Robert Downey Jr and Chris Evans just proved they’re superheroes in real life as well as on screen.
The Avengers pair, with the help from fellow Iron Man actress Gwyneth Paltrow made one very sick boy’s dreams a reality when they surprised him at his San Diego home.
Reports out of the US say Chris originally sent 18-year-old Ryan Wilcox a personalised video message that was played during his high school assembly.
Ryan was over the moon and thought that was the end of it, until the real life Captain America and Iron Man showed up at his door!
Ryan was thrilled to meet his own personal heroes.
Gwyneth shared a heartwarming photo of Ryan with his heroes, accompanied by the caption “Today @ryanwilcox0303 got a little surprise!
“Thank you to the incredible #ChrisEvans and my better work half @RobertDowneyJr for being the men you both are. And thank you to the Wilcox family for your hospitality!”
The dynamic due jet off to meet their super fan!
But Chris and Robert aren’t the only heroes.
It was Gwyneth that started the mass movement on social media to get her famous pals to meet Ryan, even offering to drive them to his house herself!
“He absolutely LOVES Captain America and The Avengers and what we want for Ryan if possible is to meet the actors and actresses of The Avengers, especially Chris Evans who plays Captain America,” the actress who plays Pepper Potts in the comic book series had posted.
Gwyneth posted this image of sick Ryan to convince her fellow Avengers to assemble.
“He isn’t doing too well and this would be a major way to boost his spirits and quite frankly be the best moment of his life!”
“Please share this to help get the attention of Chris, Robert, Scarlett and the rest of the Avengers cast and try and make his dream come true!”
See the Avengers take to the skies, to heed the call and meet Ryan! Post continues…
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And that’s exactly what happened!
The super duo of Ryan and Chris answered the call and Gwyneth helicoptered them out to see their star-struck super fan.
Robert loved Ryan’s decked out room so much, he felt he had to add to it.
And here’s the cute message he left!
The Avengers alum spent time with Ryan, chatting and goofing about before the sick teen took them in to his room to show them all the Marvel memorabilia he had collected.
Robert seized the opportunity and grabbed a pen, autographing the boy’s wall for him, signing both his name and Tony Stark’s.
We hope the visit cheered Ryan right up to keep on fighting!
Meet the Dombkins – a family that is proof of the adage that all you need is love.
When Mark and Anna Dombkins first held Jackson, their baby son, they made each other a pledge. “Everywhere you go when you have a newborn, everyone wants to love him, to touch him and give him a cuddle,” recalls Anna, a 33-year-old teacher.
“We’d watched a documentary about orphanages in China. There were so many children there that needed to be cuddled and loved, just as we were loving our baby.
“We hadn’t thought about adopting, but when we held him, those images of children who had never been held kept coming back to us. The contrast between them and our child was so stark. We promised each other we would do everything we could to share that love with children who needed it.”
Sharing simply doesn’t seem a big enough word for what Anna and Mark have achieved. Today, they have three biological children and three orphans adopted from Tanzania, Africa.
Mark and Anna Dombkins with their children Max, Jackson, Jabari, Shay, Charlie and Jemima.
As happy as they are, Mark and Anna say their attempts to create their family have not all been easy. As National Adoption Awareness Week focuses attention on the issues surrounding adoption, they spent years trying to navigate their way through the bureaucracy that surrounds international adoption in Australia.
“We started this journey here in Australia and it was clear from the start that it was going to be a long journey, but we were willing to pursue that,” says Mark, also 33 and a high school maths teacher. “But the truth is, that feeling that it was going to be long, frustrating and expensive didn’t go away.”
After attending an adoption seminar in 2007, Mark and Anna decided to become part of the Ethiopian inter-country adoption program, but that was beset by problems and closed by the Australian government in 2012. As exasperating as that was, Mark and Anna ultimately found another way. In 2010, both were offered positions at the International School in the rural city of Moshi, in northern Tanzania, not far from the Kenyan border. By then, they had also added Jemima to their family.
“After being in the Ethiopian program, we had done a lot of research about adopting from Africa. When the [teaching] opportunity came up, we thought, what a great chance to see everything first-hand,” says Anna. “We also started to research the adoption laws in Tanzania so we could pursue that while we were there.”
As it turned out, the Tanzanian adoption laws were compatible with Australian laws. Yet what struck both Mark and Anna about Africa was the degree of poverty and need. “We heard a lot of stories about people who couldn’t feed their children, people who would try to get on to social welfare, but were turned away and there was no one to help them,” says Anna. “And among the worst affected were children who were orphaned because they have no one to turn to. There is nothing else for them to do but scavenge for scraps of food.”
