The Grand Ole Opry’s star-studded Salute the Troops returns on May 23. The performance lineup includes The Oak Ridge Boys, John Conlee, Locash, The War and Treaty and Jason Crabb.For more information and to get tickets, visit opry.com.
Lukas Nelson and Lainey Wilson have dropped the music video for their rollicking new song, “More Than Friends.”
Mickey Guyton shared on Twitter that she’s reprising her role as Wanda Warbler on the next episode of Mickey Mouse Funhouse. Catch it Friday, April 21, on Disney Channel and Disney Now.
Circle Network is set to air Reportin’ For Duty: A Tribute to Leslie Jordan on Saturday, April 29, at 9 p.m. CT. The special will feature performances from country artists such as Maren Morris and Lainey Wilson. Fans can tune in on the television network or livestream it via Circle All Access’ Facebook or YouTube.
Ed Sheeran fans in Dublin, Ireland, were treated to a unique listening experience Thursday. A yellow bench with a QR code was installed in Merrion Square Park, offering music snippets from Ed’s new album, – [Subtract], and voice notes from the singer. – [Subtract] comes out May 5.
That’s a wrap on season 3 of Only Murders in the Building. Selena Gomez commemorated the end of filming by posting a photo of herself with the upcoming season’s guest star, Meryl Streep, and a message of gratitude. “I’m not sure I have enough words to explain just how beautiful this season has been,” she wrote. “It has been deliriously hilarious, challenging and for me, an absolute dream. I’ll post more soon. But I’ll I leave it with the woman I adore, look up to and love.”
Bebe Rexha and Snoop Dogg got high together and dropped the video for their new song “Satellite” on 4/20, but Bebe says she had some explaining to do after teasing the collab last week on Instagram. “My dad called me and was like, ‘What are you doing? Why are you smoking on the internet? Are you crazy?'” she tellsPeople. “I was like, ‘Dad, it’s Snoop Dogg. If you smoke with anybody, it has to be Snoop Dogg.'”
Before playing stadium shows, the Jonas Brothers decided on a more intimate setting for their fans with their recent Broadway run — and it paid off. According to Billboard Boxscore, Jonas Brothers on Broadway = 5 Albums 5 Nights grossed $1.6 million and sold 7,291 tickets over the five consecutive shows.
Billie Eilishis heading to The Late Late Show with James Corden on April 25.
Paul McCartney is celebrating the upcoming 50th anniversary of the Wings album Red Rose Speedway with the release of a special half-speed mastered vinyl arriving on Saturday, April 22, for Record Store Day.
To mark the special release, McCartney is sharing memories of the album in a Q&A on his website, and he reveals that there are at least two songs on the album that are very personal to him.
Asked about what songs stand out to him, Sir Paul notes, “I’m very proud of ‘My Love.’ This was early days for me and (wife) Linda, so it’s a love song to her really.” He adds, “One of the things I was proud of, funnily enough, was that it charted. It sort of did very well,” referring to the fact that the song hit number one in the U.S.
McCartney shares that another song on the album, “One More Kiss,” was inspired by his family, this time his daughter Mary, who was 3 or 4 at the time it was written.
“And you know how fathers often fuss over their kids? So I was fussing over her, she was a really cute baby,” he explains. “And I’m fussing away going, ‘Give me a kiss. Come on, give me a kiss!’ And she’d get fed up with me and sort of go: ‘Dad. Alright. But only one more kiss.’ So I got one more kiss … and a song!”
Overall, McCartney says Red Rose Speedway sounds “more professional” to him than Wings’ previous releases. He notes, “It sounds like it’s putting in more effort, but it’s less rebellious than (1971’s) Wild Life.”
(NEW YORK) — High inflation, interest rate hikes and recession worries pummeled stocks last year.
The market has rebounded in 2023, though, even as each of those problems continues to vex the economy. Compounding those concerns, the banking sector underwent a crisis last month and a debt ceiling dispute in Congress risks financial distress.
Still, the tech-heavy Nasdaq has climbed more than 15% this year, while the S&P 500 has jumped more than 7%. The Dow has ticked up about 2% since the outset of the year.
The gains in recent months owe in part to the poor performance last year, since investors already responded to the grim economic conditions with a sell-off, stock analysts told ABC News.
Investors flocked back to the market as inflation eased and rate hikes slowed, even if those market headwinds persist and the threat of a recession looms, they said.
“The stock market is obviously performing better than the vast majority of people would’ve expected,” Tom Essaye, president of financial data firm Sevens Report Research, told ABC News.
