The rapper recently appeared on the program, tapped as part of its Black Music Month celebration. She took the stage with her background singers, the Floettes, and Atlanta’s Band of Brothas, performing “Conceited,” “Bed Time” and “In the Party” before introducing her viral hit “Beef FloMix.”
“This next song was my first song to ever blow up. I wrote this in my mom’s house [when] I was 18. This is my baby,” she said. Flo then closed out the set with “Weak” and an acoustic version of “Never Lose Me” featuring a new verse.
Flo was part June’s all-female lineup, which also put a spotlight on Tems, Brittney Spencer, Tierra Whack and Chaka Khan.
“So, this sort of occurred to me this time last year like, ‘Wow, it’s too many dudes,’ and I want to really go for it this year, and really honor the women that helped shape Black music to me, which is all music,” producer and host Bobby Carter said. “I knew this was going to be something that we would do last year.”
(HIGHLAND PARK, Ill.) — The suspected Highland Park, Illinois, mass shooter declined to change his plea to guilty at a Wednesday hearing, crushing victims’ families who watched on in the courtroom.
Robert Crimo III is accused of killing seven people and injuring dozens of others in the mass shooting at a 2022 Fourth of July parade in the Chicago suburb of Highland Park.
Crimo was expected to plead guilty to seven counts of murder and 48 counts of aggravated battery with a firearm at the hearing, according to The Associated Press. Instead, the 23-year-old rejected the agreement, which would have sentenced him to life.
Crimo is scheduled for trial in February 2025.
“We came to court today in hopes that we could put this out of our mind,” Leah Sundheim, whose mother, Jacquelyn Sundheim, was killed, said at a news conference Wednesday.
“We have Fourth of July coming up and it will be two years,” she said. “All I wanted was to be able to fully grieve my mom without the looming trial, knowing that he was going to spend the rest of his life in jail. And instead, we were yet again shown [Crimo’s] complete and blatant disregard for humans.”
“[Crimo] is evil and manipulative, and brought us here today probably knowing what he was going to do,” she said. “I think that he has very little control, and he will exercise every bit he has — and does not care who he hurts.”
Tony Romanucci, an attorneys for some of the victims’ relatives, added, “This was a calculated effort on his part to continue the suffering that our clients are going through.”
Also among those killed were Highland Park residents Irina McCarthy, 35, and Kevin McCarthy, 37, who were at the parade with their 2-year-old son.
Lance Northcutt, an attorney for the McCarthy family, said Wednesday’s hearing revictimized the families.
Crimo “came to court today with one goal in mind: to continue the terror that began on July 4, 2022,” Northcutt said.
But Karina Mendez, whose dad, Eduardo Uvaldo, was killed, said she’ll be “patient with the court system,” adding that’s what her father would be telling her to do.
“It’s hard just to come in here and see the person that took my dad,” Mendez said. “I was hoping for closure — that was the goal for today, to be done with this.”
“My dad was somebody who loved his family. And we’ve stuck together through all this — we’re gonna keep sticking together,” she said.
Lake County State’s Attorney Eric Rinehart made a brief statement after Wednesday’s hearing. He said prosecutors will continue to support the survivors and the victims’ families, adding, “We will be ready for trial.”
ABC News has reached out to Crimo’s attorneys for comment.
Crimo’s father, Robert Crimo Jr., pleaded guilty last year to reckless conduct, admitting to signing the Firearm Owner’s Identification card for his son to apply for gun ownership.
The younger Crimo was 19 at the time and and too young to get a FOID card on his own. Illinois at the time required people ages 18, 19 or 20 to have parent or guardian authorization.
(NEW YORK) — Columbia University professors Ari Goldman and Gregory Khalil, each with their unique perspectives as individuals of Jewish and Palestinian descent, respectively, co-teach the complexities of the Israel-Hamas conflict.
The two professors are embarking on a joint educational mission at Columbia’s Graduate School of Journalism. Their course, which focuses on religion, aims to teach students how to approach conflicts through a lens of empathy and understanding.
Goldman said they try to show how it’s possible to disagree with someone and still be friendly with them. They share that someone can have differing opinions and discuss them with others, and you can coexist without insisting that a person agree with you.
This mission takes on a heightened significance in the aftermath of recent student protests, which began April 17 on Columbia’s campus.
Pro-Palestinian protesters have been calling for the Ivy League school to financially pull out from companies and institutions that “profit from Israeli apartheid, genocide and occupation in Palestine,” according to an online statement from the group Columbia University Apartheid Divest.
However, Columbia’s investments are not public information and remain largely unknown.
Following Columbia University President Minouche Shafik’s congressional hearing on April 17 about antisemitism on campus, the encampment drew a larger group of protesters.
In a statement following the protests, Shafik said that the encampment “violates all of the new policies, severely disrupts campus life and creates a harassing and intimidating environment for many of our students.”
“Students and outside activists breaking Hamilton Hall doors, mistreating our Public Safety officers and maintenance staff, and damaging property are acts of destruction, not political speech,” said Shafik. “Many students have also felt uncomfortable and unwelcome because of the disruption and antisemitic comments made by some individuals, especially in the protests that have persistently mobilized outside our gates.”
