Category: News

This article originally appeared on 08.20.15

You’ve probably been there. You’re out and about and you see something that just feels … off.

“Should I step in? … But it’s not really any of my business. … And I’m not even sure they need my help…”

Our gut tells us to speak up, to ask questions, to tell someone. But often, we don’t.

This happened to Malyk Bonnet, a 17-year-old from Montreal, on Aug. 1, 2015. But instead of ignoring his instincts, he acted brilliantly. It may have saved a woman’s life.

Photo via CBC News.

Bonnet had been having a relatively normal day until he spotted something suspicious on his way home.

He’d been waiting for the bus after a shift at the restaurant where he works when he saw a man and woman arguing. He sensed a red flag.

“The guy was screaming at her, the girl,” Bonnet told CBC News. “He wasn’t really gentle with her, and I started watching, because I thought he would hit her, so I approached them a little bit.”

The pair asked Bonnet if he could lend them bus fares to nearby Laval, a city about 25 miles away from downtown Montreal.

Bonnet felt uneasy about what was happening. But instead of declining, he decided to get more involved. He helped the man and woman with their fares and told them he was also traveling to Laval (which was not the case).

“My plan was to keep them in a public place where he wouldn’t hurt her,” Bonnet told Dateline NBC. “I decided to be friendly with the man and have him think I was his friend. I played my game and he seemed to trust me.”

After arriving in Laval, Bonnet suggested they grab a bite to eat. At the restaurant, he gave the pair $50 for food and excused himself to use the restroom. Finally having the opportunity, he called the police and told them “someone had been kidnapped.” Officers arrived minutes later.

What Bonnet hadn’t known at the time was that police were already looking for the perpetrator and his victim.

The abusive man Bonnet reported had abducted his ex-girlfriend just hours beforehand.

“We were looking for a 29-year-old woman who was kidnapped by her former boyfriend earlier that day,” Laval police Lt. Daniel Guérin told CBC News. “We believed that man was very dangerous.”

Previously, the abuser spent time behind bars for assaulting his ex and sending her death threats.

Bonnet told Dateline NBC that while he didn’t speak with the woman after police arrived, he could see how relieved she was. “We made eye contact and she had tears in her eyes. She was really happy.”

Unfortunately, this type of tragic experience isn’t all that rare.

While this particular story unfolded in Canada — where roughly half of women have experienced at least one incident of sexual or physical violence since the age of 16 — you’ll find similarly alarming statistics in the U.S.

Photo via Thinkstock.

1 out of 4 American women will experience domestic violence in her lifetime. What’s more, female victims of homicide are far more likely than male victims to be killed by a current or former partner.

Although it may seem easy to simply leave an abusive relationship in the dust, take it from some women who’ve been there — it’s much more difficult than it seems from the outside looking in.

Instead of passing judgment, you can learn more about how you can help friends and family members who may be experiencing domestic abuse.

Bonnet has become a local hero for his selflessness.

“His quick actions may have saved this young woman’s life,” Guérin said. The officers made sure to collect money so Bonnet could be reimbursed for the bus fares and food he purchased while trying to save the victim. “He now has 500 new friends in our department.”

Thank you, Malyk, for reminding me that sometimes the bravest thing I can do is simply listen to that voice when it’s trying to get my attention.

After staying quiet for the better part of a year following the release of his Grammy-nominated debut album, The Lost Boy, Cordae has returned to active duty. Now we have his latest single, “Taxes,” a song that first appeared in the Barack and Michelle Obama-produced Netflix series We The People. The lyrics take direct aim at the capitalists in the world, questioning whether or not taxes are actually used towards improving communities.

The track comes after he dropped his EP Just Until earlier this year, which featured features from Young Thug and Q-Tip, as well as videos for “Wassup,” “Dream In Color,” and “More Life,” also from the same project. Prior to that, he dropped his single “Parables” and teamed up with Roddy Ricch for their collaboration”Gifted.”

On a more recent note, he stood beside Freddie Gibbs to guest appear on an official version of Nas’ “Life Is Like A Dice Game.” He also teamed with Common for “What’s Life” and funded scholarships for HBCU students in a partnership with Disney and ESPN.

You can listen to Cordae’s “Taxes” in the video above.

