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Russia-Ukraine live updates: Ukraine pleads for heavy weapons ahead of NATO meeting

June 14, 2022 by WDNY Radio

(NEW YORK) — Russian President Vladimir Putin’s “special military operation” into neighboring Ukraine began on Feb. 24, with Russian forces invading from Belarus, to the north, and Russia, to the east. Ukrainian troops have offered “stiff resistance,” according to U.S. officials.

The Russian military has since launched a full-scale ground offensive in eastern Ukraine’s disputed Donbas region, capturing the strategic port city of Mariupol and securing a coastal corridor to the Moscow-annexed Crimean Peninsula.

Here’s how the news is developing. All times Eastern:

Jun 14, 6:37 am
Ukraine pleads for heavy weapons ahead of NATO meeting

The only way to end the war in Ukraine, either on the battlefield or behind the negotiation table, is a parity of weapons, Mykhailo Podoliak, an adviser to the head of the Ukrainian Presidential Office, said on Monday.

“Being straightforward — to end the war we need heavy weapons parity,” Podoliak said on Twitter.

According to the presidential adviser, Ukraine’s military wish list includes 1,000 howitzers, 300 multiple launch rocket systems, 500 tanks, 2,000 armored vehicles and 1,000 drones.

“Negotiations are possible from a strong position, which requires parity of weapons,” Podoliak said. “There is simply no other way.”

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba echoed Podoliak’s plea for weapons on Monday in a tweet that recounted Ukraine’s recent military triumphs achieved with limited resources.

“Ukraine has proven it can punch well above its weight and win important battles against all odds,” Kuleba said, pointing at victories in the battles of Kyiv, Chernihiv, Sumy and Kharkiv. “Imagine what Ukraine can do with sufficient tools,” the Foreign Minister added. Kuleba urged Ukraine’s partners “to set a clear goal of Ukrainian victory and speed up deliveries of heavy weapons.”

Podoliak said a meeting of NATO defense ministers will be held in Brussels on June 15.

“We are waiting for a decision” on the weapons, Podoliak said.

The group, known as the Ukraine Defence Contact Group, will convene a meeting for the third time in a bid “to ensure that we’re providing Ukraine what Ukraine needs right now,” U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III said at a press briefing in Bangkok, Thailand, on Monday.

Austin, who will be in attendance in Brussels, said that Ukraine needs support “in order to defend against Russia’s unjustified and unprovoked assault.” The secretary of Defense noted that looking ahead, Ukraine will require help “to build and sustain robust defenses so that it will be able to defend itself in the coming months and years.”

In his Monday evening address, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called on Ukrainians to tell people in the occupied territories “that the Ukrainian army will definitely come.”

“Tell them about Ukraine. Tell them the truth. Say that there will be liberation,” the president said.

Meanwhile, Ukrainian officials played down threats of possible food shortages in the country due to the ongoing conflict. While Ukraine lost 25% of its sown area as a result of Russia’ full-scale invasion, the country’s food security was “in no way” threatened, Taras Vysotsky, the first deputy minister of Agrarian Policy, said at a press briefing for Ukrainian media on Monday.

“Despite the loss of 25% of sown areas, the structure of crops this year as a whole is more than sufficient to ensure consumption, which in turn also decreased due to mass displacement and external migration,” Vysotsky said.

The deputy minister added that Ukraine has “already imported about 70% of essential fertilizers, 60% of plant protection products and about a third of the required amount of fuel” before the war erupted in late February. According to Vysotsky, current sowing volumes are enough to ensure domestic consumption and even exports.

Jun 13, 9:26 am
Bodies of tortured men exhumed in Bucha

Another mass grave has been dug up in Bucha, uncovering the bodies of seven men who authorities believe were tortured and killed during the bloody occupation of the city in March.

Police told ABC News their hands were tied with ropes behind their backs and they were shot in the knees and head.

“They were killed in a cruel way,” police spokesperson Iryna Pryanyshnykova said. “These were civilian victims. The people here were killed by Russian soldiers and later they were just put into a grave to try to hide this war crime.”

It’s not clear why the men were killed, Pryanyshnykova said.

She said experts will analyze DNA to identify the victims.

-ABC News’ Britt Clennett

Jun 13, 6:24 am
Zelenskyy: Ukraine fighting for ‘every meter’ of Severodonetsk

Russian forces have pushed the Armed Forces of Ukraine out of the center of Severodonetsk, Ukrainian officials said.

“They are pressing in Severodonetsk, where very fierce fighting is going on — literally for every meter,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in an address on Sunday evening.

Russian forces now control about 70% of the city, as intense shelling makes mass evacuation and the transportation of goods impossible, Sergiy Haidai, another Ukrainian official, said.

