(EVANSVILLE, Ind.) — Three people are dead after a house exploded Wednesday in southern Indiana, officials said.
Dozens of firefighters responded to the scene in Evansville, after the blast occurred Wednesday afternoon on the 1000 block of North Weinbach Avenue, officials said.
So far three deaths have been reported to the Vanderburgh County Coroner’s Office as a result of the explosion, chief deputy coroner David Anson said in a statement. The victims’ names will be released pending family notification, he said.
The home where the explosion occurred was destroyed and 39 other structures were “damaged severely or suffered minor damage,” Evansville Fire Chief Mike Connelly told reporters Wednesday evening. The Knight Township Trustee’s Office was among the buildings damaged and will be closed for the foreseeable future, officials said.
According to Evansville’s building department, 11 of the 39 homes damaged in the explosion are uninhabitable, Connelly said.
Some 60 firefighters were on the scene assisting, Connelly said.
A 100-foot radius around the blast is not searchable and some buildings are not safe to enter, Connelly said, noting that there could be other victims.
The cause of the explosion is under investigation.
CenterPoint Energy arrived following the blast and “made the scene safe,” Connelly said. “There was no detection of gas and they’re restoring service now.”
Evansville Mayor Lloyd Winnecke was on-site surveilling the damage.
“There’s a big investigation and cleanup effort underway,” Winnecke told ABC Evansville affiliate WEHT.
An off-duty Evansville police officer reported the explosion, the mayor said.
The block where the incident occurred “will be shut down for the foreseeable future,” the Evansville Police Department said.
“As more information becomes available, the respective agencies investigating will be able to provide more information,” the department said.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
ABC News’ Darren Reynolds contributed to this report.
On Wednesday’s The Tonight Show, Madonna joined host Jimmy Fallon and his house band The Roots in the Tonight Show Music Room for a version of “Music,” from her new compilation album, Finally Enough Love: 50 Number Ones — performed with classroom instruments.
In the recurring segment, Fallon and The Roots back music artists for a version of one of their popular songs, using instruments you would find in a classroom.
In this case, it was Madonna rocking the triangle, with Fallon pounding a wood block while Roots members played a toy xylophone, a melodica, a toy guitar, tambourines and shakers.
Past music room guests have included Justin Bieber, Jonas Brothers, Camila Cabello, Ed Sheeran and Adele.
Madonna also shared the stories behind a couple of her number-one hits, including “Everybody,” which she said she convinced the DJ at a New York City club called Danceteria to play, marking the first time she saw people dancing to one of her songs.
“I walked down these very steep stairs of a wedding cake and I got to the bottom and I started dancing and my white stiletto pump fell off,” she recalled. “I was trying to do this like smooth move, like dive for the shoe and make it look like it was choreography, and my dress flipped up and my butt was showing!”
Good news is on the way for Dolly Parton fans with a sweet tooth: her Duncan Hines baking collection is getting a restock later this month.
The collection comes with two different cake mixes: Dolly’s limited-edition Southern Style Coconut Flavored Cake Mix and Southern Style Banana Flavored Cake Mix. To go along with the cakes, fans will get one can of Creamy Buttercream Frosting and one can of Chocolate Buttercream Frosting, plus a tea towel, potholder and three keepsake recipe cards.
“I hope you get a chance to grab one & bake up something special,” Dolly said on Twitter when she announced the restock.
Dolly’s Duncan Hines isn’t just delicious — it’s also award-winning. The Coconut Flavored Cake Mix won Best Cake Mix in the People Food Awards 2022.
Only Murders in the Building star co-creator and star Steve Martin is hinting that the comedic whodunit may be his swan song.
“We were very happy just doing the live show,” the 76-year-old comedian tells The Hollywood Reporter, referencing his You Won’t Believe What They Look Like Today! tour with longtime friend and Only Murders co-star Martin Short. “There may be a natural end to that — somebody gets sick, somebody just wears out — but I wouldn’t do it without Marty. When this television show is done, I’m not going to seek others. I’m not going to seek other movies. I don’t want to do cameos. This is, weirdly, it.”
