You can’t hear the new Luke Combs track “You Found Yours” yet, but the CMA Entertainer of the Year is sharing the story behind the song.
“If you zoom in on this knife, you’ll notice YOU FOUND YOURS engraved on it,” he shared on Instagram, along with a photo. “It was made and given to me by my Uncle Eddie and I’ve had the thing for probably 10 years, but never noticed it until last January while I was sitting in the deer stand.”
“I’m not sure what made him put that on there,” he continues. “But once I saw it, I knew I had to use it in a song.”
“You Found Yours” is one of 18 new tracks on Luke’s surprise Gettin’ Old album, which comes out March 24.
“And no, my Uncle Eddie is not Cousin Eddie from Christmas Vacation,” Luke later quipped in the comments.
In celebration of the 50th anniversary of The Dark Side of the Moon,Pink Floyd is releasing a new Blu-ray disc and CD of the classic concert The Dark Side of the Moon — Live at Wembley Empire Pool, London, 1974 — and now they are giving fans a taste of it.
The band just released the album’s live recording of “Breathe (In The Air),” which is the second song on the classic album.
The March 24 release of the album will mark the first time it’s been issued on its own; it will be released on CD and, for the first time, on vinyl. Also on March 24, Pink Floyd will release The Dark Side of the Moon deluxe box set, which also includes the Wembley concert.
And also in conjunction with the anniversary, Abbey Road Studios, where the album was recorded back when it was EMI Studios, just announced an exclusive 1973 Collection of The Dark Side of the Moon merch, including short and long-sleeve shirts, a hoodie, bucket hat, tote bag and replicated session sheet. The items can be purchased at shop.abbeyroad.com.
(LOS ANGELES) — After an earthquake devastated parts of Turkey and Syria last month, killing 50,000 people, officials in Los Angles County voted Wednesday to update the county’s building code and require all non-ductile high-rises to be retrofitted within 10 years.
The motion by the board of supervisors will apply to all buildings in the incorporated areas of the county or buildings owned by the county. The director of public works has six months to come up with updated language for adoption.
While Los Angeles County building standards were previously updated to ensure new construction can withstand seismic activity, non-ductile, concrete high-rises are prone to brittle behavior during an earthquake, according to the board of supervisors.
Building owners will be required to submit structural evaluation reports within three years, including plans to retrofit or demolish buildings within five years. A full plan is due within 10 years.
Public works must also submit a report to the board with an inventory analysis of all soft-story residential structures in county incorporated areas or owned or overseen by the county that have not been seismically retrofitted, including the number of units within each structure.
The motion also instructs the directors of public works and consumer and business affairs to come up with programs that support property owners. The expense of seismic retrofits may include zero-interest loan programs and construction subsidies for low-income property owners.
The board of supervisors said the county must urgently retrofit and repair vulnerable structures to prevent as much loss of life as possible in the event of an earthquake. A United States Geological Survey simulation of a magnitude 7.8 earthquake in Southern California predicted such an event could result in nearly 1,800 deaths and 50,000 injuries.
Wood frame soft-story structures or structures where one or more floors of a building have large, unobstructed spaces that lack additional stabilization are also vulnerable to large-scale seismic activity. Updated building standards have slowly phased out the construction of these buildings, but that only applies to new construction, according to the board of supervisors.
“The county currently lacks an updated building index to assess the volume of vulnerable soft-story structures, and to assess where those buildings might be more concentrated. This assessment must become the County’s priority to prevent disproportionate casualties in Black and Brown communities,” the motion said.
(LANSFORD, Pa.) — An explosive device was found in a checked piece of luggage at Pennsylvania’s Lehigh Valley International Airport on Monday, according to a criminal complaint.
The passenger, Mark Muffley of Lansford, Pennsylvania, is now in FBI custody, officials said.
Muffley, 40, was set to take an Allegiant flight from eastern Pennsylvania to Florida’s Orlando Sanford International Airport.
