Kobe Bryant killed in helicopter crash in Calabasas
Kobe Bryant died in a helicopter crash in Calabasas Sunday morning, Yahoo Sports confirmed. TMZ first reported the news.
Bryant played his entire 20-year career for the Los Angeles Lakers and won five NBA championships prior to retiring in 2016. He was named Finals MVP twice and league MVP in 2008. Bryant was 41.
The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department responded to reports of a helicopter that crashed into a hillside and caught fire, NBC Los Angeles reported. The crash was called in at 9:47 a.m. local time, per the report, and flames that spread a quarter acre were put out by 10:30. The fire department reported no survivors.
The helicopter, a Sikorsky S-76, crashed under unknown circumstances with five people on board, according to the Federal Aviation Administration. An investigation is ongoing.
Bryant and his wife, Vanessa, have four daughters: Gianna, Natalia, Bianca and Capri, who was born in June 2019.
Photo Credit: (Lintao Zhang/Getty Images) currently.att.yahoo.com
Arizona woman gets emergency surgery after vibrator gets stuck in her bladder
MESA, AZ ( 3TV/CBS 5) – An Arizona woman is recovering from surgery after getting a sex toy stuck in her bladder. It’s a case that stunned emergency room doctors and an OBGYN, and that woman spoke out to Arizona’s Family warning others about the product she used.
She’s asked we keep her name anonymous. Her pleasure turned to pain in an instant. “Every time it went off it was like my entire abdomen was vibrating,” the Mesa woman said.
She was talking about her new Vesper Vibrator Necklace by the company Crave. She wore the sex toy around her neck out to dinner with her boyfriend, then used it with him when they got home earlier this month. She was only using it on the outside of her body as intended.
“I moved and out of nowhere I just felt a really sharp pain,” she said. The vibrator was nowhere to be found. “Where is it? And he like…didn’t know,” she said, about the moment she and her boyfriend knew something was wrong.
But…she could still feel it. “First reaction was panic because I had just lost something inside of me that was still going off,” she said.
“Still vibrating?” asked reporter Briana Whitney. “Yes, still vibrating,” the woman confirmed. With the device still on, she went to the emergency room, where several doctors did pelvic exams, but with no success.
“The emergency room staff wasn’t able to find it in the vagina,” said OBGYN Dr. Greg Marchand. The emergency room staff called in Dr. Marchand to take a look, and he was shocked by what he found on the x-ray and inside her body.
“I was really surprised when I’m looking in the abdomen and realizing this device is actually in the bladder,” Dr. Marchand said. “I’ve never seen a case like this in my entire career.” They realized the device had actually entered her body through her urethra and went into her bladder, lodging itself sideways. They had to surgically remove it.
The woman plans on filing a lawsuit against the company for lack of warning on the label that this could happen even during normal use. She said the small and narrow design is dangerous, especially with a detachable chain. After her horrific vibrator experience, she said she’ll be taking it down a notch.
“Are you done using sex toys?” Whitney asked the woman. “Uh, probably. Yeah. Probably,” she said. Arizona’s Family reached out to the sex product company, Crave, for a response but had not heard back as of Friday night.
Photo Credit: azfamily
Second black Texas teen told by school to cut dreadlocks, according to his mom
A second teenager at a Texas high school was suspended and told he could not return to class until he cut his dreadlocks to be in compliance with the school’s dress code.
Kaden Bradford, 16, a sophomore at Barbers Hill High School in Mont Belvieu in Southeast Texas, has been on at-home suspension since last week, according to his mother, Cindy Bradford.
Kaden’s cousin, DeAndre Arnold, is a senior at the school and also wears dreadlocks. DeAndre was recently told by administrators that he is not allowed in school and cannot walk at his graduation unless he cut his hair, his mother, Sandy Arnold, told NBC affiliate KPRC of Houston. DeAndre, whose father is from Trinidad, said the men in his family often grow their dreadlocks, and that it is a part of his identity and culture.
Both women, who are sisters, said they will not cut the boys’ hair.
Bradford said in an interview Friday that like DeAndre, her son has worn dreadlocks for years and it only recently became an issue at the high school. Last year, Kaden would wear a headband to keep his dreadlocks off his shoulders, his mother said. The school told her that if Kaden kept his dreadlocks pulled back, he would not be in violation of its hair policy, she said.