“The market has proven very impressively resilient, despite bad news,” he added.
Analysts differed about the outlook for stocks going forward, however, as some said they expect the rally to endure for the remainder of the year while others predicted a recession that would render the good times short-lived.
Over the last year, the Federal Reserve has imposed an aggressive string of interest rate hikes last seen in the 1980s.
The policy aims to slash inflation but risks slowing the economy and bringing about a recession.
So far, the approach has succeeded in cooling price hikes but fallen short of the Fed’s goal.
Consumer prices rose 5% last month compared to a year ago, extending a monthslong slowdown of price increases but leaving inflation more than double the target rate of 2%.
The progress in slashing inflation has left investors confident that the Fed will soon stop raising interest rates and may even begin to lower rates by the end of the year, analysts told ABC News.
“The theme we’re seeing in 2023 is ‘The end is near,'” Adam Turnquist, chief technical strategist at LPL Financial, told ABC News.
Softening inflation and rate hikes have coincided with resilient economic performance, fueling investor optimism, analysts said.
The U.S. added 236,000 jobs in March, which marks robust job growth but a reduction from an average of 334,000 jobs added each month over the previous six months, according to government data released last week.
Meanwhile, U.S. retail sales fell moderately in February but remained solid, suggesting that households still retain some pandemic-era savings.
When asked about rising stock prices this year, Tigress Financial market analyst Ivan Feinseth said: “The key fundamental reason is the economy is still strong. The world hasn’t come to an end.”
Still, the economy remains under threat of a recession.
Fed economists said in March that they anticipate a “mild” recession later this year, escalating a previous forecast, central bank meeting minutes showed.
Sixty-five percent of economists expect a recession within the next year, according to a Bloomberg survey last month.
Still, many stock investors hold out hope that the economy could avert a downturn or expect that a mild recession would cause little economic upheaval, said Turnquist, of LPL Financial.
“We’re seeing a message from the market that we could still potentially avoid a recession,” he said.
Some analysts said each of the major stock indexes would end the year at a higher price than its current level, since resilient economic activity would buoy corporate profits, the key focus for stock forecasters.
“The market is teetering on a major breakout,” said Feinseth, of Tigress Financial. “I think we’re going to see a powerful second half of the year.”
Essaye, of Sevens Report Research, offered a more pessimistic outlook, saying the S&P 500 could fall as much as 10% by the end of the year if the economy turns downward.
“It’s extremely difficult to execute a soft landing,” he said, referring to an outcome in which the Fed raises rates to bring down inflation but avoids causing a recession. “There has only been one executed successfully in the last 40 years.”
Despite the glum forecast, Essaye said the current moment offers an opportunity for patient investors to jump into the market.
“We’re pricing in the bad news now and getting ready for a positive surprise in the long term,” he said. “The U.S. economy isn’t going to break.”
ABC News’ Elizabeth Schulze contributed to this report.
(WASHINGTON) — As air travel soars, the number of guns found at airport checkpoints is up, with the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) reporting a more than 10% increase in recovered firearms for the first quarter of 2023 compared to the same time last year.
TSA said officers intercepted 1,508 guns at airport security checkpoints from Jan. 1 to March 31 of this year, averaging 16.8 firearms a day — more than 93% of which were loaded. The agency found 1,367 during the same months in 2022, according to a press release from the agency.
“Firearms at TSA security checkpoints present an unacceptable safety and security risk to other passengers and I am deeply concerned that the majority of these firearms our [officers] catch are loaded,” TSA Administrator David Pekoske said in a press release.
While the number of guns found at checkpoints is up, the rate at which they’re found has decreased. TSA said it found 7.9 firearms per one million passengers this year, down from the same time last year when the rate of discovery was 8.6 firearms per one million passengers.
This comes as air travel continues to rebound towards pre-pandemic levels – TSA says it screened 191 million passengers during Q1 of this year, up more than 20% from the 158 million screened in the first quarter of 2022.
While air travel numbers plunged during the pandemic, the rate of firearms discovered increased. TSA found a total of 3,257 firearms in carry-ons in 2020 — approximately 10 guns per million passengers screened. In 2021, the agency detected 5,972 guns. The rate of discovery that year was 10.2 firearms per million passengers.
Pre-pandemic numbers show the agency found 4,432 firearms in 2019 at a rate of five firearms per million passengers screened.
Passengers caught with guns in carry-ons can face fines up to $14,950.