The device hidden in the bag’s lining was a circular compound, about 3 inches in diameter, that had two fuses and powder concealed in wax paper and plastic wrap, according to the criminal complaint.
The “powder is suspected to be a mixture of flash powder and the dark granulars that are used in commercial grade fireworks,” the complaint said. “The black powder and flash powder are susceptible to ignite from heat and friction and posed a significant risk to the aircraft and passengers.”
The bag also had “a can of butane, a lighter, a pipe with white powder residue, a wireless drill with cordless batteries, and two GFCI outlets taped together with black tape,” the complaint said.
An airport spokesperson said the suspicious package was discovered shortly after 11 a.m. Monday and the west side of the airport’s main terminal was shut down.
Muffley was paged over the airport’s public system to come to the security desk, the criminal complaint said. Five minutes later, security cameras showed Muffley leaving the airport, the complaint said.
The package was removed from the airport and the closed portion of the terminal reopened shortly before 2 p.m., the spokesperson said.
Muffley was arrested at his home Monday night, the FBI said. He’s charged with possession of an explosive in an airport and possessing, or attempting to place, or attempting to have placed an explosive or incendiary device on an aircraft. He is due in court on Thursday afternoon.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
(TEMPI, Greece) — At least 43 people were killed and more than 80 others injured in a head-on collision between a freight train and a passenger train in Greece late Tuesday, in what was mainly due to human error, officials said.
The two trains that crashed into one another were running on the same line for 12 minutes, and a distance of about 11 miles, Greek state TV said Wednesday.
The majority of those killed were between the ages of 20 and 30 years old, Roubini Leontari, the chief coroner of the general hospital in Larissa, Greece, told Greek state TV.
The passenger train was traveling at a speed of about 103 mph when it hit the freight train, according to the Greek Fire Service.
The crash occurred shortly before midnight in the town of Tempi along the Athens-Thessaloniki route at the entrance to the Vale of Tempe, a tree-lined gorge that separates the northern Greek regions of Thessaly and Macedonia. The two trains were running toward each other on the same track and the force of the high-speed collision derailed multiple cars, with some bursting into flames, according to Greece’s Hellenic Fire Service.
Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said in remarks Wednesday that the train collision was “mainly due to tragic human error.”
About 350 people were on board the northbound passenger train, which was traveling from Athens to Thessaloniki, according to the Greek rail operator Hellenic Train.
At least 150 firefighters, including some from specialized units, and 40 ambulances responded to the scene with the assistance of 32 police officers and 15 patrol vehicles, according to the Hellenic Fire Service.
The next morning, rescuers were still searching for survivors in the smoking wreckage, using cranes to lift the derailed carriages. Their efforts were initially focused on the first two cars, which had “overturned” and were “the most difficult to extricate,” a Hellenic Fire Service spokesperson said in a statement early Wednesday.
The impact of the collision left the passenger train’s restaurant car on top of two other cars. A blaze broke out in that carriage, with temperatures reaching as high as 1,300 degrees Celsius (2,372 degrees Fahrenheit), which “makes it difficult to identify the people inside,” the Hellenic Fire Service spokesperson said in a statement on Wednesday afternoon.
The search and rescue operation at the site of the train collision will continue overnight, the Greek Fire Service said in a statement late Wednesday.
The fire servicemen will continue the search “until the last stone is turned,” the Greek Fire Service said.
A 59-year-old Greek citizen has been arrested in connection with the ongoing investigation into the deadly crash, according to Greece’s Hellenic Police.
Meanwhile, authorities are still working to identify the dead, whose bodies were taken to the general hospital in the nearby city of Larissa, a Hellenic Police spokesperson said in a statement on Wednesday afternoon.
As for the injured, 72 remain hospitalized, including six in critical condition, while the rest have been treated and released, according to the Hellenic Fire Service.
The Greek government has declared three days of national mourning in the wake of the tragedy.
