Sharon Osbourne Admits to Drugging Ozzy
Sharon Osbourne says she drugged Ozzy to find out more on the affairs
Video via Loudwire
Babysitter rapes 5-year-old girl, shoots air pistol at officers during ensuing chase, police say
GREEN, Ohio — An Ohio man has been arrested after allegedly admitting to sexually assaulting a 5-year-old girl he was babysitting.
Sage Smerk, 18, faces charges of rape and failure to obey an order of a police officer, according to the Summit County Sheriff’s Office.
The child’s mother came home and found that her daughter and 2-year-old son had been left alone for two hours by Smerk, who was babysitting, according to a press release.
She called Smerk and asked why he left the children unattended. He then allegedly admitted to sexually assaulting the 5-year-old girl.
Deputies found Smerk driving on Mayfair Road and attempted to stop him. He failed to stop and fled toward North Canton, according to police.
During the pursuit, Smerk fired an air pistol out the window of his vehicle at patrol deputies and ran several intersections before he stopped and was arrested.
According to Summit County Jail documents, he was issued $300,000 bond. Additional charges are pending.
Black Harvard doctor accuses flight attendants of discrimination
A black doctor from Boston says she was racially profiled when flight attendants grilled her over her credentials while she assisted a sick passenger.
Dr. Fatima Cody Stanford was on a flight home from Indianapolis on Tuesday when she noticed the woman next to her was hyperventilating. Stanford – who is a physician at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital – was already aiding the passenger when a flight attendant stopped by and asked Stanford if she was a doctor, CNN reported.
Stanford told the flight attendant that she was a doctor, but a second flight attendant then came by and asked for Stanford’s medical license, which Stanford presented.
Stanford claims that both flight attendants came back a third time to ask her if her medical license truly belonged to her. Stanford believes the flight attendants questioned her credentials because she is a black woman.
“I don’t understand why there was a dialogue there,” Stanford told the Boston Globe. “I showed them my license twice, and they still didn’t believe it was mine. None of that was taken into account, and I thought that was quite frustrating.”
Stanford tweeted about the incident, prompting the airline to reach out to her by email on Wednesday morning.
“@delta I am very disappointed that your policies on #Diversity have not lead to any change. As a #blackwoman #doctor who showed my #medical license to help a passenger on DL5935 your #flightattendant still did not believe I was a #Physician. @DrSinhaEsq @DrKathyHughes,” Stanford tweeted.
“@Delta my experience last night when a fellow passenger needed help shows that being a @harvardmed @MassGeneralMDs does not shield from #racism #WhatADoctorLooksLike #ILookLikeADoctor #ILookLikeASurgeon #BiasInMedicine #implicitbias #BlackWomenDoctors do exist,” Stanford wrote in a second tweet.
Stanford said she’s still not convinced Delta made any changes to its policy following a conversation with the airline about the bizarre encounter. Delta reportedly told her the flight attendants mistook her for a therapist.
“So I spoke with @Delta and I left the conversation quite uncertain that any changes will be made. Summary: flight attendants thought I was a #therapist despite #MDlicense. They will make sure this is addressed. Thanks for being a #skymiles member. Really?!$ #iamadoctor,” she tweeted.
Delta apologized to Stanford in a statement and said it would conduct a full investigation.
“We thank Dr. Stanford for her medical assistance and are sorry for any misunderstanding that may have occurred during her exchange with the in-flight crew,” the airline said in a statement.
“According to the flight crew’s account, they initially misread the credentials offered by the doctor and went to reconfirm her specific medical discipline. We are following up with the crew to insure proper policy is followed.”
Delta’s request for medical credentials violates a policy implemented in 2016, after Dr. Tamika Cross, who is also black, was kept from helping a sick passenger on a Delta flight from Detroit to Minneapolis.
Delta no longer requires medical credential verification to secure help and simply requires the volunteer’s statement that he or she is a doctor, physician assistant, nurse, paramedic or EMT.
Delta spokesman Anthony L. Black told The Post that Stanford was actually on board a Republic flight, which is a Delta Connection carrier.
“We thank Dr. Stanford for her medical assistance onboard Republic flight 5935 IND-BOS, and are sorry for any misunderstanding that may have occurred during her exchange with the in-flight crew. Moving forward, we are following up with our connection carrier partner to ensure their employees understand and consistently apply the policy, ” Black said in an emailed statement on Thursday.
“Regardless of aircraft, all customers are Delta customers and we are committed to ensuring they enjoy a similar experience on every flight. Delta changed its policy for providing medical credentials in 2016, and we are working with all of our connection partners to ensure their changes and actions align with ours,” the statement continued.
Article via HotNewHipHop
Brace yourselves: Ads in WhatsApp are coming
- WhatsApp confirmed it would soon include ads in the app.
- The ads will live in the Status section, which Facebook claims has over 450 million daily active users.
- Facebook’s native advertising system will likely power WhatsApp’s ads.
For almost 10 years, WhatsApp defied the odds and staunchly rejected placing advertisements in the app. Unfortunately, WhatsApp vice-president Chris Daniels confirmed with Outlook India that the messaging service’s opposition to ads would soon come to an end.
