‘I Will Always Love You’, Dolly Parton Used Royalties From Whitney Houston’s Version Of Song to Invest in Black Community
Dolly Parton is paying it forward in the name of the late great Whitney Houston. The famed country singer recently revealed the Black neighborhood she invested in using royalties from Houston’s chart-topping cover of her song.
Parton appeared on Watch What Happens Live With Andy Cohen where she revealed how she spent some of the royalty money she earned from Houston’s version of “I Will Always Love You”.
“I bought my big office complex down in Nashville. So I thought, ‘Well this is a wonderful place to be,’” Parton told Cohen, as noted by Yahoo. She went on to explain why she purchased the property that was located within the town’s Black community.
“I bought a property down in what was the Black area of town, and it was mostly just Black families and people that lived around there. And it was off the beaten path from 16th Avenue,” Parton said. “And I thought, ‘Well, I am going to buy this place, the whole strip mall.’ And thought, ‘This is the perfect place for me to be,’ considering it was Whitney.”
Parton reportedly raked in about $10 million in the 90s due to the success of Houston’s cover, Forbesreports. The “Jolene” singer still makes money from the song and finds ways to make good use of the money in Houston’s honor.
“I thought this was great — I’m just gonna be down here with her people, who are my people as well,” Parton explained. “So I just love the fact that I spent that money on a complex and I think, ‘This is the house that Whitney built.’ “
Parton has always spoken highly of Houston’s cover of “I Will Always Love You”. She credits Houston’s rendition of helping her see her value as a songwriter.
“Whitney did such a fantastic job. And I thought, ‘Wow. I wrote that little song.’ That’s when I felt my worth as a songwriter. This is my gift and I’m going to do the best I can with it,” Parton toldPeople.
Kyrie Irving Makes a Slam Dunk; Helps to Bring Clean Water to a Pakistani Village
Kyrie Irving is known as an NBA point guard who plays for the Brooklyn Nets, but helping to bring water to a Pakistani village may be his highest score.
Michigan-based Paani Project teamed up with Irving’s KAI Family Foundation to provide water and electric power to individuals in one of Pakistan’s most unprivileged locations called Rohal, The New York Post reported.
Rohal’s location in Tharparkar experienced a severe dry spell. It left destitute villagers in a position of trekking to the dessert to obtain consumable water. But now 1,000 people can leave all of that hardship behind. Power can illuminate places such as schools. They have clean water to drink and use at their convenience, too.
Image – Twitter
“Very few people ever even want to help out people in Pakistan and if you’re part of the Pakistani diaspora you know this,” the Paani Project’s founder and chairman, Sikander ‘Sonny’ Khan said to The New York Post.
Irving and his foundation kept the good deed under wraps, but the Internet drew attention to it. Then, it spread to viral proportions, according to SBNATION.
Khan’s journey to solicit celebrity help was an intersection of good fortune and grace.
The Irving admirer reportedly initiated contact with the KAI Family Foundation but never had a face-to-face meeting with the sports star. He explained how much has been accomplished to help others in need with a volunteer crew and track record of raising more than $1 million.
Without extreme formalities which could have caused the project to take much longer than four months to make a reality, a village was changed for better.
NBA player, Kyrie Irving’s organization called the KAI Family Foundation joined the Paani Project to bring clean water and working electricity to a village in Pakistan. Image – Twitter
“One day I was just scrolling online and came across his( Irving’s) surreal track record of philanthropy. I was surprised to see how much work he’s done in Africa, the work he’s done for low-income communities, and work towards women’s empowerment,” Khan said in the interview.
The lack of access to drinking water remains a serious issue. It impacts “785 million people” who do not have access to “a basic drinking-water service,” the World Health Organization reported in 2019. And by helping the Paani Project, Irving made a slam dunk.
Simone Biles’ Boyfriend Shares Heartfelt Message of Support Amid Her Tokyo Olympics Break
Simone Biles’ boyfriend, Jonathan Owens, showed just how strong her at-home support system is. The NFL player took to social media to encourage his girlfriend amid her stepping back from the Tokyo Olympics.
