Washington (AFP) – President Joe Biden said Saturday he will hit this road this week to sell his mammoth spending plans, which are in jeopardy in Congress amid a fight between centrist and progressive factions of his Democratic Party.

Biden struck an optimistic note as he spoke of prospects for passage of a huge infrastructure package and even larger social spending bill that are central to his political legacy.

Speaking as he left the White House to travel to Delaware, Biden said he was “going to work like hell to make sure we get both these passed.

“And I think we will get them passed,” the president told reporters.

“I’m going to be going around the country this week making the case why it’s so important,” added Biden, who has been criticized for not doing more to sell the bills to everyday people.

“There’s nothing in any of these pieces of legislation that is radical, that is unreasonable when you look at it individually,” Biden said of the $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill, and the $3.5 trillion “Build Back Better” bill allocating money for education, child care, clean energy and other issues.

The impasse on the Democratic side is rooted in political differences over how much the government should spend, but also on the sheer lack of trust between competing factions.

But Biden reiterated, “I believe I can get this done. I believe when the American people are aware of what’s in it, we can get it done.”

White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki added in a statement that Biden and his team would “continue close engagement” with both House and Senate lawmakers through the weekend.

On the other pressing issue facing the president — an urgent deadline to raise the national debt limit ahead of a default date of October 18 — Biden called on Republicans to join his party in approving an increase. A US default on its debt would be unprecedented and have catastrophic effects on the US and world economies.

Usually this is not a complicated issue. But this year Republicans are refusing to join Democrats in granting authorization, while Democrats argue they should not have to bear responsibility alone.

“I hope the Republicans won’t be so irresponsible as to refuse to raise the debt limit and to filibuster the debt limit,” the president said.

“That would be totally unconscionable, never been done before and so I hope that won’t happen,” Biden said

Tommy Dorfman has relished being at Paris Fashion Week as “myself”.

The ’13 Reasons Why’ star, who came out as transgender in July, has “more of an affinity” with skirts and dresses and has loved trying on new designer pieces at various runway shows in the French capital.

She said: “It’s been such a fun week to be back – as myself. I’m enjoying going to shows I’ve never gone to before, finally getting to explore different houses in Paris, and to try on different things.”

The 29-year-old actress insisted she has never seen fashion as “binary”.

Tommy explained: “I never really saw fashion in binary, it’s just a matter of expression. I think about history and men in tunics, men in skirts, men in dresses and to see that sort of re-translated to today is really exciting. It’s fun to be a part of all those things coming together.”

The ‘Jane the Virgin’ star loved wearing a power suit for Givenchy, as it made her feel “so powerful and beautiful”.

She told WWD: “I really wanted to wear a power suit. I wanted to feel that confidence and Matthew [Williams’] tailoring is so exceptional. I wore a suit of his a couple of weeks ago to an event and I felt so powerful and beautiful at the same time, so when I knew I was coming to the show I wanted to feel the same.”

Tommy always saw herself as a woman, and even knew she’d be a “mother or a grandmother” in the future.

She said recently: “A trans elder asked me what I see myself as when I’m older, when I’m 60, 70, 90. It was so clear, I just saw Cate Blanchett. But I really couldn’t imagine not being a mother or a grandmother.

“My spirit was so attuned to whatever it means to be a woman. I’ve walked in the privilege of a male body, but [being a woman] is all I’ve known on the inside. Trans women would clock me all the time and be like, ‘Hey, girl, what’s up?’ because it’s sort of a thing you recognise.”

(Corrects paragraph 22 to women of child-bearing age in the study could not be pregnant)

By Deena Beasley and Carl O’Donnell

(Reuters) -An experimental antiviral pill developed by Merck & Co could halve the chances of dying or being hospitalized for those most at risk of contracting severe COVID-19, according to data that experts hailed as a potential breakthrough in how the virus is treated.

If it gets authorization, molnupiravir, which is designed to introduce errors into the genetic code of the virus, would be the first oral antiviral medication for COVID-19.

