Chicago police say ‘Empire’ actor Jussie Smollett refuses to hand over cellphone to them
Article via NBCNews
The actor declined to share telephone records that could show he was speaking with his manager during his alleged assault.
CHICAGO — “Empire” actor Jussie Smollett has refused to turn over his cellphone to detectives, who are investigating the alleged attack that sent him to the hospital earlier this week, Chicago police said Thursday.
The actor declined to share telephone records that could show he was speaking with his manager just as the alleged assault happened early Tuesday morning in Chicago, police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi told NBC News.
Smollett has told police he was confronted by two men who allegedly hurled racist and homophobic slurs just before they beat him up. They are investigating the case as a possible hate crime.
The manager has told police he heard the attackers say, “This is MAGA country,” during the assault, officials said.
When police asked Smollett for his cellphone and records to confirm the call, he refused to share them, according to Guglielmi.
It wasn’t immediately clear if Chicago police would seek to obtain those records independently.
A representative for the actor could did not immediately return messages seeking comment about the cellphone and phone records.
But in a prepared statement issued late Thursday afternoon, Smollett’s family, through the same representative, reiterated his claim of being attacked because of his race and orientation.
“In the early hours of Tuesday morning, our beloved son and brother, Jussie, was the victim of a violent and unprovoked attack. We want to be clear, this was a racial and homophobic hate crime,” according to the family statement.
“Jussie has told the police everything from the very beginning. His story has never changed, and we are hopeful they will find these men and bring them to justice.”
Police have reviewed hundreds of hours of footage from more than 20 surveillance cameras in the area, according to Guglielmi. They have not found any images of the alleged attack, but do have footage that shows part of Smollet’s journey to and from the neighborhood.
Police have released pictures, taken from surveillance cameras, of two “potential people of interest” but stopped short of calling them suspects.E
Mariah Carey slammed by women’s rights activists for Saudi Arabia performance
Article via FOX
Mariah Carey may want to follow her own advice and proceed with caution when it comes to performing in oppressive regimes, activists advise.
The iconic songbird will perform in Saudi Arabia on Thursday for the first time, outraging women’s rights activists who want her to pull out in support of detained women in the country.
The Associated Press reports that Carey, 48, is the biggest start to perform in Saudi Arabia since the notoriously conservative country loosened their strict entertainment restrictions, but activists claim Carey’s show is an effort from Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman to improve the kingdom’s reputation after the Oct. 2 murder of Saudi critic Jamal Khashoggi inside the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul.
Reps for the singer told The Associated Press in a statement that when the “Hero” singer was “presented with the offer to perform for an international and mixed gender audience in Saudi Arabia, Mariah accepted the opportunity as a positive step towards the dissolution of gender segregation.”
“As the first female international artist to perform in Saudi Arabia, Mariah recognizes the cultural significance of this event and will continue to support global efforts towards equality for all,” the statement continued.
In December, Saudi Arabia hosted a Formula-E car race in Riyadh that featured concerts by Enrique Iglesias, The Black Eyed Peas and DJ David Guetta.
Omaima Al-Najjar, a Saudi woman who fled the kingdom to seek political refuge abroad, said that the concerts are a diversion from the Saudi-led war in Yemen against the neighboring country’s Houthi rebels, human rights abuses committed under the crown prince and repressive male guardianship laws that restrict women’s freedoms.
“The Saudi government is using entertainment to distract the people from human rights abuses because it can sense the anger among the public,” she said.
Al-Najjar is a co-founder of Women for Rights in Saudi Arabia, or WARSA, which launched a petition calling on Carey to boycott the country. The petition aimed to publicly pressure Carey because “she has power to stand for women … as an artist and as a female,” Al-Najjar said.
Activists are tweeting at Carey directly, urging her to take notice of the prominent Saudi women’s rights activists imprisoned since May who had long campaigned for social changes and women’s empowerment. The women, who include activists in their 20s as well as mothers, grandmothers and retired professors, have been accused of vague national security violations in connection to their human rights work.
Read more on Fox
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My EMI Contract is ‘Servitude’ … And I Want ‘To Be Set Free’
Article via TMZ
Kanye West says his contract with EMI amounts to servitude and claims he’s entitled “to be set free from its bonds.”
Kanye has just filed new legal docs in his lawsuit against EMI and Roc-A-Fella Records. He says the deal he signed with EMI effectively has no time limit … it could last the rest of his natural life.
He notes in California, personal services contracts cannot last longer than 7 years because they amount to “servitude.”
According to the deal, he’s required to deliver a certain number of songs and, until they are delivered, the contract remains in full force and effect. Problem is … that could last 1 year or 80 years.
Kanye wants a judge to cut off the EMI contract as of 2010, which would revert all of the rights of his songs back to him. The year 2010 is important because that’s the 7-year mark of his deal.
Some songs of note Ye released in 2010 and after include megahit “All of the Lights,” along with “Power” and “Monster” from his “My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy” album, “Otis” and “Ni**as in Paris” from the “Watch the Throne” album, “Bound 2” from Yeezus and “Famous” from “The Life of Pablo.”
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You Guys, Cardi B Just Confirmed She and Offset Are Working Things Out
Article via Cosmopolitan
It’s been an eternity two months since Cardi B and Offset split up—prompting Cardi to wax poetic about his penis every so often—but Cardi is done with the single life and is getting back together with her mans.
After her New York assault case was postponed to April, someone caught Cardi leaving the courthouse and asked her the status of her and Offset’s relationship. Dressed head to toe in fur, she responded, “We’re working it out, baby.”
