Australia will formally say goodbye to one of its most beloved stars on February 26, when a State Memorial Service will be held to honor Olivia Newton-John. The iconic singer, actress and activist died of cancer August 8 at age 73.
The memorial service is a free ticketed event scheduled for Hamer Hall, Arts Centre Melbourne, and is being planned along with representatives of Olivia’s family. There will be tributes from friends — presumably some of the more famous ones — and a musical performance by Australian singer Delta Goodrem.
“Dame Olivia Newton-John was an inspiration to many around the world — her work in cancer research and treatment saved lives and changed lives and her music was the soundtrack to a generation,” said Daniel Andrews, premier of the Australian state of Victoria, in a statement.
He added, “We know Victorians are eager to celebrate the life of a driving force in medical research and an icon of film and music, with a service befitting her international acclaim.”
If you want to travel Down Under for the event, you’ll need to register for the free tickets starting February 10 — visit vic.gov.au/olivia-newton-john for details on how to do it. If you want to watch the service online, it’ll stream live at that same web address at 4 p.m. Melbourne time, which is midnight EST.
You can also make a donation in honor of the late Grease star to the Wellness Programs at the Olivia Newton-John Cancer Wellness and Research Centre. To donate, visit onjcancercentre.org/donate.
Andrew Watt has become Ozzy Osbourne‘s go-to producer of late, having worked with the Prince of Darkness on his last two solo albums, 2020’s Ordinary Man and 2022’s Patient Number 9. Perhaps no one is more surprised about that development than Watt himself.
“When they first asked me, I kinda was timid about it,” Watt tells ABC Audio. “Not because I didn’t want to work with Ozzy, I just didn’t want to be responsible for making the worst Ozzy album that he’s ever made.”
That, of course, didn’t happen — Ordinary Man was hailed as a critical and commercial comeback for the Prince of Darkness, while Patient Number 9 earned Ozzy four nominations at this Sunday’s Grammys, including Best Rock Album. Working on Patient Number 9, Watt says, was “a little bit tougher” than Ordinary Man, but “in a good way.”
“It was, I would say, a challenge … to set it apart [from Ordinary Man],” Watt says. “What we did to set it apart was I feel like [Patient Number 9 is] way heavier, and it’s got all the guest guitarists.”
Those guest guitarists, which include Eric Clapton, Pearl Jam‘s Mike McCready, Black Sabbath‘s Tony Iommi and the late Jeff Beck, basically turned Patient Number 9 into Watt’s own superhero team-up movie.
“It’s so much fun to dream up these scenarios,” Watt says. “Let’s put Mike McCready on this, like, Van Halen-y, ’80s-sounding Ozzy song. Like, Mike McCready loves Ozzy and Randy [Rhoads] and Van Halen so much, he’s gonna f***ing come in and crush this.”
Should Ozzy want to reunite for a third album, Watt is at the ready.
“He’s become one of my best friends and like a family member,” Watt says. “I’ll make as many albums with him as he wants.”
(WASHINGTON) — U.S. employers added 517,000 jobs to their payrolls in January, the latest figures released Friday by the Labor Department show.
The number of jobs added far exceeded what economists had expected and is more than double the amount added in December — 223,000.
The biggest gains in employment last month occurred in leisure and hospitality (128,000), professional and business services (82,000), government (74,000) and health care (58,000).
The unemployment rate, meanwhile, dropped slightly to 3.4%, marking a 50-year low.
A little over three months after announcing their engagement, The Bachelorette alum Clare Crawley and fiancé Ryan Dawkins have tied the knot.
“Mr. And Mrs. Dawkins!” Crawley, 41, wrote on her Instagram Thursday, along with pics of her and the 47-year-old businessman’s wedding day.
Party of Five alum and Bachelor fan Jennifer Love Hewitt responded to the post, writing, “This makes me so happy!!!”
Dancing with the Stars pro Peta Murgatroyd added, “Big congratulations beautiful…You’re a stunning bride!”
Bachelor Nation also weighed in, with Bachelorette alum Tayshia Adams commenting, “You look stunning Clare!! So happy for your ever after!”