Merck and partner Ridgeback Biotherapeutics said they plan to seek U.S. emergency use authorization for the pill as soon as possible and to make regulatory applications worldwide.

“An oral antiviral that can impact hospitalization risk to such a degree would be game-changing,” said Amesh Adalja, senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security.

Current treatment options include Gilead Sciences Inc’s infused antiviral remdesivir and generic steroid dexamethasone, both of which are generally only given once a patient has already been hospitalized.

“This is going to change the dialogue around how to manage COVID-19,” Merck Chief Executive Robert Davis told Reuters.

Existing treatments are “cumbersome and logistically challenging to administer. A simple oral pill would be the opposite of that,” Adalja added.

The results from the Phase III trial, which sent Merck shares up more than 9%, were so strong that the study is being stopped early at the recommendation of outside monitors.

Shares of Atea Pharmaceuticals Inc, which is developing a similar COVID-19 treatment, were up more than 21% on the news.

Shares of COVID-19 vaccine makers https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/merck-covid-19-pill-success-slams-moderna-shares-shakes-up-healthcare-sector-2021-10-01 Moderna Inc were off more than 10%, while Pfizer was down less than 1%.

Jefferies analyst Michael Yee said investors believe “people will be less afraid of COVID and less inclined to get vaccines if there is a simple pill that can treat COVID.”

Pfizer and Swiss drugmaker Roche Holding AG are also racing to develop an easy-to-administer antiviral pill https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/covid-19-pill-developers-aim-top-merck-pfizer-efforts-2021-09-28 for COVID-19. For now, only antibody cocktails that have to be given intravenously are approved for non-hospitalized patients.

White House COVID-19 response coordinator Jeff Zients said on Friday that molnupiravir is “a potential additional tool… to protect people from the worst outcomes of COVID,” but added that vaccination “remains far and away, our best tool against COVID-19.”

A planned interim analysis of 775 patients in Merck’s study looked at hospitalizations or deaths among people at risk for severe disease. It found that 7.3% of those given molnupiravir twice a day for five days were hospitalized and none had died by 29 days after treatment. That compared with a hospitalization rate of 14.1% for placebo patients. There were also eight deaths in the placebo group.

“Antiviral treatments that can be taken at home to keep people with COVID-19 out of the hospital are critically needed,” Wendy Holman, Ridgeback’s CEO, said in a statement.

‘A HUGE ADVANCE’

Scientists welcomed the potential new treatment to help prevent serious illness from the virus, which has killed almost 5 million people around the world, 700,000 of them in the United States.

“A safe, affordable, and effective oral antiviral would be a huge advance in the fight against COVID,” said Peter Horby, a professor of emerging infectious diseases at the University of Oxford.

The study enrolled patients with laboratory-confirmed mild-to-moderate COVID-19, who had symptoms for no more than five days. All patients had at least one risk factor associated with poor disease outcome, such as obesity or older age.

Drugs in the same class as molnupiravir have been linked to birth defects in animal studies. Merck has said similar studies of molnupiravir – for longer and at higher doses than used in humans – indicate that the drug does not affect mammalian DNA.

Merck said viral sequencing done so far shows molnupiravir is effective against all variants https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/merck-says-research-shows-its-covid-19-pill-works-against-variants-2021-09-29 of the coronavirus including the highly transmissible Delta, which has driven the recent worldwide surge in hospitalizations and deaths.

It said rates of adverse events were similar for both molnupiravir and placebo patients, but did not give details.

Merck has said data shows molnupiravir is not capable of inducing genetic changes in human cells, but men enrolled in its trials had to abstain from heterosexual intercourse or agree to use contraception. Women of child-bearing age in the study could not be pregnant and also had to use birth control.

The U.S. drugmaker said it expects to produce 10 million courses of the treatment by the end of 2021.

The company has a U.S. government contract to supply 1.7 million courses of molnupiravir at a price of $700 per course.

Davis said Merck has similar agreements with other governments, and is in talks with more. Merck said it plans a tiered pricing approach based on country income criteria.

The U.S. government has the option to purchase up to an additional 3.5 million treatment courses if needed, a U.S. health official told Reuters. The official asked to remain anonymous because they were not authorized to comment publicly on the contract.

