Imagine Dragons will be livestreaming their acoustic performance at the upcoming 2022 Rise Up Gala, the annual benefit concert supporting the band’s charity, the Tyler Robinson Foundation.
You can watch the show, which takes place this Friday, September 23, in Las Vegas, beginning at 9:30 p.m. PT via ID’s YouTube and the Bandsintown Twitch channel.
The Rise Up Gala raises money for the Tyler Robinson Foundation, which helps families affected by pediatric cancer. ID founded the organization in 2013 in honor of Tyler Robinson, a fan who passed away from cancer as a teenager.
It’s been two years since the outbreak of a global pandemic paused any talk of a possible Spice Girls reunion tour. Speaking to BBC Radio 2 on Thursday, Melanie C was asked directly if we will see Sporty, Baby, Scary, Ginger and Posh Spice get back together onstage.
Unfortunately, the Dancing with the Stars alum didn’t have much to share. “I would love to sit here and go, ‘Oh, we got these shows coming,’ but I can’t, sadly,” she said. “We do want to do shows, they’re just not arranged yet.”
“We’re constantly talking, constantly trying to work it out — make it work for everybody,” she clarified, adding that a Spice Girls reunion is her “#1 wish.”
Melanie, who recently wrote her memoir, Who I Am: My Story, knows there’s a hunger for them to reunite. “All of us realized this impact we’ve had on a generation of human people and then there’s new generations discovering us,” she said of how the team felt during their 2019 stadium tour.
Melanie also hinted, “This year is the 25th anniversary of Spiceworld: The Movie and the second album. And yet there’s things happening around it.”
Elsewhere in the interview, Melanie recalled the time Madonna called her up while she was staying at a hotel and initially thought one of her bandmates was pranking her. When she heard Madonna greet her on the line with, “Hi, sweetie,” she freaked.
“She was my ultimate icon,” the British singer raved. “And then she invites me out for dinner!” Melanie directed fans to read her new memoir, which talks about the memorable dinner party and the famous guests who were also in attendance.
Kelsea Ballerini’s Subject to Change album is all about growth and the contrasting, complicated emotions it brings — so it makes sense that she’s feeling some complex feelings about her own life as she readies the project.
Of course, a big change going on in the singer’s life right now is her divorce: Kelsea recently announced that she is splitting from husband Morgan Evans after nearly five years of marriage.
“Sometimes while promoting this album I feel like a sociopath, because I’m presenting this thing I’m really proud of, and I’m really happy to be in this chapter and putting this record out,” she explains in conversation with Today’s Country Radio With Kelleigh Bannen on Apple Music Country. “But at the same time, there’s a lot going on in my life.”
Kelsea stresses the fact that, objectively, life is pretty great — she’s got her dream job as a successful singer-songwriter, after all. But life is always a mix of triumphs and challenges, and she hopes her music will reflect that, she continues.
“I talk about this album, about it being a juxtaposition. And I’m in such a juxtaposition while putting it out,” she continues. “So of course it’s like this.”
(TEHRAN, IRAN) — While Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi was holding up Gen. Qassim Soleimani’s photo on Wednesday at the United Nations General Assembly podium grieving over his killing by the U.S., Soleimani’s picture was being torn down in his home city of Kerman and set on fire by protestors.
Protests against the Iranian regime started across the country last Friday following the suspicious death of a young woman was arrested and detained for allegedly wearing a hijab improperly by hijab police three days earlier.
Mahsa Amini, 22, was on a trip to Tehran with her 16-year-old brother when the hijab police, also called the “morality police,” arrested her for not wearing the outfit that fully matched the Sharia-based hijab laws of the country. Despite her brother’s resistance, she was taken into custody only to be announced dead at a hospital three days later, according to the Islamic Republic News Agency
The head of the Forensic Medicine of Tehran said Amini was suffering from a background condition. Her father denied those claims in an interview with the BBC.
With the news of Amini’s arrest going viral, criticism against hijab laws and the confrontation of the morality police against women intensified on social media.
Protests soon developed beyond the morality police after her death and addressed a long list of the Islamic Republic’s actions over the past four decades.
