Nick Cannon’s daytime talk show set for September premiere
Nick Cannon’s upcoming daytime talk show is set for a Sept. 21 premiere, distributor Debmar-Mercury confirmed Monday.
Lionsgate’s Debmar-Mercury has teamed with Cannon’s Ncredible Entertainment to produce the comedic talk show featuring interviews with celebrities and pop culture coverage. The nationally-syndicated show, “Nick Cannon,” is cleared to launch on TV stations covering more than 90% of U.S. TV households. Debmar-Mercury’s announcement Monday is an indication of confidence that the show will be able to go into production over the summer for the planned fall debut.
“It’s been thrilling going through this process, and to see the widespread support that the show has received and the milestones we’ve achieved is mind-blowing,” said Cannon in a statement. “We’re gearing up to deliver a must-see show and I’m looking forward to coming to you on your TV this fall.”
In light of his guest appearances on “The Wendy Williams Show,” his work on Fox’s “The Masked Singer” and MTV’s “Wild ‘N Out,” among other ventures, Debmar-Mercury said that Cannon was a perfect fit for the hard job of hosting a daily yakker.
“Clearances are climbing because our great station partners are hungry for a rising, versatile and dynamic talent like Nick. His light-hearted style quickly wins over viewers and gives them a much-needed escape from the world,” said Ira Bernstein and Mort Marcus, co-presidents of Debmar-Mercury. “We’ve been asked why we skipped doing test shows and explained there was no need. It’s obvious to anyone who watched Nick guest host for Wendy Williams last year how much he loves daytime talk and, based on the reaction of fans, how much they love him.”
“Nick Cannon” has been picked up by prominent station groups including Fox, CBS, Sinclair, Nexstar, Hearst, Tegna and Meredith.
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China officially ends 10-week coronavirus lockdown in Wuhan
China has ended its more than 10-week-long lockdown of Wuhan — the city where the coronavirus is believed to have originated, and spread to 184 countries across the globe.
As of Wednesday local time, the city’s 11 million residents are permitted to leave if they present a government-sanctioned phone app confirming they are healthy and have not recently been in contact with any infected individuals.
The city celebrated the occasion with a light show on either side of the Yangtze river, with skyscrapers and bridges displaying animated images of health workers treating patients.
One displayed the words “heroic city,” the title bestowed on Wuhan by Chinese president Xi Jinping.
Residents waved flags along embankments and bridges, sang China’s national anthem and chanted “Wuhan, let’s go!”
“I haven’t been outside for more than 70 days,” emotional resident Tong Zhengkun, who watched the display from a bridge told the AP. “Being indoors for so long drove me crazy.”
More than 55,000 people are expected to take trains out of Wuhan by day’s end, China’s national rail operator said, according to a state-run broadcaster.
Broadcasters have also published footage of a rush of cars traveling through toll stations on the outskirts of the city immediately after the lockdown was lifted.
But an editorial in People’s Daily, the official newspaper of China’s ruling Communist, warned residents not to throw caution to the wind.
“This day that people have long been looking forward to and it is right to be excited. However, this day does not mark the final victory,” the paper said.
“At this moment, we still need to remind ourselves that as Wuhan is unblocked, we can be pleased, but we must not relax.”
A total of 82,718 coronavirus cases have been reported in China, according to Johns Hopkins University data.
Asymptomatic cases were not included until this month in the country’s tally of confirmed infections.
via: https://nypost.com/2020/04/07/china-officially-ends-10-week-coronavirus-lockdown-in-wuhan/
Photo Credit: nypost.com
Man in medical mask sucker-punches NYPD cop
A man wearing a medical face mask was caught on camera sucker-punching an NYPD officer in the Bronx Tuesday night as the cop’s partner was subduing a robbery suspect.
Nelson Jimenez, 31, launched his attack in front of a crowd of bystanders who had gathered on a sidewalk near 183rd Street and Davidson Avenue in University Heights to watch the arrest of 27-year-old robbery suspect Yoemdy Castro, law enforcement sources said.
One cop in the video can be seen holding Castro to the ground, while another stands nearby.
