Rod Stewart is holding steadfast to plans to perform in Hawke’s Bay, New Zealand, following a devastating cyclone that hit the area last month.
Cyclone Gabrielle battered the region mid-February and has since been described as the most severe weather event in years.
Stuff reports the legendary rocker remains committed to his original April 8 concert date, despite ongoing recovery efforts.
Live Nation emailed a statement to the outlet, which said, “Our teams continue to monitor the massive clean-up and rebuild effort underway in the region, and we are liaising with local authorities and the police.”
“Our confident expectation is that the Rod Stewart concert at Mission Estate Winery on April 8 will go ahead as scheduled,” the statement continued.
Mission State CEO Peter Holley previously told the outlet, “There’s absolutely no intention to cancel at this point in time.” There are also measures in place to ensure the performance doesn’t utilize any resources needed for recovery efforts.
Holley noted that the region could probably use a pick-me-up and predicted “we’ll really be in for a good day” when the rocker arrives.
That said, should Stewart honor his concert date, it’ll mark the area’s first major performance since Cyclone Gabrielle, which forced several artists to call off their shows. Sting was just one performer who was forced to cancel his concert, which had been set for March 4.
Rod will also perform in Auckland, New Zealand, on April 9 at Spark Arena. A portion of the concert’s proceeds will be directed to the Red Cross NZ Disaster Relief Fund.
Van Halen’s sixth studio album, 1984, hit number two on the Billboard album chart and stayed there for five weeks. The album was denied the top spot by Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” – which features guest guitar work from Eddie Van Halen.
The album never reached number one, but did go on to sell more than 10 million copies.
1984 was the last Van Halen album to feature original frontman David Lee Roth, until 2012’s A Different Kindof Truth. It was also the last full-length album to feature all four original members of Van Halen, as bassist Michael Anthony was replaced by Eddie’s son Wolfgang Van Halen on the 2012 album.
(NEW YORK) — Sidney Holmes, who was wrongfully convicted and sentenced to 400 years, was exonerated after 34 years in prison. Lamar Johnson was wrongfully convicted of a shooting without physical evidence connecting him to the incident and sentenced to life in prison. Leon Benson has been freed after 25 years of a more than 60-year sentence for a crime he maintains he did not commit.
These men are just a few in the more than a dozen people have been exonerated so far this year, due to wrongful convictions based on misidentifications, false confessions, police failure to disclose evidence and more.
These exonerations have been recorded by the National Registry of Exonerations since 1989, an exoneration-tracking project hosted by University of California Irvine, University of Michigan Law School and Michigan State University College of Law.
There have been at least 3,287 exonerations recorded by the National Registry of Exonerations since 1989.
More than 29,100 years have been “lost” in prison due to “wrongful convictions” that have been uncovered thus far, according to the registry.
“We’ve all been raised to believe that our system is a great system that works well, that we identify the right people, we convict the right people, we give people the right sentences,” said attorney Marissa Boyers Bluestine, assistant director at the Quattrone Center for the Fair Administration of Justice, in an interview with ABC News.
“It has been a very hard awakening for a lot of people to realize that that’s just not always the case,” she said.
The registry found that the most often cited factors for wrongful convictions are: witness misidentification, false accusation, false confession, faulty forensic evidence, inadequate legal defense, police misconduct and prosecutorial misconduct.
In some cases, the methods used to collect evidence in the past have since been proven to be scientifically unreliable, according to experts. This was the case with Sidney Holmes, whose armed robbery conviction was recently overturned in part because of misidentification, which was partly due to outdated photo and live lineup practices commonly used by law enforcement in the 1980s, officials say.
Black people represent 53% of the 3,200 exonerations listed in the National Registry of Exonerations, despite making up just 13.6% of the American population. Black people represent 38% of the incarcerated population, according to the Prison Policy Initiative.
“Innocent Black Americans are seven times more likely than white Americans to be falsely convicted of serious crimes,” the registry said in a 2022 report.
According to Bluestine, the only way to overturn someone’s conviction is to have “something new, something different that wasn’t heard by the trial court.”
“That’s why it takes 10, 15, 30 years to undo those convictions because we have to wait for that evidence to become available to change how we’re seeing a conviction,” she said.