Greece “will stand by the families of the victims” and “work so that this ‘never again’ that I heard in Larissa will not be a hollow word,” Prime Minister Mitsotakis said in a short video address posted on his official Twitter account Wednesday.
Greek Transport Minister Kostas Karamanlis announced his resignation on Wednesday after visiting the crash site in Tempi, saying he felt it was his “duty” to do so “as a minimum sign of respect” to the victims.
“When something this tragic happens, it is impossible to go on as if it didn’t happen,” Karamanlis wrote in a post on Facebook. “This is called political responsibility.”
Prime Minister Mitsotakis announced he has appointed a new interim Minister of Infrastructure and Transport, George Gerapetritis, to hold the office until national elections.
Mitsotakis asked the new interim minister to establish an “independent and non-partisan committee of experts” to investigate the cause of the accident and investigate the “long-standing delays” in the implementation of railway projects.
Two more executives also resigned on Wednesday in the wake of the crash, according to Mitsotakis: Spyros Pateras, the president of the Hellenic Railways Association, and Christos Vinis, president and managing director of the national railway subsidiary ERGOSE.
ABC News’ Ellie Kaufman and Daphne Tolis contributed to this report.
Stephen Stills is revisiting his first solo tour for a new album. Stephen Stills Live at Berkeley 1971 is set to drop April 28, featuring archived songs hand-picked by Stephen.
The 14 previously unreleased live performances on the album were recorded August 20 and 21, 1971, at Berkeley Community Theater in Berkeley, California. It includes two songs with Stills’ Crosby, Stills & Nash bandmate David Crosby.
“The intimacy of the Berkeley Community Theater seemed to serve as a focal point between the audience and the energy surrounding the social climate of the day,” Stills shares. “It was my first tour as a solo artist and these shows were raucous and unrestrained, captured here in these recordings.”
Stephen Stills Live at Berkeley 1971 is available now for preorder in a variety of formats, including two-LP, CD, digital and a deluxe package that contains photos by famed photographer Henry Diltz, a numbered limited-edition self-portrait, framed lithograph and more.
Here is the track list for Stephen Stills Live at Berkeley 1971:
“Love The One You’re With”
“Do For The Others”
“Jesus Gave Love Away For Free”
“You Don’t Have To Cry” (with David Crosby)
“The Lee Shore” (with David Crosby)
“Word Game”
“Sugar Babe”
“49 Bye-Byes/For What It’s Worth”
“Black Queen”
“Know You’ve Got To Run”
“Bluebird Revisited”
“Lean On Me”
“Cherokee”
“Band Introductions”
“Ecology Song”
(JACKSON, Mo.) — The nightmare gripping Ken Middleton’s family appeared to be possibly over in 2005.
The same judge who in 1991 sentenced the Kansas City, Missouri, man to life without parole plus 200 years for the shooting death of his wife, ruled to vacate that same ruling and ordered that he receive a new trial based on a series of irregularities that the judge concluded made his original trial unconstitutional.
However, Middleton was never granted a new trial despite that overturned conviction nearly 20 years ago.
The reason is a technicality in Missouri state law that gave jurisdiction in the case to the Missouri Court of Appeals, not with the Jackson County circuit court. Despite the evidence Judge Edith Messina cited in her motion to declare his trial unconstitutional due to ineffective assistance of counsel, her ruling was overturned and ultimately proved toothless.
As a result, Middleton, 78, remains behind bars. He maintains his innocence and said his wife shot herself by accident while he was sleeping.
According to the decision obtained by ABC News, his lawyer failed to present evidence to the jury that no blood was found on his shirt, gun residue evidence went missing, there were irregularities involving the handling of the body at the crime scene, and, among other things, Middleton’s original attorney failed to perform basic duties like interviewing witnesses and calling independent experts. In fact, he presented no evidence at all, the ruling said.
“It upsets me so much,” Cliff Middleton, Ken Middleton’s only child who has dedicated his life to making sure his father does not die in prison, told ABC News. “The justice system in Jackson County is broken.”
