Category: Worldwide

Derrick White had a huge game in the Boston Celtics’ Game 2 win over the Atlanta Hawks on Tuesday night. But while White’s 26 points and 7 rebounds got plenty of attention, a moment after the game turned into a way for Charles Barkley and Shaquille O’Neal to make fun of Stephen A. Smith in a way that led to Smith promising revenge.

A clip of White talking after the game led to Barkley and Shaq making fun of his hairline, with Barkley saying that he looks like the famous ESPN provocateur. Smith apparently swapped texts with both last night and tweeted his initial thoughts, and during a brief cameo on Get Up! on Wednesday morning, he addressed the situation directly.

“The first thing I did was text them, and I said I’ma get both of y’all, I’ma get both of y’all,” Smith said when Mike Greenberg asked for a reaction. “They were cracking up, dying laughing, texting me back — ‘We love ya, man!’ I was like, oh, I’m gonna get y’all back. Listen, Derrick White is a very, very good player, I’m sure a very, very good man, I wish him nothing but the best. But I don’t think my hairline looks like that, I think it looks a little better than that.”

Smith went on to scream “hell no” a few times after a side-by-side picture of himself and White got put on screen before he got back to the topic at hand.

“Shaq, Chuck, I swear, somehow, someway, I’ma get y’all,” Smith said. “I got to go to work, but I’ma get both of y’all, y’all know I’m good for it.”

At the very least, this gives us an excuse to post the video of Smith promising he’d get revenge on Shaq for calling into his radio show and yelling at him to stop being mean about the Dallas Cowboys while saying his name is “Tex Johnson.”

Governor Tate Reeves of Mississippi has declared April as Confederate Heritage Month in the Magnolia State, marking the 30th year of this ridiculous and wrong “tradition.”

If you’re wondering how the state’s leadership justifies something so backwards in 2023, here are the three reasons listed for recognizing Confederate Heritage Month in the official proclamation:

1) April is when the Civil War, “the costliest and deadliest” war ever fought on American soil, began. (Um, y’all know the Confederates were the ones who started this costly and deadly war, right?)

2) State law designates the last Monday in April as Confederate Memorial Day, “to honor those who served in the Confederacy.” (To honor those who did what, now? Served in the Confederacy? So you’re not merely memorializing those who tragically died fighting for a wrong-headed, racist cause, but you’re “honoring” anyone who “served” that cause? Interesting.)

3) The state wants to “honor all who lost their lives in this war” and “reflect on our nation’s past” and “gain insight from our mistakes and successes” and something about “lessons learned yesterday and today,” and striving to “understand and appreciate our heritage,” and no, none of this makes any sense whatsoever. (If reflection and insight lead you to still honor the Confederacy, you haven’t learned a daggone thing, folks.)

First of all, if there’s any question about what the Confederates in Mississippi were fighting for, they made it crystal clear in their own official declaration of reasons for secession. Right up top, the very first reason Mississippi listed:

“Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery—the greatest material interest of the world.”

Alrighty then.

And if that’s not clear enough, in that same document, Mississippi’s list of grievances with the United States government included that “it advocates negro equality, socially and politically,” and “it denies the right of property in slaves, and refuses protection to that right on the high seas, in the Territories, and wherever the government of the United States had jurisdiction.”

Kinda puts a kink in the whole “the Confederacy was about states’ rights, not slavery” argument, eh? Is this the Confederate heritage being honored this month? If not, what is it, exactly?

And let’s talk about this idea of “heritage.” Mississippi is 145 years old. The Confederacy lasted a whopping four years. Four years is the time between two World Cup finals and less than half the lifespan of “The Office”—hardly something that constitutes a “heritage.” Mississippi still talking about its “Confederate heritage” is like someone in their 50s still talking about their high school glory days, only infinitely more embarrassing.

The Confederates were losers, both literally and figuratively. They were on the objectively wrong side of a war, which they themselves initiated, and they lost. There was no glory in fighting a bloody, costly war in order to maintain the institution of slavery. There was no honor in officially documenting racist beliefs about Black people and enlisting troops to kill fellow Americans in defense of those beliefs.

The fact that the Confederates believed so deeply in their cause that tens of thousands of them were willing to die for it doesn’t make it right or OK or honorable. It actually makes it worse. Creating a mythology that there was some kind of righteousness in their fight might may make their descendants feel better, but it’s fundamentally dishonest. They were on the wrong side of a war that shouldn’t have been fought in the first place.

