(WASHINGTON) — Joe Biden on Monday traveled to Kentucky to survey damage from severe flooding in the state — a visit that also marks his first presidential trip since he tested positive for COVID-19 last month.
He landed in Lexington on Monday morning to talk with local officials about the flooding, which killed at least 37 people after rain soaked the eastern part of the state. On Sunday, the president amended an existing emergency declaration for Kentucky to free up additional disaster assistance.
Biden and first lady Jill Biden are scheduled to meet with Gov. Andy Beshear and Kentucky first lady Britainy Beshear, according to the White House. The Bidens will also visit families affected by the flooding.
The president previously visited Kentucky in December to survey tornado damage in the state.
Biden told reporters at Dover Air Force Base before flying on Monday that he felt “great” and again tested negative for COVID that morning.
He was first cleared to leave isolation Sunday after testing negative for a second time following a so-called rebound case of the virus.
The president tested positive last month and, according to his doctor, experienced mild symptoms including a slight fever, cough and sore throat. He tested negative less than a week after that first positive test but received another positive test just days after that.
During his initial bout with COVID, Biden took Paxlovid, which is a key therapeutic for high-risk patients in preventing hospitalization and other severe outcomes. But it at times produces a rebound case after a patient finishes their course of treatment.
After he got the green light to leave isolation, Biden traveled to his home in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, before traveling Monday to Kentucky.
Duane Prokop/Getty Images for The Wellness Experience by Kroger
Jewel says she’s OK after a scary situation over the weekend in which her tour bus erupted into flames in a hotel parking lot.
The “Intuition” singer spoke about the shocking incident on TikTok, saying, “We had a full bus fire. Nobody was hurt. It happened on an off day.”
Jewel, who is currently on tour with Train and Blues Traveler, shared photos of the extensive damage to her bus — including a charred interior, shattered windows and damaged engine. She praised the local fire department for extinguishing the blaze.
“Everybody is safe,” she assured before adding, “We saved the vintage guitar and guitar AMP.” The equipment was saved by her “hero” bus driver, and she sang his praises for “saving the vintage gear.”
Despite walking away from this incident unscathed, Jewel noted that she is upset by the situation and exclaimed, “All’s well that ends well, but how about this bulls**?!”
The singer also noted that was the same bus that broke down in the middle of the night. She didn’t offer an explanation about what arrangements were made so she can continue touring with Train. Jewel also didn’t disclose where the incident took place, except that it was in a hotel’s parking lot.
Train took their AM Gold tour to Morrison, Colorado, on August 6, where they played Red Rocks Amphitheatre.
With the VMAs just days away, MTV is gradually revealing details about the forthcoming event. The latest update: Nicki Minaj is set to receive the 2022 Michael Jackson Video Vanguard Award.
The honor is typically given as a lifetime achievement award or recognition of an artist’s contributions and impact on music video and pop culture.
“Nicki has broken barriers for women in hip-hop with her versatility and creative artistry,” said Bruce Gillmer, Paramount’s president of music, music talent, programming & events. “She has shifted the music industry and cemented her status as a global superstar with her crossover appeal, genre-defying style and continuing to be unapologetically ‘Nicki.’”
Nicki has taken the VMA stage on several occasions, as both a performer and winner of several awards. This year will mark her first appearance on the stage since 2018, when she performed “Majesty,” “Ganga Burn,” “FEFE” and “Barbie Dreams” — a medley of songs from her album Queen. She is also nominated in the category of Best Hip Hop Video for the Lil Baby-assisted “Do We Have a Problem?”
The 2022 VMAs are set to air on Sunday, August 28 at 8 p.m. ET/PT.
Meanwhile, Nicki will premiere her Queen Radio show on August 11, followed by the release of her upcoming single, “Super Freaky Girl.”
Fans of Lil Wayne‘s Tha Carter series are in for some good news: the sixth installment is coming soon. The rapper teased the project Saturday night at OVO Fest’s Young Money reunion show.
“I’m working on Carter VI, coming soon!” he said at the end of his performance, moments before a sign with the words “Tha Carter VI” appeared on an onstage screen. He later took to TikTok to share the news with those who didn’t attend the show.
Lil Wayne kicked off Tha Carter series with its original in 2004, releasing the following installments in 2005, 2008, 2011 and 2018. He first teased Tha Carter VI in 2020; the latest announcement confirms the album is still on the way.
Lil Wayne’s update came amid his reunion with Drake and Nicki Minaj,which featured performances of their hit songs “BedRock,” “Every Girl” and “The Motto.”
“It’s been a long time since we been here and been able to do this together. First and foremost, I just wanna say tonight I got to stand in the crowd and watch two of the greatest musicians of all fucking time,” Drake said, reflecting on the special moment. “I’m so grateful to be a part of that team.”