The saga is now in its 32nd year, but the family said a state law passed in 2021 gives them renewed hope. It bypasses the appeals court by empowering local prosecutors to file a motion that asks the court to vacate or set aside a guilty verdict based on new information that shows the convicted person is not guilty.
The new law is already responsible for the release of several men in Missouri, including Kevin Strickland, who spent four decades in prison in a triple murder case, and Lamar Johnson, who walked out of prison a free man after serving 28 years for a murder. The reversals of more cases are expected over the coming year, experts told ABC News.
Now all the family must do is to get the Jackson County District Attorney Jean Peters Baker to appeal for Middleton’s release based on all the constitutional violations Messina cited nearly two decades ago.
But she said she will not.
Baker will not re-open the Middleton case because, unlike Messina in 2005, she does not believe the new evidence presented at that time reflects a wrongful conviction, according to spokesperson Michael Mansur.
“Our office greatly admires [Messina] and knows she has a reputation as a fair judge. But we don’t agree with her on this particular ruling in this case,” Mansur told ABC News.
What constitutes ‘new’ evidence
In a 2019 memo provided to ABC News by Mansur, Baker’s office challenges Middleton’s claims of new evidence primarily because of a procedural reason: The failure to introduce it at his original trial was “the result of counsel’s incompetence,” even though, according to Baker, it was available at the time. Robert Duncan, Middleton’s original attorney, died of a heart attack in 1996.
“By this definition of new evidence, Middleton does not have any new evidence. All of his witnesses either were available at the time of trial or — in the case of experts — could have been available at the time of trial if Mr. Duncan had sought out such experts,” Mansur writes. In addition to arguing ineffective assistance of counsel, Middleton has claimed the missing gun residue evidence from the victim’s left hand suggests police tampering, Baker’s office said it is unclear if it was collected at the scene, but even if it was, “it would not be conclusive” that the victim shot herself.
“Middleton was aware of this issue at least as early as 1993 … and could have raised his current complaints at the proper time,” the memo reads. “The weight of the evidence does not support the sinister spin” by Middleton.
The family and supporters characterize Middleton as the victim of a bureaucratic mess.
“We have unchallenged information of an erroneous conviction, yet [Baker] will not file. That’s just unbelievable to me. It’s a dereliction of duty,” Cliff Middleton said.
Jason Flom, a co-founder of the Innocence Project, a legal non-profit involved in criminal justice issues, told ABC News in a statement that Middleton’s case “is one of the most insane and terrifying miscarriages of justice I have ever heard of.”
Missouri’s exonerations record
Retired Missouri Supreme Court Chief Justice Michael Wolff, now a professor emeritus at the Saint Louis University School of Law, said the failure to initially grant Middleton a new trial in 2005 “was a procedural glitch.” “The new statute was intended to correct that, but the problem is, it’s a narrow pathway because it’s only at the bequest of the prosecutor” who is not obligated to pursue exoneration,” he said.
In Missouri, which remains one of 24 states that still has the death penalty, “there’s a lot of bias in favor of keeping convictions final,” Wolff said.
“This new [law] does bring some hope to people but hope is only pivotal if the prosecutor can be persuaded to pursue this,” Wolff said.
Another issue with the law is politics, said Ken Middleton’s attorney Kent Gipson. Because district attorneys are elected positions, he said putting the power in their hands is inherently “stupid.”
“A prosecutor doesn’t want to politically admit that their office put an innocent man in prison for 30 years. That couldn’t do anything for their future political career, even if it wasn’t on their watch,” he said.
According to the National Registry of Exonerations, a project jointly operated by the University of California at Irvine, Michigan State University and the University of Michigan, exonerations nationwide have been steadily rising over the last three decades: from 24 in 1989 to 268 in 2022. However, Missouri only logged a single exoneration last year and the highest yearly number of those exonerated in the state since 1989 is five — in 2010 and 2013, respectively.
