RadioRob

Published by uPolitics.com Last month, the Moms For Liberty political action committee (PAC) received a massive donation from a surprise donor, Julie Fancelli, the heiress of the supermarket chain Publix. The $51,000 check was the PAC’s first large donation. Their organization is fairly new in the conservative PAC scene. The organization was started by former school board members, Tiffany Justice and Tina Descovich Fancelli is a widely known Republican donor. Before the Capitol Riot began, she was a significant donor to right-wing groups organizing the events. The donation was made on June 23, according to the financial… Read More View the full article

Published by Reuters By Sofia Ahmed and Ted Hesson NEW YORK (Reuters) -Texas Governor Greg Abbott, a Republican, said on Friday he has started to send buses carrying migrants to New York City in an effort to push responsibility for border crossers to Democratic mayors and U.S. President Joe Biden, a Democrat. The first bus arrived early on Friday at the city’s Port Authority Bus Terminal in midtown Manhattan. Volunteers were putting groups of migrants in taxis headed to a nearby intake center, where they said some would be processed for admission to city homeless shelters. Abbott, who is running for a third term as governor in November elections, has sent more than 6,000 migrants to Washington since April in a broader effort to combat illegal immigration and call out Biden for his more welcoming policies. Abbott said New York City Mayor Eric Adams could provide services and housing for the new arrivals. “I hope he follows through on his promise of welcoming all migrants with open arms so that our overrun and overwhelmed border towns can find relief,” Abbott said in a statement. Arizona Governor Doug Ducey, another Republican, has followed Abbott’s lead and bused another 1,000 to Washington. U.S. border authorities have made record numbers of arrests under Biden although many are repeat crossers. Some migrants who are not able to be expelled quickly to Mexico or their home countries under a COVID-era policy are allowed into the United States, often to pursue asylum claims in U.S. immigration court. New York City Mayor Adams’ office has in recent weeks criticized the bussing efforts to Washington, saying some migrants were making their way to New York City and overwhelming its homeless shelter system. On Friday the mayor’s Press Secretary Fabien Levy said Abbott was using “human beings as political pawns,” calling it “a disgusting, and an embarrassing stain on the state of Texas.” Levy said New York would continue to “welcome asylum seekers with open arms, as we always have, but we are asking for resources to help do so,” calling for support from federal officials. Washington Mayor Muriel Bowser has also said her city’s shelter system has been taxed by migrant arrivals and last month called on the Biden administration to deploy military troops to assist with receiving the migrants, a request that has frustrated White House officials. A U.S. defense official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told Reuters that Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin had declined a request for D.C. National Guard to help with the transportation and reception of migrants in the city because it would hurt the troops’ readiness. (Reporting by Sofia Ahmed in New York and Ted Hesson in Washington; Additional reporting by Idrees Ali in Washington; Editing by Mica Rosenberg and Daniel Wallis) View the full article

Published by BANG Showbiz English Jamie Foxx convinced Cameron Diaz to return to acting. The 49-year-old star last appeared on screen in 2014 movie-musical ‘Annie’ and had since announced her retirement from acting but is due to return in the upcoming film ‘Back In Action’ and co-star Jamie, 54, said that he just had to explain to her how “fun” the project would be. He told ETOnline: “Cameron is such an incredible force and she has done so much in this business, We love her. Getting her to come on board basically involved asking her, ‘Do you wanna have some fun? Just have some fun!’ And I think that’s what brought her to it.” Back in 2021, the ‘Charlie’s Angels’ actress – who has been married to Benji Madden since 2015 and has two-year-old daughter Raddix with him – admitted that she had stepped away from the business in order to “manage” different aspects of her life. She said:” When you do something at a really high level for a long period of time, there are parts of your life that end up being handed off to other people. For me, I just really wanted to make my life manageable by me,” she shared of her decision. “My routine in a day is literally what I can manage to do by myself. “I just went, ‘I can’t really say who I am to myself.’ Which is a hard thing to face up to,” she shared. “I felt the need to make myself whole It was previously reported that Cameron was feeling “anxious” but “excited” upon her return to the big screen. View the full article

