Month: November 2019

Actor and comedian Aziz Ansari has issued a statement in response to a report in which a woman recounted a date with the actor that she called “the worst night of my life.”

“In September of last year, I met a woman at a party. We exchanged numbers. We texted back and forth and eventually went on a date,” said Ansari in a statement given to People. “We went out to dinner, and afterwards we ended up engaging in sexual activity, which by all indications was completely consensual.”

Continued the statement, “The next day, I got a text from her saying that although ‘it may have seemed okay,’ upon further reflection, she felt uncomfortable. It was true that everything did seem okay to me, so when I heard that it was not the case for her, I was surprised and concerned. I took her words to heart and responded privately after taking the time to process what she had said.”

“I continue to support the movement that is happening in our culture. It is necessary and long overdue,” the 34-year-old Master of None star said.

Ansari’s statement was in response to the claims of a woman referred to only as a 23-year-old Brooklyn-based photographer named “Grace,” which were recounted to Babe.

Grace claimed that after meeting Ansari at an Emmy Awards afterparty in September 2017, they exchanged numbers and eventually went on a date. After a meal, she said they returned to his apartment, where she alleged that several sexual acts occurred though she was “physically giving off cues that I wasn’t interested.”

She said that she told Ansari she didn’t want to feel forced into sex, and claimed that though he expressed understanding, he later again allegedly kept trying to kiss her and undo her pants.

RELATED: Aziz Ansari on What Happened to His Brain After He Deleted the Internet from His Phone

The anonymous woman claimed that Ansari called her a car when she wanted to leave, and texted her the next day. She shared a screenshot of the alleged conversation, in which she said, “Last night might’ve been fun for you, but it wasn’t for me. You ignored clear non-verbal cues; you kept going with advances.”

“I’m so sad to hear this,” he allegedly responded. “All I can say is, it would never be my intention to make you or anyone feel the way you described. Clearly, I misread things in the moment and I’m truly sorry.”

The woman said she decided to come forward after she saw Ansari wearing a Time’s Up pin at the Golden Globe Awards last week, where he won best comedy actor in a TV series.

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She also said that “It took a really long time for me to validate this as sexual assault,” telling Babe, “I was debating if this was an awkward sexual experience or sexual assault. And that’s why I confronted so many of my friends and listened to what they had to say, because I wanted validation that it was actually bad.”

Dating and romance has long been a subject of much of Ansari’s standup routines. In 2015, the comedian wrote a book called “Modern Romance,” in which he explores dating in the digital world. He has also spoken openly about his parents arranged marriage and his own quest to find love.

Ansari touched on the subject of sexual misconduct during an episode of Master of None, which sees Dev (Ansari) and his friend making a citizen’s arrest after catching a man masturbating on the subway. The episode was inspired by a bit in his 2015 Madison Square Garden standup show, where he also spoke of the daily harassment women endure by men. During the second season of the series, actor Bobby Cannavale portrayed a chef and colleague of Dev’s who turned out to be a sexual harasser.

Instead of his usual ‘do (above), he sported a closely shorn, shaved-off hairstyle:

Getty Images (2) 

The newly buzzed look entirely replaced his formerly wispy strands. Kate Middleton and Prince Harry have reportedly teased Prince William about his lack of hair in the past, but that probably won’t happen going forward if he opts to keep the nearly bare style as is.

And they aren’t the only ones who’ve taken note of his old hairstyle. Prince William himself has joked about his hair in the past, especially when he spoke to a hairstylist last September.

“I don’t have much hair, I can’t give you much business,” he said, according to People.

Maybe Prince William gave that stylist a call after all.

Anna Faris and Chris Pratt’s top priority? Their 5-year-old son Jack.

The much-loved couple announced their split in August of 2017, and Pratt officially filed for divorce from Faris in December. But how has their relationship changed since the pair parted ways? According to E! News, the main focus is their son, for whom they’re seeking joint custody.

