Category: News

Some 75 years ago, in bombed-out Frankfurt, Germany, a little girl named Marlene Mahta received a sign of hope in the midst of squalor, homelessness and starvation. A CARE Package containing soap, milk powder, flour, blankets and other necessities provided a lifeline through the contributions of average American families. There were even luxuries like chocolate bars.

World War II may have ended, but its devastation lingered. Between 35 and 60 million people died. Whole cities had been destroyed, the countryside was charred and burned, and at least 60 million European civilians had been made homeless. Hunger remained an issue for many families for years to come. In the face of this devastation, 22 American organizations decided to come together and do something about it: creating CARE Packages for survivors.

“What affected me… was hearing that these were gifts from average American people,” remembers Mahta, who, in those desperate days, found herself picking through garbage cans to find leftover field rations and MREs to eat. Inspired by the unexpected kindness, Mahta eventually learned English and emigrated to the U.S.

“I wanted to be like those wonderful, generous people,” she says.

The postwar Marshall Plan era was a time of “great moral clarity,” says Michelle Nunn, CEO of CARE, the global anti-poverty organization that emerged from those simple beginnings. “The CARE Package itself – in its simplicity and directness – continues to guide CARE’s operational faith in the enduring power of local leadership – of simply giving people the opportunity to support their families and then their communities.”

Each CARE Package contained rations that had once been reserved for soldiers, but were now being redirected to civilians who had suffered as a result of the conflict. The packages cost $10 to send, and they were guaranteed to arrive at their destination within four months.

Thousands of Americans, including President Harry S. Truman, got involved, and on May 11, 1946, the first 15,000 packages were sent to Le Havre in France, a port badly battered during the war.

Thousands of additional CARE Packages soon followed. At first packages were sent to specific recipients, but over time donations came in for anyone in need. When war rations ran out American companies began donating food. Later, carpentry tools, blankets, clothes, books, school supplies, and medicine were included.

Before long, the CARE Packages were going to other communities in need around the world, including Asia and Latin America. Ultimately, CARE delivered packages to 100 million families around the world.

The original CARE Packages were phased out in the late 1960s, though they were revived when specific needs arose, such as when former Soviet Union republics needed relief, or after the Bosnian War. Meanwhile, CARE transformed. Now, instead of physical boxes, it invests in programs for sustainable change, such as setting up nutrition centers, Village Savings and Loan Associations, educational programs, agroforestry initiatives, and much more.

But, with a pandemic ravaging populations around the world, CARE is bringing back its original CARE packages to support the critical basic needs of our global neighbors. And for the first time, they’re also delivering CARE packages here at home in the United States to communities in need.

Community leaders like Janice Dixon are on the front lines of that effort. Dixon, president and CEO of Community Outreach in Action in Jonesboro, Ga., now sends up to 80 CARE packages each week to those in need due to COVID-19. Food pantries have been available, she notes, but they’ve been difficult to access for those without cars, and public transportation is spotty in suburban Atlanta.

“My phone has been ringing off the hook,” says Dixon. For example, one of those calls was from a senior diabetic, she remembers, who faced an impossible choice, but was able to purchase medicine because food was being provided by CARE.

Today, CARE is sending new packages with financial support and messages of hope to frontline medical workers, caregivers, essential workers, and individuals in need in more than 60 countries, including the U.S. Anyone can now go to carepackage.org to send targeted help around the world. Packages focus on helping vaccines reach people more quickly, tackling food insecurity, educational disparities, global poverty, and domestic violence, as well as providing hygiene kits to those in need.

From the very beginning, CARE received the support of presidents, with Hollywood luminaries like Rita Hayworth and Ingrid Bergman also adding their voices. At An Evening With CARE, happening this Tuesday, May 11, notable names will turn out again as the organization celebrates the 75th Anniversary of the CARE Package and the exciting, meaningful work that lies ahead. The event will be hosted by Whoopi Goldberg and attended by former Presidents Barack Obama, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and Jimmy Carter, as well as Angela Merkel, Iman, Jewel, Michelle Williams, Katherine McPhee-Foster, Betty Who and others. Please RSVP now for this can’t-miss opportunity.

Back in 2017, Michelle Rodriguez threatened to quit the Fast and/or Furious series until they finally hired a female writer. Turns out she’s always kept the franchise in check. A new oral history of the films with Entertainment Weekly contains lots of nuggets, including Vin Diesel saying Dominic’s relationship with Rodriguez’s Letty is “potentially the biggest love story” in cinema history. But there’s also the actress saying that she almost never took the role in the first place until the writers made it less sexist.

