For country fans looking for a fun, summer activity that combines music and beer, Busch Light has you covered.
The beer brand has created a DIY craft project that requires a few household items and cans of beer to make a functioning guitar.
Tools and items required include a wooden board, wrench, guitar strings and a collection of Busch Light cans. The company provides a detailed breakdown on how to build the guitar, a process that includes cutting the tops off the cans and drilling holes into the wooden board where the tuning knobs will be placed.
The end product is a mini acoustic guitar that you can play all summer long. The full list of instructions are here.
The guide was created in partnership with craftsman Logan Elliot. It’s inspired by cigar box guitars, a DIY project that dates back to the 1800s.
Fans can also enter an online contest and share their favorite Busch Light and country music memory for a chance to win a Busch Light guitar signed by Jordan Davis. The contest runs August 9-11.
Get ’em before they’re gone! Olivia Rodrigo launched a new collaboration with Casetify, this time to celebrate the recently completed SOUR world tour.
The “drivers license” singer teased two new phone cases on her Instagram Story, writing “Sour tour cases out now!” She also included a link to the Casetify website so fans can snatch up the new collection before it sells out completely.
The new line comes in two new colors, a pink butterfly print case with the official SOUR tour logo embedded in black ink and a clear case with various stickers — as well as the tour logo — decorating the see-through exterior. Both cases also have the option of coming in a clear frost or black protective lining to protect against falls.
In addition, both cases are only available for iPhone models from the iPhone X to the most recently released iPhone 13 Pro Max.
(DALLAS) — A Dallas City Council committee passed a resolution Tuesday looking to limit the impact of Texas’s strict abortion law.
The council’s Quality of Life, Arts, and Culture Committee voted to adopt the ordinance, which directs law enforcement to make investigating or prosecuting any allegation related to abortion outcomes their lowest priority.
It also limits city funds from being used to compile reports of abortions that were performed, to “conduct surveillance” to determine whether an abortion has occurred and to relay the information to any governmental agencies.
The resolution will be presented to the full council for a vote Aug. 10.
“I believe that we have to do what we can at every level of government to push back on legislation that takes away our rights, specifically when it comes to women’s rights,” Councilman Adam Bazaldua, who spearheaded the resolution, told ABC News. “It’s our job as local leaders to preserve quality of life for residents and access to health care.”
Bazaldua said it was vital the resolution was passed before Texas’s so-called trigger law goes into effect.
Most abortions were already illegal in the state prior to the Supreme Court’s reversal of Roe v. Wade in June. However, after the decision, a near-total ban went into effect with very limited exceptions.
When the “trigger law” is enforced on Aug. 25, performing an abortion in Texas will become a felony punishable by a fine of up to $100,000 and possibly up to life in prison.
Dallas is not the only Texas city that has attempted to affirm its support of abortion rights.
In June, Denton — 40 miles northwest of Dallas — was the first in the state to adopt a resolution directing police to make investigating abortions a low priority and, last month, the Austin City Council approved a resolution similar to the one passed in Dallas known as the Guarding the Right to Abortion Care for Everyone or GRACE Act, which effectively decriminalized abortion within city limits.
In addition to the measures also passed in Dallas, the Austin resolution also launched a public information campaign about vasectomies, explaining that the burden of preventing pregnancies “disproportionately falls on women.”
Lastly, the Austin resolution prevents employment and housing discrimination based on whether someone is pregnant or has had an abortion.
“As a father of a 10-year-old daughter, I find it unfathomable to raise a young woman in a time when she has less rights afforded to her than her grandmother did in her lifetime,” Bazaldua said. “And I think it’s important for this issue to be strongly considered when voters go to vote this November.”
(FRANKFORT, Ky.) — Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear said water and electricity systems across the state remain heavily damaged Wednesday from intense flooding, an issue raising concerns as scorching heat replaces rainfall.
National, state and local authorities are working to bring food, water and electricity to those in the affected areas, he said.
