Levon Helm, best known as the drummer, singer and multi-instrumentalist for The Band, died at age 71 of throat cancer.
Helm was featured on many of The Band’s classic tracks, including “The Weight,” “Up on Cripple Creek” and “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down.”
He was with The Band until their farewell performance on Thanksgiving Day, November 25, 1976. The performance was later turned into the critically acclaimed documentary film The Last Waltz, directed by Martin Scorsese.
In addition to music, Helm dabbled in acting and appeared in movies like Coal Miner’s Daughter, The Right Stuff, Feeling Minnesota and The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada.
Duane Betts, son of Allman BrothersBand guitarist Dickey Betts, is set to release his debut solo album, Wild & Precious Life, on July 14. The first single from the record, “Waiting on a Song,” is out now.
The album was written in 2020 during the pandemic and has Duane reflecting on important things in his life, like his father, his soulmate, his journey to sobriety and more.
“We’re here for such a short period of time,” Duane shares. “We see people come and people go — people we love and people we miss. We’ve all lost loved ones, yet we’re still here. You really have to take advantage of your time and make the most of it.”
Wild & Precious Life, recorded at Susan Tedeschi and Derek Trucks’ Swamp Raga Studio, features guest appearances by Trucks, Marcus King and Nicki Bluhm.It’s available for preorder now.
Here’s the track list for Wild & Precious Life:
“Evergreen”
“Waiting on a Song”
‘Forrest Lane”
“Colors Fade”
“Saints to Sinners”
“Stare at the Sun”
“Under the Bali Moon”
“Sacred Ground”
“Cold Dark World”
“Circles in the Stars”
It’s no longer been awhile since Staind‘s released new music.
Aaron Lewis and company have dropped a track called “Lowest in Me,” marking the group’s first fresh material in 12 years.
“I did want to modernize the sound and bring us up to date,” Lewis says of “Lowest in Me.” “You can certainly recognize the band but at the same time you can hear that we’ve been paying attention and understand what kind of sounds and approaches we can use that maybe weren’t around the last time we did this.”
You can listen to “Lowest in Me” now via digital outlets, and watch its accompanying lyric video streaming now on YouTube.
Staind released their last album, their self-titled seventh studio effort, in 2011. After a couple of hiatuses, the group reunited in 2019.
Along with “Lowest in Me,” a new Staind album titled Confessions of the Fallen is in the works.
In the meantime, you can catch Staind live this summer on a co-headlining tour with Godsmack.
On Wednesday, Lucasfilm dropped the season three finale of The Mandalorian.
The cliffhanger penultimate episode ended with Pedro Pascal‘s Din Djarin, Katee Sackhoff‘s Bo-Katan Kryze and their Mando mates ambushed on the home planet Mandalore, after finding a secret Imperial facility led by Giancarlo Esposito‘s Moff Gideon.
Bo-Katan and most of her allies manage to escape, but Din is captured and brought to face Gideon, who not only has a shiny superpowered Dark Trooper suit, but an army of commandos outfitted in Mandalorian-type gear. He orders an airstrike to wipe out the Mandalorian fleet and the warrior clan once and for all.
Without spoilers, the finale opens with the Mandalorians desperately trying to warn their allies in a last-ditch episode to save their people and regroup to retake their planet.
The final chapter of the season also finally reveals what Gideon has been up to with Grogu’s, aka Baby Yoda’s, DNA, in a callback to the first season, and also shows just what the little guy can do piloting his new modified IG-11 droid body.
The finale also sees Bo-Katan and Gideon finally facing off for the Darksaber, a weapon tied by legend to the Mandalorians’ fate, and a jetpack dogfight sequence reminiscent of some of Star Wars: The Clone Wars‘ most celebrated battle scenes.
Stars who served as celebrity ambassadors for the now-discredited crypto exchange FTX could be on the hook legally for billions of dollars — and it turns out Taylor Swift narrowly avoided the same fate.