And that knowledge made them all the more determined to adopt a child from Tanzania. “Once we found out that the laws were compatible with Australia and that we met the criteria, we knew we wanted to find a child there,” says Anna, who, with Mark, learned to speak Swahili. “It was easier working from that end because it was much quicker than in Australia, but the system has challenges – living in a Third World country, dealing with a bureaucracy where you don’t understand how things are done.
“But perhaps the best thing was that once we found the children that we were interested in adopting, the system encourages the children to live with you and your family while the adoption is being processed.”
“We want them to know how they came to be part of our family.”
Just a few months after they moved to Moshi, they were able to welcome three orphans into their home: Jabari, a boy, and twins Shay, a girl, and Charlie. “They were able to live with us as foster children while we were going through the process,” says Mark. “And that was an amazing thing for us as parents, for our own children and for them because they were immediately able to have the care and love that a family can provide.”
Incredibly, there is only about nine months separating Jabari, Shay and Charlie, and Jemima. “They are a tight little pack,” says Anna. “Shay and Charlie will turn five in a couple of weeks, so then we will have four five-year-olds running around the house.”
Mark and Anna believe adopting their children in their country of origin has been a blessing because it meant that they could start together as a family, but also see the children in their own culture.
“We want them to know where they come from and how they came to be part of our family,” says Anna. “They will have some memories of that, I am sure, as we all will. Africa is just as much a part of Jackson and Jemima as well.”
Mark and Anna, who recently gave birth to their third biological child, Max, brought their blended family back to Australia last September. “Jabari, Shay and Charlie had barely ever left the village where they were born,” says Anna. “And it’s easy to forget that, until they point at something that they haven’t seen before. They love it here.”
Anna with son Max.
Mark and Anna are vocal supporters of the AdoptChange campaign, which seeks legislative reform for inter-country adoption. “We know that there are many children who could benefit from becoming part of families here in Australia,” Mark says. “When you have children in Africa who have no one and families here who want to adopt, then it simply doesn’t make sense for those two goals not to meet.”
A version of this article first appeared in the November 2014 issue of The Australian Women’s Weekly.
Photography by Nick Scott. Styling by Carlie Oates.
Police in Byron Bay are appealing to the public after several women claim they’ve been inappropriately approached on the popular Lighthouse Road walk by a stranger.
Multiple women have been approached and touched while walking on the bushland trail between November 2015 and May 2016.
Police say the offences could be linked and are asking for anyone who has been approached, or thinks they have any information, to come forward.
Police have released a description of the man who the say is Caucasian, aged between 20 and 30, with a thin build.
“He has previously been seen wearing long shorts or board shorts, and not wearing a shirt or having a shirt wrapped around his head,” the Police statement read.
Anyone with information is encouraged to contact Byron Bay Police Station on (02) 6685 9499 or Crime Stoppers on 1800 333 000.
What’s the best way to honour your father after his passing? Well if you’re Paris Jackson, and your father was the King of Pop, it’s to get a very permanent reminder!
Paris payed tribute to her music legend dad by getting a rather large tattoo on her forearm.
The tattoo is a hyper realistic recreation of the pop star’s Dangerous album cover artwork, featuring Michael’s eyes peering out from intricate designs.
Alongside the picture of her new ink, the 18-year-old wrote a quote from her megastar father’s 1992 book Dancing the Dream: “The meaning of life is contained in every single expression of life. It is present in the infinity of forms and phenomena that exists in all of creation.”
Paris’s new ink tribute to her dad is a perfect replica of his Dangerous album cover artwork.
Paris had extensive designs practiced before deciding on what she wanted.
Then she followed it up with her own addition. “Never forget your roots and always be proud of where you came from.”
Michael’s album Dangerous gave the world some of his biggest hits of all time, including Black or White.
Watch the rare footage of Michael playing with Paris when she was young. Post continues.
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It’s not the first time the teen has gotten inked to celebrate her dad. In April, a newly platinum blonde Paris had the words “Queen of my heart” etched on her wrist in Michael’s handwriting.
“To everyone else he was the King of Pop,” she said. “To me, well, he was king of my heart.”
Paris’s first tattoo for her dad was a small phrase on her wrist.
Paris has had a rocky childhood, with her father passing away when she was just 11 years old.
