Olivia: Shirlaine Forrest/WireImage; Alanis: Rick Diamond/Getty Images
Earlier this year, Olivia Rodrigo welcomed Alanis Morissette onstage for a duet of “You Oughta Know.” Now, she’ll be sharing a stage with Alanis again as the Canadian star receives a major honor.
On September 24, Olivia will induct Alanis into the Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame at Toronto’s Massey Hall. In a statement, Olivia says, “I remember hearing Alanis for the first time when I was about 13. I was in the car with my parents when Jagged Little Pill came on. I heard ‘Perfect.’ I was like, ‘Oh, my God…you can write songs like that?’ I just looked at music and songwriting in a completely different way.”
In addition, fellow Canadian artists Alessia Cara and JP Saxewill perform as part of a tribute to Alanis at the event.
In addition to Alanis, Bryan Adams and his songwriting partner Jim Vallance will also be inducted, as will super-producer David Foster. Previously announced performers at the ceremony include Nickelback‘s Chad Kroeger and Ryan Peake, “Sunglasses at Night” singer Corey Hart, Deborah Cox and more. Tickets for the event are available via Massey Hall’s website.
Ezra Miller is reportedly seeking treatment for “complex mental health issues” after exhibiting alarming behavior that’s led to a recent series of arrests and accusations.
In a statement provided toVariety through their rep, the actor acknowledged what they’ve been going through and apologized.
“Having recently gone through a time of intense crisis, I now understand that I am suffering complex mental health issues and have begun ongoing treatment,” Miller says. “I want to apologize to everyone that I have alarmed and upset with my past behavior. I am committed to doing the necessary work to get back to a healthy, safe and productive stage in my life.”
Earlier this month, Miller was charged with felony burglary in Vermont after allegedly breaking into a home in May and stealing bottles of alcohol. It was just the latest controversy for the star of the forthcoming The Flash, who was also arrested twice earlier this year after altercations at establishments in Hawaii.
(NEW YORK) — In an exclusive interview with Good Morning America, Amber Escudero-Kontostathis sits down to talk for the first time about being the sole survivor of a lightning strike near the White House earlier this month, on her 28th birthday, and her road to recovery.
“I don’t remember much of that day at all,” Escudero-Kontostathis told GMA in her first interview since the incident.
On Aug. 4, Escudero-Kontostathis, 28, was canvassing outside the White House for Threshold Giving, a nonprofit organization through the International Rescue Committee that helps refugees, when she and three others took cover underneath a tree at Lafayette Square after it began to rain.
Six bolts of lightning struck the group within half a second, killing three others, including 76-year-old James Mueller and 75-year-old Donna Mueller, a married couple celebrating their anniversary, and Brooks Lambertson, a 29-year-old Los Angeles man who was in D.C. for business.
Escudero-Kontostathis said the lightning struck her through the ground and traveled through her body, resulting in significant burns on her body.
“I don’t know why I survived,” she said. “I don’t feel good about being the only survivor, that’s for sure. I’m grateful, but I just don’t feel good about being the only one.”
She doesn’t recall much of her stay at the hospital, where she was placed in the Intensive Care Unit, but does remember the nurses trying to keep her calm and telling her things would be OK.
Escudero-Kontostathis praised the burn and ICU nurses for checking on her and providing constant care.
“You would hit the little things saying you were in pain and they’d be like ‘we’re coming,’ and they walk in and their name was always on the board,” she said. “I had more of a personal relationship and memory with the burn center nurses, but I’m excited to eventually get to meet the ICU nurses in person again now that I’m more conscious of that.”
She said her path to recovery has been frustrating both physically and mentally. “I forget that I can’t just get up and do stuff. I have to use a walker, for example,” she said.
“You wake up and you think that you can just get up and go and brush your teeth or get a cup of coffee yourself and I can’t, my whole left sides like pretty charred,” Escudero-Kontostathis said. “Mentally, also a little frustrated because I want to be working and doing things.”
Escudero, who’s the director of Threshold Giving’s canvassing team, said she enjoyed the work she did and that being unable to work while she recovers is one of the more painful parts of this experience.