Published by BANG Showbiz English Christina Ricci learned about homosexuality from Johnny Depp. The 42-year-old actress was starring alongside Johnny, 59, and his then-girlfriend Winona Ryder in ‘Mermaids’ back in 1990 and revealed that the ‘Pirates of the Caribbean’ star explained to her nine-year-old self what homosexuality was during an on-set conflict. Speaking on SiriusXM, she told Andy Cohen: “There was something going on on set and someone was not being nice to someone else. And they were like, ‘Oh, well, he might be homophobic. And then I was like, ‘Well, I don’t understand what that is.’ And I was in Winona’s trailer and she was like, ‘I don’t know how [to explain].’ So she put me on the phone with Johnny, and Johnny explained it to me! “He was like, ‘It’s when a man wants to have sex with a man and when a woman wants to have sex with a woman.’ And I was like, ‘Ah, okay!'” Almost a decade later, Christina had teamed up with Johnny again and was paired up with him for her first sex scene in ‘Sleepy Hollow’ but joked that it was “weird” because she thinks of him “like a brother.” She said: “I’ve known Johnny so long, he’s protective of me as an older brother and it’s weird to think of having sex with him. So we know enough about each other to laugh at it. He said it was ‘like we were rooting around together like pigs. But the decision was made early on that Johnny and I would never be unclothed because in gypsy culture women are forbidden to be nude.” View the full article

Published by BANG Showbiz English Kevin Spacey has been ordered to pay ‘House of Cards’ producers $31 million. The 63-year-old actor was dropped from the Netflix series in 2017 after being accused of sexual misconduct by multiple young men and he was later sued by programme makers MRC for breach of contract after they said he had violated the company’s sexual harassment policy, and on Thursday (04.08.22), a Los Angeles Superior Court judge ordered him to pay £29.5 million in damages and an additional $1.5 million in legal fees and costs, People magazine reports. When MRC first took action against Spacey – who they alleged cost millions in lost profits after they were forced to remove him from the show and cut its sixth and final season short by five episodes – the disgraced star’s lawyers filed an opposition asking for the motion to be set aside. They argued: “The truth is that while Spacey participated in a pervasive on-set culture that was filled with sexual innuendoes, jokes, and innocent horseplay, he never sexually harassed anyone. “In fact, as the evidence established and the Arbitrator recognized in the Award, the few times Spacey was told that his conduct made someone feel uncomfortable or was in any way unwanted, he stopped.” But the production company quietly won the arbitration award in 2020, with the ruling coming to light in November the following year when MRC filed a petition in civil court to confirm the award. Spacey’s lawyers disagreed with the findings of the arbitrator – who ruled MCR had a right to the money, which should be paid by the ‘American Beauty’ actor and his companies M. Profitt Productions and Trigger Street Productions – as they argued external allegations against their client couldn’t be considered because Netflix were unaware of many of the claims when they fired him from the show. They wrote: “As the Arbitrator recognised, the reduction in episodes was a foregone conclusion once Netflix dictated to Petitioners that Spacey could not and would not be a part of Season 6. “But what the Arbitrator ignored is that the conduct he found to be in breach of the Agreements was not even known by Netflix at the time it made this decision. In other words, the breaches found by the Arbitrator could not have been related to Petitioners’ damages because those damages had already been caused by the time the breaching conduct was known.” MRC are happy with the outcome at the Superior Court. Their attorney, Michael Kump, said: “We are pleased with the court’s ruling.” View the full article

Published by BANG Showbiz English Jane Fonda made her famous workout video with “no money”. The 84-year-old star released ‘Jane Fonda’s Workout’ on VHS 40 years ago and she admitted the exercise class was filmed on “spit and a prayer” so she was stunned by just how successful it went on to be. She said: “I mean, we spent no money on it. I wrote the script myself on a hotel-room floor. We did our own makeup. It was spit and a prayer. “Eventually the video came out, and of course it remains the number one selling home video of all time. Nobody’s ever broken that record!” The ‘Grace and Frankie’ initially rejected multiple approaches for the video because she “didn’t even know” what a VCR was at the time. She told Vogue: “I know that the world is full of women who can’t afford to go to a gym or feel self-conscious about being in a gym or can’t go to a gym because they have a young child. So doing it in the privacy of their home was an answer for that. “I’d like to claim that I’m a brilliant, strategic businesswoman. If people wanted it, I didn’t know it, [but] I provided it and at a time, it was just perfect. “[Founder of Karl Video Corp.] Stuart Karl’s wife read my first workout book and said to her husband, ‘This could be a video.’ “He was sort of the king of home videos, which didn’t mean much at the time because nobody had a VCR. I didn’t even know what a VCR was. Literally nobody I knew had a VCR. He made the first do-it-yourself home-improvement videos. “So he came to me and pitched the idea of doing a workout video. I said no. I just didn’t get it. “But then the money was going to a political organisation that my then-husband, Tom Hayden, and I had founded called the Campaign for Economic Democracy. Stuart Karl kept coming back and kept coming back. “Finally, I realised maybe this could make money. So I said, ‘Okay, let’s try it.’ “ View the full article