ABC News sat down with Goldman and Khalil to talk about the challenging discussions they want people to have in their households.
ABC NEWS LIVE: The Israel-Hamas conflict is complex, layered with religion, race and land disputes, and dates back generations without a peaceful resolution — which is what makes one particular class at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism so unique.
Two professors, Ari Goldman, who is Jewish, and Greg Khalil, who is Palestinian, co-teach covering religion, part of an educational mission to approach conflicts with empathy and understanding, especially in the wake of protests on Columbia’s campus and beyond in recent months.
Both professors kind enough to join us now. Thank you so much. How do you think that Columbia University in particular handled when you talk about things blowing up? I mean, we saw it really happening there — was kind of like an epicenter for a lot of the tumult in what we were seeing all across the country. How do you feel that it was handled within your own campus?
KHALIL: I personally don’t think it was handled well at all, but I think what many viewers missed is that Columbia’s failures extended well before the encampments and the protests. If we can’t have these conversations on campus, is it no wonder so many of our democratic institutions feel like they’re failing?
ABC NEWS LIVE: Has there been any kind of discussion that you feel like more people need to hear this, where we’re coming to some ideas anyway, of possibilities for resolution?
GOLDMAN: Well, I would get back to what Greg said about the behavior or the success of Columbia University. I think he would probably give it a failing grade. I would give it maybe a C, a C-plus. I don’t think we’ve been as bad as, as some people might think. I think the University has made strides, has done some things good.
I support the student rights to speak out and to protest and even to demonstrate on campus. But I think when things got intimidating, when things got violent and things got — broke the law — they needed to be stopped.
ABC NEWS LIVE: Were there disagreements, those kinds of disagreements that when in discussions that we were seeing play out, in the encampments, were those happening in the classroom? And how do you all go about resolving them on the spot?
GOLDMAN: I feel that our students were well prepared to cover this big story. This story came to our door. That came, a big international story is suddenly at our doorstep. And as journalists, we took advantage of that.
KHALIL: We very much disagree on the approach of the university. I don’t think the violent approach, the university after the encampments or many months before was warranted. But there were a lot of stories that we didn’t see. I remember the third night of Passover, for example, being next to the encampment at Pulitzer Hall, where we teach and heard the Muslim call for for prayer from the camp and went over.
I saw 20 students holding up bedsheets around Muslim students who were praying an hour and a half before the start of Passover, when the Jewish students there — and there was a sizable minority of students there who were Jewish — held a multifaith meal in honor of Passover. So there were a lot of positive stories that were coming out of that that you didn’t see.
ABC NEWS LIVE: I am curious to know how your opposing viewpoints helped to inform how you teach your students.
GOLDMAN: We try to show how you can disagree with someone and yet be friendly with them. You can disagree with someone and discuss your differences, and you could coexist with them without saying, ‘you have to agree with me. And if you don’t agree with me, you’re out of here. You have nothing to contribute to me.’
ABC NEWS LIVE: One thing people have been talking about a lot lately is Zionism. And I’m curious if you all have the same definition of Zionism.
GOLDMAN: Well, I am a proud Zionist. I declare myself to be such. I’m someone who believes in the promise of, of a Jewish homeland and of the necessity of a Jewish homeland. There is no other country where Jews can go, and feel like like this is their country. There are Muslim countries; there are Christian countries. There’s no other Jewish country. And I believe that it’s essential.
I don’t agree with everything that Israel does, and Zionism doesn’t require me to agree with everything Israel does.
ABC NEWS LIVE: If you think there could be a Palestinian state in there.
GOLDMAN: Absolutely. I think there should be.
KHALIL: And I actually have a very different view of Zionism. I fundamentally believe that there is no good future for any Israeli or Palestinian without a good reality for every Palestinian and Israeli, that security, dignity, safety, freedom, equality, justice for everyone. And I think that Zionism, the motivations behind Zionism are things that completely support and understand the Jewish quest for self-determination, for liberation, which I actually believe is intertwined with Palestinian liberation.
So Zionism in its reality is resulting in sort of this indefinite control over millions of people’s lives. And that’s something that I think is wrong. And we need to find a way out that centers fundamental human rights for everyone.
ABC NEWS LIVE: What’s the way forward?
GOLDMAN: Greg used the word indefinite. It’s not indefinite. It’s gone on too long. And I think there should be a Palestinian state. And I think the proposal that President Biden has on the table is one that I support and I think has the possibility to eventually lead to a Palestinian state and normalize relations between Israel and some of its Arab neighbors.
KHALIL: And I think it’s actually a little bit more complex than that. I think, you know, when you say it’s gone on too long, it’s all the generations of my family, for generations who’ve never known one second of freedom, who’ve lived lives under absolute military control by another state based on who they are. That’s wrong.
We don’t have more time to wait. And, unfortunately, today the path forward is not clear. Gaza is going to take 80 years to rebuild. It’s like the building next door is on fire, their children dying. But the next critical step is to put the fire out, save as many children as possible, release the captives, and we have to do whatever we can before this problem in Gaza, which many around the world are causing, calling an act of genocide, explodes regionally and even globally.
