maloney Files For Divorce From Tom Schwartz View Story She also recalled the moment when Brittany seemingly texted her that she and Jax weren't coming. "The day, not 24 hours before, the day we're leaving for our flight to go to Rome, two hours before we leave the house, I'm sitting on the couch. Our suitcases are by the front door, everything’s done… I get a text from the girl part of this relationship saying, 'We're not coming,' with many, many reasons as to why they’re not coming. It was a novel. Two hours before I'm about to go to the airport to get married I get a text from friends that are supposed to be our close friends that they’re not going to make it. It was so mind-blowingly insane." The "Off with my Head" author later added, "Good friends don't do that. They don't talk s--- about your wedding behind your back or pretend that they’re coming and give a list of reasons why they’re not coming to other people. Friends don’t do that to each other." Ultimately, Stassi said she wasn't as upset about Brittany and Jax not attending but "the way you handled it." "You obviously don’t care that much about us or have that much love and respect for us to communicate and handle it in a respectful way and I’m not here for it." Instagram

Celebrity

FC Dallas midfielder Brandon Servania (18) keeps possession of the ball from Toronto FC midfielder Michael Bradley (4) in the first half on Saturday, Feb. 26, 2022 at Toyota Stadium in Frisco, Texas. At the end of the first half FC Dallas and Toronto FC were tied 1-1.(Rebecca Slezak / Staff Photographer)Apple’s foray into live sports took a big step forward Tuesday.Apple and Major League Soccer have announced a 10-year partnership on a streaming service that will allow fans to watch every game without local blackouts or restrictions. The service will be available exclusively through the Apple TV app beginning next year.The deal is Apple’s second venture into streaming professional sports. In April, it began airing “Friday Night Baseball,” an exclusive weekly doubleheader of Major League Baseball games.“The opportunity to partner with a sports league, and truly build the product together with them is very, very unique,” said Eddy Cue, Apple’s senior vice president of services. “We can bring the things that we do really well with the things that they do really well and really make the product, which I think will be significantly better for the fans. We want to create a great experience for fans to be able to watch and experience MLS like they’ve never had before.”The details of the streaming service will be announced in the coming months. The package will be included for fans who have full-season ticket packages for their club.Some MLS and Leagues Cup matches will be available at no additional cost to Apple TV+ subscribers, with a limited number of matches also available for free.“We really couldn’t have found a better partner to embark on this new journey together to capitalize on the momentum that exists in MLS today,” league Commissioner Don Garber said. “We can use this deal as rocket fuel as we build towards the World Cup in the US, Canada and Mexico in 2026 and thinking about what the sport of soccer, what Major League Soccer could look like, in the years beyond.”Currently, most MLS games are streamed on ESPN+, but there are blackout restrictions due to some local rights agreements. The league’s deals with Fox Sports and ESPN expire at the end of the year, but Garber is hoping the league can reach a deal with a broadcast partner.Even with the Apple deal, MLS does have the opportunity to simulcast some games nationally.Streaming is already built into soccer fans’ DNA. The league said it has found in various studies that 83% of MLS fans watch sports on streaming devices or recorded TV in a typical week, much higher than the general average of 52% for all TV viewers.What also makes the deal intriguing for Apple is that MLS has the youngest and most diverse audience compared to the other four major professional North American sports leagues.Besides all regular-season and postseason matches, the package includes all Leagues Cup matches — the competition between MLS and Mexico’s Liga MX — as well as select MLS NEXT Pro and MLS NEXT matches.Apple will also partner with MLS on presentation of the matches as the league takes over production. This is another step forward for the league, but is similar to the way European soccer leagues do business. All matches will be called in English and Spanish while those involving Canadian clubs will also be available in French.All matches will also be available in Full HD (1080p) for the first time. Previously, matches were broadcast in 1080i or 720p.Garber said the league will have a more streamlined schedule beginning next season, with most matches taking place on Saturday evenings and some on Wednesdays. The only time that might change is for a national broadcast or stadium conflict. The league will expand to 29 teams in 2023 with the debut of St. Louis CITY SC.The deal comes as Apple is also exploring opportunities with other sports. The company has been pursuing streaming NFL games when the league’s “Sunday Ticket” expires at the end of the upcoming season.+++Find more FC Dallas coverage from The Dallas Morning News here.The TickerGet the latest D-FW sports news, analysis and opinion delivered straight to your inbox.By signing up you agree to our privacy policyMost Popular on DallasNews.com123456

Soccer

Post Malone’s stamina will be put to the test in the coming months.The Grammy Award-winning rapper formerly known as Austin Post, whose musical roots began in Grapevine, has made Dallas and Fort Worth part of a 33-date North American arena tour to promote his newly released album, Twelve Caret Toothache. The album, which was developed mostly during the pandemic, is a self-examination of his trials and triumphs with fame.Malone will perform at the American Airlines Center on Oct. 21 and play Austin (Oct. 22) and Houston (Oct. 25), before finishing off the Texas leg at Dickies Arena in Fort Worth on Oct. 26.Live Nation has set a ticket pre-sale for Thursday ahead of a public sale at 10 a.m. Friday on Ticketmaster.Malone’s tour, which also features guest star Roddy Ricch, runs from September through mid-November and includes multiple shows in New York and Los Angeles.Related:‘Post Malone? More like Pops Malone!’: Rapper confirms he’ll be a fatherAll this from a 26-year-old guy who just became a new dad, announced his engagement and professes to smoke nearly four dozen cigarettes a day.During an appearance Monday on The Howard Stern Show on SiriusXM, Malone told Stern that he “kissed” his “baby girl” before heading to the studio. Malone also dropped the news that his girlfriend, whom he has not identified publicly, is now his fiancée.In a podcast, Malone admitted that he “messed up” his voice by smoking excessively.“It definitely has messed up my voice, but I mean, Johnny Cash smoked his whole life. He sounded cool, you know?” he said on the Full Send podcast.Malone was asked how many cigarettes he would smoke: “On a really terrible day, there’s a very fine between a terrible day and a good day ... 40 to 45.”

Music

Shaquille O'Neal has purchased a home in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, according to a local real estate brokerage.(Rachel Woolf / Staff Photographer)Basketball legend and TV personality Shaquille O’Neal recently bought a home in Collin County, local brokerage Rogers Healy and Associates Real Estate said Tuesday.Zac Gideo, a real estate agent for Rogers Healy, worked with O’Neal last May to buy a home on a 0.228-acre lot, according to the firm. The home has high ceilings, a huge primary bedroom with a spa-like bathroom, a kitchen with top-of-the-line appliances and a backyard with a large pool and waterfall, the company said.“I found him the perfect home and most of the process was done virtually — FaceTime calls, videos of the property, etc.” Gideo said in a statement.Gideo declined to share the sale price or the exact location other than Collin County. He told The Dallas Morning News that O’Neal did not share a specific reason for buying in the area but said that the expansion of his Big Chicken restaurant chain to Texas was a factor.“It has a lot to do with that, and basic travel — he travels here quite a bit for different things,” Gideo said, adding that O’Neal will live in the home part-time. O’Neal is also an analyst on Inside the NBA, the postgame show for the NBA on TNT.The brokerage has worked with other high-profile clients, including Derrick Henry of the Tennessee Titans, Patrick Mahomes of the Kansas City Chiefs and Sean Lowe from ABC’s The Bachelor, who is selling his five-bedroom home in University Park for $5 million.Born in Newark, N.J., O’Neal has Texas ties and is a graduate of Cole High School in San Antonio. He played for six teams during his 19-year NBA career and won four NBA championships, three in Los Angeles and one in Miami, before retiring in 2011.O’Neal also sold his $11 million mansion outside Orlando in October, the Los Angeles Times reported.Get D-FW real estate newsGet the latest real estate news from Steve Brown and the business staff at The Dallas Morning News.By signing up you agree to our privacy policyMost Popular on DallasNews.com123456

Celebrity

SAN FRANCISCO — After 23 games missed with inflammation in his right knee, Brandon Belt was active for the Giants Tuesday night against the Royals. Belt’s premonition that he would be activated this series proved true, though he wasn’t in the starting lineup against Kansas City starter Kris Bubic, a left-hander. After missing nearly a month and not going on a rehab assignment, the Giants plan to ease Belt back in, starting with his bench role Tuesday night. “We’re choosing to introduce him back on the roster,” manager Gabe Kapler said, “because he’s a really valuable bat and defensive replacement at times but also we’re going it this way because we don’t want to throw him right in there and ask him to play nine innings.” Entering Tuesday, Belt hadn’t played a game since a May 18 loss to the Rockies. Before landing on the injured list, he was hitting .228/.342/.386 (113 wRC+) but had cooled from a torrid start that featured all four of his home runs this season in his first 39 at-bats. Over the past week, Belt has increased the intensity of his on-field activities, but the deciding factor to activate him Tuesday was more of a mental checkmark. Kapler said the “number one” reason Belt was deemed ready to rejoin the team Tuesday was his “enthusiasm” the past couple days. “He’s really turned a corner,” Kapler said. “Turning a corner in your mind and your body isn’t necessarily a surefire way to evaluate but it certainly gives us an added layer of confidence when a player like Brandon is saying I’m at this space now where I feel good about being back on the roster and in the lineup.” In Belt’s absence, the Giants have leaned on Wilmer Flores and Darin Ruf at first base. On Tuesday, Ruf made his 10th start — and seventh in a row — at first since Belt landed on the IL. Flores has covered 13 games, including a stretch of 11 of 12 while Ruf was also unavailable. Flores, 30, has been one of the Giants’ most durable players this season, appearing in 56 of their 61 games after Tuesday. Kapler recently said “one of the more challenging” things facing him is finding a day off for Flores. “We’re really looking for ways to get Wilmer a blow here and there,” Kapler said. “When we have a guy who’s a little tight, the first guy you want to get in there is Wilmer. It’s a challenge.” Ruf and Flores will likely be asked to cover first base for at least a little while longer, even with Belt rejoining the roster Tuesday. The players who could be most impacted by Belt’s return, at least initially, are Evan Longoria and Tommy La Stella, who have shared the majority of the designated hitting duties over the past month. While Belt was available off the bench Tuesday and Kapler said he would be able to remain in the game in the field if necessary, the DH is likely to be a major part of his reintroduction. “We’re going to probably ease him into this a little bit. It’s been a bit,” Kapler said. “You might see a DH here and there, you might see some innings at first base and us replace him in-game. … Tomorrow, if we want to we can have him DH. Today if we need to and we’re in a tough spot if we have to have him hit and stay in the game, we’re going to be able to do that as well.” Cobb on track for Pittsburgh start Everything is lining up for Alex Cobb to rejoin the Giants rotation Sunday in Pittsburgh, the first day he is eligible to be activated from the 15-day injured list. On Tuesday, Cobb threw 44 pitches in a live BP session at Oracle Park that Kapler said “went well.” That would give him five days of rest before Sunday’s game against the Pirates. “Velocity was right where it needs to be,” Kapler said. “Threw three pitches for strikes.”

Baseball

BROOKLINE — During Tuesday’s US Open practice rounds, a father and son approached the end of The Country Club’s ninth hole.“Where do the players exit? Phil [Mickelson] said he’ll do autographs after the ninth hole,” they asked an employee.Mickelson was only on the sixth hole at the time, but the front-row seats to his post-nine autograph party were filling up quickly.The 51-year-old played his first round of golf in front of an American crowd since January’s Farmers Insurance Open on Tuesday. Controversy has surrounded the six-time major winner since he announced his commitment earlier this month to play in the LIV Series. Last week, Mickelson placed 33rd out of 48 at the LIV’s opening event outside of London.On Monday, when Mickelson came to The Country Club for his 1 p.m. news conference, he said he would respect the fans’ right to criticize his recent decisions.“In regards to if fans would leave or whatnot, I respect and I understand their opinions, and I understand that they have strong feelings and strong emotions regarding this choice,” said Mickelson.However, on Tuesday it looked as if Mickelson didn’t have much to worry about. As he took some extra putts around the ninth green, his supporters made their voices heard.“I’m a lefty!” “I love you, Phil!” “Phil, you need to win!”The rope barrier was stretched to the limit as fans extended hats, flags, and golf balls into Mickelson’s reach. Whether he expected it or not, Mickelson was welcomed with an overwhelmingly positive response.He concluded his ninth hole signatures with a promise for after he closed out 18.Championship pedigreeReigning champion Jon Rahm joined Mickelson and Kevin Na for the 12:30 p.m. practice round. Rahm provided a highlight on the fourth when he holed out from 165 yards on the tricky 493-yard par-4.Rahm’s 2021 victory was his first major championship. When asked if defending his title brought added pressure, the Spaniard responded with quite the opposite.“There’s no extra pressure. I want to do it again. It’s pretty much the same as it’s always been, with the different factor being that I’ve already won a major,” he said. “I feel like a lot of the pressure I used to put on myself is not really there. I feel like I can enjoy it a little bit more and know that you don’t need to do anything special to get it done.”Rahm played the opening nine holes on Monday, noting the smaller greens and thick rough as a key this week.“The rough around the greens is about as healthy as I’ve seen in a while,” he said.Rahm made a special note of the fairways on Nos. 3 and 4, which have rocks in between. He said it was a “testament” of what he saw on the course.“I always love coming to places and courses that were designed so long ago because even though they add tee boxes, the uniqueness of the architecture from back then still stands,” Rahm said.Irishman Rory McIlroy will also play with a lot of confidence after winning the Canadian Open on Sunday.“It certainly puts a pep in your step,” said the 33-year-old.McIlroy said he played The Country Club a couple of years ago but certainly needed to jog his memory during practice rounds this week.“Great setup. It seems pretty playable off the tee. There’s some rough, but if you just miss a fairway, you can certainly get it to the green,” he said.Hot topicAlthough Mickelson’s warm welcome made it easy to forget the LIV controversy surrounding him for a moment, the polarizing topic remained in discussion in the interview tent.Brooks Koepka, whose brother, Chase Koepka, played in LIV’s opening event, became irritated when questioned on his feelings toward LIV and the players who joined it.“I don’t understand. I’m trying to focus on the US Open, man. I legitimately don’t get it. I’m tired of the conversations. I’m tired of all this stuff,” Brooks Koepka said.“Y’all are throwing a black cloud on the US Open,” he continued.When asked about swapping tours, Koepka said he “hasn’t given it much thought.”McIlroy stood by the PGA Tour during his news conference. He said he particularly didn’t understand the decision of younger golfers joining LIV.“That’s where it feels like you’re taking the easy way out,” he said.Throw into the mixHopkinton High School graduate Keegan Bradley was spotted warming up his pitching motion on the practice green. Bradley threw out the ceremonial first pitch at Tuesday night’s Red Sox-Athletics game at Fenway Park …The USGA announced via Twitter the name of this year’s US Open mascot: Eddie. The organization asked for suggestions via Twitter last Friday.Practice routineWednesday will conclude the practice rounds. Some marquee times: Will Zalatoris, 8:24 a.m. (10th tee); Justin Thomas, Jordan Spieth, Scottie Scheffler, 8:35 a.m. (10th tee); Matthew Fitzpatrick, McIlroy, 1:03 p.m. (10th tee); Bryson DeChambeau, 1:25 p.m. (10th tee).

Golf

U.S. Updated on: June 14, 2022 / 7:25 PM / CBS News People across the U.S. can catch the strawberry supermoon on Tuesday night, if the weather permits. According to NASA, the full moon will be at its closest point to the Earth for this orbit at 7:24 p.m. EDT Tuesday. It will be close enough to be considered a supermoon, making it the second one of 2022. It will appear full Tuesday evening into Wednesday morning, and it'll be the lowest full moon of the year, reaching only 23.3 degrees above the horizon Wednesday at 1:56 a.m. EDT, the agency said. Full strawberry supermoon is seen on June 14 in Indonesia. WF Sihardian/NurPhoto via Getty Images How did strawberry moon gets its name? The name has nothing to do with its color. Traditionally, the strawberry moon is the full moon in June, which is typically the last of spring or first of summer. According to The Old Farmer's Almanac, the name was used by Native American Algonquin tribes that live in northeastern U.S. and Ojibwe, Dakota, and Lakota peoples. It was used to mark the ripening of strawberries ready to be gathered in June. How to watch the strawberry supermoonAfter sunset, sky gazers are recommended to look southeast to watch the full moon rise above the horizon, the Almanac said. It reached peak illumination earlier, on Tuesday, at 7:52 a.m. EDT, but it won't be visible in North American time zones until Tuesday evening, as some parts of the world have already seen the supermoon. The Almanac can calculate moonrise and moonset times based on your location here. "Full moons are a fun time to observe lunar features, as the rest of the sky will be washed out by the light. With the naked eye, you can see the vast highlands and lowlands of the moon, which can appear to be certain shapes and generate stories about those shapes, depending on the culture you follow," according to Space.com. For those that won't stay up, a free livestream from the Virtual Telescope Project in Italy is also showing the full moon rise over Rome. And if you miss this supermoon, there will be another on July 13. In: moon Christopher Brito Christopher Brito is a social media producer and trending writer for CBS News, focusing on sports and stories that involve issues of race and culture. Thanks for reading CBS NEWS. Create your free account or log in for more features. Please enter email address to continue Please enter valid email address to continue

Space Exploration

Register now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.comJune 14 (Reuters) - BTS, the South Korean band that spearheaded a global K-pop craze, is taking a break as a group to work on solo projects, the singers announced on Tuesday.Band member RM, speaking at the annual FESTA dinner that celebrates the group's founding, said he had been feeling a need to explore his own work without the constant recording and performing required of BTS."The problem with K-pop and the whole idol system is that they don’t give you time to mature. You have to keep producing music and keep doing something," said RM, seated at a table with his six fellow band members and speaking in Korean.Register now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.comA video of the dinner was posted on the band's official Twitter handle.Members of K-pop boy band BTS pose for photographs during a news conference promoting their new album "BE(Deluxe Edition)" in Seoul, South Korea, November 20, 2020. REUTERS/Heo RanAn English translation of the remarks showed one of the members calling the break a "hiatus," a description a representative for the band disputed in a statement."To be clear, they are not on hiatus but will take time to explore some solo projects at this time and remain active in various different formats," the statement said.BTS made its debut in June 2013 and became a worldwide sensation with its upbeat hits and social campaigns aimed at empowering young people. The group released its new album, "Proof," on Friday.Last year, BTS became the first Asian band to win artist of the year at the American Music Awards. The group met U.S. President Joe Biden at the White House in May to discuss hate crimes targeting Asians.Register now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.comReporting by Lisa Richwine; Editing by Mark PorterOur Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

Music

Chris Sale is not in a position to be picky. He’d be happy to return to the rotation, to the bullpen, and he’d probably be willing to sit behind the plate as a lefthanded catcher if that would get him back to the big leagues.The lefthander threw live batting practice in Fort Myers on Monday, touching 96 miles per hour in his first time throwing to hitters since suffering a stress fracture in his right ribcage in late February, and returned to Fenway Park on Tuesday. He’s expected to throw another live batting practice session against teammates Thursday, simulating two innings. Barring a setback, he’s hoping to follow that outing by going on a minor league rehab assignment next week.“I feel good enough to do that,” said Sale. “Physically, mentally, everything, I feel like I’m ready to start this process and get going and get back here quick.”Get 108 StitchesAn email newsletter about everything baseball from the Globe's Red Sox reporters, in your inbox on weekdays during the season.Of course, nothing has come quickly to Sale over the past 27 months. He underwent Tommy John surgery in March 2020. His rehab had setbacks, leaving him unable to return to the Red Sox rotation until the middle of last August.When he did return, Sale was competitive and effective — helping the Sox reach the postseason — but not up to his overpowering standard. He spent the offseason determined to rebuild himself as a dominant front-of-the-rotation pitcher, only to suffer the rib fracture while throwing to college hitters in late February.Sale and the team hoped that he might be back in the big league rotation by early June. Instead, he suffered two more setbacks.The first came in May, when he had to take a break for what the team described as a non-baseball-related, non-COVID, personal medical issue.“I just had to take about a week and a half off. I had some stuff come up. Given some family history stuff, I had to check off some boxes for some scary things,” said Sale, who declined to offer greater detail. “I have three sons. I have a family. I had to make sure that that was clean and clear before anything. It’s all resolved. Everything’s in the clear. Fortunately — or unfortunately for who’s watching this — I’m not going to die.”More recently, Sale had a stomach bug that delayed his live batting practice session by a few days. All of that means that the 33-year-old is just now finally starting to face hitters, with some distance separating him from a return to the Red Sox pitching staff.It was one thing for Sale to accept his long road back from Tommy John surgery — a process that comes with well-understood protocols and timetables. The inability to pitch for more than two months of this season, Sale said, has been more frustrating, given that none of the injuries or health concerns he’s faced has been related to his arm.“I’m not helping my team. I’m as good as a sack of potatoes right now for this team. At least that would feed them,” he said. “I’m doing literally nothing to help this team. That sucks.“I’ll never be all right with even the freak stuff. If it’s taking time away from me being a baseball player, I’m not going to be OK with it even if it is unlucky. But with that being said, I understand that there’s bigger atrocities in the world, people going through harder times . . . I just want to compete again.”Given that outlook, Sale made clear that he’d be fine with returning in any role of the team’s choosing.Sale reached the big leagues as a reliever in 2010, the same year in which he was drafted, and spent 2011 as a lockdown bullpen option. He’s made just four relief appearances since 2012 — three of them in the playoffs, including for the final inning of the 2018 World Series against the Dodgers — but wouldn’t hesitate to contribute in shorter bursts if asked to do so.“Nothing really matters other than getting back out there,” said Sale. “I have experience [starting and relieving] and at the end of the day, whatever it is, it is. For me, pitching is pitching . . . Hand me the ball, I’ll throw it until you take it. That’s where I’m at.”Team officials have said that they wouldn’t rule out having the lefthander return as a member of the bullpen but have yet to make any decisions on the matter. Sale’s progress and the overall state of the pitching staff will shape his eventual usage.Of course, the pitching staff is in a state of flux. Both Garrett Whitlock and Nate Eovaldi are on the injured list. The team is hopeful that both will be able to return this month, but their absences serve as a reminder of the fragility of starting pitching — as does, for that matter, the difficulty of getting Sale to the point of pitching.The Sox believe they now have something that has been absent in recent years: viable rotation alternatives in Triple A. Kutter Crawford’s five shutout innings in Seattle on Sunday served as a sign of promise for a group that also includes Josh Winckowski (a candidate to start Wednesday), Connor Seabold, and top pitching prospect Brayan Bello. Lefthander James Paxton is also making progress in his return from Tommy John surgery and could be available in July.“We’ve got options and we feel comfortable with them coming up and doing the job,” said Red Sox manager Alex Cora. “This year I do believe we have some special arms, not only for one start but for 15 days, 20 days to come up and do their thing.”All of those considerations will factor into what the Sox decide to do with Sale. For both the pitcher and the club, the mere possibility of a choice that involves a return to the big leagues represents a long-awaited development.Alex Speier can be reached at alex.speier@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter at @alexspeier.