Published by BANG Showbiz English Kathy Bates and Liza Koshy have joined the cast of a currently-untitled star-studded Netflix rom-com. Nicole Kidman, 55, Joey King, 23, and Zac Efron, 34, were previously announced for Richard LaGravenese’s flick, which he penned with Carrie Solomon. The movie, as reported by Deadline, tells the tale of a “surprising romance which kicks off comic consequences for a young woman, her mother and her movie star boss as they face the complications of love, sex, and identity.” The ‘American Horror Story’ star and 26-year-old YouTube personality-and-actress Liza’s roles are not known at this time. Kathy’s other upcoming movies include starring alongside Dame Maggie Smith and Laura Linney in ‘The Miracle Club’. Thaddeus O’Sullivan’s flick tells the story of a riotous group of women who go on a pilgrimage from Dublin to France. The journey allows them to discover their friendship and their own personal miracles. The 74-year-old star will also star in ‘Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret’, Kelly Fremon Craig’s adaptation of Judy Blume’s best-selling novel. She plays the titular character’s grandmother, Sylvia. The Oscar-winner, John Malkovich and Lewis Pullman also lead the cast of ‘Thelma’ by Ken Kwapis. The film “recounts the true story of the mother of John Kennedy Toole (Pullman), the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of ‘A Confederacy of Dunces’. Toole died by suicide before finding a home for his masterpiece, and his mother Thelma (Bates) made it her life’s mission, through outrageous gamesmanship, to see the book published. She eventually succeeded in getting the manuscript into the hands of writer Walker Percy (Malkovich), who became the novel’s champion. It would be published in 1980, eleven years after Ken’s death, thereafter becoming a widely celebrated cult classic.” View the full article

Published by BANG Showbiz English Angelica Ross is set to become the first transgender actress to play Roxie Hart in ‘Chicago’. The 41-year-old ‘Pose’ star will make her Broadway debut in the long-running musical later this year, playing murderous vixen Roxie for eight weeks from September 12. Actresses who have previously played Roxie include Pamela Anderson, Melanie Griffith, Christie Brinkley, Marilu Henner, Brooke Shields and Lisa Rinna. While Angelica can’t wait to get started, she admitted the announcement was bittersweet as it came on the same day that US basketball star Brittney Griner was sentenced to nine years in a Russian prison after being found guilty of narcotics possession and smuggling for bringing cannabis-infused vape cartridges into the country. Angelica tweeted: “This day is full of mixed feelings for me! I want to celebrate being on Broadway, but I don’t feel like celebrating with #BrittneyGriner sentenced to 9 years in prison. This world is messed up. She doesn’t deserve this.” The 31-year-old basketball star – who normally lives in Houston, Texas with wife Cherelle Griner – was arrested on suspicion of drug smuggling in Russia just days before the country launched the ongoing invasion on Ukraine and has now been found guilty and sentenced to almost a decade behind bars. However, her lawyers told PEOPLE that the verdict was “absolutely unreasonable” and intend to appeal the decision. Brittney – who is also said to have been fined the equivalent of $16,600 for the offence – was found to have taken less than one gram of cannabis oil into the country and insisted her actions were “inadvertent” but she decided to plead guilty. She said: “That’s why I pled guilty to my charges. I understand everything that’s been said against me, the charges that are against me and that is why I pled guilty but I had no intents to break any Russian [law].” View the full article