“These are proud, hardworking folks that have just lost it all, and I think the least we can do as human beings, as people of values, is to give and do what we can to get them back on their feet,” Beshear said.
At Wednesday’s press conference, Beshear also said 1,300 people have been rescued from flooded areas and 3 have been confirmed as missing, although that number is likely higher than what has been reported.
The death toll hasn’t risen since Monday, with 37 people reported to have died due to the floods, according to the governor.
Beshear said that a total of 219 people have been temporarily housed in Kentucky’s state parks and another 221 in shelters, to account for 440 displaced individuals. However, there are many more displaced persons that are staying with friends and family that are not included in that total, he said.
Cooling centers have been established across eight counties region braces for severe heat on Wednesday and Thursday, according to Beshear. The governor encouraged residents, especially elderly, high risk and displaced individuals without electricity to use the cooling centers in order to stay safe in the heat.
Restoring the damaged water systems will require “significant time and significant dollars,” Beshear said.
Beshear added that power outages were cut almost in half on Tuesday, with a remaining 5,058 hookups without power. Water outages remain at just over 1,800 service connections and 45,600 are under boiled water advisories, he said.
The most essential relief right now, Beshear said, is to get people water.
The National Guard has distributed over 2,400 cases of water as of Wednesday morning. Crews continue to deliver supplies and conduct welfare checks, officials said.
Jeremey Lowe, a Kentucky National Guard detachment sergeant and critical care flight paramedic, said the role of his crew has changed from emergency rescues to health and welfare checks over the last couple of days.
At the height of the flooding, Lowe’s crews worked to hoist people off roofs and out of trees using aircraft to take them to a safe area. The paramedics are now working to help elderly and medication dependent residents, he said.
Lowe told ABC News the majority of their welfare checks require no further assistance from the team, as “the people affected are self-sufficient and independent.”
While many people have been evacuated throughout the flooding, some are now sheltering in isolated areas, relying on food and water deliveries from authorities, Kentucky National Guard crew chief Shaun Morris told ABC News.
Morris said flooding conditions seem to be improving, but that debris and damages have left many roads and bridges impassable, making his airborne crews essential to the relief effort.
Beshear said many roads and bridges have been “just eaten away.”
There is a Team Kentucky Flood Relief Fund that has raised over $3 million in donations for affected families, Beshear said.
The first funds will go toward funerals for those who were killed in the floods, Beshear said.
“A lot of the grief that we’ve suppressed these last seven days trying to get the mud out and take care of each other…it’s going to come to the surface,” Beshear said. “Remember it’s okay not to be okay. I don’t think our brains or our hearts are designed to deal with trauma and loss at this level.”
Grey’s Anatomy fans will see less Meredith Grey next season.
ABC News can confirm that series star Ellen Pompeo, the show’s namesake character who has appeared in 400 episodes to date, will continue her iconic role in a limited capacity in season 19.
Pompeo will appear in eight episodes this upcoming season, premiering Oct. 6 on ABC, and stay on as executive producer.
A new crop of Grey Sloan Memorial Hospital interns have recently been announced for season 19, including Alexis Floyd as Simone Griffin, Niko Terho as Lucas Adams, Midori Francis as Mika Yasuda, Adelaide Kane as Jules Millin and Harry Shum Jr. as Daniel “Blue” Kwan.
The fresh faces seem to indicate that Grey Sloan’s residency program — which was shut down in the season 18 finale — will be back up and running sooner rather than later. That shocking twist, however, led to Miranda Bailey (Chandra Wilson) resigning and Meredith agreeing to step in as interim chief of surgery.
Pompeo had already downsized her role on the show somewhat over the past two seasons, with Meredith having been in a COVID-19 coma for most of the pandemic-centric season 17. Her character also spent a large part of last season in Minnesota, where she entered into a relationship with Scott Speedman‘s Nick Marsh.
Production on the long-running ABC medical primetime drama begins this week.
(NEW YORK) — Children as young as 9 years old have engaged in disordered eating behaviors, according to a new analysis published in JAMA this week.
