The Full Belmonte, 7/4/2022
“AKRON, Ohio (AP) — A Black man was unarmed when Akron police chased him on foot and killed him in a hail of gunfire, but officers believed he had shot at them earlier from a vehicle and feared he was preparing to fire again, authorities said Sunday at a news conference.
Akron police released video of the shooting of Jayland Walker, 25, who was killed June 27 in a pursuit that had started with an attempted traffic stop. The mayor called the shooting ‘heartbreaking’ while asking for patience from the community.
It’s not clear how many shots were fired by the eight officers involved, but Walker sustained more than 60 wounds. An attorney for Walker’s family said officers kept firing even after he was on the ground.
Officers attempted to stop Walker’s car around 12:30 a.m. for unspecified traffic and equipment violations, but less than a minute into a pursuit, the sound of a shot was heard from the car, and a transportation department camera captured what appeared to be a muzzle flash coming from the vehicle, Akron Police Chief Steve Mylett said. That changed the nature of the case from ‘a routine traffic stop to now a public safety issue,’ he said.
Police body camera videos show what unfolded after the roughly six-minute pursuit. Several shouting officers with guns drawn approach the slowing car on foot, as it rolls up over a curb and onto a sidewalk. A person wearing a ski mask exits the passenger door and runs toward a parking lot. Police chase him for about 10 seconds before officers fire from multiple directions, in a burst of shots that lasts 6 or 7 seconds.
At least one officer had tried first to use a stun gun, but that was unsuccessful, police said.
Mylett said Walker’s actions are hard to distinguish on the video in real time, but a still photo seems to show him ‘going down to his waist area’ and another appears to show him turning toward an officer. He said a third picture ‘captures a forward motion of his arm.’
In a statement shared Sunday with reporters, the local police union said the officers thought there was an immediate threat of serious harm, and that it believes their actions and the number of shots will be found justified in line with their training and protocols. The union said the officers are cooperating with the investigation.
Police said more than 60 wounds were found on Walker’s body but further investigation is needed to determine exactly how many rounds the officers fired and how many times Walker was hit.
The footage released by police ends with the officers’ gunfire and doesn’t show what happened next. Officers provided aid, and one can be heard saying Walker still had a pulse, but he was later pronounced dead, Mylett said.
The chief said an officer firing at someone has to be ‘ready to explain why they did what they did, they need to be able to articulate what specific threats they were facing ... and they need to be held to account.’ But he said he is withholding judgment on their actions until they give their statements.
A handgun, a loaded magazine and an apparent wedding ring were found on the seat of the car. A casing consistent with the weapon was later found in the area where officers believed a shot had come from the vehicle.” Read more at AP News
“WASHINGTON (AP) — More witnesses are coming forward with new details on the Jan. 6 U.S. Capitol riot following former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson’s devastating testimony last week against former President Donald Trump, says a member of a House committee investigating the insurrection.
The panel already has subpoenaed former White House counsel Pat Cipollone, who investigators remain hopeful will appear Wednesday for a deposition, and said it would also welcome follow-up details from Secret Service members with Trump that day.
Rep. Adam Kinzinger, R-Ill., cited Hutchinson’s testimony that Trump wanted to join an angry mob of his supporters who marched on Jan. 6, 2021, to the Capitol, where they rioted, as particularly valuable in ‘inspiring’ more people to step forward as the committee gets set for at least two public hearings this month.
‘Every day we get new people that come forward and say, ‘Hey, I didn’t think maybe this piece of the story that I knew was important,’ he said Sunday. ‘There will be way more information and stay tuned.’
The committee has been intensifying its yearlong investigation into the Jan. 6 attack and Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election. The next hearings will aim to show how Trump illegally directed a violent mob toward the Capitol on Jan. 6 and then failed to take quick action to stop the attack once it began. Over the weekend, Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., the committee’s vice chair, made clear that criminal referrals to the Justice Department, including against the Republican former president, could follow.
