Month: November 2019

Home / Month: November 2019

Warning: This post contains spoilers for season seven of Game of Thrones.

After more than three seasons without even a mention of his name, Gendry finally made his triumphant return in Sunday’s episode of Game of Thrones. But after recruiting him to Jon Snow’s cause, Davos Seaworth tried to convince Gendry to introduce himself to the King in the North using an alias.

“The King’s got a lot on his mind…He doesn’t need to be thinking about harboring the bastard of a dead king,” Davos told him, referring to the fact that Gendry is the illegitimate son of Robert Baratheon. “You’re just Clovis, a smith who’s come to pay his respects before he heads off to work at the Winterfell forges.”

Gendry completely ignored Davos’ advice, choosing to reveal his true identity to Jon. But some fans believe the fake name was a clue about what’s in store for the lovable blacksmith.

“Before Gendry goes rogue and tells Jon exactly who he is, Davos tries to convince him to use an alias,” Reddit user fifthpilgrim wrote. “The fake name that Davos comes up with for Gendry is ‘Clovis’ and appears to be a little insight into Gendry’s future role in the show. In the real world, there is a stone tool technology (see: spear/arrow heads and other stone tools) called Clovis. The significance of dragonglass (obsidian) this season, along with Gendry’s skill as a smith highlights the importance of Davos’ fake name for him. This appears to be a clever connection put in by the writers to suggest that Gendry will survive beyond the Wall and will become the person to make the weapons out of the dragonglass for the war against the dead.”

This theory seems plausible considering Jon recently came into an entire mine’s worth of dragonglass that needs to be forged into viable weapons. However, there is also speculation that the name may have been a reference to the Frankish king Clovis I.

“Clovis was the first king of the Franks to unite everyone (in what is now France) under one ruler, fixing a huge succession issue,” user yogurtraisin wrote. “He created the Merovingian dynasty, which lasted for two centuries. I think this was very intentional, and the Gendry will have a big part in repairing the issue of succession in Westeros.”

RELATED: Ikea Released Instructions on How to Make Your Own Jon Snow-Style Cape

Whatever the case, let’s just hope nobody sends Gendry away in a rowboat again anytime soon.

The sixth episode of Game of Thrones‘ seventh season airs Aug. 20 at 9 p.m. ET on HBO.

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Michelle Obama might have left the White House, but she’s still inspiring women each and every day. The former First Lady spoke at the Women’s Foundation of Colorado’s 30th anniversary celebration on Tuesday in Denver, giving a powerful speech asking women not to give up.

The former FLOTUS was interviewed by WFCO President and CEO Lauren Casteel, who asked Obama what it was like breaking the glass ceiling to become the first black first lady—and which of the “falling shards” cut the deepest.

Jason Bahr/Getty

“The shards that cut me the deepest were the ones that intended to cut,” she said, according to The Denver Post. “Knowing that after eight years of working really hard for this country, there are still people who won’t see me for what I am because of my skin color.”

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“Women, we endure those cuts in so many ways that we don’t even notice we’re cut,” she continued. “We are living with small tiny cuts, and we are bleeding every single day. And we’re still getting up.”

VIDEO: Michelle Obama Gets Honest About Post-White House Life

For the rare public appearance since leaving the White House, Obama looked radiant in a pink printed dress and white stilettos. As her husband, Barack Obama, has done for public appearances, she steered clear of addressing specifics regarding the current administration, but she did bestow a message of hope upon the 8,500-person audience. “The people in this country are universally good and kind and honest and decent,” she said. “Don’t be afraid of the country you live in. The folks here are good.”

RELATED: Michelle and Malia Obama Tour the Indonesian City Where Barack’s Mom Worked in Breezy Summer Looks

Wise words.

Coca-Cola is dropping Coke Zero and adding a different diet option.

The soda company announced Wednesday that it will start selling Coca-Cola Zero Sugar in August. The new drink option will feature an updated look and a new taste.

“We’ve made the great taste of Coke Zero even better by optimizing the unique blend of flavors that gave Coke Zero its real Coca-Cola taste. Coca-Cola Zero Sugar is our best-tasting zero-sugar Coca-Cola yet, and it will be available across America in August,” Coca-Cola said in a release.

Coca-Cola added that the Zero Sugar drink has sold well in over 30 countries around the world already.

VIDEO: Seltzer vs. Club Soda vs. Tonic Water—What’s the Difference?

Before the new drink’s launch, Coca-Cola will hold an “experimental sampling tour” where people throughout the country can try Coca-Cola Zero Sugar.