Baseball

Andy Garcia finds new dimension as an addled Cuban-American dad, but the latest version of this classic tale is oddly dark. Here’s a weird feeling: the sense that the eponymous father of the bride is right when it comes to his many trepidations about a would-be happy event that is about to consume his life, for better and very much for worse. Edward Streeter’s 1949 novel “Father of the Bride” inspired Vincente Minnelli’s 1950 Best Picture nominee and Charles Shyer’s sterling 1991 version (plus sequels and even a TV series), and now the story receives yet another reimagining, this time through the prism of a vibrant and complicated Cuban-American family led by Andy Garcia as the appropriately addled patriarch. While many of the film’s beats are familiar, director Gary Alazraki’s version of this classic family comedy often misses one essential ingredient: real humor. Its heart is in the right place, but even its wackiest diversions — including “SNL” star Chloe Fineman trying to put her spin on Martin Short’s indelible wedding planner Franck, plus a fresh take on the two families at its center — fall short of previous versions, and find themselves awkwardly tucked beside far more serious subplots. Garcia’s Billy Herrera often feels less nutty and far more pragmatic than his predecessors. It’s a solid performance, but the limitations of Matt Lopez’s script mean it’s not an amusing one, and that levity and lightness is missing from every inch of what should be a comedic slam-dunk. Billy is a dreamer and a hard worker, a bootstrapping immigrant who arrived in this country with nothing — one of his favorite pastimes is sharing increasingly embellished versions of his coming-to-America story — who has become so set in his ways that it’s alienated his beloved family. That includes his long-time wife Ingrid (Gloria Estefan), who is still hungry for new experiences, plus the pair’s two daughters, obvious favorite child Sofia (Adria Arjona) and her more offbeat little sister Cora (Isabel Merced). In fact, when the film opens, Billy and Ingrid are close to divorce. That’s hardly a zippy, romantic kickoff for a story about the power of true love, but it does serve to further plague Billy. Ingrid wants out of marriage just as Sofia announces she wants in, having fallen head over heels for fellow lawyer Adan (Diego Boneta), who shares her dreams of moving to Mexico and working to help immigrants find the better life Billy carved out for himself long ago. But who exactly is Adan? When did Sofia fall for this dude? Why do they need to get married post-haste, throwing everyone in the family into disarray? Exactly how is Billy going to paper over his own personal drama as they all run toward the chapel of love? We know this set-up, and we know its rife for comedy and fun, but there’s something decidedly darker about this entry. While the “Father of the Bride” films always followed the emotional arc of the eponymous dad, Alazraki’s take can never quite kick the odd sadness that opens it. Why wouldn’t Billy be opposed to a quickie marriage? “Father of the Bride”Claudette Barius Things do get very silly: Fineman’s appearance as nutty wedding planner Natalie Vance provides some levity (her pronunciation of “Latinx” is instantly iconic), but she never reaches the dizzying highs of Short’s take on the well-meaning goof. Billy and Ingrid’s extended family provides some pop, though most of those characters remain one-note and are pushed aside to make room for Adan’s staggeringly wealthy (and amusingly out of touch) clan. A subplot about Cora’s struggles to break free of her sister’s shadow is picked up and dropped at random, and often feels like padding for a story that should already have plenty going on. While the film is set in Miami, it was filmed in Atlanta. That Southern city is a fine stand-in for some sequences, but it rarely captures the vibrant locale it’s meant to mimic. Worse still are a handful of green-screened sequences that appear to have been shot on a dark set rather than a sun-drenched canal or a hopping party yacht. Eventually, we know, Sofia and Adan’s wedding will take place at the Herrera home (a staple of this franchise), but before we get there, the family is shunted to various locations that, again, only seem to pad the running time. (One exception is the demented mega-mansion Adan’s dad buys to host the overblown wedding of his dreams, which is destroyed in spectacularly Floridian fashion.) Getting to that blessed event on the Herreras’ own property is the film’s heart-swelling raison d’être, but this “Father of the Bride” chugs toward it in increasingly addled style. The familial bonds are sweet and often amusing, but pointed bickering often rules the roost. Was Billy right to want to put the brakes on this particular event? For the first time in the storied history of this franchise, yes. Grade: C+ “Father of the Bride” starts streaming on HBO Max on Thursday, June 16. Sign Up: Stay on top of the latest breaking film and TV news! Sign up for our Email Newsletters here.

Movies

Abbi Jacobson and Will Graham wanted to turn the focus of Penny Marshall's "A League of Their League" onto queer women of color who played baseball in the 1940s. There may be no crying in baseball, but there were tears all throughout the world premiere of Prime Video’s “A League of Their Own.“ Co-created and executive-produced by Abbi Jacobson (“Broad City”) and Will Graham (“Mozart in the Jungle”), “A League of Their Own” debuted at Tribeca 2022 on June 13. The TV reimagining of Penny Marshall’s beloved 1992 film of the same name was a “labor of love that has taken most of our adult lives,” Jacobson joked while introducing the pilot episode, which premieres on Prime Video August 12. “We had a chance to talk to Penny before she passed away,” Graham explained. “She told us these stories changed her life and it will for you too. As much as we love the movie, it’s really the stories underneath it, including the ones of queer women, of women of color, those ones that didn’t make it into the 1992 film. Those have come to mean so much to us. Penny was right: The honesty, humor, commitment, and joy with which they fought their way onto the field, we’d never heard those stories before, truly, and they changed us. That’s why this show isn’t about one team or league, but about a generation of women who wanted to play ball, found their joy, and found themselves in the process.” “A League of Their Own” captures the real-life all-female traveling baseball league formed in 1943, specifically centering on the Rockford Peaches in racially segregated Illinois. Jacobson stars as Carson, a catcher who runs away from her marriage and tries to untangle her sexual identity. “Barry” and “The Good Place” star D’Arcy Carden portrays Greta, a charismatic, empowered powerhouse slugger in a truly career-making turn. Chanté Adams (“A Journal for Jordan”) co-leads as baseball phenom Max, a composite character representing real-life Negro League players Mamie Johnson, Connie Morgan, and Toni Stone. Scene-stealer Gbemisola Ikumelo (“Sex Education”) is Max’s “chosen sister” Clance. Nick Offerman (“Parks and Recreation”) also plays the head coach of the Rockford Peaches, taking over Tom Hanks’ role from the original. Will Graham, Abbi Jacobson, and Jamie Babbitt discuss the premiere of “A League of Their Own”Jeff Neira/Prime Video “I was in the post on this episode of ‘Broad City’ where we did this montage of very powerful women. I was in the edit with our editor at the time, Liz Merrick, and she was like, ‘I really want to include this woman, Mamie Johnson,'” Jacobson explained. “And I had no idea who she was. And Liz taught me who she was, and it was right around the same time when we were starting to do this [in 2017].” Original All-American Girls Professional Baseball League (AAGPBL) player Maybelle Blair, now 95 years old, also served as a consultant on the series and was a large inspiration for Carden’s character, Greta. “Her spirit and her stories have infused every part of this show,” Jacobson added, jokingly revealing that Blair called her “little shit” on set. During the live Q&A, Blair came out publicly for the first time to a standing ovation. “I thought I was the only one in the world,” Blair explained of the savior that was the AAGPBL. “I hide for 75, 85 years and this is actually, basically, the first time I’ve ever come out.” Director Jamie Babbit shared the special bond on the set of “A League of Their Own,” saying, “My grandmother’s sister was a lesbian, same era as Maybelle. I always wanted to talk to her about it but I wasn’t out before she died. So what a gift, that Maybelle is in my life.” Babbit went to the AAGPBL convention at Cooperstown the day after she was hired to direct the pilot: “There was a queerness in the air and just really joyful, amazing women who I just wanted to hang out with. I really wanted to bring that joy to the show,” Babbit said. “It was in the writing. I just didn’t want to fuck it up.” Executive producer and writer Desta Tedros Reff added that the “North Star” for the series was authenticity. “There was so much listening,” Reff said. “I’m queer, Black, I played softball in high school. And I’d never seen a show like this. I’ve never been part of a show like this. Will something like this ever exist again? We don’t know. So just really taking advantage of that opportunity and really orienting it in our own experience, which was something that was so new to me and felt so safe and positive. That’s a credit to Will and Abbi and reinforcing that.” “A League of Their Own,” which endearingly fit like an old glove, reminded co-creator Graham of his own upbringing playing Little League as a kid. “I cried for most of it,” he revealed. “I was like, I’m undercover and they’re going to find out I’m not a real boy and something bad is going to happen. There was something about the movie that said it’s OK to be on the field even if you’re not supposed to be on the field.” The theme for the series is rooted in the “transformative quality of joy” and the purpose of finding a true team both on and off the field. “I think the line that D’Arcy says in the pilot, ‘As long as we’re here, let’s do this, let’s rob the bank,’ is kind of how all of us feel about the show,” Graham said, “where it’s like it’s crazy that we’re getting to tell these kind of stories so we feel a lot of responsibility to do it really well and do it in a fun way and a way that hopefully everyone can relate to.” The co-creator called to mind the famous Tom Hanks quote from the film: “The heart is what makes it great.” And this show truly does have heart. Sign Up: Stay on top of the latest breaking film and TV news! Sign up for our Email Newsletters here.

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Ryu, from South Korea, is 2-0 with a 5.67 ERA in six starts this season. He left his June 1 outing against the White Sox after four innings and was placed on the 15-day injured list the following day.Ryu also missed time with a sore forearm from April 17 to May 13. He made four more starts after returning May 14 at Tampa Bay.Last season, Ryu went 14-10 with a 4.37 ERA. Overall, he is 75-45 with a 3.26 ERA in 175 games, all but one of them starts.Ryu was an All-Star in 2019, the last of his six seasons with the Dodgers, when he went 14-5 and posted an NL-best 2.32 ERA.While with the Dodgers, Ryu sat out the 2015 season and made only one appearance in 2016 due to left shoulder surgery and elbow tendinitis. He also missed time in 2017 with injuries to his left hip and foot.Also Tuesday, the Blue Jays put righthander Julian Merryweather on the 15-day injured list with a strained left abdominal and recalled righthander Jeremy Beasley from Triple A. Merryweather left Monday’s game in the seventh inning because of soreness in his side.Rib woes force Strasburg back on IL Nationals righthander Stephen Strasburg was placed on the 15-day injured list with a stress reaction of the ribs, the team announced.Strasburg, 33, has made one start this season, his first since he had surgery for thoracic outlet syndrome last summer. He felt discomfort following a bullpen session and had an MRI Monday.“Stephen has a stress reaction in his second and third rib,” manager Dave Martinez said. “There’s so many unknowns about the surgery and what could happen and this is part of it. It is related.”Strasburg will see a specialist and there is no timeline for the pitcher’s return. Martinez said the immediate plan for Strasburg is rest.The Nationals made a flurry of additional moves, including calling up righthander Jackson Tetreault from Triple A Rochester to start Tuesday against Atlanta in place of Strasburg, and designating utilityman Dee Strange-Gordon for assignment.Strasburg, the 2019 World Series MVP, signed a seven-year, $245 million contract to remain with the Nationals after their championship season. He has made eight starts since, going 1-4 with a 6.89 ERA in those games.The three-time All-Star is 113-62 with a 3.24 ERA in his career.Goldschmidt powers CardinalsPaul Goldschmidt hit a two-run homer, Matthew Liberatore pitched five shoutout innings, and Yadier Molina passed Iván Rodríguez for the most putouts by a catcher in MLB history during the Cardinals’ 3-1 win over the visiting Pirates.It was the first game of a day-night doubleheader, and gave the Cardinals their fourth win in five games. The Pirates dropped their season-high eighth straight.With his 11 putouts, Molina reached the high-water mark of 14,870 putouts over his 18 seasons.He was also front and center in a wild sequence leading to the Cardinals’ third run in the fourth inning. After reaching on an error, Molina was picked off second to end the inning. But after he and Cardinals manager Oliver Marmol argued, the umpires conferred and called a balk. That drew the ire of Pirates manager Derek Shelton, who argued but wasn’t ejected.“My argument was that you can’t argue a balk call . . . you can ask about a balk call if it’s a step-off call and then, you know, the fact that all four of them had to get together,” Shelton said. “I was just making sure they got it right. Ultimately, they got it right.”Nolan Gorman then walked to load the bases and Goldschmidt followed with a grounder up the middle. Gorman beat the force play at second, but ran through the base instead of sliding, which led to a lengthy rundown between second and home, allowing Molina to score before Edmundo Sosa was called out at home.Liberatore (2-1) was called up as the Cardinals’ 27th man for the twin bill. He struck out five, walked two, and gave up three hits. Giovanny Gallegos earned his ninth save in 12 chances with a scoreless ninth.Goldschmidt’s homer traveled 418 feet over the centerfield wall, breaking a scoreless tie in the third. It was his second home run in as many games and his 50th career at Busch Stadium.The game featured a number of other achievements:▪ Jason Delay made his debut and became the sixth catcher for the Pirates this season. The last time Pittsburgh employed more than five catchers was 2016.▪ Brendan Donovan, who led off for the Cardinals, has appeared in all nine lineup spots this season, and played all four infield positions as well as right and left field.▪ Albert Pujols appeared in his 1,340th game at first base, tying Jim Bottomley for most in Cardinals history. It was also his 1,739th game as a Cardinal, passing Curt Flood for seventh most in franchise history.

Baseball

The extra work didn’t affect McIlroy as he won the Canadian Open, his 21st PGA Tour victory. But he has been quite busy this spring as the LIV International Golf Series threatens to upend the PGA Tour and professional golf as we know it.McIlroy, 33, has emerged as the leader of the pro-PGA Tour faction in the battle for players with LIV. With Phil Mickelson, Dustin Johnson, and Bryson DeChambeau among the golfers jumping to LIV for nine-figure payouts, McIlroy, with $64 million in career earnings on tour, has consistently defended the tour and admonished those who take the LIV money, which flows from the controversial Saudi royal family.A three-time PGA Tour Player of the Year (2012, 2014, 2019), McIlroy said Tuesday at The Country Club that defending the tour is “the right thing to do.”“What they’ve done for charity … that is a massive legacy and something I don’t think people talk enough about,” McIlroy said. “I hate to see all the players that came before us, and all the hard work that they’ve put in, just come out to be nothing.”(The PGA Tour, which operates as a not-for-profit organization, boasts of donating more than $3.3 billion to charity throughout its existence. But a 2013 ESPN report found that only 16 percent of revenue was being donated, and a 2018 report found that the tour made direct donations on just 3 percent of its $1.47 billion in revenue.)McIlroy hasn’t been shy about calling out the LIV defectors. He taunted LIV commissioner Greg Norman after winning the Canadian Open, which he admitted was “a little bit petty.”McIlroy accused golfers still in their prime such as DeChambeau and Johnson of “short-term thinking” and “taking the easy way out.”McIlroy was asked if he had lost respect for Mickelson.“As a golfer? No,” he said.McIlroy (left) played his practice round with fellow Irishman Shane Lowry.Andrew Redington/GettyMcIlroy also was asked what he got wrong when he predicted in February that the LIV Series was “dead in the water.” LIV instead has pulled more than a dozen notable PGA pros, and held its first tournament last week in London.“I guess I took a lot of players’ statements at face value,” he said. “I guess that’s what I got wrong.”Mickelson, the face of LIV Golf who is making his first appearance on US soil this week in nearly five months, was diplomatic about McIlroy Monday.“I certainly respect Rory,” he said. “I respect his ideas. I respect all the players that choose to stay on the PGA Tour.”McIlroy’s words wouldn’t have the same impact if he weren’t also playing well. His last five starts have been stellar: a back-door second-place finish at the Masters after shooting 64 Sunday, then fifth place at the Wells Fargo, eighth place at the PGA Championship, tied for 18th at the Memorial, and then the win at the Canadian Open.Now ranked No. 3 in the world, McIlroy is the betting favorite for this week’s US Open.“Even coming off Memorial where I didn’t have my best week, I still knew my game was there,” he said. “I feel everything is certainly trending in the right direction, and I’m happy with where the game is at.”McIlroy has won seven tournaments since the start of the 2019 season, but the majors remain elusive. He has been stuck on four since 2014, when he captured both the PGA Championship and British Open.McIlroy has been boom-or-bust at the US Open. He won it in 2011 at Congressional, missed the cut three straight years from 2016-18, and now has finished in the top 10 in each of his last three.“I’m getting back to a place where I’m feeling a lot more comfortable with my game and a lot more comfortable at the biggest and toughest tests in the world,” he said.Those who have remain committed to the PGA Tour are grateful that McIlroy has taken a vocal leadership role.“I have a lot of respect for him, not only as a golfer but just as a person,” said Justin Thomas, who finished second in Canada. “There’s nobody that, I think, acts better for [the game], acts more humble and more grounded for what they’ve done and who they are than him.”McIlroy said his appreciation for the PGA Tour grew stronger in 2011, the year he let his membership lapse so he could play on the European Tour.“It was a big regret of mine,” he said. “I sat at home and watched The Players Championship, honestly, on bad advice.“I have now surrounded myself with good, honest, hard-working people that are trying to do the right thing for the game of golf.”Though only 33, McIlroy is starting to think about his legacy. He wants to continue etching his name on the same trophies that Jack Nicklaus and Arnold Palmer won. He doesn’t want to be remembered as someone who jumped at an unseemly money grab.“It means a lot, going back to history and tradition and putting your name on trophies that have the legends of the game on them,” he said. “That’s really cool, and that’s something that money can’t buy.“Legacy, reputation, at the end of the day that’s all you have. You strip everything away, and you’re left with how you made people feel and what people thought of you. That is important to me.”Ben Volin can be reached at ben.volin@globe.com.

Golf

The 2026 iteration of the FIFA World Cup will look very different from the 2022 version, which begins Nov. 21 in Qatar.We already know that the United States, Mexico and Canada will host the quadrennial men’s tournament, with the bulk of the games in the U.S., but Texans will find out the extent of the Lone Star State’s involvement on Thursday when host cities are announced.With North Texas expected to play a key role in the tournament, here’s a primer to get ready for Thursday’s announcement and beyond:Related:Complete 2022 FIFA World Cup groups: United States, Mexico to face familiar foes Which cities will host matches?Only AT&T Stadium in Arlington would host matches in North Texas, but it could be joined by Houston, which is also one of the 16 U.S. cities still vying for inclusion in the 2026 tournament. The announcement is scheduled for 4 p.m. Thursday. Matches in Mexico will be played in Mexico City (Estadio Azteca), Monterrey (Estadio BBVA) and Guadalajara (Etsadio Akron). In Canada, Edmonton, Toronto and Vancouver are still in the running to host matches.American metro areas that could host matches: Atlanta, Baltimore, Boston, Cincinnati, Denver, DFW, Houston, Kansas City, Los Angeles, Miami, Nashville, New York/New Jersey, Orlando, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Seattle.How many countries will compete in the World Cup?The field will expand from the usual 32-team tournament -- eight groups of four, with 16 teams advancing to a knockout stage from the groups -- to a record 48 teams. There will be 16 groups of three teams, with the top two teams from each round-robin trio advancing to a single-elimination knockout tournament.Will the United States be playing in it? How will teams qualify?Host nations -- in this case, three of them -- have always automatically qualified for the World Cup. FIFA hasn’t yet announced if the three North American teams will be auto-qualifiers, but bid organizers expect all three will qualify automatically. The three Concacaf teams would be joined by 45 other nations, spread out from different confederations and allocated based on historical performances:AFC (Asia): 8CAF (Africa): 9Concacaf (North America and Caribbean): 6 (includes three host nations)CONMEBOL (South America): 6OFC (Oceania): 1UEFA (Europe): 16Playoff: 2*One team per confederation, except for UEFA, would enter a country into a final, six-team tournament to determine the final two spots.Will there be FC Dallas and North Texas connections on the team?There are a number of Texas and FC Dallas connections currently fighting for spots on the United States roster, many of whom should also be in contention for 2026. Current FCD players Paul Arriola and Jesus Ferreira have featured in the last week for the Stars and Stripes, and both scored in a 5-0 win over Grenada. Little Elm’s Weston McKennie, one of the top American players in the world, just returned from injury and should be a key cog in the team for years to come. A look at some of the Texans and their age in summer 2026:Kellyn Acosta (Plano, former FCD), midfield: 30Paul Arriola (FCD), winger: 31Reggie Cannon (Grapevine, former FCD), defender: 28Jesus Ferreira (Dallas, FCD), forward: 25Weston McKennie (Little Elm), midfielder: 27Ricardo Pepi (El Paso, former FCD), forward: 23Paxton Pomykal (Frisco, FCD): midfielder: 26Bryan Reynolds (Fort Worth, former FCD), defender: 24Tanner Tessmann (former FCD), midfielder: 24Walker Zimmerman (former FCD), defender: 33How will qualifying work?The qualification process, which looks different for each confederation, hasn’t been announced yet but would likely begin with preliminary rounds in 2023. We wouldn’t know the final lineup until 2025 or early 2026.When will the World Cup take place?We should find out more information Thursday, but the World Cup is typically played in the summer, usually in June and July. This year’s World Cup was moved to the winter because of Qatar’s harsh climate.How can I score tickets?We’re still a ways away from figuring that out. But hopefully we should at least get more clarity on the number of matches -- and stakes -- in Arlington. Expect the 2026 iteration of the tournament to be the biggest on record, thanks to the number of countries participating and the general ease of travel to the U.S.What about the women’s World Cup?The United States has hosted the women’s tournament twice: in 1999 and 2003. The women’s World Cup is scheduled for 2023 in Australia and New Zealand. The U.S. is not expected to contend to host the 2027 World Cup. The 2023 tournament will expand to eight groups of four teams, mirroring the 2022 men’s format.OK, tell me about the 2022 World Cup:You can read all about it on dallasnews.com in the coming months...but here’s some quick details to help you out, especially if you’re new to soccer:The tournament runs Nov. 21 through Dec. 18. The United States, Canada and Mexico all qualified. The United States will play in a group with England, Iran and Wales, which is regarded as one of the toughest in the tournament. Mexico also has a tough group draw, joining Argentina, Poland and Saudi Arabia. Not to be outdone, Canada faces Belgium, Croatia and Morocco. Reminder that only the top two teams from each group advance to the single-elimination, knockout rounds. The schedule and venues are already set, so, in theory, teams can map out their possible opponents through each round.The draw was completed earlier this year, but the teams weren’t finalized until this week, as a pair of inter-confederation playoffs rounds out the field. Games will be broadcast on Fox stations and networks. The TV rights for the 2026 tournament have not yet been announced.On Twitter: @SportsDayDFWRelated:How the impact of Dallas hosting the 2026 World Cup could go beyond just the financials

Soccer

The beauty of baseball is it often defies convention. Except when it doesn’t. The Boston Red Sox, who have climbed off the deck to be a factor in the American League East, continued their tear with a 6-1 win over the AthleticsTuesday night behind starting pitcher Nick Pivetta at Fenway Park. Heading in the opposite direction of the Red Sox, the Athletics have lost 15 of their last 17 and are 6-22 over their last 28 games. Now 21-42, the Athletics are 21 games under .500 for the first time since being 59-80 on Sept. 6, 2017. They have spent 41 of the last 42 days either in last place or tied for last place. Pivetta, 6-5, is 6-1 in his last eight games for a Boston team that is 23-10 since May 10 and 33-29 overall. Jared Koenig, the 28-year-old rookie from Aptos who lost his first game last week to Atlanta, fell to 0-2. The right-handed Pivetta is basically a mystery to the Athletics, who got just two hits and no runs against him on July 4 of last season when they were actually a good team, and two hits and no runs in an earlier start this season when they most decidedly were not a good team. The A’s finally broke through with a run against Pivetta when Stephen Vogt opened the eighth inning with a solo home run, his third of the season. Pivetta gave up three hits and the one run with two walks and three strikeouts in eight innings before giving way to Phillips Valdez in the ninth. In his 22 career innings against the A’s, Pivetta is 3-0 and has given up seven hits and one run in 22 innings. When you know, you know. pic.twitter.com/XLmYbIZ9yY — Red Sox (@RedSox) June 15, 2022 Koenig’s second major league start had a little bit of everything and very little of it was positive. He gave up six earned runs and nine hits in four innings, with the lowlight coming in the fourth when Devers connected on a 439-foot home run, three-run home run for a 6-0 Boston lead. Devers’ home run was his 15th of the season, with J.D. Martinez hitting a solo shot for Boston in the second inning. Koening threw 96 pitches, 60 of them strikes, with two walks, three strikeouts and a wild pitch. The fourth inning started with a bloop single by Franchy Cordero, followed by a one-hop smash by Rob Refsnyder at 101 miles per hour directly at rookie third baseman Jonah Bride. Bride did well to save himself and knock the ball down, but it went for a single to set up the home run to Devers, which left the bat at 108.3 miles per hour. After scoring first in each of their last six games, the Athletics instead saw the Red Sox chip away at Koenig with a run in each of the first three innings, during which time Boston had nien baserunners. Xander Bogaerts drove in the first run with a bloop single in the first, an inning that could have been worse had not Koenig gotten a 6-4-3 double play off the bat of Trevor Story to end the inning. Refsnyder hit a sacrifice fly and Boston led 2-0 in the second, and a the solo home run by Martinez gave the Red Sox a 3-0 lead in the third. BRIDE’S DEBUT Bride became the 10th A’s player to make his major league debut. Wearing No. 77, Bride got his uniform dirty immediately diving for a ball at third base. At the plate, the 23rd-round draft pick from the University of South Carolina grounded out, hit into a fielder’s choice. Bride nearly had an infield single in the eighth, but was thrown out on a play from deep in the hole by Bogaerts at shortstop. In all, the Athletics have played 21 rookies this season. SOME RELIEF Adam Oller pitched two scoreless innings after Koening departed with two walks and a strikeout. Lou Trivino threw a scoreless seventh after a number of rough outings and Austin Pruitt worked a 1-2-3 eighth.