The list of exonerated people is long. Here are just some of the wrongfully convicted cases that have been overturned so far in 2023:
Sidney Holmes
Holmes, 57, served more than 34 years of a 400-year prison sentence before the Broward State Attorney’s Office Conviction Review Unit (CRU) in Florida reinvestigated the case and determined he did not commit armed robbery.
The CRU found that there is “no evidence” connecting Holmes to the robbery besides a flawed identification of him and the vehicle involved in the robbery.
The CRU found that witness identification of Holmes was likely a “misidentification,” partly due to the photo and live lineup practices commonly used by law enforcement at the time, which are “scientifically unreliable,” according to the state attorney’s office.
Lamar Johnson
In Missouri, Lamar Johnson spent roughly 28 years behind bars for a murder he said he did not commit. He was convicted of first-degree murder and armed criminal action in 1994, according to Circuit Attorney Kimberly M. Gardner’s motion to vacate his conviction. Johnson was sentenced to life in prison.
Gardner asserted that Johnson was innocent and erroneously convicted, citing Johnson’s alibi and a lack of physical evidence connecting Johnson to the murder.
According to Gardner, the identification of Johnson was the state’s “only direct evidence.”
Judge David Mason vacated Johnson’s conviction in February.
“Today the courts righted a wrong – vacating the sentence of Mr. Lamar Johnson following his wrongful conviction in 1995,” said Gardner in a Feb. 14 statement on the decision. “Most importantly, we celebrate with Mr. Johnson and his family as he walks out of the courtroom as a free man.”
Leon Benson
Leon Benson was convicted of first-degree murder in 1999, and spent roughly 25 years in prison before the Marion County Superior Court Judge Shatrese M. Flowers in Indiana threw out his conviction in early March.
A joint re-investigation by the University of San Francisco School of Law Racial Justice Clinic and the Conviction Integrity Unit of the Marion County Prosecutor’s Office revealed that “evidence buried in the police file by the lead detective pointed to another man as the murderer.”
Researchers found that conflicting testimony and the missing evidence identified someone else in the 1998 shooting death of Kasey Schoen in Indianapolis.
“Truth never dies,” Benson said, according to a press release from the University of San Francisco. “It is only rediscovered.”
(HOUSTON) — A 17-year-old boy has been arrested in the fatal shooting of a transgender woman as Houston police continue to search for a second suspect.
Marisela Castro, 39, was found lying in the road outside a home shortly before 2 a.m. on July 29, 2022, according to Houston police.
Castro and another person had just gotten out of her car when she was shot, police said.
The two suspects fled in Castro’s car before ditching the vehicle nearby, police said.
Houston police announced on Thursday that a 17-year-old, who was 16 at the time of the shooting, is now in custody on a capital murder charge. But police believe the 17-year-old was not the one who shot Castro and authorities say they’re still searching for the unidentified second suspect.
Police would not comment on a possible motive.
Houston police asked anyone with information to call its homicide division at 713-308-3600 or submit a tip anonymously to Crime Stoppers at 713-222-TIPS.
(NEW YORK) — SVB Financial Group and top executives have been named in a federal lawsuit amid the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank, the largest bank failure since the 2008 financial crisis.
A shareholder from Wisconsin, who says he lost about $12,000, is named as a plaintiff in a federal lawsuit seeking class action status against SVB who announced a $1.8 billion loss on the sale of securities on March 8.
The lawsuit against SVB Financial Group, CEO Greg Becker and CFO Daniel Beck was filed in the U.S. district court for the Northern district of California on Monday. It is looking for damages to be awarded to people like Chandra Vanipenta who said he invested in SVB between June 16, 2021, and March 10, 2023.
“$12,000 is a lot of money,” Chandra Vanipenta told ABC News.
Vanipenta, 51, is the father of two children and works in the software industry and said he had done his homework and read several financial reports about SVP, prior to investing. He said the company sounded solid and none of the financial reports mentioned warnings from the Federal Reserve about potential interest rate hikes.
“There was no indication of any risk,” Vanipenta said.
Vanipenta said the rapidly falling share price took him totally off guard, and that he lost every penny of $12,000 dollars in SVP shares he bought through his online brokerage account.
He said he bought the shares when the share price was over $200 a share.
