With spooky season just around the corner, the Trinity of Terror tour is making its return.
The triple bill of Motionless in White, Black Veil Brides and Ice Nine Kills will reunite for a second run beginning Saturday, September 3, in Omaha, Nebraska. For Motionless in White, the tour will mark their first U.S. outing since the release of their new album, Scoring the End of the World.
When the first Trinity of Terror leg launched in March, Motionless had just announced the details of Scoring the End of the World alongside the premiere of its first single, “Cyberhex.” Speaking with ABC Audio, frontman Chris “Motionless” Cerulli recalls debuting “Cyberhex” during those first shows.
“It went really well,” Cerulli shares. “I didn’t know what to think about how the song would go over well because it’s a long song, and historically longer songs just really taper off as they go on in a live scenario.”
“But [‘Cyberhex’] came out the week … of the tour starting,” he continues. “And I think that kinda lit a fire under the fans to learn the words, show up and sing along.”
Cerulli adds that he could feel a shift in the crowd’s energy when they realized they were hearing new Motionless material.
“Whether they were rejoicing at the fact that they didn’t have to hear another song that they’ve already heard 1,000 times, or whether they were actually just legitimately excited for the new song for what it was, I don’t know, and I don’t care,” Cerulli laughs.
Along with “Cyberhex,” Scoring the End of the World includes the single “Masterpiece,” the first Motionless in White song to hit the top 10 on Billboard‘s Mainstream Rock Airplay chart.
Dave Davies recently published a candid new memoir titled Living on a Thin Line, and now the founding Kinks lead guitarist is set to release a companion musical compilation with the same title.
Living on a Thin Line is a 13-track collection that will be released on CD on Friday, September 9, while a two-LP vinyl version is due out on January 13, 2023, four days before the physical version of his autobiography will be published in the U.S. The CD and vinyl editions can be preordered now at Amazon.
The album features a selection of previously released solo studio recordings and live performances, as well as brand-new mixes of two of Dave’s songs created by his son Simon.
The new mixes are of “This Is the Time,” a track from Davies’ 2007 album Fractured Mindz, and of a live version of the Dave-penned 1971 Kinks tune “Strangers” that he performed at a 1999 concert in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin.
Among the other songs on the compilation are “The Lie!,” “Displaced Person” and “Fortis Green” from 2002’s Bug; “This Precious Time (Long Lonely Road)” and “Cradle to the Grave” from 2018’s Decade, a collection of unreleased tracks Dave recorded during the 1970s; and rerecorded versions of The Kinks’ “Death of a Clown” and “Susannah’s Still Alive” that appeared on Dave’s 1998 Kinked album.
The new album also includes three performances from Dave’s 2000 concert album Rock Bottom: Live from The Bottom Line — versions of The Kinks’ “Look Through Any Doorway,” “Living on a Thin Line” and “You Really Got Me.”
Davies’ Living on a Thin Line book was released via physical formats in the U.K. — and digitally worldwide — in July.
Here’s the full track list of the Living on a Thin Line compilation:
“The Lie!”
“Displaced Person”
“Fortis Green”
“This Precious Time” (Long Lonely Road)”
“Cradle to the Grave”
“Strangers” (Live) (2022 Edit)
“Death of a Clown”
“Susannah’s Still Alive”
“Unfinished Business”
“Look Through Any Doorway” (Live)
“Living on a Thin Line” (Live)
“You Really Got Me” (Live)
“This Is the Time” (2022 Edit)
Fantasy fans everywhere can rejoice – the first two episodes of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Powerare finally here. The cast of the Prime Video series tells ABC Audio what to expect from the new adaptation, set 1,000 years before J.R.R. Tolkien’s iconic stories.
Morfydd Clark stars as the Elf warrior Galadriel and she says even if you haven’t seen any of the movies or read any of the books, you’ll have no problem jumping into the show.