“I get to help people find their inner activist and bridge them to the work they want to see in the world,” Escudero-Kontostathis said. “Not getting to do that every day is probably more painful than cleaning the burns, which is pretty painful.”
(UVALDE, Texas) — During Monday night’s school board meeting, Uvalde citizens demanded financial transparency regarding the millions of dollars in grants announced last week aimed at strengthening school security before children return to the classroom this September.
“We just saw lump sum $100,000 here, $500,000 here,” one community member said during the Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District meeting. “Now what I would like to see is further breakdown. OK, who is that money going to?”
The school board announced last week that it plans to spend more than $3.5 million on projects such as replacing locks, installing fences and hiring more counselors. The school district received grants from the state of Texas, the Department of Justice and the Las Vegas Raiders football team to fund these projects.
Uvalde:365 is a continuing ABC News series reported from Uvalde and focused on the Texas community and how it forges on in the shadow of tragedy.
The district also outlined its plan to offer remote classes this year in response to parents’ concerns that their children do not feel comfortable returning to school in person.
Becky Reinhardt, the administrator for virtual learning, said there would not be a limit on the number of students who can be virtual, and that students could switch back to in-person learning whenever they wanted.
For their part, the school board members did not speak much about the massacre that killed 21 people in May. They did not answer when asked about the progress of fence-building at the other schools, the likelihood they would conduct their own investigation or the timing of Police Chief Pete Arredondo’s termination hearing, which has been delayed twice.
The board will meet next Monday to hear community grievances.
(UVALDE, Texas) — Archbishop of San Antonio Gustavo García-Siller has been traveling to Uvalde, Texas, to “walk with the community” as it grapples with the horrific shooting this past May.
García-Siller spends time with the residents and leads Mass services for the community. For the past two and a half months, he has borne witness to the town’s “collective wound,” he said.
When faced with the magnitude of emotions that accompanies tragedy, words often fail, which is why he’s utilizing another way to make a connection with the children of Uvalde.
The archbishop said he has met with children from the community to encourage them, but when he tried to ask them to express their feelings, they had trouble, likely due to emotional distress. But when he used sign language for words such as “sad,” “happy,” or “peace,” they were receptive and responsive, helping him and their families understand what they were feeling, García-Siller told ABC News Correspondent John Quinones.
The archbishop said one of his first concerns was that children he met weren’t able to communicate their feelings verbally. “It’s hard for people to talk… to express a feeling,” he said. But after sensing fourth and fifth graders’ participation during a partially signed homily, he went home to brush up on his American Sign Language skills. What they could not previously communicate verbally, they were able to through hand motions.
The archbishop could gauge the children’s emotional states, and how they felt sad but desired to feel peace, he said. “It was a breakthrough. I felt so happy that I was able to connect with them,” said García-Siller, who has now integrated the practice into his work with children.
“Because the children trust me,” he said, when asked why he attended a local private school’s back-to-school student-teacher meet-and-greet Monday morning.
Meanwhile, the parents of victims have presented the church leader with deep questions regarding faith and forgiveness, he said. What surprised him was how many parents asked not about why God would take their children away, but rather, if God was with their little girls and boys. “They wanted to know that God was taking care of their child,” he said.
The archbishop described a community aching for trust. He said that while children often gain trust by “just sitting [at] the same table eating cookies,” the adults in Uvalde need “servant leaders” who will reestablish “mutual trust.” The archbishop also said he has a message for Texas Gov. Greg Abbott.
“We don’t need to show power at this time. Power, at this time, and it will be for a while, diminishes people. We need you to accompany them. To walk with them,” he said. “If mistakes were made, walk with them to resolve them. Don’t bring all that power and all those arms and all that control.”
In the meantime, García-Siller plans to continue to do just that: walk with Uvalde.
(NEW YORK) — The Trump Organization’s longtime chief financial officer, Allen Weisselberg, is expected to plead guilty to tax charges as soon as this week, sources familiar with the matter told ABC News.
Weisselberg, 75, is currently scheduled to go on trial in the fall, but a hearing in the case is now scheduled for this Thursday, in what could be a sign that he could change his plea then.