She and her siblings Prince Michael, 19, and Blanket, 14 were thrust into the limelight following the star’s death, as he’d largely tried to shield them from public eye while he was alive.
Paris has drastically changed her appearance since then, chopping off her long locks and dying her hair orange, and then platinum blonde.
A love-scorned pharmacist rejected by the woman he was infatuated with has admitted to covertly drugging her 23 times out of spite.
Pharmacist Yan Chi “Anthony” Cheung met Pamela Leung at the Surry Hills Chinese Presbyterian Church in 2010 and in that time they became friends – but friendship was not enough for Mr Cheung.
After taking a job at Pharmacy@UNSW in 2015 at the urging of Mr Cheung, Miss Leung began falling prey to the 35-year-old Chinese national’s sexual advances.
According to police statements presented to the court 26-year-old Leung had her buttocks, breasts and other body parts brushed in an unwanted way by her married boss, reports the Sydney Morning Herald.
“The victim felt as though [Cheung] became obsessed with her,” the police statement said.
After Cheung was confronted by Leung and told to stop his behaviour he began to drug her with prescription drugs in a bid to make her “suffer”, he told police when he was arrested at his Maroubra home earlier in May.
The pharmacy assistant went to police with concerns her boss was poisoning her water and coffee, telling them she had been feeling drowsy and ill while on shifts since 2015.
According to the SMH, “Investigating officers found CCTV footage of the pharmacy that allegedly showed Mr Cheung pouring a liquid into the woman’s drink.”
On Tuesday, Mr Cheung pleaded guilty in Waverley Local Court to one count of poisoning to injure or cause distress or pain.
Cheung will be sentenced on July 5. A psychological assessment will reportedly be carried out prior to sentencing.
A personal trainer who dubs himself the Strength Sensei has shown the weakest side of humanity in a recent Facebook post where mocked the appearance of a total stranger.
Charles Poliquin uploaded photo of a large woman to his Facebook page and cruelly captioned the shot: ‘It must be hot… she started melting’.
The Melbourne PT continued to tell his 200,000 followers: “Or many (sic) it is epigenetics, she is expressing the marshmallow gene because of her consumption of high fructose corn syrup.”
But the internet did not like his post and soon Poliquin was reportedly bombarded with fiery comments from people who saw it and disagreed with his choice to degrade a stranger so publicly.
One Melbourne gym, [JPS Health and Fitness]( https://www.facebook.com/JPSHealthandFitness/?fref=photo
|target=”_blank”), took to Facebook to condemn the “Sensei”:
“Bullying and making fun of those who are overweight and obese is not only morally incorrect, but is of no benefit to the problem and epidemic we face,” wrote JPS on its Facebook page.
“For someone who claims to be a ‘leader’ in the fitness industry, it is disgusting to see him, let alone anyone, put down and make a mockery of someone who is out of shape.”
Adding, “Respect = 0… Not that there was much there to begin with. Shame on you Strength Sensei.”
Other pundits told the trainer to ‘rethink his career’ after the ‘distasteful’ and ‘cowardly’ post.
“Any truly strong person knows you never ever look down on someone unless you are helping them up,” one woman wrote, reported the Daily Mail.
According to news.com.au Poliquin then issued an apology which said he took “full responsibility for the comment,” while adding, “I realise people are victims or not knowing the truth, being conditioned incorrectly, and bad programming.”
The apology was later removed.
And the brief apology seemed to dig him into a deeper hole. PT Gareth Street said what support the Strength Sensei did get for his post made him feel “ashamed” of the fitness community.
“His retraction just doesn’t excuse his outrageous and disgusting behaviour,” wrote Street. “What’s worse is the support and likes he’s received from fitness professionals.”
He added: “I’m ashamed that my industry in any small way deems this acceptable and those that do should be ashamed of themselves!”
Despite her truest love, Oprah Winfrey is in the best shape of her life.
Butter us shocked!
As an ambassador and part owner of Weight Watchers, the beloved TV icon her new body to a lifestyle change.
And she has no intention of putting down that delicious slice of doughy delight.
Watch Oprah talk about her svelte new frame. Post continues…
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With the Weight Watchers Beyond the Scale program, she’s lost 12 kilograms in less than a year – but she doesn’t follow the diet strictly. For the star, it’s all about compromise and being organised with your exercise when you know you’re about to indulge.
“Yesterday, I knew I was going to be having General Tso’s chicken for dinner,” she told E! News.
“So I did an extra 30 minutes of exercise and then I walked the dogs around a couple of more times.”