Originally Letty wasn’t the badass that makes her and Dominic one of the screen’s great power couples. Costar Jordana Brewster said that when Michelle read the screenplay for the 2001 original, “she was like, ‘No, I’m not playing that.’ And then she changed it completely. It went from a trophy girlfriend to this really layered character.”

For Rodriguez, the script just wasn’t realistic. (Mind you, the franchise didn’t get truly ridiculous until Fast Five.) So she pushed for rewrites.

“It was a reality check for them to realize that the streets don’t work like that,” Rodriguez said. She elaborated:

“You don’t just get with a guy because he’s hot. There’s a hierarchy there. Can that hot guy get beat up by who you’re dating? If he can, then you don’t date him, because why would you want to lose the hierarchy? In order to keep it real, I had to school them: ‘I know you guys like Hollywood and all that, but if you want it to be realistic, this is how it really works, and I’m not going to be a slut in front of millions of people, so you’re going to lose me if you don’t change this.’ And they figured it out.”

Producer Neal H. Moritz claims they were happy for the advice. “It was nice to have that female perspective and really try and dive deep,” he said. “We wanted everybody to be empowered, whether you were white, Black, Hispanic, male, female, didn’t matter to us.”

Rodriguez even had to hustle to get some action. “I remember fighting to get a moment where Letty gets into a fight herself,” she said, “because I felt like you don’t sit around and let your boys throw down without getting your hands dirty.”

And that’s why Letty is Letty.

(Via EW)

It is exceedingly rare to see coaches in professional sports leave for the college ranks for the same job title, but with two weeks left until the start of the WNBA season, that’s exactly what happened with Atlanta Dream head coach Nicki Collen.

Collen, who took over as head coach in Atlanta in 2018, was announced as the new head coach at Baylor after Kim Mulkey left for the LSU job.

The news came as a shock to everyone, including to players of the Dream, as Collen has been running Atlanta’s training camp and even met with the media on Monday to talk about the upcoming season.

Folks from around the WNBA community were stunned by the news and had some very funny responses to Collen just dipping out right before the start of the season.

The Baylor job is, without a doubt, one of the best in all of college basketball and for Collen it is likely a spot that provides her more job security long-term. Still, it is pretty wild to see someone leave an active head coaching job at the professional level for a college job, and the Dream are left with more questions than answers with less than two weeks until the start of the regular season. We’ll find out soon who they elevate to head coach, but if nothing else this provides a whole new layer of drama to the WNBA season.

There are countless shameless conservative commentators, but few are willing to go to the lengths of Dinesh D’Souza. The pundit, propagandist, and Trump-pardoned ex-felon loves to say things so patently ludicrous it sometimes seems like his shtick is an elaborate Andy Kaufman-esque joke — a parody of Republican crapulence. Whatever the case, it’s clear he thinks his fans will believe absolutely anything, no matter how inane. Back in February, he launched a defense of the failed MAGA coup of January 6 that was dumb even for such defenses.

Now he’s back with an even dumber attempted vindication. He posted a picture of one of the more famous insurrectionists — the guy who stole the Speaker of the House lectern, but not before posing for a clean picture while smiling and waving, ensuring the feds could easily track him down. (He turned out to be a Florida Man, who was turned in by another Florida Man.) It’s the closest thing to a fun and fancy free image from the day, which resulted in five deaths.

“Does this LOOK like an insurrection? A riot? A coup attempt?” he wrote, adding, “If it doesn’t walk like a duck or talk like a duck then it probably isn’t a duck.”

But even with the man’s big smile, the image D’Souza chose was clearly of a duck. And D’Souza’s tweet was instantly called out for its failed attempt at gaslighting.

Others showed some other, more obviously damning images.

Others poked holes in his logic (or lack thereof).

Others reminded D’Souza that people actually died.

And others reminded him that he himself is a former felon, pardoned by a possible future felon.

D’Souza is far from the first Republican to try and downplay the violence of January 6. Tucker Carlson tried to do the same thing last month. But at least Carlson put some effort into the ruse. D’Souza, as usual, isn’t even trying.

On Monday, one of the richest couples in the world announced they were parting ways: Bill and Melinda Gates are getting a divorce after 27 years together. It’s the end for a pair who have spent the last 20-plus years working together to make the world a better place; in 2000, they founded the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and since then they’ve used a vast endowment of some $50 billion to influence such areas as global health and early childhood education. (Sometimes he does some solo do-goodery.)