An attorney for Weisselberg declined to comment when contacted by ABC News.
Weisselberg, along with former President Donald Trump’s namesake family real estate firm, was charged last year with tax fraud after they were accused of compensating employees “off the books” in order to pay less in taxes.
According to the charging documents, Weisselberg avoided taxes on more than $1.7 million over the past 15 years, resulting from the payment of his rent on an apartment in a Trump-owned building and related expenses that prosecutors said included cars and private school tuition for his grandchildren.
The Trump Organization is proceeding to trial, the sources said, with the case currently scheduled to begin toward the end of October.
News of the development was first reported by The New York Times.
It was not immediately clear whether the terms of Weisselberg’s plea would require him to cooperate with the ongoing investigation.
However, sources said Weisselberg is expected to serve some prison time.
Last week, Weisselberg lost his motion to have the indictment against him thrown out.
He is no longer the Trump Organization’s CFO, but remains employed by the firm.
(WASHINGTON) — Senate Democrats’ campaign arm is going on the offense for Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly less than two months before the first ballots go out in the state for the midterms — in which Kelly’s race and a handful of others could decide the balance of power in the upper chamber.
The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC) on Tuesday launched its first ad campaign of the general election cycle against Republican Blake Masters, a 36-year-old venture capitalist who is running to unseat Kelly in his first bid for political office.
Arizona voters will wake up in the West to television, digital and radio spots trying to depict Masters as “not like normal Arizonans,” as part of a previously announced $33 million independent expenditure reservation from the DSCC, which has a particular interest in protecting incumbents like Kelly.
Not a single ad of the three launching Tuesday mentions former President Donald Trump, who saw a slate of his endorsees win in Arizona two weeks ago — Masters included.
The campaign, instead, argues Masters has “dangerous beliefs and plans that are deeply out of step with the state’s values and would be harmful to Arizona’s families,” the DSCC told ABC News.
“Walk Away,” a TV ad airing both English and Spanish, highlights a remark Masters made at a GOP Senate debate in June — and later walked back — in which he said, “Maybe we should privatize Social Security, right? Private retirement accounts. Get the government out of it.” (Arizona has one of the highest percentages of residents ages 65 years and older.)
Since winning his primary, Masters has played down that remark. In a 45-minute interview with the Arizona Republic last week, he said he doesn’t want to privatize Social Security. “I, think, in context I was talking about something different,” he said.
In another new video ad targeting Masters, titled “His Own Words,” Democrats cite Masters’ past statements on abortion, arguing he would likely support a nationwide ban if given the chance.
The ad points to Masters saying in a podcast interview last year that abortion is “a religious sacrifice to these people. I think it’s demonic.”
Betting on Arizona voters reacting as voters did in Kansas and turning against strict abortion bans in the wake of the Supreme Court overturning constitutional abortion protections, Democrats are raising the issue in various battlegrounds. The DSCC has also reserved ad space in Nevada, Georgia, New Hampshire and Pennsylvania ahead of competitive races there to defend their Senate majority, and they launched a campaign last week in Wisconsin against Sen. Ron Johnson, also hitting the incumbent on abortion.
Masters told the Republic, in the same post-primary interview last week, that he thinks Arizona’s 15-week abortion ban, which makes no exceptions for rape or incest, is appropriate for his state but that he would support a federal “personhood law” to ban all third-trimester abortions. (Such procedures represent fewer than 1% of all abortions in the U.S. and are usually done to save the life of the mother or if dire fetal anomalies are detected).
A final spot reserved by the DSCC is a Spanish-language radio ad.
Masters — backed by millions in funding from billionaire Peter Thiel (his former employer and a major ally with whom he’s partnered since taking Thiel’s class at Stanford University) — has also launched his first TV ad of the general election campaign, pitching himself as a “true independent” for Arizona, a strategy which helped Kelly win in 2020.
The spot featured his wife, Catherine, speaking and Masters playing with his three sons — in a dramatic shift in tone from primary ads attacking his opponents and standing with Trump.
He said in a primary ad in November, by contrast, “I think Trump won in 2020. Maybe you disagree, but you gotta admit this election was really messed up.”
