The Guardian reports that Ed has been named the most-played artist in the U.K. for 2022, according to figures from music licensing company Phonographic Performance Limited. Ed has been enjoying this top honor since 2017. He was only bested once, by Dua Lipa, in 2020.
“Thanks to everyone who continues to listen to and enjoy my music,” Ed says in a statement. “I never take it for granted.”
Dua takes number two on the list this year, followed by David Guetta at number three, Harry Styles at number four and Elton John at number five. The most-played song of 2022 in the U.K. was Harry Styles‘ “As It Was,” according to PPL.
Gunna has released the music video for “i was just thinking,” another cut off his latest album, a Gift & a Curse. The clip finds him fidgeting while stuck in a box and in a room rapping about snitching allegations and the toll that prison took on him.
“That’s four walls talkin’ to you, tellin’ you you gone/ Only I done criеd, ’cause this feelin’ for my bro (King Slime),” Gunna melodically raps. “And you know my mind, you done watched that n**** grow/ I know you hear the lies, it’s your lil’ brother, my folk/ Yeah, I had popped out, but don’t let ’em say I told.”
The video “i was just thinking” follows that of “back to the moon,” which Gunna dropped Friday, June 16, alongside a Gift & a Curse. The album is his first since he pleaded guilty with an Alford plea to a racketeering conspiracy charge and was released from prison.
He’d been arrested in the RICO case against Young Thug, who remains in jail on charges including conspiracy to violate Georgia’s RICO Act and participation in a criminal street gang. Gunna has since denied allegations he snitched.
The bathroom probably isn’t the best place to have a conversation with God, but Lauren Daigle said that’s where she was when she prayed for some inspiration before writing her latest hit.
Lauren had booked a writing session with Jason Ingram, with whom she co-wrote “You Say,” and she tells ABC Audio she was a little nervous about it. So the day before, she asked for some divine intervention while in her bathroom getting ready.
“I said, ‘OK, God, give me a ‘Jason’ melody,'” Lauren recalls. “Because we’ve written ‘You Say’ together, we’ve had a lot of history, but we haven’t written together in three years because of touring and other things.'”
“And I was like, ‘OK, I just need a song where that synergy is just, like, a spark … it ignites and it’s like wildfire takes over.”
Lauren adds, “I was like, ‘Please let it be one of those moments, because it’s been so long'” — she says she was afraid that she was “rusty.” But, she notes, “Sure enough, we wrote ‘Thank God I Do.’ So it was really, really special.”
“Thank God I Do” is the first single from the first part of Lauren’s self-titled album; the second part is coming later this year.
Fun Fact: Pink is credited as one of the songwriters on “Thank God I Do,” because of its melody’s similarity to her #1 hit “Just Give Me a Reason.” Pink’s co-writers on the song, Nate Ruess and Jeff Bhasker, are also credited.
Elton John is winding down his Farewell Yellow Brick Road tour, which he promises will be his last tour ever. But fans shouldn’t worry, it won’t be the last we’ll be hearing from the Rock & Roll Hall of Famer. In fact, in a new interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Elton reveals he’s already thinking about making more music.
“I’ll be recording a new album very soon,” he shares, “and I can’t wait because I haven’t really recorded a proper record for a long time, so I’m looking forward to doing that.”
Elton has earned a lot of accolades over the course of his career and is just an Emmy away from getting his EGOT. That could happen this year, with his Disney+ special Farewell From Dodger Stadium getting a big Emmy push. But Elton insists earning an EGOT “has never been a goal.”
“If it gets nominated for an Emmy, that’d be wonderful,” he says. “I’m so pleased about the quality of this thing. The sound and what they did is incredible, and I’m so proud of it. I couldn’t find anything wrong with it, and I’m usually so critical.” He adds, “So if it is nominated for an Emmy, we’ll just celebrate that.”
Elton’s next tour stop is Paris, France, where he’ll play June 21, 27 and 28. In the middle of that he’ll play the U.K.’s Glastonbury Festival on Sunday, June 25. The tour is set to end July 8 in Stockholm, Sweden. A complete list of Elton dates can be found at EltonJohn.com.
Courtesy San Bernadino County Sheriff’s Department
Five months after Julian Sands, who’s appeared on shows including Dexter, and films like Warlock, A Room with a View and Ocean’s Thirteen, the San Bernardino County, California Sheriff’s Department shared an update into the ongoing search for the veteran British actor.
“On Saturday, June 17, 2023, the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department continued ongoing search efforts in the Mount Baldy wilderness for missing hiker Julian Sands,” the sheriff’s department said in a statement released on Saturday, June 17. “Unfortunately, Mr. Sands was not located.”
“Saturday’s search included over 80 Search and Rescue volunteers, deputies, and staff. Their efforts were supported by two helicopters, and drone crews,” the statement continued. “Aviation resources inserted search teams into remote areas across Mount Baldy and conducted aerial search and assessments efforts. Additionally, drone crews searched areas inaccessible to ground crews.”
