#threadcast #leoentertainment #mcb 28/10/2024
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NEW YORK -- Investigators from various federal agencies launched an "interagency operation” on Monday at the troubled lockup in New York City where Sean “Diddy” Combs is being held.
The investigators from the Bureau of Prisons, the Justice Department’s inspector general’s office and other law enforcement agencies had descended on the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn on Monday, the Bureau of Prisons said in statement to The Associated Press.
In a statement on Monday, the Bureau of Prisons said its operation in Brooklyn was pre-planned and that there is “no active threat.”
The agency said it wouldn’t provide additional details about what exactly investigators were doing there on Monday until the operation is complete “in an effort to maintain the safety and security of all personnel inside the facility and the integrity of this operation.”
The law enforcement operation is “designed to achieve our shared goal of maintaining a safe environment for both our employees and the incarcerated individuals housed at MDC Brooklyn,” the agency said. Prison officials declined to provide specific details about the operation Monday morning.
But the move comes as the jail has faced increasing scrutiny over horrific conditions, rampant violence and multiple deaths and amid a push by the Justice Department and Bureau of Prisons to fix problems at the jail and hold perpetrators accountable.
Last month, federal prosecutors charged nine inmates in connection with a spate of attacks from April to August at the Metropolitan Detention Center, the only federal jail in New York City. The allegations made public last month detailed serious safety and security issues at the jail, including charges after two inmates were stabbed to death and another was speared in the spine with a makeshift icepick. A correctional officer was also charged with shooting at a car during an unauthorized high-speed chase.
The criminal charges offered a window into violence and dysfunction that has plagued the jail, which houses about 1,200 people, including Combs and Sam Bankman-Fried, the founder of the collapsed FTX cryptocurrency exchange.
The facility, in an industrial area on the Brooklyn waterfront, has about 1,200 detainees, down from more than 1,600 in January. It’s used mainly for post-arrest detention for people awaiting trial in federal courts in Manhattan or Brooklyn. Other inmates are there to serve short sentences following convictions.
Those held at the Brooklyn jail have long complained about rampant violence, dreadful conditions, severe staffing shortages and the widespread smuggling of drugs and other contraband, some of it facilitated by employees. At the same time, they say they’ve been subject to frequent lockdowns and have been barred from leaving their cells for visits, calls, showers or exercise.
“I’m not here as a celebrity, I’m not here as a politician. I’m here as a mother,” Beyoncé said at a campaign rally for Kamala Harris.
“A mother who cares deeply about the world my children and all of our children live in, a world where we have the freedom to control our bodies, a world where we’re not divided,” she said Friday night in Houston.
“Imagine our daughters growing up seeing what’s possible with no ceilings, no limitations," she continued. “We must vote, and we need you.”
At the end, Beyoncé, who was joined onstage by her Destiny’s Child bandmate Kelly Rowland, introduced Harris. “Ladies and gentlemen, please give a big, loud, Texas welcome to the next president of the United States, Vice President Kamala Harris,” she said.
She did not perform — unlike in 2016, when she performed at a presidential campaign rally for Hilary Clinton in Cleveland.
Houston is Beyoncé's hometown, and Harris’ presidential campaign has taken on Beyonce’s 2016 track “Freedom,” a cut from her landmark 2016 album “Lemonade," as its anthem.
Harris first used the song in July during her first official public appearance as a presidential candidate at her campaign headquarters in Delaware. That same month, Beyoncé’s mother, Tina Knowles, publicly endorsed Harris for president.
Beyoncé gave permission to Harris to use the song, a campaign official who was granted anonymity to discuss private campaign operations confirmed to The Associated Press.
Arriving in the back-half of “Lemonade,” “Freedom” samples two John and Alan Lomax field recordings, which document Jim Crow-era folk spirituals of Southern Black churches and the work songs of Black prisoners from 1959 and 1948, respectively. It also features Pulitzer Prize winner Kendrick Lamar.
Kinitra D. Brooks, an academic and author of “The Lemonade Reader,” says the song “‘Freedom" is so important because it shows that freedom isn’t free. The freedom to be yourself, the political freedom ... it’s the idea that you must fight for freedom, and that it is winnable."
The Harris rally in Houston highlighted the perilous medical fallout from the state’s strict abortion ban and putting the blame squarely on Donald Trump.
Since abortion was restricted in Texas, the state’s infant death rate has increased, more babies have died of birth defects and maternal mortality has risen.