But shortly after Christmas break, she said the school’s principal, Rick Kana, told Kaden that he would need to cut his hair. Bradford said she paid last week to have Kaden’s dreads cornrowed, or tightly-braided so that they lay flat against his scalp. But that did not appease administrators, who placed him on at-home suspension because he refused to cut his hair, his mother said.
She said she is now considering taking legal action so he can return to school.
Bradford said she believes the hair policy is racist. The school district dress code states male students cannot have their hair “gathered or worn in a style that would allow the hair to extend below” the collar, earlobes and eyes when let down.
Barbers Hill High School is predominantly white, according to school district data. African Americans made up 3.1 percent of the school district’s population in the 2017-18 school year.
The principal and Barbers Hill Independent School District superintendent, Greg Poole, did not return multiple requests for an interview.
In a statement posted on its Twitter account, the district said that it does allow dreadlocks. “However we DO have a community supported hair length policy & have had for decades,” the statement said. “BH is a State leader with high expectations in ALL areas!”
On Friday, Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., who announced the first federal legislation that would ban hair-based discrimination in December, expressed support for DeAndre and Kaden.
“Natural hair like dreadlocks is a reflection of culture & heritage,” he tweeted. “No one should be punished for expressing who they are. The CROWN Act would end this—hair discrimination is discrimination against black people.”
In December, Booker said the Create a Respectful and Open World for Natural Hair Act (CROWN) will make it clear that “discrimination based on natural and protective hairstyles associated with people of African descent” is a “prohibited form of racial or national origin discrimination.”
Houston Texans wide receiver DeAndre Hopkins, who has dreadlocks, also tweeted support Wednesday for DeAndre.
“Never cut your locks,” Hopkins said.
via: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/second-teen-suspended-over-dreadlocks-texas-school-n1122261
Photo Credit: Cindy Bradford
Mom upset after 9-year-old suspended over hair color
(WISN/CNN) — A mother said her 9-year-old daughter was suspended from her private school in Wisconsin because of the color of her braids.
Jalissa Taylor said her daughter, a fourth-grader at Hope Christian School in Racine, never received a warning from school administrators before the suspension.
“She came to me crying,” Taylor said. “This is a hairstyle she picked. It’s just one big braid, going in a circle with a little bit of color to it — and now it’s a distraction.”
The school sent a letter home Tuesday, saying the fourth-grader violated the dress code policy. Students cannot dye or change their hair color, and girls can only wear solid blue, black, gray or white headbands.
“I called the school and when they did answer the phone, I’m like, ‘Please work with me, let me know.’ Don’t wait ’till you gonna suspend my kid to come tell me, ‘Oh, she was doing this, she was doing that, and this is not appropriate.’ It’s like no one told me anything,” Taylor said.
The mom said this isn’t the first time her daughter has worn a colorful hairstyle to school, and school administrators said they have discussed the dress code with Taylor.
However, they did not confirm whether Taylor and her daughter received a warning.
Administrators told WISN-TV that “all concerns have been addressed.”
Photo Credit: kjct8.com
91-year-old man charged with rape of minor in Louisiana
SHREVEPORT, LA (KTBS) — A 91-year-old man has been arrested for allegedly sexually assaulting a juvenile, according to police in Louisiana.
Otis Allen was booked into the Shreveport City Jail Friday on a charge of first-degree rape. His bond is set at $250,000.
Shreveport police’s sex crimes investigators began looking into Allen in November after receiving a complaint about the alleged rape of a juvenile.
Allen was taken into custody by the U.S. Marshal’s Office and taken to Shreveport police for interviews. He was arrested afterward.
Photo Credit: KTBS
R. Kelly: Emergency Hernia Surgery … Can’t Make It to Court
Article via TMZ
R. Kelly missed a court date this week, but had a pretty good excuse — going under the knife … in an operating room, not his jail cell.
Sources close to Kelly tell TMZ … the singer was briefly taken outta MCC Chicago, and transported to a hospital earlier this week where doctors performed emergency surgery to repair a hernia. We’re told he was transported back to the big house after the procedure.