“Despite the recent warmer weather, portions of the mountain remain inaccessible due to extreme alpine conditions. Multiple areas include steep terrain and ravines, which still have 10 plus feet of ice and snow,” the statement adds.
Sands’ family reported the 65-year-old actor missing on January 13, a week after he went for a hike on Mount Baldy.
Actor John Malkovich in a February interview with The Guardian, called Sands his “closest friend,” and “a very experienced climber” who “was always tramping off to Kilimanjaro, or Antartica, or the Andes, or the Alps.”
“I suppose the particular conditions on the ground that day on Mt. Baldy must have led to some sort of catastrophic and immediate error that was irreversible,” Malkovich continued. “That was my instinct upon hearing it. But he knew what the conditions were, and that’s what he loved to do. He found great solace in the solitude of that.”
(NEW YORK) — Rescuers racing against the clock to save the five people trapped in a tourist submersible nearly two miles deep in the Atlantic Ocean are facing major obstacles that could make saving the people onboard extremely difficult, according to a former Navy submarine commander.
Retired Capt. David Marquet told ABC News on Monday that this type of rescue operation is complicated because there aren’t nearby U.S. or Canadian underwater vessels that can go as deep as the Titanic wreckage, which sits 13,400 feet below the ocean’s surface. Also, the ocean is pitch black at that depth.
“The odds are against them,” Marquet said. “There’s a ship in Boston that has this ability to either lower cable and connect to it or have a claw. It’s still a thousand miles away.”
Even if a vessel was able to locate the submersible and lower a cable, it’s extremely difficult to safely navigate the waters and attach it, Marquet said.
“You’ve got to get it exactly right. It’s sort of like … getting one of those toys out of those arcade machines. In general, you miss,” he said.
Rescuers do have one advantage, Marquet said, as weather conditions off the coast of Newfoundland are not rough and will not disturb any boat or vessel there.
The 21-foot submersible lost communication with the mainland 1 hour and 45 minutes after it embarked on its tour of the Titanic wreckage. Marquet said if the boat made it to the surface, the submersible crew would be able to open the hatch to allow for more oxygen while it was adrift.
The vessel is designed to hold 96 hours of oxygen, Rear Adm. John Mauger, Cmdr. of the U.S. Coast Guard First District, told reporters Monday.
Marquet told ABC that if the five people are still alive, they would be asked to sleep to conserve their oxygen.
“We would put the vast majority of the crew to sleep because that’s when you’re using the least amount of oxygen and you’re expelling the least amount of carbon dioxide,” he said.
(NEW YORK) — Dozens of Pride flags were vandalized on Sunday at the Stonewall Monument National Park in New York City, according to the New York Police Department.
Police discovered 33 Pride flags broken and on the ground when they arrived on the scene, authorities said, in the latest incident this month of flags at the Greenwich Village site being vandalized.
The NYPD said three men were walking past the monument on June 10, and allegedly broke multiple Pride flags that were on the fence.
In another incident, police found multiple broken Pride flags on June 15 at Stonewall Monument National Park, according to the NYPD.
No arrests have been made in any of the three incidents, and the NYPD’s Hate Crime Task Force is currently investigating.
The Stonewall National Monument didn’t immediately respond to ABC News’ request for comment.
Threats of violence against the LGBTQIA+ community are on the rise and intensifying, according to a May 2023 briefing by the Department of Homeland Security.
Domestic violence extremists and people who commit hate crimes have increased threats of violence against the LGBTQIA+ community within the last year, the DHS document said.
“These issues include actions linked to drag-themed events, gender-affirming care and LGBTQIA+ curricula in schools,” DHS said.
A New York City woman was arrested in February after she was seen on video allegedly setting fire to a gay pride flag outside a Manhattan restaurant.
Angelina Cando, 30, was charged with arson as a hate crime, criminal mischief as a hate crime and reckless endangerment as a hate crime, police said.
Cando was found mentally unfit for trial in May, after a brief appearance in court. She’s still being held at Riker’s women’s facility, court records show. It was unclear when her next court date is.
One out of 10 violent crimes against members of the LGBTQIA+ community is a hate crime, according to a 2022 study by the Williams Institute at UCLA School of Law.
Members of the LGBTQIA+ community are nine times more likely than those not in the community to be victims of hate crimes, according to the study.
Approximately 20% of all hate crimes reported throughout the country in 2021 were motivated by bias linked to sexual orientation and gender, according to DHS.
Human Rights Campaign, an LGBTQIA+ civil rights organization, declared a state of emergency earlier this month for LGBTQIA+ people in the U.S.
The organization cited the record-breaking wave of legislation targeting the LGBTQIA+ community and an increasingly hostile environment.
“The multiplying threats facing millions in our community are not just perceived — they are real, tangible and dangerous,” Kelley Robinson, the president of HRC, said in a statement at the time.
ABC News’ Josh Margolin, Kiara Alfonseca, Aaron Katersky and Emily Shapiro contributed to this report.