According to TMZ, Cardi is heading down south to Atlanta to move back into their home, where she apparently hasn’t been since leaving him last year after accusing him of cheating.
At the time of their breakup, Cardi was totally honest about why she had to take a break from him. She told her followers:
“So everybody been bugging me and everything, and you know I’ve been trying to work things out with my baby father for a hot minute now. And we are really good friends and we are really good business partners—and you know he’s always somebody that I run to to talk to, and we got a lot of love for each other, but things just haven’t been working out between us for a long time. It’s nobody fault, it’s just like, I guess we just grew out of love but we are not together anymore.”
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Beyonce, Jay-Z offer lifetime concert tickets for fans who go vegan
Article via Reuters
Music superstars Beyonce and Jay-Z are offering fans a chance to win free tickets for life to their concerts in exchange for adopting a vegan diet for a month.
The “Lemonade” singer announced the contest to her 123 million Instagram followers late on Wednesday in support of the Greenprint Project, which encourages people to reduce their environmental footprint by eating plant-based meals.
Beyonce pledged to eat plant-based breakfasts and go meatless on Mondays, while Jay-Z is promising to eat two plant-based meals a day.
The project is the brainchild of Beyonce’s personal trainer, Marco Borges, who published his “The Greenprint” book in December explaining his plant-based diet and exercise plan. The singer and her spouse wrote the introduction to the book.
A study in the journal Science last June concluded that avoiding meat and dairy products would be the biggest way to reduce the environmental impact on the planet because of reduced irrigation of farmland, animal emissions, food processing and transport.
Under the contest rules, one fan will get a pair of tickets to one official concert tour by Beyonce and/or Jay-Z for the next 30 years.
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Michael Jackson’s Brother Responds to Shocking New Allegations: “Leave Us Alone”
Article via VanityFair
The documentary Leaving Neverland, about two men who say Jackson abused them when they were children, stunned audiences at the Sundance Film Festival premiere last week.
Hours after filmmaker Dan Reed debuted his shocking documentaryLeaving Neverland—a film that details abuse allegedly committed by Michael Jackson—at the Sundance Film Festival last week, the late musician’s family released a strongly worded statement, deriding the project as “tabloid character assassination.” On Wednesday, as disturbing details contained in the film continued to circulate across the Internet, a Jackson family member offered the first televised interview in response to the documentary’s claims from accusers Wade Robson and James Safechuck.
Jackson’s brother Jermaine began his nearly 10-minute interview on Good Morning Britain by not stating whether he has actually seen the four-hour documentary—which contains such distressing allegations that the film festival reportedly had mental-health professionals available to counsel audience members, just in case. Instead, Jermaine produced a page of notes from his jacket pocket and shakily outlined Robson’s previous defense of Michael Jackson, and other arguments the Jackson estate made in its initial statement. (As Vanity Fair’s Nicole Sperlingreported from Sundance, both Robson and Safechuck did initially defend Jackson when other young men accused him of molestation in 1993: “Neither man was able to admit that the sexual relationship they each say they shared with Jackson was abuse until they became fathers, and the weight of their secrets proved overbearing.”)
When Good Morning Britain co-host Piers Morgan countered with purported evidence that Jackson may have molested children—citing Jackson’s multi-million-dollar settlements with accusers and sleepovers Jackson hosted at his Neverland Ranch—Jermaine interjected to argue, “Those were slumber parties, and what they didn’t tell you was that there were little girls there, even with their parents, their uncles . . . they were watching movies.”
“How sure can you be, Jermaine, that Michael was completely innocent?” Morgan pressed.
“Piers, I’m 1,000 percent sure, because Michael was tried by a jury and . . . he was acquitted on all of this,” Jermaine responded. “Our family is tired. Let this man rest. He did a lot for the world. Let him rest. I’ll just say this: there is no truth to this documentary.”
Growing emotional as Morgan continued with more questions, Jermaine begged, “Leave us alone. Leave him alone. Let him rest—please. Let him rest. He deserves to rest.”
During a Q&A at the Sundance Film Festival, Robson revealed that he wasn’t particularly comfortable sharing the documentary with his own family members.
“I was really scared for my mother to see [Leaving Neverland],”said Robson. “Each of us watched it by ourselves, and there are things that I said, things my brother said, that have never been communicated within the family dynamic. It was an intense experience for them. My hope is that while this is not the usual way to healing—for a movie that goes out to the world—hopefully this can open new doors for them. This is an important story to tell.”
The documentary will air on HBO this spring in a two-part series.
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Nick Cannon stepping in for Wendy Williams
Article via CNN
Nick Cannon will temporarily sub for an ailing Wendy Williams on her talk show.
“The Wendy Williams Show” announced Tuesday on their official Instagram account that Cannon will guest-host for part of next week.
“Friend to the show and host of Fox’s The Masked Singer and MTV’s Wild n’ Out, @nickcannon will be guest hosting The Wendy Williams Show on Monday, February 4th, Tuesday, February 5th & Wednesday, February 6th,” the post read. “The new hour long episodes will include Wendy’s staple Hot Topics segment, ‘Ask Wendy,’ celebrity interviews and more!”
Williams shared last year that she was struggles with Graves’ disease, an autoimmune condition that affects the thyroid. She took a break from her show last February as a result. Williams continues to deal with medical challenges related to her condition and is also recovering from a fractured shoulder, according to her show team.