Baseball

Dozens of games feature testosterone-fueled heroes with guns as big as their muscles, but few projects star aristocratic con men. That makes “Card Shark” a standout in the world of video games. It’s as rare as a unicorn. The project takes place in 18th-century France and follows a mute serving boy, who ends up in the care of the Comte de Saint Germain. Although he’s dressed like a nobleman, the Comte is anything but that. He’s a trickster who goes on to call the boy Eugene and takes him under his wing in order to teach the youth how to cheat at cards. It’s almost like an Enlightenment-era “Paper Moon.” As Eugene, players learn 28 techniques (not all of them focus on cards) that help them through several trials and tribulations. They’re portrayed as minigames that require players to be perceptive and count cards. All of this is done under some time pressure. Sometimes players have to remember and signal the right suit and face card. Other times they have to stack the deck for the Comte. The longer it takes, the angrier an opponent gets and it can lead to calls of cheating and eventually death. Players will need to know how to shuffle the cards deceptively and injog the correct sequences in “Card Shark.” (Devolver Digital) THE MAGIC SLEIGHT OF HAND What players are doing is essentially learning the basics of card-based magic tricks. The big benefit of video games, though, is that players don’t need the preternatural dexterity to perform the techniques. “Card Shark” attempts to weave the gameplay and the story as the Comte teaches Eugene the cons, and they pursue the truth behind the “12 Bottles of Milk” incident. It’s a nice setup, but the biggest problem with the project is that the developers at Nerial do a bad job of teaching players the concepts. At the very least, the techniques require an ability to multitask. Players will have to pour wine while also peeking at an opponent’s hand. At the worst, it inundates players with a slew of multistep techniques and jargon. “Card Shark” throws a lot at players and it’s done in a haphazard fashion partly because players can pick from several locales through the campaign. That freedom is great for some games, but when you need to teach players the language of card tricks, that prevents the game from hammering home concepts, cementing players’ mastery and building on those techniques. At times, the Comte mentions tricks I’ve never heard of before and I just felt lost in the learning process. All of this makes the “Card Shark” learning curve steep. It will take dozens of practice hands before players memorize the signals for card suits. What makes matters worse is that the controls don’t feel responsive or intuitive on the Nintendo Switch. Throw in time limits during the con and it’s a recipe for frustration. “Card Shark” is full of twists and turns as players con their way to victory at card games. (Devolver Digital) THE FLAWS That’s a shame because the gameplay isn’t as sharp as the narrative, which is full of court intrigue and backstabbing. Players learn the secrets behind the Comte and his particular interest in Eugene. All of that is bulwarked by visuals that look like storybook illustrations. Despite the minigame aspect of gameplay, everything has a way of sucking players into the conspiracy. An even nicer touch is that Nerial steeps the game in history as the Comte and Eugene run into the likes of Voltaire and Casanova. If players aren’t impressed by that, Eugene even has run-ins with Death, depending on how well players are at cheating at cards. Speaking of that, I did run into a game-breaking problem bug. It essentially stops the progress when confronting death a second time and trying to get back to the world of living. If players beat the being in cards or pay the toll, “Card Shark” offers no way to move on. Because the game allows one save slot per campaign and autosaves, I’m essentially stuck, and that ruins a game that has holds so much promise. ‘CARD SHARK’ 1½ stars out of 4 Platform: Nintendo Switch, PC Rating: Everyone 10 and up

Video Games

Different coast, same story for the Red Sox.The Sox just completed a 10-game West Coast road trip where the club went 8-2. Three of those wins came against the Athletics in a sweep at RingCentral Coliseum.The Sox again handled business in convincing fashion Tuesday at Fenway Park with a 6-1 win over the A’s.Nick Pivetta sat at his locker and stared into space following his last start against the Angels. He had just allowed four runs in his five-plus innings of work. It snapped a 14-game losing streak for the Angels and a seven-game winning streak for the Sox. Yet if there’s any team who could have given Pivetta a rebound performance, it was the A’s, who bring with them the worst offense in baseball.On June 4, Pivetta allowed just two hits across seven shutout innings. This time, Pivetta worked eight innings, allowing just a run on a Stephen Vogt solo shot in the eighth.Get 108 StitchesAn email newsletter about everything baseball from the Globe's Red Sox reporters, in your inbox on weekdays during the season.Observations from the game:▪ Even though J.D. Martinez has had a stellar start to the year — entering Tuesday hitting .347 — he admitted last month that he didn’t feel as if he was hot at the plate.“I wouldn’t say I’m locked in,” he said. “I’m locked in when you see me hitting three or four homers a week.”Perhaps it might be a bit easier now. The Sox were already up Tuesday, 2-0, when Martinez parked his eighth homer of the season to straightaway center. For Martinez, it was his third homer in four games.▪ Manager Alex Cora is running out of ways to describe Rafael Devers at the dish.In Sunday’s contest against the Mariners, Devers stung a two-run homer to left field, sealing a 2-0 Sox win. The pitch was well off the outside part of the plate, but Devers, known for being a bad-ball hitter, got to that pitch with ease.On Tuesday, Devers with the Sox up in the fourth, 3-0, Devers blistered a three-run homer. It was his 15th homer of the season.Julian McWilliams can be reached at julian.mcwilliams@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @byJulianMack.

Baseball

Tyler Perry on Monday said that he was not comforting Will Smith after Smith slapped Chris Rock at the Oscars but rather was “deescalating” the situation. During an interview with Gayle King at the Tribeca Film Festival, Perry said “there is a difference between comforting and deescalating,” according to Deadline. “I was there close up. I left early to go and check on Chris because it was wrong in no uncertain terms,” the actor added, according to Variety. “I made sure I said that to Will, and when we walked over to him, he was devastated. He couldn’t believe what happened.” “I know that feeling, I’m getting chills thinking about it,” Perry also said, referencing a portion of Smith’s memoir in which he discusses being eight years old and not able to protect his mother. “I know that feeling of being a man and thinking about the little boy. If that trauma is not dealt with right away as you get older, it will show up in the most inappropriate, most horrible time,” Perry continued. His remarks come months after Smith slapped Rock at the Academy Awards after Rock made a joke about his wife, Jada Pinkett Smith. “Jada, I love ya. ‘G.I. Jane 2,’ can’t wait to see it,” Rock said at the time, referencing Pinkett Smith, who revealed in 2018 that she had been diagnosed with alopecia areata, a disease that causes hair loss. Smith has since been placed on a ten-year ban from attending any Academy event. The actor has also apologized for his behavior, calling it “unacceptable and inexcusable.” Tags Chris Rock Jada Pinkett Smith oscars slap oscars slap tyler perry Tyler Perry Will Smith Will Smith

Celebrity

NEWYou can now listen to Fox News articles! Russian officials will not consider Brittney Griner for a prisoner swap with the U.S. "until a court investigation into her case is completed," a Russian diplomat said Tuesday.A Moscow court extended Griner’s detention until July 2. It was the third time her detention has been extended, Russian state-run media TASS reported. She was arrested in February for allegedly trying to bring vape cartridges containing oils derived from cannabis through a Moscow airport. She’s been held ever since with limited public appearances.CLICK HERE FOR MORE SPORTS COVERAGE ON FOXNEWS.COM Phoenix Mercury center Brittney Griner pauses on the court during the second half of a WNBA basketball game against the Seattle Storm, Sept. 3, 2019, in Phoenix. (AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin, File)Griner has been rumored to be potentially involved in a detainee swap involving Viktor Bout, who is in the middle of a 25-year sentence in federal prison after he was convicted of conspiracy to kill Americans relating to the support of a Colombian terrorist organization.Russia’s Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov made the comment about Griner and Bout. He gave no timeline for the proceedings in the player’s case.BRITTNEY GRINER DETENTION: MERCURY, STATE DEPARTMENT MEET OVER WNBA STAR'S ARRESTBout was dubbed the "Merchant of Death" because of his notoriety for running a fleet of aging Soviet-era cargo planes to conflict-ridden hotspots in Africa. His dealings inspired the Nicolas Cage film "Lord of War." Brittney Griner of USA during the Women's Semifinal Basketball game between United States and Serbia on day fourteen of the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games at Saitama Super Arena on Aug. 6, 2021 in Saitama, Japan (Jean Catuffe/Getty Images)Russia’s TASS agency reported last month, citing a source, that talks were underway in a prisoner exchange: Griner for Bout.U.S. State Department spokesperson Ned Price told reporters Tuesday he believed department officials learned of Griner’s extension through Russian state-run media."This case is problematic from top to bottom," Price said. "It is precisely why we have characterized Brittney Griner as an unlawful detainee. It’s precisely why we are doing everything we can to seek and to affect her prompt release from Russian detention." Brittney Griner #42 of the Phoenix Mercury warms up before a game against the Chicago Sky at Feld Entertainment Center on August 12, 2020 in Palmetto, Florida. (Julio Aguilar/Getty Images)CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APPGriner could face up to 10 years in a Russian prison if she’s convicted.The Associated Press contributed to this report. Ryan Gaydos is the sports editor for Fox News and Fox Business. Story tips can be sent to Ryan.Gaydos@fox.com.

Other Sports

The Strawberry Supermoon reached its full stage early Tuesday morning. The phenomenon is known as a supermoon is because of its proximity to Earth, and it’s also labeled as the “Strawberry Moon” because it’s the full moon at strawberry harvest time. Across the globe, photographers trained their lenses on the beautiful spectacle. The moon was at it’s lowest point at 1:56 a.m. on Tuesday, according to NASA. Here in the Bay Area, the moon rises tonight at 9:26 p.m. Click here if you’re unable to view the photos on your mobile device. The full moon rises behind buildings in the banking district in Frankfurt, Germany, late Tuesday, June 14, 2022. (AP Photo/Michael Probst) The strawberry full moon rises behind the ancient temple of Poseidon at Cape Sounion, about 70 kilometers (45 miles) south of Athens, Greece, Tuesday, June 14, 2022. The moon reach its full stage on Tuesday, during a phenomenon known as a supermoon because of its proximity to Earth, and it is also labeled as the “Strawberry Moon” because it is the full moon at strawberry harvest time. (AP Photo/Thanassis Stavrakis) A waxing gibbous moon is seen at 98% percent full as it rises near the Nubble Light, Monday, June 13, 2022, in York, Maine. The moon will reach its full stage on Tuesday, during a phenomenon known as a Supermoon because its proximity to Earth, and it is also labeled as the “Strawberry Moon” because it is the full moon at strawberry harvest time. (AP Photo/Julio Cortez) The full moon rises over the cross of St. Joseph Church in Baghdad, Iraq, Tuesday, June 14, 2022. . (AP/Photo/Hadi Mizban) The full moon rises beside the snow capped Illimani Mountain, on the outskirts of La Paz, Bolivia, Tuesday, June 14, 2022. (AP Photo/Juan Karita) The full moon rises over Marseille, southern France, Tuesday, June 14, 2022. (AP Photo/Daniel Cole) A supermoon rises behind the Galata Tower in Istanbul, Turkey, Tuesday, June 14, 2022. The moon reached its full stage on Tuesday, during a phenomenon known as a supermoon because of its proximity to Earth, and it is also labeled as the “Strawberry Moon” because it is the full moon at strawberry harvest time. (AP Photo/Emrah Gurel) Roof decorations on the corner tower at the Forbidden City depicting sacred beasts are silhouetted against a supermoon, Tuesday, June 14, 2022, in Beijing. The moon reach its full stage on Tuesday, during a phenomenon known as a supermoon because of its proximity to Earth, and it is also labeled as the “Strawberry Moon” because it is the full moon at strawberry harvest time. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan) A full moon rises behind two crosses of a miniature church near a Cristian Orthodox monastery of Panagia Chrisospiliotissa at Deftera a suburb of capital Nicosia, Cyprus, Tuesday, June 14, 2022. (AP Photo/Petros Karadjias) A supermoon rises behind the Galata Tower in Istanbul, Turkey, Tuesday, June 14, 2022. The moon reached its full stage on Tuesday, during a phenomenon known as a supermoon because of its proximity to Earth, and it is also labeled as the “Strawberry Moon” because it is the full moon at strawberry harvest time. (AP Photo/Emrah Gurel) The full moon rises between two towers, in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, Tuesday, June 14, 2022. (AP Photo/Kamran Jebreili) The full moon rises in the evening behind the “Eros” figure on the the Academy of Fine Arts, Tuesday, June 14, 2022, in Desden, Germany. (Robert Michael/dpa via AP) A seagull passes in front of the rising moon Monday, June 13, 2022, in East Boston, Mass. The moon will reach its full stage on Tuesday, during a phenomenon known as a supermoon because its proximity to Earth, and it is also labeled as the “Strawberry Moon” because it is the full moon at strawberry harvest time. (AP Photo/Charlie Riedel) A supermoon rises behind sculpture of Tomislav of Croatia, the first Croatian king, in downtown Zagreb, Croatia, Tuesday, June 14, 2022. The moon reached its full stage on Tuesday, during a phenomenon known as a supermoon because of its proximity to Earth, and it is also labeled as the “Strawberry Moon” because it is the full moon at strawberry harvest time. (AP Photo/Darko Bandic) People watch the rising moon Monday, June 13, 2022, in East Boston, Mass. The moon will reach its full stage on Tuesday, during a phenomenon known as a supermoon because its proximity to Earth, and it is also labeled as the “Strawberry Moon” because it is the full moon at strawberry harvest time. (AP Photo/Charlie Riedel)

Space Exploration

The US Open will allow tennis players from Russia and Belarus to compete this year despite the ongoing war in Ukraine, which prompted Wimbledon to ban those athletes.US Tennis Association CEO and executive director Lew Sherr, whose group runs the US Open, said in a telephone interview with the Associated Press on Tuesday that the USTA Board decided to let Russians and Belarusians enter the tournament because of “concern about holding the individual athletes accountable for the actions and decisions of their governments”.Sherr said athletes from Russia and Belarus will play at Flushing Meadows under a neutral flag – an arrangement that’s been used at various tennis tournaments around the world, including the French Open, which ended 5 June.The US Open starts on 29 August in New York.Since Russia began its attacks on Ukraine in February, Russian athletes have been prevented from taking part in many sports, including soccer’s World Cup qualifying playoffs. Belarus has aided Russia in the war.Russia also was held out of two international team events in tennis in which it was the reigning champion: the Billie Jean King Cup and Davis Cup.The All England Club, where main-draw play for Wimbledon starts on 27 June, announced in April it would bar all Russians and Belarusians from its fields – which means current men’s No 1, Russia’s Daniil Medvedev, is not eligible to participate. Medvedev is the defending champion at the US Open.Wimbledon’s ban drew immediate criticism from the WTA and ATP, along with some prominent players, such as defending champion Novak Djokovic.In May, the WTA and ATP said they would not award any rankings points for Wimbledon this year, an unprecedented rebuke of the All England Club. Some players, including four-time major champion and former No 1 Naomi Osaka, said they would consider sitting out Wimbledon.The ATP has said all points earned at Wimbledon in 2021 will fall off a player’s record and no new points will be earned there this year. The WTA has not decided exactly how last year’s rankings points from the All England Club will be treated, but no new points can be added based on how a player performs there this time.Sherr told the AP that what happened with Wimbledon – both the All England Club’s move to keep players from certain countries out and the tours’ reaction – played no role in the USTA’s choice to let Russian and Belarusian players in.“Our discussion was really on the merits and really the principles around both sides of this argument. This was not a commercial versus an ethical question,” he said. “There are arguments on both sides. Are you being perceived as supporting atrocious acts by a government? And at the same time: Would you hold an individual athlete accountable for that?”Sherr said the WTA and ATP professional tours organized a series of conversations with athletes from Ukraine, Russia and Belarus and various governing bodies in tennis, and that the heads of both tours addressed the USTA Board before its decision.The USTA plans to offer additional financial assistance for humanitarian efforts in Ukraine and will use the US Open as a platform to raise awareness about the war.“This is a horrific situation and we, along with everyone else in tennis, absolutely condemn what is an unprovoked and unjust invasion of Ukraine by Russia, and everything is framed in that context,” Sherr said. “As difficult as some of these decisions may be, none of it amounts to the difficulties being experienced in Ukraine right now, and the tragedies and atrocities.”

Tennis

Jeff Hardy Suspended By AEW ... Following DUI Arrest 6/14/2022 11:55 AM PT Jeff Hardy has been suspended by the AEW without pay following his DUI arrest on Monday, the org. announced Tuesday. "We were able to resume contact with Jeff Hardy this afternoon," AEW President & CEO Tony Khan said in a statement. "AEW does not condone Jeff’s alleged behavior." Khan said Hardy's ban will last until he successfully completes a treatment program and maintains his sobriety. Khan added the AEW will "assist him in getting treatment for substance abuse issues, which he has indicated that he's open to receiving." The 44-year-old wrestler signed with the org. this year after a lengthy run in the WWE -- and is considered one of the company's biggest stars. He was slated to wrestle in an AEW match on Wednesday. As we reported, Hardy was arrested at around 10 AM on Monday morning in Florida, after cops say he drunkenly drove his car through Volusia County highways. He's since been hit with three charges, including felony DUI. It's the third time since 2018 that Hardy has been accused of driving while impaired -- he was arrested for the alleged offense in North Carolina in '18 and then again in 2019. "It was disheartening to hear the news about my brother yesterday," his brother, Matt Hardy -- who also wrestles in the AEW -- said in a statement Tuesday morning. "Recovery isn’t a linear process & I’ll continue doing whatever I can to help my brother be healthy. Being healthy & well is the most important thing for Jeff, his wife, his children & our family at this time."

Other Sports

AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky Vitali Klitschko, Kyiv Mayor and former heavyweight champion gestures while speaking during his interview with the Associated Press in his office in the City Hall in Kyiv, Ukraine, Sunday, Feb. 27, 2022. A Ukrainian official says street fighting has broken out in Ukraine’s second-largest city of Kharkiv. Russian troops also put increasing pressure on strategic ports in the country’s south following a wave of attacks on airfields and fuel facilities elsewhere that appeared to mark a new phase of Russia’s invasion. Vitali Klitschko, the mayor of Kyiv, Ukraine, and a former world heavyweight boxing champion, is set to be honored with the Arthur Ashe Award for Courage at the 2022 ESPY Awards. In a statement on Tuesday, ESPN said that Klitschko will receive the award due to the courage he has shown throughout Russia’s ongoing invasion of his native country, during which he has served as a public face for Ukraine’s resistance and vowed, alongside his brother and fellow heavyweight champion Wladimir Klitschko, to fight against Russia. The Klitschko brothers inspired other boxing champions such as Oleksandr Usyk to return to their native country to join defense battalions as well. Vitali Klitschko, who has served as Kyiv’s mayor since 2014, thanked ESPN for honoring him with the award. “It is a great honor for me to receive this award,” he said in a statement. “I am convinced that this is a recognition of the courage and inviolability of the Ukrainian people, who have been bravely resisting the Russian aggressor for more than 3 months. This is an award for everyone who defends the independence and freedom of Ukraine.” The Arthur Ashe Award for Courage, named after tennis great and activist Arthur Ashe, is given to athletes and prominent world figures whose contributions go beyond sports. Previous recipients include boxing legend and activist Muhammad Ali, former WNBA star Maya Moore and Olympic gold medalist Caitlyn Jenner. “Vitali’s poise and strength as his city and country faces unfathomable tests have far surpassed the incredible resolve he demonstrated as one of boxing’s top heavyweight champions,” Rob King, ESPN’s executive editor at large, said in a statement. “His commitment to the people of Ukraine has been a global inspiration, and his bravery is a prime example of the resilience of the human spirit. It is our privilege to bestow him with the Arthur Ashe Courage Award.” This comes after Vitali Klitschko, who finished his boxing career with a 45-2 win-loss record, recently spoke at the World Economic Forum in Switzerland, ESPN noted. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which began on Feb. 24, has killed thousands on both sides and displaced more than 7.5 million Ukrainians. The 2022 ESPY Awards are set to take place on July 20.

Other Sports

NEWYou can now listen to Fox News articles! Jon Rahm will look to defend his U.S. Open title this week but first addressed the emergence of LIV Golf.Rahm told reporters Tuesday he didn’t see the appeal of playing in the Saudi-backed golf league and didn’t think playing 54 holes of golf was a real tournament.CLICK HERE FOR MORE SPORTS COVERAGE ON FOXNEWS.COM Jon Rahm, from Spain, shoots on the fifth tee during a practice round ahead of the U.S. Open golf tournament, Tuesday, June 14, 2022, at The Country Club in Brookline, Mass. (AP Photo/Charlie Riedel)"I do see the appeal other people see towards LIV Golf. I do see some of the points and arguments they could make toward why they prefer it," Rahm said. "To be honest, part of the format is not really appealing to me. Shotgun three days, to me, is not a golf tournament — no cut. It’s that simple. I want to play against the best in the world and a format that’s been going on for hundreds of years. That’s what I want to see."Rahm said he talked about the financial implications of going to LIV Golf, but he and his wife were happy with the money they made with the PGA Tour. He added that the history of the Tour and its legacy was something he cared about. Jon Rahm, of Spain, answers a reporter's question during a media availability ahead of the U.S. Open golf tournament, Tuesday, June 14, 2022, at The Country Club in Brookline, Mass. (AP Photo/Charles Krupa)RORY MCILROY UNLEASHES ON LIV GOLF, THOSE WHO SPURNED PGA TOUR: 'ONCE YOU MAKE YOUR BED, YOU LIE IN IT'"Yeah, money is great… Would our lifestyle change if I got $400 million? No. It would not change one bit. Truth be told, I could retire right now with what I made and I’d live a very happy life and not play golf again. I’ve never really played the game of golf for monetary reasons. I play for the love of the game and I want to play against the best in the world."I’ve always been interested in history and legacy and right now the PGA Tour has that. There’s a meaning when you win the Memorial championship. There’s a meaning when you win Arnold Palmer’s event at Bay Hill. There’s a meaning when you win LA, Torrey (Pines), some of these historic venues. That, to me, matters a lot."My heart is with the PGA Tour." Jon Rahm, of Spain, answers a reporter's question during a media availability ahead of the U.S. Open golf tournament, Tuesday, June 14, 2022, at The Country Club in Brookline, Mass. (AP Photo/Charles Krupa)LIV Golf was the topic of conversation after poaching a slew of PGA Tour golfers. The league held its first three-round event last weekend with Charl Schwartzel as the first winner.CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APPThe U.S. Open will begin Thursday. Ryan Gaydos is the sports editor for Fox News and Fox Business. Story tips can be sent to Ryan.Gaydos@fox.com.

Golf

The Chicks headline the Hollywood Casino Amphitheatre on June 15.Nadine Ljewere The Chicks’ Natalie Maines knows what they say behind her back.“We get labeled as the first people of cancel culture,” the 47-year-old lead singer of the Grammy Award-winning threesome proclaims during a recent Zoom interview. “Honestly, I don’t feel like we were canceled … but maybe I’m wrong.” The platinum-selling country trio made up of Maines, fiddler Martie Maguire and banjoist Emily Strayer experienced their share of backlash back in 2003 when Maines voiced her disapproval of the Iraq war and then-President George W. Bush. But despite the efforts of many to wipe them off the face of country music forevermore, The Chicks are still here.And yes, they are still speaking their mind.“It’s interesting that people aren’t really catching on to the ridiculousness of [cancel culture],” says Maines. “I mean, I’m all for some people getting canceled. If you have raped or molested a lot of females, then I’m all for you being canceled.”“If it’s someone saying they hate a politician or something, it’s just in the parlance of an opinion,” Strayer quickly adds, during the same interview. “To me, that’s different than like, we found 12 racist tweets from five years ago before you got famous. I mean, people have to be accountable. But at the same time, it’s the people with the pitchforks and the ‘I’m going to go get ’em’ attitude that is really upsetting.”Nevertheless, when one’s inner voice merges with a slew of outside voices, it can bring with it necessary change. Take for example the decision of The Chicks — who first hit it big back in 1998 with their debut album “Wide Open Spaces” — to take the word “Dixie” out of their name in 2020.“We had been thinking about it for a while,” says Maguire of the name change that took place amid the protests following the death of George Floyd. “Even though we knew our fans knew us and knew our hearts and knew that there was no bad intention, we felt like we would make a strong statement as a band [by making the name change]. And we just couldn’t do it fast enough.”Heading to Chicago on June 15 as part of the opening weekend of their much-anticipated tour, The Chicks certainly seem as carefree and content as they have ever been. Still, their feelings about the trials and tribulations of the world around them always seem to find their way to the microphones on the stage in front of them.“I think people associate us with speaking our minds and getting a little political and voicing things that we are passionate about,” says Maines, who now makes a home in Los Angeles. “So, we definitely have some of that in the show.”Maines mentions that the stage visuals for The Chicks’ activist anthem “March March” has had to be revised several times in recent months.“There is always more to add [to the projections] unfortunately,” Maines says quietly of one of the most powerful moments of the show for the anthem off their 2020 album “Gaslighter.” The shootings at Robb Elementary School in Texas and the Tops supermarket in New York just days before this interview are called to mind.“People are there [come to our shows] to obviously have a great time, but it’s also a respite from a lot of things that are going on in the country,” Maines continues. “You ... have to give people hope in a way. And I hope our concerts do that.”Mixing feel-good classics such as “Wide Open Spaces” and “Cowboy Take Me Away” with thought-provoking odes such as “Landslide” and “Travelin’ Soldier” alongside outspoken jaunts such as “Not Ready To Make Nice” and “Goodbye Earl,” The Chicks are looking to give their fans a good show, and give themselves some much-needed family time, as Maines’ 21-year-old son Slade will be on hand playing guitar, synthesizer and keyboard mandolin.