The first big protests broke out on Sept. 17 during Amini’s funeral in Saqqez, her home city in northwest Iran.
Pictures of the burial protests went viral. The hashtag #MahsaAmini and her name in Farsi got 18 million mentions on Twitter and about 150 million on TikTok, making it the biggest trend on Persian Twitter, BBC Persian reported Thursday.
Amjad Amini, Mahsa Amini’s father, said Tuesday in an interview with Iranian news website Emtedad that the police did not let the family see Mahsa Amini’s body. Only he could briefly check her daughter’s legs and saw they were bruised.
“The person who hit my daughter should be put on trial in a public court,” Amjad Amini told the outlet.
While the news program of Iran’s state-run TV announced Thursday that 17 people had been killed in the protests, the Iran Human Rights group, IRH, reported that at least 31 killed had been killed through Thursday.
Videos shared on social media from the protestors show many women burning their headscarves on the streets. Many celebrities have removed their hijab and shared the clips on social media.
In an act of solidarity, many men and women from different countries have also shared videos of themselves cutting their hair short and expressing their anger over Mahsa Amini’s death.
President Joe Biden said America supports the growing protests in his address to the U.N. on Wednesday.
“Today we stand with the brave citizens and women in Iran who right now are demonstrating to secure their basic rights,” Biden said.
The U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control designated Iran’s morality police “for abuse and violence against Iranian women and the violation of the rights of peaceful Iranian protestors.”
“Mahsa Amini was a courageous woman whose death in Morality Police custody was yet another act of brutality by the Iranian regime’s security forces against its own people,” Secretary of the Treasury Janet L. Yellen said in a statement Thursday. “We condemn this unconscionable act in the strongest terms and call on the Iranian government to end its violence against women and its ongoing violent crackdown on free expression and assembly.”
However, to many Iranians, western countries who negotiate with the Islamic Republic over the nuclear deal are giving the country a chance to buy time and continue its oppression, such words and moves are “too little, too late.”
“I have given up hope from the West. They have proved they only care about the nuclear program not the human rights,” Nina, a 35-year-old protestor, told ABC News. Nina did not want her real name mentioned for safety reasons.
“All I want from people in the West is not to forget us, especially now that the internet is either cut or very slow,” Nina added. “Seeing the people in the world hear and celebrities help us to be heard makes up keep up our spirit.”
Sarah, 39, a protester from Tehran, said there is a huge “mix of anger, hope and fear” in the protests. “But no matter what, we will stay on the streets,” she said.
Referring to the main slogans of the protests in different cities, “woman, life, freedom,” and “death to dictator,” Sarah, who is also not using her real name over fears for her safety, said the movement does not merely address restrictions on women.
“Slogans target the very bases of the regime. They address the leader himself calling him a ‘shame’ to the country,” she said. ‘What matters the most is that these slogans are heard by the world.’
While the Internet was throttled from the beginning of the protests, it was cut or severely slowed down in the country on Wednesday, according to NetBlocks. In addition, WhatsApp and Instagram –the last social media outlets that were still accessible in Iran– were filtered in an attempt by the regime to restrict the circulation of information even more severely.
“Our anger is definitely overgrowing their power,” Sarah said. “I hope people in different countries recognize this anger and their government joins them and stop negotiating with this regime.”
In the October/November issue of AARP The Magazine, 56-year-old Adam Sandler opens up about growing up, getting older in Hollywood and his gratitude for his long career.
“I’m calmer than I used to be,” Sandler says. “I used to go nuts. I had a quick temper, quick reactions … I was selfish. I was competitive with other comedians and stuff.”
“I appreciate other people’s talent now rather than competing with it — in every field, in every sport, every part of showbiz,” Sandler says.
With that wisdom comes age, but Sandler’s OK with that. “I like my age … It’s freeing,” he explains.
Says the superstar, who famously dresses way down, “I’m nonstop commitment to my projects, though I don’t have the same discipline to keep my body in shape.”
He adds, “There hasn’t been one movie where I’ve stayed the same weight throughout a three-month shoot. I used to worry about it. Now I’m OK.”