The Original Misfits will be celebrating Halloween in Texas this year.
The reunited punk icons — featuring original members Glenn Danzig and Jerry Only, along with longtime guitarist Doyle Wolfgang Von Frankenstein — will play a headlining show in Dallas on October 29.
The bill will also include Alice Cooper and The Distillers.
Tickets go on sale this Friday, August 12, at 10 a.m. CT, with various presales throughout the week. For all ticket info, visit Misfits.com.
Danzig and Only reunited as The Original Misfits in 2016 — 33 years after the former left the group in 1983 — and have played a number of one-off shows since.
You can also catch the Misfits headline Chicago’s Riot Fest in September, during which they’ll be playing their 1982 debut album Walk Among Us in honor of its 40th anniversary.
With Top Gun: Maverick flying past Titanic in the #7 slot of all-time domestic top grossers, Paramount Pictures is saying thank you to fans.
The studio has announced a “Fan Appreciation Weekend” kicking off this Friday, August 12. The studio “is eternally grateful to the millions of fans going to theatres to experience Top Gun: Maverick the way it was meant to be seen — on the big screen,” noted Chris Aronson, president of domestic distribution of Paramount Pictures.
From Friday through Sunday, the Tom Cruise film will return to the country’s largest format theaters so fans can experience the movie again and also take in special behind-the-scenes features of what it took for Cruise, director Joseph Kosinski, and its cast and crew to bring the movie to life.
Also, while supplies last, fans can get their hands on a new Top Gun: Maverick collector’s print, commissioned and designed for fans by U.K. artist Doaly at participating theaters. More information can be found at local theater listings and exhibitor websites.
Cruise, who also produced the movie, was insistent on avoiding streaming and delayed Maverick‘s release until moviegoers were ready to return to theaters.
It was a gamble, but it paid off: At $662.5 million and counting collected in the States, and nearly $1.29 billion worldwide, the movie is Cruise’s highest-grossing movie to date.
(NEW YORK) — Scientists have made a distressing discovery on how global warming will affect known infectious diseases.
Climate hazards are expected to aggravate 58% of all known human pathogens, according to a study published Monday in Nature Climate Change. That’s over half of infectious diseases discovered since the end of the Roman Empire, Camilo Mora, a data analyst and associate professor in the Department of Geography and Environment at the University of Hawaii Manoa, told ABC News.
While the impact that climate change can have on human vulnerability to a range of diseases has been well accepted, the full threat climate change poses to humanity in the context of disease was unknown, according to the researchers. Past studies have primarily focused on specific groups of pathogens, such as bacteria or viruses, the response to certain hazards, such as heatwaves or increased flooding, or transmission types, such as food or water-borne.
Mora’s team systematically screened literature that revealed 3,213 empirical cases linking 286 unique, human pathogenic diseases to 10 climate hazards, such as warming, floods or drought. Of these, 277 pathogens were found to be aggravated by at least one climate hazard, with only nine pathogens “exclusively diminished” by climatic hazards, according to the study.
A whopping 58% of an authoritative list of infectious diseases documented to have impacted humanity have already been shown to be aggravated by climatic hazards — a finding the researchers found “shocking,” Mora said.
Examples of hazards include those that bring humans closer to pathogens, such as storms and floods, which then cause displacements associated with cases of Lassa fever or Legionnaires’ disease.
Other examples are events that bring pathogens closer to humans, in which warming increases in areas over which organisms that transmit diseases, such as Lyme disease, dengue and malaria, are active.
There is a broad taxonomic diversity of human pathogenic diseases, such as bacteria, viruses, animals, plants, fungi and protozoa, as well as transmission types — for example, vector-borne, airborne, direct contact — that can be affected by warming, heat waves, droughts, wildfires, extreme precipitation, floods and sea level rise, according to the study.
Shifts in the geographical range of species are one of the most common ecological indications of climate change, according to the study. Warming and precipitation changes, for instance, were associated with range expansion of vectors such as mosquitoes, ticks, fleas, birds and several mammals, which then were implicated in outbreaks by viruses, bacteria, animals and protozoans, including dengue, chikungunya, plague, Lyme disease, West Nile virus, Zika, trypanosomiasis, echinococcosis and malaria.
The researchers found 1,006 unique pathways in which climatic hazards, via different transmission types, resulted in cases of pathogenic diseases.
Warming at higher latitudes have allowed vectors and pathogens to survive winter, aggravating outbreaks by several viruses, such as an anthrax outbreak in the Arctic circle that may have stemmed from an ancient bacterial strain that emerged from an unearthed animal corpse as the frozen ground thawed, according to the study.