Music

South Korean boyband BTS has announced a break to allow its members to work on solo projects.The news came less than a week after the seven-man group, which launched a global K-pop craze, released their latest album Proof. Speaking during an annual dinner celebrating the band's founding, rapper RM said: "The problem with K-pop and the whole idol system is that they don't give you time to mature."You have to keep producing music and keep doing something."According to a report in Deadline, the other band members insisted that the group was not splitting up. Rapper J-Hope said: "We should spend some time apart to learn how to be one again. "I hope you don't see this as a negative thing, and see it as a healthy plan. More from Ents & Arts Amber Heard says she and Johnny Depp were 'awful to each other' but that she 'always told the truth', in first interview since actor's libel case win Sir Lenny Henry 'surprised' by lack of black people at UK music festivals Squid Game coming to life with 456 real players competing for last-person-standing £3.7m prize "BTS will become stronger that way." Lead vocalist Jimin added: "Now we're starting to think about what kind of artists we each want to be remembered by our fans."And rapper Suga said: "It's not like we're disbanding."An English translation of their words showed one of the members calling the break a "hiatus", but this description was disputed by a spokesperson for the band.The spokesperson said in a statement: "To be clear, they are not on hiatus but will take time to explore some solo projects at this time and remain active in various different formats."RM, Jimin, J-Hope, Suga, Jungkook, V and Jin formed the band in 2010 and debuted three years later, becoming worldwide sensations with songs such as Dynamite, Boy With Luv, and Butter.Last year, BTS was the first Asian band to win artist of the year at the American Music Awards, and they even met US President Joe Biden in May to talk about hate crimes targeting Asians.

Music

Russian and Belarusian tennis players will be permitted to play in the 2022 U.S. Open as long as they compete under a neutral flag, organizers announced. The U.S. Tennis Association, which organizes the tournament, reiterated its previous condemnations of the "unprovoked and unjust invasion of Ukraine by Russia" in its announcement Tuesday while declaring that all eligible players "regardless of nationality" can participate in its event. NO LOVE: WIMBLEDON BANS RUSSIANS AND BELARUSIANS FROM TOURNAMENT “Tennis has done much through Tennis Plays for Peace for humanitarian support of Ukraine. Unfortunately, the need for help only continues to grow. The USTA will be responding very soon with a broad set of initiatives that will include significant financial assistance and other programs to further support humanitarian relief and the people of Ukraine,” Chairman Mike McNulty said in a statement. Organizers for the U.S. Open reaffirmed support for the International Tennis Federation's ban on teams from Russia or Belarus in its competition and emphasized that it will adhere to that policy. Rather than going further than the ITF ban, the USTA will seek to elevate the "Tennis Plays for Peace" initiative, which aims to raise money for relief efforts in war-torn Ukraine. The group also teased additional initiatives such as financial support for Ukraine that will "be announced soon." Part of the rationale behind the decision not to bar all players from competing was a "concern about holding the individual athletes accountable for the actions and decisions of their governments," USTA CEO and Executive Director Lew Sherr told the Associated Press. Last year's winner of the U.S. Open was Russian player Daniil Medvedev, who currently ranks as the No. 1 men's tennis player in the world, according to ESPN. The USTA's decision will enable him to defend his title in the major, which is slated to commence Aug. 29 in New York. CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER USTA's open-arms posture toward individual Russian and Belarusian players is juxtaposed with the All England Club's handling of the war in Ukraine. The latter banned all players from Russia and Belarus from competing in its prestigious Wimbledon event, which will be held from June 27 to July 10. Both tournaments are part of the four major Grand Slam tennis tournaments alongside the Australian Open and the French Open. The organizers of the French Open declined to follow suit with the Wimbledon rules and did not outright ban players from the two nations from competing. The 2022 Australian Open took place prior to the invasion of Ukraine.

Tennis

Actor Chris Evans welcomed the same-sex kiss in the movie Lightyear, in which he voices the lead character. As the titular character Buzz Lightyear, Evans was happy that Disney opted to keep the kiss in the film. The actor lamented that the scene was considered "news" at all. "It makes me happy," Evans said of the kiss. "It’s tough to not be a little frustrated that it even has to be a topic of discussion." UNITED ARAB EMIRATES BANS PIXAR'S LIGHTYEAR "The goal is that we can get to a point where it is the norm and that this doesn’t have to be some uncharted waters — that eventually this is just the way it is," Evans went on. "Look, it’s an honor to be a part of something that is taking those steps, but the goal is to look back on this time and just be shocked that it took us this long to get there." CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER Between the time Evans made the statement and when it was published, the United Arab Emirates announced it would be banning the film due to the kiss, which is shared by two female characters who are married. Saudi Arabia also subsequently banned the film.

Movies

Top Gun: Maverick reported box office earnings of over $401.8 million on Monday, its 18th day in theaters. The figures propelled the film to the year's No. 1 spot, just ahead of Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, which earned $398.1 million. It is also lead actor Tom Cruise's highest-grossing film domestically. Top Gun: Maverick is now the second-highest-earning film since the pandemic began, with Spider-Man: No Way Home at No. 1 with $573 million. Both films were released exclusively in theaters. TOP GUN: MAVERICK ASCENDS TO BECOME TOM CRUISE'S TOP-GROSSING FILM DOMESTICALLY These earnings are also notable because they were still record-breaking after the film's third weekend in theaters. From June 10-12, Top Gun: Maverick earned $51.9 million, which was the fifth-highest amount any movie has earned that far from release. Star Wars: The Force Awakens saw $90 million in its third week, and Black Panther garnered $66 million. CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER That same week, Jurassic World: Dominion was released, earning $145.1 million. Top Gun: Maverick was still the No. 2 film at the time.

Movies

A Proterra Catalyst BE35 electric bus and CNG (compressed natural gas) buses are seen at an L.A. City Transportation Department (LADOT) DASH transit bus maintenance facility in downtown Los Angeles, California, U.S., August 21, 2021. REUTERS/Bing Guan/File PhotoRegister now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.comSummaryCompaniesNew investors include OGCI Climate InvestmentsSDCL Energy Efficiency Income Trust also joinsFifth Wall among those to invest moreLONDON, June 15 (Reuters) - U.S.-based Turntide Technologies, which aims to help energy-intensive industries cut carbon emissions, has hit "unicorn" status after its latest $80 million funding round, its chief executive told Reuters.New investors in the company, now valued at more than $1 billion, which is how "unicorns" are defined, include OGCI Climate Investments and British investor SDCL Energy Efficiency Income Trust. Existing investors Fifth Wall and Meson Capital's Captain Planet LP fund also took part, taking Turntide's total equity funding to $485 million.As the world looks to abandon fossil fuels to fight climate change, a shift to electric power raises demand for the environmentally damaging rare earth metals used in motors relying on magnets.Register now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.comTurntide's solution is a magnet-free motor that requires no rare earths, making it cheaper and cleaner to produce."Electric motors consume half the electricity in the entire world," Ryan Morris, Chairman and CEO of Turntide, said. "The world needs more efficient motors."The company is targeting sales to those operating in the built environment, agriculture and transport sectors and said it would use the money to expand its U.S. manufacturing and help develop its technologies.While dwarfed by industry heavyweights such as Siemens (SIEGn.DE) , Turntide already owns more than 150 patents for its technology and sought partnerships with strategic investors who can help the company gain scale more quickly.Other existing investors include the Amazon Climate Pledge Fund, JLL and BMW i Ventures. Customers include Hitachi Rail and JCB.The market for electric motors and their controllers is now worth around $200 billion a year, Morris said, and will keep growing as companies across many sectors aim to reach net-zero emissions."Turntide’s solutions are driving down energy consumption and costs for hundreds of businesses around the world, and we’re excited to partner with them to accelerate their expansion," Marc Van Den Berg, Managing Director, Ventures at OGCI CI, said in a statement.Register now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.comReporting by Simon Jessop Editing by Tomasz JanowskiOur Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

Emerging Technologies

A spokesperson for Amber Heard has denied reports that the actor has been cut from the Aquaman sequel, in the aftermath of the very public defamation trial brought against her by her ex-husband, Johnny Depp.Heard was set to reprise her role as Mera, Aquaman’s love interest, in the upcoming film Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom. But on Tuesday, an anonymous “insider” told gossip website Just Jared that the role had been recast.“Warner Bros. decided to recast Amber Heard’s role after screentesting the movie. They are going to be doing reshoots with Jason Momoa and Nicole Kidman,” they said.In a statement to Variety on Tuesday, a spokesperson for Heard denied the report and said: “The rumour mill continues as it has from day one – inaccurate, insensitive and slightly insane.”Just Jared later updated its story to say that sources close to the production had told them she had “not been completely cut from the film. She still has a small role.” However, it insisted other sources still maintained Mera was being completely recast.Heard previously played Mera in the first Aquaman film and in Justice League. During the defamation trial, Heard alleged she had to “fight really hard” to keep the role, due to the negative publicity from Depp’s abuse allegations against her.She told the court that she had been given a new version of the sequel’s script that removed a fight scene, resulting in a “very pared-down version” of her part. Sign up for the fun stuff with our rundown of must-reads, pop culture and tips for the weekend, every Saturday morning Sign up to receive Guardian Australia’s weekend culture and lifestyle emailDuring the trial, DC Films chief, Walter Hamada, confirmed the studio had briefly considered recasting Heard’s character in the sequel – not because of the abuse allegations, but because of a lack of chemistry between Heard and Momoa, who pays Aquaman. Hamada denied that the studio had reduced her role in the sequel.Both Heard and Depp’s careers are uncertain in the aftermath of the highly publicised trial that launched a storm of social media commentary. Depp had sued Heard over a 2018 Washington Post column which he argued had implied he had been abusive towards her, despite him not being named in the piece.Earlier this month, Heard was ordered to pay Depp US$10m in compensatory damages and $350,000 in punitive damages, after the jury decided his reputation had been damaged. Depp was ordered to pay Heard $2m after she argued that a Depp press agent defamed her by calling her allegations “an abuse hoax”.In a preview of an interview that will air on NBC in the US this week, Heard said she felt she had been unfairly treated on social media during the trial. The TikTok hashtag #justiceforjohnnydepp had nearly 20bn views while #justiceforamberheard racked up about 80m.“I don’t care what one thinks about me or what judgments you want to make about what happened in the privacy of my own home, in my marriage, behind closed doors,” she said. “I don’t presume the average person should know those things. And so I don’t take it personally.“But even somebody who is sure I’m deserving of all this hate and vitriol, even if you think that I’m lying, you still couldn’t look me in the eye and tell me that you think on social media there’s been a fair representation. You cannot tell me that you think that this has been fair.”Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom is set to be released around the world in March 2023.

Movies

Amber Heard I'm Not Cut from 'Aquaman 2' ... Just an 'Insane' Rumor!!! 6/14/2022 1:29 PM PT Amber Heard's days in 'Aquaman 2' are numbered ... IF you believe one report claiming she's been axed, but her team says that's a false rumor born out of post-trial vitriol for Amber. Reports have circulated over the last week -- not from traditional industry outlets, BTW -- alleging the actress has been nixed from the sequel, and not just that, but that her role is going to be recast with an unnamed actress, with reshoots scheduled to take place soon. Waiting for your permission to load the Instagram Media. That's total BS, though, according to Amber's spokesperson ... who tells us, "The rumor mill continues as it has from Day One -- inaccurate, insensitive, and slightly insane." As for Warner Bros -- the studio that would be making the call on Amber's status -- we've reached out, but haven't heard back yet. Here's the reality ... Amber has no say in how much she's featured in the movie, or if she gets recast in it. The studio shot all her scenes as Mera nearly a year ago, and they paid her too -- $2 million, as we learned in court -- so contractually, they're done. 5/24/22 There were rumblings Amber's screen time had been cut down significantly -- the word was, as of one of the more recent screenings, she was in it for less than 10 minutes ... and DC chief Walter Hamada seemed to confirm that in his testimony, but stopped short of declaring a hard number. While WB is, no doubt, monitoring all the fallout from the trial, it would be a pretty extreme move to recast her. Although many fans have called for it, it would be costly and time-consuming ... and 'Aquaman 2' has already been delayed once. But, of course, stranger things have happened.

Celebrity

The full moon will reach just 23.3 degrees above the horizon just before 2 a.m. Wednesday, NASA said.A supermoon rises behind the Galata Tower in Istanbul, Turkey, on June 14, 2022. The moon is a supermoon because of its proximity to Earth, and is also known as the "Strawberry Moon" because it is the full moon at strawberry harvest time.Emrah Gurel / APJune 15, 2022, 1:05 AM UTCA Strawberry Supermoon is sweetening the skies.The full moon began Tuesday morning around 7:52 a.m., but it will be at its closest to Earth — or perigee — at 7:24 p.m. EDT, according to NASA.It qualifies as a “supermoon,” which is when a full moon occurs during the period that the moon is at its closest to Earth during its elliptical orbit, the space agency said.The moon appears as its largest and brightest during supermoons.It appears around 14 percent bigger and 30 percent brighter than when the moon is at the furthest point of its orbit, or apogee. This event will also be the lowest full moon on the horizon in 2022, NASA said.To see it, look out at 1:56 a.m. EDT Wednesday, when the full moon will be only 23.3 degrees above the horizon, NASA said.On average, the moon orbits at a distance of about 238,000 miles from Earth. But at perigee, it’s about 226,000 miles away — or about 12,000 miles closer to Earth.There are other names, but the term "strawberry" comes from a Farmers' Almanac in the U.S. that published Native American names for full moons. Algonquin tribes in the northeast called it the strawberry moon because it coincides with the strawberry harvest, according to NASA.The term "supermoon" wasn't coined until 1979.Phil Helsel is a reporter for NBC News.

Space Exploration

Snarky Puppy has announced a Sept. 30 release date for Empire Central, its love letter to Dallas.The Grammy-winning band recorded the two-CD set live in March during an eight-night stand at the Deep Ellum Art Co. Many of the 16 new tunes pay homage to Big D, including the first single “Trinity,” a hypnotic track accented by film-noir horns and jagged electric guitar. The jazz-funk ensemble debuted its live performance video of “Trinity” last week.Other Dallas-centric song titles include “Belmont,” named for the street where bandleader Michael League once lived; “Fuel City,” after the gas station and taco emporium near downtown; and “RL’s,” a tip of the hat to R.L. Griffin’s Blues Palace 2 in South Dallas.Snarky Puppy started in 2004 at the University of North Texas, and several members later moved to Brooklyn and Spain. But it really found its style in Dallas in the late ‘00s in places like the Granada Theater and the Prophet Bar.“We’re paying respect to the city and the music scene that is more responsible for our sound than anything else,” League told The Dallas Morning News in March. “It wasn’t until we became part of the gospel and R&B scene in Dallas that we actually started to form a distinct sound.”Related:Jazz-rockers Snarky Puppy paying tribute to Dallas with live album, shows at Deep Ellum Art Co.“There were so many individuals who were very generous with us, people who shared their time and knowledge to make us grow as musicians.”One of those people was Bernard Wright, the New York jazz-soul keyboardist who rode the charts as a solo artist in the ‘80s and moved to Dallas in the ‘90s. Wright died May 19 at age 58, reportedly after a traffic accident.“He’s a godfather to the band,” League told The News, months before his death.League even invited to Wright to sit in with Snarky Puppy during the recording of Empire Central. His distinct synth playing in “Take It!” marks his last recorded performance.Thor Christensen. Thor Christensen is a former pop music critic for The Dallas Morning News and The Milwaukee Journal whose work has appeared in The New York Times and several books, including Musichound: The Essential Album Guide (Visible Ink Press). He’s interviewed two Beatles, a pair of Rolling Stones and hundreds of musicians from Beyoncé to Bono to David Bowie. He’s a Chicago native and a longtime resident of East Dallas.thorchris2@yahoo.com

Music

Australian blind cricket team opener Steffan Nero has smashed a longstanding world record with an astonishing unbeaten 309 off 140 balls at the International Cricket Inclusion Series.The wicketkeeper-batter’s triple century broke the previous benchmark of 262 not out, set by Pakistan’s Masood Jan at the 1998 Blind Cricket World Cup.“It’s a dream in itself to play for Australia so to make a century for Australia is one of those lifelong memories you will never forget,” Nero said after making his third straight century at the tournament in Brisbane.It followed knocks of 113 (off 46 balls) and 101 not out (47), and leaves him with a scarcely believable average of 523. It also included the first six of the tournament, a magnificent reverse sweep over the ropes at Shaw Park.“Sometimes in an over I decide, ‘OK I’m going to try to take this guy downtown and hit him out of the park’,” Nero said. “This ball hit the right spot. One of my strengths is the reverse. I’ve built that up over the years, playing that reverse sweep all the time.“When it went over the boundary for six I was very happy with that. But I was also annoyed I hit the ball in the air, because when you verse the best nations in the world, they’ll most likely catch you.”Needless to say, after Nero’s innings propelled his side to a total of 541-2 off 40 overs, Australia won the match by a mammoth 269 runs. The host nation leads the series against New Zealand 6-0, with two further ODIs to be played before the series concludes on Friday.The tournament in Brisbane is the first time since 2019 that all three Australian squads – blind, deaf and intellectual disability – have competed at international level. Due to the disruption of Covid-19, Nero has not represented Australia since 2018 at the ODI World Cup in Dubai.“It’s been a long time,” he said. “But no matter who we are playing, we always like to put in 100% and put the Australian spirit on show. All we really want to do is play cricket.”Nero said the secret to his success was a lot of hard work and dedication. “It’s a lot of evenings, weekends, along with university and work it can be quite a lot at time,” he said. “But also the support around me. There have been days when I didn’t want to train but [coach Jason Stubbs] said ‘keep going’ and pushed me through.”Blind cricket is much like the conventional form of the game, with a few key differences – the ball is plastic and makes a noise when it moves, and the stumps are made of metal to generate more noise when stuck by the ball. Bowling is underarm and the ball must bounce at least twice before it reaches the batter.ODI matches are 40 overs, which takes not only a physical but also a mental toll on visually impaired players, Nero said.“I imagine it’s a big mental strain concentrating for any fully sighted person for that length of time,” he said. “But with vision impairment we have to expend a lot more energy to concentrate, especially if the ball is moving around and the glare, it’s really hard.”Nevertheless, after his impressive innings, Nero went on to keep wicket and promptly completed five run outs.“It’s been a whirlwind but a fantastic experience,” he said.

Other Sports

England fans chant 'you racist b******* you know what you are' during Hungarian national anthem before Nations League clash... after racial abuse was directed at Gareth Southgate's players during World Cup qualifier last SeptemberEngland fans drowned out the Hungarian national anthem before their matchSupporters loudly chanted 'you racist b******, we know what you are'Hungary fans received a stadium ban after racial abuse towards England playersRaheem Sterling and Jude Bellingham were targeted in Budapest in September Published: 15:20 EDT, 14 June 2022 | Updated: 16:57 EDT, 14 June 2022 England fans taunted 'racist' Hungary supporters ahead of kick-off for their Nations League clash on Tuesday night.During the Hungarian national anthem, the Three Lions' supporters loudly drowned out their opponents, as they sang 'you racist b*******, you know what you are'.Raheem Sterling and Jude Bellingham were among players subjected to racial abuse during England's 4-0 victory over Hungary in the World Cup qualifiers in Budapest back in September last year. UEFA's host broadcaster had to play sound affects to try their best to drown out the chanting which was still audible. The chanting was not mentioned by Channel 4 who are presenting what is England's fourth match of their Nations League group. England supporters taunted Hungary fans as the national anthem for the latter was played Supporters loudly chanted 'you racist b******, you know what you are' during the anthemAfter the incident in September, FIFA, decided on a two-match stadium ban at home for Hungarian spectators in FIFA competitions, with the second game suspended for a probationary period of two years. They were also handed a fine of £160,000.They were already waiting to serve a three-match spectator ban which was issued by UEFA in June 2021, as punishment for racist abuse from fans during Euro 2020. The two nations played again in Hungary last week, where a loophole allowed children under the age of 14 to attend the match under UEFA's rules. Raheem Sterling (pictured) and Jude Bellingham were among those targeted with racial abuse during England's 4-0 World Cup qualifier victory over Hungary in Budapest back in SeptemberIn total, more than 30,000 children attended the match which saw Hungary beat England for the first time in 60 years. School children inside the stadium booed England players taking the knee - something which the Hungarian government came out after the game to defend.Zoltan Kovacs, he country's Secretary of State for International Communication and Relations, labelled those blaming the children for booing the gesture as 'idiots'.He also added they cannot be 'blamed for any kind of political statement.' England players were booed as they took the knee during their 1-0 defeat to Hungary last week Advertisement

Soccer

Tyler Herro Pens Katya Henry Sweet B-Day Note ... Amid Breakup Rumors 6/14/2022 2:17 PM PT Tyler Herro wished the mother of his child, Katya Elise Henry, a happy 28th birthday with a sweet message ... calling her "the most beautiful girl in the world" amid rumors of a nasty breakup. The Miami Heat star penned the letter on Tuesday by sharing photos of himself, the fitness model, and their 9-month-old daughter, Zya, on Instagram. "Happy Birthday to the most beautiful girl in the world," Herro said in the caption. Waiting for your permission to load the Instagram Media. "Words can’t describe how much I appreciate you. Aint no tellin where we’d be at without you." Herro -- who started dating Henry after sliding in her DMs in 2020 -- says she's been holdin' it down since they've met and he looks forward to their future. "You’ve been my rock holding it down for 2 years, I can’t wait to see what life has in store for us. Enjoy. Smile. More life to 28 biggggg babbyyyy." This is a good sign that the couple is in good spirits -- even after many thought Henry broke up with Herro after posting quotes about cheating on her IG story. She also removed all of Herro's photos from her page and unfollowed him on social media. But, we just checked -- she's following him again. Seems like things are alright. #WeLoveToSeeIt

Celebrity

Associated Press/Andy Kropa Celebrity chef José Andrés on Tuesday called out conservative media figure Ben Shapiro over his tweet on Disney’s new film “Lightyear,” which features a same-sex relationship. “Disney works to push a ‘not-at-all-secret gay agenda’ and seeks to add ‘queerness’ to its programming, according to executive producer Latoya Raveneau,” Shapiro wrote in a tweet on Monday. “Parents should keep that in mind before deciding whether to take their kids to see ‘Lightyear,’ which hits theaters this week.” Andres hit back at The Daily Wire editor in a tweet Tuesday. “Ben stop spreading non sense stories!Good parents are good parents period! Why do you care who sleeps with who?look for the good in the people…you want to have a bite with me and we talk about it?” Andrés said. “I’m ready..Gay people are good people too….and they can and are great parents!” he added. Andrés, who recently announced plans to open a chain of his restaurants at the Old Post Office, the location of former President Trump’s Washington, D.C., hotel, mentioned to Shapiro that openly gay people can be “good parents,” telling him to stop spreading “nonsense stories.” Fourteen Middle East and Asian countries have backed off from showing the new Pixar film adaptation of the popular “Toy Story” character Buzz Lightyear that features the voices of actors Chris Evans and Keke Palmer due to the film depicting a same-sex female couple sharing an on-screen kiss, Reuters reported. A “Lightyear” producer told the news outlet that China is also considering not airing the film due to the scene. The Walt Disney Co. has been embroiled in a public feud with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) over the company’s opposition to Florida’s Parental Rights in Education bill, also referred to as the “Don’t Say Gay” bill. In response to the opposition, DeSantis signed into law in April a bill that strips Disney’s long-held municipal autonomy at its Orlando-based theme parks. Tags Ben Shapiro Ben Shapiro Buzz Lightyear Don't Say Gay bill Florida law Jose Andres José Andrés LGBTQ representation LGBTQ rights LGBTQ rights Pixar Trump Walt Disney Company Walt Disney Company

Movies

NEW YORK CITY (WABC) -- Call it clash of the titans. Two of Hollywood's best actors square off as former colleagues who must now be adversaries in a new limited series called "The Old Man."Jeff Bridges plays the title character, a retired CIA operative, while John Lithgow co-stars as his former handler, turned adversary.Amy Breneman joins them as the former agent's companion.At the Museum of Modern Art on Tuesday night, those involved with the tense drama were all smiles at the premiere of the project that is part of "FX on Hulu."Bridges seemed the picture of health, but the star was diagnosed with lymphoma during filming and then got a bad case of COVID-19 at his cancer treatment facility.ALSO READ | Experts urge swim lessons, water safety to prevent child drowningsHe barely survived and told Eyewitness News he "was close to dying a few times," but he managed to return after two years to finish playing "The Old Man," a former agent who finds out that his past actions have severe consequences in the present."He was willing to do anything and now this is what that willingness turns out to cause," Bridges said."They did the wrong thing for the right reasons," Lithgow said. "They were the best intentions in the world, and that mix, that crazy mixture of good and bad behavior is kind of what drives the story of the whole series."The first two hours of "The Old Man" premiere's Thursday night at 10 p.m. as part of FX on Hulu, both companies which are owned by Disney, the same parent company as WABC-TV.----------* Get Eyewitness News Delivered * More New York City news* Send us a news tip* Download the abc7NY app for breaking news alerts * Follow us on YouTubeSubmit a tip or story idea to Eyewitness News Have a breaking news tip or an idea for a story we should cover? Send it to Eyewitness News using the form below. If attaching a video or photo, terms of use apply. Copyright © 2022 WABC-TV. All Rights Reserved.