In the latest episode of The Scoop podcast, attorney Adam Moskowitz talks about how he’s suing stars like Shaquille O’Neal, Tom Brady and Larry David in a class action lawsuit. The suit contends that, by promoting FTX, the stars were were promoting the sale of unregistered securities, which is illegal in the U.S.
Moskowitz, who’s seeking $5 billion in the lawsuit, says he doesn’t understand why these stars’ handlers didn’t bother to find out more about the company before their clients made digital and TV ads for FTX. The only person he says did their due diligence was Taylor.
“The one person I found that did that was Taylor Swift,” Moskowitz says. “In our discovery, Taylor Swift actually asked that: ‘Can you tell me that these are not unregistered securities?'”
In December of 2022, the Financial Timesreported that Taylor and FTX were in negotiations for a $100 million deal involving ticketing and NFTs, but talks collapsed in November.
One former FTX employee told the Financial Times the company was looking for a “light degree of endorsement” from Taylor on social media, but another source insisted, “Taylor would not, and did not, agree to an endorsement deal. The discussion was around a potential tour sponsorship that did not happen.”
FTX filed for bankruptcy in November. The company’s founder, Sam Bankman-Fried, has pleaded not guilty to fraud, conspiracy to commit money laundering and conspiracy to defraud the U.S., among other charges.
(WASHINGTON) — In a rare open hearing, lawmakers on Wednesday are set to question the head of the Pentagon’s office charged with tracking UFOs — or what the Defense Department calls unexplained anomalous phenomena (UAP).
The director of the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office, Sean M. Kirkpatrick, will testify before the Senate Armed Services Subcommittee on Emerging Threats and Capabilities on the AARO’s mission and budget, with some senators expressing concerns over whether the Pentagon’s effort is getting adequately funded.
This is only the second recent hearing on the subject — following the first one in more than 50 years happening last May.
The ongoing review by the U.S. intelligence community and the Pentagon of hundreds of UAP incidents reported by military personnel was one of the techniques that helped identify that China was carrying out a foreign surveillance program using balloons, a U.S. official said in February.
That review of UAP incidents in recent years, required by congressional legislation, helped inform the identification process of the threat posed by China’s balloon program and how it was being done according to the official.
The U.S. intelligence community said in January that the number of UFO reports involving U.S. military personnel is increasing, “enabling a greater awareness of the airspace and increased opportunity to resolve” what is actually being reported.
Roughly half of the new incidents reported in the report had terrestrial explanations, the report said.
The increase in reporting is being partially attributed to the continuing effort to destigmatize the reporting of such incidents and to focus on the potential safety risks they could pose to U.S. personnel.
The report released by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence said that since its first June 2021 unclassified report on what are now called Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAPs), it is now aware of 510 such reports.
That is significantly more than the 144 incidents reviewed in the initial report, only one of which could be explained.
The report said the Pentagon’s new office looking at UAP reports has looked at 366 new reported incidents and initially determined that about half of them have “unremarkable characteristics.”
Twenty-six are being attributed to drones, 163 are characterized as balloons or balloon-like entities, and six are attributed to clutter.
(BOSTON) — The federal magistrate judge overseeing Jack Teixeira’s case granted his request to delay a detention hearing that was scheduled for Wednesday.
Teixeira, the Massachusetts Air National Guardsman charged with leaking national defense information online, sought to postpone the hearing so his attorneys could have more time to address arguments for keeping him in federal custody, according to a court filing.
Teixeira, 21, has been held since his arrest last week on two charges related to the posting online of classified defense information.
The defense’s request to delay came hours before the hearing was scheduled to begin in Boston federal court.
He has been held in custody since his arrest after the FBI said he caused “serious damage to the national security of the United States.” According to a criminal complaint unsealed last week after his arrest, Teixeira “improperly and unlawfully retained and transmitted national defense information to people not authorized to receive it.”
He began posting classified information on Discord in December, according to the complaint.
At first the material appeared as paragraphs of text. Then, when Teixeira allegedly became concerned he could be discovered copying material at work, “he began taking the documents to his residence and photographing them,” the complaint said.