Hallmark Media executive vice president of programming Lisa Hamilton Daly instructed a former employee not to cast “old people” for Hallmark roles, saying that “our leading ladies are aging out,” according to a lawsuit filed against the network this month and obtained by The Associated Press.
Penny Perry, a 79-year-old casting director who filed the lawsuit Oct. 9 in Los Angeles Superior Court, alleges that she was wrongfully fired from the network known for its feel-good movies because of her age, and despite stellar performance reviews. "Hallmark’s happy endings are stories made for TV only," the complaint says. “In Ms. Perry’s case, there was no happy ending, and no feel-good episode to wrap up her career with Hallmark. Instead, her finale episode was marred by ageist and ableist harassment, and a callous termination which robbed her of her illustrious career, her pride, and her well-being.”
In a statement, Hallmark denied the allegations, adding: “Hallmark continues to consistently cast and maintain positive, productive relationships with talented actors representing a broad spectrum of diversity, including actors who span many age groups and cross generations.”
According to the lawsuit, Hamilton Daly told Perry that they needed to "replace" the “old talent" including 42-year-old actress Lacey Chabert, who has starred in dozens of Hallmark movies, many of them Christmas-themed, and portrayed Gretchen Wieners in Mean Girls (2004), saying Chabert is “getting older and we have to find someone like her to replace her as she gets older.”
The lawsuit adds that Hamilton Daly said of the 60-year-old actress and “Our Christmas Journey” star Holly Robinson Peete: “No one wants her because she’s too expensive and getting too old. She can’t play leading roles anymore.”
Hallmark countered: “Lacey and Holly have a home at Hallmark. We do not generally comment on pending litigation. And while we deny these outrageous allegations, we are not going to discuss an employment relationship in the media,” a company representative told AP in an emailed statement.
Chabert stars in a new Hallmark movie, The Christmas Quest, slated for release Dec. 1, and hosts the reality series “Celebrations with Lacey Chabert,” according to Hallmark's website. Representatives for Chabert and Robinson Peete did not immediately respond to request for comment.
Perry herself endured ageist and ableist harassment at the company, and Hamilton Daly — who apparently repeatedly made reference to age as a negative attribute that did not fit the network's image — “told Ms. Perry she was too ‘long in the tooth’ to keep her job at Hallmark,” the lawsuit says. It also alleges that senior vice president of programming and development Randy Pope ridiculed Perry for her relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis by mocking her when she mispronounced words or names — a symptom of the condition.
"Unfortunately, Hallmark treated a venerable Hollywood veteran this way and we hope this action will lead to change in Hollywood and all work environments,” said a statement from Perry’s attorneys, Lisa Sherman and Josh Schein.
The allegations arrive amid a period of turmoil for Hollywood, punctuated by historic labor strikes, the pandemic, and the streaming revolution.
The Associated Press’ women in the workforce and state government coverage receives financial support from Pivotal Ventures. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.
LOS ANGELES -- Phil Lesh, a classically trained violinist and jazz trumpeter who found his true calling reinventing the role of rock bass guitar as a founding member of the Grateful Dead, died Friday at age 84.
Lesh's death was announced on his Instagram account. Lesh was the oldest and one of the longest surviving members of the band that came to define the acid rock sound emanating from San Francisco in the 1960s.
“Phil Lesh, bassist and founding member of The Grateful Dead, passed peacefully this morning. He was surrounded by his family and full of love. Phil brought immense joy to everyone around him and leaves behind a legacy of music and love,” the Instagram statement reads in part.
Lesh is survived by his wife, Jill, and sons Brian and Grahame.
John Rogers, the principal writer of this obituary, retired from The Associated Press in 2021.
Although he kept a relatively low public profile, rarely granting interviews or speaking to the audience, fans and fellow band members recognized Lesh as a critical member of the Grateful Dead whose thundering lines on the six-string electric bass provided a brilliant counterpoint to lead guitarist Jerry Garcia's soaring solos and anchored the band's famous marathon jams.
The band often closed its concerts with the song.
After the group’s dissolution following Garcia’s 1995 death, Lesh often skipped joining the other surviving members when they got together to perform.
He did take part in a 2009 Grateful Dead tour and again in 2015 for a handful of “Fare Thee Well” concerts marking both the band’s 50th anniversary and what Lesh said would be the last time he would play with the others.
“When Phil's happening the band's happening,” Garcia once said.
Drummer Mickey Hart called him the group's intellectual who brought a classical composer's mindset and skills to a five-chord rock ‘n’ roll band.