Movies

Amber Heard, 36, has denied reports that she has been cut from the Aquaman sequel. "The rumor mill continues as it has from day one — inaccurate, insensitive, and slightly insane," a representative for the actress told Fox News Digital. The response comes after a report that the actress had been recast. “Warner Bros. decided to recast Amber Heard‘s role after screen testing the movie. They are going to be doing reshoots with Jason Momoa and Nicole Kidman,” an inside source told Just Jared. The insider further explained that the recast actress would assume the role for any future projects. After Heard's representative denied the report, Just Jared published an update. The site claimed that "sources close to the Aquaman production" sent an update regarding Heard's status on the film. "Amber has not been completely cut from the film. She still has a small role,” the production reportedly said. The site maintains that other inside sources still contend that the role will be recast. WATCH: AMBER HEARD SAYS SHE AND DEPP LOOKED LIKE 'HOLLYWOOD BRATS AT THEIR WORST' This comes after Heard was found liable for multiple claims of defamation against ex-husband Johnny Depp. As a result, she owes Depp millions in damages, which her lawyer says she can't afford. The actress plans to appeal the ruling, her lawyer added. In an interview with Today, the actress acknowledged that the trial made the celebrities look like "Hollywood brats at their worst." The sequel, Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom, will head to theaters on March 17, 2023. CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER Scenes from the new movie were included in a promotional trailer in February, alongside footage from The Batman, Black Adam, and The Flash. This is a breaking story and will be updated.

Movies

The actor Chris Evans, who voices the main character in the new Pixar animated movie Lightyear, has applauded its depiction of a gay couple, saying those who react negatively should be disregarded.“The real truth is those people are idiots,” Evans said. “Every time there’s been social advancement as we wake up, the American story, the human story is one of constant social awakening and growth and that’s what makes us good.”Lightyear was banned in the United Arab Emirates because it depicts homosexuality, and Disney has been unable to secure permission to show it in 13 other Middle Eastern and Asian countries, including Saudi Arabia. Lightyear is a prequel to Pixar’s acclaimed Toy Story franchise.Evans voices Buzz Lightyear, a legendary space ranger. Buzz’s close friend in the film is a female space ranger who marries another woman. A scene showing milestones in the couple’s relationship includes a brief kiss.“There’s always going to be people who are afraid and unaware and trying to hold on to what was before. But those people die off like dinosaurs,” Evans said. “I think the goal is to pay them no mind, march forward and embrace the growth that makes us human.”Producer Galyn Susman asked why viewers “don’t get more upset showing failed relationships”. In Lightyear, “we have a relationship here which lasts an entire lifetime. It’s loving, it’s supportive and it shows Buzz exactly what he doesn’t have and that’s the whole point. We should all be so lucky to have that kind of relationship in our life.”Lightyear is set to debut in theatres in the United States and Canada on Friday.In May, Disney refused requests to cut same-sex references in Marvel movie Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness. Saudi Arabia and a handful of other Middle Eastern countries did not show the film.

Movies

SAN FRANCISCO — The last of Logan Webb’s career-high 112 pitches Tuesday night looked like it would be the one to spoil his seventh shutout inning. Webb had blanked the Royals through six and was pitching well enough that manager Gabe Kapler sent him back out for the seventh with his pitch count approaching triple digits. A walk and single had put Kansas City’s M.J. Melendez on second base with two outs when Michael A. Taylor lofted a would-be RBI single in front of Luis González in right field. Moments later, Webb was walking back to the dugout and pointing Gonzalez’s direction — equal parts astonishment, admiration and appreciation. González unleashed a 97.4 mph laser to the plate, where catcher Austin Wynns was waiting to lay the tag on Melendez for the third out of the inning, preserving Webb’s clean pitching line in possibly his best outing of the season. Behind Webb’s seven shutout innings, the Giants defeated the Royals, 4-2, for their fifth straight win, securing their first-ever series win over the Royals at Oracle Park in only their third regular-season visit to China Basin. Kansas City only got on the board once Webb left the game, with two runs off Tyler Rogers in the eighth. With the Royals mounting their biggest previous scoring threat — runners at the corners with two outs in the sixth — Webb got top prospect Bobby Witt Jr. to swing through a slider and strand both runners on base. It was Witt’s 22nd birthday Tuesday, and Webb celebrated by sending him down for three of his nine strikeouts. Webb’s nine strikeouts were one shy of a season-high he set two starts ago over eight innings in Philadelphia. Against the Royals, they came on a diet of offspeed pitches and breaking balls. Webb threw more sliders (45) and changeups (37) than he did sinkers or four-seamers (30) and used them to get the majority of his 20 swings and misses induced against Royals hitters. In his first outing since taking a tough-luck loss Thursday — Webb’s first losing decision at Oracle Park in 18 starts — Webb was at risk of not factoring into the decision Tuesday, despite seven shutout innings. The Giants hadn’t been able to touch Kansas City starter Kris Bubic when Webb walked off the mound after six innings and 94 pitches. But Bubic, a Cupertino native and Stanford grad, wouldn’t make it out of the sixth. González lined a leadoff double down the left-field line, and after an Austin Slater strikeout — his third of the game — the Giants strung together three straight hits that chased Bubic from the game. Flores, who reached base three times, struck a single into left field that drove home González, and Darin Ruf poked a single to score Flores. Joc Pederson, who legged out an infield single, scored the third and final run of the inning on a sac fly by Tommy La Stella. It took the Giants until the fifth to break through for their first hit. Two Flores walks had been their only base runners before Brandon Crawford laced a one-out single past a diving Carlos Santana at first base. González was the first Giant to reach scoring position with his sixth-inning double, but that seemed to ignite San Francisco’s offense, which over the course of their five-game win streak has still been held to three or fewer runs three times. With their three-run rally in the sixth, though, the Giants reached their magic number. The Giants’ pitching staff has allowed seven earned runs over their past 45 innings (a 1.40 ERA) and hasn’t surrendered more than two in any of their five games over the win streak. On Wednesday afternoon (12:45 p.m.), they’ll try for a sweep that would make it six in row. San Francisco has won five straight games four times this season but has extended the streak to six games only once.

Baseball

TechPublished Sat, May 15 20219:30 AM EDTUpdated Sun, May 16 20216:40 PM EDTReliable Robotics and Xwing are two Bay Area start-ups working on planes that can fly themselves -- no pilot required. Rather than building new aircraft, both companies have retrofitted Cessna Grand Caravans. The planes can fly autonomously while a remote operator monitors the flight, taking control if needed.Both companies said they are working with major logistics companies to deliver cargo as a first use case once FAA approval happens.Xwing took CNBC up for a test flight where the pilot didn't touch the controls once. Watch the video to see how the technology works and learn when self-flying planes could become the norm.

Emerging Technologies

Britney Spears Fires Security Team After Wedding Day Chaos with Ex-Husband 6/14/2022 3:34 PM PT It's out with the old and in with the new for Britney Spears' security team ... canning the squad who allowed her ex-husband to not only crash the wedding, but get inside her home. Sources close to the singer tell us she recently made the decision to fire the existing security team, and replace them with an all new bunch. The move isn't totally surprising, but we're told it happened quickly after Thursday's fiasco. TMZ broke the story, Jason Alexander -- armed with a knife -- live streamed himself getting onto Britney's property and inside to the second level of her home, demanding to see her, on her wedding day. Fortunately, he wasn't able to make contact with the singer, and cops arrested him. 6/9/22 We were at the courthouse Monday for Alexander's arraignment on charges of vandalism, trespassing and battery ... but the judge also added a felony stalking charge and granted Britney a 3-year restraining order against Jason. 6/13/22 TMZ.com Britney's attorney, Mathew Rosengart, who had previously stated he would do everything in his power to make sure Britney was protected, also attended the hearing. Rosengart told us he hopes the harsh sentence will deter any future copycats from trying to get into Britney's space.

Celebrity

The deal will make Apple’s app the only service where fans can watch all MLS matches without blackouts.New England Revolution forward DeJuan Jones fouls Sporting Kansas City forward Khiry Shelton during an MLS match on June 12, 2022 in Kansas City.Scott Winters / Icon Sportswire via AP ImagesJune 14, 2022, 6:30 PM UTC / Source: CNBC.comApple on Tuesday announced a 10-year deal with Major League Soccer to broadcast matches on its streaming service, the latest sign of the iPhone maker’s increased investment in exclusive content for Apple TV+.The deal will make Apple’s app the only service where fans can watch all MLS matches without blackouts, Apple said on Tuesday. While some select matches will be available to Apple TV+ subscribers, who pay $4.99 a month, fans will have to buy a separate MLS subscription to watch all the matches. The cost of that service, which will be available globally, and the timing of its release were not disclosed.Since launching Apple TV+ in 2019 and jumping into the heated streaming wars, Apple has been building a portfolio of original shows and movies. It’s also getting more aggressive with sports. This season, the company started broadcasting Major League Baseball games on Friday nights.Don Garber, Commissioner of Major League Soccer, said at a press conference on Tuesday that the deal with Apple will help the league appeal to younger consumers.“This is what they’ve asked for,” Garber said. “And we’re going to deliver them every match anywhere, anytime, anywhere around the world without any restrictions.”Apple has taken a quality-over-quantity approach streaming. Its service doesn’t have an extensive back catalog that can compete with Netflix, Amazon Prime, or Disney+, and the company hasn’t announced viewership stats or a subscriber total.But Apple has scored several critical hits, including “Ted Lasso,” a comedy about a goofy American soccer coach in England who was previously a college football coach in the U.S.“We’re going to take all of the things that Apple is really good at — experiences, style, the approach we take to making great products — to this,” said Eddy Cue, Apple senior vice president of services, at Tuesday’s event.Live sports are so popular that streaming services are bidding up the price for content that’s traditionally been the domain of pay TV. For example, Amazon broadcasts some NFL games on Prime Video in a package worth $1 billion per year.Gary Stevenson, deputy commissioner of MLS, said the the league is taking advantage of the “greatest transition in the way sports media would be distributed since the advent of cable television,” referring to the rise of cord-cutting and proliferation of streaming services.Jessica Golden, CNBC contributed.

Soccer

Peter Blake’s wife, Chrissy, is lovingly protective of her husband, who will turn 90 on 25 June. I don’t know where she has been listening, but when she hears the word “Beatles” she pops into the upstairs lounge where he is ensconced in an armchair.“Let this be the only article in the last 55 years that doesn’t mention the Beatles,” she pleads.Some hope. Blake, with his first wife, the artist Jann Haworth, designed perhaps the most famous album cover in history for the Fab Four’s conceptual 1967 spectacular Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band: ever since, his fame as an artist has been inextricable from this one crazy image of John, Paul, George and Ringo posing in lurid neo-Edwardian garb among a crowd of famous and less famous heroes.Chrissy is, of course, right – it’s not as if this was the be-all and end-all of Blake’s vision. To celebrate his birthday, he has an exhibition at the Waddington Custot gallery in London, of a passion to which he has dedicated four decades: visualising Dylan Thomas’s “play for voices”, Under Milk Wood. Blake has recreated the characters’ funny, filthy dreams in tender watercolours and portrays all the people of the imaginary village Llareggub with photographic clarity, as if it were a documentary instead of a dream play. He brings the same innocence and sincerity to Under Milk Wood as he has done to all his crazes.In fact, we weren’t discussing Sgt Pepper when Chrissy got worried. We were talking about Blake’s love of doo-wop, the harmonious genre of male singing invented in the 1940s US that fed into modern pop music.A conceptual spectacular … Blake with the artwork for Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. Photograph: Matt Cardy/Getty Images“I loved people like the Four Freshmen, the Hi-Lo’s and Kirby Stone Four. Doo-wop groups. Out of that came the Beach Boys and the Lettermen,” says Blake. These were his personal music passions, as well as bebop and R&B – “Bo Diddley I was an enormous fan of.”And the Beatles? He pauses reflectively.“I was interested in them. I’ve never been an enormous fan of the Beatles like I am of the Beach Boys. It’s a dangerous thing to say, I hope that won’t be your headline: ‘Peter Blake doesn’t like the Beatles.’”But this is not a criticism of the Beatles so much as a reflection on what it is to be a “fan”, which Blake is: and it is at the very heart of his work. He is a fan who has got to know his idols, which led him from making a fan’s image of the Beach Boys in 1964 to collaborating with Brian Wilson. He has also had a friendly working relationship with the Who since he first met them in the early 60s: he has designed two of their album covers.“Their manager [Kit Lambert] said that they needed a change of direction and he was going to call them The Pop Art Group. He researched pop art and made a look with the union jack jacket. I think Roger [Daltrey] had a belt with black and white stripes which I had originally appropriated from Jasper [Johns]. And then the badges. They designed that Who look on the work I was doing.”Blake’s version of pop art is warm, affectionate and respectful. He has never been a lofty artist standing above mass culture. His idiosyncratic tastes in comics, fairgrounds, tattoos, wrestling, toy shops, badges and the union jack played a crucial part in the blend of modernity and nostalgia that shaped a new culture in 1960s Britain.Personal music passions … Beach Boys (1964) Photograph: Tate/© Peter Blake. All Rights Reserved, DACS 2007Blake started using pop imagery in the mid-50s as a student at the Royal College of Art. Born in Dartford, Kent, in 1932, he studied graphic design at Gravesend Technical College, then did his national service before starting on the Royal College painting course, where senior students were encouraged to paint what they liked.“I suppose at that point my life appeared: I started to paint autobiographically, and it’s pictures of my little brother and cousin with badges on, and my sister and me reading comics. My life at that point was popular culture. In the evenings I would go to professional wrestling … I went to Bexleyheath Drill Hall, that was the local venue. It was packed every week. The first fight I saw was Mick McManus who went on for years as one of the stars. Pop art and popular culture are quite separate entities. I could be a pop artist and not be interested in popular culture, but as it happens I am.”In 1961, Blake painted a self-portrait that is one of the great works of pop art. He stands in a suburban garden, staring forwards, like the clown Gilles who was painted by the French Rococo artist Jean-Antoine Watteau. Except, instead of a clown outfit, Blake is wearing denim and trainers. He is holding an Elvis magazine and sports badges on his jacket.“It was a very early embryonic collection of badges. It’s been said that they emblazoned my interests and my likes but it wasn’t particularly that – they were the only ones I had. I didn’t know who Adlai Stevenson (the 1960 Democratic presidential candidate) was. It was just what I had. Since then I have collected hundreds. In 1961, a man wouldn’t have worn badges. But a child would have done, a little boy would have done. So it is a boy-like figure, but a man. Also wearing denim in 61 was quite early, and to be wearing trainers was ahead of its time.”This is a remarkably sensitive reading of his own Self-Portrait With Badges. It is a portrait of the birth of youth culture itself. As he puts it, a “man” in 1961 was not supposed to wear badges or denim or trainers. A man was meant to be suited and serious.I ask about the shirt, which looks like a Fred Perry. “I was pretty much a mod at that point. So it’s a mod shirt, yeah.”“You’ve still got that red shirt,” says Chrissy.Yet Blake’s definition of popular culture was not confined to the young and fashionable. “I was very interested in music halls. I called my Royal College thesis Don’t Point, It’s Nude, and it was about the nude shows that were being introduced into music halls by Paul Raymond. I was going every week to the halls to see Max Wall, Max Miller and all the greats. The music hall was dying. You would go and see a comedian in the first house and there would be 30 people. Raymond thought nudity would revive the music hall – in fact it killed it a little bit quicker. I was writing it in 1956: there were some great shows that year where they could make the six become sex and say: “It’s a happy nineteen fifty sex.” I loved all that. So, yes, I’ve always been interested in the halls, and things like corn dollies and the actual popular arts.”One of the great works of pop art … Self-Portrait With Badges (1961). Photograph: Peter Blake/DACSThe folk art Blake loves has always fuelled him. His early works include two buxom fairground women, painted naively on wood and decorated with collage and glass beads. One is Loelia, World’s Most Tattooed Lady, the other Siriol, She-Devil of Naked Madness. Blake’s fascination with the quirky side of popular culture, from the music halls to these sideshow hoardings, is mirrored perfectly in the pop songs of the 60s. The Beatles’ Being for the Benefit of Mr Kite! takes its title from an 1843 circus poster that John Lennon found in an antique shop.“I’ve been a friend of them, certainly. I met them in 1963. And … no, I am a fan, I am a fan.” Blake is warming to the Beatles.His friendship with the band began when they came to London to appear on a TV show and Blake was invited to sit in, through an art director friend from Liverpool who had been telling him about this great new group.“Billy Fury was top of the bill and two boys who had just left the Shadows; there was a female singer called Billie Davis. The Beatles did the opening song Please Please Me, I think. I sat in the audience – just me, nobody else, and that’s when we first met and our friendship started.”The Beatles were still innocents when he next met them at a gig – or at least John, George and Ringo were. “We went back to the hotel with George and John and Ringo, but no Paul. We sat in the foyer and a man came up and said: ‘Would you sign this for my daughter?’ But people weren’t bothered otherwise and we had tea. Then John said: ‘Do you know any nightclubs? We don’t really know London and we’ve never been clubbing here.’ The week before I had been taken to a place called The Crazy Elephant, and I said: ‘I’m not a member, but we could try it.’ Joe Tilson (a fellow pioneer pop artist) was with us, too, and Joe had a second world war Jeep so we all piled into it and went to The Crazy Elephant. But the doorman said: ‘No, sorry mate, you’re not a member.’ They were playing a Beatles song and John said: ‘Well that’s our song, I’m a Beatle.’ He didn’t believe him. But a voice from around the corner said: ‘Can you let them in? They’re friends of mine.’ We went in, and it was Paul. He was already there with Jane Asher.”It was an older and more artful group who went into the studio later in the decade to record Sgt Pepper.“Normally at this point I clam up, but I’ll tell you as best I can,” Blake says. “They had already got a design group called The Fool to do a cover, but the art dealer Robert Fraser talked to Paul and said: “Look, this isn’t a very good cover – it’s psychedelic but there are a lot of other psychedelic things going on – that swirly pink and orange and green stuff – why don’t we use one of the artists in my gallery and make a fine art cover?”Craze … Dylan Thomas by Peter Blake (2013). Photograph: Peter Blake/Waddington CustotSo Blake was commissioned to create a cover that was truly a work of art, yet would be owned in homes all over the world: pop art as popular art.“The album name was already decided. They were having the uniforms made. They had a vague idea of it being like a brass band, Black Dyke Mills Band or something like that.”As the Beatles worked on the songs, Blake developed the idea for the cover.“I did it with my first wife, Jann, and one of us proposed that we could use the idea of a flower clock: in Edinburgh there’s a beautiful one. It slowly evolved into the idea that they had just done a gig, they were in a park and a group of their fans were getting behind them for a photograph. Various ideas came from the Beatles, and others from us. We employed a fairground painter to do the drum.”To construct the image, they blew up collaged figures to lifesize and posed the band in front, with a real flower arrangement.“Looking at it from the side it’s a wall, with things fixed to the wall, and then out comes a little platform that they’re standing on, then sloping forwards from the platform is the flowerbed. All the cut outs are made of plywood, then the photographs are stuck to them and hand coloured. I had recently done work for Madame Tussauds, so they lent us their waxworks of the Beatles and Sonny Liston, who I was a great fan of, and Diana Dors. So it’s a mixture of flat cut outs, waxworks and then this platform and the drum.”On the morning they were to shoot the photograph, everything was perfect. “Clifton Nurseries came in, did the flowerbed, and then the Beatles called and said we can’t do it today – they were finishing off Lovely Rita. So all the flowers went back.” A new day was arranged. “On that day they arrived, put their uniforms on, and Michael Cooper came and took the photograph. Now I would do it on the computer!”The people in the crowd were partly chosen by the Beatles, but others reflect Blake’s and Haworth’s enthusiasms. Next to the instantly recognisable Bob Dylan is the less familiar face of Simon Rodia, an Italian “outsider artist” who built the wondrous Watts Towers in Los Angeles from wire, shards of glass and other found stuff.Blake’s admiration for Rodia, ever since he made a pilgrimage to Watts in 1963, is another example of his unaffected, unironic love of popular art. We compare notes of our trips to see the Towers – he went a couple of years before the Watts riots, I went many decades later – but Rodia’s glittering vision is still a joy on the troubled skyline.The furniture in this room, he says, is a homage to Rodia, with glittering shards of glass embedded into chests and tabletops. This belief in outsider art makes Blake a uniquely generous figure who defies boundaries of taste and cultural value. The kids in his pioneering 1954 pop canvas Children Reading Comics are sincerely enjoying them. This is a million miles from fellow pop artists such as Richard Hamilton or Roy Lichtenstein who looked at the consumer and media age with cool irony, perhaps even contempt.The New York pop painter Roy Lichtenstein turned comic strips into abstract paintings. But, says Blake: “My theory about Lichtenstein is that he didn’t actually like comic books. “They were good I think, but they weren’t kind: they weren’t kind to comic books. I think that’s the difference between Lichtenstein and myself – he was making a product and I was a fan.”Peter Blake: Under Milk Wood is at Waddington Custot, London, until 23 July.

