Kim Petras has made history by becoming the second transgender woman to model on the cover of Sports Illustrated. As part of the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit's annual issue, the popstar was picked as one of the four cover stars including Megan Fox, Brooks Nader and Martha Stewart. Sign up to our free Indy100 weekly newsletter In her cover photo which was shot by Yu Tsai in Los Angeles, Petras wore a gold bikini as she stood in a pool and had her armed posed above her head. The Grammy Award winner is the second transgender woman cover star, with actress Leyna Bloom being the first to grace the cover back in July 2021. "It’s very iconic, and a lot of very iconic people have done it before, so [it was a] big dream come true for me," Petras told the publication. Fans of Petras flocked to her post and congratulated her on this achievement. One person wrote: "So so proud of you Kim this is iconic @kimpetras KEEP BUSTING DOWN THEM DOORS" "Beautiful!!! Congrats!!!! I wish you the best and many more of these," another person said. Someone else added: "And the photo credits being colored as the trans flag? Iconic. @sportsillustrated really focusing all in those details. Congrats, mama!!!" The 30-year-old German singer also acknowledged what it means to be part of the transgender community amid a wave of anti-trans laws being introduced in states and the pressure she feels to represent it in an interview with the magazine. "It’s definitely a scary time to be transgender in America, but there’s also so much more representation than there’s ever been, and there’s so many things on the bright side," she added. “I do feel a pressure sometimes to represent the trans community with everything I do because I feel very blessed that I am at this point where I have all these amazing opportunities that I’ve worked really hard for and feel so happy when I hear from trans people in general that they’re inspired by me.” Though she also noted that everything she does is "definitely not about being transgender." “I always try to remember that everything I do is definitely not about being transgender. It’s a part of me, but there are so many other parts of me. And I think that’s really important for me to show that to people,” she said. “No matter what your gender or sexuality or any of that stuff is, it’s about what you make of life and it’s about what’s inside of you, so I hope that can be inspiring to people.” It's not the first time Petras has made history, as she became the first trans woman to win Grammy for Best Pop Duo for her collaboration with Sam Smith on the hit song 'Unholy.' Petras's new highly-anticipated major label debut album, Feed the Beast is out on June 23. Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.

A member of a New York City drug-dealing crew blamed for the fentanyl-laced heroin death of actor Michael K

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Machine Gun Kelly received an unusual request from a fan who asked the singer who was performing to punch him in the face. In the clip shared on the 33-year-old's Instagram, Machine Gun Kelly was on stage at the Rock Werchter festival in Belgium on 1 July where he can be seen asking the fan: "Why do you want me to punch you in the face so bad?" Good question - to which the fan simply replied: "I love you!" Sign up to our free Indy100 weekly newsletter Though Machine Gun Kelly did warn the guy that it could hurt as he told him: "I got rings on dude that s***'s gonna hurt." "I don't know it's a lose/lose for me," he added. "I don't if I'm gonna do it, I'll consider it." The video then cuts to Machine Gun Kelly who left the stage to go interact with the crowd and lifted the sign the fan-made to the camera that reads: "I just came from Mexico 4 u 2 punch me in the face." And with that, he fulfilled the fan's request since he came all the way over from Mexico and Belgium for this - though mindful of his rings, the 'Emo Girl' singer landed a softer punch. "I love you!" Machine Gun Kelly proceeded to scream afterwards. For the post caption, the singer wrote: "making dreams come true." In the comments section, fans appeared to be entertained by the interaction. One person was inspired by a Mean Girls quote and said: “One Time Machine gun kelly punched me in the face… it was AWESOME "Boy might be missing teeth and still be smiling," another person wrote. Someone else added: "Bro bouta file a life changing lawsuit." "It’s the way he was happy as hell," a fourth person commented. Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings

Alison Hammond sobbed during This Morning today (2 June), as she admitted she was finding the allegations against former host 'painful'. The show chose to address Schofield's 'redemption' interviews with The Sun and BBC. "It's weird because I still love Phillip Schofield. However, what he's done is wrong, he's admitted it, he's said sorry", she said. "As a family, we're all really struggling to process everything. My mum always said use your bible as your sat nav." Click here to sign up for our newsletters