The committee also has been reviewing new documentary film footage of Trump’s final months in office, including interviews with Trump and members of his family.” Read more at AP News
Protesters outside the Fox News headquarters in New York. media and legal experts believe Fox could be in trouble in the Dominion case.Photograph: Sarah Yenesel/EPA
Rightwing networks Fox News, OAN and Newsmax could be found liable in cases brought by voting machine company Dominion
“In the months following the 2020 US presidential election, rightwing TV news in America was a wild west, an apparently lawless free-for-all where conspiracy theories about voting machines, ballot-stuffed suitcases and dead Venezuelan leaders were repeated to viewers around the clock.
There seemed to be little consequence for peddling the most outrageous ideas on primetime.
But now, unfortunately for Fox News, One America News Network (OAN), and Newsmax, it turns out that this brave, new world wasn’t free from legal jurisdiction – with the three networks now facing billion-dollar lawsuits as a result of their baseless accusations.
In June, Dominion Voting Systems, which provided voting machines to 28 states, was given the go-ahead to sue Fox Corp, the parent company of Fox News, in a case that could draw Rupert Murdoch and his son, Lachlan, into the spotlight.
In the $1.6bn lawsuit, Dominion accuses Fox Corp, and the Murdochs specifically, of allowing Fox News to amplify false claims that the voting company had rigged the election for Joe Biden.
Fox Corp had attempted to have the suit dismissed, but a Delaware judge said Dominion had shown adequate evidence for the suit to proceed. Dominion is already suing Fox News, as well as OAN and Newsmax.
‘These allegations support a reasonable inference that Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch either knew Dominion had not manipulated the election or at least recklessly disregarded the truth when they allegedly caused Fox News to propagate its claims about Dominion,’ Judge Eric Davis said.
Davis’s ruling is not a guarantee that Fox will be found liable. But the judge made it clear that this isn’t some frivolous attempt by Dominion – and media and legal experts think Fox could be in real trouble.” Read more at The Guardian
Smoke rises over the remains of a building destroyed by a Russian attack. Photograph: Reuters
“Russia has said it is in control of Ukraine’s eastern Luhansk region after taking over Lysychansk, the last Ukrainian-controlled city in the region.
The Russian defence minister, Sergei Shoigu, told Vladimir Putin on Sunday that their forces had established ‘full control’ over Lysychansk and several nearby settlements, the Russian state news agency RIA Novosti reported.
Ukraine’s military command confirmed on Sunday evening that its troops had been forced to pull back from the city, saying there would otherwise be ‘fatal consequences’.
It said: ‘In order to preserve the lives of Ukrainian defenders, a decision was made to withdraw.’” Read more at The Guardian
Russian cosmonauts Oleg Artemyev, Denis Matveev and Sergey Korsakov pose with a flag of the self-proclaimed Luhansk People's Republic at the International Space Station. Photograph: Roscosmos/Reuters
The Russian cosmonauts who were lauded at the outset of the war on Ukraine in February for appearing to show their support for their invaded neighbours with yellow and blue spacesuits have been pictured on the International Space Station (ISS) holding the flags of the self-proclaimed republics in Luhansk and Donetsk, alongside a message celebrating what the Russian space agency Roscosmos termed the “liberation” of Luhansk.
In a message posted to the official Roscosmos Telegram channel, Oleg Artemyev, Denis Matveyev and Sergey Korsakov are shown holding the flags of the two occupied territories, whose occupiers are recognised as legitimate authorities only by Russia and Syria among UN member states.
The message accompanying the pictures says: ‘Liberation Day of the Luhansk People’s Republic! We celebrate both on Earth and in space.’” Read more at The Guardian
“Ukraine unveils a massive postwar rebuilding program today just as Russian President Vladimir Putin marks the first real strategic success of his invasion. The developments may amount to a recipe for endless war.
The withdrawal of Ukrainian troops from the city of Lysychansk means Russia seized the last urban stronghold in the Luhansk region, moving Putin closer to capturing the whole province. Russian forces may now concentrate fire on the neighboring Donetsk region to try to cement control of Ukraine’s east.