COVID-19 is an example of how one single disease can create a thematic change in society, Mora said, adding that he does not believe the most recent pandemic — and the animal-to-human transmission that likely caused it — could have happened without global warming.
This research reveals more evidence that humans will have difficulty adapting to climate change, especially those in developing countries, Mora said.
“The magnitude of the vulnerability when you think about one or two diseases — okay, sure, we can deal with that,” he said. “But when you’re talking about 58% of the diseases, and 58% of those diseases can be affected or triggered in 1,000 different ways. So that, to me, was also revealing of the fact that we’re not going to be able to adapt to climate change.”
Extreme weather events such as drought and wildfire in the West, flooding in both inland and coastal areas and extreme heat in places that previously did not experience such high temperatures are becoming more common, Mora said.
The findings reveal unique pathways in which climatic hazards can lead to disease, underlining the limited capacity for societal adaptation, and emphasizing the need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, the authors said.
(BRUNSWICK, Ga.) — Sentencing is underway for the three men convicted of federal hate crimes in the death of 25-year-old Ahmaud Arbery.
Travis McMichael, who fired the fatal shot on Feb. 23, 2020, was sentenced Monday to life in prison.
His father, Gregory McMichael, and their neighbor, William “Roddie” Bryan could also face life sentences. They’ll be sentenced Monday afternoon at the Brunswick, Georgia, courthouse.
The three white men were convicted in February by a federal jury who decided that they followed and killed Arbery because he was Black.
After deliberating for less than four hours, the jury convicted all three men of being motivated by racial hate in interference of Arbery’s civil rights and attempted kidnapping. Travis McMichael, 36, and his 64-year-old father were also convicted of carrying and brandishing a weapon during the commission of a crime of violence. Travis McMichael was also found guilty of discharging a firearm in relation to a crime of violence.
The McMichaels chased Arbery in their pickup truck after they saw him jogging in their neighborhood, falsely believing he had been responsible for several break-ins in the Satilla Shores neighborhood. Bryan joined the chase in his own truck, blocking Arbery from escaping and recorded cellphone footage of Travis McMichael shooting Arbery with a shotgun after a brief struggle.
During the trial, prosecutors released text messages and social media posts in which Travis McMichael and Bryan repeatedly used racist slurs. Witnesses also testified to hearing both McMichaels make racist comments.
All three defendants are already serving life in prison for the killing after being found guilty of murder in a Georgia state court last fall.
Ernest is embarking on his first headlining tour later this year with the Sucker For Small Towns Tour that takes him to college towns across the country for 11 dates.
Throughout October and November, Ernest will perform in cities across the South and Midwest, including Birmingham and Mobile, Alabama; Columbus, Ohio; and at the famous Joe’s on Weed in Chicago. The “Flower Shops” singer will deliver songs off his album of the same name,among other country hits he’s written. The trek begins on October 6 at Zydeco in Birmingham and wraps up November 19 at Crusens in Peoria, Illinois.
“Well look what we have here….I’m Gonna be comin to party with y’all this fall!!” Ernest writes on Instagram, adding in a statement, “It’s an experience we put together specifically for the fans and I think it’s going to be special for them to be able to say they were there for it!”
Tickets go on sale Friday at 9 a.m. ET. Visit Ernest’s website for a full list of shows.
Sting is among the many stars who will take part in an upcoming CMT special celebrating the career of country music great — and current Eagles touring member — Vince Gill.
The 90-minute show, CMT Giants: Vince Gill, will air September 16 at 9 p.m. ET and will feature a variety of major country stars performing Gill’s songs, including Brad Paisley, Carrie Underwood, Chris Stapleton, Luke Combs, Maren Morris and Ricky Skaggs.
Sting is among a number of guest stars who will appear on the special to share personal stories about Gill, reflect on their experience collaborating with him and discuss his contributions to country music. Others include Emmylou Harris, Keith Urban, Reba McEntire and Rodney Crowell.
Back in 2011, the Police frontman and Gill were featured together on an episode on the popular CMT performance series CMT Crossroads.
In addition, the special will feature a new interview with Gill as he reflects on “his career, his classic songwriting, musical influences and his future plans,” along with rare photos, performance footage and archival conversations.
Meanwhile, Sting recently announced plans for two new special 2023 concerts that will take place on January 9 and 10 at Pittsburgh’s Heinz Hall. They will feature the Rock & Roll Hall of Famer performing his classic Police and solo hits accompanied by the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra.
Tickets for the shows go on sale to the general public on August 22, while members of Sting’s fan club can purchase presale tickets starting today. In addition, Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra subscribers will be able to buy presale tickets beginning August 15. General public tickets will be available at PittsburghSymphony.org, by calling 412-392-4900, or in person at Heinz Hall in downtown Pittsburgh.