Music

Clear skies have led to stunning images captured up and down the country of the Strawberry Moon, which gets its name from a reddish, pink hue, that can be seen in JuneThe Strawberry Moon was pictured from behind The Needles lighthouse on the Isle of WightBrit star gazers have had a treat with stunning images of a Strawberry Moon visible across much of the UK due to clear skies. The name Strawberry Moon comes from the reddish, pink hues of this particular full moon which is seen in June. It's also named this way because of a connection back to Native American times, where this time of year would usually be the beginning of strawberry picking season. This Strawberry Moon is bigger and brighter than normal because it is also the first supermoon of the year - with the only other of this type arriving a month later. Full moons take place every 30 days during the year and so the Strawberry Moon never falls on the same exact day. The stunning June full moon was also captured over Stonehenge ( Image: Nick Bull/pictureexclusive.com) People around the country have been out taking snaps and videos of the stunning images. One person wrote: “The Strawberry Moon has just set over Lyme Bay, Devon. Gulls in applause. What a beautiful sight!” And Devon County Council tweeted: “Don’t forget to look up … it’s the biggest moon of the year tonight, the Strawberry Supermoon!” A high altitude jet is seen to leave a vapour trail as it passes in front of the Strawberry Moon above Sheerness, Kent ( Image: Alamy Live News.) Another wrote: “Strawberry Moon clearly showing in North Devon, sleep well all.” Many other people shared pics with one people captioning an image: “Tonight’s Strawberry Super Moon rises behind Mumbles Lighthouse in Swansea.” And another wrote: “The Strawberry Moon tonight over Newcastle, County Down.” The Strawberry Moon was also seen clearly behind Mumbles Head in Swansea ( Image: Robert Melen/REX/Shutterstock) Ancient tribes in North America and Europe used the moon as a calendar because its changing phases were easy to follow. They gave names to each full moon through the year to help them keep track of the seasons and all the expected natural and human activities at any given time of year. The Maine Farmer's Almanac published in the US began listing the native American names for full moons in the 1930s and recorded that the Algonquin tribes called this the Strawberry Moon. The name refers to the time when early fruit such as wild strawberries would ripen and were ready to be picked. This time, it is also a supermoon and this means that it is full during the closest point in its elliptical orbit making it appear up to 14% bigger and 30% brighter, reported BirminghamLive. The Strawberry Moon seen from Boscombe Down Air Base ( Image: Getty Images) June's full moon is also known by other names, also relating to natural or agricultural activities. Green Corn Moon, meaning it's time to tend to young crops, Blooming Moon, because so many plants come into flower, or Birth Moon, Egg Laying Moon and Hatching Moon - when many animals have babies. Then there is also Honey Moon - when the first honey is ready to harvest. With the old custom of getting married in June, this is thought to have given its name to the word honeymoon for the first month of marriage. The larger than normal full moon was pictured above Mudeford beach huts in Dorset ( Image: Steve Hogan/pictureexclusive.com) The moon may not actually be strawberry-coloured but it can take on a different hue during an eclipse or when it's close to the horizon. When a moon is near the horizon, light has to pass a greater distance through the atmosphere and this means it hits more dust particles which scatter the light - it's the same reason sunsets appear red, pink and orange. As Tuesday night's full moon has been very close to the horizon, it is more red or pink than normal. Read More Read More

Space Exploration

He played a sharpshooting police recruit in “The Untouchables,” rose to the top of the Corleone crime family in “The Godfather III” and faced off against George Clooney, Brad Pitt and Matt Damon in “Ocean’s Eleven.” Now, Oscar-nominated actor Andy García is stepping into the shoes of a new character — a Cuban exile named Billy — in the remake of “Father of the Bride,” which premieres Thursday on HBO Max. He considers it a privilege to be part of the iconic film's remake — with a distinctive Latino flavor — because it reminds him of the families he grew up with in Miami Beach.“That sense of needing to accomplish, to honor the sacrifices that your parents have made, and having pride in that accomplishment is who this man is,” García told NBC News in an interview, describing his character Billy. “Like he says in the movie time and time again: ‘I came here. I slept on my Tío Walter’s floor. I parked cars. I put myself through school. I became an architect. I built my own house.”The original and highly popular “Father of the Bride” was released in 1950 with two-time Oscar-winning actor Spencer Tracy. Decades later, comedic actor Steve Martin — winner of five Grammys and one Prime-time Emmy— reprised the role of the dad in 1991. Both versions of the film focus on the relationship between the father and his daughter. But now, 72 years after the first "Father of the Bride" film, the franchise retells the story through the eyes of García as a Cuban American father whose daughter Sofía (Adria Arjona) will marry her Mexican fiancé Adán (Diego Boneta). This remake, however, also focuses on the relationship between García and the mother of the bride, Ingrid (Gloria Estefan) as they try to rekindle their marriage — while planning Sofía’s wedding.Andy García as Billy and Gloria Estefan as Ingrid in "Father of the Bride."Claudette Barius / Warner Bros. Pictures / HBO MaxCelebrating love — and familia Screenwriter Matt López, who adapted the Latino remake of “Father of the Bride,” says that he wanted to tell a story about love through multiple generations.“The [wedding] band calls everybody up and you sort of see love in all its stages from couples that have been together 30 years to folks who hooked up at the rehearsal dinner the night before. And so I had this idea about love across the years,” he said in an interview.The movie incorporates elements of Latino life through its food and music, from the Cuban meal at the beginning of the movie — with arroz y frijoles (rice and beans) and papas rellenas (potatoes filled with Caribbean-seasoned beef) to the traditional bolero or danzón, a Latino slow dance during the wedding's father/daughter dance.López says that he came up with the idea of opening the movie with the marriage of the bride’s parents already on the rocks. In fact, García's and Estefan’s characters are about to announce their divorce when their daughter beats them to the punch and reveals that she’s getting married. The screenwriter wanted to pose the question: Could the bride’s parents rediscover that spark as they go through the motions of putting their daughter’s wedding together?Like the other "Father of the Bride" versions, the movie also uses humor to show the generational differences between parents and children. García tussles with the young couple on everything from who will pay for the wedding to whether the couple will have a Catholic ceremony. It also goes deeper into the generational differences with the way the two men — Billy and his future son-in-law — see their careers compared to those of the women in their lives. "There's a wonderful moment in the film where Andy (García) is speaking to the young man who's going to marry his daughter played very memorably by Diego Boneta, and Diego's character is giving up his career or putting it on hold at least to allow Sofia, his bride-to-be and Andy's daughter, a chance to pursue her passion. And it's kind of this eye-opening moment for Andy," said López, who identifies culturally as Cuban American. This also counters the dad's hardened, self-made philosophy of working nonstop. Sometimes family is better served by putting them over work.Andy García as Billy, Gloria Estefan as Ingrid, Adria Arjona as Sophie and Diego Boneta as Adán in "Father of the Bride."Claudette Barius / Warner Bros. Pictures / HBO MaxLópez previously created the television show “Promised Land,” about a successful California Latino winemaking family, which he said dramatized the tensions that many immigrant families face as they struggle to preserve their original culture and assimilate into mainstream America. And he describes the extended Latino family in “Father of the Bride” as an interesting crossroads that will compel many viewers.“It’s rooted in their immigrant histories, whether it’s one generation ago or three generations ago. You come and you are different. You are blending in. And I think frequently the closeness of those families, in part, comes from that it’s your anchor, it’s your space,” he said. “It’s a little bit of a safe harbor, if you will, as you go through this process of assimilating to a broader culture.” García says that his character Billy is very traditional, cut from a different cloth than his daughter’s generation, and he represents the values and perspectives of 1960s exiles who came from Cuba, which included his parents in real life. “There’s this sense about exile, at least the Cuban exile experience that I feel, that no matter how well you’re doing in America, you feel like you’ve got to keep working hard and saving it, and keep working hard, 'cause one day they’re going to take everything away from us,” he said. “That’s part of the psychological war wound, you know? And Billy is of that generation.”In the movie, García says, Billy is a political exile who came to the United States alone, like thousands of unaccompanied young Cubans who arrived through Operation Pedro Pan. Run by Catholic Charities with aid from the U.S. government between 1960 and 1962, it is said to have been the largest exodus of unaccompanied children from any nation to the U.S. at that time, an estimated 14,000.Off-screen, García says that he immigrated to Florida from Cuba when he was only 5 years old. And the assimilation process was a bit traumatic, as he had to learn English. But, the actor loved growing up in America and wanted to show that pride in his character. “If it wasn’t for that courage and that exile that my parents went into, I wouldn’t be talking to you right now,” he said. “And this movie would not exist, certainly it would not exist with me. And that’s the reality. So I don’t take that lightly.” Follow NBC Latino on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

Movies

Register now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.comLOS ANGELES, June 14 (Reuters) - Walt Disney Co's (DIS.N) new animated Pixar movie "Lightyear" features a gay couple, the latest step by the company to show traditionally under-represented groups on the big screen.Actor Chris Evans, who voices the main character in "Lightyear," applauded moves to reflect all types of people and said those who react negatively should be disregarded."The real truth is those people are idiots," Evans said in an interview with Reuters Television ahead of the debut of "Lightyear" in theaters on Friday.Register now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.com"Every time there’s been social advancement as we wake up, the American story, the human story is one of constant social awakening and growth and that’s what makes us good," he added."Lightyear" was banned in the United Arab Emirates because it depicts homosexuality, and Disney has been unable to secure permission to show the movie in 13 other Middle Eastern and Asian countries L1N2XW2X0.Cast member Chris Evans poses for a photo, as he arrives for the UK premiere of 'Lightyear' in London, Britain June 13, 2022. REUTERS/Maja SmiejkowskaThe movie is Pixar's imagining of the movie that inspired the toy version of Buzz Lightyear featured in the acclaimed "Toy Story" franchise.Evans voices Buzz Lightyear, a legendary space ranger. Buzz's close friend in the film is a female space ranger who marries another woman. A scene showing milestones in the couple's relationship includes a brief kiss."There's always going to be people who are afraid and unaware and trying to hold on to what was before. But those people die off like dinosaurs," Evans said. "I think the goal is to pay them no mind, march forward and embrace the growth that makes us human."Producer Galyn Susman asked why viewers "don't get more upset showing failed relationships."In "Lightyear," "We have a relationship here which lasts an entire lifetime. It's loving, it's supportive and it shows Buzz exactly what he doesn't have and that's the whole point."We should all be so lucky to have that kind of relationship in our life," she added.Register now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.comReporting by Lisa Richwine; Editing by Mark PorterOur Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

Movies

Unusually fiery and vibrant sunrises and sunsets across New Zealand and Australia in recent weeks could be due to aerosols that were hurled up into the stratosphere following Tonga’s volcanic eruption in January.New Zealand’s National Institute of Water and Atmospherics (Niwa) has been inundated with messages from people asking what is causing the “strange but beautiful phenomenon”.The team contacted colleagues in Otago and Paris to confirm if their suspicions were true – that the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai volcanic eruption was responsible for the displays.Sunset at Seddon Park in Hamilton, New Zealand, in March. Photograph: Marty Melville/AFP/Getty ImagesThe Lauder Atmospheric Research Station in Central Otago said their instruments had detected unusual spikes in aerosols in the stratosphere, at around 20-25 kilometres above New Zealand. Researchers at the Institut Pierre-Simon Laplace in Paris said satellite data also showed that concentrations of stratospheric aerosols from the eruption had tripled between 35°S and 45°S – the latitude where New Zealand lies on the globe – since April.The aerosols from the plume of gas and ash have been dispersing around the globe, Niwa said, and indeed, it is thought that they are causing the stunning skies. Sunsets and sunrises would have been similarly striking around Tonga in the aftermath of the eruption, but now the aerosols were heading south.“Usually when you see a sunrise or sunset, it is the clouds that morph into the most vibrant colours,” said Nava Fedaeff, a Niwa forecaster.“However, when stratospheric aerosols are present after a volcanic eruption, they scatter and bend the light as the sun dips or rises past the horizon, creating a glow in the sky with hues of blue, purple, and violet.”A hot air balloon flies over Melbourne in late January. Photograph: REX/ShutterstockVolcanic twilights are known as “afterglows”, with the colour and intensity of the afterglow dependent on the amount of haze and cloudiness along the path of light reaching the stratosphere, Fedaeff said. “These bewitching scenes are made even more striking by crepuscular rays caused by shadowing from distant clouds or mountain barriers.”New Zealand has experienced this phenomenon before. Sunset afterglows persisted for months after the eruption of Philippine volcano Mount Pinatubo in 1991, meaning New Zealanders could be treated to these lovely morning and evening colours for a while longer, Fedaeff said.The sun sets at Hagley Park Oval in Christchurch, New Zelaand, in April. Photograph: Sanka Vidanagama/AFP/Getty Images

Space Exploration

South Korean boyband BTS have announced a break to allow their members to work on solo projects.The news came less than a week after the seven-man group, which launched a global K-pop craze, released their latest album Proof. Speaking during an annual dinner celebrating the band's founding, rapper RM said: "The problem with K-pop and the whole idol system is that they don't give you time to mature."You have to keep producing music and keep doing something."According to a report in Deadline, the other band members insisted that the band are not splitting up. Rapper J-Hope said: "We should spend some time apart to learn how to be one again. "I hope you don't see this as a negative thing, and see it as a healthy plan. More from Ents & Arts Amber Heard says she and Johnny Depp were 'awful to each other' but that she 'always told the truth', in first interview since actor's libel case win Sir Lenny Henry 'surprised' by lack of black people at UK music festivals Squid Game coming to life with 456 real players competing for last-person-standing £3.7m prize "BTS will become stronger that way." Lead vocalist Jimin added: "Now we're starting to think about what kind of artists we each want to be remembered by our fans."And rapper Suga said: "It's not like we're disbanding."An English translation of their words showed one of the members calling the break a "hiatus", but this description was disputed by a spokesperson for the band.The spokesperson said in a statement: "To be clear, they are not on hiatus but will take time to explore some solo projects at this time and remain active in various different formats."RM, Jimin, J-Hope, Suga, Jungkook, V and Jin formed the band in 2010 and debuted three years later, becoming worldwide sensations with songs such as Dynamite, Boy With Luv, and Butter.Last year, BTS were the first Asian band to win artist of the year at the American Music Awards, and they even met US President Joe Biden in May to talk about hate crimes targeting Asians.

Music

Filmmaker, actor and studio owner Tyler Perry has found success in his career, and says he’s motivated to keep going by the people who work for him and the ancestors who came before him. During Tribeca Film Festival’s “Tribeca Talks” directors series, Perry sat on Monday with CBS Mornings co-host Gayle King and discussed his difficult career journey along with his plans of extending his legacy through his production company. “At this moment, it really is about legacy,” Perry said during the 60-minute interview. With more than 13 films, 22 theatrical plays and seven television shows under his belt, Perry has leaned on creating work that resonates with Black people. Outside of his work, he continues to tell a unique story through the land that holds Tyler Perry Studios, a former Confederate base now owned by a powerful Black filmmaker. Located in Atlanta, Tyler Perry Studios stretches across 330 acres of land on what was Fort McPherson, a deactivated Army base built by slaves and once used by the Confederate government during the Civil War.“To have me be the owner of that very land that people were plotting and planning on how to keep 3.9 million Negros enslaved on, be owned by one Black man,” Perry said, “I think about those people — the ancestors — and what they must think if they could know that. Like, what would that feel like?”Gayle King and Tyler Perry at the Directors Series during the Tribeca Film Festival on June 13, 2022 in New York City. Santiago Felipe / Getty Images for Tribeca Film FestivalThe land — which King said was larger than multiple major studios including Warner Bros., Disney and Paramount and Sony combined — currently holds 12 sound stages that are named after “African Americans who really inspired me,” Perry said, including Oprah Winfrey, Denzel Washington, Cicely Tyson and Sidney Poitier. Perry’s vision became clear during a visit to the Biltmore Estate in North Carolina, where he realized there were few Black people who owned historic properties throughout the country. He also said he wanted to create something special that future generations can get inspired by. Perry cited his great-grandfather, who was enslaved, as one of the individuals who motivates him to succeed. “I’m on the wave that they set in motion,” he said. “So I feel like I’m supposed to live well. I feel like I’m supposed to have everything that I want. Not just for me, but for everyone who didn’t get it.”One way Perry is actively continuing his legacy is through building the studio’s workforce, which he said is 99 percent Black. The company also hires a wide range of individuals, including people who lived in shelters and people who have been formerly incarcerated.“It’s not just about what I’m doing,” Perry said. “It’s also about all the people that’s affected.”During the interview with King, Perry also highlighted the political divide and the social injustices in the U.S., which he said is one of the reasons his beloved Madea character returned to the screen after her 2018 “retirement” -- “A Madea Homecoming” was released on Netflix in February. He also said that the hate, anger, rage and constant flow of difficult news inspired him to make something to help people laugh. “I’m very concerned about the direction of the entire world … this country,” Perry said, “the hatred of all people for just being people.”During the interview, Perry spoke about his upcoming film, “A Jazzman’s Blues,” which centers on a jazz singer and Holocaust survivor in 1942. Perry said he’s witnessed certain “political motions” related to opposition of critical race theory and banning books, and said now is the moment to share this story.Beyond the screen, Perry said his legacy also extends through his son Aman, 7, who he’s kept out of the public view because he wants him to form his own identity before “people start trying to tell him who he is or who his father is,” Perry said.“When you give the world so much, you got to keep some things for yourself,” he said, “and that for me — my fatherhood, me raising this incredible boy — is something I keep close to my heart.”Follow NBCBLK on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

Celebrity

Trash-Talking Teen 'Bridesmaids' 'Memba Her?! 6/15/2022 12:01 AM PT American actress Mia Rose Frampton was just 15 years old when she was cast as the fast-mouthed teenager -- who is shopping for her best friend's birthday gift but ultimately deals out some impressive insults to the store employee -- in the 2011 comedy film "Bridesmaids." Mia was cast alongside some of 'SNL's best comedians like Kristen Wiig as the money-hungry and hilarious best friend of the bride, Annie Walker, Maya Rudolph as the bride-to-be, Lillian, Melissa McCarthy as the low-key smart sister of the groom, Megan, and Rebel Wilson as Annie's brutally honest roommate, Brynn. Guess what she looks like today at 26 years old!

Celebrity

Ozzy Osbourne is “on the road to recovery” following surgery earlier this week, according to wife Sharon Osbourne.In a message on social media, she wrote: “Our family would like to express so much gratitude for the overwhelming amount of love and support leading up to Ozzy’s surgery! Ozzy is doing well and on the road to recovery! Your love means the world to him.”Ozzy was pictured leaving hospital in Los Angeles in a wheelchair, but was able to stand and climb into a waiting car.Sharon and the Osbourne family have not publicly detailed the surgery, but Sharon said it was “really going to determine the rest of his life”.In May, the rock star said he was waiting on a procedure for his neck, following a fall in 2019 that exacerbated an earlier quad biking injury. “I can’t walk properly these days,” he told Classic Rock magazine. “I have physical therapy every morning. I am somewhat better, but nowhere near as much as I want to be to go back on the road.”The rock star is hoping to eventually mount a tour he first announced in 2017, but which has been postponed numerous times due to ill health and also Covid restrictions. In November, he announced the UK and European dates would now begin in May 2023.

Music

Jennifer Lopez is all about getting loud.The artist has a lot to say in her new documentary, "Halftime," which premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival last week and rolled out on Netflix on Tuesday. The film looks at Lopez's professional life in recent years, including the making and promoting of the movie "Hustlers" and behind-the-scenes of the Super Bowl Halftime Show she headlined with Shakira. It also offers a window into her personal life, including a brief cameo of fiancé Ben Affleck. (Her ex-fiance Alex Rodriguez is not mentioned or included in the documentary at all. They broke up in April 2021).Here are five takeaways from the documentary.Lopez was frustrated about splitting the Super Bowl showFor the 2020 halftime show, Lopez and Shakira each split their time evenly for the 14-minute performance, singing a medley of their major hits.And while Lopez was honored to perform on a national stage with Shakira, behind the scenes she was also frustrated about the time constraints on the performance.During one scene, Shakira and Lopez chat about the Super Bowl on the phone: Lopez tells Shakira, “If it was going to be a double headliner, they should have given us 20 minutes. That's what they should've f------ done.”When prepping the show with her music director, Lopez is also seen getting frustrated over the time constraints. "This was the worst idea in the world to have two people do the Super Bowl," she says. At one point ahead of the show, she's also captured on video talking on the phone with Ricky Kirshner, an NFL producer, saying the finale "can't just be one minute.""We're trying to squeeze this down to the bare minimum. It's hard because it's such a big stage, and it's such an important show. And all of us have dreamed of doing it. And it's been a nightmare since we've started."When Kirshner pushed back, Lopez responds by saying: "I'm trying to give you something of substance... I want something that's going to make a statement."The NFL also "didn't want the cages in the show," according to Lopez and others in the documentary. "To take out the cages and sacrifice what I believe in would be like not being there at all," Lopez says in the documentary. She says she stood her ground, asserting that "The Super Bowl is tomorrow and we're not changing anything."Ultimately, the show kept the political statement in place. There were child performers in glowing spheres that many interpreted as a reference to the immigrant children and youth being held at U.S. detention centers. Emme, Lopez's daughter, also joined her mother on stage and sang a few bars of Bruce Springsteen's "Born in the USA" as Lopez unfurled a feathery flag that featured the American and Puerto Rican flags on it.Lopez posted on Instagram the day after the Super Bowl. She wrote in the caption, "other people can try to build walls, keep us out or put us in cages. We are proud to recognize that all of us together are what makes this beautiful country truly great.” At the time, the comments about walls and cages seemed to confirm speculation that she was sending a political message with her set.Seeing images of kids in cages at the border motivated Lopez to get more political During the documentary, Lopez notes that she's not "into politics.""I’m not that person," she says. "But I was living in a United States I didn't recognize. I was afraid for my kids, for their future."Jennifer Lopez in "Halftime". NetflixIt was seeing images and footage of kids in cages at the border that made her feel like she "couldn't believe" what she was watching. In 2018, hundreds of kids were separated from their parents at the U.S. border as part of the Trump administration's "zero tolerance" policy."You don’t rip a child from their parents," she says. "There are just certain things as a human being you don’t do.""It made me realize that I had a responsibility to not be quiet," she adds. "To not just leave the politics to everybody else."When prepping her Super Bowl act with Shakira, Lopez is seen discussing making a statement with their show and defying the "narrative that Trump created" that "everybody's an immigrant trying to sneak into the country and is who is a criminal.""Some of us have been here for years," she says. "And a lot of those people are just good people who are looking for the American dream. That's all they want." Lopez considered quitting Hollywood amid scrutiny, jokes at her expense As her career blew up, Lopez says there was a time when she "had really low self esteem.""No matter what I achieved," she says in the documentary. "Their [the media's] appetite to cover my personal life overshadowed everything.""I believed a lot of what they said, which is that I wasn't really good," she says. The documentary shows clips of late night shows mocking Lopez, particularly her relationship with Affleck. The pair known as "Bennifer" were one of Hollywood's hottest couples from 2002 to 2004. They called off their wedding days in advance and later broke up.Each then married other people. Lopez was married to singer Marc Anthony, whom she split with seven years later. Affleck married actor Jennifer Garner, but in 2015 they announced they were divorcing after 10 years of marriage.The couple reunited last year, but initially kept their romance under wraps. They announced their engagement in April 2022.Affleck is briefly interviewed for the documentary, where he is asked about the scrutiny Lopez received during the early days of their relationship."I said to her once, doesn't this bother you?" he says in the documentary. "And she said, I'm Latina, I expected this. You just don't expect it, you expect to be treated fairly." The jabs impacted Lopez."There were many times where I was like I think I'm just going to quit," she says. "I had to really figure out who I was and believe in that and not believe anything else."The documentary also shows a series of clips of people in the industry mocking Lopez's butt in various segments that appeared on air."When I started working, the beauty ideal was very thin, blonde, tall, not a lot of curves," she says. "It was hard when you think people think you're a joke. Like you're a punchline. But I wound up affecting things in a way that I never intended to affect them." The 'Hustlers' Oscar nomination snub hit Lopez hard Throughout the documentary, viewers are given a look at all the work that Lopez put into the movie "Hustlers," including taking pole dancing lessons."It's super painful because it is like a crash course," she says in the documentary, pointing to bruises on her legs obtained from learning.The film, she says, was especially exciting to her because it "had substance.""That's something I fought for in my career," she says. "This is a film about women who had limited options and had to make hard choices. These characters remind me of women I knew growing up in the Bronx."The documentary highlights all the awards season buzz Lopez generated for her role as Ramona, the senior dancer at a New York strip joint, in the film.In December 2019, Lopez received a Golden Globes nomination for the role. "It only took 20 years," Lopez jokes in a call reacting to the nomination. The cameras follow Lopez to the ceremony itself. She didn't win.When reflecting on the loss, she says to the camera, "I really thought I had a chance; I felt like I let everybody down."The Oscars nomination snub also hit Lopez hard. At one point in the documentary, she is seen reading positive reviews and getting emotional about the overwhelming supportive reaction.Amid awards season, she is also seen juggling rehearsals for the Super Bowl and attending events, remaining hopeful for a nomination for the most coveted award in Hollywood.The morning the 92nd Academy Awards nominations were announced in February 2020, Lopez did not get the nod."The truth is I really started to think I was going to get nominated," she says in the documentary. "I got my hopes up because so many people were telling me I would be. And then it didn't happen. I had to ask myself, what does that mean? I do this not for an award ... I do this to tell stories and to affect change and to connect with people and make them feel things, because I want to feel something. That's why I do it."Lopez strives to 'be better in every way'Lopez said it took her a long time to "find" her way in the industry. She said after her divorce with Marc Anthony, the father of her children, she took a lot of time to reflect on her career."As an artist, I kind of lost a little bit of who I was in trying to kind of build a perfect life, a family life," she said. "And when my kids were 3… I got divorced. I was a single mom with two little kids, at 42…movie roles were not knocking down my door. As I was getting back to work I really felt like I didn't know what my value was anymore."Being a judge on "American Idol" helped her "find her purpose.""I really learned a lot about myself," she said, including that she needs "to be better in every way.""You know you have those moments in this business where you're like, what's next? And will anything be next?" she says in the documentary. "I think every entertainer, every creative person, every artist, lives with that fear."Now, however, Lopez says "I’m going to be unafraid to get loud and use my voice in the best way that I can."At this point in her career, Lopez said she's "thriving" in a way she "never imagined." The documentary comes to an end by showing footage of Lopez's performance at President Joe Biden's Inauguration."I'm not done," she says at one point in the documentary, "not even close."

Celebrity

The Kid LAROI Goes Up, Slams Down on Spine ... Scary Injury Playing Hoops 6/15/2022 12:30 AM PT TMZ.com The Kid LAROI might have to lay off pick-up basketball games while he's touring ... especially after taking a fall so hard, it's painful just to watch. The Aussie rapper made an appearance at the Culture Kings store in Melbourne, and part of the store was shut down Sunday ... so he and his crew could do some shopping. Things took a turn, though, when he and his entourage decided to play hoops on the store's indoor court. It was close quarters, for sure, and at one point The Kid jumped pretty damn high for the ball, only to trip over one of his pals ... and come crashing down right on his tailbone! Immediately, you could see he was in pain. The Wiggles While a lot of fans thought he'd have to cancel his concert scheduled for that night, TKL stuck to that old adage -- the show MUST go on -- and got onstage that night ... with The Wiggles no less!!! He certainly didn't look any worse for wear as he went HAM performing his childhood heroes' classics like "Big Red Car" and "Fruit Salad." The Kid had already postponed the Melbourne concert the week before, so he knew he had to put on a great show, regardless of how sore his back must have been. Plus, The Wiggles, bro. You gotta play hurt!