“If you carry a firearm to the checkpoint, our [officers] will see it and there will be significant penalties, to include federal penalties and additional screening, which may prolong the security screening process,” Pekoske said. “You may still travel with a firearm — it just must be properly packed in your checked baggage and you must declare it to the airline.”
(TALLAHASSEE, Fla.) — Florida officials are apologizing and pledging to remove the company responsible for sending Florida residents emergency alerts on their cellphones after much of the state was woken up to an alarm at 4:45 a.m. on Thursday.
Officials said the alert, which included wording that it was a test, was intended to be on TV.
“The Division understands that unexpected 4:45 AM wake up calls are frustrating and would like to apologize for the early morning text,” the Florida Division of Emergency Management said in a statement to ABC News.
“We are taking the appropriate action to remove the company responsible for submitting the alert this morning. We want to stress that while this wake up call was unwarranted, disasters can happen at any time and having a way to receive emergency alerts can save lives,” the division said.
Florida’s emergency management agency said it tests emergency alerts on a variety of platforms, including radio, television and text alerts.
“We are taking the appropriate action to ensure this will never happen again and that only true emergencies are sent as alerts in the middle of the night,” the division said in a tweet.
Gov. Ron DeSantis echoed that he would “bring swift accountability” to those responsible.
“This was a completely inappropriate use of this system,” he said in a tweet.
Ahead of her upcoming cookbook, Y’all Eat Yet?, Miranda Lambert is sharing with People a peek at her delectable Cornbread Muffins With Sausage & Cheddar recipe.
“Living on the road for 20 years, I really appreciate home cooking — especially straight-up comfort food. You don’t get to enjoy it that much when you travel for a living,” Miranda tells People. “When I’m back in my kitchen, I love making these warm and hearty muffins with corn, sausage and melty cheese. It tastes like home to me.”
In terms of ingredients, Miranda’s recipe involves cornbread mix, hot pork sausage, whole kernel corn, green chiles and sharp cheddar cheese, among others. The entire baking process is estimated to take 40 minutes and will feed 12 people.
The Grateful Dead are the latest artists to join TikTok. On Thursday, 4/20 by the way, the band launched their official account with a post featuring archival Dead-related footage soundtracked to a remastered 1969 live recording of “St. Stephen” at San Francisco’s Fillmore West.
The band captioned the clip with a lyric from the 1974 track “Scarlet Begonias,” writing, “Once in a while you get shown the light, in the strangest of places if you look at it right.”
This isn’t the first time the Dead has made their presence felt on TikTok. Just last month their music launched on the platform, which means fans can now use recordings from the band’s catalog for their posts.
(NEW YORK) — Sea level rise is likely presenting more threats to an already vulnerable marine species, according to new research.
As waters from the ocean push further and further onto shore, the flooding is washing away the nesting sites for sea turtles in places like the United States, Australia, Costa Rica and the Dominican Republic, according to a study published Thursday in Scientific Reports.
Researchers estimated the probability of flooding under moderate and high greenhouse gas emission scenarios could impact 2,835 sea turtle nest locations within seven breeding grounds between 2010 and 2100. They found that under a moderate emissions scenario, breeding grounds located on flat beaches were most vulnerable to flooding — with 100% likelihood of flooding of nests in Raine Island, Australia; Saona Island, Dominican Republic; St George Island, Florida; and Mondonguillo beach, Costa Rica, according to the study.
Flooding of nests in some those areas are expected by 2050, the researchers said.
Nests in Raine Island and Saona Island will likely be “completely vanished” in the next several decades, Marga Rivas, a biodiversity and nature conservation researcher at the University of Cadiz in Spain and author of the study, told ABC News.
In Sint Eustatius, a Dutch island in the Caribbean, 50% of leatherback, 18% of hawksbill and 13% of green turtle nest locations could be vulnerable to flooding by 2050.
Within breeding grounds used by multiple turtle species, leatherback turtle nests may be particularly vulnerable to flooding due to their tendency to nest in open areas near the high tide line, according to the study. Hawksbill and green turtles tend to nest at higher elevations closer to dunes and steep cliffs, the researchers said.
As female sea turtles return to nest on the same beaches they hatched on, sea level rises could lead to many turtles nesting on flooded beaches, which could negatively impact the number of turtles hatching, according to the study.
Coastlines in places like Costa Rica and South America have been shrinking significantly in the last several years, Rivas said. The fact that turtle nests will likely disappear in alarming rates on several islands so far away from one another prove how widespread and dangerous the threat is, she said.
