To celebrate Fall TV and our huge Fall TV Preview issue that’s out in September, EW is bringing you 50 scoops in 50 days, a daily dish on some of your favorite shows. Follow the hashtag #50Scoops50Days on Twitter and Instagram to keep up with the latest, and check EW.com/50-Scoops for all the news and surprises.
Get ready to feel bad about laughing at other people feeling bad.
NBC’s upcoming sitcom I Feel Bad sees overwhelmed mom/wife/daughter/video game designer Emit (played by Sarayu Blue) try to overcome her persistent guilty conscience. “I think it’s something that all of us really feel,” Blue tells EW. “We’re apologizing just for existing. What’s so great about this particular series is that it brings the mom storyline to the forefront. It’s Emit’s experience of just making her way through the craziness that is life, and we haven’t gotten to see that exclusively on TV before.”
Part of that craziness in the pilot is dealing with her daughter Lily’s (Lily Rose Silver) newfound love for dance. Though Emit doesn’t want to discourage Lily’s new hobby, when the routine is a little too raunchy to be age-appropriate, she has to come up with creative ways to redirect her passion.
In an exclusive clip from the very first episode, Emit’s husband, David (Paul Adelstein), is just as freaked out by his little girl’s moves as she is. Luckily, the parenting duo are in it together. “We’re united in disastrous fun,” says Blue. “To get through the ridiculous situations, they have to be a team.”
Watch the exclusive clip above, and tune in to a special preview of I Feel Bad on Wednesday, Sept. 19, at 10 p.m. ET.
WASHINGTON – President Donald Trump accused former New Jersey governor Chris Christie of “stealing from me” and feared that a presidential transition team was “jinxing” his chances of victory during the 2016 presidential campaign, according to journalist Bob Woodward’s new book on the Trump White House.
In one passage from “Fear: Trump in the White House,” Woodward described a scene in which then-candidate Trump summoned Christie to Trump Tower along with campaign CEO Steve Bannon. Trump was angry to learn that Christie, whom he made head of his transition team in May 2016, was raising money for the team’s operations.
“Where the (expletive) is the money?” Trump asked Christie, according to Woodward. “I need money for my campaign. I’m putting money in my campaign and you’re (expletive) stealing from me.”
Christie explained the money was necessary for the transition team to do its job of preparing Trump to smoothly take over the executive branch of the government should he defeat his Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton.
Trump responded that one reason 2012 Republican nominee Mitt Romney failed to defeat President Barack Obama was because he spent too much time on his transition and not enough time campaigning, Woodward writes.
“That’s why he lost,” Trump said.
Trump also expressed concern that the transition team was bringing bad luck to his campaign.
“You’re jinxing me,” Woodward quotes Trump as saying. “I don’t want a transition. I’m shutting down the transition. I told you from day one it was just an honorary title. You’re jinxing me. I’m not going to spend a second on it.”
At that point, Bannon jumped in and tried to explain why the transition team was useful, according to Woodward. But Trump repeated, “It’s jinxing me.”
After Bannon said that the news media was likely to read an end to the transition team as a sign that Trump didn’t believe he could win, the candidate relented. But he wanted the transition operation to be scaled down and for Christie to stop fundraising, Woodward writes.
“He can have his transition,” Trump said, according to the book. “But I don’t want anything to do with it.”
An Australian snake catcher captured video of two coastal carpet pythons attacking each other inside a family’s spare bedroom.
It all went down, literally, after the male snakes fell from a ceiling duct inside a home in a western Brisbane suburb.
“This pair has been a bit naughty,” Lana Field from Snake Catchers Brisbane said in a Facebook Live from the scene on Sunday. “They have pushed their way through from the ceiling and left a bit of a mess.”
The snakes, apparently “small” for that area, are about 5.7-feet-long, Field said, as the reptiles thrashed and wrestled near a bedroom closet. The video shows the snakes twisting around each other, and even slamming the other to the ground.
The reason for the violent fight? A lady snake. Field explained that males tracking the scent of a female python will often duke it out to prove who is stronger, and more deserving of the mate.
“They can continue like this for hours until one is exhausted,” Field said.
While these snakes were evenly matched, Field said battles between large and small snakes can end in a nasty bite. Field, who appeared feet away from the raging pythons, also assured viewers that she was watching at a safe distance and the snakes were more interested in each other than her.