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“We’re confident that loyal Coke Zero fans will love the new-and-improved recipe, and that fans of original Coca-Cola fans—who are looking to reduce their sugar intake—will want to try it, too,” the release said.

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Gwyneth Paltrow Sounds Off on Goop Haters

November 13, 2019 | News | No Comments

Gwyneth Paltrow is taking off the gloves.

The actress, 44, has been fiercely defending her controversial lifestyle brand Goop as of late — especially since the recent launch of Goop Magazine — and she continued to taunt her haters in a new interview with The Hollywood Reporter.

“I’m interested in criticism based on fact, not on projections,” she said. “If you want to f— with me, bring your A game.”

Earlier this month, the star-turned-wellness guru defended her brand as a surprise guest on The Late Late Show. Paltrow stood behind host James Corden as he relentlessly mocked Goop, which offers controversial health advice for women — and its new magazine, which featured Paltrow wearing nothing but mud on its debut cover.

“The cover features Gwyneth Paltrow lying down in mud,” Corden joked. “I can’t believe Gwyneth Paltrow beat out the competition to be on the cover of the new Gwyneth Paltrow magazine.”

He even mocked the cover, changing its name to Poop – “We actually fixed the cover to be more appropriate,” he quipped.

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Poking even more fun at the star, Corden said, “Pretending to be down to earth has been Gwyneth Paltrow’s best performance yet.”

That’s when Paltrow chimed in, saying, “Hi, James. Just wanted to stop by.” She added, “James, I mean, to be fair, I think you’re being a little harsh. There are a lot of people that listen to the advice that we give in Goop.”

Members of Corden’s crew then proceeded to demonstrate some of Goop’s lifestyle recommendations like “grounding” — the website claims walking barefoot could cure insomnia — and “vaginal steaming” — which doctors have previously told PEOPLE is “probably not good for your vagina.”

RELATED: Gwyneth Paltrow Is Topless and Covered in Goop

Nevertheless, Paltrow has already opened up her first Goop brick and mortar location in Los Angeles, and is even setting her sights on TV.

During her interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Paltrow announced plans to launch a show with the working title of The Radical Wellness Show.

“I would be going into the field and talking to any number of doctors, scientists, civilians, people in crisis in Flint, Michigan, where there is something to uncover and confront about wellness,” she explained. “We would want it to feel more Vice-y in its vibe, but we’re just in the brainstorming phase.”

But don’t expect an entire Goop network.

“Dude, then I’ll be hospitalized,” she joked.

At least 50 people have been killed and 200 wounded after a gunman opened fire on a country music festival with a fully automatic weapon Sunday night.

The shooting started just as Jason Aldean began his show at the Route 91 Harvest Festival, a three-day country music festival.

Videos posted on social media show Aldean singing as very rapid gunfire begins in the background. He can be seen running from stage as he, and the thousands in the crowd, realized what was happening.

One off-duty officer with the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department, who was attending the concert, is among the dead, Sheriff Joseph Lombardo told reporters early Monday.

Witnesses reported that a gunman continued to rain bullets on the terrified audience for up to two hours. The victims took the short pauses while the shooter reloaded to run to safety, according to NBC News. Many were trapped in the concert venue as police searched for the gunman.

Police SWAT officers killed the shooter – identified as Stephen Paddock, 64, of Mesquite, Nevada – after finding him on the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay Casino, Lombardo said.

“Right now we believe it’s a solo act, a lone wolf attacker,” Lombardo told reporters early Monday. “We are pretty confident there is no longer a threat.”

The gunman has not yet been officially identified.

Aldean called the scene “horrific,” but said he was safe in an Instagram post early Monday.

“Tonight has been beyond horrific. I still dont know what to say but wanted to let everyone know that Me and my Crew are safe. My Thoughts and prayers go out to everyone involved tonight,” he wrote. “It hurts my heart that this would happen to anyone who was just coming out to enjoy what should have been a fun night.”

Aldean’s wife Brittany posted a message on Instagram early Monday saying, “We are safe… our angels were definitely watching over us tonight. No words for what happened… Just horrific. Praying for everyone.”

Witness Ivetta Saldana told the Las Vegas Review-Journal, “It was was a horror show. People were standing around, then they hit the floor.”

Robyn Webb, who was at the concert with her husband, told the newspaper, “It just kept coming. It was relentless.”

Authorities are searching for a 62-year-old woman named Marylou Danly, whom they call the gunman’s roommate. She is being called a person of interest in the investigation.

