Paul McCartney’s recently released photography book, 1964: Eyes of the Storm, features pictures from the early days of Beatlemania, and putting it together was a great walk down memory lane for the Rock & Roll Hall of Famer.
“Well, I mainly see it as a ‘behind the scenes’ publication. After all these years, it was lovely for me to be taken backstage again,” he reveals in a Q&A on his website. “I love just looking at old pictures of the guys.”
One such picture is of John Lennon with his glasses. McCartney writes, “… obviously it’s hugely sad, because I miss him so much. But this just reminds me of growing up with him and all the pleasant memories.”
He adds, “Whenever I see John with these sorts of glasses, it reminds me of the way he would take him off when there were girls around. For some reason people think they look better without their glasses! And now, whenever other people do that it always reminds me of John.”
He says the book “just brings back all those little memories which make up a life.”
As for whether he’s still taking pictures, McCartney shares, “I am a keen photographer, and now of course it’s all iPhone. It’s just too easy!”
He says, “The iPhone quality is really pretty good, but having a daughter, Mary, who is a professional photographer, she tells me she always takes the precaution of taking a nice picture on a what she calls her ‘real’ camera, just because, you can do pretty much anything with that.”
(NEW YORK) — A submersible has gone missing while on a tour of the wreckage of the Titanic off the coast of Newfoundland, Canada, according to a Coast Guard official.
The Coast Guard was notified Sunday afternoon that a vessel belonging to the deep-sea exploring company OceanGate was overdue, and crews immediately launched search and rescue operations, Rear Adm. John Mauger, U.S. Coast Guard 1st District Commander, told Fox News.
The capsule is advertised to have 96 hours of oxygen for survival, which “gives us some time to continue searching and continue to use all our means to try and locate the crew members,” Mauger said.
He noted that this is in a remote part of the Atlantic Ocean.
“This is on the site of a wreckage, the wreckage of the Titanic, and so there’s a lot of debris on the bottom and locating an object on the bottom will be difficult,” Mauger said.
“We have lives that are potentially at risk,” he said.
OceanGate confirmed Monday that it lost contact with a submersible.
“We are exploring and mobilizing all options to bring the crew back safely. Our entire focus is on the crewmembers in the submersible and their families,” OceanGate said in a statement. “We are working toward the safe return of the crewmembers.”
OceanGate’s website says it offers paying customers the opportunity to explore the wreckage of the Titanic. The website says it has five-person submersibles.
On April 14, 1912, the Titanic hit an iceberg on its maiden voyage from England to New York. Over 2,200 passengers and crew were on board, and more than 1,500 people died when the ship sank.
The ship wreckage was found in 1985, almost 12,500 feet below the surface of the Atlantic Ocean.
ABC News’ Josh Hoyos, Alex Faul and Nadine El-Bawab contributed to this report.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
Teresa Taylor, second from left; Marc Broussely/Redferns
Former Butthole Surfers drummer Teresa Taylor has died.
The “Pepper” outfit confirmed the news in a Facebook post on Monday, June 19, reading, “Teresa Taylor passed away peacefully this weekend after a long battle with lung disease.”
“She will live in our hearts forever,” the post continues. “RIP, dear friend.”
Taylor, also known as Teresa Nervosa, joined Butthole Surfers in 1983, forming a double drumming section alongside King Coffey. She played with the group throughout the ’80s before leaving in 1989, after which she appeared in the early ’90s Richard Linklater film Slacker. Taylor later reunited with Butthole Surfers from 2008 to 2009.
(NEW YORK) — Climate change is taking a major human, economic and environmental toll in Europe, which has now been dubbed the fastest warming continent of the world, according to a new report.
Europe has been warming twice as much as the global average since the 1980s, the report, released Monday by Copernicus, the European Union’s climate change service, and the World Meteorological Organization, states.
Summer 2022 in Europe was characterized by rolling heatwaves, record-breaking temperatures and more than 100 heat-related deaths in a single event.