We don’t know how long of a hospital stay he had, but he was back in his jail cell by Thursday evening. We’re told he wasn’t allowed to have any visitors at the hospital.
Seems the hernia’s been plaguing Kelly for a while. His lawyer filed docs back in September, outlining several medical issues facing Kelly … including anxiety, numbness in one of his hands and the then-untreated hernia.
The Chicago Sun-Timesreports Kelly is getting pain meds now, and aside from missing the court date this week — he’s also MIA from jailhouse basketball games while he’s recovering.
Check out some Lovelyti videos:
R.Kelly’s ENABLERS give up Incriminating Video+Mathew speaks about Destiny’s Child Working W/RKelly
R. Kelly’s “Surviving Lies” facebook page shut down+ he’s now under Investigation in 2 states
Mister Cee & Social Media Call Out Dream Hampton for putting Charlamagne in the R. Kelly Doc.
Tinder adds a panic button for dates that go wrong
Tinder is following in Uber’s lead in adding in-app safety features for dates that become unsafe.
The dating app is adding new safety features, including a panic button that alerts safety authorities if something goes wrong during a date. Tinder has also added the ability to check-in, telling friends where the daters are.US users will receive the free new tools next Tuesday in a new section of the app called the Safety Center. Match, the dating conglomerate that owns Tinder, will roll out the new tools to its other US dating services later this year. The company also owns OkCupid, Hinge and the flagship Match.com.
The tools will be powered by Noonlight, a safety platform that Tinder made an investment in. Terms of the deal weren’t disclosed. To use the new Safety Center tools, users will have to also download Noonlight and enable the app’s location-tracking tools. Users’ dates information, such as location, will have to be manually entered into a new “Tinder Timeline” tool that can be shared with friends. If the user feels unsafe, they will have to open the Noonlight app and press a button that discreetly contacts Noonlight dispatchers. The dispatcher will first send them a text so they don’t have to vocally talk for help. If that’s unanswered, Noonlight will send a code and call them. If there are no answer, Noonlight will dispatch emergency services. The aim to let users ask for help without raising suspicions during the date. That’s why it’s panic tools are located within the Noonlight app.
Location-sharing apps have come under scrutiny recently for not selling users’ information to advertisers. Match won’t have access to Noonlight’s location data and Noonlight claims it doesn’t sell user data. Users can also switch off location services within the phone’s settings when they aren’t on dates.Tinder is also testing a new photo verification tool so users can ensure they’re talking to someone real before they go on the date. A user will have to submit picture certain poses. Tinder’s AI technology will compare those photos to previously submitted pictures. Profiles will have a check mark for those that complete the service. Tinder said the tool will become widely available later this year.Match said it’s the first dating company to integrate in this type of service. Dating apps and ride-hailing companies, like Uber (UBER) and Lyft (LYFT), have been blasted for putting users in unsafe positions. Both of those companies have rolled out similar so-called panic buttons and safety tools to address those concerns.
Article via CNN
Scientists discovered four new species of sharks that walk
So — some sharks walk. Just not the scary ones. While great whites haunt the deep, walking sharks are content to scuttle in the shallows.
They’ve been walking, or something close to it, for at least 9 million years. They’re evolutionary superstars, too: Walking sharks could be the most recently evolved shark on Earth. That’s according to findings published this week in Marine and Freshwater Research.
Shark scientists spent years sampling the DNA of the only known walking shark species to estimate when they evolved. They found four new species while they were at it.
The youngest species might’ve evolved less than 2 million years ago. And by evolutionary standards, that’s recent — and a major contradiction to the widely held belief that sharks are slow to evolve. “The discovery proves that modern sharks have remarkable evolutionary staying power and the ability to adapt to environmental changes,” said Mark Erdmann, the paper’s co-author and Conservation International Vice President of Asia-Pacific marine programs. Sharks are older than dinosaurs, dominating the seas for as long as 400 million years (the oldest dinosaur fossil is thought to be about 240 million years old, by comparison). So the fact that sharks continue to evolve as recently as 399 million years later is pretty remarkable.