“Clare!!!!! Soooo beautiful and so happy for you both!!!!!” Trista Sutter, a runner-up on season 1 of The Bachelor, shared.
The Bachelorette season 15 star Hannah Brown gushed, “Congrats Claire — you are a beautiful bride.”
The Bachelor season 11’s Ben Higgins also offered his congratulations.
Crawley shared the news of her engagement back in October, “He has held me in my darkness, loves me through my healing, and we now celebrate the light together!” Clare captioned a photo of Dawkins getting down on one knee. “The easiest YES of my life”
Clare began dating Ryan in 2021, but didn’t go public with the romance until September of 2022, writing, “Him,” along with a video of them singing in the car together, before adding that she found her “perfect fit.”
Crawley previously got engaged to Dale Moss during season 16 of The Bachelorette in 2020, leaving the reality series early after hitting it off with the 34-year-old former football player. Adams took her place as the season 16 lead.
Crawley and Moss called it quits in January 2021. They reconciled a month later before splitting for good in September 2021.
Paramount+ has renewed the Yellowstone prequel 1923 for a second season, Deadline reports. Starring Helen Mirren and Harrison Ford, 1923 was Paramount+’s most-watched premiere ever when it debuted in December, pulling in 7.4 million total viewers across all platforms. The first Yellowstone prequel, 1883, starring Tim McGraw, Faith Hill and Sam Elliott, was a one-and-done. 1923 returns this Sunday after a brief hiatus…
Four episodes into its first season, NBC’s Night Court has gotten a season 2 renewal, the network announced on Thursday. The series stars The Big Bang Theory alum Melissa Rauch as judge Abby Stone, the unapologetic optimist daughter of the late Harry Stone — played in the original series by Harry Anderson, who died in 2018 at age 65 — as she follows in her father’s footsteps, presiding over a crew of oddballs and cynics. John Larroquette, who played prosecuting attorney Dan Fielding in the original series, reprises his role for the sequel. India de Beaufort, Kapil Talwalkar and Lacretta also star. Night Court has put up strong numbers since its January 17 premiere, reaching 25.7 million total viewers across all viewing platforms, according to NBC…
Nielsen reports Netflix’s Ginny & Georgia debuted at the top of the streaming rankings for the first week of 2023, according to The Hollywood Reporter. Season 2 of the coming-of-age drama, about a mixed-race teen and her 30-year-old mother, played respectively by Antonia Gentry and Brianne Howey, premiered on January 5 and amassed 2.52 billion minutes of viewing time for the week of January 2-8…
The Daily Show reporter Roy Wood Jr. will headline the 2023 White House Correspondents’ Association’s annual dinner on April 29. “It’s an honor to be a part of a long-running tradition of celebrating those members of the media, who work so hard to uncover the truth, and hold our government accountable,” Wood said in a statement on Thursday. “It will be a great night that will go down in the history books, or not, depending on which state you live in.” The White House Correspondents’ Dinner returned as a live event in 2022 following two years without it due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Daily Show host Trevor Noah hosted last year’s show. Wood also has a stand-up special, Imperfect Messenger, on Paramount+…
(NEW YORK) — Many were stunned when videos were released of Tyre Nichols, a 29-year-old Black man, being beaten to death by five Memphis police officers during a traffic stop.
Officers pulled Nichols from his car on Jan. 7, pepper sprayed him and used a taser, the footage shows. He managed to flee, but the officers caught up with him and held him on the ground as they punched and kicked him in the head and hit him with a baton, according to the video that was released last week.
Seven Memphis police officers have been relieved of duty, with the five involved in the beating charged with murder. Additionally, three Memphis Fire Department personnel were fired.
While it’s unclear what motivated the officers to act in that way, psychologists and other social experts told ABC News some people act differently in groups than when they are alone and may participate in group-based violence because of it.
Police may misperceive someone as a threat
George Smith, director of outpatient group therapy at McLean Hospital — a psychiatric hospital in Belmont, Massachusetts — said police group violence might be different from other forms of group violence because they may act when they view someone as a threat.
“I was just thinking about the five police officers, and they may have believed that there was an actual threat, either to the community or to themselves,” he told ABC News. “Thinking this person is a menace to the community, and we need to do something to protect humanity from this genuine threat, or it may be that they believe that this person was a threat to one of them.”