The Hulu series — also starring Selena Gomez — and his live show are just two of Martin’s current projects. He’s also working on his 12th book, as well as a documentary about his life and career.
Only Murders in the Building is up for three Emmys this year, including outstanding comedy series and lead actor nods for Martin and Short. The show, currently in its second season, was recently renewed for a season three.
(NEW YORK) — Since the first case of monkeypox was detected in the United States in mid-May, the outbreak has led to more than 10,300 reported cases across the country as of Wednesday.
The evolving situation moved the Department of Health and Human Services to declare a public health emergency last week.
Many questions have emerged over the last two-and-a-half months including how the disease spreads, how it’s treated and which vaccines can prevent infection.
Experts spoke to ABC News about the primary methods of transmission, why most patients won’t need treatment and what people can do to protect themselves.
How monkeypox spreads
In the current outbreak, monkeypox has been mostly spreading via skin-to-skin contact with a person with monkeypox or through contact with a patient’s rash, lesions, scabs or body fluids.
Although monkeypox can spread during intimate sexual contact, as many cases have during this outbreak, there is no evidence it is a sexually transmitted disease.
It can also spread through prolonged contact with objects or fabrics — including clothes, bed sheets and towels — touched or used by someone with monkeypox, but this brings a lower risk.
Dr. Gabriela Andujar Vazquez, an infectious disease physician and associate hospital epidemiologist at Tufts Medical Center in Boston, told ABC News a person is much less likely to contract monkeypox by brushing past a positive patient or by using shared public spaces such as a swimming pool, gyms, restrooms or public transit compared with skin-to-skin contact.
“We don’t think shared bathrooms, locker rooms, things that are shared publicly — or even within households — are a major mode of transmission,” she said. “It’s really direct contact with a person who is infectious.”
This is different from a previous monkeypox outbreak in 2003, linked to contact with pet prairie dogs, which were infected after being kept near small mammals from Ghana.
Dr. Jessica Justman, an associate professor of medicine in epidemiology at Columbia Mailman School of Public Health, emphasized this could change.
“I think we all learned with COVID that things can change, particularly in public health when we are dealing with an outbreak and we just need to all be prepared for the information to change and the public health messaging to change as we gain more information,” Justman told ABC News. “And COVID was a brand new virus. At least with monkeypox, it’s not a brand-new virus.”
She added, “But the current outbreak has a number of features to it that are different from prior outbreaks.”
Signs and symptoms
The incubation period from the time a person is exposed to when symptoms first appear can range from three days to 17 days, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The most common symptom is a rash that can appear on the arms, legs, chest or face or on or near the genitals, the health agency said.
Lesions start out as dark spots on the skin before progressing to bumps that fill with fluid and/or pus.
Finally, the lesions will scab over and eventually fall off. People may be left with scars or skin discoloration, but health officials say a person is no longer infectious once the scabs are gone and a fresh layer of skin has formed.
Other symptoms include fever, headache, fatigue, chills, muscle aches, backache and swollen lymph nodes.
What treatments are available
Most monkeypox patients recover within two to four weeks without specific treatments and receive “supportive care” such as Tylenol for fever or topical pain relievers for rashes.
However, some patients at high risk of severe illness, such as those with weakened immune systems, may benefit from treatment.
“We have an antiviral medication we can offer to patients if they need a little more help handling the rash,” Andujar Vasquez said. “But that would be for a subset of patients. Not every patient needs to be on antiviral medication.”
Tecovirimat, known under the brand name TPOXX, is a two-week course of pills approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to treat smallpox.
However, TPOXX was made available to treat monkeypox under “compassionate use” by the CDC after animal studies showed it can lower the risk of death.
Vaccines that can protect against infection
There are two vaccines that can be used to prevent monkeypox.
The only one currently being used is JYNNEOS, which is a two-dose vaccine approved by the FDA to prevent smallpox and monkeypox.
“We would give the vaccine ideally by four days from your exposure, but we think it may be still beneficial to do it if it’s been 14 days after you were exposed,” Andujar Vasquez said.