Published by BANG Showbiz English Harry Styles gave Olly Murs one of his Brit awards. The ‘Watermelon Sugar’ hitmaker was unable to attend the 2018 ceremony so the 38-year-old singer – who has been nominated for six prizes at the event over the years but never won – accepted the Video of the Year accolade for ‘Sign of the Times’ on his pal’s behalf. And Olly was left stunned a few weeks later when he opened a mysterious parcel to discover he’d finally received his very own Brit from the former One Direction singer. Speaking to Heart Bingo’s blog, Olly said: “I love Harry’s Styles’ new album and I love Harry. Harry gave me his first Brit for ‘Sign Of The Times’. “He couldn’t make the Brit Awards ceremony, so I accepted it on his behalf. I jokingly said, ‘I will take it because I’ve never won a Brit’. “I didn’t think anything of it because as you walk backstage you have to give it back to one of the producers. “About two weeks later a gift came to my house and I opened it. It was from Harry saying, ‘All my love mate. Here he is’. “And it has my name on it. And of course, Harry’s name and ‘Sign Of The Times’. But I am like, ‘I have got a Brit award from Harry Styles!’” Olly previously spoke of how “dangerous” it was when he supported One Direction on tour because fans were constantly throwing things on stage that they hoped would be passed on to Harry and his bandmates. He said:”When I was on the One Direction tour, we were getting all sorts of things thrown up to us on stage. I think the weirdest things I was getting thrown was like passports, lipsticks and there were quite a few mobile phones. “They wanted you to pick up the phone, like take a photo and give it back to them. Fans were so obsessive, especially on tours with the One Direction boys. The fans just wanted one of them to touch their possessions. “But when you have got 15 phones flying towards you, it was starting to get dangerous at one point. I think they had to say to the fans could you stop throwing things on stage because someone got quite hurt by something thrown at them. I can’t remember, it might have even been me.” View the full article

Published by BANG Showbiz English ‘The Flash’ will still go ahead with Ezra Miller. The 29-year-old actor, who played Barry Allen aka the Flash in 2018’s ‘Justice League’ and the 2021 Zack Snyder cut, has faced a number of headline-making controversies in recent times. Just last month, it was reported that they will no longer face legal trouble in Germany after prosecutors reportedly dropped a trespassing investigation. The star had been accused of refusing to leave the Berlin home of a woman named only as Zara after she invited them there one evening in February – with the woman alleging the star became verbally abusive and only left after she called the police. Variety.com reported she filed a criminal complaint against Miller but dropped the case when it emerged they had left Germany. Miller was also accused of sheltering teenage runaway Tokata Iron Eyes, whose parents filed a restraining order against the star. However, despite the run-ins with the law, Warner Bros. confirmed the film is still on track for a June 23, 2023, with Miller in tow. Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav said at the firm’s Q2 earnings call this week: “We have seen ‘The Flash,’ ‘Black Adam’ and ‘Shazam 2.’ “We are very excited about them. We’ve seen them. We think they are terrific, and we think we can make them even better.” Zaslav also spoke out to defend the studio’s decision to axe the $90 million ‘Batgirl’ movie starring Leslie Grace as the titular superhero. He said: “We’re not going to launch a movie until it’s ready. We’re not going to launch a movie to make a quarter, and we’re not going to put a movie out unless we believe in it.” View the full article

Published by AFP A 2018 photo shows the statue of Andrew Jackson, with the White House behind it, in Lafayette Square in Washington, where four people were struck by lightning on August 4, 2022 Washington (AFP) – Two people were killed and two more were in critical condition on Friday after a lightning strike near the White House the night before, police in the US capital said. The lightning hit Lafayette Square, a small park across the street from the White House, shortly before 7:00 pm (2300 GMT) Thursday, leaving two men and two women with “critical life-threatening injuries,” according to a statement from Washington’s fire and emergencies department. All the victims were taken to local hospitals, but on Friday morning the Metropolitan Police confirmed that two of them — 75-year-old Donna Mueller and 76-year-old James Mueller, both from Janesville in Wisconsin — had been pronounced dead. The other two adults remain in critical condition, police said. A White House spokeswoman said the Biden administration was “saddened by the tragic loss of life.” “We are praying for those still fighting for their lives,” added Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre in a statement. US Secret Service and park police rushed to help the four after witnessing the strike, fire and emergency services department spokesman Vito Maggiolo said in a statement posted on social media. Photos posted by the department on social media showed multiple ambulances and at least one fire truck with flashing lights working at the scene. Witness David Root told NBC he heard a “horrific boom.” “I just couldn’t believe it,” he was quoted as saying. “Was surreal. I have never seen anything like this in my entire life.” He said he had been sheltering beneath a tree when he saw the lightning strike across the park. The people “weren’t moving,” he said, so he and others ran over to give help. The Washington Post said the four were found some 100 feet from the statue of former US president Andrew Jackson which marks the center of the square. The strike was part of a severe thunderstorm that hit the American capital on Thursday evening. “Trees are not safe places,” Maggiolo told the Post. “Anybody that goes to seek shelter under a tree, that’s a very dangerous place to be.” View the full article