In 2022, Europe was approximately 2.3 degrees Celsius above the pre-industrial revolution average — global temperatures between 1850 and 1900, which are used as a baseline for the Paris climate accord.
Several countries, including Belgium, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Portugal, Spain, Switzerland and the U.K. had their warmest year on record in 2022, according to the report.
Europe’s 2022 annual average temperature was between the second and fourth highest on record, with an anomaly of about 0.79 degrees Celsius above the average between 1991 and 2020.
Summers with extreme heat will likely be “frequent and more intense across the region” in the future, Copernicus Director Carlo Buontempo said in a statement.
“The record-breaking heat stress that Europeans experienced in 2022 was one of the main drivers of weather-related excess deaths in Europe,” Buontempo said. “Unfortunately, this cannot be considered a one-off occurrence or an oddity of the climate.”
The pattern of extreme heat has already continued into 2023. An early season heat wave that plagued countries along the Mediterranean Sea such as Spain, Portugal, Morocco and Algeria in April was found to have been prompted by anthropologic, or human-caused, climate change, according to a study published last month.
In addition to extreme heat, the year was also marked by drought, wildfires and sea surface temperature reaching new highs, which were then accompanied by marine heatwaves, the report states.
Meteorological, hydrological and climate-related hazards in Europe in 2022 resulted in 16,365 reported fatalities (many of them due to heat stress, the No. 1 weather-related killer in the world.
Glaciers in Europe lost a volume of about 880 cubic kilometers of ice from 1997 to 2022. The Alps were the worst affected, with an average reduction in ice thickness of 34 meters, the report said.
MORE: Extreme heat taking its toll on US, European economies
In 2022, glaciers in the European Alps experienced “unprecedented” mass loss in one single year, caused by very low winter snow amounts, a very warm summer and Saharan dust deposition, the researchers said.
The report also noted a “hopeful future” for renewable energy, which generated more electricity on the continent than polluting fossil gas for the first time in 2022.
Wind and solar power generated 22.3% of European Union (EU) electricity in 2022, overtaking fossil gas at 20%, the researchers said.
Increasing use of renewables and low-carbon energy sources is crucial to reduce dependence on fossil fuels,” World Meteorological Organization Secretary-General Petteri Taalas said in a statement. “Climate services play a key role in ensuring the resilience of energy systems to climate-related shocks, in planning operations, and in informing measures to increase energy efficiency.
(NEW YORK) — A tropical depression in the Atlantic could strengthen to a hurricane by the end of the week and pass the Lesser Antilles, Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands.
Here’s what to expect:
The system is expected to strengthen to Tropical Storm Bret later on Monday and is forecast to become the first hurricane of the season by Thursday morning.
By Thursday night into early Friday morning, Bret is forecast to move just north of St. Lucia.
The National Hurricane Center predicts Bret will pass just south of Puerto Rico on Saturday as a Category 1 hurricane.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is predicting a near-normal hurricane season this year.
What’s bright, plastic and pink all over? The Barbie Dreamhouse, of course.
In promotion for her upcoming film Barbie, producer and star Margot Robbie gave Architectural Digesta tour of the candy-colored Barbie Dreamhouse set.
“We want things to be obviously artificial, but still very satisfying,” Robbie said. “Even though it’s fake, it’s really beautiful. Which is kind of like everything in Barbie Land.”
Every shade of pink imaginable is on display throughout the home, and the film’s director, Greta Gerwig, says they took great care in establishing the most dominant tints.
“I can’t even tell you the meetings we’ve had about pink,” Gerwig said. “We, like, sat with all these different kinds of pinks, and were like, ‘What is the pink? And how do the pinks interact? … When I was a little girl, I liked the pinkest, brightest things.’”
Amenities include a slide that goes from Barbie’s bedroom down to the heart-shaped pool, a magical wardrobe that displays outfits on the wall similarly to the packaging inside of a doll box and an open concept floor plan without any outer walls so that the Barbies can always see each other.