The analysis, which was published Monday and based on data from nearly 12,000 children, showed that 5% of children — both boys and girls — engaged in binge eating, one of many types of disordered eating behaviors.
“It starts younger than a lot of us may think,” ABC News Medical Correspondent Dr. Jennifer Ashton said on “Good Morning America” Wednesday.
Disordered eating behaviors can lead to eating disorders, according to the National Institute of Mental Health. Eating disorders include anorexia nervosa, where someone may avoid or severely restrict the amount of food they eat; bulimia nervosa, where someone may overeat and then vomit or overexercise afterward; and avoidant restrictive food intake disorder (ARFID), an extreme version of picky eating, where someone is selective about the foods they eat.
Researchers say such issues are common: More than 28 million in the U.S. are living with an eating disorder, which often starts during the teenage years.
“When they found 9- [and] 10-year-olds starting to engage in binge eating, that really shifts our timeline to try to be more aware earlier and try to intervene,” Ashton said.
How to spot warning signs of an eating disorder
Parents may often be the first to notice disordered eating behaviors at home. Here are some red flags to watch out for:
A sudden change in appetite
Sudden avoidance of meal times
Frequent calorie counting
Overexercising
Poor body image or constant focus on weight or talk of weight gain or weight loss
What parents can do
If parents notice their child may be developing or already have an unhealthy relationship with food, Ashton recommends seeking professional help. As a starting point, parents can begin by initiating a conversation with their child’s pediatrician.
Ashton added that parents should keep their child’s privacy in mind and anticipate kids may act out, especially when they’re nearing their pre-teen years.
If you or someone you know is battling an eating disorder, contact the National Eating Disorders Association (NEDA) at 1-800-931-2237 or NationalEatingDisorders.org.
(WASHINGTON) — President Joe Biden signed an executive order Wednesday that paves the way for Medicaid to pay for abortion services for people having to travel out of state.
Speaking from the White House virtually, Biden continued to criticize the Supreme Court’s June 25 decision to overturn Roe v. Wade.
“Today, I’m signing the second executive order that responds to the healthcare crisis that has unfolded since the Supreme Court overturned Roe, and that women are facing all across America,” he said.
The executive order comes just one day after abortion rights activists secured a major win in Kansas, where voters on Tuesday rejected removing the right to abortion from the state constitution.
Biden said the Supreme Court “practically dared women in this country go to the ballot box and restore the right to choose that the Court just ripped away after 50 years.”
“The voters of Kansas sent a powerful signal that this fall the American people will vote to preserve and protect the right and refuse to let it be ripped away from politicians,” Biden said.
The executive order comes just one day after abortion rights activists secured a major win in Kansas, where voters on Tuesday rejected removing the right to abortion from the state constitution.
Biden said the Supreme Court “practically dared women in this country go to the ballot box and restore the right to choose that the Court just ripped away after 50 years.”
“The voters of Kansas sent a powerful signal that this fall the American people will vote to preserve and protect the right and refuse to let it be ripped away from politicians,” Biden said.
The new directive allows the secretary of health and human services to “invite states to apply for Medicaid waivers, so that states where abortion is legal could provide services to people traveling from a state where abortion may be illegal to seek services in their state,” the official said. Technically, these states would apply through what’s known as a “Medicaid 1115 waiver,” according to a senior administration official.
The official noted that when the White House looked into declaring a public health emergency for abortion and what that would allow the federal government to do, this change to Medicaid — an assistance program for low-income patients’ medical expenses — was one of the options. But the White House realized the president could also do it through an executive order instead, which he plans to do Wednesday, the official said.
But the timeline for these changes remains unclear.
ABC News Chief White House Correspondent Cecilia Vega pressed White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre on Wednesday for more details on the implementation of the executive order for women who want to seek abortion care soon.
“Are we talking about days, are we talking about weeks, are we talking about six months?” Vega asked.
Jean-Pierre said the administration didn’t “have the details to share today but [Health and Human Services] will soon have more on what a waiver could look like and the timeline.”