Published by Raw Story By Matthew Chapman On Thursday, Florida Politics reported that Andrew Warren, the Democratic state prosecutor of Hillsborough County, Florida, is hitting back at Gov. Ron DeSantis after he moved to suspend him from office. “People need to understand this isn’t the Governor trying to suspend the one elected official,” said Warren. “This is the Governor trying to overthrow democracy here in Hillsborough County.” Florida is unusual among states in that county prosecutors are elected directly, but that the governor has the authority to suspend them from office. DeSantis took this action against Wa… Read More View the full article

Published by AlterNet By David Badash Authoritarian dictator Viktor Orbán, the prime minister of Hungary, was invited to speak to CPAC, the Conservative Political Action Conference. On Thursday he delivered an anti-LGBTQ attack on same-sex marriage and same-sex families, echoing the false “groomer” claims increasingly prevalent on the right by demanding same-sex couples must “leave our kids alone.” “Hungary shall protect the institution of marriage as a union of one man and one woman,” he decreed, to cheers. “Family ties shall be based on marriage or the relationship between parents and children. To sum up, the mot… Read More View the full article

Published by New York Daily News NEW YORK — LBGTQ+ history will be made on the Great White Way. Angelica Ross has been cast as Roxie Hart in “Chicago,” becoming the first openly transgender woman to play a leading role on Broadway. Earlier this year, “A Strange Loop” breakout L Morgan Lee made history as the first openly transgender actress to be nominated for a Tony Award. Producers of Broadway’s longest-running Tony Award-winning musical revival announced Thursday that Ross is scheduled to perform an eight-week limited engagement at the Ambassador Theatre from Sept. 12 though Nov. 6, 2022. “Chicago” marks the “Pose” star’s … Read More View the full article

Published by BANG Showbiz English Lady Gaga is to star in ‘Joker: Folie à Deux.’ The 36-year-old superstar will take on reportedly take on the role of henchwoman Harley Quinn opposite Joaquin Phoenix in the title role of the musical sequel to the DC Comics movie ‘Joker’ and took to Instagram on Thrusday (04.08.22) to confirm the news. Alongside a video of the trailer, Gaga captioned the post: “Joker: Folie à Deux, 10.04.24.” In the background of the video, a laugh could be heard alongside an instrumental of the Frank Sinatra hit ‘Cheek to Cheek’. The ‘Poker Face’ hitmaker – who has found success in the acting world with acclaimed roles in blockbusters such as ‘A Star is Born’ and ‘House of Gucci’ – previously admitted that she had “something in mind” when it comes to creating her own musical and explained that when it comes to acting she will always want to tell the stories of women. She said: “I do have something in mind for [a musical] , but I’m not going to reveal it. I think I’ll always tell the stories of women because I am a woman and women have so many stories to share. Women are powerful, and women are vulnerable. And to be vulnerable and strong at the same time, I think, is a special thing.” The Clown Prince of Crime’s notorious first lady has previously been played by ‘Barbie’ star Margot Robbie – who took on the role in the 2016 movie ‘Suicide Squad’ and 2020’s ‘and Birds of Prey’ – while ‘Big Bang Theory’ actress Kaley Cuoco provided her voice in the HBO Max animated series ‘Harley Quinn.’ ‘Joker: Folie à Deux’ is due for release on October 4 2024. View the full article