But, Gates wrote in a tweet, the two will part ways, at least as a private couple, if not business partners. “After a great deal of thought and a lot of work on our relationship, we have made the decision to end our marriage,” Gates wrote. The Microsoft co-founder — and, as per Forbes, the fourth richest person on the planet, with an estimated $124 billion in wealth — boasted about how they had “built a foundation that works all over the world to enable all people to lead healthy, productive lives.” Alas, he said they “no longer believe we can grow together as a couple in this next phase of our lives.”

It’s sad news, and it throws the future of their foundation into some jeopardy: As per The New York Times, much of their vast fortune, which will be split in some fashion, has yet to be moved into their charitable company.

Gates asked the world to grant them “space for privacy.” But people couldn’t resist some Microsoft or Microsoft-related jokes.

Some made jokes about Bill Gates bro-ing down with a certain other divorced billionaire.

And others imagined Melinda hitting the town with other rich divorcees.

(Via NYT)

While WandaVision ended up being an unpredictable delight that left Marvel fans spinning out theories, week after week, the show pulled an unexpected twist by not having a Doctor Strange cameo. From the jump, the show was promoted as a lead-in to Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, so it was assumed that the Sorcerer Supreme could pop up at some point, even if it was nothing more than a brief end-credits scene. Instead, he was nowhere to be found. Of course, this could’ve been another case of fans getting ahead of themselves, but in a new interview, Marvel Studios head Kevin Feige has confirmed that Benedict Cumberbatch was signed on to make an appearance, but the cameo was nixed at the last minute to keep the focus on Wanda. Via Rolling Stone:

“Some people might say, ‘Oh, it would’ve been so cool to see Dr. Strange,’” says Feige. “But it would have taken away from Wanda, which is what we didn’t want to do. We didn’t want the end of the show to be commoditized to go to the next movie — here’s the white guy, ‘Let me show you how power works.’”

Here’s where Marvel’s decision gets even… stranger. According to head writer Jac Schaeffer, WandaVision‘s commercials were supposed to be “messages from Strange to Wanda,” and at one point, Cumberbatch was actually going to be in one of the ads. Ultimately, Strange was cut, but the dark, creepy ads were left in, which probably explains why some of them still don’t make a lick of sense. A claymation child literally died trying to eat yogurt. What the heck, Marvel?

(Via Rolling Stone)

Whether you grew up calling him Puff Daddy, P. Diddy, or Sean “Diddy” Combs, the entertainer variously known as all three is officially “Sean Love Combs” on his driver’s license, which he shared on Instagram earlier today (forgetting to blank out his address and other identifying details — although, it’s hard to imagine he’d be hard to find if one wanted to do so in the first place). Diddy previously “joked” about changing his name to “Brother Love,” then just to “Love” a few years ago, but as it turns out, he was dead serious — in a way.

Of course, the name change to a more positive moniker hasn’t cleared up very much of the confusion around his stage name; on DJ Khaled’s recently released 12th album Khaled Khaled, Combs is still credited as “Puff Daddy” on “This Is My Year” which also features A Boogie Wit Da Hoodie, Big Sean, and Rick Ross. And while Puff Daddy closes the track with much of his signature big money talk, his trademark motivational mouthiness has drawn criticism elsewhere, as fans took issue with his open letter to General Motors chastising the auto manufacturer for exploiting Black artists — a practice he’s been accused of himself multiple times over the years.

You can see Diddy’s new license reading his updated name here.

A few weeks ago, something unexpected happened: Tig Notaro went viral, for an appearance in the Army of the Dead trailer that was declared by social media to be both “badass” and “sexy AF.” No one was as surprised by this as the comic herself, who confessed on The Tonight Show that she didn’t even know what “AF” meant. This latest Tig news isn’t quite as earth-shaking as that, but it’s still one for the history books (probably): Notaro is getting a new HBO comedy special — but with a twist.

What is that twist? That it will be fully-animated. According to HBO, that’s a history first, though they could be wrong and some stand-up special expert may crop up to point out, say, George Carlin did that in 1986 and everyone forgot. But for now, Notaro is making history, and good for her, not the least because almost all stand-up specials tend to look and feel alike. (Then again, the few attempts to change the basic format — like that one Chris Rock one where it keeps cutting between three different shows in three different places and three different outfits — essentially prove that tradition works here for a reason.)

An animated stand-up special, though, sounds like it could work. Besides, it sounds like a close cousin of shows like The Midnight Gospel, which animates podcast episodes, turning simple chats into psychedelic whatzits. Between this special, due on HBO and HBO Max this summer, and her possibly being the coolest part of Zack Snyder’s forthcoming zombie pic, Notaro could gives us something we never knew we always wanted.

