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Utah Jazz team plane makes emergency landing after bird strike

• No Comments • Sports News

matimix/iStockBy MARK OSBORNE, MINA KAJI, and AMANDA MAILE, ABC News

(SALT LAKE CITY, Utah) — The Utah Jazz’s team charter was forced to return to the gate at Salt Lake City International Airport Tuesday afternoon due to a bird strike.

A Utah Jazz spokesperson confirmed to ABC News the Jazz team charter “returned safely to the Salt Lake City airport today after a bird strike.”

Delta Fight 8944 departed Salt Lake City and on takeoff it was reported the plane hit a flock of birds. The engine was shut down as a precaution, the crew declared an emergency and then landed without incident. The plane taxied back to the gate.

The Jazz were leaving Salt Lake City to travel to Memphis. Utah is scheduled to play the Memphis Grizzlies on Wednesday night.

Utah has the best record in the NBA at 35-11, led by stars Donovan Mitchell and Rudy Gobert.

Several of the team’s players posted on social media following the scare, though none explicitly referred to the landing. Several players, including Mitchell and Jordan Clarkson simply posted prayer hands emojis.

Gobert posted, “It’s a beautiful day!”

Copyright © 2021, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

Maren Morris calls third album "the happiest thing I've ever made"

• No Comments • Country Music News

ABCMaren Morris is in her happy place as she preps her upcoming album. 

The cross-genre star turned to TikTok on Tuesday to reveal that she’s halfway through making her third studio album in what appears to be a beach setting.

Maren shared a video of a gray ocean set against a mountain backdrop, with whale tails visible in the distance rising from the water, alongside clips of herself giving the peace sign to the camera while in the recording booth and venturing on a sunset ride with husband Ryan Hurd. 

“Album 3 has been fun. Probably the happiest thing I’ve ever made,” she says, captioning the video, “the only upside to not touring: I make more songs.” 

Maren’s forthcoming project follows the success of 2019’s GIRL, which spawned a pair of #1 hits with the title track and Grammy nominated “The Bones.” The latter spent multiple weeks at the top of the Billboard Country Airplay chart and crossed over to Billboard Adult Contemporary and Adult Top 40 charts.

By Cillea Houghton 
Copyright © 2021, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

'Wrath of Man': Watch trailer for Jason Statham's bloody reunion with 'Snatch' director Guy Ritchie

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Metro Goldwyn Mayer Pictures © 2021 Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures Inc. All Rights Reserved(LOS ANGELES) — In 1998, a then-unknown director named Guy Ritchie and an even less-known former Olympic diver named Jason Statham collaborated on the cult classic heist movie Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels. They followed that up with another heist hit, 2000’s Snatch, with Brad Pitt.

Fast-forward to 2021. Ritchie has directed hit action films like the Sherlock Holmes series with Robert Downey Jr., stylish, star-studded crime dramas like The Gentleman with Matthew McConaughey, and even family fare like Disney’s live-action hit, Aladdin. 

Statham, meanwhile, became one of Hollywood’s most bankable movie tough guys: in the Transporter films, the hit Expendables series with Sylvester Stallone, the action comedy Spy with Melissa McCarthy, and recently alongside The Rock in the blockbuster Fast and the Furious spin-off Hobbs and Shaw.

It’s only fitting that their latest collaboration, Wrath of Man, would play to both Statham’s and Ritchie’s strengths. The brand-new trailer shows Statham as an an armored car guard who clearly has experienced more than the two-week training course. Between dispatching bad guys, he’s untwisting a conspiracy that could solve the murder of his son. In true Ritchie style, much of the tightly-edited heist action is set to Johnny Cash’s Folsom Prison Blues.

The movie, which also stars Mindhunters‘ Holt McCallany, Black Hawk Down‘s Josh Hartnett, Laz Alonzo from The Boys, and recording artist and actor Post Malone, opens May 7.

By Stephen Iervolino
Copyright © 2021, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

After relaxing "No Zoom" policy, Oscars opening awards-night venues in Europe

• No Comments • Entertainment News

Todd Wawrychuk / ©A.M.P.A.S.(LOS ANGELES) — In a Zoom call Tuesday morning with nominees, Oscar-winning director Steven Soderbergh and the other producers of this year’s Academy Awards telecast announced the ceremony will allow European participants to attend virtually if they can’t, or aren’t willing to, fly to Los Angeles for the April 25th ceremony. 

This comes after nominees balked at the producers’ former “no streaming” rule amid high rates of COVID-19 in Europe and elsewhere. In short, producers said either the nominees come in person, or they won’t be part of the program.

However, in Tuesday’s call, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and the producers changed their tune, with Soderbergh promising to “be more transparent from this point forward.”

According to The Hollywood Reporter, Soderbergh was joined on the call by fellow producers Jesse Collins and Stacey Sher, and UMass Dartmouth COVID-19 consultant Dr. Erin Bromage. They promised that the safety precautions that are being instituted at Los Angeles’ Union Station for the show will be mirrored at the yet-to-be announced venues in Paris and London.

That said, producers still “encouraged” the participants to come to the L.A. venue if they can, and if they agree follow Los Angeles County’s policies regarding travel and quarantine — expenses the Academy will cover.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, producers said the traditional two-week quarantine period can be shortened if the participants travel in first or business class, if they’ve been vaccinated, or if they’re already working under the strict “bubble” conditions that have become the norm in the film and TV industry.

The 93rd Annual Academy Awards will air live on ABC on April 25. 

By Stephen Iervolino
Copyright © 2021, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

Luke Combs drops "We Still Drink Beer" inspired by fan's tweet

• No Comments • Country Music News

ABCLuke Combs is on a writing streak, sharing a brand-new song, “We Still Drink Beer.” 

On Monday, Luke turned to Twitter to share that he and friends Dan and Reid Isbell were in the middle of a songwriting session when he came across a tweet from a fan named Billy McKee, who tagged him and Miller Lite in a photo from his wedding last weekend that shows his groomsmen chugging cans of the beer while he wears the box over his head. 

“If you guys don’t reply back to this photo I don’t know even know what to say!!” Billy challenged. “Hell yeah! My kinda folk. Congrats and drink another one for me,” Luke replied.

But he took it one step further, writing a brand-new song called “We Still Drink Beer” inspired by the photo.  

“I know I got a lot of beer songs, but here’s another one,” Luke said about the rugged acoustic number, which boasts imaginative lyrics that send them to the moon with a cooler full of cold ones, singing, “one small sip for man, cold cans for all mankind.” 

“We still drink beer/We still get loud/We still turn ’em up/Catch us a buzz while the sun goes down,” they chant. 

This is the second new track Luke has debuted in the past week on social media, following “See Me Now.”

By Cillea Houghton 
Copyright © 2021, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.