Published by Reuters By Jack Queen (Reuters) – A Texas judge denied Alex Jones’s motion for a mistrial on Thursday as jury deliberations resumed in a defamation case over the U.S. conspiracy theorist’s false claims about the Sandy Hook mass shooting. The mistrial request followed the disclosure at trial that Jones’s lawyer accidentally sent two years of the U.S. conspiracy theorist’s text messages to the plaintiffs. Federico Andino Reynal, an attorney for Jones, told Judge Maya Guerra Gamble that attorneys for the plaintiffs should have immediately destroyed the records. An attorney for the parents, Mark Bankston, used the texts to undercut Jones’ testimony during cross-examination on Wednesday. Jones, founder of the Infowars radio show and webcast, is on trial to determine the amount of damages he owes for spreading falsehoods about the killing of 20 children and six staff at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, on Dec. 14, 2012. Neil Heslin and Scarlett Lewis, the parents of slain six-year-old Jesse Lewis, are seeking as much as $150 million from Jones and his company, Free Speech Systems LLC, for what their lawyer has called a “vile campaign of defamation.” Heslin told jurors on Tuesday that Jones’ falsehoods had made his life “hell” and led to a campaign of harassment and death threats against him by people who believed he lied about his son’s death. Jones previously claimed that the mainstream media and gun-control activists conspired to fabricate the Sandy Hook tragedy and that the shooting was staged using crisis actors. Jones, who later acknowledged that the shooting took place, told the Austin jury on Wednesday that it was “100% real.” Gamble issued a rare default judgment against Jones in the case in 2021. Free Speech Systems declared bankruptcy last week. Jones said during a Monday broadcast of Infowars that the filing will help the company stay on the air while it appeals. Jones faces a similar defamation suit in Connecticut state court, where he has also been found liable in a default judgment. The Sandy Hook gunman, Adam Lanza, 20, used a Remington Bushmaster rifle to carry out the massacre. It ended when Lanza killed himself with the approaching sound of police sirens. (Reporting by Jack Queen; Editing by Noeleen Walder, Amy Stevens and Howard Goller) View the full article

Published by Reuters (Reuters) -The United States has declared a monkeypox outbreak a public health emergency, Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra said Thursday, a move expected to free up additional funding and tools to fight the disease. The World Health Organization has also declared monkeypox a “public health emergency of international concern,” its highest alert level. The WHO declaration last month was designed to trigger a coordinated international response and could unlock funding to collaborate on sharing vaccines and treatments. Biden on Aug. 2 appointed two top federal officials to coordinate his administration’s response to monkeypox, following declarations of emergencies by California, Illinois and New York. Cases have crossed 6,600 in the United States, as of Wednesday’s data, almost all of them among men who have sex with men. First identified in monkeys in 1958, the disease has mild symptoms including fever, aches and pus-filled skin lesions, and people tend to recover from it within two to four weeks, according to the World Health Organization. (Reporting by Manas Mishra in Bengaluru, Ismail Shakil in Ottawa and Leela de Kretser; Editing by Anil D’Silva and Deepa Babington) View the full article

Published by Reuters By Julie Steenhuysen CHICAGO (Reuters) – As U.S. monkeypox cases rise, U.S. health agencies in a medical journal article published on Wednesday defended their decision to require human trial data to show that SIGA Technologies’ experimental drug TPOXX is safe and effective to treat the virus. U.S. agencies have been under pressure to ease access to the drug, which is being distributed by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) under a special “compassionate use” access that requires doctors to request it from the agency or their health department and enroll each patient in a study. As of July 22, 223 people have been treated with the drug, compared with more than 6,000 known cases in the United States. The FDA approved TPOXX in 2018 for smallpox in adults and children based on studies of animals infected with monkeypox and rabbitpox, as well as safety data in healthy people. It can only be sold to the U.S. Strategic National Stockpile. Authors of the article in the New England Journal of Medicine from the Food and Drug Administration, the CDC and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) said the latter is planning a U.S.-based randomized clinical trial. Data from that study will be used to determine whether the drug gains U.S. approval for monkeypox. The drug, also known as tecovirimat, is approved for both smallpox and monkeypox in the UK and Europe. The European Union approved it under an “exceptional circumstances” pathway that allows for marketing approval when data cannot be obtained even after authorization. Although TPOXX was only tested in healthy people, the European Medicines Agency said it expects side effects to be similar in infected people, and deemed the drug’s benefits to be greater than its risks. Dr. Jay Varma, director of the Cornell Center for Pandemic Prevention and Response who has advocated for broader access to the drug, said the FDA’s standards ensure U.S. drugs are safe and set a high bar for the world, but in some circumstances, “those strict standards are harming us.” There were 1.7 million doses of the treatment in the U.S. Strategic National Stockpile at the start of the current outbreak in May. On July 21, the CDC and the FDA began allowing doctors to prescribe the drug before the trial paperwork is completed, but still requires approval of a hospital’s institutional review board for each dose. “It’s definitely better. It’s still very burdensome,” said Dr. Karen Krueger, an infectious disease expert at Northwestern Medicine in Chicago, who said there is additional paperwork after the patient visit and for several follow-up visits. “It’s doable but certainly a lot more challenging than how we normally prescribe drugs.” Neither the FDA nor the CDC immediately responded to a request for comment. Northwestern has treated at least 20 monkeypox patients with TPOXX and will be one of the sites for the NIH trial. To win approval, SIGA Chief Scientific Officer Dennis Hruby estimates it will likely take a 500-patient, placebo-controlled clinical trial in the United States. If cases remain high, the trial could be fully enrolled within a few months. “It’s not a terribly long trial,” he said. SIGA Chief Executive Phillip Gomez said the company is working to launch trials in the UK, Canada, the United States and Europe. If the United States declares monkeypox a national emergency, Gomez said the drug could be granted an emergency use authorization. However, because the FDA has been “very clear” they want full, placebo-controlled trials, that could still take time, he said. (Reporting by Julie Steenhuysen in Chicago; additional reporting by Natalie Grover in London; Editing by Bill Berkrot) View the full article