“I think you can come in at any point,” Clark said. “I started with The Hobbit, some people start with Lord of the Rings, and I guess some people start with ours. And hopefully it will take them to the books, as well.”
Nazanin Boniadi plays the human healer Bronwyn in the series, and she says that the five realms that the series portrays are all unique and “magnificent in their own right.”
“When you watch it, you almost feel like you’re immersed in that world,” Boniadi says. “The costumes are distinct. The accents are distinct, the color schemes, the everything – it’s just really gorgeous to watch.”
Clark enjoyed almost everything about working on the series, but says her favorite part was learning stunt choreography.
“They made me feel really powerful, made me do things that I never imagined I could do,” Clark says. “And the more powerful I felt physically, the closer I felt to an immensely powerful Elf.”
Charlie Vickers, who plays Halbrand, a human from the Southlands, wants to make one thing clear. While this show is distinctly its own, it’s still Tolkien “at its core” and focuses on themes “we can all relate to. Stories of hope and stories of love and loss and despair.”
(NEW YORK) — Here are the scores from Wednesday’s sports events:
MAJOR LEAGUE BASEBALL
INTERLEAGUE
Tampa Bay 2, Miami 1
Washington 5, Oakland 1
Chicago Cubs 7, Toronto 5
AMERICAN LEAGUE
Houston 5, Texas 3
Baltimore 4, Cleveland 0
Seattle 5, Detroit 3
Chicago White Sox 4, Kansas City 2
Boston 6, Minnesota 5
LA Angels 3, NY Yankees 2
NATIONAL LEAGUE
Milwaukee 6, Pittsburgh 1
San Diego 5, San Francisco 4
NY Mets 2, LA Dodgers 1
Atlanta 3, Colorado 2
St. Louis 5, Cincinnati 3
Philadelphia 18, Arizona 2
WOMEN’S NATIONAL BASKETBALL ASSOCIATION PLAYOFFS
Chicago 85, Connecticut 77
Las Vegas 78, Seattle,73
MAJOR LEAGUE SOCCER
Philadelphia 4, Atlanta 1
Columbus 1, Miami 0
New York 1, CF Montral 0
Chicago 0, New England 0 (tie)
LA Galaxy 2, Toronto FC 2 (tie)
DC United 2, New York City FC 1
Houston 2, Los Angeles FC 1
Nashville 4, Colorado 1
Orlando City 3, Seattle 2
Real Salt Lake 3, Minnesota 0
Portland 0, Austin FC 0
(WASHINGTON) — Democrat Mary Peltola is projected to win the Alaska special general election for the state’s sole House seat, ABC News reports.
Peltola defeated two Republicans — former Republican Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin and Nick Begich — and will be the first Democrat to represent the state in the House in nearly half a century, succeeding Rep. Don Young, who died in March.
Peltola will also be the first Alaska Native to represent the state in Congress.
“What’s most important is that I’m an Alaskan being sent to represent all Alaskans. Yes, being Alaska Native is part of my ethnicity, but I’m much more than my ethnicity,” Peltola said following the announcements of the results according to the Anchorage Daily News.
The election, which was called on Wednesday some two weeks after voting ended, was historic for a more technical reason: It was the first Alaska race that used ranked-choice ballots.
The process — which advocates said would encourage more consensus-building but Palin criticized as “convoluted” — worked like this: If a candidate in the election had initially won more than 50% of first-choice votes, they would have won the race outright. That didn’t happen in the special race on Aug. 17. (Peltola ended up with about 40%.)
Then, the candidate with the least amount of first-place votes — Begich — was eliminated and that candidate’s voters instead had their ballots redistributed to their second choice until one candidate got at least 50%.
Peltola is an indigenous Yup-ik Alaskan and former member of the Alaska House of Representatives. As a state lawmaker, she chaired the bipartisan Bush Caucus of rural politicians. In addition, she served in the Kuskokwim River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission before leaving for her congressional campaign.
On the trail, she prioritized climate change, responsible resource development and infrastructure for airports, ferries, highways and energy grids.