Any time Mississippi puts its racist history on display like this, people say, “Well, it’s Mississippi, what do you expect?” I get the impulse, but we should reject that knee-jerk response, wholeheartedly.

First of all, it’s not “Mississippi” doing this. Mississippi has the highest percentage of Black residents in the country. In the 1920s, Mississippi actually had a Black majority. Yet the state has elected an unbroken string of white governors—65 of them—since its founding. Does that seem a teensy bit…statistically unlikely, all things being equal?

Of course, things have never been equal in Mississippi, which is the whole point here. It’s not “Mississippi” clinging to the Confederacy like a security blanket, it’s the people in power in Mississippi. Specifically, it’s the white politicians who have maintained power through decades of voter suppression tactics, ranging from poll taxes and literacy tests to sneaky legislative structures to blatantly violent intimidation, that have disenfranchised the state’s Black voting population.

Does anyone seriously think “Confederate Heritage Month” represents the overall will of the Blackest state in the union? Let’s call it what it is—an exercise of Mississippi’s steeped-in-racism power structure and a not-so-subtle way of saying, “We’re still in charge here.”

As for what we should expect from Mississippi’s leadership? Better. We should expect better, more, sooner and faster. The state has shown, in the removal of the Confederate flag from its state flag and the willingness to change school names to stop honoring Confederates, that it is capable of letting go of heroic fantasies about the Confederacy. This is a conscious choice it is making, which shouldn’t go unchallenged.

If the state wants to demonstrate that it truly has “gained insight” and “learned lessons” from the past and “understands its heritage,” it should stop recognizing the Confederacy with words like “tradition” and “honor” and acknowledge the tragedy and horror that it caused. It’s way past time to be honest about that history and stop pretending “Confederate heritage” was ever something to celebrate or take pride in.

When we think about romance and soulmates, we are generally thinking about people, not dogs. But it turns out these two dogs are completely smitten with each other and have the internet calling them “relationship goals.” Rollo and Sadie met during the pandemic when their owners moved into apartments in the same building in Canada. According to Sadie’s owner, Kayla McTeer, it was love at first sight for the Husky German Shepherd mix.

McTeer told CNN that Sadie didn’t really get along well with other dogs, but when she met Rollo, “She whined and cried and laid down on her back like she just met the love of her life.”

Well, that’s one way to know your dog is in love. Thankfully for Sadie, her beau was also into her, and the relationship we didn’t know we needed to see was born.

Sadly for the two lovebirds, Rollo’s owner Caitlin Banks had to move for a job that was three hours away from Rollo’s girlfriend. If dogs could talk, I’m sure they both would’ve told their owners that the move was unfair and they’d find a way to be together. But the two did find a way to be together, with the help of their humans. The women set up weekly FaceTime calls so the dogs can have date night chats, and chat they do. Once they spot each other on camera, they whine and howl like they haven’t seen each other in years. Well, to them it may seem like years since dogs can’t tell time.

Their lovebird shenanigans are amplified when they meet up in person, and their dog romance has taken TikTok by storm with their latest call racking up 23 million views. Hopefully, they won’t have to stay apart for too long as their owners revealed that they plan to eventually move back under the same roof.

Check out the sweet love story below:

We live in a world where there is more art to consume than ever. There’s no shortage of musical mashups, digital paintings, song covers, cosplay videos, and so on and on and on and on. While having visual and audio exposure to various forms of art is lovely, when we only experience art through an online platform, we sometimes sacrifice that powerful feeling of immersion, of being able to come face to face with a creation and truly be moved by an artist’s message. There’s a subtle, yet undeniable change that happens both internally and externally when you step into something with the intention to inspire. Honestly, it’s the closest thing to real world alchemy that we’ve got.

Agnes Denes might not be a name that regularly comes up on your feed, but she’s made an entire career out of creating art that provides this kind of visceral, profound effect.

Since the late 1960s, Denes has been a pioneer for environmental activism through art, exploring our relationship to the Earth through epically large-scale creations that mimic natural splendors of nature. And what really makes her work unique, even among other similar artists, is that it’s more than a call to action—there’s actual restoration built into the process.

The most brilliant example of this is her grandest work of all, ”Tree Mountain,” which is both artwork and the first ever human-made virgin forest. Yep, she designed a giant, living, breathing thing. Denes doesn’t just praise Mother Nature in her creations…she channels her.