England’s Adil Rashid produces a fantastic ‘Shane Warne-like’ delivery to dismiss KL Rahul for 149 as India chase 464 for victory on the final day of the fifth Test at The Oval.
Antakya, Turkey – A temporary calm has settled over the rebel-held areas in northwest Syria, allowing some civilians to return to their homes after fleeing an intensive bombardment by Russian and Syrian government forces.
The government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, backed by allies Russia and Iran, has been preparing a large-scale military onslaught to capture the northwest province of Idlib, the last rebel stronghold in the country hosting some three million people, and adjacent areas.
Air raids and shelling of southern Idlib and northern Hama provinces escalated over the past week after Moscow and Tehran rejected a Turkish ceasefire proposal at a trilateral summit held in the Iranian capital on September 7.
The renewed bombing campaign led to the flight of more than 30,000 people from rebel-held areas in northwest Syria since early September, according to the United Nations.
Abdullah Mohamed, 26, and his family were among them. The father of one told Al Jazeera that they were forced to flee Jisr al-Shoghour, a town in southwestern Idlib province, and seek refuge in the relative safety of the countryside.
But after spending two days in a nearby village, they have now headed back home as Mohamed could not afford to pay for shelter for his family.
“Because of the wave of people fleeing, the rent in nearby villages skyrocketed. It is now up to $300 a month,” Mohamed said on Tuesday, adding that tents are also difficult to find and cost as much as $100.
Mohamed said a small number of Jisr al-Shoghour residents had also returned to the town, but the majority of them – around 6,000 – were still sheltering elsewhere.
Fearing the resumption of the bombardment, they were either residing with relatives or in camps along the Syrian-Turkish border, added Mohamed, who is originally from Latakia province and has already been displaced four times over the past three years.
Abd al-Kareem al-Rahmoun, a member of the White Helmets, a civil defence group operating in rebel-held parts of Syria, told Al Jazeera that amid the temporary respite few families in northern Hama province were able to go back to their homes.
He estimated that around 5,000 families had previously fled the area, with some heading north to the camps that have popped up along the border with Turkey, and others taking shelter in the fields outside villages and towns.
According to Dr Habib Khashouf, a member of the doctors’ union in Idlib province, as of September 9 the number of internally displaced persons (IDPs) who arrived at the camps in northern Idlib province during the recent escalation stood at 8,000.
Khashouf said many of the camps were not prepared to deal with the influx of people.
Amid the worsening conditions, there is a shortage of tents and adequate food provision, as well as delays in medicine shipments due to the departure of many foreign organisations from northern Syria over the past year, he added.
Soleiman Abu al-Bara, who worked previously with the Qatari Red Crescent, told Al Jazeera that despite the temporary lull in the bombardment, there are still IDPs arriving at the camps in the north. According to him, hundreds are forced to spend the night without a shelter due to a lack of space and tents in the camps.
Mark Lowcock, the UN’s secretary-general for humanitarian affairs and emergency relief, said that a major assault on opposition-held areas in northwest Syria could force 800,000 civilians to flee to the Turkish border and risked provoking the worst humanitarian catastrophe of the 21st century.
The Turkish government has also warned against an attack on opposition-held territories.
In an op-ed published in the Wall Street Journal on Monday, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan called on the international community to take action and said that an offensive on Idlib province would result in “serious humanitarian risks for Turkey, the rest of Europe and beyond”.
“Innocent people must not be sacrificed in the name of fighting terrorism,” he wrote.
Turkish officials have also signalled that the country will not be able to accommodate another wave of refugees. Turkey, which has recently sent reinforcements to its borders to prevent the influx of more refugees, currently hosts more than three million Syrians.
Turkish aid organisations also support a number of camps on the Turkish-Syrian border.
Actress, singer, and activist Lucy Hale sat down to discuss the importance of supporting Childhood Cancer Awareness Month and her new role as ambassador for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.
St. Jude will rally supporters in 65 communities across the nation this September for its annual Walk/Run to End Childhood Cancer. Hale and St. Jude have also teamed up with Omaze.com to raise money and awareness, offering a T-shirt in exchange for donations.
For decades now Emma Thompson has redefined what it means to be a triple threat.
The actress, who first began appearing on screens in the early 1980s, rose to fame as a star in period dramas based on renowned literary works like Howard’s End and several Shakespeare adaptations. In 1995, she proved herself a force to be reckoned with off-screen as well, winning an Oscar for adapting Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility(which she also starred in). In the years since she’s continued to expand her repertoire, doing everything from adapting children’s books to the screen (Nanny McPhee) to joining the star-studded cast of the Harry Potter franchise.