Peltola will only serve the remainder of Young’s term, which ends in January. She is on the ballot again in November — along with Palin and Begich — to try and win a full two-year term.
In a statement Wednesday, Palin repeated her criticism of ranked-choice voting, saying it “was sold as the way to make elections better reflect the will of the people” but that it has the “opposite” effect.
She said that “though we’re disappointed in this outcome, Alaskans know I’m the last one who’ll ever retreat. Instead, I’m going to reload. With optimism that Alaskans learn from this voting system mistake and correct it in the next election, let’s work even harder to send an America First conservative to Washington in November.”
(WASHINGTON) — Lawyers for former President Donald Trump on Wednesday responded to the Justice Department in the dispute over Trump’s request for a “special master” to review materials the FBI seized at his Mar-a-Lago estate.
Trump’s lawyers have argued to a federal judge in Florida that the review is needed to deal with matters they argue could be covered by executive privilege.
Late Tuesday, the Justice Department, ahead of a court hearing Thursday, laid out in extraordinary detail DOJ’s efforts to obtain highly classified records they allege were improperly stored at Mar-a-Lago since Trump’s departure from the White House, and the resistance — which they describe outright as obstructive conduct, that they were met with by Trump’s representatives in their efforts to have them handed over.
Judge Aileen Cannon has indicated she was leaning toward granting a request from Trump’s legal team to appoint a special master to intervene in the ongoing review of documents.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
(NEW YORK) — Last year saw record levels of major greenhouse gases, including carbon dioxide and methane, released into the Earth’s atmosphere, according to an international climate report.
The annual State of the Climate report, published Wednesday in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society and led by scientists from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Centers for Environmental Information, also found that global sea level and ocean heat reached record highs in 2021.
“The data presented in this report are clear — we continue to see more compelling scientific evidence that climate change has global impacts and shows no sign of slowing,” NOAA administrator Rick Spinrad said in a statement. “With many communities hit with 1,000-year floods, exceptional drought and historic heat this year, it shows that the climate crisis is not a future threat but something we must address today as we work to build a Climate-Ready Nation — and world — that is resilient to climate-driven extremes.”
Greenhouse gas emissions from human activities are the “most significant driver of observed climate change since the mid-20th century,” according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, warming the climate as they build up in the atmosphere.
In 2021, the global annual average atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration was 414.7 parts per million (ppm) — 2.3 ppm greater than the amounts measured in 2020, according to the latest State of the Climate report. That marks the highest amount measured since 1958 — the start of the instrumental record — and in at least the last million years, based on paleoclimatic records, the report found. It was also the fifth-highest growth rate in the modern record.
Two other major greenhouse gases — methane and nitrous oxide — also saw record concentrations last year, according to the report. The annual increase in methane was the highest in the modern record, and the growth rate of nitrous oxide the third-highest, it found.
Last year was the fifth- or sixth-warmest on record, depending on the dataset referenced, with the last seven years (2015-2021) the seven warmest years on record, according to the report.
Global ocean heat content, measured from the ocean’s surface to a depth of more than 6,000 feet, saw record levels in 2021, “indicative of steadily increasing heat in Earth’s system,” according to the report. Meanwhile, the global sea surface temperature cooled compared to 2019 and 2020, due to the ongoing La Niña conditions in the tropical Pacific, though it was higher than the 1991-2020 average, the report found.
For the 10th year in a row, the global average sea level rose about 4.9 mm to a new record high, according to the report. The level was about 97 mm higher than the average recorded in 1993, when satellite measurements began, the report stated.
Both global ocean heat content and global average sea level saw “year-on-year increases substantially exceeding their trend rates of recent decades,” the report stated.
Among other highlights, the report found that tropical cyclone activity was “well above average” in 2021, with 97 named tropical storms during the Northern and Southern Hemisphere storm seasons compared to the 1991-2020 average of 87. Last year’s storm season saw Hurricane Ida, a category 4 cyclone that was the costliest U.S. disaster last year and the fifth most expensive hurricane on record since 1980, with $75 billion in damage, the report noted.
