• News

by Cedric 'BIG CED' Thornton

September 22, 2023

Police Find More Fentanyl In Bronx Daycare Trap Floor After Toddler’s Tragic Death

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After a 1-year-old boy died and three other children were hospitalized last week after being exposed to fentanyl, police officers said they found a trap floor with drugs at the daycare center where the tragedy took place.

According to ABC News, police officers were informed that there was a trap door in the floor at the Bronx daycare center where the child died. Officials said they searched the Divino Niño daycare center on Sept. 20 and Sept. 21 and discovered a large amount of fentanyl, other narcotics, and drug paraphernalia.

As part of an ongoing overdose fatality investigation in a Bronx daycare center on 9/15/23, a search warrant was conducted by @NYPDDetectives. A large quantity of Fentanyl, other narcotics, & drug paraphernalia was recovered in a trap floor in the play area at the daycare center. https://t.co/VycTB9hzpx pic.twitter.com/ZwaeukUHqS

— NYPD NEWS (@NYPDnews) September 21, 2023

Investigators had already discovered a kilo of fentanyl that had been stored on play mats at the daycare center, along with a device that pressed drugs into bricks for sale, according to court records.

Nicholas Dominici died Friday, and the three other children at Divino Niño, who range in age from 8 months to 2 years, were taken to the hospital. They were treated with Narcan and are recovering. Fentanyl was found in the urine of one of the victims, officials confirmed.

Two people are being held on federal charges of narcotics possession with intent to distribute resulting in death, and conspiracy to distribute narcotics resulting in death.

Grei Mendez, the operator of the daycare center, and Carlisto Acevedo Brito, a tenant in the building, are currently being held without bail. Both were arrested and charged on state charges including murder. Their next scheduled court date is Oct. 5. Bronx District Attorney Darcel Clark said they were indicted by a grand jury.

Mendez’s attorney claims she was unaware that Brito, her husband’s cousin, was storing drugs in the building. Police are looking for her husband, who, according to court records, was seen on video fleeing the building out of a back alley, carrying two trash bags.

RELATED CONTENT: Family Sues Airbnb After Baby Dies From Fentanyl Poisoning Day After Entering Florida Rental Property

• Lifestyle

by Cedric 'BIG CED' Thornton

September 22, 2023

Here’s Your Chance To Get $2,500 To Binge-Watch Popular Netflix Shows

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Did you know that Sept. 25, 2023, is National Binge Day? Did you also know that if you Netflix and chill for a pretty long time, there is a chance you will be rewarded with $2,500?

In celebration of National Binge Day, onlinecasinos.com is offering to pay someone to sit and binge-watch movies on Netflix. Yes, you read that correctly: You can make money by simply watching several series on the popular streaming platform.

Telfar and UGG have another collaboration collection that’ll keep us cozy, stylish, and warm this fall and winter.

On Tuesday, Sept. 19, the fashion brands announced their second joint venture, which launches Sept. 25 exclusively on Telfar and UGG’s official websites. This time, Telfar and UGG add their signature flair to denim bags and boots topped off with UGG’s cozy wool sherpa lining.

A variety of Telfeezy-designed leggings, boxer briefs, bucket hats, and T-shirts are also part of the signature collection of small, medium, and large Telfar shopping bags. Telfar took to Instagram on Tuesday to tease the new collab in an “UGGbelievable” video showing musician Ian Isiah in a bathtub covered in items from the collection.

“IS THAT DENIM??!? COMING SEPTEMBER 25: TELFAR x @UGG DENIM ,” the brand captioned the post.

 

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The new collaboration comes two years after the first Telfar x UGG team-up that included a collection of chestnut-colored bags and boots. That collection also included black T-shirts with “UGG” on the front, and sweaters that displayed “Telfar.”

Fans were already wondering if the chestnut colorway would return in the newly unveiled collection, or if denim would have to do for now.

“Does that mean the ugg chestnut or ugg black bags are coming soon ? Mr. Telfar plz don’t play games w/me & get me all excited,” said one enthusiast.

