Entertainment

Rita Moreno is standing by her good friend Lin-Manuel Miranda. The actress appeared on “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” Tuesday night and spoke about the controversy surrounding Miranda’s new movie “In the Heights,” in which he has been criticized for featuring dark-skinned Afro-Latinos in background and dance scenes but not in main roles. “It’s

Franceli Chapman knows what Washington Heights looks like. The uptown Manhattan neighborhood where Lin-Manuel Miranda’s musical “In the Heights” takes place is where Chapman, an Afro-Latina actress with roots in the Dominican Republic, played on street corners as a child and where she hung out on rooftops as a teenager. Chapman cried when she saw

For decades, Gina Torres has carved out a career in Hollywood feeling like she couldn’t fully express herself. Now, the Afro-Latina actor is using her power to change that. The daughter of Cuban immigrants, Torres said there was a time when she had to audition for a role multiple times early in her career because

Fashion giant Zara is under fire after its head women’s designer, Vanessa Perilman, sent inflammatory messages to Palestinian model Qaher Harhash on Instagram. Harhash posts pro-Palestinian content on his Instagram account and it appears Perilman responded to a post via direct message last week. “Maybe if your people were educated then they wouldn’t blow up

It’s an arachnophobe’s worst nightmare: towns draped in spider webs. Residents of the Australian region of Gippsland in the state of Victoria were greeted with layers of gossamer cobwebs after the area was hit by severe flooding, according to CNN affiliate 9News. The Victoria State Emergency Service issued multiple flood warnings for the rural area

Whether at the Met Gala or in the pages of Vogue, Rihanna has never played it safe with her own fashion choices. But it’s not clear if fans of her lingerie line Savage X Fenty will be similarly brave when it comes to a pair of leggings that took the internet by storm this week.

The study of Jane Austen’s novels, many of them about 200 years old, is never complete. And neither is the excavation of the beloved author’s personal life. Austen’s personal values — namely, whether she supported slavery — have been debated by literary enthusiasts and experts who read her work like a cipher. A new discovery

Joe Jonas surprised a SoulCycle class that was playing his music while he was in Atlanta. The singer was visiting the city on business and had a free afternoon, so he checked out local exercise classes. He happened to find a “Jonas Brothers vs. One Direction” themed class at a nearby SoulCycle studio but it

After at times feeling like Lucy pulling the football away from Charlie Brown in terms of its narrative arc, “The Handmaid’s Tale” delivered a season finale that closed a key chapter while providing the central character, June, with what she has clearly craved from the outset of the latest season: Revenge. “A good mother would

US passport holders have more international travel options now than at any point during the Covid-19 pandemic. Total US cases are nearing the 33.5 million mark since the pandemic started, but the rate of new cases has been slowing down recently. The United States is one of the world leaders in vaccination rates and has

More than 15 months after becoming the first state in the US to implement a stay-at-home order due to the Covid-19 pandemic, California fully reopened its economy on Tuesday. That happened after more than 70% of eligible residents received at least one dose of the Covid-19 vaccine and new case rates have remained steadily below

California lifted most of its Covid-19 restrictions Tuesday as part of a grand reopening in which the state ended capacity limits, physical distancing and — at least for those vaccinated — mask requirements. The new health order went into effect and allows vaccinated people to go without a face covering in most situations, putting the

Southwest Airlines said it was “resuming normal operations” and investigating the cause of technical issues that paused departing flights Tuesday afternoon. The outage was the second technical issue in less than 24 hours, and the airline said it is “in the process of investigating the root cause of each event to determine the reason behind

Actress Lisa Banes, who appeared in numerous television series and films like “Gone Girl,” died Monday after suffering injuries sustained from being hit by a scooter in New York City earlier this month, the NYPD and a law enforcement official told CNN Tuesday. She was 65. “We are heartsick over Lisa’s tragic and senseless passing,”