(WASHINGTON) — As the country commemorated Juneteenth, thousands of people lined up outside the National Archives in Washington on Monday to see rarely exhibited original versions of the Emancipation Proclamation and General Order No. 3.
The former is President Abraham Lincoln’s order freeing America’s slaves in 1863, amid the Civil War; the latter is from 1865 when a Union general informed Texas that slaves were now free — on the day that later became Juneteenth.
Both documents, while foundational to the United States and the end of slavery, are very fragile and normally kept in a secure climate-controlled vault with limited light exposure to ensure their preservation.
However, the National Archives intends to place the Emancipation Proclamation on permanent display, with select pages rotated to limit exposure.
“I am proud that the National Archives will enshrine this seminal document for public display adjacent to our nation’s founding documents,” the nation’s archivist, Colleen Shogan, said in a statement on Saturday announcing the planned permanent display alongside the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.
Visitors to the National Archives on Monday told ABC News that viewing the documents was impactful and an important way for everyone to recognize history, including the next generation. Juneteenth was designated by President Joe Biden as a federal holiday in 2021.
Ashley Witfield brought her mother and three sons to the archives.
“It’s really important to me that my children know the history of the country and that they understand that our ancestors really were an integral part to building it,” Witfield said. “One thing that my son did say is, ‘You’re going to see the paper of justice,’ and I thought that that really sums it up well. So it was really special to be able to share that with them.”
Washington resident Shawna brought her young son, John, for the first time and said she hoped Juneteenth does not become synonymous merely with a day off of work — but rather “to actually understand the purpose of it and why is it important to us.”
Another pair of visitors, Priscilla and Warren, said that Monday’s celebration was a long time coming and that the holiday needed more promotion.
“When you hear Fourth of July, you think of fireworks sales, holiday, people cooking out. Here’s June the 19th, and you have to advertise it,” Warren said.
“It should be celebrated by all, not just people of color, not just by Black people,” Priscilla said, “because otherwise, we’re going to continue to be a nation that’s fractured.”
For Virginia resident Ashley, seeing the documents up close with her husband and daughter was a transporting experience.
“It makes it less of a story and more of a real,” she said. “These are real lives and real people that were directly impacted by that signature.”
(NEW YORK) — Public health experts fear that Meta’s decision to roll back some of its COVID-19 misinformation measures will lead to more disinformation about the virus, treatments for it and vaccines.
The company announced the changes on Friday after it asked its independent oversight advisory board whether it should continue its COVID-19 misinformation policy for Facebook and Instagram or take a “less restrictive approach.”
In countries that still have a COVID-19 public health emergency declaration, the policies still stand and content that violates Meta’s coronavirus misinformation policies will be removed. The policies will not be upheld in the U.S. due to the emergency expiring last month.
Meta said the World Health Organization downgrading the global public health emergency was a major reason behind the change.
“Our COVID-19 misinformation rules will no longer be in effect globally as the global public health emergency declaration that triggered those rules has been lifted,'” the company wrote in a statement. ‘We are consulting with health experts to understand which claims and categories of misinformation could continue to pose this risk.”
Infectious disease specialists told ABC News they are worried this misinformation and disinformation could reach vulnerable groups such as teenagers.
“One of the biggest challenges we faced with the pandemic, in some ways, was not the virus itself but it was the misinformation that was generated around the science of the virus and interventions that surrounded our control of the virus, whether that’s vaccines, or masking, or therapeutics,” said Dr. John Brownstein, an epidemiologist and chief innovation officer at Boston Children’s Hospital and an ABC News contributor.
He continued, “That misinformation, it’s been a threat to science for many years, and that’s been amplified by social media.”
This is not the first time that social media platforms have rolled back misinformation policies. Twitter announced it would no longer label or remove posts that have COVID-19 misinformation in November 2022, a month after Elon Musk bought the company.
Other platforms, such as YouTube, are continuing to keep their polices about COVID-19 misinformation and removing content that contradicts health authorities. Health experts say that despite COVID-19 cases and deaths remaining low, misinformation is still prevalent.
“The ramifications are huge because the pandemic is not over yet. The end of the emergency doesn’t mean that it’s still not a threat,” Dr. Peter Chin-Hong, an infectious diseases specialist at the University of California, San Francisco, told ABC News.
According to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the U.S. has seen more than 37,000 deaths from COVID-19 this year, which is more than seen in a typical flu season.
“We haven’t even reached the midpoint of the year and there’s still the potential for a winter surge,” Chin-Hong said. “So I’m worried that this fuel of misinformation, and the megaphone of misinformation, is going to threaten how we deal with not just COVID but all respiratory viruses this particular season.”
Both Brownstein and Chin-Hong recommended that people be careful about what they read online and look for trusted sources such as public health agencies.
“It’s at some level challenging because [for] someone not trained in science, it may be harder to separate fact from fiction,” Brownstein said. “But I would say, generally speaking, don’t use social media as the core information source, especially when it comes to making personal health care decisions.”