During the episode, Jimenez walks behind the standing officer, then socks him in the head, knocking off his winter cap, the video shows.
The officer who was struck immediately turns around and fires his Taser, but it’s unclear if it struck Jimenez.
Jimenez then runs away, with the cop close behind, the video shows.
Spectators can be heard cheering on the suspect, imploring the suspect to “run.”
Officers later caught and arrested Jimenez in a nearby bodega, law enforcement sources said. Charges against him are pending.
A second cop who responded to the fracas was also punched in the head in an off-camera incident, according to sources.
The suspect in that assault, Brandee Isom, 25, was arrested and charged with assault and obstructing governmental administration, sources said.
via: https://nypost.com/2020/04/07/man-wearing-medical-mask-sucker-punches-nypd-cop-in-the-bronx/
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Illinois Mayor Sends Police To Break Up Parties. They Found His Wife At One Of Them
The mayor of a small city in Illinois warned citizens that he had ordered police to break up parties and issue citations to enforce the state’s stay-at-home orders that are meant to slow the coronavirus pandemic. But when the officers did so, they found his wife at one such gathering.
“These are very serious times and I’m begging you to please stay at home,” Alton Mayor Brant Walker said on Saturday. “Parents, please keep your kids at home, doing so is vital to our health.”
On Monday, Walker issued a statement on Facebook saying police had found his wife at a bar in the city that was operating in violation of Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s stay-at-home orders. Walker said he was embarrassed and apologized to his constituents.
“My wife is an adult capable of making her own decisions, and in this instance she exhibited a stunning lack of judgement [sic],” he wrote. She will face “the same consequences for her ill-advised decision as the other individuals” caught at the event, he added.
Walker did not provide the name of his wife nor was she identified in local news reports.
Police told the Alton Daily News that officers broke up a party at Hiram’s Tavern early Sunday. The owner was arrested on an outstanding warrant for domestic battery while others in attendance received citations for reckless conduct.
Alton is a city of some 26,000 people, located about 20 miles north of St. Louis, Missouri.
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This 7-year-old is making and delivering care packages to the elderly shut in by the coronavirus
CNN) — Cavanaugh Bell is a 7-year-old on a mission: “To help other people and let them know that I got their back,” he told CNN.
At a time when senior citizens must stay in to avoid the coronavirus, the spirited boy in Gaithersburg, Maryland, decided to make them care packages.
“The packages include toilet paper, some flushable wipes, hygiene products and a bunch of food,” he said.
‘She’s my best friend’
The idea came when Bell realized his 74-year-old grandmother is in a high-risk age group for coronavirus.
“One day I was thinking about my grandma and I was like ‘Oh, mommy she shouldn’t be going out to the grocery store because it’s coronavirus season. She’s my best friend.’ “
After helping his grandma, the boy with the big smile and bigger heart looked at his grandmother’s neighbors at her senior citizen home — and worried.
“He was so heartbroken that he didn’t have enough to give to everyone,” Llacey Simmons, Bell’s mom, told CNN.
So Bell used $600 he’d saved up to fund his first batch of care packages.
“I asked him how much money he wanted to use from his savings– $50 or $100? He’s like ‘let’s use all of it.’ “
Bell assembled more than 100 care packages and hot meals to deliver.
The community joins in
When news spread of the first-grader’s good deed, donations began to roll in.
It’s become more of a community project that way. But only Bell and his mother make the deliveries.
“We aren’t allowed to gather in large groups,” the supportive mom shared.
And with an overflow of donations, Simmons and Bell have created a community care pantry in Gaithersburg.
“Hopefully we can help a thousand people. We plan to do this until we run out of donations or until the pandemic is over,” Simmons said,
“It makes me feel beautiful inside because I like giving back.” Bell said.
If you would like to contribute to Bell’s community care pantry, you can donate to his GoFundMe account.
Photo Credit: Courtesy Llacey Simmons
At 90, she said her final goodbyes as doctors prepared her to die from coronavirus. Then she survived
(CNN) — Geneva Wood knew her life was about to end. She could feel it with every strained breath.