The work’s full title, “Tree Mountain—A Living Time Capsule—11,000 Trees, 11,000 People, 400 Years,” gives a glimpse into the huge scope and scale of the project. Built at the site of an abandoned mine in Ylöjärvi, Finland, “Tree Mountain” measures 1,378 feet long, 886 feet wide, and 125 feet tall, and is made up of thousands of trees planted in a formation reminiscent of the golden ratio.

Though Denes first came up with the concept in 1984, it wouldn’t become an official project until 1992. But once it was backed by the United Nations and the Finnish government, volunteers from around the world came together to help. Anyone who planted a tree received a certificate that not only named them as the owner of the tree they planted but bestowed ownership of the tree to that person’s descendants up to 400 years in the future.

Even granting ownership of the trees is part of the project’s message. As Denes has stated, “Anything you put into the world you become responsible for…my hope is they keep [Tree Mountain] going, for the centuries.”

Truly, at the core of all of Denes’ work is a commitment to a better future for the planet.

“The trees must outlive the present era and, by surviving, carry our concepts into an unknown time in the future. If civilization as we know it ends or changes, there will be a reminder in the form of a strange forest for our descendants to ponder. They may reflect on an undertaking that did not serve personal needs but the common good and the highest ideals of humanity and its environment while benefiting future generations.”

When we think about how hard it would be to lose one of our senses, we usually imagine losing our sight or our hearing. But what about losing our sense of smell?

Being able to smell may not seem as important as being able to see or hear, but that doesn’t mean it’s not a big deal if you can’t. Our sense of smell functions as an early-warning safety alert system, for one thing, so losing it can put us at risk. But smell is also one of our biggest memory triggers; a familiar scent can transport us to a specific time and place in the past in an instant. Pleasant smells can also evoke joy, whether we’re inhaling the fragrance of our favorite flower or basking in the mouth-watering scent of our mom’s cookies.

One of the most beloved scents in the world, even for people who don’t like the taste of it, is the smell of coffee. So when 54-year-old Jennifer Henderson got to experience her first whiff of coffee after two years of not being able to smell anything at all, her reaction was understandably emotional.

Henderson has been dealing with “long COVID,” a term referring to new or lingering symptoms long after an initial acute COVID-19 infection wanes, since she contracted the virus two years ago. Long COVID can manifest in many ways, one of which is the senses of smell and taste going awry. For Henderson, long COVID has resulted in bananas tasting like metal, garlic tasting like gasoline and her sense of smell being nonexistent for two years, according to WOIO News.

However, Cleveland Clinic anesthesiologist and pain medicine specialists Christina Shin, M.D. and Jijun Xu, M.D., Ph.D. have found that a common pain medication treatment seems to help many COVID long haulers regain their sense of smell and taste. The doctors told WOIO they don’t really konw why it works, but it does offer hope for many who are suffering with long COVID like Henderson.

“You feel like you’re in this box,” Henderson said in a video shared by CBS. “For two years, two senses are gone, completely gone. And now I just feel like I’m getting my life back. I’m getting back to normal.”

Watch the moment she realizes she can smell the coffee:

People struggling with long COVID often feel forgotten as the world increasingly moves away from focusing on the pandemic. It doesn’t help that there’s still so much we don’t know. As can be expected in a novel viral pandemic, data has taken time to collect and analyze, and even defining long COVID has been a challenge as researchers learn in real-time about the long-term effects of COVID infection.

The Kaiser Family Foundation reports that as of January 2023, the estimated workforce numbers affected by long COVID range from fewer than 500,000 to as many as 4 million. A study published in Nature in January 2023 estimated that long COVID occurs in at least 10% of acute SARS-CoV-2 infections, with more than 200 symptoms impacting multiple organ systems being identified with the condition.

Thankfully, breakthroughs like the one from the Cleveland Clinic do offer hope for people who have had far more questions than answers about their symptoms. Hopefully, we will see more people get relief like Henderson did as doctors and scientists keep working to decipher the long COVID puzzle.

It seems there are few things people can agree on these days, but it’s safe to say that stealing from a child is viewed pretty unanimously as awful.

We can also agree that when we see others do good, it often makes us want to do good in return. We can’t always expect reciprocation other than the intrinsic rewards of being good people, but stories like this prove that goodness can indeed be contagious.