The reconstruction plan outlined at a conference in Switzerland may cost more than $500 billion. The bulk of the funding is likely to come via the European Union which has just accepted Ukraine as a membership candidate and will seek to rally global donors to help finance Kyiv, a challenging proposition in the current security environment.
It underscores the scale of the task of keeping Ukraine’s war-battered economy afloat, while oil and gas revenues continue pouring into the Kremlin’s coffers. The economic damage is rising for Europe, too, as Russia turns the gas-supply screw in retaliation for sanctions.
The plan amounts to rebuilding Ukraine to meet EU entry standards amid Russia’s destruction of much of its Soviet-era legacy of outdated infrastructure and city buildings. That’s an incentive for Putin to continue missile strikes on Ukraine to stall its integration with Europe.
Yet Russia so far has shown it can’t deliver a knockout blow in the war. Ukraine has proved able to defend itself and President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has vowed not to cede territory to Russia.
Eastern Ukraine’s open landscape makes it hard for either military decisively to hold territory. Ukraine is awaiting more heavy weapons from the US and its allies before a potential autumn counterattack, while Russian forces are tiring and need reinforcement.
Russia, and some of Ukraine’s supporters, initially expected the invasion to be over in days. After nearly five months, the risk is the war settles into a pattern that lasts for years. That may mean ambitious postwar reconstruction plans remain just that — plans.” Read more at Bloomberg
The destroyed Community Art Center in Lysychansk on June 17. Photographer: Aris Messinis/AFP/Getty Images
“The ‘American Cancer Society of Michigan,’ state authorities say, was a fake charity. And not even a good fake.
It was not in Michigan, for one thing. When the group applied to the Internal Revenue Service to become a tax-exempt nonprofit in 2020, it listed its address as a rented mailbox on Staten Island. It was not the American Cancer Society, either: In fact, the real American Cancer Society had already warned the I.R.S. that the leader of the sound-alike group, Ian Hosang, was running a fraud.
The I.R.S. approved the group anyway. Soon after, it also approved another operation run by Mr. Hosang: ‘the United Way of Ohio,’ which was also registered to the Staten Island address.
Mr. Hosang, 63, is now accused by prosecutors in New York of operating a long-running charity fraud that has astounded nonprofit regulators and watchdogs — and raised concerns about the I.R.S.’s ability to serve as gatekeeper for the American charity system.
Not because the alleged scheme was so good.
Because it was terrible. And it worked.
Mr. Hosang — a convicted stock-market fraudster once accused of dangling a man out of a building — got the I.R.S. to approve 76 nonprofits, often despite glaring red flags of potential fraud. His operations stole the names of better-known charities. They claimed to be located where they obviously were not.
But the I.R.S. kept saying yes. And in doing so, the agency has attracted scrutiny of its new fast-track system for approving charities — an innovation implemented to deal with backlogs and budget cuts that now denies only one application in 2,400, according to agency statistics.
‘Nobody’s watching the store,’ said Nina E. Olson, who was the I.R.S.’s in-house national taxpayer advocate from 2001 to 2019 and warned repeatedly about the decreased level of vetting. ‘They’re the gatekeeper to this whole universe of charitable subsidies. And if the I.R.S. is not doing its job as a gatekeeper, then you’ve got real problems.’
The agency declined to answer questions about Mr. Hosang’s case, citing taxpayer privacy laws. It also declined to make officials available for in-person interviews, but it released a written statement saying that the fast-track approval system ‘continues to reduce taxpayer burden and increase cost effectiveness of I.R.S. operations.’” Read more at New York Times
The Field's shopping centre in the Danish capital remained closed on Monday after Sunday’s shooting. Photograph: Mads Claus Rasmussen/AP
“A shooting at a Copenhagen shopping centre in which three people were killed and four others seriously wounded was not terror-related, Danish police have said.