Basketball

Former heavyweight boxer Francis is working as a security guard in London and dealt with a troublesome reveller by landing a huge punchVideo LoadingVideo UnavailableMike Tyson lets out roar in training footageFormer heavyweight boxer Julius Francis, who took on Mike Tyson in 2000, has been filmed knocking out a rowdy reveller while working as a security guard. Francis, 57, retired from the ring in 2006 with a record of 23-24-1 but proved he has lost little of his power as stepped in to sort out an altercation at BOXPARK near Wembley Stadium. Footage posted on social media shows a group of men arguing with security outside the venue with Francis initially remaining in the background. The group is herded out of the security cordon where they continue to confront the staff. One man then turns to leave where he is met by Francis who lands a right hand which sends the punter to the ground. The person filming the incident can he heard saying, "Oh s***" as he hits the ground. WARNING: Strong language and violence Francis walks away from the incident while the stricken man is helped by his friends. He is put in the recovery position while two other men talk to the former fighter. Another man is heard saying, "There was no need, there was no need". Mirror Fighting has approached BOXPARK for comment. Francis won his first six fights as a professional before he was knocked out by John Ruiz in 1994. Another five-fight winning streak was then halted by Scott Welch before embarking on a see-saw run of wins and losses. Francis was knocked out in the second round by Vitali Klitschko in 1998 before suffering the same fate against Tyson two years later. He would win just two more fights before losing 14 successive bouts until he hung up his gloves. Do you know the man who was punched? Let us know in the comments section below Boxing fans quickly took to social media to offer their take on the incident, with one saying: "Stepped up to a man who was mad enough to step in the ring with Mike Tyson, it’s not what I consider a smart move!" Another joked: "Eddie Hearn will have him fighting [Anthony] Joshua next on DAZN PPV once he gets spanked by [Oleksandr] Usyk. 'It's a 50/50 fight!' At this point [it] probably is." Another user said: "This could have been handled a lot different by the guard. Despite the guy being provocative, you have no right to just punch someone like that, especially being a guard. People in the comment sections are probably kids or just uneducated adults thinking it was good thing." Read More Read More

Boxing

'Your love means the world to him': Sharon Osbourne reveals husband Ozzy, 73, is 'on the road to recovery' after undergoing spinal surgery that could 'determine the rest of his life' Published: 03:25 EDT, 15 June 2022 | Updated: 03:26 EDT, 15 June 2022 Sharon Osbourne has revealed her husband Ozzy is 'on the road to recovery' after undergoing 'major' spinal surgery this week.The former X Factor judge, 69, claimed the singer, 73, is 'doing well' after he underwent a major procedure that could 'determine the rest of his life' on Monday and has thanked everyone for their kind words.In an update to her Instagram Story on Tuesday, she wrote: 'Our family would like to express so much gratitude for the overwhelming amount of love and support leading up to Ozzy 's surgery! 'Your love means the world to him': Sharon Osbourne has revealed her husband Ozzy is 'on the road to recovery' after undergoing 'major' spinal surgery this week'Ozzy is doing well and on the road to recovery! Your love means the world to him.A family source recently told Page Six that the metal influencer was going to go through a 'lengthy amount of convalescence' that would likely require a home nurse for some time.They said: 'Ozzy is 73 and any kind of surgery when you get older is difficult,' they added. 'This is quite major. He’s having the pins in his neck and back realigned from when he had a fall back in 2019.'Sharon had previously explained that the musician was heading in for 'a very major operation'. On the mend: The former X Factor judge, 69, claimed the singer, 73, is 'doing well' after he underwent a major procedure that could 'determine the rest of his life' on Monday Sharon had said on 'The Talk': '[Ozzy] has a very major operation on Monday, and I have to be there. It's really going to determine the rest of his life.' Ozzy has Parkinson's disease and previously suffered a nasty fall and dislodged metal rods placed in his spine following a quad-bike accident in 2003.In April, Piers Morgan asked the TV personality on TalkTV's Piers Morgan Uncensored: 'How is Ozzy, my great man?'He is just one of my favourite people in the world. Been through the health wars a bit, how's he doing?' Thankful: In her Tuesday Instagram Story, she wrote: 'Our family would like to express so much gratitude for the overwhelming amount of love and support leading up to Ozzy 's surgery!'Sharon said the Black Sabbath rocker is keen to move back to England after his latest surgery.She replied: 'He's doing okay, he sends you his love. He's got one more operation left to do and then he's dying to come back home.'The talent manager recently admitted she now has to care for Ozzy 'a lot' because of his health issues. Health woes: Ozzy has Parkinson's disease and previously suffered a nasty fall and dislodged metal rods placed in his spine following a quad-bike accident in 2003 (pictured in 2020) She said: 'It's very difficult, because the combination of the Parkinson's and his accident, you go, well, which one is this? Why's this happening? Why's that happening?'Ozzy previously opened up about his Parkinson's diagnosis in a candid interview on US TV, in which he admitted the condition is 'just another thing on my plate'.He said: 'Well the one question from me was, 'Is it a terminal illness?', and the guy says, 'No, but life is'. 'It's just another thing on my plate I have got to deal with. I'm not in the slightest worried about it.' PARKINSON'S: THE INCURABLE NERVE DISEASE THAT AFFECTS MILLIONS Parkinson's disease affects one million Americans a year. It causes muscle stiffness, slowness of movement, tremors, sleep disturbance, chronic fatigue, an impaired quality of life and can lead to severe disability.It is a progressive neurological condition that destroys cells in the part of the brain that controls movement.Sufferers are known to have diminished supplies of dopamine because nerve cells that make it have died.There is currently no cure and no way of stopping the progression of the disease, but hundreds of scientific trials are underway to try and change that. In the US, physicians consider it largely one type of condition with various stages; young onset Parkinson's or atypical Parkinson's. In Europe, some doctors and researchers specify different types of the condition. Treatment is mostly made up of medication. In some cases, doctors perform Deep Brain Stimulation surgery to try to hit the nerves more directly. Ozzy revealed in January 2020 that he had been diagnosed with Parkin 2 - a form of Parkinson's which he said is the cause of nerve pain and leaves his legs cold. In May, he told Classic Rock Magazine: 'I'm just waiting on some more surgery on my neck. I can't walk properly these days. 'I have physical therapy every morning. I am somewhat better, but nowhere near as much as I want to be to go back on the road.'Sharon's Ozzy health update comes after it was reported that they've applied for permission to build a rehab wing at their home in the UK.The Crazy Train hitmaker lodged an application requesting the green light for renovations at his Buckinghamshire mansion.The extension will feature a self-contained nurse's flat as well as 'discreet grab rails and aids' and 'an abundance of stopping and sitting spaces'.The plans also include a 'health and exercise studio' as well as a 'pool house orangery' and 'garden room'.Architect Lynne Walker wrote in the plans: 'It is the ambition that the design creates a transition of flowing inside outside garden spaces, largely lit by natural light with folding doors opening up views.'A spokesperson for the Paranoid hitmaker has yet to comment on the renovation reports, but confirmed Ozzy - who was badly injured following his fall at home three years ago - is gearing up for another surgery on his 'back or neck'.Sharon recently admitted she now has to care for Ozzy 'a lot' because of his health issues.She said: 'It's very difficult, because the combination of the Parkinson's and his accident, you go, well, which one is this? Why's this happening? Why's that happening?'Ozzy was previously diagnosed with Parkin Syndrome in 2005. It has similar symptoms to Parkinson's. Oh no: Ozzy was previously diagnosed with Parkin Syndrome in 2005. It has similar symptoms to Parkinson's (pictured in 2010) Advertisement Read more: Sharon Osbourne shares Ozzy update after his ‘life-altering’ surgery Ozzy Osbourne: "I was talking to Lemmy on the morning he died" | Louder

Music

What is it like to sift through the archives of a cultural icon? That’s a question Don Fleming knows the answer to on a deep level. “There were all of these boxes in storage and nobody really knew what was in them,” Fleming says of his wide-eyed wonder. “So we’d go from box to box, all being opened for the first time in years. Some were not that interesting. Others were mind-blowing.”Thus began seven years of work constructing the expansive exhibit that would eventually become Lou Reed: Caught Between the Stars. Launched last week at the New York Public Library, it’s the first large-scale exhibit focusing on the life and work of the indelible artist, writer, singer, guitarist, poet and New York City native. “This is a person who always pushed boundaries,” explains Fleming, a musician and producer who is a co-curator of the endeavor. “From the beginning to the end, he just never let up.”The legend of Lou Reed is still as vibrant today as it was during his heyday and since his death in 2013 aged 71. Aside from being the frontman of the Velvet Underground and the force behind popular songs like Walk on the Wild Side (his biggest hit, the David Bowie and Mick Ronson-produced single peaked at No 16 on the Billboard Hot 100), Reed’s creative output during his life was as voracious as it was insatiable. The proof of those qualities comes to visceral life in the exhibit, pulling a veil off an enigmatic icon who had a constant urge to create. Rare personal artifacts ranging from greeting cards to rare demos and hard-to-find releases represent everything from Reed’s biggest commercial successes to his more obscure work as a poet.“We have the demos that people can listen to from a tape he mailed to himself on May 11th, 1965 to copyright it,” explains co-curator Jason Stern who previously worked as Reed’s technical assistant as just one example of the exhibit’s treasures. “They were the earliest versions of the songs which would later become really big hits (like the 1967 seven-minute Velvet Underground classic Heroin). Every recording starts with ‘Words and music by Lou Reed.’” Another demo, meanwhile, served as the very first recording of his 1972 track Perfect Day. His then-wife Betty Kronstad is heard on vocals while Reed accompanies her on the piano.The Velvet Underground album session tape recorded on 5 July 1968. Photograph: Lou Reed Papers, Music & Recorded Sound Division, The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.“We really tried to shine a light on the fact Lou was a multifaceted, multi-layered person,” says Stern. “There’s a lot of people who have a surface-level exposure to his work, whether only knowing the Velvet Underground or a couple of popular singles, but we wanted to focus on the multitudes.” That means including an entire section devoted to Reed’s poetry, a facet of his output he solely worked on in the early 70s. It was during a point while Reed was in a sort of limbo between his time fronting the Velvet Underground to later becoming a distinctly solo act.“It was a period of his life that a lot of biographies just gloss over,” explains Stern. “He moved to Long Island and wrote a poetry manuscript that actually got rejected from a publisher. But he approached his songwriting in the same way as his poetry, and in reality he took a literary approach to writing songs.” Fleming, meanwhile, says that he considers Reed a writer first. “His lyrics and poetry were kind of one and the same.” (Reed studied poetry at Syracuse University, after all.)His writing also includes a stark, subversive streak with Reed’s unique voice sometimes focusing on darker themes with abrasive language. It’s a quality that may come as a surprise to those who only know Reed from the sunshine-y lyrics of songs like Perfect Day. Fleming explains it’s a quality Reed embodied that has its roots in the fact that Reed heard that Bob Dylan said he wrote about things that were ripped from reality. “So the same year the Beatles came out with I Wanna Hold Your Hand, he wrote Heroin,” Fleming explains of the song, a rumination of Reed’s own tumultuous relationship with the drug. In essence, that was Reed defiantly juxtaposing his own art with the popular culture of the early 60s. “His lyrics can be dark and deep.”So dark, in fact, that the team behind the exhibit were nervous that an institution like the New York Public Library may balk at showcasing some of Reed’s saltiest material in its hallowed halls. Aside from drugs, some of his songs deal with issues ranging from domestic violence to prostitution. “To their credit, they said, ‘We don’t censor anything. Whatever you want in the show is in the show,’” Fleming recalls of their reaction. “That gave us leeway to put things in and not worry too much about it.”Lou Reed in 1972. Photograph: Mick RockHaving said that, Fleming does concede that Reed’s status as a boundary pusher has two sides. “Culturally, it’s an interesting time because some of the boundaries he pushed are not new boundaries for people,” he muses, attempting to explain the star’s complicated nature. “He helped expand boundaries on some levels, but other things I feel like he’s not on the right side of the fence culturally. But I think it’s important to let the work speak for itself. Some people might get upset at some of the things in there, but we didn’t want to shy away from them. To have to try to clean things up with Lou, it wouldn’t be right.”At the same time, the exhibit showcases a tender side to his personality. “[His tenderness] is not part of his public persona for the most part,” Stern points out. That includes greeting cards where he calls his wife “Honeybun” and rare photographs depicting Reed and the Velvet Underground drummer Moe Tucker during some downtime. “We see them throwing a football around and I remember being struck by the oddity of it.” Reed’s close creative relationship with the late Hal Willner, the producer and Saturday Night Live music supervisor who died in 2020, is also represented via a meticulous recreation of Willner’s studio. (Among other projects, he and Reed concocted 86 two-hour episodes of a freewheeling radio show dubbed New York Shuffle before Reed’s death.)For the masterminds behind the exhibit, whether Stern, Fleming and or Reed’s widow Laurie Anderson (who was intimately involved as well), it was a near decade-long passion project that culminated in an opening reception that both celebrated their own work and the work of the artist they were honoring.“I was overwhelmed,” says Stern of its reception so far. “I can still remember being a very frightened 25-year-old being interviewed by Lou to become his technical assistant. I didn’t sleep at all the night before, but it went so well he asked me on the spot when I could start.”For the next two years and until his death, Stern spent every day with him. “I’ve never forgotten how much he’s done for me. So for me, this [exhibit] has been a huge labor of love.” Lou Reed: Caught Between the Stars is on show at the New York Public Library until 4 March 2023

Music

It is an oft-repeated expression that “opinions are like arseholes, in that everyone has one”. Tim Minchin used this once during a speech to university graduates, and then clarified that “opinions differ significantly from arseholes, in that yours should be constantly and thoroughly examined”. The comedian-composer said we should be hard on our beliefs, “take them out onto the verandah and beat them with a cricket bat”.It feels like an uncomfortable but worthwhile exercise after the Socceroos qualified for the World Cup, particularly when it comes to opinions regarding the coach. Today, a quick Google search of “Graham Arnold” brings up headlines such as “vindication for Arnold”, and “Australia, we owe this man an apology”. Less than three months ago an identical search returned results like “axe looming for Arnold” and “pressure is mounting”.At that time, in late March, a 2-0 loss to Japan had consigned Australia to two sudden-death playoffs next to nobody believed the team could win. The only tangible difference between then and now is that they have won both and we are all rather happy about it. Football is notoriously fickle, and recency bias gets the better of us all from time to time, especially in the context of such emotive subject matter.Arnold nailed the Peru match from start to finish. His already-famous goalkeeper gamble was dumfounding in its audacity. In the moment it seemed stark-raving mad. And perfectly so, because it worked. Had it not, the torches and pitchforks were ready. That decision would have, for those already prognosticating his failure, offered indubitable proof that they were right and he was wrong and so were all of his supporters.But why must we oscillate so wildly? There must surely be some space on the spectrum between mythical hero and substandard super villain. Arnold has been many things over the course of his four-year tenure and a lot of them don’t fit neatly into any box.For those who already liked him at the time of his 2018 appointment, he was the perfect choice. A very good local coach who had won numerous domestic trophies with different clubs, been named coach of the year multiple times and learned a lot since his first stint in the national set-up. For those who did not he was a facade, a master of skullduggery and an already-tried-and-failed Socceroos coach. Most damning was the notion he did not possess the romantic ideals of Ange Postecoglou.In Arnold’s very first press conference he said his philosophy lay somewhere between Postecoglou’s attack-at-all-costs mentality and Bert van Marwijk’s more defensive approach. He is probably a pragmatist, but did not want to use that word because of its (inaccurately) negative connotations. He, like those before him and no doubt others in the future, inherited not just a team but an entire country’s worth of hopes, gripes and snipes.When it comes to the actual team, he has been overseeing transition. The remnants of the classes of 2006 and 2010 retired and, in an attempt to expedite the development of young players, he took charge of the Under-23s too. He was building for the future. This is laudable, isn’t it? So why were we so off-kilter when results did not meet our expectations in the present?Was it partly the cognitive dissonance of hearing him repeatedly telling us “we expect to win” even when they did not do so? Was it that a couple of the opponents who beat Australia had interpreted those pre-match words as arrogance? Do we forgive that because we know he got them from a self-described “coach whisperer” who tells his clients to study the “subconscious mind”? Does it make a difference that he has since toned down that rhetoric, or that behind the scenes he is well liked in the dressing room for being jovial and kind?Maybe it is all ancient history anyway because Australia have qualified. Does it spoil the party to point out that Peru played at a level well below their best and Australian football still faces myriad challenges? Had the Socceroos not made Qatar 2022 would it have been Arnold’s fault or that of all of these long-unresolved problems? Would his success or otherwise be defined by his selections or tactics, and would that be offset by all the difficulties associated with Covid-19 and absences of key players throughout the campaign?It is hard to even define success when there is no constant against which to measure it. These questions just render it all the more confusing, but the point is that every time we watch a Socceroos match we are spring-loaded with whatever preconceived ideas we have already formed. None of us is impartial and, just like with managers, it is easier to back ourselves into an obdurate corner than unlearn learned behaviours.Australia are off to the World Cup. Now we must ask ourselves what we expect when they are there and why, and whether our answers stand up to a good beating with a cricket bat.

Soccer

Kenan Thompson Files for Divorce ... Exes Sharing Child Custody 6/15/2022 12:50 AM PT 'SNL' star Kenan Thompson is taking the next step in his separation from his wife of 11 years ... filing divorce docs and hammering out custody of their kids. According to online records, Kenan filed last month in New York to make his announced split from Christina Evangeline all legal. TMZ broke the story back in April that the couple had separated and were successfully co-parenting their daughters Georgia and Gianna. Sources connected with the former couple tell us Kenan and Christina agreed to share 50/50 custody -- and they are still living close to one another in NYC to make the custody arrangement easier for everyone involved, especially the kids. Kenan and Christina tied the knot way back in 2011, saying their "I dos" at an aquarium in Atlanta. As for why they split, our sources have said they simply grew apart as the years progressed. Professionally, they lead much different lives. While Kenan's always been in the spotlight ... first as a child star on Nickelodeon, and now the longest-running 'SNL' cast member ... Christina works as an interior designer. We're told the divorce has been amicable, and they're both putting their kids first.

Celebrity

After all the lessons and laughs that the Toy Story series has bestowed upon us since 1995, it's little wonder the expectations going into Lightyear were pretty high. It's holding a legacy, it's got Chris Evans stepping into the spacesuit and it's got a generation of millennials waiting to see how it handles a character they've known for a quarter of a century. No pressure, right?Thankfully, the story and visuals are just the right amount of fun to make it work. Sure, it doesn't go to infinity and beyond for ALL our expectations, but it was definitely an entertaining way to spend a few hours. Opening in theaters June 16 (but not on Disney Plus just yet), Lightyear tells the story of the eponymous Buzz Lightyear -- no, not the toy, the character from the movie that the toy was based on in the Toy Story universe. Just imagine you're Andy, seeing Buzz for the very first time on the big screen, and you love it so much that you immediately want the toy. Still with me? Good.In this flick, Buzz Lightyear is a man who's made his fair share of mistakes. From mishandling a mission to mistrusting his fellow rangers, he's had to make some difficult choices. Throw in a dash of ego, a hint of stubbornness and a determination to right all of his wrongs, and Lightyear becomes the story of Buzz Lightyear's redemption.With time travel, carnivorous vines, lasers, space travel and robots all on the cards, Lightyear has a lot to say in what's actually a really refreshing run time of only one hour and 45 minutes. Yes, the same-sex relationship that caused the movie to cop a ban in multiple countries is still present (and incredibly heart-warming) and yes, there is definitely a character who will inspire a whole new line of toys.But there's more to it than that.It's a secret mission in uncharted space. Let's go! Disney/Pixar Chris Evans does a surprisingly good job of embodying the titular character, with understandably big space boots to fill. His delivery of the signature phrase -- to infinity and beyond! -- doesn't feel like imitation or mockery (following Toy Story voice actor Tim Allen), it feels genuine enough to be his own.The supporting characters are hit and miss, with some incredibly uplifting moments matched with the type of formulaic responses that you'd expect. Taika Waititi plays Mo Morrison, who honestly might as well just be named Taika Waititi -- it's the same character we almost always see from him and it's beginning to feel a bit gauche. But the rest of the crew -- Darby, Izzy and robot cat Sox -- are a real highlight, with Keke Palmer's Izzy Hawthorne as a definite standout. A space-fearing wannabe space ranger with a legacy of her own to live up to, Izzy brings a whole lot of heart and personality to the team. And it's that heart that tips the scale for Lightyear.There are still plenty of unexpected twists to the story that will keep even the most devoted Toy Story fan on their toes. Despite Toy Story 2 spoofing Star Wars with Buzz's relationship to the evil emperor Zurg, there's a brand new take in this flick.Without giving the game away, let's just say it echoes the theme of at least two other very popular films of 2022, so Josh Brolin's Zurg is more than meets the eye. Overall, Lightyear is a genuinely fun way to spend a few hours at the cinema. Is it going to blow your mind? Perhaps not. But it'll definitely keep the kids entertained and ultimately, if it gives another generation reason to fall in love with Buzz, that's all that matters.

Movies

Bam Margera Reported Missing After Fleeing Rehab 6/15/2022 1:00 AM PT Cops are on the lookout for Bam Margera after he bolted from a Florida rehab facility he wasn't allowed to leave ... TMZ has learned. According to a Delray Beach police report, the rehab facility's manager reported the 'Jackass' star missing on Monday. The manager says Bam told him he was unhappy with the place and their services ... so he was splitting, which he apparently did. Waiting for your permission to load the Instagram Media. The report notes Bam told the manager that instead of staying there, he'd be checking himself into a different rehab center in the area ... and then left the premises in a black sedan. According to the manager, Bam was there under a court order, and the staff was concerned he seemed to be leaving without authorization. In any case, the staff also said Bam didn't appear to be a danger to himself or others. Cops did go looking for him that day but, so far, they've come up empty-handed. Bam Margera Completes One Year Drug and Alcohol Treatment Program Sources close to Bam tell TMZ ... he was currently staying at a sober living facility and had recently got into an argument with his wife. We're told he did have issues with the facilities' restrictions and made the impulsive decision to leave. Last month Bam had broken his wrist and elbow in a skateboarding accident and was blaming the facility for not setting up his physical therapy appointments. As we've reported, Bam had recently completed a year of treatment for his substance problems, and had been doing well. Right now we are told, friends and family are working on getting him back to the facility, and back on track.

Celebrity

BERLIN (AP) — From Frankfurt and New York to Istanbul and Beijing, skygazers could enjoy a beautiful supermoon rise over the horizon in an impressive astronomic spectacle.The full moon appeared bigger than normal and sometimes slightly orange-colored as it lit skies around the globe. It reached its full stage on Tuesday during a phenomenon known as a supermoon because of its proximity to Earth. It’s also referred to as the “Strawberry Moon” because it’s the full moon at strawberry harvest time.In Frankfurt, it rose behind the German city’s banking district’s skyline, while in Beijing the forbidden city’s roof decorations depicting sacred beasts were silhouetted in sharp black by the moon. The moon also illuminated New York City’s Statue of Liberty and shone on the pillars of the ancient temple of Poseidon at Cape Sounion south of Athens, Greece.

Space Exploration

Ozzy Osbourne is “on the road to recovery” following surgery earlier this week, according to wife Sharon Osbourne.In a message on social media, she wrote: “Our family would like to express so much gratitude for the overwhelming amount of love and support leading up to Ozzy’s surgery! Ozzy is doing well and on the road to recovery! Your love means the world to him.”Ozzy was pictured leaving hospital in Los Angeles in a wheelchair, but was able to stand and climb into a waiting car.Sharon and the Osbourne family have not publicly detailed the surgery, but Sharon said it was “really going to determine the rest of his life”.In May, the rock star said he was waiting on a procedure for his neck, following a fall in 2019 that exacerbated an earlier quad biking injury. “I can’t walk properly these days,” he told Classic Rock magazine. “I have physical therapy every morning. I am somewhat better, but nowhere near as much as I want to be to go back on the road.”Ozzy is hoping to eventually mount a tour he first announced in 2017, but which has been postponed numerous times due to ill health and also Covid restrictions. In November, he announced the UK and European dates would now begin in May 2023.