Now, Thompson adds the challenge of portraying a high-powered family court judge with a fondness for piano playing to her credit as Fiona Maye in The Children Act.Ian McEwan (Atonement) adapted the film from his novel of the same name. Fiona is a judge in the family court in Britain, an institution responsible for weighing in on decisions involving contentious divorces, battles over religious belief and medical care, and more. As Fiona presides over a case involving a young Jehovah’s Witness and a blood transfusion, she faces similar upheaval at home when her marriage to Jack (Stanley Tucci) begins to unravel.
The role is dramatically demanding, and Thompson is in nearly every scene, but it was one in particular that intimidated her — an emotional interlude in which a holiday recital gives way to an impromptu singing performance. While Thompson has sung onscreen before, most recently in Beauty and the Beast, she describes that scene as “really scary.”
That aspect of the role demanded six months of rehearsal from Thompson, and she also undertook extensive research into the lives of female judges in the British courts to help her understand the psyche of her character. “Their workload and the way in which they undertake their workload is different to a lot of the male judges,” she explains.
Ahead of the film’s Sept. 14 theatrical release (it’s available now on DirecTV), EW caught up with Thompson on what drew her to the project and how her own life experiences influenced her approach to Fiona.
ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: How did you first get involved with this project? Were you a fan of Ian McEwan’s work already? EMMA THOMPSON: Yes! I was always a fan of Ian’s and met him years and years ago actually. We were both doing a strange talk show back in the day. At that time, he was more established than I was, and he was terribly nice to me. I remember thinking, “That’s a nice man,” and then I read all of his books. So I’d read Children Act when [director] Richard [Eyre] asked me to do it. Ian had done the script and made such a good job of his own book, which is not always the case. People that adapt their own novels, [it] doesn’t always work as well as it did with this. It was a no-brainer really. It was, “Yes, please, where do I sign?”
You are not a religious person — did your own beliefs factor into your approach to Fiona and how she considers a case so knit up with morality and faith? The job of acting is to pretend to be someone else so really the things I’m considering are what Fiona’s position might be. She would probably be brought up in the Church of England, christened, and had quite a conventional upbringing. I wouldn’t have thought of her as an atheist. More agnostic. Someone who takes faith very seriously.
Talking to the judge who actually presided over this case [McEwan based the case on a real one a friend presided over] — he really wanted to show his respect for the Jehovah’s Witnesses, for their beliefs. Whatever he might have thought about their decision, he wanted to make it very clear that he was taking them seriously. A lot of the time people don’t. They’re sort of sidelined and belittled and ridiculed. I thought that was very interesting, that aspect of the personality of this judge that she wanted to be judicious and consistently respectful of everybody’s opinions. I suppose that’s part of the job; you can’t bring your personal beliefs because you’re representing the law and the law doesn’t have personal feelings about anything.
You recently told The Guardian, “Marriages die, but then they are reborn” – that’s fitting for what Fiona and Jack go through here. Would you agree and did you bring any of your personal experiences to bear here? I absolutely think that all long-term relationships have to change. Otherwise, they’re very unlikely to survive. You can’t continue a relationship in exactly the same vein over 20 or 30 years because it’s simply not going to happen. We’re human, and we change, and we get older. We change our minds. We become different in all sorts of ways. For a lot of people who are in very long-term relationships, part of that journey is definitely having to recalibrate. There are all sorts of things that can happen to people. They can become ill. They can lose a leg. Everything can change and does change.
In the case of Fiona and Jack, he’s got to the end of his tether and throws an emotional grenade into the room. [It] explodes, knocks her off balance, but then she still has to work. Because it’s not the type of job you can take a break from; you’re a public servant. It’s cost her a lot to get there as it is. The woman judges I know are incredibly lucky because they have very, very supportive husbands. Jack’s been very supportive of her. He must have been. Otherwise, they just wouldn’t have managed really. The commitment she’s had to show, the work level is just incredible. It’s so hard. It’s such a demanding job. It’s not surprising at some point something happens to both of them within the relationship, which is the moment where they have a look at it and go, “Well, things have changed here.”