Merck has also agreed to license the drug to several India-based generic drugmakers, which would be able to supply the treatment to low- and middle-income countries.

Molnupiravir is also being studied in a Phase III trial for preventing infection in people exposed to the coronavirus.

Merck officials said it is unclear how long the FDA review will take, although Dean Li, head of Merck’s research labs, said, “they are going to try to work with alacrity on this.”

(Reporting by Deena Beasley and Carl O’Donnell; Additional reporting by Josephine Mason, and Ahmed Aboulenein; Editing by Lincoln Feast, Kirsten Donovan, Alexander Smith, Bill Berkrot and Sonya Hepinstall)

Anderson Cooper has revealed that his son is obsessed with feet and that his first word was shoes.

The 54-year-old broadcaster – who welcomed 17-month-old Wyatt with then-partner Benjamin Maisani via surrogate back in 2017 – joked about his son’s unusual fascination on The Ellen Show.

He said: “Wyatt is always showing off his feet. I’m not sure why, but there it is”.

Host Ellen DeGeneres smiled at the comment and quipped: “Maybe he’s gonna be aerialist!”

Anderson then revealed that Wyatt has recently started to speak his first words.

He added: “He’s just started to talk a little bit. One of his first words was ‘shoes’ which I love.”

It comes as the CNN presenter shares the cover of People Magazine with his son, which he unveiled on the talk show.

He also went on to talk about his new book later in the chat with Ellen.

‘Vanderbilt: The Rise and Fall of an American Dynasty’ tells the story of his famous family, who began a shipping empire in the 19th century with Cornelius Vanderbilt being called ‘America’s first great tycoon.’

Anderson joked about how he was shocked to learn during research that he is far from being the only gay member of his family.

He said: “My mom was taken away from her mom as a child by courts and given to an aunt. One of the reasons the court ruled to take my mother away is that her mother was seen kissing a woman in bed who she was having a relationship with. She had been married to a man. My mom’s aunt – who she was given to – also had a secret gay life.”

Further research revealed that Cornelius Vanderbilt had a gay son too.

He added: “Commodore Vanderbilt – one of his sons, who he hated – was secretly gay and yeah, it didn’t end well but he gave his house to his male lover.”

He then quipped: “I was like ‘Wow, it’s chock full of gays!'”

San Francisco (AFP) – Facebook and its Instagram and WhatsApp platforms were hit by a massive outage Monday, impacting potentially tens of millions of users as the social media giant faces fallout over its effect on teens and misinformation.

Tracker Downdetector was showing outages in heavily populated areas like Washington and Paris, with problems being reported from around 1545 GMT.

“We’re aware that some people are having trouble accessing our apps and products,” Facebook spokesman Andy Stone said on Twitter.

Users trying to access Facebook in affected areas were greeted with the message: “Something went wrong. We’re working on it and we’ll get it fixed as soon as we can.”

The outage comes a day after a whistleblower went on US television to reveal her identity after she leaked a trove of documents to authorities alleging the company knew its products were fueling hate and harming children’s mental health.

Frances Haugen, a 37-year-old data scientist from Iowa, has worked for companies including Google and Pinterest — but said in an interview with CBS news show “60 Minutes” that Facebook was “substantially worse” than anything she had seen before.

The world’s largest social media platform has been embroiled in a firestorm brought about by Haugen, with US lawmakers and The Wall Street Journal raising sharp criticism of the network.

‘Make body dissatisfaction worse’

“I think that finally now policymakers, maybe the White House, other leaders can look at someone like Frances Haugen and say… ‘It’s now incumbent upon us, Facebook will not fix itself,'” said Nora Benavidez, a Facebook accountability expert.

Facebook’s vice president of policy and global affairs Nick Clegg vehemently pushed back at the assertion its platforms are “toxic” for teens, days after a tense, hours-long congressional hearing in which US lawmakers grilled the company over its impact on the mental health of young users.

Haugen, the whistleblower, is herself set to testify Tuesday on Capitol Hill over Facebook and Instagram’s impact on young people.