“He happens to play bass but he’s more like a horn player, doing all those arpeggios — and he has that counterpoint going all the time,” he said.
Lesh began his long musical odyssey as a classically trained violinist, starting with lessons in third grade. He took up the trumpet at 14, eventually earning the second chair in California’s Oakland Symphony Orchestra while still in his teens.
But he set the trumpet aside after college, concluding he didn’t have the lung power to become an elite player.
Soon after he took up the bass, The Warlocks renamed themselves the Grateful Dead and Lesh began captivating audiences with his dexterity. Crowds gathered in what came to be known as “The Phil Zone” directly in front of his position onstage.
Lesh’s death comes two days after MusiCares named the Grateful Dead its Persons of the Year. MusiCares, which helps music professionals needing financial or other kinds of assistance, cited Lesh’s Unbroken Chain Foundation among other philanthropic initiatives. The Dead will be honored in January at a benefit gala ahead of the Grammy Awards in Los Angeles.
The statement did not cite a specific cause of death and attempts to reach representatives for additional details were not immediately successful. Lesh had previously survived bouts of prostate cancer, bladder cancer and a 1998 liver transplant necessitated by the debilitating effects of a hepatitis C infection and years of heavy drinking.
Lesh credited Garcia with teaching him to play the bass in the unorthodox lead-guitar style that he would become famous for, mixing thundering arpeggios with snippets of spontaneously composed orchestral passages.
Fellow bass player Rob Wasserman once said Lesh’s style set him apart from every other bassist he knew of. While most others were content to keep time and take the occasional solo, Wasserman said Lesh was both good enough and confident enough to lead his fellow musicians through a song’s melody.
But he had largely put both instruments aside and was driving a mail truck and working as a sound engineer for a small radio station in 1965 when Garcia recruited him to play bass in a fledgling rock band called The Warlocks.
When Lesh told Garcia he didn’t play the bass, the musician asked, “Didn’t you used to play violin?” When he said yes, Garcia told him, “There you go, man.”
Armed with a cheap four-string instrument his girlfriend bought him, Lesh sat down for a seven-hour lesson with Garcia, following the latter’s advice that he tune his instrument’s strings an octave lower than the four bottom strings on Garcia’s guitar. Then Garcia turned him loose, allowing Lesh to develop the spontaneous style of playing that he would embrace for the rest of his life.
Lesh and Garcia would frequently exchange leads, often spontaneously, while the band as a whole would frequently break into long experimental, jazz-influenced jams during concerts. The result was that even well-known Grateful Dead songs like “Truckin’” or “Sugar Magnolia” rarely sounded the same two performances in a row, something that would inspire loyal fans to attend show after show.
“It’s always fluid, we just pretty much figure it out on the fly,” Lesh said, chuckling, during a rare 2009 interview with The Associated Press. “You can’t set those things in stone in the rehearsal room.”
Phillip Chapman Lesh was born on March 15, 1940, in Berkeley, California, the only child of Frank Lesh, an office equipment repairman, and his wife, Barbara.
He would say in later years that his love of music came from listening to broadcasts of the New York Philharmonic on his grandmother’s radio. One of his earliest memories was hearing the great German composer Bruno Walter lead that orchestra through Brahms’ First Symphony.
Musical influences he often cited were not rock musicians but composers like Bach and Edgard Varèse, as well as jazz greats like John Coltrane and Miles Davis.
Lesh had gravitated from classical music to cool jazz by the time he arrived at the College of San Mateo, eventually becoming first trumpet player in the school’s big band and a composer of several orchestral pieces the group performed.
Although he was never a prolific songwriter, Lesh also composed music for, and sometimes sang, some of the band’s most beloved songs. Among them were the upbeat country rocker “Pride of Cucamonga,” the jazz-influenced “Unbroken Chain” and the ethereally beautiful “Box of Rain.”
Lesh composed the latter on guitar as a gift for his dying father, and he recalled that Grateful Dead lyricist Robert Hunter, upon hearing the instrumental recording, approached him the next day with a lyric sheet. On that sheet, he said, were “some of the most moving and heartfelt lyrics I’ve ever had the good fortune to sing.”
He did continue to play frequently, however, with a rotating cast of musicians he called Phil Lesh and Friends.
In later years he usually held those performances at Terrapin Crossroads, a restaurant and nightclub he opened near his Northern California home in 2012, which was named after the Grateful Dead song and album “Terrapin Station.”