Their questions were answered on Friday, when Telfar followed up with a photo slide of Isiah modeling the black UGGs lined with wool sherpa shaped in Telfar’s signature “TC” logo. Other photos showcased the denim boxer briefs, leggings, and T-shirts wearers can pair with their bags and boots.

 

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A post shared by @telfarglobal

Telfar is fresh off dressing Beyoncé (and Blue Ivy) for her highly successful Renaissance World Tour. The brand showed off the tracksuits Queen Bey and her dancers donned for their recent tour stop.

 

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RELATED CONTENT: Telfar Clemens Is Moving On From Bag Security Program

• Celebrity News

by Sharelle Burt

September 22, 2023

Quavo Stands Against Gun Violence in Washington, D.C. After Takeoff’s Untimely Death

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Migos rapper Quavo has joined the fight against gun violence after witnessing his nephew Takeoff’s murder in 2022, The Associated Press reports.

The Grammy-nominated artist spoke on a panel during the Congressional Black Caucus Legislative Conference in Washington, D.C., on Sept. 20, 2023, alongside Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-GA), Rep. Lucy McBath, the mother of senseless gun violence victim Jordan Davis, and Community Justice Action Fund Executive Director Greg Jackson. The conversation centered on how gun violence can be combated with the help of powerful advocacy and community intervention strategies.

“I feel like your calling comes at the least expected times. You don’t think nothing is going to happen,” Quavo said.

“I need to step up to the plate and hit a home run. I have to do something about it so it won’t happen to the masses — especially in our culture. I don’t want this to happen to the next person. I want to knock down these percentages.”

After the panel, Quavo, whose birth name is Quavious Keyate Marshall, along with Takeoff’s mother, Titania Davenport, met with U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris, who gave the rapper and his sister props for taking a stand.

Jackson, who himself was a victim of gun violence, commended the Atlanta native for sitting down with Congress for change, adding that Quavo’s voice could make a difference. “His voice and commitment around community violence intervention could provide more resources for those who are most at risk,” Jackson said.

“With gun violence, in order to change it, we have to change the behavior just as aggressively as we focus on safety and ownership and access. … But we can’t change behavior if our communities don’t have the resources they need and our youth is being overlooked and forgotten.”

Since Takeoff’s murder in Houston sent shock waves through the music world, Quavo has taken steps in the right direction, hoping the tragedies stop. According to ABC News, in November 2022, Quavo and his family started the Rocket Foundation in honor of the fellow Migos member to prevent similar incidents from forming dark clouds over Black and brown communities.

“I’m a survivor. I was there, so at the same time, it could have been both of us,” he said. “So I look at this as me being alive, I have to do this job and make sure everybody’s aware that losing my nephew, you could be in the same position.”

Takeoff’s death only added to the list of hip-hop stars we’ve lost in the last four years, including Young Dolph, PnB Rock, Pop Smoke, and Nipsey Hussle.

RELATED CONTENT: Takeoff’s Mother Files Wrongful Death Lawsuit Against Venue Where Rapper Was Shot

• Sports

by Cedric 'BIG CED' Thornton

September 22, 2023

Stephen A. Smith’s Awful First Pitch At Yankee Stadium Gets Him Clowned By Sports Fans

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ESPN sports analyst Stephen A. Smith is known for his braggadocio, but he may have a reason to stay silent after his latest antics in front of a camera.

At Yankee Stadium in the Bronx Thursday night, Smith threw the game’s ceremonial first pitch and came up extremely short. The controversial announcer, walking with as much confidence as LeBron James on a basketball court, may have to withstand whatever biting comments come his way.

Twitter users had a “ball” after watching Smith’s ineptitude.

Just a bit short, @stephenasmith! 😅

Watch and Stream #YANKSonYES LIVE: https://t.co/aRu5PF6iD2 pic.twitter.com/JVMWJg3VFd

— YES Network (@YESNetwork) September 21, 2023

At least it was in line with home plate!

— Joshua S (@sandler_joshua) September 21, 2023

It couldn’t have happened to a more deserving person. The person who is always quick to point out the flaws of everyone else, couldn’t even reach the catcher. EMBARRASSING!!