Senators put the social media giant’s Antigone Davis through the wringer last week over damning reports that Facebook’s own research warned of potential harm.

Davis told lawmakers that a survey of teens on 12 serious issues like anxiety, sadness and eating disorders showed that Instagram was generally helpful to them.

Yet, Senator Richard Blumenthal read aloud excerpts from company documents he said were leaked to lawmakers by a Facebook whistleblower that directly contradicted her.

“Substantial evidence suggests that experiences on Instagram and Facebook make body dissatisfaction worse,” he said, adding the finding was not a disgruntled worker’s complaint but company research.

The enterprise has been under relentless pressure to guard against being a platform where misinformation, hate and child-harming content can spread.

Legislators have struggled to pass new rules that would update online protections in decades-old laws crafted long before social media even existed.

Washington (AFP) – President Joe Biden went on the offensive Monday with a speech attacking Republicans over a looming threat of US debt default, while pressuring his Democratic Party to enact his stalled multi-trillion-dollar domestic spending agenda.

Back from a rare weekend relaxing at home in Delaware, Biden plunged into the most consequential period of his presidency so far.

On one side, he faces Republican determination to cripple his momentum and recapture control of Congress in next year’s midterm legislative elections. On the other, Biden is struggling with infighting between Democrats over his infrastructure and social spending bills.

With the speech calling out Republicans and a trip to Michigan on Tuesday to promote his domestic spending plans, the 78-year-old political veteran hopes to regain the initiative.

While Biden’s legacy may ultimately depend on the $1.2 trillion infrastructure package and a potentially $2 trillion or more social spending package, the entire US and global economies face the imminent threat of a possible debt default.

Biden on Monday called Republican opponents “reckless and dangerous” for refusing to join Democrats in raising the debt limit.

Republican obstruction could push “our economy over a cliff,” Biden said in a White House speech, warning he cannot “guarantee” that a resolution will be found in time.

“If I could, I would,” he said.

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen warns that from October 18, the United States will not have the funds to meet its obligations to creditors if Congress does not relax the legal debt ceiling.

Congress has done this dozens of times over the decades since setting borrowing limits, and the votes are usually bipartisan and drama-free.

This year, reflecting the extraordinary acrimony, Republicans are refusing to vote for lifting the ceiling and indicate they will even block Democrats from passing a simple vote by themselves along party lines.

Instead, Senate Republicans are attempting to force Democrats to use a complex maneuver called reconciliation to take sole responsibility for the debt hike. Democrats so far are refusing, accusing the Republicans of taking the nation’s financial standing hostage.

The standoff means that Democrats, who control the Senate by only one vote, find themselves bogged down in trying to manage the debt crisis while also trying to overcome internal differences over Biden’s spending packages.

On Monday, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said a debt ceiling lift should be voted through “by the end of the week, period.”

“We do not have the luxury of waiting until October 18th, as it is our responsibility to re-assure the world that the United States meets our obligations in a timely fashion,” he said.

How much is enough?

Meanwhile, Biden is needing every bit of his experience from nearly four decades in the Senate and eight years as vice president under Barack Obama to try and come up with a formula that will unite the left and more conservative wings of his party.

His trip Tuesday to a trade union training facility in Howell, Michigan, will seek to highlight the White House’s argument that the big spending plans are popular with voters and that Democrats would be committing colossal self-harm if their squabbling results in the entire legislative agenda collapsing.

On Thursday, Biden is also set to fly to Chicago to talk about the Covid pandemic — underlining his argument that the country needs effective government at a time of national crisis.

Moderates in the House and most crucially in the ultra-tight Senate are refusing to go along with the progressive wing’s hoped-for $3.5 trillion price tag on social spending. Progressives are rejecting a counter-offer of $1.5 trillion.

Biden is now pushing for something in the $2 trillion range.

However both camps are playing hardball, with progressives refusing to back even the $1 trillion infrastructure component unless their bigger social spending goals are first guaranteed.