“He’s surrounded by so much love,” Faris told E! about her little boy. “We constantly reinforce what a great kid he is.” The proud mom said they “try to discipline when he’s being a little bit naughty,” but knows how to make sure they’re raising him well: “I think the key is surrounding him with a lot of joy and happiness, which he has a ton of.”

She added that it’s the little things that count. “I think it’s those small moments in life, when your kid says something funny or like for me, I love what I do so I get a kick out of feeling like I nailed a joke well. And family and friends!” she said.

RELATED: Anna Faris Officiated a Wedding While Wearing UGGs

Both Faris and Pratt put the well-being of Jack at the forefront when they announced their separation on Facebook. “Our son has two parents who love him very much and for his sake we want to keep this situation as private as possible moving forward. We still have love for each other, will always cherish our time together and continue to have the deepest respect for one another,” they wrote in a Facebook post.

We’re glad to know Jack is doing well.

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Menounos tells People that the timing feels right for a child. She initially planned for IVF but was diagnosed with a benign brain tumor summer 2017. She has since recovered but has to monitor it closely to make sure it doesn’t grow again.

“God put this all on my plate perfectly,” she tells People. “I don’t know what’s going to happen. Specifically, Menounos isn’t sure that getting pregnant is the best option for her, especially given her medical history.

RELATED: 15 Celebrity Parents Who Used Surrogacy

“I need to work with doctors to see if getting pregnant is the smartest thing,” she says. “I do have some kids in the freezer, maybe we’ll implant. But if not, we’ll look into surrogacy.”

In the interview, Undergaro confirms that the couple is looking to expand the family. “We definitely want children,” he says. “But I’m very concerned about her going through a pregnancy, and I would like to explore [using a] surrogate because her body has been through hell. I want a baby desperately, but I don’t want it to be at the risk of her health.

RELATED: This Is What Surrogacy Is Really Like

Menounos is healthy though she hasn’t had an MRI since July, and is seeing what the future holds. “I really believe that God has a plan,” she says. “If I’m supposed to have a baby, it’s going to happen. If not, maybe God is protecting me from this tumor growing.”

Menounos and Undergaro will look into surrogacy options this month.

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Body acceptance is often a work in progress. Some days you may be feeling yourself and others not so much. Demi Lovato totally gets it. 

The singer and actress, who has opened up about struggling with an eating disorder and learning to love her body, took to Twitter today to give fans an update on her decision to accept herself and to ultimately quit dieting. 

“Feeling gross today at a photo shoot but I’m choosing to accept what I see because I love myself for who I am and your love and support gets me through moments like this. if you’re struggling as well, don’t forget.. if I can do it, you can too!” she posted on Twitter. 

RELATED: Demi Lovato Is Insecure About Her Legs in This Swimsuit Pic, but She Shared It for an Important Reason

In a follow-up tweet, Lovato reveals the reason she’s no longer dieting. “No longer depriving myself of treats (in moderation) and I’m not gonna lie, I put on a couple lbs since I’ve given up dieting BUT I’ve given up the chronic stress of what I eat because I don’t want to set that example for my fans,” she continued. “No more food shaming myself!!” Yes, girl! 

It’s definitely not always easy learning to love your body, but Lovato is truly an inspiration for everyone who struggles both with body acceptance and obsessive dieting.

 

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Southern comfort food is on the menu for the newly-expanded West family!

On Wednesday night, three days after welcoming her third child and second daughter with husband Kanye West via surrogate, Kim Kardashian West flaunted her cooking abilities on Instagram in a major way. The Keeping Up With the Kardashians star, who is known for her “soul food” feasts, showed off trays of homemade fried chicken and roasted Jamaican jerk chicken, along with macaroni and cheese, cornbread, and more.

“Cooking tonight!!!,” the 37-year-old captioned a video stirring some super-creamy mac ‘n’ cheese, followed by a pot of green beans she had on the stove top cooking in bacon.

