The latest incarnation of Runaway June is back, featuring longtime member Jennifer Wayne, along with Natalie Stovall, and new lead singer Stevie Woodward.
Not only does the threesome have a new single, “Broken Hearts (Do Broken Things),” they’re also ready with an original Christmas tune. And it’s an idea Jennifer’s been hanging onto for some time.
“I’ve had that idea for a couple years, and I’ve just never done it, and it’s never felt right to do it until this new version,” she explains. “And I told the girls my idea and they were like, ‘Oh my gosh, we love it!’ And so we got in and wrote it.”
“And it’s basically like, you know, I don’t want anything else. I want a cowboy for Christmas. And it is so cute and so fun,” she smiles.
Of course, Jennifer does know a thing or two about a “Cowboy for Christmas,” since her grandfather was legendary actor John Wayne.
“It really like sets the scene of like a country Christmas,” the third generation cowgirl says of the song. “Like this girl has all the stuff. She’s on a ranch and western and beautiful, but all she’s missing is her cowboy. It’s really cool.”
If you want even more yuletide tunes from Runaway June, you can check out the trio’s 2020 EP, When I Think About Christmas.
This Saturday, KISS‘ Paul Stanley will be making an appearance at the Wentworth Gallery in Short Hills, New Jersey, to unveil his latest series of paintings and mixed-media works. Stanley, who’s been painting for a decade, wants fans to know that you don’t need a degree to appreciate art.
“I want people to not be intimidated by the arts,” he tells ABC Audio. He notes, “When somebody says, ‘Well, I like that painting, but I don’t know anything about art,’ it’s like, ‘What do you need to know? You like it or you don’t like it.'”
Some of Stanley’s paintings are part of his new “Black Series,” in which he starts out with, not a white canvas, but a black canvas. “[It’s] really interesting because everything comes out from it,” he says. “Whereas most of us are taught to paint on a white canvas, to do it on black means it comes from darkness. And I think that’s great.”
The KISS frontman says his art gives him something that being a rock star doesn’t: less structure.
“A song has to have a key. It has to have lyrics that rhyme,” he explains. “And in terms of art, my sense of color … is based purely upon … aesthetically what pleases me. I like the freedom.”
The day after his appearance, Sunday, is the start of Hanukkah; Stanley, who’s Jewish, says he and his wife, who’s not, celebrate both Hanukkah and Christmas. He considers it very necessary, especially since he “grew up around people with [concentration camp] tattoos on their arms.”
“My duty and obligation as a Jew is the obligation I have to 6 million who were exterminated. So whether my children choose to practice Judaism in their own lives, knowing their heritage and knowing what my background is, is very, very important.”
The Music Center has rescheduled its tribute to record executive and A&M co-founder Jerry Moss, which was supposed to happen back in February but was postponed, with a new star-studded lineup now confirmed.
Peter Frampton, Amy Grant and Bad Company’s Paul Rodgers are confirmed for Live at The Music Center: Concert Celebrating Jerry Moss, Co-Founder of A&M Records, now happening January 14 at The Music Center’s Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles.
Other artists on the bill include Dionne Warwick and Joe Sumner (Sting‘s son), with special appearances by Herb Alpert, Burt Bacharach and Misty Copeland and prerecorded appearances by Sheryl Crow, Yusuf/Cat Stevens and Sting.
Limited tickets are currently available. They can be purchased here.
When Tom Cruise set a personal record for holding his breath underwater for six minutes while filming Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation, most thought besting that feat would an impossible mission of its own.
Enter Kate Winslet. The multiple Oscar winner not only beat Cruise, but bested her own record while filming Avatar: The Way of Water, for which she held her breath for a dizzying 7 minutes, 15 seconds.
The cast had to undergo specialized training to film underwater for the movie, which opens Friday — and the Titanic star knocked it out of the pool.
At a recent press event, Winslet and company had a laugh about the notion that none of the cast thought the breath-holding was a competition, because of course they did.
“When I surfaced — I actually have a video of when I surface from that breath hold. And the only reason I have it is because my husband snuck in,” she said of Edward “Ned” Smith.
“And I knew that day that [the trainer] Kirk had said to me, ‘We’re going to go for another one today, Kate.’ And I said to Ned, ‘No, look, please don’t come because I just don’t want you, like, videoing, and I’ll just feel pressure. Just please don’t be there.’ He snuck in, and I have the video of me surfacing saying, ‘Am I dead? Am I dead? Have I died?’ And then going, ‘What was it?’ Straight away, I wanted to know my time.”