The actor also shared some thoughts on his pivots from wacky comedies like The Ridiculous Six and Grown-ups to acclaimed dramatic turns.
“I love comedy more than anything,” he reveals, but says he welcomes a challenge.
“It was cool as hell pushing myself in new ways like I did on Uncut Gems … the intensity of that amazing character, or in Hustle, being around the greatest NBA players, and not worrying about laughs as much as what each character is going through and pulling for.”
Sandler also says he hopes people like his movies: “Whether you’ve liked me or not, [they] appreciate that I’ve tried my best.”
He adds, “I’m just amazed people have trusted me as long as they have in this business and given me shot after shot. Because it would suck to do something else.”
If you’re not already hyped for Slipknot‘s upcoming The End, So Far album, perhaps this will set you right.
Wednesday night, the masked metallers shared a mysterious video teasing “Adderall,” the opening song off The End, So Far. The clip features a variety of spooky images that you might expect from a Slipknot video, as well a montage of frontman Corey Taylor‘s various masks from throughout different eras of the band.
The post’s caption reads, “9 Days: Adderall,” which coincides with the release date of The End, So Far: September 30. Perhaps, the album drop will be accompanied by a full video for “Adderall.”
The End, So Far is the follow-up to 2019’s We Are Not Your Kind. It includes the previously released tracks “The Chapeltown Rag,” “The Dying Song (Time to Sing)” and “Yen.”
Slipknot is currently on a U.S. tour in support of The End, So Far, continuing Friday at the Louder than Life festival.
The Human League is releasing a new limited-edition colored-vinyl box set featuring four LPs and an EP issued on the Virgin Records label from 1981 through 1990 on November 11.
The Human League: The Virgin Years is a five disc collection that features 1981’s Dare pressed on blue vinyl, the 1983 Fascination EP on green vinyl, 1984’s Hysteria on yellow vinyl, 1986’s Crash on red vinyl and 1990’s Romantic? on clear vinyl.
Dare was The Human League’s third studio album and marked the start of the group’s second, more pop-oriented incarnation, which was led by singer/keyboardist Philip Oakey and showcased female vocalists Joanne Catherall and Susan Ann Sulley.
The record, which peaked at #3 on the Billboard 200, featured the chart-topping “Don’t You Want Me Baby” as well as the top-10 U.K. hits “Love Action (I Believe in Love)” and “Open Your Heart.”
The Fascination EP included the hit singles “(Keep Feeling) Fascination” and “Mirror Man.”
Hysteria featured three tunes that reached the top-20 of the U.K. singles tally: “The Lebanon,” “Life on Your Own” and “Louise.”
Crash, a collaboration with the hit-making production duo of Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis, featured the group’s second Billboard Hot 100 chart-topper, “Human.”
Finally, Romantic? — which brought the band’s stint on Virgin to a close — featured the top-40 single “Heart Like a Wheel.”
Marilla Sicilia/Archivio Marilla Sicilia/Mondadori Portfolio via Getty Images
Deep Purple has welcomed guitarist Simon McBride as an official member of the band.
McBride began serving as Deep Purple’s touring guitarist earlier this year after longtime guitarist Steve Morseannounced in March that he was taking a hiatus from the group to care for and spend time with his wife, Janine, as she battles cancer. In July, Morse, who joined Deep Purple in 1994, announced that he was officially leaving the group.
The Rock & Roll Hall of Famers said in a joint statement, “We are thrilled that Simon has agreed to join. Simon’s playing is up there with the greats. Of course, Steve can’t be replaced, the same as Ritchie [Blackmore], and Steve has a long legacy with Deep Purple. In Simon we have not found a replacement, but an extraordinarily talented and exciting guitarist in his own right.”
The group adds, “The reception from audiences over the Summer has already been great and we are looking forward to the forthcoming dates in the UK and Europe across the rest of the year. It is clear that Simon also holds great respect for those before him. We are all excited for what the years to come hold for the band.”
McBride, meanwhile, says in his own statement, “I’m very happy to be asked to join the band, at the start of the pandemic if someone would have said to me that I was going to be the new guitarist in Deep Purple I would have just laughed, but here we are and it’s happening. Deep Purple has a history of great guitarists so I’m very honoured to be asked to be part of that.”