Some artists covered here are Warner Music artists. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

Megan Fox is currently experiencing a renaissance. Many are realizing they took the actress’ late aughts popularity for granted, and that she’d been the victim of sexism, from filmmakers like Michael Bay (and Judd Apatow), from the press and more. Now that people are finally taking her seriously, she has an idea on how to salvage a movie that didn’t do so well when first released: turn the 2009 horror-comedy Jennifer’s Body into a TV series.

In a new interview with The Washington Post to promote her new horror-thriller Till Death, Fox was asked about the film, which came out around the time she got fired from the third Transformers for publicly comparing Michael Bay to Hitler. Penned by Diablo Cody, it stars Fox as a high schooler possessed by a demon, with Amanda Seyfried as her bestie. Savaged upon release, it’s slowly built up a cult following. And Fox is one of its fans.

“‘Jennifer’s Body’ is iconic, and I love that movie,” Fox said. When asked about circling back to it in the age of revivals and reunions, she was game. “I don’t think it’s a hard movie to make a sequel to,” she told the Post. “I mean, they should make it into a TV series. That would be cool.”

Jennifer’s Body was released by 20th Century Fox, which is now owned by Disney. So it might be a bit tricky convincing them to put that on Disney+.

(Via The Post and EW)

A lot has come to light about Britney Spears’ conservatorship in the last couple of weeks. During a court hearing about the conservatorship on June 23, the singer called it “abusive” and asked a judge to end it altogether. “All I want is to own my money … and for this to end … and for my boyfriend to be able to f*cking drive me in his car,” she said. It was during that same hearing that she claimed conservators forced her to go on a European tour back in 2018.

“I was on tour in 2018. I was forced to do … my management said if I don’t do this tour, I will have to find an attorney and by contract, their own management could sue me if I didn’t follow through with a tour,” she said during the hearing, according to TMZ. “He handed me a sheet of paper as I got off the stage in Vegas and said I had to sign it. It was very threatening and scary. I couldn’t even get my own attorney, so out of fear, I went ahead and did the tour.”

However, the publication reports that sources “connected to the conservatorship” tell them Spears wanted to do the tour. They said that after her 2018 Vegas residency, she realized “she had nothing on her calendar for almost all of 2018. She then asked Management to find something for her to do so she wouldn’t be bored for a year.”

They added, “She literally begged to do the 2018 European Tour run. She was very excited about it and called repeatedly to ask to have it confirmed. There is a text message exchange between Management and Britney on December 16, 2017, where management provides her with the tour routing. She asks a few questions, and expresses how excited she is to do it.”

A strange season for the Golden State Warriors ended with them failing to parlay an appearance in the play-in tournament into a postseason berth. The team tried to thread the needle between having a collection of veterans with championship experience and having a bunch of younger players who were new to the stage, and while they showed plenty of promise, they ultimately didn’t do enough.

A major reason for this was the season-long absence of Klay Thompson. The team’s All-Star wing expected to suit up this season after tearing his ACL in the 2019 NBA Finals, but an injured achilles held him out for the year. In fact, Thompson explained that his inability to take the floor led to him struggling to watch these playoffs altogether.

“It’s hard for me to watch, to be honest, fellas,” Thompson said during an IG Live from a boat. “It’s hard for me to watch because I know if we was there it’d be a different story, but you gotta channel that energy into your workouts.”

Thompson went on to give an update on his recovery from achilles surgery, saying, “Rehab’s going very well, I had a great day today, made some huge strides. I got some jumpers up, it just feels good to get up and down the floor right now.”

It’s been a minute since we’ve seen Thompson on the floor, and it’s certainly fair to wonder what the Warriors would have accomplished if he was able to play this year. Regardless, with him healthy and the various growing pains the team went through this season, the expectations will be high in Golden State when 2021-22 rolls around.

The Los Angeles Clippers will enter next season without Patrick Beverley. It was reported earlier this week that the team’s ultra-passionate point guard would face a suspension to start the 2021-22 campaign, and on Saturday afternoon, the NBA announced that would end up being the case. The good news for L.A., though, is that Beverley won’t miss an extended period of time.

The league announced that Beverley’s shove on Chris Paul during Game 6 of the Western Conference Finals, which the Clippers lost to end their year altogether, will cost him the first game of next season that he’s eligible to play in — i.e., if Beverley is out with an injury to start the year, those games will not count. The infraction was officially referred to as “an unsportsmanlike act for forcefully pushing … Paul from behind and knocking him to the court during a stoppage in play.”