Biles has been under fire after choosing not to compete in the gymnastic finals on Tuesday. There have been mixed reviews on her decision to forfeit the games in order to prioritize her mental health.
On Thursday, Owens, a safety for the Houston Texans, took to Instagram to share a photo slide dedicated to his Olympian bae.
“Imma ride with you through whatever baby. Your strength and courage is unmatched and you inspire me more and more everyday SB,” he captioned the heartfelt post.
“You always gone be my champ baby and don’t you ever forget that, i love you so much and i can’t wait till you come home and i get to see that beautiful smile again. You know I’m always here for you baby,” he added.
Biles’s decision to remove herself from the finals came after her shaky performance on the vault. On Thursday, Biles credited the mishap to a case of the “twisties,” the New York Postreported.
“Literally cannot tell up from down,” Biles said. “It’s the craziest feeling ever. Not having an inch of control over your body. What’s even scarier is since I have no idea where I am in the air I also have NO idea how I’m going land or what I’m going to land on. Head/hand/feet/back.”
The four-time gold medalist has said her exit is to focus on her mental health, something many are praising her for, while others criticize the decision.
On Wednesday she shared a tweet thanking her fans and supporters.
“The outpouring love & support I’ve received has made me realize I’m more than my accomplishments and gymnastics which I never truly believed before,” Biles wrote.
Making Intergalactic History: A Black Man’s Art Will Blast Off Into Outer Space
Ghanaian painter Amoako Boafo is proving that his priceless masterpieces not only belong in a gallery but also in the great beyond.
To help a new art program blast off, Uplift Aerospace will employ Boafo’s stellar painting talents to supply art for the Origin New Shepard rocket’s outer panels, according to The Art Newspaper. The rocket’s mission is scheduled for the fall. It will bear Boafo’s work, entitled the “Suborbital Triptych”.
“I am drawn to the idea of my works going into a new orbit, literally,” Boafo told The Art Newspaper. “This will further push my vision for my practice. I am honored to be one of the first Black men to have my work sent to space. I’m very excited to be a part of this from a historical standpoint.”
The creative guru blends finger- and hand- produced painting with strokes of a brush to capture moods of people who artistically move him. Some of the artist’s portraits were snagged for over $1 million through the highly-acclaimed Christie’s auction house, Space.com reported.
Josh Hanes, CEO of Uplift Aerospace, explained that the Uplift Art Program is intended to become a conversation starter and spark new concepts.
“Artists have a unique capacity to evoke fresh perspectives and interpret unfamiliar terrain. The profound strength of Amoako’s portraits for the first “Suborbital Triptych” will bring another dimension to the power that propels the New Shepard rocket,” Hanes said in a press release.
LeVar Burton’s Daughter Pokes Fun At His ‘Jeopardy!’ Hosting Debut
LeVar Burton doesn’t have to worry about getting trolled online because he’s getting made fun of right at home.`
The Reading Rainbow icon made his Jeopardy! guest-hosting debut this week. It’s something Burton has wanted to do for years and has anxiously waited for the opportunity. But leave it up to his own flesh and blood to tease Burton during his career-high.
During Burton’s hosting debut on Monday night, Mica Burton took to Twitter to poke a little fun at her celebrity dad.
“Bless @levarburton for putting up with me,” she captioned the sweet tweet.
It included a short TikTok video showing the family around the television tuned in to a Jeopardy episode.
“He’s there, but he’s there,” Mica said while panning the camera from the television to her father who was sitting down watching himself perform. “But he’s on TV. But he’s there.”
Once Burton realized his daughter was recording him, he jokingly asked her to stop. The adorable family moment gave fans a glimpse into Burton’s amicable at-home life with his family.
Burton led a campaign to host Jeopardy that he launched in 2013 and fans were overjoyed when the Star Trek star was selected as one of the celebrity guest hosts earlier this year, the New York Timesreported.
“[Hosting Jeopardy] wasn’t even on my bucket list, because I never anticipated that it could possibly be a reality for me,” Burton toldEntertainment Weekly in May. “And no matter what happens, I’m really proud of myself for daring to dream that dream, ultimately.”