Kelly, a Navy veteran and former NASA astronaut married to former Rep. Gabby Giffords, won his spot in the Senate in a special election two years ago for the late Sen. John McCain’s seat — and did so by just 2.4%.
(WASHINGTON) — A frozen food manufacturer issued a recall Sunday for more than 13,000 pounds of frozen meat pizza over possible contamination, the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service said.
Home Run Inn Frozen Foods said the food products “may be contaminated with extraneous materials, specifically metal,” the USDA said.
The company discovered the problem after it received complaints from consumers, according to the USDA.
“There have been no confirmed reports of injuries or adverse reactions due to consumption of these products. Anyone concerned about an injury or illness should contact a health care provider,” the agency said in a statement.
The company said the recall affects its 33.5-ounce cartons containing “Home Run Inn Chicago’s Premium Pizzeria Deluxe Sausage Classic Pizza” with a “best by” date of “12/03/22.” The frozen meat pizzas were produced on June 6, 2022, the USDA said.
The affected products recall bears an establishment number “EST. 18498-A” inside the USDA mark of inspection, according to the agency.
Anyone who purchased these products is urged not to consume them, the USDA said.
(NEW YORK) — Tuesday’s primaries in Alaska and Wyoming will spotlight two big Republican detractors of former President Donald Trump — and now two big targets of his revenge tour this election cycle.
The incumbents, Sen. Lisa Murkowski and Rep. Liz Cheney, may also see two diverging results at the ballot box.
Polls close in Alaska at 1 a.m. ET on Wednesday and in Wyoming at 9 p.m. ET on Tuesday.
Cheney learns her fate
Wyoming is the state that handed Trump his widest margin of victory in the 2020 election.
Cheney, Wyoming’s lone member of the House, has since cemented herself as the one of the most vocal anti-Trump members of Congress.
She earned the ire of Trump, his ardent supporters and many of her fellow Republican lawmakers after she crossed party lines — with nine other House Republicans — to impeach him after the attack on the U.S. Capitol last year.
She was censured one month later by the Wyoming Republican Party and, though she initially survived a leadership vote among the House GOP caucus, she was subsequently booted from her position as the No. 3 House Republican.
Legislatively, Cheney and Trump were not political foes: As noted by FiveThirtyEight, Cheney voted with him on the issues 92.9% of the time.
But she has broken with Trump on what she calls the greatest issue of all: His continued, baseless attacks on elections. As vice chair of the House Jan. 6 committee, she has taken a major role in a year-long investigation into Trump’s conduct before, during and after the Jan. 6 insurrection.
Cheney is the last of six House Republican incumbents to seek reelection after their impeachment vote last year. So far only two — Rep. David Valadao of California and Rep. Dan Newhouse of Washington — have successfully fended off their primary challengers.
The other three — Reps. Jaime Herrera Beutler of Washington, Peter Meijer of Michigan and Tom Rice of South Carolina — all lost to Trump-endorsed challengers. Cheney’s chances of reelection also seem slim, according to polling cited by FiveThirtyEight, though surveys of the race are sparse and Cheney insists she still has a shot.
Cheney’s main opponent is boosted by Trump: Attorney Harriet Hageman is a former Republican National Committee member — and a former Cheney ally and Trump critic.
Once an adviser to Cheney in Cheney’s short-lived 2014 Senate campaign, Hageman won Trump’s approval in September 2021 and has since embraced his false messaging about the last presidential race, claiming that it was “absolutely” rigged.
Hageman, her supporters will say, also has a home-field advantage over Cheney: She is a lifelong Wyomingite while Cheney — whose father held Wyoming’s House seat for a decade in the ’70s and ’80s — was raised in both Wyoming and the Washington, D.C., area. before she went on to work in national politics.
Hageman ran for Wyoming governor in 2018, pledging to “reform federal land management and access” in a state where nearly half of the land is federally owned. During that primary, she took the position of transferring federal public land to the states and suggested that 1 million acres of Wyoming be part of the pilot plan. The proposal raised eyebrows among leading conservation groups, most of whom endorsed Republican Mark Gordon, who went on to win.