“I couldn’t believe it was 7:15,” Winslet continues, as the cast and director James Cameron cheered. “But having been told … do you know the first thing I say is? ‘We need to radio set.’ I wanted Jim to know,” to which Cameron laughed, “Not competitive at all!”
(NEW YORK) — Two species that were previously extinct on the Galapagos Islands have reappeared a decade after an invasive predator population was eradicated, showing how impactful restoring and re-wilding ecosystems can be for addressing some of the world’s environmental and biodiversity crises, according to scientists.
Locally extinct cactus finches and geckos are now “thriving” in their restored habitats, according to biologists who recently traveled to the Rabida and Pinzon islands in the Galapagos to monitor the wildlife recovery 10 years after the removal of an invasive rodent species, according to Island Conservation, a nonprofit organization that focuses on preventing extinctions by removing invasive species from islands.
There have been frequent sightings of the cactus finches on Pinzon Island, a species considered extinct from the region for more than four decades.
A healthy population of geckos, known only from subfossil records dating back more than 5,000 years, have recolonized Rabida Island. Scientists believe that they were likely present but in such small numbers that they weren’t able to track the populations, Paula Castano, native species manager at Island Conservation, told ABC News.
Scientists have also documented the presence of Galapagos rails, known locally as pachays, an endemic bird never before reported on this island, on the upper part of Pinzon Island. The researchers believe the rails could have migrated from Santiago Island, another island in the Galapagos, and has now found Pinzon Island to be the ideal habitat to establish itself now that the invasive predatory species is gone.
For decades, perhaps even centuries, invasive rodents such as the black rat and the Norwegian rat, devoured native species and destroyed the natural ecosystems on Pinzon and Rabida Islands, located in the center of the Galapagos archipelago.
The first known black and Norwegian rats likely arrived in the Galapagos beginning in the 1500s, when pirates and buccaneers would travel and move between the islands, Castano said. Additional rodents likely traveled with Charles Darwin when he arrived on the islands in 1835, Castano added.
“And at that time, nobody was paying attention to if these animals were establishing and causing any problems to these native and endemic species,” she said. “But, it has caused a lot of damage.”
Therefore, many of the native species did not have the mechanisms to cope with the threat, Castano said.
The rodents were removed with the use of anticoagulant rodenticides, a process that took years to implement in order to protect native species, Castano said.
On Nov. 21, a technical team led by park rangers from the Galapagos National Park Directorate and Island Conservation, with support from the Jocotoco Foundation and the University of Idaho, carried out an ecological evaluation to record plant and animal recovery on the Galapagos Islands.
The team will use the data they collected to determine the degree of ecological restoration that the two islands currently maintain by comparing it to data collected prior to removal of the invasive rodents.
The stability of the islands’ natural ecosystems has experienced “much positive change” following the removal of the invasive rodents, including a return of ecosystem processes that provide a safe habitat for native plants and animals — much of them either existing in low populations or considered locally extinct, the nonprofit announced in a press release on Wednesday.
Every time an ecosystem loses a species it becomes imbalanced, highlighting the importance of conservation and maintenance of invasive species, Castano said.
“The management measures implemented on these islands in recent decades have been effective and today we can see the results,” said Danny Rueda Cordova, director of the Galapagos National Park, in a statement. “The islands have once again become the habitat of endemic species of great importance to the ecosystem.”
Local communities are also rooting for the sustainability of the islands, because their livelihoods rely heavily on the tourism industry and conservation efforts, Castano said.
In recent years, the giant tortoise, thought to be extinct for more than 150 years, has returned to nest on Pinzon Island, Cordova said.
“Because of our work to remove invasive rodents, the population now reproduces naturally without human intervention,” he said.
(FORT WORTH, Texas) — A jury has found former police officer Aaron Dean guilty of manslaughter in the death of Atatiana Jefferson, a 28-year-old Black woman who was fatally shot in her Fort Worth, Texas, home in 2019.
The jury considered both a murder charge and a lesser charge of manslaughter during its deliberations, according to Judge George Gallagher. Manslaughter is a second-degree felony according to Texas penal code. It’s punishable by two to 20 years in prison and up to a $10,000 fine.
Dean’s sentence will be decided by the jury. The sentencing phase will begin Friday morning at 10 a.m. Eastern time.
Throughout the five days of testimony, the jury heard from Jefferson’s now-11-year-old nephew Zion Carr, who was in the room when she was shot.
Jurors also heard from Dean’s partner that night, Officer Carol Darch, the call center operator who gave Dean and Darch the information about Jefferson’s home that they received that night, and Dean himself. Additionally, Jurors heard from Richard Fries, the deputy medical examiner in Tarrant County, several other Fort Worth officers and detectives, a forensics video expert and law enforcement experts.