Data from Africa has shown two doses of JYNNEOS are at least 85% effective in preventing monkeypox infection.
The other vaccine, ACAM2000 — which the U.S. has in a stockpile — is not being used because it has been shown to cause side effects in people with certain conditions, such as those who are immunocompromised.
To increase the number of JYNNEOS doses available, health officials announced Tuesday they would be implementing a new strategy to inject the vaccine intradermally, just below the first layer of skin, rather than subcutaneously, or under all the layers of skin.
This will allow one vial of vaccine to be given out as five separate doses rather than a single dose.
Prevention methods
The experts say for most Americans, the risk for monkeypox is still low. However, they recommend proper hand hygiene and following CDC guidelines for practicing safer sex.
“It’s worth it to pay attention to what’s happening with monkeypox, but I would not worry about shaking hands with people [without monkeypox] or opening doors or touching surfaces,” Justman said.
Amazon Prime Video has debuted the trailer for Catherine Called Birdy, Lena Dunham‘s new film about girl’s search for gender equality. The third feature film from the creator of the HBO series Girls, is set in a Medieval English village in 1290, where teen Lady Catherine, a.k.a. Birdy — played by Bella Ramsey — is assigned to find a husband. Her greedy but poor father, portrayed by Andrew Scott, wants to capitalize to save their manor, but Catherine refuses to comply. Joe Alwyn, Ralph Ineson, Billie Piper, Isis Hainsworth and Russell Brand also star. Catherine Called Birdy opens in limited release September 23 and streams on Amazon Prime Video October 7…
She-Hulk: Attorney at Law star Tatiana Maslany will executive-produce and star in the upcoming AMC series Invitation to a Bonfire, the cable channel announced on Wednesday. Inspired by Vladimir and Vera Nabokov’s co-dependent marriage, the series, per AMC, follows Zoya — played by Skins‘ Freya Mavor — “a young Russian immigrant and groundskeeper, who is drawn into a lethal love triangle with the school’s newest faculty member — an enigmatic novelist, portrayed by Pilou Asbæk — and his bewitching wife,” played by Maslany…
The official trailer for the dark comedy/thriller The Menu dropped on Wednesday. The film follows “a couple — played by The Queen’s Gambit‘s Anya Taylor-Joy and Mad Max: Fury Road‘s Nicholas Hoult — that travels to a coastal island to eat at an exclusive restaurant where the chef — portrayed by The Grand Budapest Hotel‘s Ralph Fiennes — has prepared a lavish menu, with some shocking surprises.” John Leguizamo, Judith Light and Hong Chau also star. The Menu’s release date is currently set for November 18…
(NEW YORK) — The national average price for a gallon of gas fell below $4 on Thursday for the first time since early March, according to AAA data. The milestone was reached after more than 55 consecutive days of declining prices at the pump.
The national average price for a gallon of gas, which stands at $3.99, has fallen more than 20% since it reached a peak of $5.01 in mid-June, according to data AAA provided to ABC News.
In California, the state with the highest average price, a gallon of gas costs $5.38, though that price has fallen more than 11% over the past month. In Texas, the state with the lowest average gas price, a gallon costs $3.49, AAA data showed.
Despite the recent price dip, the cost of gas remains elevated, standing roughly 25% above a $3.18 national average one year ago, according to AAA data.
Sky-high prices in the summer stemmed from a travel boom that brought more people to the pump, experts told ABC News in late May.
That spike in demand coincided with a shortage of crude oil supply amid the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which prompted a widespread industry exit from Russia that pushed millions of barrels of oil off the market, the experts said.
The effort to reduce gas prices has made up a key policy priority of President Joe Biden. During a visit to Saudi Arabia last month, Biden urged the major oil producer to increase output as a means of relieving the global supply shortage.
The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, or OPEC, a Saudi-led group of oil-producing countries, announced along with allies last week that it would modestly increase output next month. But the move fell short of the major increase that the Biden administration had sought.
In March, the U.S. and its allies announced the collective release of 60 million barrels of oil from their strategic reserves over the following months, which sought to alleviate some of the supply shortage and blunt price increases.