Palin and Murkowski on the ballot
Further north, in Alaska, voters on Tuesday will be making a bit of history: The state has scrapped its party-line primaries in favor of a top-four system, where every candidate competes together, and has implemented a ranked-choice voting system for its general elections.
The special general election held Tuesday along with the primaries will be the first time Alaskan voters rank candidates on the ballot.
The new system works like this: If a candidate gets more than 50% of the votes, they win outright; otherwise, the last-place candidate is eliminated and their voters’ ballots are distributed to the voters’ second-choice picks. This process continues until a candidate gets more than 50%.
According to the new system’s supporters, ranked-choice encourages more moderate candidates who can appeal to the most voters, especially in crowded fields.
One of the critics of the new system is also eyeing to win the special election to serve the few months remaining in late Rep. Don Young’s term in the House. Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, who is backed by Trump, seeks a return to elected office after running as the Republican vice-presidential nominee in 2008. Between then and now, Palin was a face of the Obama-era tea party movement — a precursor, in style and substance, to Trump’s platform — and was a conservative pundit and TV personality.
She has called Alaska’s new voting system a “convoluted” process that will result “in voter suppression.”
Facing off against Palin are Nicholas Begich III — Republican heir to a local Democratic dynasty whose family members include a former representative and state senator — and Democrat Mary Peltola, a former Alaska state representative.
The polling aggregate from FiveThirtyEight shows Peltola doing well against both Begich and Palin. (The fourth candidate who advanced in the special primary, Al Gross, withdrew and urged people to back Peltola.)
The three are also the front-runners in the regular House primary election simultaneously being held Tuesday, in which 22 candidates are vying to advance to November’s general election and secure a full two-year term in the House.
On the Senate side, incumbent Republican Lisa Murkowski faces her first major electoral test in years — though, as history has shown, she is no stranger to surprising victories.
Murkowski is the only one of the seven GOP senators who voted to convict in Trump’s impeachment trial last year to be on the ballot this year. Her vote, like Cheney’s, led to a censure from her state’s Republican Party.
Unlike Cheney, Murkowski has built a profile as one of the Senate’s most moderate Republicans and repeatedly crosses political lines — notably, supporting abortion access, voting against Trump-nominated Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation to the Supreme Court and negotiating last year’s infrastructure spending bill.
Kelly Tshibaka, a former commissioner of the Alaska Department of Administration, hopes to unseat her. Backed by Trump, Tshibaka has cast doubts on the integrity of the 2020 election but ultimately recognized Joe Biden as the president. She also called last week’s FBI search of Mar-a-Lago a “gross abuse of power.”
According to FiveThirtyEight’s polling aggregate, Murkowski and Tshibaka trade off the lead in various surveys.
Still, because of the primary’s top-four rules, Murkowski is likely to advance from Tuesday to the general election. And even if she doesn’t, she could still win: She famously lost the Republican primary in 2010 to tea party-challenger Joe Miller but went on to win the general election after more than 100,000 Alaskans voted for her as a write-in candidate — in part, due to ads that taught voters how to correctly spell her name.
ABC News’ Chris Donovan and Tracy Wholf contributed to this story.
Reba McEntire and her boyfriend, Rex Linn, are uniting onscreen.
Deadlinereports that the couple is set to star as husband and wife Buck and Sunny Barnes in the new season of ABC’s Big Sky. Their characters are owners of glamping company Sunny Day Excursions. Season 3 is in the midst of shooting in Helena, Montana, with the country legend saying they’re having “a blast” on set.
“We are really loving it,” she says.
Rex also dropped a hint that his girlfriend is portraying a more sinister character than she has in past roles, like on her sitcom, Reba, and her 2001 turn as Annie in Broadway’s Annie Get Your Gun.
“Wait until you see her in this!” Rex says.
Big Sky premiered in 2020 and is based on the book series by C.J. Box that follows a pair of detectives as they work to solve a series of murders in Helena. Season 3 premieres on ABC September 21.
Reba and Rex also star together in The Hammer, an upcoming movie on Lifetime that Reba executive produced.