Rust, the Alec Baldwin film on which cinematographer Halyna Hutchins was killed in 2021, will resume production on Thursday, according to a press release obtained by ABC News.
“The production will continue to utilize union crew members and will bar any use of working weapons and any form of ammunition,” Melina Spadone, Attorney for Rust Movie Productions said in a statement on Tuesday. “Live ammunition is — and always was — prohibited on set.”
The 65-year-old actor and the film’s armorer, Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, were both charged last month with two counts of involuntary manslaughter over Hutchins’ death in October 2021.
Baldwin has already formally entered a not-guilty plea to one count of involuntary manslaughter for his role in the fatal shooting.
Baldwin and Hutchins’ estate settled a wrongful death lawsuit against the actor in October. As part of the settlement, Matthew Hutchins, the widower of the slain cinematographer, will now serve as an executive producer on the film. He joins Rust‘s original producers and a new addition, Academy Award-nominated The Thin Red Line veteran Grant Hill.
Baldwin and the rest of the movie’s original principal cast are due to return to set Thursday when production resumes.
New co-CEO of DC Studios, James Gunnannounced on social media Tuesday that Superman: Legacy, which he wrote and will be directing, is taking flight.
“I’m honored to be a part of the legacy. And what better day than #SupermanAnniversary Day to dive fully into early pre-production on #SupermanLegacy?” he captioned a photo of the screenplay’s title page.
Tuesday was the 85th anniversary of the hero’s first appearance, in Action Comics#1, on April 18, 1938.
Gunn continued, “Costumes, production design, and more now up and running.” Additionally, sources tell Deadline that physical production will start in early 2024.
Superman: Legacy is scheduled to hit theaters on July 11, 2025.
In the meantime, Gunn’s last directorial effort for Marvel Studios, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, hits theaters on May 5.
(NEW YORK) — The settlement agreement between Fox and Dominion Voting Systems amounted to a warning shot for other media companies that may spread falsehoods, CEO of Dominion Voting Systems John Poulos said on Wednesday in an exclusive ABC News interview, his first since the settlement.
“I think that it’s a big step forward in democracy if our system can send a signal that if media companies lie — whoever they are or whatever channel they’re on — and they do so knowingly, they will be prepared to pay a very high price,” Poulos told George Stephanopoulos on ABC News’ Good Morning America on Wednesday.
Poulos’ statements came a day after his company reached a settlement agreement in its high-profile defamation suit against Fox.
Fox agreed to a $787.5 million settlement in the suit, which had sought $1.6 billion in damages. The suit had accused Fox News of recklessly airing false election claims and conspiracy theories in the wake of the 2020 presidential election.
“We weren’t ready to settle until all the facts we discovered came to light,” Poulos told ABC News in his first interview since the settlement.
Poulos said he feels they got accountability from Fox with this settlement, pointing to all of the facts that had come to light in the hundreds of private communications that were released as part of the suit, but said the effect on his company has been “devastating.”
“If we could have our company back and undo it, we would have it in a second,” he said.
Poulos said he was not surprised it took so long for Fox to settle, saying, “This was not the case of a media company pursuing the truth and making a mistake — they knew.”
Speaking outside the courtroom on Tuesday after the settlement was announced, Poulos said that Fox had “admitted to telling lies about Dominion,” although it wasn’t immediately clear whether Fox officials had agreed in the settlement to make such an admission.
“Truth matters. Lies have consequences,” Justin Nelson, an attorney for Dominion Voting Systems, said as he announced details of the company’s settlement with Fox News during a press conference following the court’s adjournment.
Fox News said in a statement after the agreement was announced that it was “pleased” to have reach the settlement.
“We acknowledge the Court’s rulings finding certain claims about Dominion to be false,” the statement said. “This settlement reflects FOX’s continued commitment to the highest journalistic standards.”
Poulos on Wednesday said the lawsuit was “never really about Fox, per se, it was about the media telling the truth.”
Noting the other lawsuits against Trump allies the company is still bringing, Poulos said “We will pursue all of them.”