(Via The AV Club)

In a new interview with Adweek, Travis Scott rejects terms like “branding” and “marketing,” which may strike some as sort of ironic. Over the course of the past year, his brand partnerships netted him over $30 million, landing him on Forbes magazine’s coveted 30 Under 30 list thanks to deals with McDonald’s, Nike, and Sony PlayStation. He also launched his Cactus spiked seltzer brand earlier this year, pulling down some truly impressive sales figures for a brand-new product. Still, despite all that, he insists his process is based on vibes, not a business strategy based on branding.

Receiving Adweek’s inaugural Creator Visionary of the Year designation, Travis downplayed his gift for selling himself, saying, “I don’t like words like ‘branding’ and ‘marketing.’ I just wasn’t ever really into it, you know? I guess I’m a naturalist in that sense… I’m just more about putting out very cool things that inspire me and I hope one day inspire other people. I’m trying to bring a utopian effect … hoping to inspire the next person to just get creative or even just live their life in an aesthetically pleasing, vibed-out way.”

However, he also pointed out how choosy he can be when picking partners to collaborate with. “I can’t do anything that I’m just not totally comfortable with,” he said. “I was never into being handed anything and just standing behind [a product]. Then we wouldn’t be creators. I’ve always set out to formulate something to bring to each partnership. I’ve just stood on that since day one and maintained it… I do think there is care in how you present things. It’s all about how you deliver things to people. My intentions aren’t to market a brand.”

You can read the full profile here.

A landmark new study has found that LGBTQ boys from Gen Z (1998 to 2010) are much more comfortable being open about their sexuality than previous generations.

The study, published in the journal Psychology of Sexual Orientation and Gender Diversity, found that 66% of gay or bisexual boys between the ages of 13 to 18 were “out” to their mothers or other female parental figures, and 49% were out to their fathers or male prenatal figure.

The study examined 1,194 boys aged 13-to-18 who identify as gay, bisexual, or as being attracted to people regardless of gender.

That’s a massive uptick since the 1990s when an estimated 40% of gay and bisexual male teens were out to their mothers and only 30% to their fathers.

“This study is encouraging in that it shows that many teens, including those under 18 years old, are comfortable with their sexuality,” said lead author David A. Moskowitz, PhD, assistant professor of medical social sciences at Northwestern University’s Institute for Sexual and Gender Minority Health and Wellbeing.

“At the same time, we must be cautious, as the data also point to some of the same barriers and discrimination that previous generations have faced. Work still needs to be done,” Moskovitz continued.

via Pexels

The study found that white teens were more likely to come out to their parents than Black teens and that religious affiliation also plays a big role in determining who comes out.

Participants who aren’t religious were more likely to come out to their parents than those who are.

“This gives us an understanding of the factors that move teenagers to share this type of information with the people closest to them,” said Moskowitz. “We can now compare these practices with how other generations deal with these issues and think about what it all means for future generations.”

One reason why Generation Z is more comfortable being out of the closet than older generations may be their exposure to a greater number of LGBTQ peers. A poll from last February found that Gen Z is the queerest generation, with 15% of teen respondents identifying as queer, trans, or nonbinary.

The study shows that LGBTQ teens are growing up in a more tolerant world but there is still a disparity between the comfort level male teens have with their mothers and fathers. Dr. Michael C. LaSala says that LGBTQ males have a harder time coming out to their dads due to societal expectations of masculinity.

“They realize if they are being chided in the outside world for not being real men that this will reflect poorly on their dads, who will be angry and disappointed once they come out,” LaSala said in Psychology Today.

LaSala believes that many fathers will need to overcome societal pressures in order to be more supportive of their LGBTQ sons.

“Certainly all fathers need to show that they love their sons and daughters, but fathers of gay sons need to find ways to surmount the barrier of homophobia and socially scripted queasiness about gay sex to show their sons that they are indeed lovable and deserve the love of a good man,” LaSala adds.

via Pexels

Overall, the study is great news for the LGBTQ community because those who are open about their sexuality suffer fewer psychological problems than those who are not.

Lesbians, gays, and bisexuals who were out and open about their sexuality are less likely to have anxiety, depression, and burnout. They also produce less cortisol, the hormone associated with stress.

Gay and bisexual men who are out of the closet are also are more physically fit and have lower rates of depression than straight men.

Moskowitz believes that the research can be used to help even more young men accept their sexuality. “An important next step would be to determine the coming out practices of females in this age group,” Moskowitz said. “This study provides a roadmap for such an effort. In the meantime, these findings should be helpful to those who work with teenagers identifying as sexual minorities.”