Biden’s order also directs the health and human services secretary to make sure “health care providers comply with federal non-discrimination laws so that women receive medically necessary care without delay,” according to the White House. That could include “providing technical assistance for health care providers who may be confused or unsure of their obligations in the aftermath of the Supreme Court decision in Dobbs,” or providing other info and guidance to providers about their obligations and consequences of not complying with non-discrimination laws.
The order also directs the health and human services secretary to improve research and data collection on maternal health outcomes, according to the White House.
Antonio Perez/Chicago Tribune/Tribune News Service via Getty Images
(NEW YORK) — The U.S. is currently in a race to have the necessary tools and medicines to stop the growing spread of monkeypox, and it may be an uphill battle, according to one vaccine expert.
Dr. Peter Hotez, the dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine in Texas, spoke with ABC News Live Tuesday about the latest developments in the spread of the virus. Hotez said he’s concerned about the trajectory of new cases that are being reported throughout the country and the world.
As of Wednesday, 6,326 monkeypox cases have been confirmed in all states except Montana and Wyoming, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. No American has died from the virus, according to health officials. There have been 25,391 cases worldwide as of Wednesday, according to the CDC.
Hotez said the current monkeypox vaccine, JYNNEOS, is effective, but said the current supply may not be enough.
“It’s not dire yet, but the feeling is unless we work pretty quickly we could get there,” he told ABC News.
Monkeypox is spread through skin-to-skin contact, and although most known cases in the current outbreak are among people who identify as gay or bisexual, anyone can get it, Hotez said. As of Wednesday, five children have contracted the virus, the CDC said.
Hotez said the small supply of the vaccine, which was commissioned a decade ago, is the result of U.S. health officials letting a stockpile expire “inexplicably” and doing nothing to replenish it.
“When the outbreak began we only had a few thousands doses and we’re playing catchup ever since,” Hotez said.
The Food and Drug Administration announced last week that it had inspected and approved the manufacturing of 786,000 more doses of JYNNEOS for distribution in the U.S. and that more than a million doses will be available in the coming weeks.
On Tuesday, President Joe Biden announced FEMA administrator Robert Fenton would serve as the White House National Monkeypox Response Coordinator and Dr. Demetre Daskalakis would serve as the White House National Monkeypox Response Deputy Coordinator.
The pair will “will lead the Administration’s strategy and operations to combat the current monkeypox outbreak, including equitably increasing the availability of tests, vaccinations and treatments,” according to a statement from the White House.
Hotez said Biden’s appointees are qualified to lead the task and said one of the issues that they’re going to have to tackle is the vaccine supply. In addition, he said they will have to determine if there will be an increased call to use the antiviral drug tecovirimat, a.k.a. TPOXX, to treat patients while the country replenishes the vaccine supply.
“The problem is this: We don’t have the full armamentarium of tools to control it,” he said. “So we’re in a race trying to…accelerate the control tools, [so] that we have the diagnostics, the drugs and the vaccines versus that steep trajectory of cases.”
(WASHINGTON) — Abortion rights activists on Wednesday were relishing a major victory after Kansas voters soundly rejected a proposed constitutional amendment to roll back abortion access in the first state-level test since the Supreme Court overturned Roe. v. Wade.
That win — in a red state former President Donald Trump carried by double digit margins in 2020 — is a clear warning shot for conservative candidates and state lawmakers alike who campaign on Roe’s downfall: Put the fate of abortion in the voters’ hands and suffer the political consequences.
Kansas voters choose to protect abortion access
Several factors may have motivated Kansas voters to defeat the amendment 59%-41%, but left-leaning strategists are likely to paraphrase Barack Obama famously observing, “elections have consequences.”
Those sorts of consequences can be measured in turnout.
On Tuesday, an eye-popping number of voters took to the polls, in near presidential general election-levels. So far, about 900,000 Kansans sounded off — compared to numbers in the 300,000 range in the 2016 and 2014 primaries. The turnout was stunning by any measure, for a primary night in the middle of summer vacation season.