Miss Winfrey, you are looking good! (L) In April Oprah showed off her svelte frame at the Tribeca Tune In event, compared to last year’s Oscars (R).
And the 62-year-old isn’t about give up the yummy things in life. In fact she’s discovering a little thing called “balance” and it is working a treat (especially when she wants to eat a treat).
“It’s OK because tomorrow is another day. You don’t have to feel like, ‘Oh, I shouldn’t have eaten that biscuit!'”
Wiser words have never been spoken.
She recently chatted to a few lucky Weight Watch members, imparting some pearls of wisdom.
The veteran journalist admitted that water is SO important, but even she has trouble drinking it.
Check out Oprah chat to Ellen about her diet. Post continues…
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“I don’t get enough water in the day. I don’t really like water but I’m grateful to have it. I’m drinking a tea. It’s like water infused with ginger and a hint of vanilla – I’m trying to trick myself that way,” she explained.
With many tricks up her sleeves, she shared many nifty hints including some healthy food swaps like Cauliflower mash, where she adds one potato into the mixture to help with the taste and texture.
Oprah also dished she loves spaghetti squash and revealed her secret tip on how best to enjoy it.
It TOTALLY helps that Oprah has her very own farm with delicious fresh produce at her doorstep.
“If you put just a few noodles in with the spaghetti squash, just a few, like a little mixture… it’s a lot more satisfying.”
For all of us at home who aren’t Oprah, just remember diets are hard and there no such thing as mistakes… just lessons (Oprah taught us that!)
“I had to get to be 62 to figure it out,” the philanthropist concluded.
We love you, Oprah.
Also, in case you didn’t know that Oprah loves bread, check out the video below. Thank us later!
Congratulations are in order for Johnny Depp and Vanessa Paradis’ daughter Lily-Rose, who has just been unveiled as the new face of Chanel’s latest fragrance, Chanel No. 5 L’Eau.
Earlier this month, the announcement came that the iconic fragrance was indeed getting a refresh, and now, with Lily-Rose as the scent’s muse, the much-loved perfume has been re-branded as a lighter, more youthful take on the classic.
Officially confirming the exciting news on May 23, the blonde beauty wrote via Instagram, “I’m so excited to announce that I am the face of the new Chanel Number 5 L’EAU!”
And the fashion house is equally excited to have the influential teen on board. “She embodies her generation and its values of freedom and boldness to perfection, bringing to the iconic fragrance of the House her youthful freshness and beauty,” Chanel said in a statement.
The blonde beauty is a long time wearer of the luxury label.
The budding actress, who is already the face for the Chanel Pearl eyewear range, now joins a coveted collection of Hollywood names that have fronted glorious Chanel campaigns.
She not only joins Keira Knightley, Kristen Stewart and Diane Kruger, but also her model mother Vanessa Paradis, who was the face of the Rouge Coco lipstick in 2010 before the two actually walked the runway together at Karl Lagerfeld’s Chanel Haute Couture show in Paris last year.
Karl Lagerfeld’s muse is a spitting image of her mum. Here, the mother-daughter duo pose for a happy snap when Lily Rose was a baby.
Speaking to Ellen DeGeneres of how his daughter has grown up right before his eyes, the Pirates of the Caribbean actor said: “She’s a sharp kid, very sophisticated, super intelligent and, uh, scary.”
“You come home and my daughter is sitting around doing her homework. ‘Oh what are you reading, baby?’ It’s the Odyssey by Homer. She starts asking me questions and you’re flummoxed, befuddled … what happened to Dr. Seuss?”
The fragrance, created by the brand’s perfumer Olivier Polge, is set to release later this year.
An inquest is underway into the Sydney siege in the Martin Place Lindt Cafe and will today hopefully reveal answers into why police waited until a hostage had been killed before storming in.
Assistant Police Commissioner Mark Jenkins is giving evidence at the inquest into the stand-off that occurred on December 2014 ending with the loss of three lives, including gunman Man Haron Monis.
It is expected that Asst Comm. Jenkins will today be asked why he failed to order a rescue when Monis fired his first shots, while some hostages escaped.
Yesterday, he said that the behaviour of hostages were described by senior police as “jovial” after 12 hours of the siege had passed.
At 10pm that evening, he’d taken command of the siege, and said he found the comment comforting to hear.
“I must say it gave me a little comfort that they (were) able to move around (and) weren’t restricted,” he said.
The inquest is still continuing.
Trending video: Seven Year Switch’s Tim proposes to Jackie