How they walk and where they do it
Walking sharks, also called “epaulette” sharks for their spots that resemble the military decor, “walk” on their muscular fins to forage for small fish along shallow reefs and sea grass. It’s a behavior partially driven by changing sea levels and shifting landscapes, which ultimately influenced where most of the nine known species settled — eastern Indonesia and neighboring islands, New Guinea and parts of Australia. Based on differences in the sharks’ DNA, scientists created estimated evolutionary timelines. They found walking sharks started to split off from their evolutionary relatives around 9 million years ago.
This walking shark, which resides in a shallow ocean off New Guinea, uses his fins to “walk” along the sea floor in search of food. During mass extinction events, carpet sharks, the group that includes walking sharks, were among the “most affected” animals, researchers wrote. Sea levels rose and ocean temperatures dropped, pushing the sharks to migrate to warmer waters. Sharks off the coast of Australia “hitched a ride” on moving tectonic plates all the way to New Guinea, researchers said. When the plates stopped shifting, the land settled, creating barriers for species to migrate. This might be why the sharks’ habitat rarely overlap, they wrote.
Hope for walking sharks’ future
Erdman said the group hopes their research could encourage conservationists to add a few of the sharks to the IUCN Red List, a global inventory of threatened species, based on how little is known about them. “A global recognition of the need to protect walking sharks will help ensure they thrive providing benefits for marine ecosystems and to local communities through the sharks’ value as tourism assets,” he said. “It’s essential that local communities, governments and the international public continue working to establish marine protected areas to help ensure our ocean’s biodiversity continues to flourish.”
Article via CNN
Don Lemon’s assault accuser says CNN anchor a ‘liar and hypocrite’ with #MeToo coverage
The man suing CNN host Don Lemon for assault says his claim isn’t being taken seriously because it doesn’t fit the mainstream media’s #MeToo movement narrative.
Dustin Hice filed an explosive lawsuit against Lemon – who is openly gay — last year, accusing the “CNN Tonight” host of a sexually charged assault.
Hice told Fox News the alleged “vile, disgusting, lewd and inhumane” attack would be treated much differently if he were a woman.
“[Lemon] put his hand down the front of his own shorts, and vigorously rubbed his genitalia, removed his hand and shoved his index and middle fingers into Plaintiff’s mustache and under Plaintiff’s nose,” according to the lawsuit, filed Aug. 11, 2019 in Suffolk County Court.
Lemon offered a six-figure settlement before talks broke down and the formal complaint was filed, according to Hice.
“I’m not doing this for notoriety or fame, I’m doing this because I’m standing up for myself and what I believe in,” Hice told Fox News. “I’ve grown a new respect for people dealing with mental health issues because stress, depression, anxiety, those are all very serious things. It consumed my life.”
CNN did not respond to a series of questions from Fox News, including a request for comment regarding Hice’s claim that Lemon offered him a six-figure settlement.
Lemon was served with the complaint Wednesday. The case was moving to discovery, according to a source close to Hice’s legal team.
CNN did not immediately respond with a comment regarding the complaint being served.
Lemon, through CNN, previously vehemently denied Hice’s allegations, and has continued to host “CNN Tonight.”
“I’ve grown a little skeptical of the news after what’s happened to me, nobody acknowledges it anymore,” Hice said. “The hypocrisy, he is a black, gay, liberal and supposed #MeToo advocate but when it doesn’t fit their narrative, or it’s one of their own, they don’t even address it.”
Lemon allegedly asked a crude question about Hice’s sexual preference during the physical confrontation, leaving him “shocked and humiliated,” according to the suit. The alleged incident occurred at Murf’s Backstreet Tavern, in the prestigious Hamptons area east of New York City in July 2018.
CNN initially denied Hice’s account and said Hice seemed to bear animosity toward the cable news network. But, Hice said he didn’t watch much CNN, with the exception of “Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown,” before the alleged incident and had no reason to trash the network.
Last year, the New York Post cited a “source close to Lemon” who said Hice asked for $1.5 million in exchange for not filing the lawsuit. Hice admitted that $1.5 million was a figure discussed during settlement talks but said it’s only part of the story.