A 3-year-old boy went into a store with his mom, leaving his Spider-Man bicycle outside. When he and his mother returned, the bike had vanished. Security footage shared by NEWS CENTER Maine shows a man riding off with it.

The Rockland Maine Police Department made a Facebook post describing the incident and requesting information about the stolen bike. A woman saw that post and was immediately inspired to help—an act of kindness she had no idea would spur many others.

The woman, who remains an anonymous hero, drove over two hours from where she lives in Oxford County the following day to donate a brand new Spider-Man bicycle, complete with a matching helmet and bike lock for good measure.

This good deed wasn’t necessarily an easy task—the woman told the police that she was living out of her car, having been unable to pay for her rent. But just as she decided to help a stranger, so too did others show support once they learned of her plight. In addition to her tolls being paid by a store clerk, the Mid-Coast Recovery Coalition began collecting donations and people have been calling in offering assistance. Many were inspired to supply even more bikes for children who might need them.

Rockland Police added the positive update, saying, “We thought it was important to share this heartwarming outcome with everyone and we are so lucky to live in such a wonderful community.”

Yes, there are bad people out there. But there are far more people who go above and beyond to help others. It’s important to highlight stories like this so that we remember our inherent humanity, no matter how many bleak and divisive headlines are hurled toward us.

Losing a child is tragic no matter their age, and many parents would do whatever they could to preserve their child’s memory or fulfill their final wishes. If you ask Spanish TV star, Ana Obregón, that’s exactly what she did when she decided to welcome a grandchild through surrogacy.

The actress’s decision is causing a lot of conversation and backlash for multiple reasons. In Spain, surrogacy is illegal and the sperm of a deceased loved one can only be used to impregnate the widow up to 12 months after the husband’s death, according to CNN. This detail didn’t deter Obregón.

The grandmother used a surrogate and egg donor from the United States, where surrogacy is legal, and Obregón’s grandchild is an American citizen. Ana Sandra Lequio Obregón was born in Miami, Florida March 20, Obregón told Hola! magazine.

The discussions in Spain, aside from the ethical concerns, are related to the legality of bringing a baby born via surrogate back to Spain where the procedure is illegal. It seems that Obregón will not be in any legal trouble though, as the baby is legally her daughter, though biologically her granddaughter.

While people may be perplexed or even uncomfortable with the dual title of Obregón, it should be noted that grandparents legally adopt their grandchildren all the time if circumstances warrant it. This then gives the grandparent who adopts dual titles as parent and grandparent. One of the most famous examples of this situation is Olympic athlete Simone Biles.

“This girl isn’t my daughter, but my granddaughter,” Obregón told Hola! “She is Aless’ daughter and when she grows up I will tell her that her father was a hero.”

But some people in Spain are having strong feelings about the morality of conceiving a grandchild in this manner, with a philosophy professor likening it to an episode of “Black Mirror,” according to CNN. The naysayers aren’t deterring the new grandmother’s excitement, though. Obregón told Hola! it took three years to conceive her grandchild, explaining that though it was a long process, it is what has kept the 68-year-old alive.

See on Instagram

In the caption of her Instagram post sharing the interview, Obregón wrote, “My Aless: I swore I would save you from cancer, and I failed you. I promised you I’d bring your daughter into the world and here she is in my arms.”

“When I hug her, it’s an indescribable feeling because it’s as if I were hugging you again,” she continued. “I swear that I will take care of her with the infinite love that I have to give, and from heaven, you will help me.”

The new grandmother finished her heartfelt post, written in Spanish, by saying that her son was the love of her life in heaven while his daughter is now the love of her life on Earth.

While the process to have a grandchild through surrogacy isn’t something that is traditional or common, it seems to be what worked for Obregón. She’s even open to having more grandchildren via surrogacy since her son reportedly wanted a large family.

The grandmother and granddaughter are still in the United States awaiting the baby’s American passport to fly home to Spain. In the meantime, here’s hoping for safe travels, a happy healthy baby, and hopefully a nanny because sleep deprivation at 68 is probably a whole different level of exhaustion.

Following the release of The Mandalorian Season 3 finale, the big question on Star Wars fans’ minds is will there be a Season 4? The good news is, yes, almost definitely.

Right out of the gate, we know from creator Jon Favreau that Season 4 is coming because he already wrote it. Favreau confirmed that he wrote the next season during post-production for the just-concluded Season 3.

