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Which celebrity had the biggest year for Black viewers may be determined by the NAACP Image Award for Entertainer of the Year. Was it the artist Kendrick Lamar, who for weeks made headlines with his feud with Drake? Or Keke Palmer, the ubiquitous game show host, actress, and podcaster? Was it Shannon Sharpe, whose podcast Club Shay Shay frequently ignites social media with smoldering rumors, or the hilarious comic Kevin Hart? Fans of Wicked may have held space for Cynthia Erivo to defy gravity. The NAACP Image Awards ceremony, which will be televised on BET and CBS on February 22, will reveal the winner. Fight Night: The Million Dollar Heist leads the television categories with nine nominations, while The Piano Lesson, starring John David Washington in an adaption of one of August Wilson's...

The Summary NASA has announced an overhaul to its plan to bring samples from Mars back to Earth. Agency officials have decided to scrap parts of their original plan to cut down on the difficulty and cost. Instead, NASA plans to pursue two alternative options simultaneously. A revision to NASA's plan to gather samples from Mars and bring them back to Earth was disclosed on Tuesday. According to agency officials, they have chosen to abandon some of their initial plans in order to reduce the technological complexity and expense of the operation and to expedite the return date of the samples. NASA's Perseverance rover has been gathering samples of Martian soil since 2021, and the agency has been working toward retrieving these samples for more than 20 years through its Mars S...

More than 20,000 people have been forced to leave the Pacific Palisades neighborhood of Los Angeles due to a fast-moving fire and "life-threatening and destructive" winds. The Pacific Palisades Highlands subdivision was the scene of the fire, which started Tuesday morning local time. The Los Angeles Fire Department said that the fire spread to around 770 acres in a matter of hours. Dry weather and strong winds have been its main drivers, and they are expected to get worse over night. The windiest areas are predicted to experience gusts of up to 100 mph. Homes were under "immediate threat," and the fire department issued evacuation orders for many towns. Pacific Palisades resident Kelsey Trainor, an attorney, claimed she left her neighborhood at 11:30 a.m. only to become caught in heavy tra...

Washington Following a memorial service attended by his family, Vice President Kamala Harris, members of Congress, and other authorities, former President Jimmy Carter arrived to the U.S. Capitol on Tuesday to lie in state. The 39th president was praised by congressional leaders for his volunteerism, faith, and work in office. Harris recounted that she was in middle school when Jimmy Carter was elected president. "Jimmy Carter was that all too rare example of a gifted man who also walks with humility, modesty, and grace," Harris remarked. "He lived his faith, he served the people, and he left the world better than he found it," she continued. Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., emphasized Carter's volunteerism by pointing to his 1994 initiative in South Dakota, Thune's home state,...

The release of special counsel Jack Smith's report on his investigation was temporarily blocked Tuesday by an order granted by the federal court who presided over the case involving secret information against President-elect Donald Trump. After the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rules on a pending motion to prevent the distribution of the report over a different matter involving Trump co-defendants Walt Nauta and Carlos De Oliveira, the injunction will remain in effect for three days. In a motion filed Monday evening, attorneys for Nauta and De Oliveira cited U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon's earlier decision that Smith's appointment was unlawful in order to request that the report be blocked. Trump nominated Cannon to the bench, and she claimed she was doing so "to preserve the stat...

According to a regulation that Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., extended Friday, transgender persons will not be allowed to use gender-neutral single-sex restrooms next to the House Chamber. The Congressional Record, a daily journal of congressional events, reflected Johnson's policy during the 119th Congress, which included the ban. The House rules package that was approved on Friday at the first session of the House did not formally include the policy. According to the record of Friday's hearings, the policy specifies that all single-sex facilities, including locker rooms, changing areas, and restrooms, are only available to people of that biological sex. According to the Congressional Record, the policy will be implemented by the sergeant-at-arms and will be applicable to any parts of the C...

Ruby Franke, a once-famous family vlogger who was found guilty of child abuse, had an open discussion on whether she would ever be able to forgive her mother. In an interview with ABC's Good Morning America that aired Tuesday, 21-year-old Shari Franke stated, "I've had to study a lot and kind of think about what forgiveness means." However, I would define forgiving as not allowing that to take up all of my time. In 2023, Ruby Franke entered a guilty plea to four charges of child abuse and was given four distinct jail terms, ranging from one to fifteen years. Jodi Hildebrandt, her business partner, was also sentenced. Simon & Schuster published Shari Franke's memoir, The House of My Mother: A Daughter's Quest for Freedom, on Tuesday. The Frankes were well-known for years for their well...

Washington Following a memorial service attended by his family, Vice President Kamala Harris, members of Congress, and other authorities, former President Jimmy Carter arrived to the U.S. Capitol on Tuesday to lie in state. The 39th president was praised by congressional leaders for his volunteerism, faith, and work in office. Harris recounted that she was in middle school when Jimmy Carter was elected president. "Jimmy Carter was that all too rare example of a gifted man who also walks with humility, modesty, and grace," Harris remarked. "He lived his faith, he served the people, and he left the world better than he found it," she continued. Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., emphasized Carter's volunteerism by pointing to his 1994 initiative in South Dakota, Thune's home state,...

Republicans in Congress applauded Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg's statement on Tuesday that the company's platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, and Threads, will scale back moderation and stop labeling content that fact-checking partners found to be false. Zuckerberg and the business claimed that third-party fact-checking groups were too politically biased and that Meta had overreached itself in its attempts to stop the spread of false material. Meta has obscured photos and added labels to postings that include false material, such as viral hoaxes, in recent years, beginning with Donald Trump's first term in office. Third-party fact-checkers wrote and contributed to the descriptions in those categories. A post's distribution was frequently impacted by its label, which resulted in fewer peo...

The parent company of Panera Bread said on Tuesday that Jose Due, its CEO, is leaving his position with immediate effect. After years of obstacles, the company's intentions to eventually go public are now facing a new difficulty in the form of a leadership shift. While the board looks for a permanent successor to manage the company, which includes Panera Bread, Einstein Bros., and Caribou Coffee, Panera Brands CFO Paul Carbone will serve as interim CEO. According to the corporation, he intends to remain as a special advisor until the end of March. He led the bagel chain Einstein Bros. for four years before taking over as CEO of Panera Brands in July 2023. After purchasing Panera Bread for $7.5 billion in 2017, the Reimann family's investment arm, JAB Holding, took it private and combined i...