You are also a screenwriter and adapted one of the most beloved novelists of all time — did you and Ian ever discuss the process of adaptation and its challenges? No, we didn’t really. Because when we met, we were on the set, so you tend not to have that kind of discussion when you’re in the middle of shooting. We talked a lot about the law. We talked about the people and the personalities that we’ve met. We talked about being backstage at the law courts and how extraordinarily arcane and obtuse it all is and how surprising that was. I did an awful lot of research on my own because I wanted to really focus on the women judges. Their workload and the way in which they undertake their workload is different to a lot of the male judges. We talked about the family court a lot and the fact that it’s almost mythic in the amount of pain and difficulty and resentment and rage that passes in front of these people who then have to make decisions that affect people’s lives in extremely profound ways. I can’t imagine having that kind of responsibility. Nor the sort of pressure that might put upon your consciousness.
It’s probably difficult for American audiences to fathom because we don’t have that notion of a distinct Family Court in the same way where one person has so much responsibility. That was something that was really central to the development of her character was this sense of responsibility. She’s accused rightly by both the men we see her interact with of having lost touch perhaps a little bit with her own fallibility. She’s not used to being questioned anymore. The pillar upon which she rests everything is this massively, almost swollen sense of personal responsibility.
You sing onscreen here, that’s not something we get to see you do often. Would you like to do more of it or was it intimidating for you? Yeah, it’s always a bit intimidating. I used to do it much more than I do now. Just a few years ago I did Sweeney Todd. That was an amazing experience. That was more intimidating, but it still is always scary. Playing the piano at the same time as singing, that was a lot of rehearsal. That took me six months to really get that under my skin. Because we shot it live. That’s how it was performed on the day as it were. It was really scary, but there’s a tentative quality to it which I really liked because there’s a risk involved when you’re playing and singing live. You ‘re going to make mistakes, and those mistakes contain a lot of the emotion of that scene.
The email addresses you by name and knows one of your online passwords – and even may include the last three digits of your phone number.
Assured it has your attention, it then proceeds to claim that malware placed on a porn site you’ve visited will expose you. Unless you pay up.
Count yourself lucky if you haven’t received this email or a similar one in the past few months.These so-called sextortion scams are on the rise, fueled by the past years’ data breaches that have released personal information into the wild.
“Anecdotally, it appears to be very prevalent,” said Cooper Quintin, a cybersecurity researcher at the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
The fraud banks on the chance that one of its potential marks – you, perhaps – has been visiting porn sites or has been cheating on a partner, and so believes the letter’s sender really has secret information.
One such email claims that “while you were watching the video, your web browser acted as a RDP (Remote Desktop) and a keylogger provided me access to your display screen and webcam. Right after that, my software gathered all your contacts from your Messenger, Facebook account and email account.”
What’s more, it says you were recorded as you were viewing the porn. (“Yep! It’s you doing nasty things!” reads the scam letter.) If that weren’t enough, the email claims all of your personal contacts — family, friends, co-workers — have been stolen. Now the blackmailer is giving you 24 hours to make a payment, often several thousand dollars, via Bitcoin.
“If I don’t get the payment,” the email continues, “I will send your video to all of your contacts including relatives, coworkers, and so forth.”
According to Steven D’Antuono, chief of the FBI’s financial crime section, it’s what they call “a scare scam.” The FBI is seeing a rise in reported cases this summer, so much so that the Bureau issued an alert on the matter in August.
What makes this scam different? Most phishing scams try to steal passwords, but this one already has your stolen password – and uses that information to try to reel in the victim.
“The messages are sent to email addresses exposed in previous known data breaches in which the user database (email address and password) was indexed online,” said Brian Krebs, editor of the security news site KrebsOnSecurity.com.
Cindy Ratzlaff, a retired publishing executive, received the extortion email in early August.
“The most frightening thing was that they referred to a password I once used,” she said. Her letter claimed to have a split-screen video of her watching porn, as captured by her computer’s camera. She knew it was fake — because she’s never visited a porn site and she keeps a green Post-it over the camera eye — “but it was still very concerning.” She told her husband, then immediately deleted the email, emptied the trash and rebooted the computer. As a final precaution, she then changed all her passwords.
Ratzlaff did all the right things, according to Eric Vanderburg, vice president of cybersecurity at Greensboro, North Carolina-based computer forensics firm TCDI. First, she avoided paying the ransom and then didn’t engage with the threat.
“It is best to interact with the email as little as possible. Do not click on any links in the message nor open any attachments, as this could infect your computer with malware,” he said.