Søren Thomassen, Copenhagen’s chief police inspector, said the gunman, a 22-year-old Danish man who confessed to the shooting on Sunday night, had apparently picked his victims at random when he opened fire at the Field’s shopping centre on Sunday afternoon.
The dead include a 17-year-old boy, a 17-year-old girl, and a 47-year-old Russian man who lived in Denmark.
At least four people were injured in the attack, including a 19-year-old and a 40-year-old from Denmark, as well as a 50-year-old and a 16-year-old, from Sweden.” Read more at The Guardian
“ROME (AP) — Some 17 people remain unaccounted for a day after a huge chunk of an Alpine glacier broke off and slammed into hikers in northern Italy, officials said Monday.
At least six people have been killed after being caught in an avalanche sparked by the collapse of a glacier in the northern Italian Alps.
Emergency officials said nine others were injured in the collapse, with two people suffering serious injuries.
Rescue teams using helicopters and drones have been working through the night searching for 19 still missing.
Video of the incident showed an ice mass collapsing down the slopes of Marmolada, the area's highest mountain.
‘An avalanche of snow, ice and rock which in its path hit the access road when there were several roped parties, some of which were swept away,’ emergency services spokeswoman Michela Canova said. ‘The definitive number of mountaineers involved is not yet known,’ she added.
The injured hikers, including one person left in critical condition, were taken to several hospitals around the area, rescue officials said.” Read more at BBC
“New Zealand has declared the Proud Boys, the far-right American group that played a key role in the deadly storming of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, to be a terrorist organization, making it illegal for New Zealanders to participate in or support its activities.
There was no evidence that the group was operating in New Zealand, but its activity has been observed in Australia and Canada, which designated the group a terrorist organization last year.
New Zealand’s prime minister can designate groups terrorist entities if they have carried out at least one terrorist act, and the government believed the Proud Boys’ involvement in the Jan. 6 attack was ‘consistent with the definition of a terrorist act,’ it said in a statement from June 20. It said that the group’s ‘extreme right-wing ideology was founded on racist and fascist principles’ and that it had shown a consistent fondness for violence.” Read more at New York Times
“Shifting mood | A year before Britain handed Hong Kong back to China, then-President Jiang Zemin hailed the “one country, two systems” plan for the city as a model for China to one day unify with Taiwan. For Taipei, though, the proposal has never been an option. Making Xi Jinping’s task even harder is a drastic shift in the consensus in Taiwan against any form of integration, given its growing sense of nationhood and the Communist Party’s crackdown on dissent in Hong Kong.
China is racing to quash a new Covid-19 flareup that risks spilling over into one of its most economically significant regions, raising the specter of disruptions that could roil global supply chains for solar panels, medicines and semiconductor chips.
Unknown hackers claimed to have stolen data on as many as a billion Chinese residents after breaching a Shanghai police database, in what industry experts are calling the largest cybersecurity breach in the country’s history.” Read more at Bloomberg
Residents line up for Covid tests in Suqian city, Jiangsu Province, on Saturday. Photographer: Future Publishing/Future Publishing
“More sleaze | UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson is facing opposition calls to explain what he knew about allegations surrounding a disgraced Conservative lawmaker who was suspended from the party last week, the latest scandal to wash over his premiership. At issue is Johnson’s decision to name Chris Pincher to the post of deputy chief whip in February, despite the MP quitting a similar role in 2017 amid prior allegations he had made unwanted sexual advances to a former Olympic rower.