Despite how elated he was to finally host one of his favorite game shows, Burton admitted he felt some pressure to perform well.
“This was a real challenge,” he told the Associated Press. “The pressure, the natural tendency was to want to live up to Alex’s example, his legacy. I came backstage after taping the first episode and I said to [my wife] Stephanie, ‘Well, how did I do?’”
When asked how his wife thought he did at hosting, “She said, ‘Ehhh,’” Burton recalled before adding how “really, really, really scary,” the experience was for him.
Google, Facebook, and Netflix Are Requiring Employees to Be Vaccinated to Return to the Office
Tech giants Google,Facebook and Netflix are planning to batten down the hatches when employees return to their campuses to work by requiring them to be vaccinated, CNN reported.
Google CEO Sundar Pichai sent an email to staff members on Wednesday announcing that the policy would roll out in the United States in the coming weeks before being implemented in other regions as vaccines become more widely available in the coming months.
“Getting vaccinated is one of the most important ways to keep ourselves and our communities healthy in the months ahead,” Pichai wrote.
The initial date to return to the offices was originally set for September 1, but it has been pushed back to October 18.
“We are excited that we’ve started to re-open our campuses and encourage Googlers who feel safe coming to sites that have already opened to continue doing so,” Pichai wrote. “At the same time, we recognize that many Googlers are seeing spikes in their communities caused by the Delta variant and are concerned about returning to the office.”
On the same day, Facebook’s Vice President of People Lori Goler released a statement regarding its reopening plans.
“As our offices reopen, we will be requiring anyone coming to work at any of our US campuses to be vaccinated,” Goler said in a statement. “We will have a process for those who cannot be vaccinated for medical or other reasons and will be evaluating our approach in other regions as the situation evolves.
Deadline reported that Netflix became the first major Hollywood studio to implement a policy mandating vaccinations for the casts of all of its U.S. productions. The new protocols that were agreed upon by the Hollywood unions and major studios last week gave producers “the option to implement mandatory vaccination policies for casts and crew in Zone A on a production-by-production basis.”
CNN also reported that Twitter was already requiring employees who returned to the office to show proof of vaccination, but the company recently closed its offices in New York and San Francisco completely and paused further office re-openings.
A spokesperson from Twitter told CNN Business that the company made the call “after careful consideration of the CDC’s updated guidelines, and in light of current conditions. We’re continuing to closely monitor local conditions and make necessary changes that prioritize the health and safety of our Tweeps.”
Texas Official Apologizes for Calling Simone Biles A ‘National Embarassment’
Texas Deputy Attorney General Aaron Reitz issued out an apology to Simone Biles after calling the decorated American gymnast a “national embarrassment.”
In a since-deleted tweet on Wednesday, Reitz responded to a video of Kerri Strug’s 1996 Olympic performance on an injured ankle, KHOUreports. Reitz used the video to “Contrast this with our selfish, childish national embarrassment, Simone Biles.”
Later that day, Reitz returned to Twitter to issue out a full statement apologizing to the four-time gold medalist. “I owe @Simone_Biles an apology. A big one,” Reitz said while sharing the lengthy statement.
Reitz comments come after Biles pulled out of the finals in the Tokyo Olympics on Tuesday to focus on her mental health. Biles explained her reasoning and credited it to the pressure she was feeling to perform well.
“We also have to focus on ourselves because at the end of the day, we’re human too,” Biles said. “We have to protect our mind and our body rather than just go out there and do what the world wants us to do.”
Amid the debate over professional athletes making their mental health a priority, Reitz is under fire from many who accuse him of being insensitive to the issue.
“Yes, you do!!!!!!, You degraded her shame on you,” one Twitter user said in response. “The mental health crisis is a serious epidemic problem in the US and your downplaying of what she is going through is shameful.”
Others equated Biles’ slander to the fact that she is a Black woman.
“Between Simone and (tennis great) Naomi Osaka kind of really taking a forefront and saying, ‘You know, I’m protecting my mental health,” Dr. Antoinette Wilson toldCBS News.
“Honestly, a lot of that criticism is tinged with some misogyny and racism,” Wilson added. “Simon Biles is a Black woman. Osaka identifies as a black woman as well, Japanese and Black.”