Can Democrats repeat the results in other states?
Beyond the headline there’s layered impact here, as those seeking an abortion in a handful of states bordering Kansas — states that have implemented trigger law restrictions — can legally travel across state lines for the procedure.
While it might be a stretch for Democrats to do too big a victory lap for the cause, never in this midterm cycle has the left had a flare so bright and powerful, especially as down-ballot Democrats inherit the baggage of a generally unpopular president in Joe Biden, staggered inflation numbers, and mounting concerns about inflation.
The White House is championing this win, with Biden releasing a statement that the vote “makes clear” that “the majority of Americans agree that women should have access to abortion.”
But several questions remain, a chief one being whether this voter enthusiasm can be replicated in other deeply red states. And will Republican-controlled legislatures dare to push amendments for fear of the same sort of result?
A winning strategy forward for Democrats to preserve abortion rights remains unclear and will surely be tested in the upcoming August primaries.
Plus, the result in the rest of Tuesday night’s primaries will likely give Democrats more headaches than produce high-fives.
A mixed night for impeachment backers, but a big night for election deniers
Elections in Michigan, Missouri, Arizona and Washington made way for big wins for “the big lie” and saw the end of the reelection road for Michigan Rep. Peter Meijer, one of the few Republicans who broke party ranks and voted to impeach Donald Trump. Meijer’s loss is something of a grim prescription for the remaining anti-Trump Republicans — Rep. Liz Cheney take note — who have staked their reputations and job security on the anything-but-MAGA line.
Instead of Meijer, ultra-conservative election-denier John Gibbs advances to the general election. The embers of Democrats’ stoking far-right flames burned in this race, too, with the party’s congressional campaign arm pumping $500,000 in ads boosting Gibbs’ profile in the hopes he would be easier for Democrats to beat in November.
Rep. Adam Kinzinger, another vocal anti-Trump Republican who decided to back out reelection, told CNN that “the DCCC (Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee) needs to be ashamed of themselves.”
Tricky news in any event for Cheney, who faces her own set of hurdles in the Wyoming at-large primary on Aug.16. A quirk of the Wyoming election rules where Democrats and Independents can change party affiliations at the time of voting introduces a safeguard not accessible to someone like Meijer, however.
If the Republican primary cycle has taught anything, it’s that there is legitimate appetite for election conspiracy among the GOP electorate – or at least, a willingness to support “big lie” candidates despite everything that’s been revealed. FiveThirtyEight estimates at least 120 nominees deny the credibility of the election.
Arizona is something of the ground zero of election denial, where candidates at nearly every level champion a flavor of “election integrity.” In the GOP primary for attorney general, former prosecutor Abe Hamadeh, with a blessing from Trump, will effort to make Arizona great again.
It’s too early to call the results for the Republican gubernatorial primary, where former tv anchor Kari Lake has made a questioning of the election her mantra, turning interviews back on journalists to make her case.
Which sort of Democrat is left to fend off someone like Lake? In Arizona, it will be former secretary of state Katie Hobbs, who already is campaigning against “conspiracies of the past.”
“We need leaders who will look to the future, not conspiracies of the past. Leaders who are doers, not whiners. Do you want a governor whose entire platform boils down to being a sore loser or a governor who will get the job done for Arizona?” Hobbs pitched in her victory speech Tuesday night.
The 1975 has premiered a new song called “Happiness,” which will appear on the band’s upcoming album, Being Funny in a Foreign Language.
The horn-laden track is accompanied by a video featuring a smoking Matty Healy performing in front of disinterested lounge patrons as the stage setup continually changes. You can watch that now streaming on YouTube.
“Happiness” is the second Being Funny in a Foreign Language cut to be released following lead single “Part of the Band.” The album will arrive in full on October 14.
Along with the song premiere, The 1975 has announced a U.S. tour in support of Being Funny in a Foreign Language. The headlining run begins November 3 in Uncasville, Connecticut and concludes December 17 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
For the full list of dates and all ticket info, visit The1975.com.