On Oct. 12, 2019, Dean and another officer responded to a non-emergency call to check on Jefferson’s home around 2:30 a.m. because a door was left open to the house.
Dean did not park near the home, knock at the door or announce police presence at any time while on the scene, according to body camera footage and Dean’s testimony.
Dean testified that he suspected a burglary was in progress due to the messiness inside the home when he peered through an open door. When Dean entered the backyard, body camera footage shows Dean looking into one of the windows of the home.
Jefferson and Zion were playing video games when they heard a noise, according to his testimony. Zion said in testimony his aunt had left the door open because they burned hamburgers earlier in the night and were airing out the smoke.
Jefferson grabbed her gun from her purse before approaching the window, Zion testified. Police officials have said Jefferson was within her rights to protect herself.
In body camera footage, Dean can be heard shouting, “Put your hands up, show me your hands,” and firing one shot through the window, killing Jefferson.
Dean resigned from the police department before his arrest. Fort Worth Chief of Police Ed Kraus has said Dean was about to be fired for allegedly violating multiple department policies.
ABC News’ Lisa Sivertsen contributed to this report.
(MEDFORD, Ore.) — A day after Alejandra, which is not her real name, arrived for a job harvesting marijuana at a farm near Medford, Oregon, she says things took a harrowing turn when armed guards prevented workers from leaving.
“Holding a gun, one of them said, ‘No one goes out. No one goes out until you’re done trimming the pot. No one goes out and no one comes in,’” the undocumented mother of three told ABC News.
“You feel horrible. You feel humiliated, trampled on. You feel like dying,” Alejandra said.
Pot was legalized for recreational use in Oregon in 2015. The goal was to generate tax revenue for the state while curbing the black market. But years later, foreign drug cartels have taken advantage of the limited oversight by running illegal farms on the backs of exploited migrant workers, officials told ABC News.
On these unlicensed farms in southern Oregon, estimated to be in the thousands, workers like Alejandra are often forced to live and work in deplorable conditions as they tend to the crops.
“We were prisoners, because we couldn’t go out. We worked very long hours, sometimes until 2 or 3 in the morning. They were constantly pushing us to work faster, to trim the pot,” Alejandra said.
The work was supposed to take 15 days, but ended up lasting an entire month, Alejandra said. “I feared for my life, because [the guards] would act really crazy. I kept thinking about my kids, my mother. Wishing I could see them again. That’s all I could think about.”
Over the past year, ABC News has been tracking the underbelly of marijuana legalization in southern Oregon, where federal, state and local law enforcement are working together to combat the growing problem of “narco slavery.” The three-part investigation, “THC: The Human Cost,” is airing this week on “ABC News Live.”
Special Agent-in-Charge Robert Hammer leads the initiative to root out Oregon’s illegal pot farms for Homeland Security Investigations’ Pacific Northwest Office. Last August, the news of a dying man left at a gas station set off alarm bells for Hammer and his team.
“We were able to track that [person] back as a worker on one of the farms,” Hammer said.
“We’re not trying to look at it as, ‘Oh, this is just another marijuana operation.’ We’re really trying to focus on the fact that this is the exploitation of people. This is the destruction of the environment through illegal pesticides,” Hammer said.
“The marijuana black market is out of control in the United States and threatens the integrity of the already struggling regulated cannabis industry,” said Terry Neeley, founder and managing director of West Coast AML Services, which creates risk management programs for financial institutions to safely bank marijuana-related businesses. “This crime of human slavery is not unique to the U.S. Narco slavery will spread around the world like a cancer as other countries legalize marijuana. Tough drug laws need to be in place at the state level and aggressively enforced to curb the narco-slave epidemic,” he said.
ABC News embedded with HSI on a joint raid with local authorities in October. On a property about 20 miles outside of Medford, agents found 17 workers and a 2-year-old toddler.
A total of three neighboring properties were also raided. At one site, law enforcement says they counted a little over a hundred illegal greenhouses, more than 8,500 black market marijuana plants and 7,000 pounds of processed illegal cannabis.
After each raid, authorities bulldoze and demolish the grow site in order to keep the illegal farms from resurfacing. A nongovernmental organization called Unete steps in to make sure workers, who are mostly undocumented, have access to food and shelter.
Many workers arrive to the U.S. from Mexico and Central America desperate for work, Unete co-director Kathy Keese told ABC News. Keese said the workers’ vulnerability makes them easy targets for human trafficking and exploitation by the cartels.