Like Many Athletes, Mental Health Challenges Can Impact The Performance of Black Students
Elite American gymnast Simone Biles and tennis sensation Naomi Osaka know firsthand the painful ordeal that mental health struggles can bring.
Biles has made her mental health a priority and has withdrawn from U.S. team competition during the Olympics. She has reportedly stated. “I have to do what’s right for me and focus on my mental health and not jeopardize my health and my well-being.”
And Osaka was upset at the Olympics on July 27 after losing to the Czech Republic’s Marketa Vondrousova. Osaka publicly said, “I definitely feel like there was a lot of pressure for this. I think it’s maybe because I haven’t played in the Olympics before and for the first year (it) was a bit much.”
But the two superstars are not alone. Many Black American students are facing related challenges.
A fresh report from management consulting firm McKinsey & Co. shows parents whose children have fallen significantly behind academically are one-third more likely to say that they are very or extremely concerned about their children’s mental health.
And the numbers are more disturbing for people of color. Black and Hispanic parents are respectively seven to nine percentage points more likely than White parents to report higher levels of such concern.
The report examined the impact of COVID-19 pandemic school disruptions on students, covering data for the 2020-2021 academic year. It analyzed the academic learning loss that students experienced the past school year, along with the long-term impacts in multiple areas. Those include student mental health, chronic absenteeism, dropout rates, and earnings ability among them.
McKinsey assessed the results of over 1.6 million elementary school students across more than 40 states to examine their learning through the pandemic. The firm compared students’ performance in the spring of 2021 with the performance of similar students before the crisis. Students testing in 2021 were about 10 points behind in math and nine points behind in reading, versus matched students in prior years. The report also questioned 16,370 parents across all 50 U.S. states to capture their concerns about their child’s academic and mental development..
The discoveries are a big deal as unaddressed mental health challenges also will likely have a knock-on effect on academics in the future, the report disclosed. Research shows that trauma and other mental health issues can influence children’s attendance, their ability to complete schoolwork in and out of class, and even the way they learn.
Further, the report examined how Black students’ learning abilities were disrupted by COVID-19.
Among the report’s top conclusions:
Based on 2021 test results versus previous years, students are five months behind in math and four months behind in reading. The findings where McKinsey expected them to be compared to prior years.
In math, Black students ended the year with six months of unfinished learning, low-income students with seven. Students in majority-Black schools were six months behind in math and reading. Students in majority-white schools were four months behind in math and three months behind in reading.
Parents underestimate the unfinished learning caused by the pandemic. Forty percent think their child is on track and 16% think their child is progressing faster than in a usual year. Only 14% of parents think their child has fallen significantly behind.
Chronic absenteeism: McKinsey estimated that an additional 617,000 to 1.2 million eighth- through twelfth-grade students could drop out of school altogether owing to the pandemic if efforts are not made to re-engage them in learning next year.
Long-term consequences: The survey suggests that 17% of high-school seniors who had planned to attend post-secondary education abandoned their plans. The number is much higher among low-income high-school seniors, with 26% relinquishing their plans.
On the income front, McKinsey estimated that, without immediate and sustained interventions, pandemic-related unfinished learning could reduce lifetime earnings for K–12 students by an average of $49,000 to $61,000. Those costs are significant, notably for students who have lost more learning. Check this out: The report showed the lifetime earnings decline could be as much as 2.4% for Black students and 2.1% for Hispanic students. Conversely, the figure for White students is a 1.4% reduction.
Citing a combination of lower earnings, reduced levels of education attainment, and less innovation, the report declared those forces could lessen economic productivity. By 2040, it stated most of this cohort of K–12 students will be in the workforce. The report projected a potential annual GDP loss of $128 billion to $188 billion from pandemic-related unfinished learning.
The report also offered some recommendations to help overcome the lingering impact of COVID-19’s dire learning loss on the nation’s students. Check out more details here.