On Sunday, Schumer said the goal was “to get both bills done in the next month,” adding yet another deadline to a tense autumn season for Biden’s team.

PARIS (Reuters) -The French Catholic Church has had an estimated 3,000 paedophiles in its ranks over the past 70 years, the head of an independent commission investigating the sex abuse scandal said in an interview published on Sunday.

The scandal in the French Church is the latest to hit the Roman Catholic Church, which has been rocked by sexual abuse scandals around the world, often involving children, over the past 20 years.

The French commission is due to publish its findings on Tuesday, marking the culmination of 2-1/2 years of work, probing allegations of abuse going back to the 1950s.

“We have estimated the number (of paedophiles) as standing at 3,000, out of 115,000 priests and religious officials, going back to the 1950s,” commission head Jean-Marc Sauve told the Journal du Dimanche paper.

A spokesperson representing the French Catholic Bishops’ Conference declined to comment on Sauve’s remarks.

A Vatican spokesperson said it would wait for the full report to be published before deciding on whether to comment.

In June, Pope Francis said the Catholic Church’s sexual abuse crisis was a worldwide “catastrophe”.

The French Catholic Church posted a prayer on its official Twitter account on Sunday, on behalf of victims, and added it would also hold a prayer on Oct. 5 – the day of the publication of the report.

“Dear Lord – we entrust to you all those who have been victims of violence and sexual attacks in the Church. We pray that we will always be able to count on your support and help during these ordeals,” it wrote on its Twitter account.

STEPS TO WIPE OUT ABUSE

Since his election in 2013, Francis has taken a series of steps aimed at wiping out sexual abuse of minors by clerics.

In 2019, the pope issued a landmark decree making bishops directly accountable for sexual abuse or covering it up, requiring clerics to report any cases to Church superiors and allowing anyone to complain directly to the Vatican if needed.

This year, he issued the most extensive revision to Catholic Church law in four decades, insisting that bishops take action against clerics who abuse minors and vulnerable adults. Critics have said he has not done enough.

The French Church, which has seen dwindling numbers of faithful in recent years, said in March it would propose financial compensation to those who were victims of abuse.

Last month, the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Cologne decided to take a “spiritual time-out” from his duties after committing grave errors in a crisis over clerical sexual abuse.

A report published last year in Britain said the Catholic Church received more than 900 complaints involving over 3,000 instances of child sex abuse in England and Wales between 1970 and 2015, and that there have been more than 100 reported allegations a year since 2016.

(Reporting by Gilles Guillaume and Philip Pullella;Editing by Frances Kerry)

Washington (AFP) – US fatalities from Covid-19 surpassed 700,000 on Friday, according to figures from Johns Hopkins University, a toll roughly equivalent to the population of the nation’s capital Washington.

The grim threshold comes with an average of well over 1,000 dying each day, in a country where 55.7 percent of the population is now fully vaccinated, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

After a heavily criticized early response to the pandemic, the United States organized an effective vaccine roll-out — only to see a significant portion of Americans still refusing to get the shots.

The United States finds itself having notched the most fatalities in the world, far exceeding other frontrunners such as Brazil and India, and facing a resurgence in cases due to the prominence of the highly contagious Delta variant.

While the latest global coronavirus wave peaked in late August, the virus continues to spread rapidly, particularly in the United States.

The vaccination campaign launched by US authorities in December — which had reached a peak in April, with sometimes more than four million injections per day — has meanwhile slowed considerably.

Coronavirus misinformation has been rampant in the country, and masking remains a political issue, dividing many Americans.

Some Republican governors, such as those in Texas and Florida, have sought to ban mandatory masking in their states, citing individual freedoms.

The Democratic state of California on the other hand announced on Friday that Covid vaccinations will be compulsory for all students.

In Washington, hundreds of thousands of white flags fluttered on the grass on the National Mall, not far from the White House, as somber reminders of those who have died of Covid in the United States.

Nearly 4.8 million people worldwide have died since the outbreak began in China in December 2019, according to an AFP tally from official sources.