For the main event, Kim got all the ingredients ready to make a Jamaican jerk chicken which she says she only recently learned how to make. For this recipe, she roasts the chicken in her massive, industrial-strength convection oven, then tosses it in a sauce of simmered fresh herbs and vegetables.

And, of course, a decadent sweet potato soufflé, which is a Kardashian family favorite.

Next up the star shared the “special key” to making her cornbread. She first lined the cups in butter followed by sugar “so it’s crispy all the way around,” she explained in her Instagram story.

RELATED: Kim Kardashian West Reveals the Truth About Her Surrogacy Experience

She also added a little something to make the recipe complete. “Honey goes on top just to make it extra sweet!” she said.

“This is by far my favorite part of the kitchen —our fryer for the fried chicken to go in,” she said.

And if it seems like Kardashian is a seasoned pro in the kitchen, that’s because she has years of experience. “You guys don’t understand, I’ve been making this food since high school, so when I started this post all of my high school friends were DM’ing me saying, ‘Blast from the past!’,” she says.

VIDEO: Kanye and Kim Kardashian West Welcome a Daughter

  Though we still don’t have a name the Wests’ newest little one, one thing is for certain: She will be well fed!

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A U.S. F-16 fighter jet dropped a 230 kilogram dummy bomb onto private property near a bombing training site in Aomori Prefecture, Defense Ministry officials in Tokyo said Thursday.

No one was injured and no buildings were damaged in the incident, which took place during a training mission at around 6:35 p.m. Wednesday, the officials said.

The U.S. military reported the incident to the ministry Thursday morning. Later, it said that the incident was very serious and that similar training missions with dummy bombs will be suspended for the time being, according to the officials.

Following the report, the ministry sent staff to the scene and provided related information to local authorities. It also demanded the U.S. military identify the cause of the incident and tighten safety controls.

“It could have caused a terrible disaster. We are taking this incident very seriously,” Aomori Gov. Shingo Mimura told reporters Thursday.

On Friday, Defense Minister Taro Kono met Mimura at the ministry and apologized for not reporting the incident to the prefecture on the day it occurred.

The incident “fans fears of residents and exacerbates distrust of the U.S. military’s safety control,” Mimura was quoted by ministry officials as telling Kono.

The dummy bomb, filled with concrete instead of gunpowder, landed in a meadow about 5 kilometers west of the training site, which straddles the city of Misawa and the village of Rokkasho, according to the ministry officials.

The training site is located about 20 kilometers (12 miles) north of U.S. Misawa Air Base, which the fighter jet belongs to. A post office and a school are located within a 5-kilometer radius of the training site.

The training site is managed by the U.S. military but it is also used by the Self-Defense Forces.

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North Korea on Thursday unleashed an insult-laden diatribe against Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, calling him an “idiot and villain” who should not even dream of setting foot in Pyongyang, and hinted at the possibility of missiles again flying over Japan after Abe criticized a recent weapons test by the North.

In a statement attributed to Song Il Ho, the North Korean ambassador for normalization talks with Japan, the official blasted Abe as reacting “as if a nuclear bomb was dropped on the land of Japan” to what the North described as a test-firing of rocket artillery last week.

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Song also took aim at Abe’s expressed willingness to meet North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, saying he would be “well-advised not to dream forever of crossing the threshold of Pyongyang,” after insulting the North’s “just measures” for self-defense.

North Korea has said it conducted its third test-firing of a new “super-large” multiple rocket launcher system last week, launches the Defense Ministry in Tokyo assessed as ballistic missiles.

North Korea is banned from the use of ballistic missile technology under United Nations Security Council resolutions, and Abe has repeatedly voiced condemnation over the North’s recent spate of weapons tests, with some deemed as having used such tech.

