Six men and two women were taken to hospitals, officials said. Their ages were not immediately clear.
A building adjacent to the site of the explosion was being evacuated, fire officials said.
Video from the scene showed debris strewn across the sidewalk, street and several cars. Windows were blown out of the building, which had extensive damage to its top floor.
Crews for local gas utility Peoples Gas did not smell any gas at the site, a spokesperson for the company said.
“The cause of the incident is unknown, but there is no reason at this point to believe the cause is related to gas or any of our equipment,” the spokesperson said in a statement.
The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and the Chicago Police Bomb Squad were also responding to investigate, the Chicago Fire Department said.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
Four men and three women were taken to hospitals, officials said. Their ages were not immediately clear.
A building adjacent to the site of the explosion was being evacuated, fire officials said.
Video from the scene showed debris strewn across the sidewalk, street and several cars. Windows were blown out of the building, which had extensive damage to its top floor.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
(LONDON) — Britain’s royal family released a previously unseen photo of Queen Elizabeth II on Monday, following her private burial at the King George VI Memorial Chapel at Windsor Castle.
The photo, shared on the royal family’s social media accounts, shows the queen walking through the countryside, holding a walking stick and wearing one of her trademark head scarves.
The photo was captioned with the words, “May flights of Angels sing thee to thy rest,” from Shakespeare’s “Hamlet.”
Those are the same words the queen’s eldest son King Charles III used at the end of his first public address following the queen’s death on Sept. 8 at age 96.
“And to my darling Mama, as you begin your last great journey to join my dear late Papa, I want simply to say this: thank you,” Charles said. “Thank you for your love and devotion to our family and to the family of nations you have served so diligently all these years. May ‘flights of Angels sing thee to thy rest.'”
The life of the queen, Britain’s longest-reigning monarch, was celebrated Monday with a state funeral at Westminster Abbey attended by around 2,000 dignitaries, heads of state and members of the royal family.
The queen’s coffin was lowered into the royal vault in a smaller committal service at Windsor Castle’s St. George’s Chapel following her funeral.
Later Monday evening, Charles and other members of the royal family attended a private burial service for the queen.
Elizabeth was buried next to her husband Prince Philip at the King George VI Memorial Chapel at St. George’s Chapel, where her mother, father and sister are also buried.
The royal family’s period of mourning for the queen will last until Sept. 27, when they will resume official engagements and the flags will be raised to full staff at royal residences once more.
The national period of mourning in the U.K. ended on the day of the queen’s funeral, which was declared a public holiday.
Guns N’ Roses‘ classic 1991 albums Use Your Illusion I and Use Your Illusion II will be reissued on November 11 in multiple configurations and formats, including expansive CD and vinyl box sets featuring remastered versions of both records plus a treasure trove of bonus content.
The super deluxe Guns N’ Roses – Use Your Illusion I & II box sets will feature either seven CDs or 12 LPs. Both versions will include a Blu-ray featuring a previously unreleased video of the band’s May 1991 performance at The Ritz Theatre in New York City, as well as a new live music video for “You Could Be Mine.”
In addition, the box sets will feature the full audio of the New York City show and of a complete and previously unreleased concert that Guns N’ Roses played in January 1992 in Las Vegas.
The super deluxe box sets also feature a 100-page hardcover book that boasts rare photos, memorabilia and archival documents, as well as such collectible items as a replica fan club materials and backstage pass, uniquely designed lithographs, seven band photo prints, a poster and more.
The reissues also will be available together as a four-LP colored-vinyl collection, and separately as deluxe two-CD sets, single CDs and two-LP black-vinyl sets. Digital versions of all the version also will be available.
Released simultaneously in September 1991, Use Your Illusion I and Use Your Illusion II debuted at #2 and #1, respectively, on the Billboard 200 chart. Use Your Illusion I features the top-10 hits “Don’t Cry” and “November Rain,” while Use Your Illusion II includes the top-30 single “You Could Be Mine.”
Both albums have gone on to be certified seven-times Platinum by the RIAA.
This Saturday, Elton John is set to perform at Nationals Park in Washington, D.C., but on Friday, while he’s in the neighborhood, he’ll be stopping by to visit the Bidens.