Published by Reuters (Reuters) – The U.S. Department of Justice on Wednesday sued Peter Navarro, an adviser to former President Donald Trump, seeking emails from his time in the White House that he has refused to return without a grant of immunity. The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., centers on Navarro’s use of a personal ProtonMail for some official White House business. Mr. Navarro is wrongfully retaining presidential records that are the property of the United States, and which constitute part of the permanent historical record of the prior administration,” Justice Department attorneys said in the lawsuit. Attorneys for Navarro could not immediately be reached for comment. The case is unrelated to misdemeanor contempt of Congress charges of filed against Navarro by the U.S. government in June over his refusal to provide testimony or documents to a House of Representatives committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021 riots. Navarro last month declined an offer by the government to plead guilty to a contempt of Congress charge, according to federal prosecutors. (Reporting by Dan Whitcomb; Editing by David Gregorio) View the full article

Published by AFP Multiple gunshot incidents occur daily in New York New York (AFP) – A man in New York has been charged with attempted murder after allegedly shooting a McDonald’s worker for serving his mother cold french fries, police and reports said. Multiple gunshot incidents occur daily in the Big Apple. In this latest case, Michael Morgan, 20, shot the 23-year-old McDonald’s employee in Brooklyn on Monday evening, according to police and the New York Post. The victim is in critical condition in hospital. The incident started as an argument between a 40-year-old woman and the victim, whom she accused of having given her cold fries, the tabloid said. The woman made a video call to her son Morgan, who burst into the fast-food chain and argued with the employee before the two of them went outside. Morgan then shot the employee, according to a police source cited by the Post. The accused has been arrested several times for various crimes, the tabloid said. Morgan was also slapped with a charge of criminal possession of a loaded firearm, a New York Police Department spokesperson told AFP. The number of shooting victims in New York is down almost nine percent compared to last year, falling to 988 from 1,051, according to weekly statistics from the NYPD. There are almost 120 guns for every 100 people in the United States, according to the Small Arms Survey group. More than 45,000 people were killed in 2020 by firearms, half of them by suicide, according to the Gun Violence Archive. View the full article

Published by BANG Showbiz English Jennifer Coolidge got “a lot of sexual action” after starring in ‘American Pie.’ The 60-year-old actress took on the role of Jeanine Stifler – known as the ‘MILF’ or ‘Stifler’s Mom’ – in the 1999 coming-of-age comedy and joked that she has slept with hundreds of people since playing the part. She said: “I was so happy for ‘American Pie’ and the MILF thing. I got a lot out of being a MILF and I got a lot of sexual action from ‘American Pie.’ There were so many benefits to doing that movie. There would be like 200 people that I would never have slept with [had I not done it!]” Meanwhile, the ‘White Lotus’ star is also known for playing manicurist Paulette Bonafonte in the ‘Legally Blonde’ movies opposite Reese Witherspoon and has to deal with fans coming up to her to do impressions of her ditsy character’s famous line. In ‘Legally Blonde 2: Red, White and Blonde’, Paulette says: “Oh my God, you look like the Fourth of July! Makes me want a hot dog real bad.” Jennifer told Variety: “All day long and all night. Y’know, just so many people like say it on a plane, for f**** sake! It’s exhausting, this hot dog story! But I have to go with it. I have to go with it and say ‘Oh my God, you sound just like me when you say that!'” Jennifer is set to appear as Paulette once again in the upcoming ‘Legally Blonde 3’ but revealed she is even yet to see a script for the movie. She said: “Everyone keeps talking about it. I’m very excited about the script that is coming my way but I haven’t seen it yet!” View the full article