“All the Barbies in their own Barbie Dreamhouses wake up in the morning and they can wave at each other,” Robbie explains.
And while there is no actual water in Barbie Land, the Dreamhouse does have a shower, a bubble bath and that aforementioned pool.
“It’s actually funny to see how many people avoid walking [on it],” Robbie says. “Everyone walks around the pool.”
Kristi Daugherty remembers the announcement like it was yesterday.
It was March 11, 2021—one year since the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a global pandemic—and in those twelve months, emerging data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention showed that historic rates of mental illness, overdose deaths and deaths by suicide were soaring. Amid the horrific trends, the government decided to take action.
The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline was getting a makeover.
As part of the refresh, the 10-digit phone number was simplified to a succinct 9-8-8. The lifeline also added texting services, in addition to comprehensive mental health services beyond suicide prevention.
The program was supported with $200 million in funding through the Biden administration’s American Rescue Plan.
As the chief executive officer at Emergence Health Network in El Paso — which provides behavioral health, crisis response and other services to nearly 30,000 Texans a year — Daugherty said she was excited about the developments.
But then, political pressure hit a boiling point and the launch timeline got moved up by half a year, Daugherty told ABC News. For months, EHN hustled to staff up in the face of tight budgets and tighter deadlines, she says, they didn’t see a dime of federal support trickle down from Austin. The Texas Department of Health and Human Services did not respond to ABC News’ request for comment on Daugherty’s claim.
She’s not alone in her frustration.
In some critical ways, 988 has bolstered an American mental healthcare system that the Department of Health and Human Services itself has called “long underfunded and under-resourced.”
Since its launch in July 2022, the new hotline fielded over 2 million calls from people in crisis — 45% more than the 10-digit hotline over the same period in the previous year, according to data from Vibrant Emotional Health, the organization appointed by the federal government to oversee the line.
Vibrant says the hotline has also answered over 1 million chats and texts. Average wait times have dropped from nearly 3 minutes to less than a minute. Additionally, 988 has rolled out variations of the line specifically devoted to the care of at-risk groups like veterans, Spanish-speakers and LGBTQI+ youth.
Outcome data on emergency responses, referrals to outpatient mental healthcare or inpatient stabilization services is not immediately available, according to Vibrant. But Tia Dole, the chief 988 officer at the organization, said the service has helped many people who may not have elsewhere to turn for help.
In 2021, one American died by suicide every 11 minutes, over 12 million considered suicide, and suicide was the second-leading cause of death in most youth or young adults, according to the CDC. Over 100,000 more Americans died from drug overdoses, per National Institute of Health data.
But almost one year after the crisis line’s rollout—and after nearly one billion dollars of federal investment—the majority of states are still struggling to ensure that their citizens’ calls get answered locally.
Unanswered calls roll over to national backup centers, but federal officials acknowledge these centers are generally less equipped to provide the local services callers may need. In April 2023 alone—the most recent month for which public data is available, according to Vibrant—states collectively missed over 11,000 calls. And in April 2023, despite stipulations to federal funding requiring answer rates above 90% by June 2022, only 15 states met that goal. Texas’ call answer rate, at 75%, ranked it amongst the worst performers.
“This thing we’re doing has never been done,” Dole told ABC News. “Is it perfect? No.”
Widespread staffing shortages
Many of these shortcomings may relate to a particularly thorny challenge: staffing.
Crisis call centers depend on behavior health workers to man the phones — a workforce that includes psychologists and psychiatrists, nurses and social workers, counselors and coaches. The number of job openings for those types of workers is expanding “much faster than the average for all occupations,” according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
The market for mental health counselors, for example, is expected to outpace overall job growth by 4.5-times during the next decade.
In 2020, the country required over 1 million more behavioral health workers to meet Americans’ mental healthcare needs, according to federal data collected by the Government Accountability Office. That data also doesn’t account for the pandemic, which took a toll on the workforce, Dole told ABC News.