The climate report, now in its 32nd issuance, is based on contributions from more than 530 scientists in over 60 countries.
“The 2021 AMS State of the Climate provides the latest synthesis of scientific understanding of the climate system and the impact people are having on it,” American Meteorological Society associate executive director Paul Higgins said in a statement. “If we take it seriously and use it wisely, it can help us thrive on a planet that is increasingly small in comparison to the impact of our activities.”
(JACKSON, Miss.) — Six hundred Mississippi National Guard members will deploy to Jackson starting Thursday to help with water distribution, officials said Wednesday, as they grapple with an ongoing water crisis plaguing residents.
No timeline was given when the water pumps at Jackson’s O.B. Curtis Water Treatment Plant will be fixed, but 72 hours of bad weather has caused significant service interruptions at the plant, Gov. Tate Reeves said at a press conference Wednesday.
“There is a tremendous amount of work to be done at the O.B. Curtis plant,” he said. “There will be future interruptions; they are not avoidable at this point.”
Jackson has been using backup pumps since the main pumps were damaged, Reeves said Monday.
Officials said there would be no reliable running water in Jackson, which will impact up to 180,000 people until the pump is fixed.
State officials also warned residents not to drink the water from the pipes if they could avoid it, adding that if they must use the water, then boil it first.
“Don’t open your mouth in the shower and don’t give your pets the water,” Jim Craig, the senior deputy and director of the state’s office of health protection, said at Wednesday’s news conference.
The city has been under a boil water notice since July 29.
Reeves declared a state of emergency on Tuesday, allowing state officials to better help in Jackson.
The White House approved Reeves’ request for federal assistance Tuesday night.
“An emergency exists in the State of Mississippi and ordered Federal assistance to supplement the state’s response efforts due to the emergency conditions resulting from a water crisis,” the White House said in a press release.
(JACKSON, Miss.) — Jackson, Mississippi’s water supply is wholly unsafe to drink, officials said on Monday, with water pressure so low from long-failing treatment systems compounded by river flooding this week that cooking and cleaning — and firefighting, flushing toilets and bathing — would be widely unavailable for the state capital’s 180,000 residents save for critical outside aid.
The emerging disaster has drawn attention to the strained relationship between the city’s Democratic leadership and the Republican governor and legislature.
When Gov. Tate Reeves held an emergency press conference on Monday with the Mississippi Emergency Management Agency, Jackson’s mayor, Chokwe Antar Lumumba, was not in attendance even as Lumumba, separately, had been in discussions with the Department of Health that same day.
And on Tuesday, at a news conference of his own, Lumumba said that the issues had at last spurred aid for the Magnolia State’s largest city after years of petitioning Reeves and the GOP-controlled legislature.
“We feel like we’ve been going at it alone for the better part of two years — lifting up the fact that these are challenges that are, first and foremost, beyond partisan. These are human rights challenges,” Lumumba said Wednesday on ABC News Live.
Reeves did not invite Lumumba to his Monday presser, according to a spokesperson for the mayor, who said that as of Tuesday evening, the two men had not spoken directly about the water problems. They subsequently a useful conversation on Wednesday morning, after the mayor initially reached out to Reeves, who then returned his call.
President Joe Biden also spoke to Lumumba on Wednesday morning.
Both Reeves and Lumumba have made emergency declarations and Reeves deployed the National Guard to assist on Tuesday.
The infrastructure issues with Jackson’s water system, coupled with flooding from a nearby river which damaged one of the area’s major processing facilities, fueled the latest — but not the first — water crisis.
The city’s archaic system has been in the spotlight before for being on the risk of failure, most recently in the winter of 2021. The city had been under a separate boil water notice since late July for a water-quality issue.