“And when that happens, your good judgment can go completely out the window,” he added.
Smith said the person police officers might think to be a threat could be completely innocent, but the violence can still occur anyway.
“Even in a more benign situation, when a traffic cop pulls somebody over, it may be a completely innocent person whose taillight was out,” he said. “But they don’t know if this person has a weapon in their glove compartment so there’s this unnatural tendency for them to get adrenalized and to approach the situation in a more belligerent way than was warranted.”
Wanting to feel part of a group
Experts told ABC News wanting to belong to a group is nothing new and extends from wild animals running in a pack to humans wanting to affiliate.
While joining a group may have been necessary for survival in prehistoric times, it is now for developing a sense of camaraderie and belonging, experts said.
“As people are part of a group, they start to feel identified with this group, they feel like it’s an important part of who they are, they might even come to define themselves in terms of being a member of a group,” Dr. Rebecca Littman, an assistant professor in the department of psychology at the University of Illinois Chicago, told ABC News.
“There’s different kinds of groups, some that are based on the premise of violence and others that are not,” she continued. “So, you feel like you’re very identified with this group, you want to be a good group member, you want to get along with everyone else. And that can lead kind of ordinary people who generally in their individual lives would never end up participating in violence.”
Those same people, even though they know violence is wrong, may still participate because they’ll feel shunned by the group if they don’t.
“People are afraid of losing a social status, particularly when it’s a group that they really care about,” said Littman, who has studied why people participate in group-based violence. “They don’t want to be ostracized or, even just in a less extreme form, they don’t want to be seen as the odd person out.”
Dr. Vivian Zayas, a professor in the department of psychology at Cornell University in New York, said if a person starts to go against what the group thinks, they might be seen as undermining the group.
“Strategically, there are consequences to people who don’t work well in a group,” Zayas told ABC News. “They can be left out of the group, they can be left out of decision-making, they can be marginalized, they could lose power and status. Those sorts of social punishments can be used to silence differing opinions.”
Groups can normalize violent behavior
Research has shown that people’s thoughts and actions are often influenced by how those around them think and act.
If a group normalizes a behavior, even if that behavior is bad — such as violence — then we might believe that behavior is acceptable.
“What can happen is that this group is creating this new set of social norms. Maybe in this group, we’re often in situations where we feel a lot of threat and we have to protect ourselves, and the way we protect ourselves is violence,” Littman said.
“So, you can kind of see how that violence in particular groups can become normalized in a lot of different ways and make people either themselves genuinely feel like it’s okay or at least feel like this is what is normal in my group,” she added.
Leaders can influence behavior
The experts told ABC News that because we are influenced by leaders — and leaders set examples for the group — if the leader believes in bad behavior, the group may follow.
“If that person has status in that group and if they’re saying that the behavior is appropriate for group members — even if initially, someone thought that the behavior is problematic — they might feel that or come to think that it’s more appropriate,” said Zayas.
Zayas added that someone in the group might also see that the leader was elevated by engaging in problematic behaviors and wasn’t punished or reprimanded so they think they can also engage in the behavior without getting in trouble.
Reports have emerged that Memphis Police Chief Cerelyn Davis adopted a “tough on crime” strategy when she took on the role.
Part of that included launching the SCORPION unit, which stands for Street Crimes Operation to Restore Peace in Our Neighborhood, of which the five officers were members. Activists and residents have said members of the unit used excessive force. The unit has since been disbanded.
“The process of listening intently to the family of Tyre Nichols, community leaders, and the uninvolved officers who have done quality work in their assignments, it is in the best interest of all to permanently deactivate the SCORPION Unit,” a statement from the department read.
This doesn’t mean that Davis advocated the use of violence nor that she encouraged her officers to be violent, but the officers may have felt they were fulfilling her mission, experts said.
“So, it became part of a shared mission and when you get that mission, and there’s buy-in, because you’re part of a group that believes this mission,” Smith said. “One’s ability to discern whether it actually is a perceived threat can get totally overshadowed by this belief that we together are saving the community from these threats that are out there.”