Rivas also warned against relocating turtle nests to higher ground because without temperature control, this well-meaning action could cause skewing sex ratios — causing all of the eggs that hatch to be females. The temperature of the developing eggs determines whether the offspring will be male or female.
“They put it anywhere, and they are producing 100% of females in those places,” Rivas said.
Sea level rise is adding to the severe threat sea turtles already face by overfishing and plastic ingestion, Rivas said.
“We need to help protect their nesting population because without those, with the high mortality they’re suffering, it’s impossible to to keep their species for the future,” Rivas said.
Loggerhead turtles are listed as vulnerable and multiple subspecies of leatherback turtles are listed as critical on the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s Red List of Threatened Species.
(ATLANTA) — An investigation into the death of a man whose family claims he was “eaten alive by insects and bedbugs” in an Atlanta jail has led to “sweeping changes,” according to the Fulton County Sheriff’s Office.
Sheriff Patrick “Pat” Labat said in a statement Monday that he’s asked for and received the resignations of multiple employees of the Fulton County Jail: the chief jailer, assistant chief jailer and the assistant chief jailer of the site’s Criminal Investigative Division.
The resignations come after the lawyer of LaShawn Thompson’s family said last week that Thompson’s body was discovered in a “filthy jail cell” on Sept. 13, 2022, after medical staff allegedly ignored his declining health. According to family attorney Ben Crump, authorities found Thompson with over 1,000 insect bites “all over his body.”
“They literally watched his health decline until he died. When his body was found, one of the detention officers refused to administer CPR because in her words, she ‘freaked out,'” the family’s attorney, Michael Harper, wrote in an April 12 Facebook post. “He did not deserve this. Someone has to be held accountable for his death.”
Although there are graphic images of Thompson’s jail cell and his body and face after he was found, the medical examiner could not determine the cause of death, according to family attorneys.
Thompson was arrested on June 12, 2022, for simple battery against police officials, according to jail records.
In the statement, posted to its Facebook page, the sheriff’s office said the executive team that’s been in place “has more than 65 years of jail administration and law enforcement experience.”
“When leveraged at its very best, that experience can be invaluable. However, it can also lend itself to complacency, stagnation and settling for the status quo,” it said.
“It’s clear to me that it’s time, past time, to clean house,” Labat said in the statement.
According to Harper, Thompson suffered from mental health issues and was diagnosed with schizophrenia. He was placed in a psychiatric ward in jail three months before his death.
Family attorneys, community members and family held a press conference Thursday to demand the Department of Justice investigate the jail.
Thompson’s family also has called for the jail to be closed.
“He wasn’t the only one who was affected by those insects and bedbugs in that entire wing, but he was the only one that we know of who died,” Harper said during the press conference.
Thompson’s younger sister Shenita Thompson spoke at the press conference, sharing she’d been calling authorities for months to get answers regarding the death of her brother, but was unable to get answers until Harper stepped in to help.
“I want to get down to the truth of what happened to my brother,” Shenita said.
Thompson’s aunt spoke as well, detailing the bites she found over her nephew’s body at the funeral home.
The Fulton County Sheriff’s Office says it’s exploring its options to change medical vendors and to partner with a provider that can “compassionately” deliver care, officials said.
Sheriff Labat joined the family at the Thursday press conference, offering his condolences and answering questions from the community.
“The family asked me to come out here and stand with them. We have prayed together. We understand and I’ve said this publicly. This is absolutely unconscionable. Point blank,” he said.
An investigation is being conducted by the Office of Professional Standards, as well as by the Atlanta Police Department, authorities said. The Georgia Bureau of Investigations will ultimately review a “full investigative package” once the probes are complete, the sheriff’s office said.
According to Harper, Senator Jon Ossoff also called for the DOJ to begin an investigation and Labat shared at the press conference that he has been “in contact” with Ossoff’s office.
“In terms of the timeline, it’s important to know what I don’t want to do is, I don’t want to for the sake of expediency rush through. I want to get it right,” Labat said. “The family deserve it. We need to make sure we get it right every step of the way.
Crump announced at the press conference that he will be conducting an independent autopsy done for Thompson with help from former NFL star and activist Colin Kapernick, who contacted the family assuring that he will pay for it “no matter what.”
“We didn’t want our brother to be shown to the public like this, but the public need to see,” said Brad McCrae, younger brother of Thompson. “Everybody need to see. Everybody needs to wake up and somebody needs to be held accountable.”