She was well aware her 90-year-old lungs were filling with fluid. She was drowning from the inside out. The coronavirus had taken hold and she had one last request.
“I said to the doctor, this is the end. I’m not gonna make it and I want to see my family,” Wood told CNN. “And that was my only wish and desire was to be able to talk to my children again.”
Her doctor agreed. She was dying. Her children were called to see their mom alive one last time. With so little oxygen in her lungs Wood was losing the ability to talk.
Her daughter, Cami Neidigh, drove from home to the hospital.
“They didn’t think that she was going to make it, and that we should go ahead and come on down while she can still talk to us,” her daughter said.
The news was doubly devastating for the family. Wood had been recovering from a stroke.
“It was kind of cruel, you know,” Neidigh said. “She had just learned to live again.”
Wood’s family had chosen to send her for rehab to the nearby Life Care Center of Kirkland, Washington, after her stroke. When Wood arrived months earlier, she couldn’t talk. She couldn’t walk. She couldn’t speak well enough to be understood.
The staff cared for her until she could do all those things.
“All I could do was jabber and they taught me to live again,” Wood said. “I went there for therapy, which they provided. What the staff did for me was great.”
But as she regained her strength, the coronavirus spread through the Life Care Center of Kirkland. It became the first place in America to have a major deadly outbreak of the novel coronavirus. Only nobody realized it at the time. The virus was spreading like a deadly plague inside the facility long before people switched to elbow bumps instead of handshakes, and before self-distancing and stay-at-home orders became the norm.
Geneva Wood suddenly found herself infected like 80 other patients there.
She was rushed to the hospital where the virus began taking her breath away.
“I coughed a lot.” Wood said “I had trouble breathing, I was just tired. I just wanted to sleep and rest and just leave me alone.”
She had never felt the kind of exhaustion that came with Covid-19. The spitfire of a great-grandmother says she survived the flu dozens of times while raising her children and survived the Great Depression and World War II, but she never wanted to give up until she got the coronavirus.
But her body fought it. And she survived, with her humor intact.
“I’m not dead yet,” Wood quipped to the nurse who she asked to bring her water.
Wood was one of the lucky ones. Fifty-five people associated with the Life Care nursing home died, many younger than her.
Now Wood is home and able to speak with her family, who she once feared she might never see or talk to again.
She snuggled up next to her daughter in her big comfortable chair and marveled at how happy she was just to be home.
“I love it here. One of the things I fought for was to be able to be with my kids. To give them a hug or a kick or whatever they needed,” Wood said.
Her daughter cracked up. Her feisty, strong-willed mother was back.
“That’s, that’s what I’m here for.” Wood laughed. “To take care of their needs. If they need a hug that’s what they need and if they need a kick in the rear, that’s what they get.”
Her daughter is relieved to hear her mom joke again.
“It’s been a brutal roller coaster ride,” she says.
And Neidigh wants anyone who is writing off the elderly as those who can be sacrificed to coronavirus for the sake of others or for the economy to remember people like her mother. She says nobody should get to choose who gets to live or die and that the world could used the wisdom of the elderly. They still have something to give.
“You can’t put a price on life like that,” Neidigh said.
CNN’s Leslie Perrot contributed to this report.
Photo Credit: Courtesy Wood Family
Man intentionally coughs on gas pump handle, mentions coronavirus
A California man may face charges in Arizona for intentionally coughing on a gas pump handle while referencing the spread of coronavirus, police said.
The man, identified only as a 23-year-old man from Winterhaven, was questioned after cops in Yuma received multiple reports of video circulating on social media Saturday showing the unsanitary deed, police said.
The suspect later admitted to coughing on the pump during an interview Sunday at the Yuma Police Department, Sgt. Lori Franklin said.
“He came in willingly and did a full interview,” Franklin said. “He admitted to the fact that that was him on the video.”
The man got the idea “from other social media videos” he’d previously seen on the internet, police said in a statement.
“He blatantly coughed on the handle and said, ‘This is how you get coronavirus,’” Franklin said of the footage, which was posted to Snapchat.
The suspect did not show any signs or symptoms of COVID-19, police said.