In a video posted on Jan. 26, Chief Davis condemned the officers’ actions and called the circumstances surrounding Nichols’ death “horrific.”
“I am not wavering in my commitment to you to have a police force that is here to serve and protect you,” she said. “Those five officers and others failed our community and they failed the Nichols family and that is beyond regrettable.”
(NEW YORK) — When Karissa Warren lost her job as a kitchen manager in December, she worried about how she and her husband would continue to pay off over $10,000 in credit card debt they had accumulated during previous financial rough patches.
Worsening the problem, high inflation had hiked the couple’s everyday costs, including meals for their 3-year-old daughter, said Warren, 31, who lives in Silver Spring, Maryland.
To help pay the bills, she focused on her side job as a baker, but the food prices made it nearly impossible for her to turn a profit, she said.
“The cost of everything is going crazy, especially eggs,” Warren said. “All of the recipes I make have eggs.”
On top of that, interest rates on the couple’s credit card have skyrocketed. Roughly two years ago, Warren and her husband consolidated their debt on a single card, which offered 0% interest for the first year. Then it ticked up to 5%. In recent months, that rate has doubled to 10%, Warren said.
“I’m really upset,” she said. “It’s a pressure every day.”
Warren is one of many Americans battered by a one-two financial punch of elevated inflation, which has sent household expenses soaring; alongside aggressive interest rate hikes, which have spiked credit card rates and interest rates for other loans that help cover the ballooning costs.
The setback could plunge some households into debt for years, as they struggle to make payments that keep up with the rising interest rates, experts said.
The average credit card user carried a balance of $5,805 over the last three months of 2022, research firm TransUnion found. The figure marked an 11% increase from the year prior.
The Fed has put forward a string of borrowing cost increases as it tries to slash price hikes by slowing the economy and choking off demand. That means borrowers face higher costs for everything from car loans to credit card debt to mortgages.
“Because the Fed has been raising rates aggressively over the past year, that really has a direct pass through to your credit card rate,” Ted Rossman, a senior analyst at Bankrate.com who focuses on the credit card industry, told ABC News.
“A lot of people may not have enough income coming in to support day-to-day expenses, so it lands on the credit card,” he added. “That becomes a very persistent cycle of debt, unfortunately.”
The average credit card interest rate offered in the U.S. over the last three months of 2022 stood at 21.6%, according to WalletHub, a jump from 18.2% a year prior.
At the same time, the share of people with ongoing credit card loans has grown. The proportion of credit card users who carry a balance has risen to 46% from 39% a year ago, Bankrate found.
Meanwhile, households looking for relief from high prices have seen an easing of inflation, but price increases remain unusually high.
Consumer prices rose 6.5% over the year-long period ending in December, which amounts to a significant slowdown from a summer peak but remains more than triple the Fed’s target inflation rate of 2%.
Price hikes for some items stand well above the overall inflation rate. The price of eggs has risen 60% over the past year; while the cost of flour has risen 23%, government data showed.
“The fact you’re paying more to fill your cart with groceries, to fill your car with gas — that’s directly leading to more spending and debt,” Rossman said.
Paula Green, 60, a gig worker raising her 14-year-old granddaughter, plunged $4,500 into credit card debt in November after spending thousands on her daughter’s wedding. The interest rate on her card, 13.99%, marked an increase from the rate on the card months before, she said.
Rather than pay the debt off relatively quickly at about $500 a month, Green has committed half as much to paying it down as she weathers inflation, she said.
“It has affected me drastically,” she said. “It has turned my budget on its head.”
The cost of food for Green and her granddaughter has jumped significantly, she said. A 12-pack of diet Coke cost Green $6.99 before the pandemic, she said; now it costs double that.
Green, who has worked freelance since 2009, is training for a customer service job at a cruise line company to find more reliable income as she faces at least two years of credit card debt, she said.
“I don’t think it’s going to calm down anytime soon,” she said.
Despite their debt, Warren and Green remain optimistic.
Warren said she is starting a new job next week that pays more than the one that laid her off. She’s hoping the added income will help her and her husband pay off their credit card debt within two years, and eventually buy a home, she said.