“You can’t talk about it, because you don’t know who you can be talking to, and they might seek retaliation with your family. So it’s better to stay silent,” said Maria, which is not her real name. She also worked on a cartel-run pot farm in Oregon.
Both Alejandra and Maria asked for their real names not to be used, because they fear retaliation from the cartels.
Maria said she heard about the job through someone who called themselves a contractor. She was told they paid well, and they didn’t check her immigration status.
“They told us, it’s like you were going to harvest grapes – you’ll come and go. But when we got there, it wasn’t like that,” Maria said.
Like Alejandra, once Maria began working on the farm, armed guards prevented her from leaving until the harvest was over. She said there were no bathrooms or beds for the more than 200 workers there. She slept on the floor or on an air mattress.
In the summer heat, she and others were forced to work from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m., Maria said. The guards would determine when they would wake up, eat and sleep.
When police raided the farm, Maria said she ran into the mountains and hid for 12 hours because she feared she would be thrown in jail or deported. When she returned to the camp, everything — and everyone — was gone.
Last year, Oregon lawmakers agreed the problem with illegal pot farms is out of control, recognizing the cartels had infiltrated the industry and migrants were being trafficked to work the fields.
But help can’t come fast enough.
Currently, 21 states and Washington, D.C., have legalized the recreational use of marijuana. Some advocates say it needs to be decriminalized nationally to prevent cartels from smuggling cannabis to buyers in states where it’s still illegal.
Rep. Earl Blumenauer, D-Ore., blames the problem on “dysfunctional federal policy.”
“The states have been forced to step up and do it themselves. People who try to play by the rules are dramatically disadvantaged. They face higher costs. There’s no effective regulation for the people who cheat. In fact, the incentives are for the black market,” Blumenauer told ABC News.
Meanwhile, officers in Oregon are hoping to combat labor exploitation by creating more incentives for farm workers to come forward.
“The law is very clear. If you’re a victim of human trafficking, the law is on your side. There are various protections that can be put in place in order to mitigate any type of immigration concern that victims would have,” Hammer said.
Alejandra and Maria both said they never got paid for their work. The contractors vanished, leaving the women with nothing but bad memories and the fear it will happen again.
“A lot of people have gone through the same, and even worse; they are no longer with us to tell their stories,” Alejandra said.
(ALBANY, N.Y.) — New York Gov. Kathy Hochul signed legislation Thursday banning the sale of dogs, cats and rabbits in retail pet stores throughout the state.
Animal activists have been calling for such a ban for years contending that pet stores are often stocked with animals that are bred and abused in “puppy mills” and other mass breeding centers.
“Dogs, cats and rabbits across New York deserve loving homes and humane treatment,” Hochul said in a statement.
Under the law, which goes into effect in 2024, retail stores that previously sold pets can still operate and sell pet supplies and other accessories. They also have the option to charge shelters and rescue groups rent to use their space for adoptions.
Store owners face a $1,000 fine for violating the new rules.
State Sen. Michael Gianaris, who co-sponsored the bill, said that puppy breeding mills have been known to keep animals in unsanitary conditions, where they’re abused and neglected.
“Today is a great day for our four-legged friends,” he said in a statement.
The American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals has pushed the governor and other state leaders to do more against the puppy mill pipeline and go after stores that sell animals from those facilities. A report released this year by the ASPCA found that 1 out of 4 of puppies shipped to New York state pet stores came from dog brokers who buy puppies from licensed and unregulated breeders and resell the animals to stores.
California was the first state to ban the sale of pets in 2019 and four other states, Washington, Maine, Maryland and Illinois, have followed suit.
“We are hopeful that this enormous step by New York State may encourage other states to take similar action to stop the cruel commercial breeding industry from supplying pet stores within their borders,” Matt Bershadker, the president and CEO of the ASPCA, said in a statement.
Some pet shop owners, however, criticized the governor and state legislature for the bill, saying the move hurts their businesses without going after the root problem.
“We have policies like this where everybody just makes the assumption that every single breeder that a pet store works with looks like the ones you see on TV that are filthy and the [dogs] are dying, and that just simply isn’t the case,” Emilio Ortiz, the manager of the New York pet store CitiPups, told NY1.
Gianaris, however, argues that there isn’t a single New York pet store that hasn’t been touched by the puppy mill industry.
“That’s why we should ban it outright. There is no such thing as a responsible retail sale of animals in New York,” he told WABC, ABC News’ New York station.
(WASHINGTON) — The District of Columbia Bar association’s disciplinary counsel called Thursday for Rudy Giuliani’s disbarment after a preliminary finding that Giuliani violated at least one rule of attorney practice when, as the attorney for then-President Donald Trump, he pressed a baseless, failed legal challenge to the 2020 election results in Pennsylvania.