Myles Murphy married Carly Fink in a private Beverly Hills ceremony, attended by close friends and family

X most certainly marks the spot for the world’s most headline-grabbing billionaire. Elon Musk announced on Sunday that he would be giving Twitter a major makeover: changing its name to “X” and doing away with its famous bird logo. He tweeted (or should that be X-ed?): “Soon we shall bid adieu to the twitter brand and, gradually, all the birds.” And, he said: “If a good enough X logo is posted tonight, we’ll make go live worldwide tomorrow. To embody the imperfections in us all that make us unique.” Sign up for our free Indy100 weekly newsletter It’s all part of his overarching plan to transform X into an “everything app”, much like China’s WeChat, which handles everything from payments to messaging to micro-blogging. Posting a beaming photo of himself with his arms raised in a cross, Musk added: “Not sure what subtle clues gave it away, but I like the letter X.” So where does his love of the letter come from? And where else has he used it? Here, indy100 takes a look at the SpaceX founder’s somewhat unorthodoX obsession. X.com When it comes to letters of the alphabet, X is certainly the most associated with euphemism – anything branded X-rated is bound to raise an eyebrow or two. And this is quite possibly one of the reasons the proud provocateur liked it so much to begin with. According to Ashlee Vance, author of the 2015 biography ‘Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future’, his fascination with the letter began with one of his earliest ventures. Musk, one of the world's richest men, co-founded the online banking service X.com in 1999, but, Vance said, not everyone was enthusiastic about the name. "Everyone tried to talk him out of naming the company that back then because of the sexual innuendos, but he really liked it and stuck with it," he revealed. However, the critics were soon able to breathe a sigh of relief: X.com merged with competitor Confinity Inc., in 2000 and the name was changed to the family-friendly PayPal. And yet, Musk clearly wasn’t able to let go of his brainchild. So, in 2017, he bought the url "X.com" back off PayPal, tweeting that the domain "has great sentimental value,” as NPR notes. Now, if you type “X.com” into your web browser, you will be directed to the Twitter – soon to be X – homepage. SpaceX After making his first fortune with the sale of his tech company Zip2 for $307 million (around £240 million) in 1999, and PayPal in 2002 for $1.5 billion (around £1.32 billion), the universe was the limit for Musk. The same year he sold PayPal, he founded his space flight company Space Exploration Technologies Corp. However, the name doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue, so it was abbreviated to SpaceX. The Tesla ‘X’ While Musk opted for three alternative consonants in the name of his electric car company (which he started in 2003), he eventually couldn’t resist adding a touch of X. In 2015, the father-of-six unveiled Tesla’s third model: an e-car lovingly named… you guessed it. Tim Higgins, author of ‘Power Play: Tesla, Elon Musk, and the Bet of the Century’, explained that Musk had cheeky intentions when choosing the names of his models. The idea was that, combined, they would spell out the word “sexy," Higgins said. However, another car company – Ford – threw a spanner in the works thanks to its ownership of the rights to the “E” model. Musk, therefore, had to settle on calling his second model “3” – a "kind of a backwards E," as Higgins pointed out – to semi-achieve his desired acronym. But yes, there are now S, 3, X and Y models of the cars. Baby names In 2020, Musk and his then-partner, Grimes, welcomed a baby boy, calling him X Æ A-12. However, the couple were forced to alter the spelling of the name to X AE A-XII, after being notified that it breached legal conventions. California law dictates that names on birth certificates must employ “the 26 alphabetical letters of the English language,” although apostrophes and dashes are allowed, NME reports. Grimes, whose real name is Claire Boucher, explained via tweet that the X part of her son’s name refers to the “unknown variable” in algebra. Meanwhile, the Æ refers to the “elven spelling of Ai (love &/or Artificial intelligence)," and the A-12 at the end is apparently a nod to the Lockheed A-12 reconnaissance aircraft — the couple’s “favourite” plane. Despite all of this, the pair – who are now separated – refer to their child simply as “Little X”, Boucher admitted in