Published by BANG Showbiz English Aaron Rodgers says ayahuasca had a profound impact on his life. The 38-year-old Green Bay Packers quarterback – who was previously engaged to actress Shailene Woodley – credits the plant-based psychedelic drug with helping him to focus more on “self love”. Speaking to Aubrey Marcus, the founder of supplement company Onnit, on his podcast, Aaron said: “To me, one of the core tenets of your mental health is that self-love. That’s what ayahuasca did for me, was help me see how to unconditionally love myself. It’s only in that unconditional self love, that then I’m able to truly be able to unconditionally love others. And what better way to work on my mental health than to have an experience like that? “The greatest gift I can give my teammates, in my opinion, is to be able to show up and to be someone who can model unconditional love to them. I mean obviously it’s important I play well, and show up and lead and all that stuff. They won’t care about what you say until they know how much you care.” And Aaron credited ayahuasca with helping him to win MVP [Most Valuable Player] back-to-back in 2020 and 2021. He said: “I don’t think it’s a coincidence. I really don’t. I don’t really believe in coincidences at this point. It’s the universe bringing things to happen when they’re supposed to happen. “There’s signs and synchronicities all around us at all times if we’re awake enough to see them and to take them in and to listen to our intuition when it’s speaking to us or pounding us in the head saying, ‘Hey dummy, this is what you’re supposed to be doing.’ “For me, I didn’t do that and think ‘oh, I’m never playing football again’. No, it gave me a deep and meaningful appreciation for life. My intention the first night going in was ‘I want to feel what pure love feels like.’ That was my intention. And I did. I really did. I had a magical experience with the sensation of feeling a hundred different hands on my body imparting a blessing of love and forgiveness for myself and gratitude for this life from what seemed to be my ancestors. “It set me on my course to be able to go back in to my job and have a different perspective on things. To be way more free at work, as a leader, as a teammate, as a friend, as a lover. I really feel like that experience paved the way for me to have the best season of my career (in 2020).” View the full article

Published by Reuters KHIMKI, Russia (Reuters) – A Russian court on Thursday ruled that U.S. basketball star Brittney Griner was guilty of drugs possession and smuggling after she pleaded guilty to bringing cannabis-infused vape cartridges to Russia. In its ruling, the court said that Griner committed the crime “deliberately”, despite the defendant having said that it was an “honest mistake”. (Reporting by Reuters; editing by Guy Faulconbridge) View the full article

Published by BANG Showbiz English Lady Gaga’s alleged dognapper has been recaptured five months after he was mistakenly freed from a LA jail. James Howard Jackson, 19 – who was one of five people arrested after Gaga’s dog walker Ryan Discher was shot and her French bulldogs were stolen in February 2021 – was previously released due to a “clerical error” but he has now been recaptured. Last month, the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department Major Crime Team asked for the US Marshals help to apprehend Jackson, offering a $5,000 reward for information leading to his arrest, but warned he “should be considered armed and dangerous”. Shortly after the 19 year old was released from jail, Ryan appealed for him to turn himself back to authorities. He said in a statement: “While I’m deeply concerned at the events that led to his release, I’m confident law enforcement will rectify the error. “I ask for Mr. Jackson to turn himself over to the authorities, so resolution to the crime committed against me runs its course, whatever the courts determine that outcome to be. Thank you to everyone who is supporting me during this time.” Jackson – whose full list of charges includes attempted murder, conspiracy to commit robbery, second-degree robbery, assault with a semiautomatic firearm and a felon carrying a concealed firearm in a vehicle – is accused of shooting the dog walker with a .40-calibre handgun with him and two suspects allegedly fleeing the scene in a car with two dogs. The animals were returned to police two days later. A woman who returned the dogs after claiming to have found them and the father of another suspect were also charged. Ryan suffered a collapsed lung in the attack and admitted medics were initially unsure he’d survive. He previously said: “The people in the ER, who I had seen that night, told me they didn’t think I was gonna survive that night.” He also praised his famous boss for her support throughout his recovery. He said: “She’s helped me so much. She’s been a friend for me and after I was attacked, my family was flown out and I had trauma therapists flown to me and I stayed at her house for months while friends comforted me and security was around me.” View the full article