Green, meanwhile, said she has no regrets about going into debt for her daughter’s wedding.
“Both of my parents have a saying: ‘It’s only money, we make more,'” Green said.
Inflation will soften over the coming years, eventually reaching normal levels, experts said. But the easing of prices may require more interest rate hikes, known as monetary tightening, which make borrowing costs and in turn credit card rates even more expensive in the meantime, they added.
“The question is: How much tightening does it take to slow down the economy and bring down inflation?” William English, a former senior Fed economist and finance professor at the Yale School of Management, told ABC News. “It’s very hard to predict.”
(NEW YORK) — Americans’ confidence in how police are trained and their treatment of Black people both have fallen to new lows in an ABC News/Washington Post poll.
Following the death of Tyre Nichols after he was beaten by Memphis, Tennessee police on Jan. 7, just 39 percent of adults in the national survey are confident that the police in this country are adequately trained to avoid the use of excessive force. And just 41 percent are confident the police treat Black and white people equally.
Both are lows since first asked in ABC/Post polls nearly a decade ago.
The decline has been striking. In 2014, 54 percent of adults expressed confidence that the police are adequately trained to avoid excessive force; that’s since tumbled by 15 percentage points. Fifty-two percent said the police treat Black and white people equally; that’s 11 points lower now.
Indeed, this poll produced for ABC by Langer Research Associates, finds that 38 percent are “not confident at all” that the police treat Black and white people equally, while just 15 percent are very confident of this. On avoiding excessive force, 34 percent are not at all confident, vs. 12 percent very confident.
These polls were conducted across a long period of police killings of Black people and subsequent protests, from the shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, in August 2014 to the murder of George Floyd by police in May 2020 and now the death of Nichols, in which five Memphis officers were fired and have been charged with murder. His funeral was Wednesday.
An ongoing analysis by the Washington Post finds that police officers fatally shot at least 1,096 people in 2022, with Black people more than twice as likely as white people to be killed.
RACIAL/ETHNIC GAPS – While confidence in the police is down overall, wide gaps across racial and ethnic groups remain. Forty-six percent of white people think the police are adequately trained on excessive force, compared with 34 percent of Hispanic people and only 20 percent of Black people.
On equal treatment, the gap in perceptions between Black and white people is wider: While 48 percent of white people think the police treat Black and white people equally, just 12 percent of Black people say so. It’s 33 percent among Hispanic people.
That said, the biggest shift in these views has come among white people. The sense among white people that the police are adequately trained to avoid using excessive force has dropped by 16 points since 2014, compared with 10 points among Hispanic people and 9 points among Black people, both within the margin of error for these groups.
Similarly, the share of white people who say the police treat Black and white people equally has fallen by 15 points, compared with 9 points among Black people and 7 points among Hispanic people which is again, within sampling error in the latter two groups. This is the first time fewer than half of white people (48 percent, as noted) say the police treat Black and white people equally.
Notably, while 33 percent of white people and 32 percent of Hispanic people are not confident at all that the police treat Black and white people equally, this soars to 72 percent among Black people.
OTHER GROUPS – There also are wide partisan and ideological differences in these views. On treating Black and white people equally, 72 percent of Republicans are confident in the police, falling to 40 percent among independents and just 14 percent of Democrats. On avoiding the use of excessive force, confidence in the police runs from 60 percent of Republicans to 39 percent of independents and 20 percent of Democrats.
One reason is that 29 percent of Democrats are Black people, dropping to 9 percent of independents and 3 percent of Republicans.
Attitudes divide similarly on the basis of ideology. Confidence in the police to treat Black and white people equally ranges from 68 percent of conservatives to 38 percent of moderates and 9 percent of liberals. Confidence on excessive force is 55-40-15 percent across these groups, respectively.
Among other groups, on equal treatment, confidence is far lower in urban areas, 35 percent, as opposed to rural areas, 57 percent; it’s 42 percent in the suburbs. Gaps are similar on avoiding the use of excessive force.
Women are 10 points less confident than men on the question of equal treatment by the police, 36 vs. 46 percent. And confidence on this item is a slight 7 points lower in the Midwest and South than in the Northeast and West.