“They painted me as trying to extort $1.5 million from him but they never mentioned that he offered many times over six figures to settle. He tried to make payments on that and I said, ‘No thank you,’” Hice said. “I think that when he went to CNN and [denied the accusations], he probably failed to mention that he offered me well over six figures in the settlement process.”
While Hice wasn’t particularly opinionated about CNN before the alleged incident, he has since paid close attention to Lemon’s show.
“I don’t want to see his face on the news anymore because he’s a blatant liar and hypocrite,” Hice said, pointing to a Sept. 2018 segment when Lemon discussed the various ways victims of sexual harassment dealt with the aftermath and trauma.
“It was only two months after he assaulted me,” Hice said. “This is something that I’m going to be healing from and recovering from for the rest of my life.”
Hice said he didn’t want to take the spotlight away from female victims of abuse and said he developed a strong sympathy for anyone going through similar struggles.
“The media has labeled me as an ‘accuser,’ as opposed to a ‘victim,’ just because I’m a male,” he said. “I’ve been struggling, but there is a lot of people that have gone through a lot worse things than somebody rubbing their genitals and putting it in your face, as disgusting and vile as that is. There are people that have been raped and worse.”
Hice said he took a polygraph test with a former FBI profiler to prove to people close to him that he’s telling the truth.
“I passed with flying colors, this guy hooked me up to this whole machine, it was nerve-wracking but I just wanted to prove that I’m not lying,” Hice said. “Witnesses saw this happen. The whole town of Sag Harbor knew.”
Last year, when the suit initially was filed, Fox News spoke with George Gounelas, one of the witnesses named in the suit who was Hice’s boss at the time of the alleged incident.
Hice approached Lemon to strike up a conversation but the newsman declined, according to Gounelas, who said he and Hice then offered to buy Lemon a drink, which the CNN host also declined.
Hice told Fox News he simply wanted to be able to share a story of taking a shot with the CNN host and was not hostile, confrontational or looking for trouble.
“He took offense to it, or took it as me flirting, and that’s when he decided he’s above the law and can do whatever the hell he wanted,” Hice said.
Gounelas said that a few moments later, Lemon came up to them.
“Don Lemon has now come around the corner and is standing face to face with us. There is a beam, a pole, in the place. Don’s standing up against the pole, face to face with Dustin, I turn around and I’m standing right there between the two of them,” Gounelas said. “He’s saying, ‘So, you like me? Is that why you’re bothering me?’”
Gounelas told Fox News he couldn’t recall what Lemon said verbatim, but it was “along the lines of, ‘Do you like me? Is that why you’re bothering me, because you wanna f— me?’”
Gounelas said Lemon appeared “pretty drunk” when he confronted the duo.
“He put his hands down his pants, inside his board shorts, grabbed his [genitals], and then came out with two fingers and, like, clipped Dustin’s nose up and down with two fingers asking ‘do you like p—- or d—?’” Gounelas said.
Gounelas also said he laughed during the alleged incident and immediately mocked Hice as “gross” because of Lemon’s alleged actions – but Hice didn’t think it was a laughing matter.
“Dustin was in this shock mode, saying, ‘Bro, did that just happen? That was disgusting,’” Gounelas said, noting that the story followed Hice. “Every time we went out, every bartender offered him a lemon drop shot, making fun of him. He got some sh– for it.”
“The plaintiff in this lawsuit has previously displayed a pattern of contempt for CNN on his social media accounts,” a CNN spokesperson told Fox News in a statement when the suit was first filed last year. “This claim follows his unsuccessful threats and demands for an exorbitant amount of money from Don Lemon.”
“Don categorically denies these claims and this matter does not merit any further comment at this time,” the CNN spokesperson added last year.
Article via FOX
Tyra Banks Declares It’s ‘Payback Time’ In Passionate Video About The Dark Side Of Modeling
Tyra Banks has long fought against the cookie-cutter beauty standards of the fashion and modeling industry, but in 2020 the model is fed up. The 46-year-old released a passionate video where she shouted out all the things she hated about the industry, and every pain she had felt over her 28 years in the industry. The model encouraged her fans to do the same, and to make videos shouting at whoever caused them pain in order to turn it into strength. The video was released to promote Tyra’s new venture “ModelLand,” an inclusive model-themed interactive entertainment park that is set to open in late 2020.