By Akriti Sharma

(Reuters) -Former U.S. President Donald Trump asked a federal judge in Florida on Friday to ask Twitter to restore his account, which the company removed in January citing a risk of incitement of violence.

Trump filed a request for preliminary injunction against Twitter in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida, arguing the social media company was “coerced” by members of the U.S. Congress to suspend his account.

Twitter and several other social media platforms banned Trump from their services after a mob of his supporters attacked the U.S. Capitol in a deadly riot on Jan. 6.

That assault followed a speech by Trump in which he reiterated false claims that his election loss in November was because of widespread fraud, an assertion rejected by multiple courts and state election officials.

Twitter “exercises a degree of power and control over political discourse in this country that is immeasurable, historically unprecedented, and profoundly dangerous to open democratic debate,” Trump’s lawyers said in the filing. The filing was reported earlier by Bloomberg.

Twitter declined to comment on the filing when contacted by Reuters.

At the time of removing Trump’s account permanently, Twitter said https://bit.ly/3FdtfID his tweets had violated the platform’s policy barring “glorification of violence”. The company said at the time that Trump’s tweets that led to the removal were “highly likely” to encourage people to replicate what happened in the Capitol riots.

Before he was blocked, Trump had more than 88 million followers on Twitter and used it as his social media megaphone.

In the court filing, Trump argued Twitter allowed the Taliban to tweet regularly about their military victories across Afghanistan, but censored him during his presidency by labeling his tweets as “misleading information” or indicating they violated the company’s rules against “glorifying violence”.

In July Trump sued https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-says-he-is-suing-facebook-twitter-google-claiming-bias-2021-07-07 Twitter, Facebook Inc and Alphabet Inc’s Google, as well as their chief executives, alleging they unlawfully silence conservative viewpoints.

(Reporting by Akriti Sharma and Kanishka Singh in Bengaluru; Editing by William Mallard and Frances Kerry)

By Julia Harte

(Reuters) – Women’s rights advocates will join 660 marches planned around the United States on Saturday to protest against recent efforts to restrict abortion access, including a new Texas law that bans abortions after about six weeks.

In Washington, D.C., protesters will march to the U.S. Supreme Court two days before the court reconvenes for a session https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSKBN2GR3F4 in which the justices will consider a Mississippi case that could enable them to overturn abortion rights established in the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade case.

In a 5-4 decision on Sept. 1, the justices denied a request from abortion and women’s health providers to block enforcement of the near-total ban in Texas, the strictest such law in the country.

“This is kind of a break-glass moment for folks all across the country,” said Rachel O’Leary Carmona, executive director of Women’s March, the main organizer of Saturday’s demonstrations.

“Many of us grew up with the idea that abortion would be legal and accessible for all of us, and seeing that at very real risk has been a moment of awakening,” she said.

Carmona said the number of marches scheduled for Saturday is second only to the group’s first protest, which mobilized millions of people around the world to rally against former President Donald Trump the day after his inauguration in 2017.

Saturday’s marches will take place from coast to coast, including in cities across Texas, a flashpoint in the nation’s battle over abortion rights.

The state’s so-called “heartbeat” law, which went into effect on Sept. 1, bans abortion after cardiac activity is detected in the embryo, usually around six weeks. That is before most women know they are pregnant and earlier than 85% to 90% of all abortions are carried out, experts say.

Texas also lets ordinary citizens enforce the ban, rewarding them at least $10,000 if they successfully sue anyone who helped provide an illegal abortion.

In the month since the law was enacted, hundreds of women in Texas have driven to other states for abortions, while others have sought abortion-inducing pills by mail or visited “crisis pregnancy centers” that encourage women not to get abortions. Abortion clinics are struggling to survive https://www.reuters.com/world/us/texas-abortion-clinics-struggle-survive-under-restrictive-law-2021-09-30 as patient visits decline and some staff quit.

Abortion rights advocates and the U.S. Justice Department have challenged the law in state and federal courts, arguing that it violates Roe v. Wade.

A federal judge in Austin on Friday heard the Justice Department’s request https://www.reuters.com/world/us/biden-administration-urge-halt-strict-texas-abortion-law-2021-10-01 to block the law temporarily while its constitutionality is challenged.