The poorest families in the UK have been left ‘brutally exposed’ to the cost of living crunch after almost two decades of income stagnation, the Resolution Foundation think tank warned.” Read more at Bloomberg
“Japan’s ruling coalition is set to win a majority in Sunday’s election for the upper house of parliament, with the opposition failing to pick up support from voters worried about rising prices, polling shows.” Read more at Bloomberg
“French President Emmanuel Macron shuffled his cabinet after losing his outright majority in parliament last month but made few changes, in a sign he’s failed to convince major opposition figures to join his coalition.” Read more at Bloomberg
“A Chinese-Canadian tycoon who was seized at a Hong Kong hotel five years ago and has lost much of his business empire to the Chinese government is going on trial today. The Wall Street Journal reported earlier that Xiao Jianhua would be charged with illegally collecting funds from the public.” Read more at Bloomberg
“Presidents of West Africa’s regional bloc agreed yesterday to lift sanctions on Mali after the nation’s military leaders agreed to a return to democracy by 2024.” Read more at Bloomberg
“Chile is today due to submit a draft of its new constitution, the signature policy of President Gabriel Boric, two months before a referendum to approve it.” Read more at Bloomberg
Kellogg's will not be allowed to promote sugary cereals in supermarket special offers, a court has ruled.
“In-store promotions on food and drink high in fat, salt or sugar will be restricted under new rules for England.
Food giant Kellogg's had taken the government to court arguing the rules did not take into account the nutritional value of added milk.
But the Royal Courts of Justice ruled in favour of the government. Kellogg's said it was ‘disappointed’.
‘It makes little sense to us that consumers will be able to buy other products, like donuts and chocolate spreads, on promotion - but not many types of breakfast cereals,’ said Kellogg UK managing director, Chris Silcock.
The new rules were due to start in October but have been delayed by the government due to the cost of living crisis.
When they do kick in, it will mean foods deemed high in fat, sugar or salt will be banned from special offers and prime spots like checkouts, store entrances, aisle ends and their online equivalents.” Read more at BBC
“WIMBLEDON, England (AP) — LOOKAHEAD TO MONDAY
There’s no more ‘Manic Monday’ at Wimbledon, although there will be plenty of intriguing fourth-round matchups nonetheless. Nick Kyrgios will be first out on Centre Court, trying to follow up his win over Stefanos Tsitsipas by beating American Brandon Nakashima, who has reached the fourth round of a Grand Slam for the first time. Second-seeded Rafael Nadal will face Botic van de Zandschulp of the Netherlands later. Simona Halep, the only former Grand Slam champion remaining in the women’s draw, faces fourth-seeded Paula Badosa, also on Centre Court. Amanda Anisimova tries to follow up her win over Coco Gauff by beating Harmony Tan, the Frenchwoman who ousted Serena Williams in the first round. Before play on middle Sunday was introduced this year, the second Monday usually featured all 16 men’s and women’s fourth-round matches.” Read more at AP News
A new species of giant water lily has been discovered - and it’s been hiding in plain sight for 177 years.
“The huge plant had been in the archives of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew and was growing in a number of aquatic collections but it was mistakenly identified as another species.
Now a detailed scientific study has revealed that it is new to science.
It also holds the record as the world's largest water lily, with leaves growing more than 3m (10ft) wide.
The plant has been called Victoria boliviana - named after Bolivia, where it grows in a single water basin in part of the Amazon river system.” Read more at BBC
“BOSTON (AP) — A letter written by Alexander Hamilton in 1780 and believed stolen decades ago from the Massachusetts state archives is going back on display — though not exactly in the room where it happened.
The founding father’s letter will be the featured piece at the Commonwealth Museum’s annual July Fourth exhibit, Secretary of the Commonwealth William Galvin’s office says. It’s the first time the public is getting a chance to see it since it was returned to the state after a lengthy court battle.
It will be featured alongside Massachusetts’ original copy of the Declaration of Independence.
Hamilton, the first Secretary of the Treasury who’s been getting renewed attention in recent years because of the hit Broadway musical that bears his name, wrote the letter to the Marquis de Lafayette, the French aristocrat who served as a general in the Continental Army.
Dated July 21, 1780, it details an imminent British threat to French forces in Rhode Island.