“I think the workforce, with regards to crisis services, has not recovered since [the pandemic],” Dole told ABC News.
The workforce shortages have meant crisis call centers across the country have struggled to staff up. According to data reviewed by ABC News from state health departments, in Rhode Island, 52% of positions were empty as of May 2023. In Wisconsin, 30% of positions were empty. According to a 988 jobs board maintained by the Substance and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), nearly every state in the country has vacancies.
For Vince Brancaccio, the labor scarcities are a daily struggle.
Brancaccio, who is the chief executive officer at Health Network of Southeast Ohio—one of the state’s 988 centers—is spending a significant part of his days now simply trying to find interested candidates. That’s instead of doing the work of crisis stabilization and mental healthcare itself, Brancaccio told ABC News.
Most of the time, his days spent hiring are riddled with frustration by way of empty Zoom rooms. More often than not, candidates “don’t show for interviews,” Brancaccio said. Or if they’re hired, he said, “they don’t show for the job the first day.” About half of the 988 chairs at his center are empty, he said.
Inflexible work requirements
Another challenge call centers are facing around staffing relates to managing remote versus in-person work.
In a post-pandemic world, remote work has become standard, according to a 2021 McKinsey report, especially for computer-based office work, like answering calls. However, many 988 centers — like Brancaccio’s — are not offering remote work: according to the SAMHSA 988 jobs page, over 70% of centers are in-person only.
Additionally, fewer than 5% of 988 centers currently use Vibrant’s new software platform — the development of which was funded in part by federal money — to answer calls, Dole told ABC News. Many are still using legacy software whose origins stretch back to the 2004 launch of the pre-988 lifeline—software that too often is ill-equipped to handle the complexities of remote work almost two decades later, Dole said.
These dynamics mean that states with already-scarce behavioral health workers are experiencing a brain drain, Joshua Thomas, the chief executive officer at the Delaware chapter of the National Alliance on Mental Illness, told ABC News. According to a December 2022 study by the Delaware Department of Health and Social Services, there is a widespread shortage of mental health resources in the state.
Thomas said that lack of flexibility around remote work—combined with “an income potential that is significantly lower than it is elsewhere”—present the risk that states like his will struggle to compete with others who are better resourced or more flexible.
In comparison, states like Massachusetts—which devoted $10 million from state coffers to 988, increasing wages and providing hybrid work options—has more than doubled its staff since the hotline’s rollout, according to Vibrant. Massachusetts’ call answer rate in April was 88% — just under SAMHSA’s 90% answer rate threshold — compared with Delaware’s 73%, according to date collected by Vibrant.
Gift-wrapping an empty box
Daugherty worries that the accelerated timing of the rollout was short-sighted: the rush to announce 988—followed by the scramble to get it operational and the struggles that have ensued—may have undercut trust in the line over the longer-term.
At the time of the hotline’s launch, HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra said that “988 is more than a number, it is a message: we’re there for you.” Eleven months later, amid centers’ struggles to staff up, Daugherty compares those promises to gift-wrapping an empty box.
Monica Johnson, SAMHSA’s 988 director, acknowledged the hotline’s growing pains so far. But Johnson also pointed towards the progress of the hotline to date—over 3 million contacts answered, shrinking wait times, almost $1 billion invested—as signs that things are moving in the right direction.
“I think about, okay, what month are we in into this first year—[and] did we demonstrate that we have the capacity to answer the calls?” Johnson told ABC News. “The answer to that, so far, has proven to be yes.”
Still, for people like Molly Jacobson, those growing pains are a matter of life and death.
Jacobson, a Florida native, said she called the line in October 2022 on behalf of a loved one in crisis. A relative had attempted suicide before, and she worried, might do so again. However, when she dialed 988, she says she was immediately put on hold.