METHODOLOGY – This ABC News/Washington Post poll was conducted by landline and cellular telephone Jan. 27-Feb. 1, 2023, in English and Spanish, among a random national sample of 1,003 adults. Results have a margin of sampling error of 3.5 percentage points, including the design effect. Partisan divisions are 26-25-40 percent, Democrats-Republicans-independents.
The survey was produced for ABC News by Langer Research Associates, with sampling and data collection by Abt Associates of Rockville, Md. See details on the survey’s methodology here.
(NEW YORK) — Nearly two years ago in June 2021, mom Fran Humphreys got a phone call at work that no parent wants to receive.
“I was called at work and came home to the chaos and the grief,” the nurse recalled to ABC News’ Good Morning America.
Fran Humphreys was told that her 20-year-old daughter Sophia Humphreys had been found unresponsive in bed and died. Later, she and her husband learned that their daughter had allegedly been sold fake Percocet pills through the popular social media app Snapchat.
“Immediately, the law enforcement took her phone,” Fran Humphreys said. “And the detective called us shortly after and said that they were able to see that she had purchased it from a Snapchat dealer.”
Fran Humphreys is just one of 25 families who have sued Snap, Inc, the company behind Snapchat.
“No parent should have to go through this,” Fran Humphreys said.
One lawsuit, filed in Los Angeles by the Social Media Victims Law Center on behalf of 18 plaintiffs, and obtained by ABC News, claims the social media giant “facilitates – and profits from – designing a product that markets and sells lethal drugs to its young users” and accuses it of enabling drug dealers to allegedly sell drugs like fake prescription pills that are laced with fentanyl to minors and young adults.
Matthew Bergman, a founding attorney of Social Media Victims Law Center, told GMA Snapchat is the differentiator in this particular case.
“They all lost a child to fentanyl poisoning through counterfeit drugs obtained through Snap, not through Instagram, not through TikTok, but through Snap,” Bergman claimed. “This isn’t an internet problem. This isn’t a social media problem. This is a Snapchat problem.”
According to the lawsuit, “From 2020 through 2022, Snapchat was involved in over 75 percent of the fentanyl poisoning deaths involving children between the ages of 13 to 18 and involving a dealer who was connected with the child via social media.” The dealers, according to the lawsuit, would sell fatal fentanyl doses that were often counterfeit or disguised as prescription drugs.
Some of Snapchat’s features that set it apart from other apps, like automatically deleted messages, are especially attractive to drug dealers, the lawsuit alleges, making illegal activities harder to track.
Bergman told ABC News the families in the lawsuit hope to see changes to Snapchat, including ending the the disappearing messages feature, improving the detection of and permanent removal of drug dealers from the app, and improving notifications for parents and children of what they call a “clear and present danger” that exists on the app.
In a statement to ABC News, a spokesperson for Snap. Inc. said they could not comment on any active lawsuits but claimed the company was using “cutting-edge technology to … proactively find and shut down drug dealers’ accounts.”
“We block search results for drug-related terms, redirecting Snapchatters to resources from experts about the dangers of fentanyl. We continually expand our support for law enforcement investigations helping them bring dealers to justice, and we work closely with experts to share patterns of dealers’ activities across platforms to more quickly identify and stop illegal behavior,” the statement continued.
They added, “We will continue to do everything we can to tackle this epidemic, including by working with other tech companies, public health agencies, law enforcement, families and nonprofits.”
(NEW YORK) — Shoppers have seen significant price spikes on eggs as of late and since everyone wants to make the most of their hard-earned money, there are a few simple rules and tricks you should know to prevent prematurely tossing or wasting the staple protein.
Most egg cartons sold in stores get stamped with a “best if used by” or “best before” date for stores to control and rotate inventory. The U.S. Department of Agriculture explains that the printed “expiration date” is there so consumers know how long the eggs will be at their highest quality and best taste when stored in ideal conditions.
“Use by” dates show shoppers how long they have to consume the eggs before their overall quality diminishes. According to the USDA, the “use by” date “may not exceed 45 days including the day the eggs were packed into the carton.”
However, in many cases eggs can still be safely consumed beyond that date if they aren’t spoiled.