The fall in gas prices marks good news for federal policymakers, who have sought to dial back prices across the economy while averting a recession.
The milestone for falling gas prices coincides with a slowdown in price increases for goods overall.
The consumer price index, or CPI, rose 8.5% over the past year as of July, a marked slowdown from 9.1% in June, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
A slowdown in the inflation rate emerged in part because of the decline in the national average price of gasoline, which makes up a key portion of the consumer price index.
(NEW YORK) — Price hikes have battered the U.S. economy for months, straining household budgets and prompting an aggressive series of rate hikes from the Federal Reserve.
Inflation has sent prices sky high for just about everything: groceries, gas and rent, among other essentials. But some goods are getting hit harder by cost increases than others, and the cost increases are impacting some groups of people more than others.
In fact, Black and Latino people have been disproportionately affected by the set of goods hit hardest by inflation, in light of which goods those groups consume compared with their counterparts, according to a study released in June by the New York Federal Reserve.
Here’s a breakdown of which goods are getting hammered by inflation, and which purchases are escaping the worst of it:
Which products are getting hit hardest by inflation?
Those who have gone grocery shopping lately know that the prices for store-bought foods have jumped in recent months. The latest government data shows that food prices have outpaced the overall inflation rate, rising nearly 11% year-over-year in July. Costs have risen even faster for food meant to be consumed at home, which has seen a roughly 13% hike.
Bakers, beware. As of July, the price of flour and prepared flour mixes — when purchased in a U.S. city — has risen 22% over the last year, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The cost of breakfast cereal has also gone up dramatically, rising 16.4% year-over-year. But those price hikes are preferable to what’s transpired with a common breakfast alternative, eggs, which have undergone a 38% price increase over the past year.
To get to the grocery store, many Americans hop in the car. If they bought a new car last month, it cost them over 10% more than it would have a year ago, outpacing overall inflation, government data showed.
Meanwhile, it takes one cruise past a roadside sign to know that gas prices have jumped significantly over the past year. While prices at the pump have fallen for nearly two months, they remain highly elevated. Gas prices have risen 26% over the past year, according to AAA data.
Which products are avoiding the worst of inflation?
As mentioned, overall food prices have increased sharply. But one silver lining has emerged in that category: food eaten away from home. As of July, when dining out, Americans encountered prices 7.6% higher than a year ago — a slower pace of inflation than the 8.5% year-over-year rate for goods as a whole.
Health care, meanwhile, has managed to escape nearly all of the steep price hikes. The medical care commodities index, a measure of the price of goods and services in health care, rose 3.7% year-over-year in July — that’s well below overall inflation and relatively close to the Federal Reserve’s target inflation rate of 2%.
Insurers and providers often negotiate health care prices well in advance, leaving them less sensitive to short-term pricing pressures.
Taken together, the overall price of goods has shown signs of moderating. In July, the consumer price index rose 8.5% compared with the same month a year prior. While still high, the year-over-year inflation rate eased from its breakneck pace in June, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
On a monthly basis, the consumer price index rose 1.3% in July, remaining flat from the rise seen in June, according to the bureau.
The data offers hope to policymakers and consumers that inflation has peaked. But, as with rising inflation, a cooling off of price hikes will likely play out in uneven ways across the host of products that Americans buy each day.
(NEW YORK) — As the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) continues to deal with staffing issues on a nearly daily basis, the agency says it has received 57,956 applications for this year’s 1,500 open air traffic controller positions.
The median annual salary for air traffic controllers (ATCs) was $138,556 in 2021. All applicants must be under 30 years of age.
In a speech last week in Washington, D.C., the head of the ATC union says the FAA is not hiring fast enough.
“In 2011, there were over 11,750 Certified Professional Controllers and additional trainees yielding over 15,000 total controllers on board at the FAA,” Rich Santa said at an industry conference last week. “By the beginning of 2022, there were more than 1,000 fewer fully certified controllers, and 1,500 fewer total controllers on board, a number that has declined for at least the past 11 years.”