When she finally spoke with someone, after a series of triage questions, the operator sounded resigned, she said. “‘I’m sorry, I don’t know what I can offer,'” Jacobson recalls him telling her.
Jacobson said she didn’t know where else to turn.
She said, “For something that’s funded by hundreds of millions of dollars…where’s all that going?”
Jacobson’s experience highlights some of the challenges the state has had so far: in April, Florida received over 10,000 calls, of which it answered only 73%–putting it amongst the worst performing states. Florida’s Department of Children and Families, which oversees the management of the 988 hotlines in the state, did not respond to ABC News’ request for comment on Jacobson’s case.
Jacobson says her loved one ended up fine despite the negative experience with the line. But she worries about what might happen next time—or, to someone else in a similar situation.
“When any of us are in our darkest hour,” Jacobson said, “what we need is to be heard.”
Despite some of the staffing challenges, if you or a loved one is struggling with a mental health crisis or considering suicide call or text 988.
ABC News is looking into challenges and successes with implementation of the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline. If you have had issues or successes with the line, please contact us here.
Michal Ruprecht, a member of the ABC News Medical Unit, contributed reporting.
Lil Uzi Vert spilled a few details about his forthcoming album, The Pink Tape, while chatting with YouTuber and Twitch streamer Kai Cenat. The star shared what fans can expect to hear from the record, which he says will be accompanied by the release of new clothing and merchandise.
“Probably like 24 or 25 new, well 24 new joints because everyone has heard ‘Just Wanna Rock,'” Uzi said. “Then two at the very, very bottom, bottom, bottom, bottom that a lot of people love, but the world they didn’t really get to hear them.” They explained that the two tracks “are special to me that some people love that it didn’t really get the reach that they would’ve liked.”
When it comes to the guest appearances on the album, Uzi didn’t disclose too much, noting there are “not that many features, but the features that everybody think I should have.”
The Pink Tape is slated to come out any day now, as Uzi previously announced. “The album is coming at the end of this month. I can’t hold off anymore,” they said on a recent Instagram Live. “Like you know me, I am crazy. Even if I have to drop it myself, it’s coming out at the end of the month.”
While not many wives get along with their hubby’s exes, Tommy Lee‘s current wife, Brittany Furlan, doesn’t seem to have an issue with at least one of his former loves. In fact, Brittany tells People she and Heather Locklear are actually good friends.
“Heather and I are very close. She’s awesome, I love her,” Furlan says of Locklear, who was married to the Mötley Crüe drummer from 1986 to 1993. “I think she’s the most kind, down-to-earth person. We met through Tommy, obviously, and became close. She’s just very cool, very nice, just supportive and just a cool chick all around.”’
Furlan says she’s grateful for the relationship she has with Locklear, and says that while “everyone glorifies his relationship with Pam,” referring to Pamela Anderson, she says Lee calls Locklear “the one that got away.”
“She was the love of his life. I see it, because she’s just a fun, sweet, caring, awesome person,” she says. “Tommy even says he messed up in that relationship. He cheated on her. To this day, that’s why they’re still really good friends.”
And Furlan can’t believe Lee actually let Locklear get away in the first place. “I yell at my husband, I’m like, ‘I can’t believe you cheated on her. She’s so cool,'” she shares. “That was a different time. He was 25 years old, 26 years old. Not to make excuses, but he’s a very different man now from all those years ago. You live and you learn.”
Are Lauren Alaina and Blake Shelton now “Thicc As Thieves”? It sure seems like it.
Lauren recently posted an Instagram Reel of her teaching Blake the dance to “Thicc As Thieves,” a duet she recently released with Lainey Wilson.
Their infectious dance features them shimmying, kicking up their boots in style and, at times, going down low. The video ends with Lauren burying her face in her hands in laughter as Blake lets loose with some over-the-top dance moves.
“Thicc As Thieves” is featured on Lauren’s latest EP, Unlocked. The six-song set, which dropped in early June, is her debut project with Big Loud Records.