President Joe Biden and the first lady will host a performance by Elton on the South Lawn of the White House as part of an event called “A Night When Hope and History Rhyme.” Organized in collaboration with A+E Networks and The History Channel, the event will honor teachers, nurses, frontline workers, mental health advocates, students LGBTQ+ advocates and more.
It will also “celebrate the unifying and healing power of music” and pay tribute to Elton’s “life and work.”
The Bidens will deliver remarks at the event. The fact that A+E and The History Channel are involved seems to indicate that the whole thing will be televised at some point, but there are no details on that as of yet.
This week, Elton is also performing in Atlanta as part of his Farewell Yellow Brick Road tour.
A streaming service decides to bring back a once popular sitcom. Sound familiar? It’s happening over and over again in real life, and it’s the premise of Reboot, a new Hulu comedy out Tuesday from Modern Family co-creator Steve Levitan.
Keegan-Michael Key, who plays one of the stars of the original series, tells ABC Audio now is the perfect time for a show like this.
“There’s a plethora of reboots in our world, the fact that nostalgia is something that we’re all kind of connecting to in some way,” he says. “I think part of it has to do with the world that we’re living in right now and the pandemic, we need some comfort food, we need some visual comfort food.”
Paul Reiser, co-creator and star of the hit 1990s sitcom Mad About You, plays the creator of the original show who’s part of the reboot’s writing team, so a lot of his character’s time is spent in the writers room. The calls it a place where he has “learned so much about human nature…because it’s about collaboration, it’s about ego, it’s about tempering egos, supporting egos, filtering out negativity, bringing out the best of people.”
“It’s trying to tamper down the worst in people,” Reiser continues. “So it really is this petri dish of human instincts and emotions.”
As for where the idea for Reboot came from, Levitan shares that it was largely due to the revival of Roseanne and it “kind of blew up because Roseanne got in trouble.”
“I just remember thinking to myself, well that’s the show I want to see,” he said, adding that he thought someone else would have the same idea before he got a chance to: “But much to my surprise, no one ever did.”
The Smashing Pumpkins are coming back in a big way.
The alt-rock vets — now consisting of original members Billy Corgan, James Iha and Jimmy Chamberlin, plus longtime guitarist Jeff Schroeder — have announced a new album called Atum, a 33-track, three-act “rock opera” described as the sequel to the Pumpkins’ Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness and Machina/Machine of God albums.
Your first preview of Atum is the song “Beguiled,” which is available now via digital outlets. The “Beguiled” video premieres Tuesday at 12:33 p.m. ET on YouTube, and you can catch the Pumpkins perform the track on NBC’s The Tonight Show this Friday.
Atum, the follow-up to 2020’s Cyr, will be released in three parts, with Act 1 dropping November 15. Acts 2 and 3 will follow in 2023 on January 31 and April 21, respectively.
Along the way, Corgan will be breaking down each song off of Atum on his new podcast,Thirty-Three with William Patrick Corgan. The first two episodes are out now.
If that’s not enough Smashing Pumpkins for you, a vinyl box set edition of Atum will be available on April 21 with 10 more bonus tracks.
Meanwhile, you can also catch The Smashing Pumpkins on the road on their Spirits on Fire tour alongside Jane’s Addiction. The outing launches October 2 in Dallas, Texas.
Taylor Swift has been honored with her own “Written by Taylor Swift” Songwriter page on Spotify, but some of her most popular songs are missing.
As Billboard notes, the albums that Taylor hasn’t re-recorded yet aren’t included on the playlist. So while you’ll get the “Taylor’s Version” of songs from Red and Fearless, plus all the songs from Lover, evermore and folklore, there aren’t any songs on there — yet — from albums like Speak Now, 1989 or Reputation.
On the other hand, the playlist gathers some of the songs that Taylor wrote for other artists and for movie soundtracks in one place. Those include “Babe,”recorded by the country duo Sugarland; “Renegade,” recorded by the duo Big Red Machine; “Crazier” and “You’ll Always Find Your Way Back Home” from Hannah Montana: The Movie; “Sweeter than Fiction” from One Chance; “Eyes Open” from The Hunger Games; “Carolina” from Where the Crawdads Sing and “Only the Young” from her documentary Miss Americana.
However, the playlist doesn’t feature Taylor’s other Hunger Games song “Safe & Sound” nor does it include “I Don’t Wanna Live Forever” from 50 Shades Darker or “Beautiful Ghosts” from CATS.