“Abe is also a rarely ignorant man who dreams of making Japan a military power, failing to distinguish between multiple rocket launchers and missiles, and he is an under-wit as he is only able to say such crude words as ‘provocation,’ ‘outrage,’ ‘violation,’ ‘abduction,’ and ‘pressure,’” Song said in the statement carried by the North’s official Korean Central News Agency.

“It is too natural that Abe is treated as a poor dog and dwarf that fails to enter the international political arena with the Korean Peninsula as a center,” it said.

In 2017, the North lobbed two intermediate-range missiles over Japan as it underwent a massive expansion in its capabilities, prompting Abe to call the new threat “unprecedented, serious and important.”

Song hinted of a return to such launches in Thursday’s statement.

“Not many years have elapsed since peace settled in the sky above Japan,” he said.

“If the dwarfs persist in provoking the DPRK, seemingly to get the uneasiness and horror with which they trembled when a projectile flew over Japan, the DPRK will do what it wishes to do, indifferent to the island nation.”

DPRK is the acronym for the North’s formal name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

Asked about the apparent warning that North Korean missiles could soon be again overflying Japan, Defense Minister Taro Kono downplayed the threat.

“I don’t think it’s necessary to address every statement by North Korea, but its series of ballistic missile launches are clear violations of U.N. Security Council resolutions and a challenge to the international community,” Kono told a televised news conference.

Abe, who has pinned much of his North Korea policy on resolving the decades-old issue of Japanese nationals abducted in the 1970s and ’80s by agents from the country, has also said he is eager to meet Kim “without conditions.” The North, however, has rebuffed these entreaties.

North Korea has been known to hurl crude insults at foreign leaders and those critical of its leadership and policies, and state media routinely spews vitriol at the peninsula’s former colonial rulers, Japan, referring to Japanese in recent years as “heinous devils,” “narrow-minded guys of an island nation” and “island barbarians, the sworn enemy of the Korean nation.”

More and more municipalities in Japan are scrambling to amend or abolish what are widely criticized as draconian school rules long imposed on students, heralding a rethink of a long-standing teaching culture that has prized conformity and docility.

In the latest example, the board of education in Gifu Prefecture has run a sweeping review of rules upheld by high schools under its jurisdiction. Such rules, known as kōsoku, typically refer to internal codes of conduct that each junior high and high school imposes on pupils under their care, often dictating a strict dress code that extends to the length and color of their hair.

The investigation by the Gifu Prefectural Board of Education found that more than 90 percent of its 61 full-time high schools had maintained rules so stringent that they risked compromising the human rights of the students.

Examples included those that stipulated girls’ underclothes must be white, that students must notify schools in advance of their personal plans for long-distance travel, and that students must seek teachers’ permission to join any assembly outside of school hours, education board official Masayuki Ishigami said. “Assembly” is generally interpreted to include political rallies, although few explicitly state so, Ishigami added.

Although the board has already instructed schools to remove those rules, the changes will officially take effect at the beginning of the new school year in April, Ishigami said.

“At the very least, we felt it necessary to revise those school rules that affect students’ human rights,” Ishigami said. “For example, the mere act of teachers trying to check the color of underclothes worn by girls would raise human rights questions,” he said.

The official said Gifu’s review has been prompted by a recent groundswell of public outrage against the rigorous rules. Although long taken for granted as part of the education system, the tradition of kōsoku ignited debate when an 18-year-old girl sued Osaka Prefecture for damages in 2017 after she was repeatedly forced by her teachers to dye her naturally brown hair black as per a school rule.

Those overly restrictive rules are now commonly dubbed “black kōsoku.” In August, a group of campaigners seeking to eliminate them submitted an online petition signed by more than 60,000 people to the education ministry urging immediate action. Osaka Prefecture, too, took steps to address the issue, ordering all of its high schools to review their rules. As a result, about 40 percent of its 135 full-time high schools made changes, the prefectural government said in a report in April last year.