NBC reports that police have searched a home in Mesquite, Nevada, 85 miles from Las Vegas. It’s believed the gunman lived there with Danly.

Country star Jake Owen has just finished his set and was still on stage when the shooting started. He told the Today show that he ran off the stage and ducked for cover.

“I was crouched down behind a cop car. There was blood on people and you could see a couple of people in the streets that looked like they had been shot,” he said.

It’s a well-known fact that Reese Witherspoon has the perfect mini-me in her 18-year-old daughter Ava Phillippe, but every time we see them together, we still marvel at how much they really do look like twins.

The mother-daughter duo hit the HBO after-party of the Emmy Awards on Sunday after mom Reese’s show Big Little Lies won big with eight Emmys, and, as always, they looked perfectly in sync.

Jeff Kravitz/FilmMagic

During the bash, guests chowed down on roasted plums and champagne while Witherspoon posed for snaps on the red carpet. The actress kept her deep sea blue suit dress on from the award show, while Phillippe kept things classic in a black dress and hoop earrings.

VIDEO: What Snack Would You Smuggle In At The Emmys?

 

At the party, Witherspoon opened up to InStyle about what the Big Little Lies wins meant to her. “When we got four nominations for different female performances, I felt like that was a big moment. All I did … set out four years ago to create better roles for women in film and television. That was the win,” she said. “I feel like we won before we got there that night. Just to have this, it’s just icing on the cake … We feel so lucky!”

RELATED: Reese Made Daughter Ava Phillippe Cry on Her 18th Birthday

Witherspoon added that she planned on celebrating her achievements “with her girls,” and we’re sure that means Phillippe, too.

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Talk about mother-daughter goals.

—With reporting by Brianna Deutsch

President Donald Trump’s administration issued a long-rumored rule today exempting a broad range of employers from covering birth control in employer-sponsored insurance plans for moral or religious reasons.

The new regulation, issued by the Health and Human Services Department, takes effect immediately, though it is likely to be challenged in court.

The measure is a rollback of one of the Affordable Care Act’s most popular provisions, which stipulates that all insurance plans offered by employers and on the individual market must cover FDA-approved forms of birth control at no additional cost, including birth control pills, rings, intrauterine devices, and more.

Now, Trump’s mandate revision could deny birth control to hundreds of thousands of women as it expands the exemption to all nonprofit and for-profit employers including publicly-traded companies, who can choose not to cover birth control based on religious belief. The plan also allows a similar exemption for “moral conviction,” though publicly-traded companies are not included in this.

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One of the Obama administration’s goals when it passed the ACA was to expand birth control access to as many women as possible. And it was largely successful: More than 55 million women accessed birth control without co-payments because of the mandate, according to the New York Times.

RELATED: How Birth Control Affects Skin and How to Deal With It

The measure had a direct impact on women’s wallets. For example, in the spring of 2014, 67 percent of women with private insurance paid nothing out-of-pocket for the birth control pill, up from just 15 percent in 2012, a report from the Guttmacher Institute found. A similar increase occurred among women using injectable contraception, vaginal rings, and IUDs, all of which added up to an estimated $1.4 billion in savings in 2013 alone, per the report. Average out-of-pocket spending on oral contraceptive pills has decreased by about $255 per year because of the ACA’s birth control mandate, and by $248 for an IUD, a study published in Health Affairs found.

As Money has previously reported, the 2017 Willis Towers Watson Emerging Trends in Health Care survey found that 11 percent of employers would stop covering forms of birth control if it was no longer required (59 percent would definitely keep covering it). “Dozens of employers are already suing to get out of this benefit, so we know they will want to take advantage of this,” says Mara Gandal Powers, senior counsel at the National Women’s Law Center, which has vowed to fight the law.

Experts expect this to be challenged in court by women’s advocacy groups. The Obama mandate was challenged often, too, by colleges and companies that objected to providing this service, with the most famous case being the Hobby Lobby case of 2014.

Currently, 28 states require health plans to cover all FDA-approved forms of birth control, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation.

BALTIMORE — 

The widow of U.S. Rep. Elijah Cummings has resigned as Maryland’s Democratic Party chair to run for her late husband’s congressional seat.

Maya Rockeymoore Cummings, 48, is expected to formally announce her campaign at her Baltimore home Tuesday morning, news outlets reported. Congressman Elijah Cummings died last month at age 68.

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“I am, of course, devastated at the loss of my spouse, but his spirit is with me,” Rockeymoore Cummings told the Baltimore Sun . “I’m going to run this race and I’m going to run it hard, as if he’s still right here by my side.”