Maurice Possley, a senior researcher at the registry, said the reason for such diminished numbers is cultural. “It’s a state that is not particularly open minded to the idea that people are wrongly convicted. Prosecutors tend to be more willing to dig in to preserve convictions,” he said.
Even counties with conviction integrity units, like Jackson County, are not immune to slow-walking wrongful verdict cases, Possley said.
According to Mansur, the unit helped to successfully overturn just one case in its four years of existence and currently doesn’t “have another one right now in which we’re planning to move ahead on.”
New prosecutor, judge sought
Gipson is currently asking for a special prosecutor and a new judge to address Middleton’s case. Last week the Kansas City Star editorial board blasted Baker and said she needed to reopen the case or recuse herself due to several conflicts of interest that Gipson outlines in his filing. For one, the judge who refused to hear Gipson’s motion to disqualify Baker worked under Baker in the prosecutor’s office before her current appointment.
Mansur said no conflict exists because Phillips “sits over criminal cases from our office routinely” and “was not a member of this office at the time of Middleton’s trial.”
(NEW YORK) — A Brooklyn man stole an American Airlines bus from John F. Kennedy International Airport and drove it through three boroughs before he was pulled over by police in downtown Brooklyn.
Burshawn Quildon, 43, is charged with grand larceny of an auto and criminal possession of stolen property. He allegedly jumped into the American Airlines bus that was left running in an airport lot at around 1:40 a.m. Wednesday.
An airport employee followed the stolen vehicle and called police. Officers then pursued the bus onto the Van Wyck Expressway and Grand Central Parkway in Queens, the FDR Drive in Manhattan and across the Brooklyn Bridge into Brooklyn, where it was finally pulled over on Cadman Plaza West.
Quildon has nine prior arrests, including robbery, marijuana possession, assault and transit fraud.
There were no passengers inside the bus, police said.
(WASHINGTON) — A review of ‘Havana syndrome” by the U.S. intelligence community finds it “very unlikely” that a foreign adversary or energy weapon is the cause, officials said Wednesday.
That’s according to a new assessment from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) released on Wednesday.
Instead, Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines said in a statement that the events, which are referred to officially as Anomalous Health Incidents, were probably the result of other factors such as “preexisting conditions, conventional illnesses, and environmental factors.”
Haines added that the evidence also did not indicate that a “causal mechanism,” such as a weapon, or a “unique syndrome” brought on the reported symptoms.
The report from ODNI added that confidence in the explanation was “bolstered by fact we identified medical, environmental and social factors that plausibly can explain many AHIs reported by U.S. officials,” but that the level of confidence varied across agencies.
“Needless to say, these findings do not call into question the very real experiences and symptoms that our colleagues and their family members have reported,” Haines said. “We are sincerely grateful to those who came forward, as it helped to not only shape our response, but identify areas where we need to improve our medical and counterintelligence protocols, which remains an ongoing process.”
In a statement of his own, CIA director William Burns noted the assessment was the product of “more than two years of rigorous, painstaking collection, investigative work, and analysis” and “one of the largest and most intensive” in the agency’s history.
But there are still many unanswered questions, and not everyone is pleased with what they called the limited information declassified to support the conclusion.
Mark Zaid, an attorney whose firm represents dozens of AHI victims, said in a statement to ABC News that the assessment “lacks transparency,” adding, “we continue to question the accuracy of the alleged findings.”
“Until the shrouds of secrecy are lifted and the analysis that led to today’s assertions are available and subject to proper challenge, the alleged conclusions are substantively worthless,” he said. “But the damage it has caused to the morale of the victims, particularly by deflecting from the government’s failure to evaluate all the evidence, is real and must be condemned.”
While this assessment is the result of the extensive known effort conducted by the government to identify the cause of strange symptoms that have plagued hundreds of diplomats, intelligence officers, and other U.S. personnel serving abroad, previous inquires have come to similar conclusions.
A comprehensive review conducted by the CIA and released in January found it was unlikely that a foreign power was behind most of the incidents, but a later interagency report found that some of the cases were likely brought on by directed energy or acoustic devices, suggesting they were the result of deliberate attacks.