Japan began keeping a tighter rein on students when the nation went through a drastic increase in juvenile delinquency and violence against teachers in the early 1980s, prompting school authorities to stiffen rules in a bid to curb rowdy behavior, education studies scholar Masaharu Hata wrote in a 1999 book.

But despite recent moves by municipalities to rethink their long-held codes of conduct, progress has moved at a glacial pace because many teachers still prize them as a form of education, said Ryo Uchida, an associate professor of Nagoya University who has written multiple books on school-related issues.

“The biggest objective of Japanese teachers is to keep their classes as orderly as possible and without any incident, and the most common way to achieve that has been to limit students’ freedom,” Uchida said.

Uchida said schools are “almost as though they were granted extraterritoriality,” where even the most absurd rules, such as banning students from wearing scarves and tights even in winter, are justified under the pretext of nipping delinquency in the bud.

“The logic is that if one student started showing off what might be considered a fashion accessory, other students may follow suit, which could encourage overall disorderliness,” Uchida said. “But how could denying students the simplest choices such as wearing something because of cold weather possibly help foster their independence and self-initiative?”

Going forward, the associate professor said the most effective antidote to black kōsoku is for education boards in each municipality to take steps to disclose the details of these internal school rules so they can be checked against the “common sense of the outside world.”

“Only then will the black kōsoku die off,” Uchida said.

Indeed, Setagaya Ward in Tokyo is gearing up to do just that. Its education board is currently in the “final phase” of its plan to make public a list of rules upheld by all of its junior high schools on their respective websites, having conducted a comprehensive update of any inappropriate code.

“Our big objective is to eliminate any unreasonable kōsoku for the sake of children’s human rights,” Setagaya Education Board official Yuji Aoki said. “We also believe that children should be left to make their own decisions about how they should act, not governed by a long list of rules, in order to harness their autonomy in these changing times.”

It is under this belief that all public junior high schools in Setagaya now allow their students to go to school wearing the clothes of their choice once a month — although some locals have argued such an initiative is inappropriate for junior high school students, Aoki said.

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Marco Silva has warned his Everton players not to allow talk of a crisis to distract them from their task, and insisted his team are “showing character” despite their terrible start to the season.

The Toffees head for Southampton on Saturday perched just above the Premier relegation zone and with their manager under pressure following a run of results which has seen them win just once in the league since September 1.

 

 

However, the Portuguese is refusing to be bowed as he plots a path out of trouble.

Silva said: “I understand all the opinions, I understand everything as well. The main thing for us is we are talking inside about what is our goal for the next match and keeping focused on all these things.

“What’s happened with this football club and this group in the last four weeks is really strong and if you are losing focus with all the things that are happening, you don’t put the focus on what is essential for us.

“What’s essential for us is what we do here and preparing well for the games.”

It has been an eventful few weeks for Everton, who have been stung by a series of controversial decisions which have gone against them, and by the horrific injury suffered by midfielder Andre Gomes during last Sunday’s 1-1 home draw with Tottenham.

Gomes suffered a fractured dislocation of his ankle after a challenge by Son Heung-min and is facing a lengthy spell on the sidelines after surgery.

Silva’s men were trailing 1-0 at the time and went on to snatch a draw courtesy of substitute Cenk Tosun’s late equaliser, and he wants to see the same spirit again at the St Mary’s Stadium.

He said: “The team is showing reaction, it’s showing character as well, commitment to our goals as well even in a tough period within the circumstances that we have at this moment.

“It’s what I expect for the next game as well.”

Everton are likely to be without injured midfielder Fabian Delph as well as Gomes on the South Coast, where Silva is expecting a tougher test than the one Leicester got two weeks ago when they trounced their hosts 9-0.

He said: “They didn’t start in the way they wanted, for sure. The last home defeat was the toughest moment for them this season, I’m 100 per cent sure.

“They showed a good reaction against City, they competed really strongly in that game and for sure, they’ll want to do the same against us.”

 

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