‘We have just received advice from New York through different channels that the enemy are making an embarkation with which they menace the French fleet and army,’ Hamilton wrote. ‘Fifty transports are said to have gone up the Sound to take in troops and proceed directly to Rhode Island.’” Read more at AP News
A drag queen holds a ‘Drag Queen Story Hour’ on 25 June, in Raleigh, North Carolina. The events have become a main target for rightwing ire. Photograph: Allison Joyce/AFP/Getty Images
The drag queens were out in force across New York’s recent Pride parade triggering cheers and waves with their flamboyant and extravagant costumes.
But this year the world of American drag has been marred by growing fears of violence and intimidation as they have been specifically targeted by conservatives and extremist far-right and militia groups amid a general rise in anti-LGBTQ hate.
One of the main targets for rightwing ire has been Drag Queen Story Hour events where drag queens will read books to children at public libraries.
Three weeks ago at a reading in a library in San Lorenzo, 30 miles from San Francisco, a group of men, one wearing a T-shirt stenciled with the image of an assault rifle, interrupted a drag performer reading The Kindness Book to pre-schoolers, frightening all.
Authorities said at least five men who appeared in the black and yellow uniform aligned with the extremist Proud Boy group hurled homophobic and transphobic slurs at the story hour’s performer, Panda Dulce, who later said the interruption was ‘a brazen act of vitriolic intimidation’. The incident is being investigated as a hate crime.
Members of the same organisation – designated a hate group by The Southern Poverty Law Group – also disrupted a Pride story-time event in South Carolina where kids were being read Daddy and Dada and Heather Has Two Mommies. One parent was told they were a child abuser.
Last week a drag event at a California bar, Mojos, was cancelled after protestors yelling homophobic abuse sought to enter the premises.
The pattern of intimidation, in cases not limited to the intimidation of drag queens, comes as Pride month itself has become a target for rightwing extremists in the US. Recently in Idaho a group of far-right Patriot Front extremists were arrested amid fears they intended to attack a Pride march in the state.
Drag queens themselves, however, are standing their ground.
‘The drag queen story hour is super important for kids,’ said Diamante Habibi, a drag queen working the door at New York’s Stonewall Inn. ‘You need a creative person to bring an imaginative state to the kids and we’re able to do that in a way that’s safe for them and entertaining for everyone.’
Habibi added: ‘They’re afraid of the stigma of what a draq queen is, which in their in their minds is over-sexualization and sexual puns. But we know how to work with audiences. ‘What’s for the 21 and plus is for 21 and plus, what’s for children is for children.’
Drag performance has long served as popular entertainment and is largely understood as such. RuPaul’s Drag Race TV show finished its fourteenth season in April, with the recent premiere being the most watched for several seasons. The winner was Willow Pill, who became the first transgender ontestant to win the main contest. And it was RuPaul who famously remarked: ‘You’re born naked and the rest is drag.’
In fact, because of the longstanding mainstreaming of drag culture in the US, some of the recent rightwing critics have been outed for their hypocrisy on the issue.
A Phoenix-area drag queen named Barbra Seville recently busted Kari Lake, a Trump-endorsed frontrunner for the Republican nomination in Arizona’s governor’s race, for being an enthusiastic patron of drag performance – even while publicly denouncing the after-school reading program.
‘They kicked God out of schools and welcomed the Drag Queens,’ Lake hadtweeted . ‘They took down our Flag and replaced it with a rainbow.’ Lake went on to talk up her back-to-basics platform: ‘God, Guns & Glory.’ In later posts, she accused drag queens of ‘grooming’ children.
But Seville called Lake a ‘complete hypocrite’ by revealing the politician had long been a frequenter of drag shows herself, including with family.
‘She’s friends with drag queens. She’s had her kid in front of a drag queen,’ she told the Arizona Republic. ‘I’ve done drag in her home for her friends and family. She would come to shows constantly.’
But the exposure of Lake is unlikely to stem a rising tide of anti-drag queen rhetoric, and more broadly anti-LGBTQ sentiment, that frequently sinks into wild conspiracy theories around child abuse and even satanic rituals, reminiscent of the QAnon conspiracy movement .