Earlier this month, Sam Fromartz, editor-in-chief of the Food and Environment Reporting Network, came home from vacation to find a typewritten letter sent to him by name via the U.S. Postal Service. If he didn’t send $8,000 via Bitcoin, the letter said, his porn-viewing video would be released to his wife.
Fromartz knew it was a scam – he doesn’t watch porn – but what puzzled him most were the Bitcoin payment instructions. “It took up a full page and was so complicated. I wonder how anyone would decipher how to do it,” he says.
The addition of Bitcoin to the phishing blackmail is a new twist on old scams, the FBI’s D’Antuono says. Paying via Bitcoin is more anonymous than other methods, he says, because it’s nearly impossible to trace and, as he notes, once a payment is made “there’s not much you can do to get Bitcoin funding back.”
Who’s behind these schemes, often referred to as “sextortion?” That’s not clear. The FBI notes the scam could come from anyplace.
I was curious to know if actual porn watchers were more at risk than others for being scammed. But cybersecurity experts say it’s an equal opportunity threat: one’s viewing habits have nothing to do with who is targeted. TCDI’s Vanderburg notes that victims are likely chosen simply because their name and password have been “exfiltrated” in a data breach. So if you’ve had your info stolen in a past breach, you may be more vulnerable.
The takeaway:
· The EFF’s Cooper Quintin suggests practicing good “security hygiene,” which means regularly changing passwords and user names, signing up for a password manager like Dashlane, 1Password, or KeePass, and using two-factor authentication (which usually means responding to a text to your phone in addition to entering your username and password on a site as added proof that it’s really you).
· Since laptops and many desktops are equipped with cameras and microphones, Vanderburg recommends covering the camera lens and adding a micblock to the microphone/headphone port on your computer.
· The FBI’s D’Antuono recommends reporting any scams like these to IC3.gov, the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center, or contact your local FBI office (or toll-free at 1-800-CALL-FBI). “Predators are out there,” he says. “We need everyone’s help to stop this.”
· Finally, “don’t respond to spam at all, period,” says security expert Krebs. “Don’t pay off extortionists.” In other words, be computer smart and think before you click.
USA TODAY columnist Steven Petrow offers advice about living in the digital age. Submit your question at stevenpetrow@gmail.com. You can also follow Petrow on Twitter: @StevenPetrow. Or like him on Facebook at facebook.com/stevenpetrow.
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Hundreds of rare gold coins discovered beneath Italian theater
The rare treasure was found by construction workers at the previous site of the historic Cressoni Theater in northern Italy.
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Hundreds of Roman gold coins were discovered at a former theater in northern Italy. Buzz60
About 300 Roman-era gold coins were unearthed last week beneath what once was an Italian theater, authorities say.
The rare treasure was found by construction workers building an apartment complex at the previous site of the historic Cressoni Theater in northern Italy, which closed in the 1990s. What appears to be a soapstone vase or jar held the coins, believed to be from 474 B.C.
“More than exceptional, it’s epochal — one of those discoveries that marks the course of history,” Culture Minister Alberto Bonisoli said during a Monday news conference.
Luca Rinaldi, the local archaeology superintendent, told the Times of London the coins are in remarkable condition “unlike anything else ever found” in the area.
“Sometimes coins that are found are stuck together, but these are all separate. It was like opening a wallet,” she told the Times.
Archaeologists are now restoring and studying the coins at a laboratory in Milan, according to the Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activities.
A third European club competition could be introduced alongside the Champions League and Europa League from 2021, according to the head of the association of Europe’s biggest teams.
European Club Association (ECA) chairman Andrea Agnelli, who is also on Uefa’s executive committee, said the “the green light has been given”.
He did not give any more details on how the tournament would be organised.
“The current model needs modernising,” said Agnelli, 42.
Agnelli, who is also chairman of Italian champions Juventus, said: “A detailed assessment of the existing international match calendar is required prior to presenting a new model post-2024.”
Speaking at the annual general assembly of the ECA in Croatia, he said the third competition would increase the number of clubs involved in European football from 80 to 96.
The Champions League features 32 teams in the group stage and the second-tier Europa League has 48.
The Cup Winners’ Cup – for domestic cup champions – was scrapped in 1999.
In a statement, Uefa said it is “constantly reviewing the format of its competitions and is looking at a variety of options”.
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