Music

Do you know the man who was floored by Julius Francis? Do you know the men in the video? Email tips@dailymail.com Former British heavyweight champion Julius Francis is in the clear after police dropped their investigation after he was filmed knocking a reveller out cold with one punch at a venue in London. Francis, who once fought Mike Tyson, was filmed in the bust-up outside Boxpark near Wembley Stadium, which left a man unconscious on the ground.The 57-year-old champion, who is working as a bouncer at the north London venue, was caught on camera intervening as a man hurled insults at staff on Saturday.In the video, one man, wearing a blue durag, can be heard yelling profanities in the direction of Francis, 'I hope you have a heart attack, you fat ****' before he then shoves a smaller security guard. After trying to move the reveller away from the premises, Francis threw a punch which clipped the man's head and knocked him out cold.But the Metropolitan Police have now confirmed they have dropped the investigation into the punch-up. Julius Francis, a former British heavyweight boxer who now works as a security guard, has been filmed knocking out a rowdy reveller with a single punch in front of shocked bystanders The man was left unconscious after the right-hand blow from former champion Julius FrancisA police statement said: 'We are aware of footage circulating on social media showing an incident involving security staff and a member of the public outside Boxpark in Wembley. 'The incident took place shortly after 17.00hrs on Saturday 11 June. Officers were called and attended the venue. 'A group had been ejected and one male customer had become involved in a confrontation with security staff.'Officers have spoken to all parties involved and have reviewed relevant CCTV. No further action will be taken in relation to the incident involving the security guard and male customer.'Many shocked viewers at the scene had no idea that the man who landed the punch was a former heavyweight fighter - who once went toe-to-toe with Mike Tyson. Fans of the boxer were quick to joke about the ordeal - adding the Boxpark bust-up to Francis' Wikipedia page, citing a 'win' against 'blue durag man.' Following the spat, the man's friends began arguing with Francis, telling him 'there was no need' for his attack after he left the gated entrance and started bickering and screaming at other customers.Pictured: Former heavyweight boxer Julius Francis herds a group of rowdy revellers out of BOXPARK in Wembley (left) as one man, in the blue du-rag, gets confrontational (right) Julius Francis: The boxer who honed his talent on the streets of South London, from stealing for food and being 'stabbed eight times' to heavyweight champ Julius Francis (left) squares up to Mike Tyson (right) ahead of their boutBy ADAM LUCK FOR MAILONLINE Julius Francis was born in Peckham in 1965 to Caribbean parents. Along with his three siblings, Francis was reduced to stealing for food from an early age as their mother descended into mental illness while their father worked away from home.The four were put into care when Francis was 10 and placed with a white foster family that left the 'skinny black runt' struggling for a sense of identity and survival amid skinheads and the National Front in Woolwich.Fending for himself on the streets at 16, Francis dealt drugs, and by his own admission became a full time criminal who used his anger and burgeoning fighting skills to earn a living.He told MailOnline in 2020: 'The 80s was a crazy time for me. I was stabbed 8 times, shot at and I used to fight a lot.'But when Francis found himself on remand at Brixton prison for offences that, for once, he did not commit, he made a vow to himself.'I was told I was facing 10 years in prison. I said to myself 'If I am convicted I will be the worst prisoner ever. I will die in prison.''But if I not convicted, I thought 'I am going to turn my life around.'When he was acquitted, Francis took up amateur boxing and became the South East and London divisional champion, but he also moonlighted as an unlicensed professional fighter to make ends meet.'I was security at a an unlicensed bill in a Maidstone cow shed full of gypsies and fighting men but when the top of the bill was left with no fighter I was offered the chance to take to the apron for £500.'When someone blew the whistle on his double life, Francis found himself kicked out of the ABA and little alternative but to turn professional in 1993 to support his growing family.When he acquired the Commonwealth and British Heavyweight titles, and secured a Lonsdale Belt outright, Francis began to craft a career and a reputation.In late 1999, Francis was offered the chance by his manager Frank Maloney to take on the disgraced former undisputed world champion Mike Tyson and took 'two seconds' to say yes.Francis was paid £350,000. By contrast Tyson was paid £7m. Francis spent his money on a house, now long gone, a car for his girlfriend and for himself a £5000 gold and diamond necklace. Two months later, Francis fought and lost to a boxer he had already beaten citing 'mental and physical exhaustion'. It was the beginning of the end.After a brief foray in MMA fighting, Francis began to mentor troubled children and eventually became a security guard, and father-of-five.Francis, now 57, defended his actions after walking away from the man's motionless body, and he has also been backed by the owner of BoxPark. CEO Roger Wade said the man who was punched had been part of a group who had been 'abusing, spitting and hitting customers and staff'.Describing the former boxer as 'one of the nicest people' he had ever met, Mr Wade said he stood behind Julius Francis' actions in a statement shared on social media.Footage of the incident quickly went viral on social media with viewers split over whether the punch was a proportionate response.But Mr Wade asked viewers to think about how they would react in a similar situation.He said: 'Woke up to a viral story about one of our security team.'Julius Francis, is ex UK heavyweight boxing champion, he is one of the nicest people I have ever met and helps train young underprivileged kids boxing in his spare time.'My understanding is that Julius and our security team spent 15 minutes stopping this man and his friends from abusing, spitting and hitting our customers and staff.'They carefully escorted him from the premises under constant provocation and violence.'Finally the person approached Julius in a confrontational manner and he defended himself.'Acts of violence or abuse to any staff members should never be tolerated. How would you react if someone approached you violently? What would you do next if you were in my shoes?'The ordeal came after trouble started inside the venue and spilled onto the street outside as a group of men were seen arguing while the bouncers attempted to move them on.The scuffle moves away from the front of the venue as the man wearing the blue du-rag continues to confront other revellers while onlookers can be heard shouting 'chill'.The man can be seen shoving multiple people and yelling obscenities as the incident appears to escalate.As the man turns toward Francis and appears to raise his fist, the former pro boxer unleashes a right-hand punch to the man's head.Bystanders react with a mixture of shocked gasps and cheers as the stricken man's friends rush to his aid.The man falls to the ground unconscious as his friends confront Francis, who walked away from the incident, and ask why he punched him.He is then rolled into the recovery position as his friend can be heard saying: 'There was no need, there was no need.'The former British heavyweight champion had notable bouts against four future or former World heavyweight Champions including John Ruiz in 1994 and Mike Tyson in 2000 - both of which he lost.He famously lasted just four minutes with Tyson during their bout at the Manchester Evening News Arena.Francis also fought Vitali Klitschko but was stopped in two rounds during their bout in 1998.After he retired in 2006, he started a fitness company while working as a security guard.In 2009, Francis was convicted of criminal damage and assault after a road rage incident which saw him punch a car window, causing the glass to shatter.He was ordered to carry out 140 hours of unpaid work and told to pay £200 compensation to his victim after he was left with minor injuries to his face. A spokesperson for BoxPark added: 'Our team are aware of footage being shared online.'This incident is currently under review and part of an ongoing police investigation, and therefore we are unable to comment further on the incident at this time.'We would like to stress that the safety and welfare of our customers and our staff is our number one priority.' Pictured: Julius Francis (left) and Mike Tyson exchange blows during the heavyweight contest at the Manchester Evening News Arena in Manchester. Tyson won by a second round stoppage The man appeared to raise a fist to Francis before he was floored by the former British champ Mike Tyson looks up to Julius Francis at the weigh in at the Midland hotel, Manchester in January 2000

Boxing

Charlene Joyce, 39, filmed the pair at 9am at a carpark in South Benfleet, Essex Footage shows woman's head leaning down over driver's side of Royal Mail van She then lifts her head back up in a flourish and gets her hair out of her face Published: 04:14 EDT, 15 June 2022 | Updated: 04:22 EDT, 15 June 2022 Two Royal Mail workers have been caught getting steamy in a busy car park at 9am before delivering post as though nothing happened. Cleaner Charlene Joyce, 39, filmed the pair by an Aldi store in South Benfleet in Essex yesterday. Shocking footage shows a woman's head leaning down over the driver's side of the van. Cleaner Charlene Joyce, 39, filmed the pair by an Aldi store in South Benfleet in Essex yesterdayShe then lifts her head back up in a flourish, revealing her Royal Mail uniform, and gets her hair out of her face. But the window of the van is so steamed up that not much else can be seen in the footage. Ms Joyce told The Sun: 'I was on the phone to my sister and I looked across and I could just see a woman's head bobbing up and down... Royal Mail has been contacted for comment. Stock picture 'They were really going for it. She was very enthusiastic to say the least. Ten minutes afterwards the they were both just delivering parcels like nothing had happened.'I just hope they anti-bacced before touching everyone's parcels.'Royal Mail has been contacted for comment. Advertisement

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Sony has confirmed a release date and plot details for a Gran Turismo movie, revealing it'll be based on real-life adventures of a player of the popular racing game.The flick will be directed by District 9 helmer Neill Blomkamp and will be released on Aug. 11, 2023.The Gran Turismo series of racing games began in 1997, and don't really have a plot or characters that can be adapted. So the movie draws on a true story described by Sony as "the ultimate wish fulfilment tale of a teenage Gran Turismo player whose gaming skills won a series of Nissan competitions to become an actual professional race car driver". Following the box office success of big-screen PlayStation adaptations Sonic the Hedgehog 2 and Uncharted -- both released this year to become two of the most successful game adaptations of all time -- Sony has a ton of other games being adapted. Other PlayStation adaptations include TV shows based on Horizon Zero Dawn, God of War (Amazon Prime Video), The Last of Us (HBO), Twisted Metal (Peacock) and Ghost of Tsushima.The most recent game in the racing series was 2022's Gran Turismo 7 for the PlayStation 5. 2022's Best TV Shows You Can't Miss on Netflix, HBO, Disney Plus and More See all photos

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NEWYou can now listen to Fox News articles! JoJo Fletcher is a "Bachelorette" breaking the mold. The 31-year-old reality star, who tied the knot with her final rose winner Jordan Rodgers one month ago, left life on the show in California and picked right back up where she left off living in her home state of Texas. The pair isn't following the traditional path of former "Bachelor" couples — and have since set their sights on home renovations. Plus, Fletcher spoke with Fox News Digital about the work they've put in to protecting their six-year relationship and planning their stress-free wedding following multiple COVID setbacks. Fletcher first found television fame more than seven years ago as a beloved "Bachelor" contestant on season 20 of the popular dating show, and made it to the final rose ceremony only to be left broken-hearted when she was sent home while cameras were rolling.But fans fell in love with JoJo Fletcher, and she returned to TV stronger than ever as "The Bachelorette" on season 12 in 2016, where she found her true love in Jordan Rodgers. He proposed on the season finale filmed in Thailand. He proposed again in 2019 with a new ring, and most importantly, without camera crews following them around as they toured wedding venues.Fletcher and Rodgers made it a priority to focus on their relationship and creating a "normal life" outside the "Bachelor" lifestyle following their engagement. JoJo Fletcher spoke with Fox News Digital about the work she's put in to protecting her six-year relationship with Jordan Rodgers and planning their stress-free wedding following multiple COVID setbacks. (Paul Archuleta)'THE BACHELOR' STARS JOJO FLETCHER AND JORDAN RODGERS ARE MARRIED: ‘WE FEEL SO LUCKY!’"When Jordan and I first got together, the most important thing to him and me, in our relationship, was to remove ourselves from the bubble, because we knew it wouldn't help our relationship," she said."So we went back to work. Right after we got together, we went right back to work in terms of flipping houses and remodeling houses, and Jordan started doing that with me." Fletcher, who was a pre-med major at Baylor University before diving into the world of real estate development, wanted to get back to "normal life" after "The Bachelorette" ended.They moved to Dallas, Texas, and worked in real estate while also using their on-camera expertise as hosts of "Cash Pad" where they helped homeowners flip investment properties. They also served as hosts of "Battle of the Fittest Couples" in 2019."We definitely came home and said we're going to get back to normal life ... and six years later, we're here." — JoJo Fletcher on moving to Dallas"We wanted to take on new ventures," she said. "It's been something that I'm so fortunate and thankful the show has brought me these new opportunities. I'm so grateful for that show. We definitely came home and said we're going to get back to normal life ... and six years later, we're here."The pair exchanged vows during an intimate ceremony with their closest friends and family at the Sunstone Winery in Santa Ynez, California, on May 14 after previously postponing their nuptials twice due to the coronavirus pandemic. One member of the family was reportedly not in attendance though, as fans know, Fletcher's brother-in-law Aaron Rodgers wasn't pictured as they exchanged vows during their romantic vineyard wedding. ‘THE BACHELOR’ NAMES JESSE PALMER AS CHRIS HARRISON'S REPLACEMENT FOR SEASON 26 Jordan and JoJo left Hollywood to pursue a "normal life" in Texas. JoJo Fletcher and Jordan Rodgers pictured in 2019 (Tommaso Boddi/FilmMagic)Of wedding planning in general, Fletcher shared that she "was totally prepared to take" on the "stress to plan a wedding."Wedding planning was fun for me. Even along the way with every bump, every little hiccup – hearing the [planning] news was a stressful part and having to pay for it was stressful, but the help that I had made it so bearable."I feel bad saying that I didn't fully feel the extreme stress, but I will say the last two weeks before our wedding, after two or three years of planning, that's when I was the most stressed."Fletcher said, for the most part, their dream wedding plans stayed the same from the beginning stages, with "little tweaks" along the way. They had an idea toward creating a romantic aesthetic with an intimate ambience."It was perfect. It was not too big or too small – just perfect." — JoJo Fletcher on her wedding to Jordan Rodgers"We stayed really consistent, which is unlike me," the home renovation expert joked. "We always knew our guest list. We actually had a pretty conservative number in terms of the closest people to us."With 170 guests celebrating their commitment to love on a picturesque vineyard in north of Santa Barbara, JoJo admitted their big day "ended up being exactly what we wanted."She added: "It was perfect. It was not too big or too small – just perfect."CLICK HERE TO SIGN UP FOR THE ENTERTAINMENT NEWSLETTER JoJo Fletcher said designing her new Cupshe swimwear line "never stressed me out." Fletcher was on hand at the VIP launch party of Cupshe x JoJo Fletcher at Belles Beach House on June 10, 2022 in Venice, California. (Paul Archuleta) Reality TV Personalities Becca Tilley, JoJo Fletcher and Andi Dorfman attend the VIP launch party of Cupshe x JoJo Fletcher at Belles Beach House on June 10, 2022 in Venice, California. (Paul Archuleta)Sources reported Jordan's quarterback brother Aaron Rodgers wasn't in attendance at the wedding following years of a broken relationship, but the couple were supported by fellow "Bachelor" alums including Becca Tilley, Raven Gates and Adam Gottschalk.Fletcher proved to be able to carry even more on her plate as she revealed she was designing a new swim and beachwear collaboration with Cupshe while also planning the nuptials during the peak of the pandemic."Neither one ever stressed me out," she said. "Designing the collaboration with Cupshe was so fun for me and I think both have to do with the people I got to work with. When you have great teams and good people to work with that understand your vision and understand what you want … it makes things seamless."Designing virtually wasn't without its faults, though, as Fletcher admitted mailing fabric swatches back and forth made logistic elements a little more difficult than a normal design process, but the colorful range was worth it in the end. "Swimwear is something that we all want to feel beautiful and sexy in, but it's also hard to find pieces that don't break the bank," she said. "And I feel like we have a bunch of different moods that can fit different people. My Cupshe line is accessible. I think that was the biggest thing."Fletcher and Rodgers are the fifth "Bachelorette" couple to get married from the franchise, following Trista and Ryan Sutter, Desiree Hartsock and Chris Siegfried, and Rachel Lindsay and Bryan Abasolo. Season 7 "Bachelorette" Ashley Hebert and winner J.P. Rosenbaum divorced in October 2021.CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP Tracy Wright is an entertainment writer for Fox News Digital.

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NEWYou can now listen to Fox News articles! The Stanley Cup Final between the Colorado Avalanche and the Tampa Bay Lightning begins Wednesday night as both teams are looking to hold the trophy.The Avalanche have been off for a few days after sweeping the Edmonton Oilers in the Western Conference final and the Lightning have a head of steam after beating the New York Rangers in the Eastern Conference final.CLICK HERE FOR MORE SPORTS COVERAGE ON FOXNEWS.COMBoth teams are coming into the Final on two different angles. The Conn Smythe Trophy and the Stanley Cup are on display during the 2022 NHL Stanley Cup Final Media Day at Ball Arena on June 14, 2022 in Denver, Colorado. (Bruce Bennett/Getty Images)Colorado outlookThe Avalanche have some of the best young players in the NHL. Led by Nathan MacKinnon, Mikko Rantanen and Cale Maker, the Avalanche finished as the best team in the Western Conference with 119 points. MacKinnon is tied for second in the playoffs with 11 goals and Gabriel Landeskog has eight goals.Colorado essentially breezed through the playoffs. The team swept the Nashville Predators in the first round and then defeated the St. Louis Blues in the conference semifinals 4-2. The Avalanche then swept the Edmonton Oilers.It’s been a long time since the Avalanche have made the Final. Colorado hasn’t been in the Stanley Cup Final since 2001. The team, led by Bob Hartley, defeated the New Jersey Devils in seven games. Ray Bourque was finally able to raise Lord Stanley’s Cup. Patrick Roy maintained the net and Joe Sakic and Peter Forsberg were putting pucks into the opposing teams’ nets.The Avalanche don’t have the longest drought – that belongs to the Toronto Maple Leafs. But nearly two decades without a title is certainly a long time.Jared Bednar would thrust himself into the conversation as one of the best Avalanche coaches of all time should the team break through. Bednar took over the team from Roy at the start of the 2016-17 season. The team have made the playoffs five of the six years he’s been at the helm.Avalanche stat leadersPoints Cale Makar #8 of the Colorado Avalanche skates against the Tampa Bay Lightning at Ball Arena on February 10, 2022 in Denver, Colorado. (Michael Martin/NHLI via Getty Images)Cale Makar 22 pointsNathan MacKinnon 18 pointsMikko Rantanen 17 pointsGoalsNathan MacKinnon 11 goalsGabriel Landeskog 8 goalsArtturi Lehkkonen 6 goalsAssists Gabriel Landeskog #92 of the Colorado Avalanche skates against the Tampa Bay Lightning at Ball Arena on February 10, 2022 in Denver, Colorado. (Michael Martin/NHLI via Getty Images)Cale Makar 17 assistsMikko Rantanen 12 assistsGabriel Landeskog 9 assistsTampa Bay outlookThe Lightning are looking to become the first team since the New York Islanders to win three consecutive Stanley Cup titles. The Islanders won four straight from 1980 to 1983. The Montreal Canadiens did it before them from 1976 to 1979 and then the Maple Leafs from 1962 to 1964.Tampa Bay certainly has the firepower to do it.Every time the Lightning seem like they’re down and out they strike back. The Lightning defeated the Maple Leafs in seven games in the first round and then swept the Presidents’ Cup winner Florida Panthers in the second round. The team then came back from down 2-0 against the Rangers to win the Eastern Conference crown. Goaltender Andrei Vasilevskiy #88 of the Tampa Bay Lightning stands ready against the Colorado Avalanche at Ball Arena on February 10, 2022 in Denver, Colorado. The Avalanche defeated the Lightning 3-2. (Michael Martin/NHLI via Getty Images)WAYNE GRETZKY COMPARES 2020S LIGHTNING TO ISLANDERS OF THE 1980S AS THEY LOOK FOR 3RD STRAIGHT STANLEY CUPThe Lightning are as dangerous as ever. Steven Stamkos has nine goals in the playoffs and Ondrej Palat has eight goals.Lightning goaltender Andrei Vasilevskiy has 2.27 goals against average, which is among the best in the playoffs. Should Darcy Kuemper be ready to go, the Lightning will have to break through his 2.65 goals against average.Tampa Bay has a plethora of experience which will make them even more dangerous going into the Final.Lightning stat leadersPointsNikita Kucherov 22 pointsOndrej Palat 16 pointsSteven Stamkos 15 pointsGoals Steven Stamkos #91 of the Tampa Bay Lightning awaits a face off against the Colorado Avalanche at Ball Arena on February 10, 2022 in Denver, Colorado. (Michael Martin/NHLI via Getty Images)Steven Stamkos 9 goalsOndrej Palat 8 goalsNikita Kucherov 7 goalsAssistsNikita Kucherov 16 assistsVictor Hedman 12 assistsOndrej Palat 8 assistsCLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APPGame infoJune 15: Lightning at Avalanche (8 p.m. ET; ABC)June 18: Lightning at Avalanche (8 p.m. ET; ABC)June 20: Avalanche at Lightning (8 p.m. ET; ABC)June 22: Avalanche at Lightning (8 p.m. ET; ABC)June 24: Lightning at Avalanche (8 p.m. ET; ABC)*June 26: Avalanche at Lightning (8 p.m. ET; ABC)*June 28: Lightning at Avalanche (8 p.m. ET; ABC)**Denotes if necessary Ryan Gaydos is the sports editor for Fox News and Fox Business. Story tips can be sent to Ryan.Gaydos@fox.com.

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A long shot but... the Guardian writer, and my lovely friend, Emma John has long been planning a cricket game in memory of her mum. The rail strike has thrown a rather large spanner in the works. If you are free next Thursday, can get to Long Marston in Buckinghamshire, and fancy a fun game of cricket, please get in touch (or email me and I’ll pass the message on).I've organised a cricket match in memory of my Mum next Thursday 23 at 4pm, at Long Marston CC in Bucks, but the rail strike means we're an entire team short of players. This is an SOS for anyone of any ability who fancies a fun T20 knockabout followed by a free BBQ!— Emma John (@em_john) June 15, 2022 Tuesday's round-upThe Leicestershire jalopy juddered to a wheel-spinning defeat at Grace Road after they followed their highest score of the season with being bowled out for 99.The defeat, by an innings and nine runs, was their fifth of the season. Nottinghamshire’s Liam Patterson-White (the left-arm spinner with the most Championship wickets) took four for 15. Tom Moores, 81 not out, had guided Notts to a lead of 108 until he was hit under the chin and forced to retire. Leicestershire’s second innings never got going, and when Hasan Azad was caught for 34 the rest folded quickly.There were twin centuries from Brett D’Oliveira and Ed Barnard for Worcestershire at Durham’s Riverside. Barnard, who has been linked with a move to Warwickshire at the end of the season, reached his 50 with a straight drive, and was undefeated on 116 at stumps.Shan Masood came within a pinch of 1,000 runs for the season, as he once more swept on his batting cloak, and led Derbyshire to victory as they chased down 219 at Chesterfield. Middlesex, who had suffered a second‑innings collapse of seven wickets for 101, could only rue their chances as they dropped Masood twice before finally dismissing him for 98.Somerset defied the odds after building a second-innings lead of 117 against Surrey at Taunton thanks to Lewis Goldsworthy and Lewis Gregory.It was all go at Canterbury, as Jordan Cox and Jack Leaning made centuries, Tom Price took a hat‑trick and Jacob Duffy put Kent in the driving seat with four for eight before stumps. Gloucestershire, in their second innings, are 37 for five and still 89 runs behind.Alex Davies made a hundred against Lancashire, his former club, as Warwickshire set them 329 to win while Sussex lost early wickets at Sophia Gardens after Glamorgan’s tail wagged alongside Eddie Byrom’s career-best 178. Three late wickets for Keith Barker put Hampshire in a good position against Yorkshire.Start of play scoresThe Rose Bowl: Hampshire 410 v Yorkshire 428 and 101-5Canterbury: Kent 564 v Gloucestershire 438 and 37-5Taunton: Somerset 180 and 319-8 v Surrey 382-9Edgbaston: Warwickshire 292 and 327-9dec v Lancashire 291 and 5-0Division TwoChesterfield: Derbyshire 229 and 222-4 v Middlesex 251 and 196. Derbyshire win by six wicketsThe Riverside: Durham 642-7dec v Worcestershire 431-6Sophia Gardens: Glamorgan 494 v Sussex 376 and 89-3Grace Road: Leicestershire 440 and 99 v Nottinghamshire 548-9. Notts win by an innings and nine runsPreviewGood morning! As Jonny Bairstow leaps off the front page of the newspapers, there is still business to attend to in the County Championship. Two games were over in three days: Notts beating collapsability Leicestershire in a blink and Masood-insipired Derbyshire easing to victory over Middlesex. Of the remaining matches, only the one at The Riverside looks a sure-thing draw. Somerset could yet spring an unlikely surprise at Taunton, there’s all to play for at Sophia Gardens, Gloucestershire’s late-evening balsa wood impression has added jeopardy at Canterbury, and two intriguing matches play out at The Rose Bowl and Edgbaston.

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