Simone Biles Releases Video Demonstrating How ‘The Twisties’ Is ‘The Craziest Feeling Ever’
With recent news of Olympic superstars from Naomi Osaka to Elizabeth Cambage to Simone Biles withdrawing from competition due to strains on their mental health, the tide might finally be turning to offset the myth that Black people don’t need to do anything when it comes to their mental health.
According to ESPN, Biles went on her Instagram Live to engage with her millions of fans and explain to them that she didn’t “quit” but was instead upended by the curious case of the “twisties” that have affected her performance level.
Several days before she took herself out of the Olympic competition for the sake of her mental health, Biles indicated that her mental state was a bit strained.
“It wasn’t an easy day or my best but I got through it. I truly do feel like I have the weight of the world on my shoulders at times. I know I brush it off and make it seem like pressure doesn’t affect me but damn sometimes it’s hard hahaha! The Olympics is no joke! BUT I’m happy my family was able to be with me virtually🤍 they mean the world to me!”
On her IG stories, Simone Biles responds to people who think she “quit” on her team by explaining the “the twisties” she’s been experiencing and what it feels like “not having your mind and body in sync” …. pic.twitter.com/79hN973rkd
In the Instagram Live video posted, Biles posted a clip of her during practice on the uneven bars in which she tries a 1½ twist and falls flat on her back. She stated, “I don’t think you realize how dangerous this is on a hard/competitive surface.”
Biles didn’t have a great night during the women’s team final on Tuesday. She appeared to get lost in the air — a phenomenon called “the twisties.” It’s been said that having “the twisties” can cause serious injuries to gymnasts who perform airborne routines. According to Biles, this was not happening before she left the U.S, and that “it randomly started happening after prelims competition the very next morning.”
She allowed fans to ask her questions to which she responded to several. When she was asked what it feels like while twisting, she responded by saying, “Literally cannot tell up from down. It’s the craziest feeling ever. Not having an inch of control over your body. What’s even scarier is since I have no idea where I am in the air I also have NO idea how I’m going to land, or what I’m going to land on. Head/hands/feet/back. I also have no idea how I landed on my feet on that vault because if you look at the pictures and my eyes you can see how confused I am as to where I am in the air. Thankfully I landed safe enough but I also don’t think some of you realize I was supposed to do a 2½ and I only completed 1½ twists before it looks like I got shot out of the air.”
Wisconsin Man Sentenced to 205 Years After Killing 5 Family Members, Then Calling Cops to Confess
A Black man in Wisconsin has been sentenced to 205 years in prison for killing five members of his family after he confessed to the murders.
According to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, on Tuesday Milwaukee County Judge Michelle Havas sentenced 44-year-old Christopher P. Stokes to 205 years for the crime of killing Marcus Stokes, 19, Demetrius Thomas, 14, Tera Agee, 16, Lakeitha Stokes, 17, and Teresa Thomas, 41, in April 2020. The judge sentenced Stokes to 40 years in prison for each of the five counts of first-degree reckless homicide that he pleaded guilty to, plus an additional five for illegally possessing a gun as a convicted felon.
Fox 6 Milwaukee also reported that, prior to his sentencing, Stokes was given an opportunity to speak to the court.
“Don’t know what in the world came over me. Woke up and just had blood on my mind. Something just wasn’t going right. It was, I don’t know,” Stokes stated. “The reality is, I can’t take it back. I did the ultimate sin…I deserve to be locked up. I deserve everything I get. I’m not asking for no leniency or anything like that. I deserve it. No one in the world should have done what I did.”
Stokes’ attorney asked the judge to give his client only a 35-year sentence. He also stated that Stokes sought mental health treatment in early March 2020, but those sessions couldn’t take place in person and it switched to over the phone once the coronavirus pandemic hit. Although Stokes had undergone treatment that was related to his mental health last June, he was later found competent for trial.
Police think the shooting may have occurred about 5 a.m., based on neighbors who said that they heard a “booming” noise during the overnight hours.
When police got to the home, they found Stokes sitting outside the home with the 3-year-old grandchild of Stokes and Teresa Thomas. The 3-year-old was the only person not shot. Prosecutors stated on Tuesday that the grandchild witnessed the killings and was spared after he asked Stokes not to hurt him.