“I never thought that it (the share price) would go to zero! And so suddenly,” he said.
The lawsuit states that annual reports for 2020 through 2022, “understated the risks posed to the company by not disclosing that likely interest rate hikes, as outlined by the Fed, had the potential to cause irrevocable damage to the company.”
The lawsuit adds that Becker and Beck “intended to deceive Plaintiff and other members of the Class, or in the alternative, acted with reckless disregard for the truth when they failed to ascertain and disclose the true facts in the statements made by them … to members of the investing public…”
“I feel bad. I should have sold earlier,” Vanipenta said.
Vanipenta said when he learned his once valuable shares were worth nothing, he contacted a law firm to help him. Vanipenta’s lawyer, Laurence Paul Rosen, would not comment on the “pending litigation.”
A partner from a New York based law firm, Levi & Korsinsky, LLP, told ABC News that they plan to file a separate class action lawsuit imminently against SVB.
“We are extremely interested in this, and are looking into it. We will probably be filing our own case this week or next,” Adam M. Apton, a partner in the firm, told ABC News.
ABC News reached out to SVB for comment but have not yet received a response.
Queen’s deep dive into their live performances continues with episode nine of Queen The Greatest Live taking a look at the importance of lighting in a show.
The episode, “Under the Lights,” looks at the production that has gone into their tours, with Brian May and Roger Taylor sharing their thoughts on why lighting is such an important part of their stage show.
“For that 2 1/2 hours that we’re onstage, we are in complete control of the environment – that means the sound, the lights, the temperature, everything,” May shares. “We’ve always thought the lights are not just objects to illuminate, they’re objects in themselves and they’re part of the environment. And that’s a kind of rock ‘n’ roll thing, I think. I think we imbibed that from seeing stuff that we enjoyed when we were kids.”
Taylor notes they took inspiration from their peers, such as Pink Floyd, when coming up with their lighting, but sought to go even further. “There were so many acts going around that had hundreds of lights, all different colors, and it just made white,” he shares. “So, we had this idea of just having red, green and white. And it was very effective.”
Queen was one of the first bands to use a lighting rig called the “crown,” which could be raised and lowered during the show, as well as what May calls the “pizza oven,” which was a wall of lights above them that got incredibly hot.
But even Roger notes that sometimes all that stuff isn’t necessary. He explains, “Sometimes the most effective light is one single powerful spotlight, to focus the entire arena on that performer.”
If you bought a ticket to The Cure‘s upcoming U.S. tour during this week’s Ticketmaster Verified Fan sale, you’ll be getting some money back, thanks to frontman Robert Smith.
As previously reported, Smith tweeted earlier this week that he was “sickened” by the fees charged by Ticketmaster on top of the ticket price. One viral tweet showed someone bought four tickets for a total of $80 and was charged over $90 in fees.
In a tweet Thursday evening, Smith shared, in his traditional all caps style, “After further conversation, Ticketmaster have agreed with us that many of the fees being charged are unduly high.”
“As a gesture of goodwill have offered a $10 per ticket refund to all Verified Fan accounts for lowest ticket price (‘LTP’) transactions and a $5 per ticket refund to all Verified Fan accounts for all other ticket price transactions, for all Cure shows at all venues,” Smith continued.
Smith added that tickets purchased during Friday’s general sale “will incur lower fees.”
The Cure’s tour, which marks their first full U.S. headlining run in seven years, begins May 10 in New Orleans.
(NEW YORK) — A new report suggests the virus that causes COVID-19 may be linked to raccoon dogs that were illegally being sold at a wet seafood market in China.
First reported in The Atlantic, a team of scientists from around the world announced Thursday they believe the virus, SARS-CoV-2, originated at the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market in Wuhan, where the outbreak began.
It comes amid swirling debate about the origins of the pandemic, after a report from the U.S. Department of Energy concluded with “low confidence” that it was the result of a lab leak.
According to the report, researchers at the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention uploaded new data from swab samples collected in January 2020 at the market — including of the floors, walls and cages containing animals — to the open global genome sequencing database GISAID.
From there, the international team, which included virologists and biologists, downloaded the samples and analyzed them.
The samples that came back positive for the virus also contained genetic material of several animals, particularly large amounts matching the common raccoon dog.