Taylor’s one of several stars who have their own “Written By” pages on Spotify. Others include Mariah Carey, Elton John, Sia, Carole King, Bruce Springsteen, Meghan Trainor, Joni Mitchell and Pharrell Wiliams.
Tuesday, Taylor will be honored as Songwriter/Artist of the Decade by the Nashville Songwriters Association International in Nashville, TN.
The teen singer has canceled her Avoiding College fall tour, which was to have kicked off October 8. On her Instagram Story, she wrote, “Hey everyone, I am cancelling my tour that starts next month. Thank you to everyone that bought tickets. It really does mean the world to me. You’ll get a refund and I hope to see you at these shows next year.”
As for why she’s calling off the tour, the “abcdefu” singer wrote, “I’m learning how to be an adult and how best to do this new life. I love it so much and I’m trying to do it the best way I can.”
GAYLE notes that she’ll still play the festivals for which she’s already booked, which include Austin City Limits on October 7 and the Breakaway Festival in North Carolina on October 1. She also and teases that she’s “working on new music.”
She ends her message by saying, “I’m still definitely not going to college :).”
The singer’s new EP, A Study of the Human Experience Volume Two, is due out October 7.
(BAIDOA, Somalia) — At an encampment in Baidoa, Somalia, Garan Hassan tugged at a reporter’s sleeve. Her 18-month-old daughter Malaika was too sick to eat, too weak to cry.
Staff at a Save the Children pediatric nutrition center quickly determined that this toddler had severe acute malnutrition, like more than 500,000 other children in Somalia, according to the U.N. This diagnosis means they could die without immediate treatment.
Malaika’s arm was as thick as a man’s thumb, and she weighed little more than an infant. Her body was shutting down and if left untreated she would likely die.
Somalia, like Ethiopia and Kenya, is suffering a record drought which, coupled with soaring food prices and plummeting donor funding to humanitarian groups, has left more than 22 million people starving, according to the U.N.’s World Food Programme.
A 2011 famine in Somalia killed nearly 260,000 people, half of them children.
More than half of the country’s children face acute malnutrition, Save the Children revealed in a report released on Monday.
The hunger has dislocated over a million Somalis, like Garan Hassan and her family, many of them seeking food and support in the once-small town of Baidoa. It is now a massive sprawl of thousands of tattered tents and home to 600,000 internally displaced people.
Many of them, like Hassan, had to travel through territory controlled by the Islamic fundamentalist group al-Shabab to get there.
Hassan told ABC News her husband died from starvation “at the beginning of the famine.” He was just 32. She is now the sole provider for little Malaika and her six siblings, which is why she told Save the Children staff she could not take Malaika to the hospital — she had to ensure that her other children were cared for.
“For me the declaration of famine is irrelevant. Look around you,” Ebrima Saidy, chief impact officer at Save the Children, told ABC News at the nutrition center where over 200 women with acutely malnourished children hoped to get support, “what is this if this is not famine?”
A famine has not been officially declared in Somalia since 2011.
Aid groups say that after the 2011 famine they had built up the infrastructure to help, but now with donor attention on the war in Ukraine and the COVID-19 pandemic, they lacked the funds.
Famine prevention efforts by the U.N.’s Food and Agriculture Organization go to a million Somalis, but the agency tells ABC News its projects here are only 24% funded.
The next day Save the Children staff visited Garan Hassan and Malaika. They found that another of her siblings had severe acute malnutrition and both children, Malaika and her 3-year-old brother Nadifa, had multiple complications. They had suffered fevers, but were now disturbingly cold to the touch.
The staff warned Hassan they could die if they didn’t get treatment. After a terrifying night, Hassan quickly agreed to go to the hospital.
The children were whisked through the camp to a van that took them along streets broken by neglect and war to the Save the Children stabilization center — basically a hospital for the acutely malnourished.
Hospital staff determined the children suffered from malaria, whooping cough and measles — a result of their immune systems cratering from malnutrition.
During the admission process, as the two children were weighed, and measured and prodded with needles, Nadifa whimpered that he was thirsty. A few minutes later he was propped up on a nurse’s knee and given nutritional formula.
Nadifa drank one cup, then two. A milk mustache formed on his face, and on his mother’s face, for the first time in a long time, a smile.