— MAGS (@Hunter223322) September 22, 2023

SAS gonna hear about it from the First Take crew!

— warrior82 (@808_warrior82) September 21, 2023

If it wasn’t for the fact that Queens, NY, native 50 Cent had possibly the worst pitch in the history of baseball, Smith would have taken that crown!

pic.twitter.com/xKDVKCkNnK

— Kevin (@coldasshonky65) September 21, 2023

Even Sister Mary Jo Sobieck put Smith to shame when she took the mound five years ago.

This is how it’s done…https://t.co/WS0cgO3NhA

— Just Me (@XenoYautja44) September 22, 2023

NJ.com reported that Smith responded to his pitch in the YES broadcast booth. He admitted that he choked while he was on the pitcher’s mound.

“I was disgusted with myself,” Smith told fellow sportscasters Michael Kay, Paul O’Neill, and David Cone. “Let me tell you something, I was warming up down there. I was throwing strikes from 60 feet away. And I got on that mound and it looked like it was a mile away. I said, ‘What the hell am I doing here?’…And you know, it just, I mean, it was…there’s no excuse, there’s no excuse. It was a choke job. I can do better than that. It was a choke job, and Stephen A. choked a little bit. I just did. It was straight. But damn it, I can do better than that.”

He continued: “Listen, I want to go up on the hill, man. I stood up there and I’m like, ‘I can’t believe how far this is.’…And then, not only that, they would coach me to let it go sooner and I followed through and then let it go. I let it go too late. And you don’t get warmups on the mound, man. I choked.”

Indeed you did, Mr. Smith, indeed you did.

RELATED CONTENT: Shannon Sharpe Calls Stephen A. Smith “Skip” Multiple Times in First Take Debut

• Women

by BLACK ENTERPRISE Editors

September 22, 2023

Accused Of Faking It: Women In Viral ‘Brickgate’ Incident Speaks Out

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Roda Osman, the Somali mom who went viral after “Brickgate,” in which a catcalling man allegedly threw a brick at her after she refused to give her phone number, revealed the backlash she received upon sharing her story.

After describing her ordeal and calling out the men who watched in the now-viral video, Osman is facing threats against her and her son weeks later. Doubters examined her social media history in an effort to disparage her character, even going so far to claim her assault was a hoax.

Speaking to NBC News, Osman detailed how she has been struggling to cope with the intense cyberbullying, enduring everything from panic attacks to nightmares.

“First, they’re like, ‘Where’s the police report?'” Osman said. “‘You don’t have a police report.’ I show the police report. Then they’re like, ‘Oh, it’s a fake police report.’ Then they’re like, ‘Show us the hospital records. You don’t have hospital records.’ I show them the hospital records. ‘It’s fake hospital records.’ The goalposts will never be met.”

NBC News confirmed the records were legitimate. Osman’s left ear had blood coming out of the canal, and the left side of her face was left bruised and tender. Police have identified a suspect in the incident.

Some point out that Osman’s experience reveals a growing pattern of Black women facing harsh criticism when they report Black men committing harmful acts against them. “I am an independent, strong, educated, successful Black woman,” Osman said. “That makes a lot of them just infuriated by my existence alone.”

Osman is aware of the deeper issues behind the online harassment, but that has not brought her peace. The backlash has thwarted her progress toward her schooling as well. Osman is a Ph.D. candidate at University of Texas at Austin, focusing on Black feminist theory and diasporic studies. She had expected to graduate according to her original time frame. That was before the assault.

“I don’t know how I’m going to support myself,” she said. “I don’t know how I’m going to graduate on time. I don’t know how I’m going to, you know, feel safe again.”

A GoFundme created by a friend on Osman’s behalf has been active since the assault occurred. It has received more than $42,000 so far.

RELATED CONTENT: GoFundMe For Woman Harmed By Brick-Throwing, Catcalling Man Exceeds Goal

Naomi Campbell opened up about the drug addiction she used to “cover up” the grief she was carrying during the early years of her modeling career.