“Even when we’re not contending at that present moment with low pressure … we are in a constant state of emergency,” Lumumba said at Tuesday’s news conference. “And so now we are excited to have finally welcomed the state to the table and all of the valuable resources that they bring.”
On ABC News Live, Lumumba said that “we’ve had great disparity in the funding of the resources of Jackson compared to other portions of our state, over generations.”
“I think that it is time that we represent a new model … that we demonstrate from the city level to the state level and beyond that we’re all on board in trying to make certain that residents, that people, human beings, don’t have to deal with the challenge of not having the basic resource of water,” he said.
On Monday, the five state senators who represent the city of Jackson called for a special legislative session.
That day, the state’s two other top Republicans, Lt. Governor Delbert Hosemann and House Speaker Phillip Gunn, also released statements laying blame with local leaders.
“It is apparent the cities served by the system do not have the assets to address this issue in a timely manner and effectively for the longer term. I believe it is time for the State to take an active role in finding a solution—both short term and long term,” Hosemann said.
Gunn said: “I’ve been contacted by hospitals, businesses, and schools pleading that something be done to address the water crisis in Jackson. Unfortunately, the city leadership has not presented a permanent solution or a comprehensive plan. These groups have turned to the state for help, and it seems we will have to evaluate what options might be available.”
Reeves, too, has faced scrutiny. Critics have long accused the governor of stoking the flames of cultural warfare during his two-year tenure rather than addressing some of the state’s critical needs — especially in Jackson. In the days before and during the flooding that worsened the water problems, Reeves was active on social media sounding off on a range of other issues including Biden’s student loan forgiveness plan and Second Amendment rights.
Since taking office in 2020, Reeves’ greatest legislative focus has been on income tax breaks in the state.
Jackson residents voted in 2014 to approve a 1 cent local sales tax to pay for improvements to their roads and water and sewer systems. After the winter water emergency in 2021, the city council sought another election, subject to legislative approval, that would double that tax to 2 cents.
Reeves weighed in at the time and invoked the city’s history of utility mismanagement. “I do think it’s really important that the City of Jackson start collecting their water bill payments before they start going and asking everyone else to pony up more money,” he said.
Gunn, the state’s House speaker, told a conservative radio show last week that the required $1 billion to fix the city’s water system — to help with repairs, upgrades and staffing, which is the No. 1 problem, officials have said — may be too large of a price tag for even the state.
“I’m on the verge of saying that the state has got to step in and take over,” he said. “But the size of the problem is so great that I’m not even sure the state can meet the needs. It’s going to require federal help.”
On Wednesday, Reeves announced that the federal disaster declaration for Jackson had been approved by the White House, freeing up further funds to assist residents.
“The White House is watching critically in terms of what is taking place here. And so we look forward to additional support from them,” Lumumba said at Tuesday’s news conference.
“We have open arms to welcome the coordination and welcome the support … This is what we’ve been asking for,” he said.
ABC News’ Justin Gomez contributed to this report.
(NEW YORK) — Serena Williams is set to begin her second-round match of the U.S. Open against the WTA No. 2-ranked player Anett Kontaveit of Estonia Wednesday night.
Williams defeated 80th-ranked Danka Kovinić of Montenegro in two sets, 6-3, 6-3, on Monday night, in an electric match that could have been her last professional singles appearance. Following her win, a celebration for Williams was held at center court, including appearances from tennis legend Billie Jean King and a taped message narrated by Oprah.
All eyes have been on Williams, 40, who had announced earlier this month in a personal essay for Vogue that she would be “evolving away” from tennis. If she loses tonight, it will end a nearly three-decade-long dominant career in professional tennis.
But she won’t be done at the U.S. Open in Flushing: Williams will also reunite with her older sister Venus Williams to play a doubles first-round match on Thursday night.
Williams has won 23 major singles titles — the most in the Open Era for men or women — but is in pursuit to notch one more at Arthur Ashe Stadium, on the same court she won her first major title in 1999.