Although this doesn’t definitively prove that the virus definitely jumped from raccoon dogs to humans, the team said it is the strongest evidence to date of the natural transmission theory.
“This is a really strong indication that animals at the market were infected,” Dr. Angela Rasmussen, one of the virologists involved in the new report, told The Atlantic. “There’s really no other explanation that makes any sense.”
Members of the research team, who have not yet published their findings, did not immediately return ABC News’ request for comment.
The findings also support other scientific research indicating that the virus likely spilled over from animals into people in and around the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market.
Raccoon dogs are known to harbor other viruses that jump from animals to humans. For example, a October 2003 report found a virus very similar to SARS-CoV-1, which is a cousin of the new coronavirus, in a raccoon dog and among humans at a live animal market in Guangdong, China.
Although most experts now believe the SARS outbreak in 2002-03 in China was linked to bats, raccoon dogs are believed to have been brief accidental hosts of the virus.
Currently, four U.S. agencies and the National Intelligence Council say the virus was the result of natural transmission that jumped from animals to humans.
Late last month, the Department of Energy changed its stance from “undecided” to “low confidence” that the COVID-19 pandemic “most likely” was the result of a laboratory leak, becoming the second agency, after the FBI, to believe a lab accident resulted in the global health emergency.
(NEW YORK) — Hours of body camera footage was released Thursday in the fatal police shooting of Najee Seabrooks, a New Jersey anti-violence activist who called 911 during an apparent mental health crisis.
Seabrooks, 31, of Paterson, was shot five hours after police responded to his home on March 3, according to the New Jersey Attorney General’s Office, which released redacted footage and 911 calls made by Seabrooks amid its investigation into the deadly incident.
The fatal shooting of Seabrooks, who worked for the anti-violence organization Paterson Healing Collective, has sparked protests and calls for reform.
According to the state attorney general’s office, officers from the Paterson Police Department responded to Seabrooks’ apartment around 7:43 a.m. “in response to a 911 call from an individual in distress” and found him locked inside a bathroom.
Members of Seabrooks’ family told officers he had been “hallucinating and behaving erratically” and may have been “experiencing a bad reaction to something he had smoked,” the state attorney general’s office said. In 911 calls, Seabrooks can be heard asking for someone to help escort him to his car because he’s received threats.
Seabrooks told police that “people are trying to kill me, I need an escort,” though the officers at the scene determined there were no threats, the attorney general’s office said.
Seabrooks told officers he had two knives and a gun and at one point can be heard saying “that he was going to die in the bathroom and take one of the officers with him,” the attorney general’s office said.
Throughout the incident, additional officers, crisis negotiators, members of the department’s emergency response team and emergency medical services responded to the apartment as police and family members attempted to get Seabrooks to come out of the bathroom to receive help, authorities said.
“At various times during the encounter officers deployed approximately 15 less than lethal sponge-tipped projectiles some of which struck Mr. Seabrooks, but were not effective in subduing him,” the attorney general’s office said.
As armed officers stood outside the bathroom door, Seabrooks at one point remarked they were going to shoot him.
“Nobody’s going to shoot you,” an officer says.
The officers told him to “drop the knives” and to come out of the bathroom to get help.
At approximately 12:35 p.m., Seabrooks could be seen coming out of the bathroom while holding a knife in his hand. An officer can be heard yelling “drop it” right before two members of the Emergency Response Team — identified as Officer Anzore Tsay and Officer Jose Hernandez — opened fire, striking him.
Seabrooks was transported to a local hospital and pronounced dead at 12:51 p.m., authorities said.
The investigation into Seabrooks’ death is ongoing. Once completed, it will be presented to a grand jury to determine if any officers involved should be charged, the attorney general’s office said.
Representatives of Seabrooks’ family reviewed the footage prior to its public release, according to the attorney general’s office.
In the wake of the fatal shooting, the Paterson Healing Collective had called for the release of body camera footage of the incident. It has also called for the officers involved in the shooting to be placed on administrative leave, and the creation of a non-carceral crisis response team and a civilian complaint review board that could have “investigatory and subpoena power.”
(NEW YORK) — The family of Irvo Otieno, a man who died in police custody earlier this month, reacted to the recent death of the Virginia man during a Thursday news conference.