The iconic supermodel spoke candidly in Apple TV+’s docuseries “The Super Models,” revealing her past struggles with substance abuse. Campbell recalled the dark period in her life that started after the sudden death of her friend Gianni Versace, People reports.

“When I started using, that was one of the things I tried to cover up, was grief. Addiction is such a — it’s just a bulls— thing, it really is,” Campbell says in the doc.

“You think, ‘Oh, it’s gonna heal that wound.’ It doesn’t,” she shared. “It can cause such huge fear and anxiety. So I got really angry.”

For Campbell, who grew up in a single-parent household in London before finding early success as a model, Versace became part of her “chosen family.” Having built a close bond with the late founder of high-fashion label Versace, Campbell took his 1997 murder outside his Miami mansion that much harder.

“He was very sensitive to feeling me — like, he pushed me,” Campbell recalled. “He would push me to step outside and go further when I didn’t think I had it within myself to do it.”

“So, when he died, my grief became very bad.”

The rising model was also dealing with abandonment issues stemming from her fatherless childhood and loss of time with her mother. Campbell says her grief was a “very strange thing” to have to manage, as it “doesn’t always show.”

The fashion star notes the “shock” she initially went into when it happened, then having a “break” later on.

“I kept the sadness inside, I just dealt with it,” she said.

Campbell struggled with addiction for five years until she collapsed on set in 1999 and checked herself into rehab.

“When you try to cover something up, your feelings — you spoke about abandonment. I tried to cover that with something. You can’t cover it,” she admitted.

“I was killing myself. It was very hurtful.”

Now, as a 53-year-old mother of two, Campbell considers the rehab stint as “one of the best” decisions she made for herself during that challenging time.

“It’s taken me many years to work on and deal with,” Campbell shared. “And it does still come up sometimes. But I just now have the tools how to deal with it now when it comes up.”

“The Super Models” details the success stories of Campbell and fellow modeling legends Cindy Crawford, Christy Turlington, and Linda Evangelista. The ladies sat down for the cameras to relive their respective rises in the modeling world.

RELATED CONTENT: Naomi Campbell Debuts PrettyLittleThing Collection At NYFW Show

Will Smith wasn’t going to let hip-hop 50 pass without getting in on the fun. The legendary rapper turned Academy Award-winning actor has a podcast aimed at celebrating a pivotal year in hip-hop history.

The King Richard star teamed up with Audible and Wondery to launch a limited-edition hip-hop podcast called “Class of ’88,” Billboard reports. The eight-episode podcast will feature a few of Smith’s friends and fellow hip-hop greats including Queen Latifah, Salt-N-Pepa, Darryl “DMC” McDaniels, Rakim, Fab 5 Freddy, DJ Jazzy Jeff, Chuck D, and DJ Red Alert.

Smith was selected to host the podcast that celebrates the central year “that defined the global cultural phenomenon of Hip-Hop.”

“Hip-Hop has been a central part of my life for over four decades,” Smith said in a statement.

“I’m hyped to share my first-hand experiences and those of some of Hip-Hop’s greatest legends as we delve into the origins of one of the most influential genres of music in history.”

The podcast will relive the significant year in hip-hop that introduced icons of the art form, including Public Enemy, Salt-N-Pepa, Queen Latifah, and of course DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince. 1988 was a crucial year for Smith and Jazzy Jeff as the pair skyrocketed to fame with the success of their hit “Parents Just Don’t Understand.”

The song became the first to win the Grammy for Best Rap Performance at the 1989 Grammy Awards. But Smith, Jazzy Jeff, Salt-N-Pepa, and others boycotted the awards show upon learning that their category would not be televised.

Many years later, in 2016, Smith would lead a boycott against the Academy Awards as part of the “Oscars So White” backlash. He won his first Oscar in 2022, moments after he walked onstage to slap comedian Chris Rock for making a joke about his wife, Jada Pinkett Smith.

His new eight-episode podcast series was produced by Wondery, Audible, Westbrook, and Awfully Nice and will be available on Amazon Music and Audible beginning Oct. 26. Prime members can also listen ad-free on Amazon Music. The official trailer for the podcast can be heard here.