McBride previously toured with Deep Purple singer Ian Gillan and keyboardist Don Airey, among many others.
Pedro Portal/Miami Herald/Tribune News Service/Getty Images
(NEW YORK) — The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has released its 2022 Summer Climate Report, which outlines the extreme weather events from June to August in the U.S.
The report also describes where this year ranked compared to previous summers, using data from dozens of weather stations in each state.
US record temperatures
The summer of 2022 ranks third-warmest on record, with an average temperature across the contiguous United States at 73.9 degrees, according to the report. That’s 2.5 degrees above average, coming in only 0.01 degrees behind 1936 (when the dust bowl was in full swing) for the No. 2 spot. The hottest summer on record was in 2021.
It wasn’t just the highs that were sweltering, it was often the lows. The average minimum temperature across the country hit a record of 62.3 degrees this August, meaning there wasn’t much relief during the overnight hours. Houston broke several records for warmest low temperature, only bottoming out at 86 degrees after reaching highs above 100 degrees on multiple occasions. Without any cooler temperatures at night, the cumulative heat can be dangerous.
Heat is the No. 1 weather-related cause of death each year, and communities have recently taken it more seriously by opening cooling shelters to those most at-risk during heat waves.
Rainfall
While some parts of the country suffered from serious to exceptional drought, others dealt with major flooding. Taking the whole country into account, the precipitation turned out average, but how much rain you saw heavily depended on which region you were in. For example, Arizona had its seventh wettest summer, while Nebraska came in at third driest, according to NOAA.
Monsoon season in the Southwest is a typical occurrence during the summer months, but it started earlier than normal this year and brought flash floods to highly populated areas at times. Las Vegas experienced major flooding across the city in late July and again in early August, flooding casinos and leaving two dead.
August also brought a relentless surge of rainfall to northern Louisiana and Mississippi.
The several-day deluge caused major flash flooding in Jackson, Mississippi, where cars were submerged and people were left standing on their roofs waiting for rescue. More than 153,000 residents didn’t have clean drinking water for weeks after the water treatment facility went offline in the flood.
1,000-year floods
A 1,000-year rainfall event means that there is a 1 in 1,000 chance that a flood of that magnitude will occur in any given year. Three such events happened in August.
On Aug. 2, southern Illinois picked up a foot of rain in only 12 hours. Near Newtown, Illinois, an incredible 14 inches fell in those 12 hours, according to the National Weather Service.
Death Valley isn’t known for its rainfall, but on Aug. 5, the National Park was drenched with 1.70 inches of rain, leading to damaging flooding and trapped visitors. That rainfall broke a record that had stood for more than 34 years.
Then, on the morning of Aug. 22, the rain began in Dallas and didn’t stop. Hefty downpours led to catastrophic flooding across the city, with many nearby towns recording more than a foot of rainfall.
The governor declared a disaster for 23 counties in Texas due to the rainfall. Although it was destructive for many, it was bittersweet because it helped alleviate the exceptional drought that plagued that area for months. Water reservoirs rose significantly after being at record low levels just a week before, and the U.S. Drought Monitor noted major improvement in its update following the flood event.
Drought
Even though there were several drought-busting rain events across the country, the U.S. finished up the summer with 45.5% of its land mass in drought conditions, the NOAA report said.
The northeast was one region that saw the drought ramp up during the summer months. Lawns that were a healthy shade of green in May were crunchy and yellow by August, as the rain stayed away for weeks. As a result, Massachusetts saw extreme drought spread across the eastern half of the state, and severe drought expanded to Rhode Island, Connecticut and New York, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor.
Meanwhile, the intense drought set the stage for a supercharged wildfire season in the west. Gusty winds helped easily spread these fires that had no resistance from the weather.
Tropics
In the tropical Atlantic, there was only one word to describe the situation: quiet. From July 3 to Sept. 1, there were no named storms in the Atlantic basin. That stretch of 60 days was the longest stormless stretch since 1941, according to the National Hurricane Center.