“Havana syndrome” was first reported in late 2016 by State Department personnel stationed in the Cuban capital, but soon, diplomats stationed around the world began experiencing similar, unexplained neurological symptoms.
Symptoms are said to vary in type and severity, but often are reported to include the sudden onset of severe headaches, difficulty concentrating, auditory disturbances, and memory loss.
The initial incidents led to increased strain on the already fraught ties between the U.S. and Cuba, and eventually the American embassy was shuddered during the Trump administration.
Earlier this year, the State Department said it was reopening processing for all immigrant visa categories at the U.S. Embassy in Cuba and increasing its staffing numbers, even though Havana Syndrome was still a poorly understood threat.
“The fact that we have been able to augment our staffing posture at our embassy in Havana is a signal that we are confident in our ability to mitigate the risks, confident in our ability to take prudent steps to protect our people. But this is something we evaluate and reevaluate on a virtually a daily basis,” department spokesperson Ned Price said at the time. “Diplomacy is never a risk-free endeavor.”
In September 2022, the State Department announced it had started approving payments for victims of the anomalous health incidents in accordance with the HAVANA Act — the unanimously passed bill that authorizes agencies to compensate “personnel who incur brain injuries from hostilities while on assignment.”
While plans vary across the federal government, the State Department said in June 2022 that it would provide eligible victims a one-time, non-taxable, lump sum of between $140,475 and $187,300. The total would depend on whether the requestor had reemployment potential, if they required a full-time caregiver for activities of daily living, and other factors.
To qualify, a document published by the State Department says applicants must have sustained “an acute injury to the brain such as, but not limited to, a concussion, penetrating injury, or as the consequence of an event that leads to permanent alterations in brain function,” a medical diagnosis of a traumatic brain injury, or the acute onset of new persistent, disabling neurologic symptoms.
The injury also must have occurred on or after Jan. 1, 2016, and it must have happened while the impacted person or the victim’s direct family member was working for the department.
“Because of the varied symptoms and still-nascent understanding of how to test or otherwise screen for AHI impacts, the Department sought to establish a standard that it believes will be broadly inclusive of the types of injuries that have been reported by covered individuals to date,” the document states.
Jason Reitman, son of the late Ivan Reitman, who directed theoriginal Ghostbusters and its 1989 sequel, posted to his Instagram a photo that will get any franchise fan fired up.
The black-and-white snap shows the Ghostbusters: Afterlife director smiling next to co-writer Gil Kenan, who is taking the reins behind the camera for a new movie that will presumably follow the events of Jason’s hit Ghostbusters: Afterlife.
There’s a wall between the two collaborators, literally: a tiled one marked by the set construction crew as “Firehouse: Ground Floor, Main Entrance.” That would be set decoration standing in for the real-life FDNY Hook & Ladder 8 in downtown Manhattan, the firehouse most know as the Ghostbusters’ HQ.
Afterlife‘s end credits saw Ernie Hudson‘s now-mogul member of the original team entering the vintage firehouse, getting it ready for a new generation of professional paranormal investigators/eliminators.
Afterlife starred Mckenna Grace as Phoebe and Finn Wolfhard as Trevor, both grandchildren of Dr. Egon Spengler, who was played by Ghosbusters co-creator Harold Ramis before and after his 2016 death. He reappeared at the climax of Afterlife, thanks to the magic of computer effects. The original two films’ co-creator and writer Dan Aykroyd also returned, as did Annie Potts as Janine Melnitz, Sigourney Weaver as Dana Barrett and Bill Murray as Dr. Peter Venkman. The sequel also starred Paul Rudd as the younger busters’ science teacher, who ends up getting a little too involved in a paranormal invasion in a small town.
Not much is known about the movie, which will be the fifth to bear the Ghostbusters name but the fourth in official canon — sorry, 2016’s all-female reboot — except that it will haunt theaters this December.