Between Lake’s persona; enthusiasm for drag acts and her public disavowal of drag in schools is an ocean of anti-LGBTQ hate across the country, with far-right forums describing Pride marches as satanic rituals, and each energizing extremists toward expressions of denunciation.
And that is starting to drive mainstream, politics on the right.
Republican legislators in Arizona recently announced they would seek to bar minors from drag shows in the state. Meanwhile in Florida, governor Ron DeSantis – who is a rising figure in the Trumpist movement, has said he might urge the state’s child protective services to investigate parents who take their children to drag shows.
Lady Bunny, the famous drag queen founder of the annual Wigstock festival, New York’s pre-eminent drag event, believes drag queens will be able to withstand the latest hysteria.
‘They’ve been focusing on drag queens for a while, and whereas someone like me can say, ‘Oh drag is on TV and in movies, enhanced opportunities,’ these people see this as something unhealthy that’s being pushed on children as family-friendly. So we have to debate them, and make our stance clear,’ she said.
She also believes that the issue of Drag Queen Story Hour, and much else besides, is often used as a distraction by Republicans while important issues like anti-discrimination legislation, housing rights and universal healthcare, is sidelined.
Meanwhile, she, and many other drag queens in the US, will continue to do what they do best, whether in a nightlife venue or a classroom: fighting against prejudice of what they actually do and stand for.
‘I can’t pretend that coming from nightclubs at 2am where I do salacious, outrageous stuff is the vibe you want in a classroom. [But] I don’t think it’s the vibe most story hour performers give in the classrooms,’ she says.” Read more at The Guardian
Adele performing in London on Friday – her first live show in five years. Photograph: Gareth Cattermole/Getty Images for Adele
Adele has spoken of her grief and guilt over the loss of her high-profile Las Vegas residency, which she cancelled at the last minute in January, disappointing fans who had paid thousands of pounds to travel and attend.
‘I was a shell of a person for a couple of months,’ the singer reveals in a radio interview. ‘I just had to wait it out and just grieve it, I guess, just grieve the shows and get over the guilt, but it was brutal.’
Her comments come on the heels of her concerts on Friday and Saturday in London – the first time she has performed live in five years. Ambushed by emotion at points during the performances, the singer let the crowd of 65,000 know that new US dates would be announced ‘very, very soon’.
Now Adele, born Adele Adkins, tells the host of Desert Island Discs, Lauren Laverne, that she needed to deal privately with the aftermath of her decision to axe the residency. ‘The show was not good enough. Maybe my silence has been deadly, I don’t know. But it was horrible,’ she said.” Read more at The Guardian
“Lives Lived: Vladimir Zelenko received national attention in 2020 when the White House embraced his hydroxychloroquine regimen. He died at 48.” Read more at New York Times
“Bruce Katz, who with his father started the Rockport Shoe Company in 1971 and established walking shoes as a vibrant footwear category, died on June 26 in Greenbrae, Calif. He was 75.
His brother, Roger, said he died in a hospital from complications of a fall at his home in Mill Valley.
In the late 1970s Mr. Katz developed a comfortable, casual shoe that became the foundation of Rockport’s business. The company was a pioneer in the use of features like cushioned, removable orthotics — or foot beds, as they are also called — to provide internal comfort and structure.” Read more at New York Times
Families went bananas for Minions this weekend at the movie theater. ‘Minions: The Rise of Gru’ brought in an estimated $108.5 million in ticket sales from 4,391 screens in North America, Universal Pictures said Sunday. By the end of the Monday’s July Fourth holiday, it will likely have earned over $127.9 million.
The film is on track to become one of the biggest openings ever for a July Fourth holiday weekend, a record previously held by ‘Transformers: Dark of the Moon’ which made $115.9 million in its first four days in 2011. Including international showings, where ‘Minions: The Rise of Gru’ is playing in 61 markets, its worldwide gross is sitting at $202.2 million through Sunday.” Read more at AP News