“Season 4, yeah I’ve written it already,” Favreau told BFMTV back in February. “We have to know where we’re going to tell a fully formed story. We had mapped it out, Dave [Filoni] and I, and slowly you start to write each episode. I was writing it during post-production. All of it has to feel like a continuation and one full story.”

Favreau also revealed that it was important to lock in the Season 4 story because of the upcoming Mandalorian spinoffs, Ahsoka and Skeleton Crew, which “take place within the same Star Wars time period.” However, we now know the connection goes even deeper than that. All three series will culminate in a new movie that will be directed by longtime Lucasfilm veteran Dave Filoni. That film will reportedly feature the growing showdown that’s brewing between the New Republic and Grand Admiral Thrawn.

As for the plot of The Mandalorian Season 4, those details tightly under wraps as of this writing. The Season 3 finale provided little in the ways of clues, thanks to its heartwarming ending that left the door open to a wide world of adventure for Mando and Grogu.

The Mandalorian Seasons 1-3 are available for streaming on Disney+.

Throughout the first two games of the NBA Playoffs series between the Sacramento Kings and Golden State Warriors, the Kings’ beverage partner 50 Cent has been a fixture at the Golden 1 Center in Sacramento.

However, it sounds like he might be rethinking making the trip 370 miles northwest to the Warriors’ Chase Center for the next few games after one of his rap peers, E-40, was given the boot from Game 1 after a contentious exchange with another fan in the expensive seats. 50 joked about the Warriors exacting vengeance for their unofficial rap mascot on Instagram.

“I was thinking about jumping on this jet to the Bay Area for game 3 but the KINGS kicked E40 out,” he wrote. “They might want to kick 50 out the Chase center. LOL.”

The Dubs have reason to be a little salty after the first two games of the series, which Sacramento now leads 2-0 after defeating the Warriors 114-106 on Monday night. To add insult to injury, the cornerstone of Golden State’s defense, Draymond Green, was suspended one game after stepping on the chest of Kings forward Domantas Sabonis — an incident 50 had thoughts about as well.

E-40 was kicked out of Game 1 after the altercation, which started when a fan behind him told him to sit down. The Vallejo rapper made it a point to ascribe the response to “racial bias” in a statement, writing, “Security saw a disagreement between a Black man and a white woman and immediately assumed I was at fault.”

If 50 does make the trip, he could probably avoid a similar outcome, so long as he does the opposite of his rap career and doesn’t start any beef.

The Notorious B.I.G.’s 1997 album Life After Death, which was released just days after he was murdered, is an iconic piece of hip-hop history. Now, to coincide with the ongoing celebration of hip-hop’s 50th anniversary this year, Warner Music Group’s WMX has announced the debut season of visual podcast series Iconic Records will focus on the landmark Biggie Smalls album.

The eight-episode run of the show, hosted by Radio Hall Of Fame member Angie Martinez, will premiere on April 29 at 8 p.m. ET, on the new WMX Hip-Hop channel on The Roku Channel (channel 1137). Further episodes will debut every Saturday after that. It will also be available on Biggie’s YouTube channel and on major audio podcast platforms starting May 1. Guests appearing over the course of the season will include Fat Joe, Pusha T, Rick Ross, Too Short, Lil Cease, and surprise guests yet to be revealed.

Martinez said in a statement, “Biggie was, and still is, one of the most important artists of our lifetime and Life After Death is a masterpiece! To collaborate with WMX on this series has been an incredible experience. It’s especially meaningful as we also pay homage to 50 years of hip-hop and how it’s changed the course of history.”

Ben Blank — WMX president, media & creative content — also noted, “We’re excited to be able to share stories about the albums that have shaped entire generations so profoundly – beginning with Biggie’s Life After Death. The launch of Iconic Records embraces the huge appetite and need for unique content tailored for genre-specific audiences. WMX lives at a crossroads where artists, content, and experiences converge to reach music fans where they are, and this exciting series is the first of many forums in which we will continue to tell the stories about the art that shapes and inspires our culture.”

Wayne Barrow, Biggie’s manager, added, “The Notorious B.I.G. is a once-in-a-lifetime talent. His work has been examined and reviewed before, but this series provides new stories and firsthand accounts by the people that were there. It’s something special.”

Check out the Iconic Records trailer above.

The Notorious B.I.G. is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.