According to Daniels, WhatsApp will place ads in the Status section. This is the section that takes more than a few inspirations from Instagram Stories and lets you share text, photos, videos, and GIFs. After 24 hours, any content you put in the Status section disappears.
Daniels added that ads in the Status section would be the “primary monetization mode for the company as well as an opportunity for businesses to reach people on WhatsApp.” Daniels did not say when WhatsApp users can expect to see ads in the app or whether the messaging service has plans for additional revenue streams. Facebook’s native advertising system would reportedly serve as the backbone for ads in WhatsApp.
Regardless of how sad this news makes me, I cannot pretend to be surprised. Ever since Facebook scooped up WhatsApp for a cool $19 billion, it was only a matter of time until ads made their way to the messaging service. This was something that WhatsApp co-founder Brian Acton felt uncomfortable with up until his departure from the company in November 2017.
“I sold my users’ privacy to a larger benefit. I made a choice and a compromise. I live with that every day,” said Acton in an interview with Forbes. He also said that Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg wanted to monetize WhatsApp with targeted ads, which led to Acton leaving the company he co-founded.
We can presume that the targeted ads will not compromise WhatsApp’s end-to-end encryption and collect data from the app directly. Even so, targeted ads in the messaging service will probably arrive sometime next year.
Article via AndroidAuthority
Just try to be offended by the new Starbucks holiday cups
Starbucks seems to be awfully cautious about this year’s holiday cups, which debut annually after Halloween. The company has released new holiday cup lines since 1997, and this year’s four new cups appear to wholly embrace the “season”—whatever that completely inoffensive “season” is—with a lineup of red-striped; green argyle; red-and-white sweaterish pattern; and holly-and-berries cups. Nondenominational, seasonal, neutral. We get it.
It’s quite a pendulum swing back from the plain red cups of 2015, or the festive, multicultural mural motif of last year (inspiring our all-time favorite Takeout headline from Jen Sabella: “Pry this lesbian Starbucks cup from my cold, dyke hands”). For 2018, Starbucks appears to be striving for a lukewarm medium: more festive than the sacrilegiously plain (according to some) red ones, but no hints toward multiculturalism as on last year’s cup. Argyle patterns and coffee cherries are about as non-controversial as you can get.
No matter what, though, we’re sure that somehow these cups will inspire some sort of backlash to kick off the season. It’s becoming as much an annual tradition as watching Elf every year.
Article via TheTakeout
Carly Rae Jepsen’s Joyous New Single Celebrates Self-Love and “Self-Love”
Carly Rae Jepsen is the “queen” of many things, from Japanese shampoo commercials to preserving our sanity in troubled times. Now we can add songs about masturbation to the ever-growing list of accomplishments that Jepsen has dominion over. On Thursday, the pop star released a new single, “Party for One,” which she said in a statement is “an anthem of what it is to celebrate time with yourself, which is a hard thing for people to really enjoy sometimes, and it’s something I’m learning to do more and more.” Sure enough, the lyrics are a tribute to singledom and self-affirmation:
Party for one
If you don’t care about me
I’ll just dance for myself
Back on my beat
I’ll be the one
If you don’t care about me
Making love to myself
Back on my beat
There are many songs about self-love that also sound like they’re about, y’know, self-love.(Looking at you, “Love Myself.”) But in the case of “Party for One,” that innuendo isn’t confined to the lyrics. The music video, directed by Bardia Zeinali, features Jepsen at a hotel surfing TV channels and encountering a suggestive ad for the “confidential, easy, fast” hotline 1-800-PARTY-4-1. The rest of the video follows Jepsen and a variety of other singles staying at the same hotel in various states of undress: lying on the bed in their underwear, eating naked in the bathtub, and, in the case of one old woman in lingerie, pulling sex toys out of a bag and holding them aloft like they’re Simba in The Lion King.
Jepsen also announced that she has a new album coming out next year, her first since 2015’s Emotion. In the interim, Jepsen has collaborated with the likes of Bleachers and Charli XCX and put out another single of her own, “Cut to the Feeling.”
Article via Slate
Harvey Weinstein accused of sexually assaulting 16-year-old virgin
An aspiring actress says she was a 16-year-old virgin when disgraced movie mogul Harvey Weinstein sexually assaulted her in New York, according to an amended Manhattan federal racketeering lawsuit filed Wednesday.
The woman, a former model from Poland identified only as Jane Doe in the court papers, said that after agreeing to meet for a business lunch in 2002, Weinstein instead took her to his Soho apartment.
“…Weinstein wasted no time in aggressively and threateningly demanding sex,” the suit alleges. He told the distraught starlet that if she wanted to be an actress she had to give in to his perverted desires.
“Weinstein threatened and pressured Jane Doe, saying that he had ‘made’ the careers of Penelope Cruz and Gwyneth Paltrow, and that neither would be working without him,” the suit alleges.
“He then took off his pants and forcibly held Jane Doe while taking her hand and making her touch and massage his penis,” the filing states.