(Reporting by Julia Harte; Editing by Colleen Jenkins and Daniel Wallis)

Lil Nas X is still “very much in love” with his ex-boyfriend.

The ‘Montero (Call Me By Your Name)’ hitmaker has now confirmed his mystery former partner was Yai Ariza, who appears in his ‘That’s What I Want’ music video, and though he recently declared himself single, he’s admitted it’s possible they will get back together eventually.

Speaking to SiriusXM’s Hits 1 LA hosts Tony Fly and Symon, he said: “We were dating, and we are still in very good terms. You know, we may date again I’m sure.

“I love him, he is amazing. I wanted to kind of focus on my music right now.”

The 22-year-old star described his former partner as “the best person” he has “ever” dated.

He added: “I am still very much in love, I’m like trying to manage…If it’s meant, it will happen in the future, life is long.”

As well as getting close to Nas in the ‘That’s What I Want’ music video, Yai was also a dancer in the singer’s ‘Industry Baby’ music video and made out with him during his performance of ‘Montero’ at the 2021 BET Awards.

The ‘Old Town Road’ hitmaker confirmed earlier this week his relationship had ended.

He said: “I was seeing someone. Um, I kind of decided I didn’t want to anymore…

“I don’t want to ruin anybody’s perception of [‘That’s What I Want’], but I don’t think I want any guy right now.

“Maybe I’m floating around right now. I just want to work on music and every now and then, you know, maybe I’ll kiss a guy, every blue moon, you know.”

Just a month ago, Nas gushed about how “effortless” his romance with his boyfriend was.

He said: “I feel like this is one of the best [relationships] yet. I’m really happy about it, and it all just feels natural. It’s effortless.”

And Nas had previously suggested that his boyfriend could be “the one”.

He said: “I’ve had some good boyfriends and some bad ones. A lot of them were emotionally unavailable or had a lot of insecurity and whatnot.

“I’ve found someone special now. I think this is the one. I can’t explain it – it’s just a feeling.”

Pepsi and Shirley think the late George Michael has been sending them messages of support for their new book.

The duo – whose full names are Pepsi Demacque-Crockett and Shirlie Kemp – have reflected on their time as Wham! backing singers in their new autobiography, ‘ Pepsi & Shirlie: It’s All in Black and White’, and they believe the ‘Careless Whisper’ hitmaker would have wanted the tome to do well.

Pepsi said: “I’m quite emotional actually. I’ve been walking into the hotel foyer and every time one of George’s songs comes on. I think he’s got his fairy dust on our book, wishing us well.”

Shirlie had known George – who died in December 2016 – and fellow Wham! singer Andrew Ridgeley since their school days and she paid tribute to her friend for his “empathy and wit”.

She told the Daily Mirror newspaper: “I knew George as a friend way before Wham!, way before fame.

“He was adorable and his sense of humour, he could laugh at himself. It was his empathy and his wit.

“To be that compassionate but that hilarious was a beautiful combination.”

The ‘Heartache’ hitmakers – who performed as a duo after Wham! disbanded – are “really proud” of their pop hey days.

Shirlie said: “When you meet Wham! or Pepsi and Shirlie fans, you think, ‘Wow, I was actually part of that.”

Pepsi added: “I feel really proud of the fact I can look back on so many fond memories. It’s tainted with sadness, but that’s life.”

But they admitted it was “really hard work” and they often shunned invites to parties in favour of going straight home after gigs.

Pepsi said: “It’s really hard work, coming off stage you’re all sweaty. It seems very glamorous on the outside, cameras going, waving to the fans but Shirlie would be like, ‘Oh my gosh, we’ve got to have a shower, put make-up on, what are we going to wear?’

“We’d look at each other and go, ‘No, I think we’ll go back to the room’.”

(Reuters) – More than half of all U.S. deaths involving police violence from 1980-2018 were not listed as such in the government’s main database, according to a study conducted by researchers at the University of Washington and published in The Lancet.