CLEVELAND -- Jim Donovan, the beloved radio play-by-play announcer for the Cleveland Browns and a TV sports fixture for more than four decades, died Saturday. He was 68.
Donovan retired from his broadcast career earlier this year and stepped away from his game-day duties with the team before this season while battling cancer. He had called Cleveland's games since the team's expansion rebirth in 1999.
“He will be greatly missed, but he cemented a legacy that will live on forever. The only thing that outweighed his love for this city and this team was the love he had for his family. Our thoughts and prayers are with his wife, Cheryl, his daughter, Meghan, and everyone who was fortunate enough to call Jimmy family or friend.”
"This is an incredibly difficult day for us and the entire Cleveland Browns organization,” Browns owners Dee and Jimmy Haslam said. “His impact as the Voice of the Browns for 25 years is immeasurable as he touched the lives of our fans each and every Sunday with his love for the Browns and his brilliance at his craft.
A Boston native known to everyone as “Jimmy,” Donovan endeared himself to Cleveland fans with his passion, sense of humor and professionalism. He was a stickler for detail, spending countless hours preparing for game broadcasts.
Donovan had recently been inducted into the Browns' Legends Club and the Greater Cleveland Sports Hall of Fame. He had been too ill to attend the events.
Even in some lean, losing years for the Browns, Donovan managed to find moments to celebrate.
“He kept it real, but he kept a positive tone to it,” said former Browns kicker Phil Dawson, who inducted Donovan into the Legends Club. ”He just always could find that balance — authentic, real, accurate, but he was still supportive, even when there wasn’t a whole lot to support.
"And I know the players appreciated that. I know I certainly appreciated that. He was always quick to try to provide context, rather than letting people just focus on an individual moment. He just really had a knack for seeing the big picture. It was always ‘Go Browns,’ yet he kept it real and accurate, so that everybody understood what was going on.”
When he was forced to step down in August, Donovan wrote a letter to Browns fans expressing his gratitude for their support.
“I have called Browns games for 25 years. Not a day has gone by when I haven’t paused and been so proud to be ‘The Voice of the Browns,’” he wrote. “Cheryl, Meghan and I thank you for all the love, support and prayers during my rough patches. It’s like having a huge family around us. And that’s what makes the Cleveland Browns so special. You do.”
Donovan had to step away as sports director at WKYC-TV last fall for several months to undergo treatment for leukemia. He returned to the broadcast booth in time to call the team's late-season run to the playoffs.
He had been diagnosed with chronic lymphocytic leukemia in 2000 and underwent a bone marrow transplant in 2011.
A graduate of Boston University, Donovan got to Cleveland in 1985. Along with doing local reporting of the city's three professional sports franchises, Donovan also had several national network assignments and was part of NBC's coverage team at the 1992 and 1996 Summer Olympics.
Elizabeth Francis, who was the oldest living person in the United States, has died. She was 115.
Her 69-year-old granddaughter and caregiver, Ethel Harrison, told ABC News on Wednesday that Francis died peacefully on Tuesday night while surrounded by her family.
Speaking to ABC News, Harrison described Francis as "a person who loved people."
"She loved the Lord. Her faith was extremely strong," Harrison said. "She was always, you know, jolly, you know, 'how you doing? You're doing okay?' That was just her personality,"
"And she would always say, treat people like you want to be treated. And that was her motto," she added of her grandmother.
At the time of her death, Francis was the oldest living person in the U.S. and the third-oldest person in the world, according to LongeviQuest, a global database of the world's oldest individuals. She lived most of her life in Houston, Texas, read a press release from the database.
Francis, who was born in 1909 and turned 115 years old earlier this year, is also known as a "supercentenarian," a person who has reached the age of 110 or older.
During an interview with ABC Houston KTRK-TV in 2023 to mark her 114th birthday, Francis said at the time despite her age, she still felt young at heart.
"I'm very, very young. Look at me, I'm like a little young chicken," she said.
She shared that her secret to longevity in life includes no drinking or smoking, but she ate "everything."
Harrison told KTRK that her grandmother always grew her own vegetables and ate at home instead of opting for fast food.
"Whenever you went to her house, I don't care what day of the week she was cooking," Harrison said. "So, I just think that had a lot to do with it, too. Just how she took care of her body and things like that."
Meanwhile, Francis' 96-year-old daughter, Dorothy Williams told KTRK at the time that "it's hard to believe" that her mom had turned 114 before calling it "a blessing."
"Because she has been a wonderful mother and grandmother to all of us," Williams said. "She has been our backbone."