Weinstein allegedly became enraged when the terrified teen objected and refused to let her leave — but eventually relented, the suit says.
The underage catwalker had just met Weinstein three days earlier at a soiree for her modeling agency Next.
After picking her up in his car for what she thought was a business lunch, she told him she was only 16, the papers say.
The pervy producer pursued the model for the next decade, getting her an extra role in the “Nanny Diaries” in 2004 — but she continued to resist his demands for sex.
In a 2008 after-hours meeting in his Greenwich Street office to arrange for her to sign with the modeling agency Marilyn, Weinstein spotted Christina Aguilera on a nearby TV and allegedly said, “‘Wow, I’d really like to f—k that p—-y’ then unzipped his pants and began touching his penis,” the filing states. Jane Doe fled the room.
But later she continued to discuss her career with Weinstein, including trying out for “Project Runway.”
Weinstein “ensured she never received work” because she refused to hop into bed with him, she alleges. The abuse and harassment left her depressed and exacerbated her anorexia, the suit says.
She is the 10th victim to join the class action lawsuit against Weinstein, the Weinstein Company and Miramax, accusing them of assault, battery and racketeering.
The women all claim that Weinstein lured them to hotels and auditions under the guise of furthering their careers and sexually assaulted or raped them.
The suit, filed by firm Hagens Berman, says that the companies, which it calls the “Weinstein Sexual Enterprise,” were aware of the producer’s alleged illegal conduct and enabled it by threatening victims and paying them off.
In September, a federal judge instructed three women — Melissa Thompson, Caitlin Dulany and Larissa Gomez — to consolidate their suit with six other class-action plaintiffs —Louisette Geiss, Katherine Kendall, Zoe Brock, Sarah Ann Thomas, Melissa Sagemiller and Nannette Klatt.
The new complaint, filed Wednesday, added plaintiff Jane Doe, describing her disturbing allegations for the first time.
Weinstein’s civil lawyer, Elior Shiloh, declined to comment.
“This claim is preposterous,” said Weinstein’s criminal lawyer Ben Brafman. “Like so many other women in this case who have already been exposed as liars, this latest completely uncorroborated allegation that is almost 20 years old will also be shown to be patently false.”
Article via PageSix
‘Better Call Saul’ actor admits he cut off his own arm and lied about being a wounded vet
A New Mexico-based actor who has appeared in AMC’s “Better Call Saul,” the western TV drama “Longmire” and the 2009 movie “The Men Who Stare at Goats” says he cut off his own arm and pretended to be a wounded veteran in hopes of furthering his acting career.
In a video interview with Albuquerque’s KOB-4 TV, Todd Lawson Latourette, who is bipolar, said he was off his medications and in the midst of a psychotic episode 17 years ago when he cut off his right forearm with a Skilsaw and cauterized it himself.
“I don’t want to say the word ‘insanity’ because the mentally ill – we’re so far from insane,” he said tearfully of his mental state at the time. “We are your brothers, your mothers, your sisters. And we hurt.”
Latourette later fashioned his own prosthetic forearm and hand. He also began lying about the cause of his disability, saying he sustained the wound in combat. It worked, he insisted. Casting directors started booking him for roles.
“The film industry obviously took a different angle,” he recalled. “That I was different. And so they liked that.”
He added, “They trusted me that I was exactly who I said I was, that I was a war veteran. I was hired because I lied.”
According to IMDB, Latourrette’s first role was in the 2002 horror film “Unspeakable,” starring Dennis Hopper. He also appeared in the 2008 Toby Keith movie “Beer for My Horses,” and the following year, he was onscreen again in the George Clooney film “The Men Who Stare at Goats.” His most recent role was during the fifth episode of the current season of the Albuquerque-based “Breaking Bad” spinoff “Better Call Saul.”
But the lie weighed on him to the point where he felt had to come clean.
“It’s been so difficult to live with,” he told the TV station. “It’s been years since I told that lie.”
“I was dishonorable. I’m killing my career by doing this,” he acknowledged, adding that he doesn’t expect his admission to be met with forgiveness. “If anyone thinks this was for personal edification, that’s not the case. I’m ousting myself from the New Mexico film industry. And gladly so, just to say what I’ve said.”
Latourette says he hopes he can serve as a cautionary tale for other people with bipolar disorder.
“The power is in your hands to take that medication in the morning and at night so that this discourse of my life doesn’t necessarily need to be yours. Because it happens quick.”
Article via USAToday
Stephen Curry Named Executive Producer on Charleston Church Shooting Documentary
Stephen Curry‘s company, Unanimous Media, has received a producer credit in a documentary about the 2015 church shooting in Charleston, South Carolina.
Per Variety‘s Todd Spangler, the Golden State Warriors star is an executive producer on the project, entitled Emanuel.
Curry launched Unanimous Media in April and agreed to a multiyear deal with Sony Pictures to produce content for television and movies.
Emanuel chronicles the events of June 17, 2015, when Dylann Roof shot and killed nine people at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church. The movie premiered earlier this year at the Bentonville Film Festival and will screen later this month at the DOC NYC festival.
Article via BleacherReport