an interview with Bloomberg shortly after his birth. Two years later, the then-couple announced that they’d had a baby girl via surrogate, naming her Exa Dark Sideræl. However, earlier this year, Boucher confirmed that they’d changed her name to “Y” – yet again proving that single letters at the bottom of the alphabet really are Musk’s thing. xAI On 12 July this year, the 52-year-old announced the formation of a new company called xAI. It's goal is simple, according to its website: "To understand the true nature of the universe." The new startup, based in the San Francisco Bay Area, has hired a group of top AI researchers who formerly worked at OpenAI, Google, Microsoft and Tesla. But we don't know much more about it than that. Musk was a co-founder and early funder of the artificial intelligence research laboratory OpenAI. However, he's grown increasingly critical of the company as it’s gained global prominence and commercial success with last year’s release of ChatGPT. In April, the billionaire criticised ChatGPT in an interview with Tucker Carlson, telling the then-Fox News host that the chatbot had a liberal bias and that he planned an alternative that would be a “maximum truth-seeking AI that tries to understand the nature of the universe.” And... voilà xAI. What neXt? It’s time for the renaissance of X.com, but with a grand new purpose. Weeks before forking out the $44 billion (around £34 million) to buy Twitter in October, Musk tweeted that the eye-watering purchase was simply “an accelerant to creating X, the everything app". "He wants to create an app similar to how WeChat is used in China, where it's part of the fabric of day-to-day life,” the billionaire’s biographer Vance explained to NPR. “You use it to communicate, to consume news, to buy things, to pay your rent, to book appointments with your doctor and even to pay fines.” Hinting at the financial difficulties that have plagued Twitter both historically and since Musk’s acquisition, Vance pointed out: "The company clearly needs a new, bigger business if it's to make the type of money that would justify his investment and satisfy his ambition.” Indeed, the world-famous entrepreneur is doing everything he can to build the hype around his company’s new facelift. On Monday (24 July), he retweeted a message from his newly-appointed Twitter CEO Linda Yaccarino, which read: “It’s an exceptionally rare thing – in life or in business – that you get a second chance to make another big impression. Twitter made one massive impression and changed the way we communicate. Now, X will go further, transforming the global town square." She continued: “X is the future state of unlimited interactivity – centered in audio, video, messaging, payments/banking – creating a global marketplace for ideas, goods, services, and opportunities. Powered by AI, X will connect us all in ways we’re just beginning to imagine.” So… why X? Musk suggested that he’d chosen “X” to replace Twitter because he wanted something that “embod[ies] the imperfections in us all that make us unique”. The letter has a number of different spiritual, cultural and mathematical meanings – any, or all, of which may have informed his lifelong fascination with the letter. As Boucher noted in her baby name explanation, X connotes the “unknown variable” in algebra. It is, of course, also the symbol for multiplication, and in linguistics, it’s what’s known a “phonetic chameleon” – meaning that it’s used to replicate a number of different sounds. It is also known as signifying the end of something – or death – think the X in a skull and crossbones emblem or the crosses drawn on the eyes of the dead in cartoons. It also signifies an error or cancellation, or that which is negative, and has long been recognised as an occult symbol for Satan. In other words, it has become the most “nihilistic” of letters, as psychologist Leon F Seltzer pointed out in a piece for Psychology Today. This all goes to suggest that Musk appreciates X’s malleability – how it can be birth and death, cancellation and multiplication, nothing and everything. X.com is dead. Long live X.com. Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.

Patti LaBelle had to overcome a bit of a snafu during her tribute performance to the late Tina Turner at Sunday's BET Awards.

When death threats forced Irish pop singer Sinead O’Connor to call off a peace concert in Jerusalem in the summer of 1997, a young man named Itamar Ben-Gvir took credit for the campaign against her

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