Three days after being arrested on March 3, Otieno was transported to Central State, a psychiatric hospital in Petersburg, Virginia from Henrico County jail after reportedly suffering a mental health crisis. The same day on March 6, Otieno was pronounced dead.
On Thursday, family attorneys Ben Crump and Mark Krudys, alongside family members of Otieno, viewed videos from the day leading up to his death.
According to attorneys for the family at the press conference, there were seven deputies who held Otieno down for around 11 to 12 minutes, eventually causing him to suffer from asphyxia.
“You see in the majority of the video that he seems to be in between lifelessness and unconsciousness, but yet you see him being restrained so brutally with a knee on his neck,” Crump said during the conference. “The weight of seven individuals on his body while he’s face down, handcuffed with leg irons. … It is so unnecessary, it’s so unjustifiable.”
Caroline Ouko, Otieno’s mother, described during the conference that her son was having a mental health crisis and was initially transported to Henrico Doctors’ Hospital on March 3, a hospital farther than the family’s residence. While in the hospital, Otieno was arrested and taken to Henrico Police Department without the ability to see his family, according to his mother.
“Even though Irvo was going through mental illness, what I saw today was heartbreaking America. It was disturbing. It was traumatic. My son was tortured,” Ouko said. “Mental illness should not be your ticket to death. There was a chance to rescue him, there was a chance to stop what was going on. And I don’t understand how all systems failed him.”
Although the Henrico County Sheriff’s Office is conducting an independent review of the incident alongside an investigation by Virginia State Police, the attorneys call the Department of Justice to intervene.
Seven deputies from the Henrico County Sheriff’s Office were arrested and charged with second-degree murder in the death of the 28-year-old on Wednesday and during their court appearance, Dinwiddie County Attorney Ann Baskervill alleged that Otieno had been victim to hours of assaults prior to his death.
Krudys told the press that Otieno had been subject to previous brutality in his cell while he was handcuffed before he was taken to Central State.
“He’s naked. He’s lost. … There’s feces on the ground. It is so inhumane,” Krudys said. “We also saw a glimpse of the video where it’s like an animal being carried by legs and arms, with his pants falling off him, into the vehicle.”
Henrico County Sheriff Alisa A. Gregory released a statement the week after Otieno’s death, extending her “deepest sympathies and condolences” to Otieno’s family and friends.
“The events of March 6, at their core, represent a tragedy because Mr. Otieno’s life was lost. This loss is felt by not only those close to him but our entire community,” Gregory said in the statement.
Otieno’s older brother emotionally spoke during the press conference, telling the public that after viewing the footage, he’d “witnessed a homicide.”
“What I saw was a lifeless human being, without any representation. No regard to his human life,” he said. “At what point do we stop preserving life? At one point do we consider mental illness a crime? Can someone explain to me why my brother is not here right now?”
The seven deputies arrested were Randy Joseph Boyer, 57; Dwayne Alan Bramble, 37; Jermaine Lavar Branch, 45; Bradley Thomas Disse, 43; Tabitha Renee Levere, 50; Brandon Edwards Rodgers, 48; and Kaiyell Dajour Sanders, 30.
Each of the seven deputies appeared in court on Wednesday.
A lawyer for Branch spoke in court Wednesday, saying the officer allegedly “did not administer any blows to the deceased, or violence towards him, other than simply trying to restrain him.”
Branch’s lawyer, Cary Bowen, told ABC News by phone that Cabell Baskervill was trying to fashion the case as something that is “malicious.”
“There was no weapon used. There was no pummeling or anything like that. I think everybody agrees,” Bowen said. “And the way she was casting it was that they ended up suffocating. He couldn’t breathe. And she’s acting like the guy didn’t resist and he wasn’t manic or bipolar or whatever. Just a nice guy who they’re picking on.”
Three more individuals were arrested Thursday: Darian M. Blackwell, 23; Wavie L. Jones, 34; and Sadarius D. Williams, 27.
No plea deals have been entered as of Thursday. The three additional people involved in the arrest will appear in court on Tuesday.
“He was murdered,” Ouko said. “They smothered the breath out of my baby. They murdered my baby. … Why did they do that? What right did they have to do that?”