She says Cummings told her he wanted her to succeed him if he died. She said he was conflicted about whether he should to resign or stay in office.

Rockeymoore Cummings also said she will undergo a preventative double mastectomy Friday. She expects her recovery to take up to four weeks. Her mother died from breast cancer in 2015 and her sister was diagnosed with the disease last year, according to the newspaper. She said the surgery had been planned since before her late husband died.

She’s joining a crowded race for the 7th District congressional seat. At least six Democrats and three Republicans have filed for the position.

Rockeymoore Cummings, who resigned Monday as party chair, is a public policy consultant who founded the Washington consulting firm Global Policy Solutions. State senator and party vice chair Cory McCray will take over as interim chair.

The special primary for the congressional seat is Feb. 4. The special election is April 28. The winner will fill the rest of the congressman’s term, until January 2021.


WASHINGTON — 

The Supreme Court said Tuesday that a survivor and relatives of victims of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting can pursue their lawsuit against the maker of the rifle used to kill 26 people.

The justices rejected an appeal from Remington Arms that argued it should be shielded by a 2005 federal law preventing most lawsuits against firearms manufacturers when their products are used in crimes.

The court’s order allows the lawsuit filed in Connecticut state court by a survivor and relatives of nine victims who died at the Newtown, Conn., school on Dec. 14, 2012, to go forward.

The lawsuit says the Madison, N.C.-based company should never have sold a weapon as dangerous as the Bushmaster AR-15-style rifle to the public. Gunman Adam Lanza used it to kill 20 first-graders and six educators. It also alleges Remington targeted younger, at-risk males in marketing and product placement in violent video games. Lanza was 20 years old.

Lanza earlier shot his mother to death at their Newtown home and killed himself as police arrived at the school. The rifle was legally owned by his mother.

The Connecticut Supreme Court had earlier ruled 4-3 that the lawsuit could proceed for now, citing an exemption in the federal law. The decision overturned a ruling by a trial court judge who dismissed the lawsuit based on the 2005 federal law, named the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act.

The federal law has been criticized by gun control advocates as being too favorable to gun-makers, and it has been used to bar lawsuits over other mass killings.

The case is being watched by gun control advocates, gun rights supporters and gun manufacturers across the country, as it has the potential to provide a roadmap for victims of other mass shootings to circumvent the federal law and sue the makers of firearm.

The 2005 federal law has been cited by other courts that rejected lawsuits against gun-makers and dealers in other high-profile shooting attacks, including the 2012 Colorado movie theater shooting and the Washington, D.C., sniper shootings in 2002.

The National Rifle Assn., 10 mainly Republican-led states and 22 Republicans in Congress were among those urging the court to jump into the case and end the lawsuit against Remington.


CONCORD, N.H. — 

Mark Sanford dropped his challenge to President Trump for the Republican presidential nomination on Tuesday, saying the focus on impeachment has made it impossible for his campaign to gain traction.

“You’ve got to be a realist,” Sanford said outside the New Hampshire statehouse. “What I did not anticipate is an impeachment.”

The former South Carolina governor and congressman announced his decision to suspend his campaign on the eve of televised impeachment hearings in the U.S. House. He centered his campaign on warnings about the national debt but had struggled to gain traction since announcing his run in September. He said Republicans were more interested in defending Trump from the threat of impeachment.

“It was a long shot, but we wanted to try and interject this issue, how much we’re spending, into the national debate which comes along once every four years,” Sanford said. “I don’t think on the Republican side there is any appetite for a nuanced conversation on issues when there’s an impeachment overhead.”

The effort had become even harder as a handful of state parties canceled their primaries and other nominating contests, including in South Carolina.

Sanford’s decision comes little more than a week after he moved his campaign’s “home base” to New Hampshire.

Sanford had once been a rising star in Republican politics, but in 2009 he was brought down by a lie about an extramarital affair. He claimed he had been hiking on the Appalachian Trail when in fact he had been in Argentina with his mistress.

Three years later, Sanford managed to win back his old seat representing a House district along the South Carolina coast. But a primary opponent in 2018 berated Sanford over his criticisms of Trump. Hours before the polls closed in the primary, Trump tweeted from Air Force One to taunt, “He is MIA and nothing but trouble. He is better off in Argentina.” Sanford lost the primary, and his opponent lost the general election to a Democrat.

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When Sanford entered the presidential field, Trump continued to mock him, calling him and the other Republican challengers “the Three Stooges.” The other two GOP challengers are former Massachusetts Gov. William Weld and former U.S. Rep. Joe Walsh of Illinois.