RELATED CONTENT: Will Smith Beams and Shows Pride When Daughter Willow Performs At Coachella

Dwyane Wade is noting the “work” he still has to do in his marriage to Gabrielle Union-Wade after admittedly fathering a child with another woman.

Wade got candid on Shannon Sharpe’s “Club Shay Shay” podcast about the time he had to inform Union-Wade about his son Xavier, a child he fathered while they were on a short break in their relationship. It was 2013, and the NBA Hall of Famer tried to end their relationship at the time, but the “Being Mary Jane” star wasn’t going anywhere.

“I tried to pussyfoot around it, I tried to break up with her,” Wade said of the “hard conversation” he was forced to have.

“‘Hey, things have been bad lately,’ ‘Hey, we’ve been having a little distance in our relationship anyway,’ I tried all of that. She kept showing up.”

Wade recalled how “scary” it was having to sit Union down and tell her the hard truth.

“You’re thinking about it all, it’s all scary,” he said. “One, the whole situation is scary enough, you’re a public figure.”

“But you know that this is going to hurt someone that you’ve been building a relationship with and a life with,” he added.

Wade continued. “No matter what people say on the outside, or what people want to think, ultimately you gotta sit with you, and you gotta sit with this person, and I had to sit with my wife and have this conversation.”

Union-Wade chose to forgive her beau and the two went on to get engaged in December 2013 before tying the knot the following in August. In 2018, they welcomed their daughter Kaavia James Wade via surrogate. Together they share Wade’s two children with his ex-wife son Zaire, 21, and daughter Zaya, 16, as well as his son Xavier, 9, with Aja Metoyer. Wade is also the legal guardian of his nephew, Dahveon Morris, 21.

While in happier times, Wade admits he’s still at “work” repairing the damage he caused nine years ago.

“It hasn’t been perfect, it will never be perfect but that was nine years ago,” Wade admits. “We go to therapy, we’ve had shouts about it, we’ve had regular conversations about, and so it’s been something that going to be something that I have to work at and work on.”

“It doesn’t go away because years come or because I say ‘sorry,'” he added.

RELATED CONTENT: Dwyane Wade On His Family Leaving Florida, They Didn’T Feel Protected, Safe, Seen

A small, Black-owned venture capital fund investing in businesses led by women of color is being sued for allegedly running a “discriminatory program” by the same players that helped overturn affirmative action.

The American Alliance for Equal Rights filed in Atlanta federal court on Aug. 2 accusing Fearless Fund, an organization that has invested in Black woman-owned businesses, including Slutty Vegan, of racial discrimination. According to ABC News, the alliance claimed the fund’s Fearless Strivers Grant Contest violates part of the Civil Rights Act of 1866 that prohibits racial discrimination in contracts. The contest awards $20,000 to Black women who run businesses, according to the fund’s website.

Westlaw, a research service and proprietary database for lawyers and legal professionals. stated the alliance wants to end the grant program. If that wasn’t enough, the alliance also wants the Atlanta court to place a restraining order and preliminary injunction against Fearless Fund by August 17, 2023. Apparently, the goal is to keep the company from identifying its next round of grant recipients, Westlaw reported. The president of the alliance, and the name behind the lawsuit, Edward Jay Blum, was also involved in the Harvard College and University of North Carolina Supreme Court cases that outlawed affirmative action in college admissions, Westlaw noted.

In 2022, CNBC reported Black entrepreneurs received less than 2% of venture capital funding every year. Black women business owners got even less, at 1%, the news outlet determined from data on Crunchbase. That’s where Fearless Fund comes in. The venture capital player boasts a diverse portfolio of businesses run by Black women and women of color, including Hairbrella, The Lip Bar, and Live Tinted.

Harvard Business Review reported that Black women are more likely, at 17%, to start a business than White men, at 15%. Black women business owners are not sitting around waiting for things to change in venture capital. They are advocating for themselves even in the face of obstacles.

RELATED CONTENT: Fearless Fund Awards $150K To Black-Owned Plant-Based Feminine Care Brand ‘Femly’