The U.S. National Vital Statistics System recorded police violence as playing a role in 13,700 deaths over that period, the study’s authors said. By examining three non-governmental, open-source databases, they estimated the true total was around 30,800.

The databases they examined were Fatal Encounters, Mapping Police Violence, and The Counted.

The burden of fatal police violence is an urgent public health crisis in the United States, said the study published on Thursday in The Lancet, a major British medical journal.

Deaths at the hands of the police disproportionately impact people of certain races and ethnicities, pointing to systemic racism in policing, it added.

Protests broke out last year in the United States following the death of George Floyd, a Black man who died after a police officer knelt on his neck for more than 8 minutes, and other incidents in which police killed Black men and women.

“Proven public health intervention strategies are needed to address these systematic biases. State-level estimates allow for appropriate targeting of these strategies to address police violence and improve its reporting,” the study said.

(Reporting by Kanishka Singh in Bengaluru; Editing by Peter Graff)

Lizzo credits twerking for helping her to love her butt.

The ‘Good as Hell’ hitmaker admitted her backside used to be her “least favourite” part of her body, but she admitted her opinion has changed dramatically in recent years, largely thanks to the raunchy dance move.

In a new TED Talk, she said: “I used to think that only asses like J.Lo’s or Beyoncé’s could be famous. I always felt like my body type wasn’t the right one or the desirable one growing up, because I grew up in an era where having a big ass wasn’t mainstream…

“My a** has been the topic of conversation. My a** has been in magazines. Rihanna gave my a** a standing ovation. … How did this happen? Twerking! Through the movement of twerking, I discovered my a** is my greatest asset.”

In the talk, Lizzo reflected on the history of twerking, explaining how it evolved from West African dance styles to become a staple of Black club culture in the 1980s, before hitting the mainstream thanks to Miley Cyrus’ controversial MTV Video Music Awards (VMAs) performance in 2013.

From that point, Lizzo felt twerking has been adopted by pop culture and “misunderstood and taken out of context”.

She said: ““I wish that a Black woman could have popularized twerking in the mainstream. Everything that Black people create, from fashion to music to the way we talk, is co-opted, appropriated and taken by pop culture.”

However, the 31-year-old star insisted she wasn’t “trying to gatekeep”.

But she added: “But I’m definitely trying to let you know who built the damn gate.”

And Lizzo vowed to use her platform to continute to highlight the origins of the dance style.

She said: “I twerk for fat, Black women because being fat and Black is a beautiful thing.

“Black women invented twerking and twerking is part of the revolution. We’ve been doing it, we going to keep doing it, because we have and always will be the blueprint.”

New York (AFP) – The Vatican on Wednesday announced a new bishop for the Diocese of Brooklyn, after the retirement of long-serving Bishop Nicholas DiMarzio, who was cleared in a sex abuse investigation.

The 77-year-old DiMarzio had been the subject of a high-profile Vatican probe after two men accused him of abusing them fifty years ago when he was a priest in New Jersey.

Earlier this month, the Vatican cleared DiMarzio in the investigation, saying the accusations against him do not “have the semblance of truth.”

The lawyer for the two men dismissed the Vatican probe as biased and said they will pursue civil lawsuits against the priest.

DiMarzio, whose resignation was earlier accepted by Pope Francis, will be succeeded by Bishop Robert Brennan, 59, a native of New York City, who has served as the Bishop of Columbus, Ohio since 2019, according to US media reports.

“Today I welcome Bishop Robert Brennan appointed as the eighth Bishop of Brooklyn,” DiMarzio said on Twitter. “I have known Bishop Brennan for years and have great confidence in his ability to lead the diocese.”

Several states in northeastern United States have been rocked by sexual abuse scandals in recent years. The drama is illustrated by the 2015 Oscar-winning film “Spotlight,” which documents how journalists with the Boston Globe newspaper uncovered sexual abuse committed by dozens of Boston priests.

According to BishopAccountability.org, an advocacy organization, between 1950 and 2016, the Catholic Church in the US received complaints from more than 18,500 alleged victims claiming abuse by more than 6,700 clergy members.