However, the FAA said that its hiring goals are in line with targets.
“The FAA annually hires new air traffic controllers, is on target to meet our hiring goal this year, and is reducing the backlog of training caused by COVID-19,” the FAA said in a statement to ABC News.
Air traffic controllers manage plane traffic at airports across the country, and they are vital to the safety of plane passengers and the ability of airlines to maintain a timely schedule.
“Unfortunately, FAA staffing is not keeping up with attrition,” Santa said. “With the introduction of new technology and new entrants into the [National Airspace System], we should have 1,000 more controllers, not 1,000 fewer than we had a decade ago.”
The applications come after the FAA’s annual hiring push, which is now closed for the year.
During a summer plagued by delays and cancellations, many airlines pointed to air traffic control staffing levels as a reason for travel meltdowns. Airlines for America (A4A), an industry group representing major U.S. airlines, sent a letter to Congress in early June pointing the finger at the staffing of air traffic controllers.
“Specifically, air carriers are taking great care to reduce their summer flight schedules while also accelerating efforts to hire and train new employees to meet the strong resurgence in travel demand,” the letter said. “The FAA must also work to ensure that the air traffic control system is capable of meeting demand.”
However, the FAA pushed back on that narrative, saying that data points to delays and cancellations for other reasons.
“Airline data show that the vast majority of delays are not due to air traffic controller staffing,” the FAA told ABC News. “Where demand has increased, the FAA is adding additional controllers.”
Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg has said that it is a priority for his agency to ensure that there is enough staffing to meet demand.
“We’re also working to make sure that FAA personnel, the air traffic control side, is ready to support these flights,” Buttigieg told ABC News in early July. “So when we have an area where there’s a staffing issue, it’s been happening in Florida where you’ve had huge demand and a lot of weather and other issues like military and even commercial space launches affecting the airspace.”
Selected candidates from the 2022 hiring window will join the 14,000 air traffic controllers across the country. Successful candidates will then attend a training academy in Oklahoma City before being deployed to an air traffic control tower anywhere in the country.
(NEW YORK) — Law enforcement agencies around the country are actively monitoring online threats and rhetoric that has emerged in the wake of the FBI raid on former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate Monday, sources tell ABC News.
Agencies are also preparing for possible acts of violence they fear could occur at or near pro-Trump demonstrations that some supporters are calling for, law enforcement sources said.
Authorities on Monday morning searched Trump’s Florida estate in what sources told ABC News was part of a probe into documents that Trump improperly took to Mar-a-Lago when he departed the White House, some of which the National Archives has said were marked classified.
“Over the last several months, law enforcement officials across the nation have become increasingly concerned about calls for violence against law enforcement and other government officials by violent extremists,” said John Cohen, a former Department of Homeland Security official who is now an ABC News contributor. “The search warrant at Mar-a-Lago has only served to increase those calls, adding to law enforcement concerns.”
In the aftermath of the raid, Trump supporters called for protests at FBI offices in Riverside, California, and Washington, D.C., according to online messages collected by the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, a think tank that monitors extremism and hate speech.
The ISD reported that one Trump supporter was “calling on fellow veterans and Americans of all walks to join him” in Washington “to protest the out-of-control FBI and its actions against President Trump,” while a post by another supporter implored followers to “Protest FBI tyranny.”
Cohen says authorities have grown even more concerned as public figures have echoed those kind of remarks.
“We now face a situation where public officials and members of the media are mimicking the language used by violent extremists, and this has served to add more volatility to the situation,” he said.
Evan worse, said Cohen, “there’s been talk about a range of conspiracy theories regarding what the FBI was doing at Mar-a-Lago. And when public figures — especially those who have previously served in law enforcement — spread wild conspiracy theories that they know are false, it’s not only irresponsible but dangerous.”
On the other hand, Cohen said, authorities have become better at monitoring threats and acting on them.
“Following the events at the Capitol on Jan. 6, law enforcement has improved its ability to analyze online activities by violent extremists, taking threats made online more seriously and incorporating that understanding into their security planning,” he said.