ABC NEWS LIVE: He said that it’s wrong that his family for generations has had to live as he described and kind of not knowing freedom. Would you agree that that’s wrong?
GOLDMAN: I agree, and I want the situation to be better. I want it to change. Our job is not to resolve the Arab-Israel conflict, and we’re not going to. Whatever ideas we have, our job is to teach journalists how to write about this subject in a way that recognizes the other side, that hears his argument and hears my argument, or hears not my argument than the Israeli argument.
ABC NEWS LIVE: We could all benefit from that class.
KHALIL: And on that we are absolutely committed. We may be ideologically opposed in one sense, but we’re good friends. I love Ari like family. That’s not just a saying. And we believe that we as a society need to hold space and build space for people as different as us to enable others to have these conversations, too.
ABC NEWS LIVE: Gentlemen, we hope that we will be able to get the conversation started in households and beyond, all around the world. We thank you so much for this kind of safe space to have this kind of discussion. People need to talk about it more. Professors Ari Goldman and Greg Khalil, we thank you.
— YGunveiled the artwork for Just Re’d Up 3, which he announced will come out on Aug. 16. It pays homage to previous Just Re’d Up projects while displaying the juxtaposition of his old and new life. Like previous albums, YG poses in front of a white background, with his name written in a bold gray font. He holds a red Louis Vuitton duffle bug, similar to the brown one spotted on the original Just Re’d Up album cover. And instead of standing in front of one car, like he did for the second installment, he now stands before three luxurious vehicles.
— LeBron James and Lil Wayne unite for a commercial promoting the return of the new Beats Pill speaker. The ad finds James turning up to music, including Wayne’s “A Milli,” which prevents Weezy from a getting a good night’s rest. He makes his way to the apartment above to find out what’s causing the noise, discovers the party, and ends up staying and asking for the music to be turned up. “The Beats Pill has been a staple in the James household from day one,” said James. “It’s an iconic product, so it’s exciting to be part of its relaunch for a new generation.” Available in matte black, statement red and champagne gold, the Pill is $149.99 on apple.com.
50 Cent was welcomed into Tyler Perry‘s studio in Atlanta, and he left feeling super inspired. “I’m leaving no room for error. Tyler showed me some s*** today that inspired me,” Fif wrote on Instagram. “I need all my money if you owe me, you better give me mine now!” Alongside the post were pictures of him and Tyler, a concession stand and an LED board that announced 50 Cent’s arrival. “Tyler Perry Studios Welcomes 50 Cent & G-Unit,” it read.
Lil Jon is all about promoting wellness of the mind, body and soul. The producer, whose love for meditation is well known, will be bringing his music to six of Peloton’s classes, including cycling, strength and meditation. He’s also set to pop up in a few live classes, including Dr. Chelsea Jackson Roberts‘ meditation class, on launch day.
“My meditation journey really led me to take on a more positive mindset, and has really helped drive awareness and access to the practice of meditation; everyone deserves to find an outlet that gives them moments of peace,” Lil Jon says, per Billboard. “I’m excited to join Dr. Chelsea Jackson Roberts, I know what an influential force she is in the yoga and meditation space!”
The Lil Jon Artist Series starts June 27 on the Peloton app. It’s not clear what music will be used, but it’s likely some classes will feature his guided meditation albums, Total Meditation and Manifest Abundance.
(NEW YORK) — A wind-driven wildfire that ignited on Tuesday in Central Oregon spread overnight to 1,700 acres and was threatening homes as residents were ordered to evacuate, officials said.
The Darlene 3 Fire burning in Deschutes County was 0% contained early Wednesday, according to the Central Oregon Fire Management Service.
The blaze started about 2 p.m. PT on Tuesday. Fanned by gusty winds, the blaze quickly spread through a pine forest near homes in La Pine, a small town of about 2,500 people in the foothills of the Cascade Mountains, officials said.
The Deschutes County Sheriff’s Office ordered some residents on the southeast side of La Pine to evacuate. Shelters were opened at a local high school and the La Pine Rodeo Grounds, officials said.
Lt. Jayson Janes of the Deschutes County Sheriff’s Office said evacuation alerts were sent to 1,100 homes and businesses.
It was not immediately clear if any structures had been damaged or destroyed.
Several campgrounds and hiking trails in the area were also closed, officials said.
The cause of the fire is under investigation.
The sheriff’s office posted photos and video on its Facebook page showing a large plume of smoke emerging from a forest behind a group of homes and a firefighting air tanker dropping fire-suppression retardant on the flames.
Oregon Gov. Tina Kotek invoked the Emergency Conflagration Act after determining the fire posed a threat to life and property and exceeded the resources of the local fire agencies. The act allows the state fire marshal to mobilize firefighters and equipment throughout the state to assist local fire crews in battling the fire.
Oregon State Fire Marshall Mariana Ruiz-Temple said gusty winds and hot weather caused the fire to quickly spread.
“The Emergency Conflagration Act allows us to send the full power of the Oregon fire service to protect life and property,” Ruiz-Temple said in a news release. “As we enter the hot and dry summer months, I am asking Oregonians to do everything they can to prevent wildfires.”