“This case, the seriousness of the misconduct, calls for only one sanction and that is a sanction of disbarment,” Phil Fox, a lawyer for the D.C. Bar, said at a disciplinary hearing in Washington. “I think it was a fundamental harm to the fabric of the country that could well be irreparable.”
Thursday’s hearing is only a step in a long process that could lead to Giuliani’s disbarment in the nation’s capital. His law license has already been suspended — but not revoked — in New York, where a court last year found he made “demonstrably false and misleading statements” about his attempts to overturn the results of the 2020 election. Giuliani has appealed the decision.
Giuliani’s attorney, John Leventhal, said Thursday that Giuliani’s service to the nation mitigated the need for the District of Columbia to disbar him.
“Let’s take politics out of this equation and treat Mr. Giuliani like any other lawyer,” said Leventhal.
“A letter of reprimand or private admonition” would be more appropriate, Leventhal said.
Fox called Giuliani’s previous service as United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York and as mayor of the city of New York “admirable,” but told the disciplinary committee it did not justify a sanction less than disbarment.
“It’s like it’s two different people,” Fox said during the hearing. “There’s the person who responded the way very few people could have responded to 9/11 … and there’s the person who tried to undermine the legitimacy of a presidential election without a basis to do so.”
“I would like to personally object to Mr. Fox’s attack on me as having tried to undermine American democracy when there’s not a single fact in the record to support that argument,” Giuliani responded as Leventhal and another defense attorney, Barry Kamins, urged him to stop. “It is a typical unethical cheap attack.”
A decision from the disciplinary committee is expected in late February or early March. The D.C. Court of Appeals would make a final decision on whether Giuliani would be disbarred, a determination that could have consequences on his ability to practice law in other places.
(SAN DIEGO, Calif.) — A father is warning about how serious the flu can be, especially for children, as his 10-year-old son remains hospitalized with the virus.
Cory Tamborelli, from Ramona, California — about 34 miles northeast of San Diego — said his son, Tristan, first started experiencing flu symptoms about a week and a half ago.
‘A fever and a little bit of a runny nose,” he told ABC News local affiliate KGTV.
However, the young boy’s condition rapidly deteriorated and within 48 hours, Tristan was unresponsive.
“He was limp, couldn’t move, couldn’t talk. It was the most scared I’ve ever been in my life,” Tamborelli said.
Tristan was life-flighted to Rady Children’s Hospital in San Diego, where he tested positive for two strains of flu, according to an update from his aunt, Sara Presley Scott.
Doctors discovered that Tristan’s liver and kidney were failing. He was rushed to the pediatric intensive care unit, where he was sedated and placed on a ventilator.
His aunt said he needed to be placed on dialysis to help support his non-functioning kidney.
“It was so bad. I was scared he wasn’t going to make it. You feel helpless,” Tamborelli said. “Nothing you can do.”
Hospitals across the country have been reporting that they are at capacity or near capacity as the flu season has started earlier than usual.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, some children are at higher risk of developing flu-related complications including infants, those up to age 5, American Indian/Alaskan Native children, and those up to age 18 with chronic health problems.
Tristan falls into that latter category. Tamborelli told KGTV that his son suffered a stroke as an infant and, as a result, has several underlying conditions including epilepsy and a blood clotting disorder.
“Each year, millions of children get sick with seasonal flu, thousands of children are hospitalized and some children die from flu,” according to the CDC.
Currently, children age 4 and under are being hospitalized at a rate of 42.3 per 100,000 and children between ages 5 and 17 at a rate of 17.9 per 100,000 — the highest rates recorded since the 2009-10 season, which was the year of the swine flu outbreak, CDC data shows.
Additionally, at least 21 pediatric deaths have been recorded so far this season.
Tristan has since come off the ventilator and his condition is starting to improve, although doctors told his family it will likely be a long road to recovery.
Now, Tamborelli is urging families to make sure their children are vaccinated as the U.S. heads into the colder weather months.
According to CDC data, about 42.5% of all children have been vaccinated as of the week ending Nov. 26, the latest date for which data is available.
This is similar to the 40.9% of children who were vaccinated this time last year but less than the 46.9% who were in 2020.
This year, a CDC study — conducted alongside other experts — found that flu shots were 75% effective against life-threatening influenza.
Tamborelli said Tristan’s flu shot from his pediatrician was delayed last month but is advising other parents not to delay and to be on the lookout for flu symptoms.
“Keep an eye out. If they get sick, and you’re not sure, take them to the hospital,” he told KGTV. “I’d hate to have anyone else go through this.”