A day after the incident, Beverley took to Twitter to apologize to Paul and wished him and the Suns good luck as they play for a championship.

There’s no word on whether or not Beverley would attempt to appeal the ruling, but it would make sense if he decided it ultimately wasn’t worth the headache and just started his regular season 48 minutes later than everyone else.

Earlier this year, Taylor Swift earned her third No. 1 album in less than 12 months with the release of Fearless (Taylor’s Version), making her the first woman in music history to achieve this. It’s part of her latest project, which involves re-recording her older albums following a dispute with her former label, which resulted in her losing the masters of her first six albums. This fall, the singer will share her next one, which takes on her 2013 album Red. She also promised previously unheard music, and it may include a collaboration that will surely be one for the books.

As rumor has it, the album may include Taylor collaborating with Adele on “Broken Hearts,” which was registered online with both artists appearing as writers on the song. It reportedly appeared on the SESAC (Society of European Stage Authors and Composers) registry, one of the oldest performance rights organizations in the United States.

After the registry appeared on social media, fans of both singers began to share their theories about when the song would arrive and which album it would appear on. Most believed the song will land on Red (Taylor’s Version), which is due on November 19.

You can read some thoughts about the rumored collaboration from fans below.

Jen Psaki has been a remarkably different White House press secretary than any of her four predecessors. Where they were contemptuous and snippy — not to mention sometimes allergic to the truth — the Biden team’s first person on the job is, well, not. Except with Peter Doocy. Psaki and the Fox News journalist quickly established a frenemy repartee, with him asking questionable questions and her replying with snappy retorts. That schtick got a good workout on Friday, when Psaki quoted his own network back to him.

Doocy tried to take the Biden administration to task for the Defund the Police movement, in which people demand that police budgets be slashed and reallocated in ways that may be more productive, not to mention safer for some communities. Biden and team have never embraced it, but Doocy singled out U.S. Associate Attorney General Vanita Gupta, who last year was quoted saying it was “critical” for police budgets to be decreased.

But Psaki was ready for him. She immediately turned to a report from Fox News in February, which stated that Gupta’s nomination was supported by “current and former police chiefs in more than 53 cities across the country, as well as the National Fraternal Order of Police.” In addition to praising her leadership, they urged the Senate Judiciary Committee to “quickly confirm her.” (Gupta assumed office on April 22.)

After reading Doocy a piece from his own employers, Psaki said, “I don’t know if that was your report or not.” (It wasn’t.) “But it was certainly one from your network.”

When Doocy pressed that Gupta said she wanted police budgets decreased, Psaki replied, “She also made it clear in her confirmation process that she opposes defunding the police. And the president, most importantly, did not run on defunding the police. He’s always opposed defunding the police.”

The two’s latest exchange comes after a number of Democrats, as well as Fox News host Chris Wallace, have pointed out that, technically speaking, it’s Republicans who have tried to take money from the nation’s police forces, after they opposed a bill that would have made their budgets bigger.

The Philadelphia 76ers are trying to figure out what to do with Ben Simmons. Despite the fact that he’s an All-Star, Simmons’ flaws as a player were on full display during the team’s Eastern Conference Semifinals loss to the Atlanta Hawks, and now, Philly has to figure out if it’s worth moving forward with him or trying to trade him elsewhere.

While he has some questions about Simmons, Sixers coach Doc Rivers told TMZ that he’d like to have him suit up for the team when next season rolls around.

“Ben’s great,” Rivers said. “I want him back. He’s terrific. He’ll be great.

“I think he doesn’t need a lot of fixing,” he continued. “He’s gonna be great for us. He’ll be great.”

Rivers turned some heads by proclaiming after the team’s Game 7 loss to the Hawks that he’s unsure if Simmons can be a championship-level point guard. In the aftermath of those comments, Sixers executive Daryl Morey did some damage control by telling the press that the team is committed to this group of players going forward, although reports indicate that Simmons’ agent, Rich Paul, met with the team’s front office while at the NBA Draft Combine to discuss the future, although he did not request a trade.

Simmons is about to enter year two of a five-year contract extension, and over the next four seasons, he’s slated to earn more than $145 million.