In September, the tropics began to heat up. Several named storms formed right around the historical peak of hurricane season in the Atlantic. The strongest of which was Hurricane Fiona, which peaked as a Category 4 storm after dropping catastrophic rainfall on Puerto Rico.
Roasting in Europe
Across the pond, records were just as prevalent as they were in America this summer. Europe experienced its hottest summer on record, with several countries roasting in a mid-summer heat wave that shattered long-standing records. It peaked on July 19, when dozens of weather stations across the U.K. topped 100 degrees. London soared to an incredible 104 degrees that day, according to the U.K. Met Office.
Around the world
Globally, the June-August period tied for the fifth warmest in the 143 years of records.
“The five warmest June-August periods on record have occurred since 2015,” according to NOAA,
Both hemispheres came in above average, and while June-August is winter in the Southern Hemisphere, temperatures were not nearly as cold as they typically are. Antarctic sea ice during that time frame ended up at record low levels, according to climate scientists at NOAA’s Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Lab.
In terms of rain, Pakistan dealt with some of the worst floods in recent history. Extreme monsoon rainfall in August is estimated to have killed more than 1,500 people and destroyed more than 1.7 million homes.
Connection to climate change
While not every weather event can be attributed to climate change, some are undoubtedly enhanced by our warming world, as explained in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change 2022 Assessment.
An example of this is the extreme flooding rain events. With ocean temperatures significantly higher than average, there is more moisture in the air due to evaporation. Also, higher temperatures can hold more water content, so the likelihood of heavy rain events rises with the temperature.
(UKRAINE) — Woman and girls in Ukraine and around the world have suffered disproportionately as the men of the country fight against the invasion by Russia, a new report by the United Nations has found.
The policy paper, published as the U.N. Security Council meets to discuss the war in Ukraine, reveals how the war and its global impacts on food, energy and finance have caused women in Ukraine and globally to suffer numerous hardships.
The report states that 265,000 Ukrainian women who were pregnant when the war broke out in February either had to flee or give birth in a time of conflict.
It also highlights how the crisis in Europe is exacerbating existing inequalities around the world, especially surrounding the scarcity of food.
The war-induced food price hikes and shortages have widened the global gender gap in food insecurity, the report shows. Many women have even reduced their own food intake to provide for other household members.
The report states that spiraling energy prices have caused families to return to using less clean fuels and technologies, exposing women and girls to household air pollution, which already kills 3.2 million people per year — the majority of whom are women and children.
Women-headed households in Ukraine were already more food insecure prior to the war, with 37.5% experiencing moderate or severe levels of food insecurity, compared to 20.5% of male-headed households, according to the report.
The fate of women in rural territories occupied by the Russian military remains dire. The women are increasingly unable to perform agricultural work due to high insecurity and lack of resources, but they continue to rise to the challenge of accommodating and feeding internally displaced people, which then multiples their unpaid care and domestic work responsibilities, according to the report.
In addition, school-aged girls are even more at risk of being obliged to drop out of school to get married for dowry or bride-price income for desperate families, officials stated. The report shows that there are alarming increases in gender-based violence, transactional sex for food and survival, sexual exploitation and trafficking, and early child marriage and forced marriage as a result of these worsened living conditions in conflict, crisis and humanitarian contexts worldwide.
“Systemic, gendered crises require systemic, gendered solutions,” Sima Sami Bahous, the executive director of U.N.-Women, said in a statement. “That means ensuring that women and girls, including from marginalized groups, are part of all the decision-making processes. That is simply the only way to be certain that their rights and needs are fully taken into account as we respond to the clear facts before us.”
The policy brief calls for solutions from the international community to prioritize women’s and girls’ voice agency, participation and leadership in conflict response, recovery and peacebuilding as well as to enhance gender statistics and sex-disaggregated data to build the evidence base for gender-responsive policy.
The U.N. also recommended that international communities promote and protect the right to food by targeting the specific nutrition needs of women and girls and accelerate the transformation towards more equitable, gender-responsive and sustainable food systems, equitable access to access to inputs, technologies and markets by women.