Eggs can last up to five weeks after they were packed, when stored in proper refrigerator conditions, according to The American Egg Board.
Here are some Grade A tips from the USDA to keep in mind when you need to know if you still have a good egg:
How to properly store store-bought eggs
Eggs purchased at the store should be brought straight home and refrigerated immediately at 40 degrees or colder, the USDA advises: “Keep them in their carton and place them in the coldest part of the refrigerator, not in the door.”
Typically, the coldest part of the fridge is lower shelves and towards the back of the unit.
Due to risk of bacteria growth and salmonella, don’t leave store-bought eggs out of the refrigerator for more than 2 hours. Any bacteria present in an egg can multiply quickly at room temperature, according to the USDA. When a cold egg sweats at room temperature, it can cause bacteria to move into the egg and spread more easily.
How long are eggs good once cracked?
Because bacteria can enter eggs through cracks in the shell, the USDA says to never purchase an egg that’s cracked.
“If eggs crack on the way home from the store, break them into a clean container, cover it tightly, keep refrigerated, and use within two days,” the agency states. “If eggs crack during hard cooking, they are safe. Remember that all eggs should be thoroughly cooked.”
How to use water to test if eggs are still fresh
Despite a “best by” or “packed on” date — or if you have a couple extra eggs out of their carton in the fridge and don’t remember when they got there — this sink or float test is a good baseline to determine if an egg is still fresh.
First, fill a bowl with enough cold water to cover the egg, and gently lower the egg in.
If it sinks to the bottom and stays on its side, the egg is very fresh, according to The Spruce Eats, which regularly tests common kitchen and cooking tricks like this one.
An egg that sinks to the bottom but floats on an angle or upright is slightly older but still safe to eat.
Eggs that float completely should be discarded as they’re too old to safely consume, The Spruce Eats notes.
As eggs age, the shell becomes more porous so more air is able to flow through and can create a larger air pocket between the egg membrane and shell. That small sack of air, once large enough, is what makes the egg float.
How long do you have to safely eat eggs once cooked?
Cooked eggs and dishes made with eggs should be eaten immediately after cooking. They can also be stored in a shallow container for quick cooling and then refrigerated for later use within three to four days.
When it comes to hard boiled eggs, the USDA states that the shell’s protective coating, or “bloom,” which is produced by a hen when it lays an egg, gets washed away “leaving bare the pores in the shell for bacteria to enter and contaminate it.”
For that reason, the USDA recommends hard-cooked eggs be refrigerated within two hours of cooking and used within a week.
How long do farmers market eggs stay fresh?
Because farm stands and farmers aren’t bound by the same USDA requirements to be washed, these eggs are often sold unrefrigerated and protected by their bloom.
According to The Happy Chicken Coop — an online publication and “group of chicken enthusiasts from around the world who have been raising chickens in their backyards for decades” — farm fresh eggs can be left unrefrigerated for up to a month, though after that, should be stored in a refrigerator, where they can be kept for up to six months.
Freeze raw eggs to use later
Yes, you can freeze eggs, just not in their shell because they will expand and break. So if you know you won’t finish an entire carton before the expiration, this is a great way to cut down on food waste.
According to The American Egg Board, there is a simple way to freeze eggs.
Crack the eggs into a bowl, gently whisk until whites and yolks are combined (not so much that air is introduced), and pour the eggs into an ice cube tray to freeze in individual servings. One cube is approximately half an egg. Once the cubes are frozen solid, transfer from the tray into a freezer-friendly, air-tight plastic bag.
Chef Jürgen David, director of pastry R&D at the Institute of Culinary Education, told ABC News’ Good Morning America that he suggests separating the whites from the yolks first “because many pastry applications call for just yolks or an unequal amount of yolks and whites.”
Gently beat the yolks until it forms a liquid and freeze and store as explained in the first method. One cube equals two egg yolks.
For the whites, pour directly into an ice cube tray, then freeze and store accordingly.
Frozen eggs keep best for two to three months, but can last up to a year in the freezer.
When ready to use the frozen eggs, thaw them in the refrigerator overnight or under running cold water and use them as intended.