Charges of unlawful use of infectious biological substance — a felony — will now be sent to Yuma County prosecutors for review, Franklin said.
A spokeswoman for Yuma County Attorney Jon Smith said his office had not received the case as of Monday.
via: https://nypost.com/2020/04/06/arizona-cops-bust-man-for-coughing-on-gas-pump-handle/
Photo Credit: Alamy Stock Photo
Man faces $50K fine for escaping quarantine to visit girlfriend
An Australian man blew off his coronavirus self-quarantine to visit his girlfriend — and even used public transportation to get there — and could now be fined up to $50,000, according a report.
The 35-year-old man, whose name was not released, was busted Sunday, West Australian police announced on Facebook.
The man arrived in West Australia from Victoria on March 28 and was required to self-quarantine for 14 days at a Perth hotel under the state’s Emergency Management Act, police said.
But instead, he snuck out of his Travelodge hotel Friday and Saturday night because he “wanted to see his girlfriend” and had no one to bring him food, 7 News reported.
Police visited his hotel room early Saturday after being contacted by hotel staff, but he was not there, according to the report. When he showed up 45 minutes later, he told authorities he went out to tend to a personal problem.
Police directed him not to leave again unless it was for a medical emergency — but he flouted their orders and left around 9 p.m. that night, wedging open a fire escape door and fleeing down the emergency stairwell, the outlet reported.
CCTV footage captured him returning around 4 the next morning.
Hotel staff told police they spotted the man outside his room on five occasions over the course of four days.
Cops said he used public transit in his travels, 7 News reported.
He was denied bail at a court appearance Monday, with prosecutors arguing he showed “complete negligence for the conditions of the Emergency Management Act” and had “put the community of Western Australia at risk,” according to the report.
He was remanded and ordered to make a court appearance over video on Thursday.
“Custody is far worse than staying in a hotel,” WA Premier Mark McGowan said at a Monday press conference, according to news.com.au. “He has already suffered a consequence. He can now suffer a penalty of up to $50,000 and further incarceration.”
“He has done the wrong thing, he has been caught,” McGowan added. “I expect the law will deal with him fairly harshly.”
via: https://nypost.com/2020/04/06/man-faces-50k-fine-for-escaping-quarantine-to-visit-girlfriend/
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Massive fire near Florida airport burns more than 3,500 rental cars
More than 3,500 rental cars were damaged or destroyed in a fire that burned near a Florida airport before being contained late Friday.
The Fort Myers News-Press reports the cars were in a grassy area used as an overflow lot by car rental companies that service Southwest Florida International Airport. The vehicles weren’t occupied.
Witnesses said they heard multiple small explosions and flames leaping high into the air as the flames spread across the area. Another 3,850 vehicles were undamaged, according to airport spokeswoman Vicki Moreland.
Investigators are trying to determine the cause of the fire.
via: https://nypost.com/2020/04/06/fire-near-florida-airport-burns-more-than-3500-rental-cars/
Photo Credit: Charlotte County Sheriff’s Office
Man allegedly tried to burn disabled wife after learning he didn’t qualify for relief check
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — A New Mexico man is facing charges after police say he became enraged he didn’t qualify for a COVID-19-related stimulus check and tried to set his wife on fire.
The Albuquerque Journal reports Joe Macias was arrested Wednesday shortly following an argument with his disabled wife, where he allegedly doused her with gasoline.
The wife told police Macias had come home around 5 p.m. with a four-pack of beer and “upset because he did not qualify for the stimulus check.”
According to police, the 63-year-old Macias threw gas on his wife and their mobile home.
The wife told officers Macias then pulled out a cigarette and attempted to light it several times, but was unsuccessful due to the lighter getting gasoline on it.
Police say officers later found Macias walking down the street, his clothes soaked in gasoline. Officers also discovered the victim, her hair the cand pajamas soaked in gasoline, on the floor inside a nearby trailer.
Macias charged with attempted murder, kidnapping, and aggravated battery against a household member.
No attorney was listed for him in online court records.
via: https://nypost.com/2020/04/06/coronavirus-nm-man-allegedly-tried-to-burn-wife-over-relief-check/
Photo Credit: AP