Hollywood star Jada Pinkett Smith has posted a never-before-seen poem written for her by deceased rapper Tupac Shakur, who would have turned 50 on Wednesday. The pair were close friends, and Pinkett Smith uploaded a video showing the poem to her Instagram account. “Tupac Amaru Shakur would have been 50 midnight tonight! As we prepare
Continue Reading
As always, June is a-jostle with corporations revealing their Pride-themed initiatives, but one US airline has gone a little further than the usual rainbow-decked Instagram post. Alaska Airlines debuted its Pride plane on Tuesday, truly nailing its colors to the mast — or decals to the fuselage. The Airbus A320’s new livery has “Fly with
Continue Reading A Canadian businessman and his wife pleaded guilty Wednesday to violating quarantine requirements after flying to a small indigenous town in the Yukon territory and allegedly posing as local workers to receive the Covid-19 vaccine. Rodney Baker, the former president and CEO of the Great Canadian Gaming Corporation, and his wife Ekaterina Baker pleaded guilty
Continue Reading
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
Continue Reading
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
Continue Reading Talk about a collaboration. The Killers and Bruce Springsteen have joined forces on a new track called “Dustland.” It is a remake of The Killers’ 2008 song “A Dustland Fairytale,” written as a tribute to the lead singer’s parents. Brandon Flowers, the frontman of The Killers, told Rolling Stone that Springsteen has greatly influenced him
Continue Reading Caves, often their deepest reaches, were humanity’s first art galleries, where early artists produced star maps, hunting scenes and friezes of ice age animals. However, caves weren’t great studio spaces — there is no natural light and humans can’t see in the dark. And while some art is found at cave entrances and under rock
Continue Reading
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
Continue Reading
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
Continue Reading
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
Continue Reading
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.
Continue Reading
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
Continue Reading It’s late afternoon in Santa Elena Canyon — a 19-mile gorge that separates Big Bend National Park in West Texas and three national parks in Mexico — and we’re setting up camp along a remote stretch of the Rio Grande. We came across two other canoe groups this morning, but they were day trippers. The
Continue Reading
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
Continue Reading It’s late afternoon in Santa Elena Canyon — a 19-mile gorge that separates Big Bend National Park in West Texas and three national parks in Mexico — and we’re setting up camp along a remote stretch of the Rio Grande. We came across two other canoe groups this morning, but they were day trippers. The
Continue Reading
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
Continue Reading Filled with nerves, I intentionally left my bikini behind before embarking on my first nudist beach experience on the uninhabited Lokrum Island in Croatia. This was the only way I could be sure that the fear of baring it all in front of strangers wouldn’t cause me to back out at the last minute. After
Continue Reading
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
Continue Reading
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
Continue Reading
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
Continue Reading