Around 500 people, including 40 children, are sheltering in the city’s Azot chemical plant, Haidai said.

While the Ukrainians try to organize their evacuation, authorities of the self-declared Donetsk People’s Republic have given an ultimatum to Ukrainian troops in the city.

“They have two options: either follow the example of their colleagues and give up, or die. They have no other option,” said Eduard Basurin, deputy head of the People’s Militia Department of the DPR.

-ABC News’ Yulia Drozd and Tanya Stukalova

Jun 12, 5:33 pm
Zelenskyy sends virtual message to Sean Penn’s CORE benefit

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy addressed the annual Hollywood fundraiser for actor Sean Penn’s nonprofit Community Organized Relief Effort (CORE) Saturday night with a powerful video message urging people to continue to support Ukraine in its war against Russia.

“All of you have heard about the horrors that Ukraine is going through. Tens of thousands of explosions and shots, hundreds of thousands wounded and killed, millions who have lost their homes,” Zelenskyy said in his virtual speech. “All of this is not a logline for a horror film. All of this is our reality.”

Zelenskyy’s video message included footage showing missiles striking homes and apartment complexes in Ukraine, civilians dead in the streets of Ukrainian cities and children playing in parks amid the backdrop of bombed buildings.

Among those attending the CORE fundraiser, held at the Hollywood Palladium in Los Angles, were Penn and CORE co-founder Ann Lee, former President Bill Clinton, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti, singer John Legend, and actors Patrick Stewart and Sharon Stone.

The group said the event raised more than $2.5 million for CORE’s disaster relief and preparedness work, including its urgent humanitarian response in Ukraine.

Zelenskyy noted that Penn traveled to Ukraine at the start of the Russian invasion and witnessed the atrocities firsthand. He thanked Penn and his group for the continued support for Ukraine.

“We have been resisting it for 107 days in a row,” Zelenskyy said of Russia’s aggression in Ukraine. “We can stop it together. Support Ukraine, because Ukraine is fighting for the whole world, for democracy, for freedom, for life.”

Jun 12, 4:17 pm
Russia’s firepower superiority 10 times that of Ukraine’s in Luhansk: Military chief

Ukraine’s Armed Forces Commander-in-Chief Valeriy Zaluzhny said Sunday that he told his American counterpart, Gen. Mark Milley, U.S. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, that Russian firepower superiority in the Luhansk region is far greater than that of Ukrainian forces.

Zaluzhny said that during a briefing he told Milley that Russian forces are concentrating their efforts in the north of the Luhansk region, where they are using artillery “en masse” and their firepower superiority is 10 times that of Ukraine’s.

“Despite everything, we keep holding our positions,” Zaluzhny said.

Zaluzhny also said Russia has deployed up to seven battalion tactical groups in Severdonetsk, a city in the Luhansk region. He said Russian shelling of residential areas in Kharkiv in northeast Ukraine has resumed.

Russian forces destroyed a second bridge leading into Severodonetsk and are now targeting a third bridge in an effort to completely cut off the city, Luhansk region Gov. Sergiy Haidai said Sunday. Ukraine’s army still controls around one third of the city, he said.

Haidai said that Ukrainian forces are still holding onto the Azot chemical plant in Severodonetsk, where around 500 civilians are taking shelter.

If Severodonetsk falls, Lysychansk will be the only city in the Luhansk region that remains under Ukraine’s control.

Zaluzhny said that as of Sunday, the front line of the war stretched 1,522 miles and that active combat was taking place on at least 686 miles of the front line.

Zaluzhny said that during his briefing with Milley, he reiterated Ukraine’s urgent request for more 155 mm caliber artillery systems.

Jun 12, 12:48 pm
Russian cruise missile attack confirmed in western Ukraine

Russia claims a cruise missile strike destroyed a large warehouse in western Ukraine storing weapons supplied to the Ukrainians by the United States and European allies.

While police in the Ternopil region of Ukraine, where at least one cruise missile hit, told ABC News that no weapons were destroyed, the region’s governor said part of a military facility was damaged.

Ternopil’s governor Volodymyr Trush posted a video showing widespread damage from what he said were four Russian missiles launched Saturday from the Black Sea. Trush said 22 people were wounded, including a 12-year-old child, in the missile strikes.

In addition to the military facility, Trush said four five-story residential apartment buildings were damaged. One of the missiles hit a gas pipeline, he said.

Russia’s defense ministry said Kalibr high presicion sea-based, long-range missiles struck near Chortkiv in the Ternopil province and destroyed a large warehouse full of anti-tank missile systems, portable anti-aircraft missile systems and artillery shells supplied by the United States and European countries.

Departing plane’s crew acted appropriately in harrowing incident with desperate Afghans: US military

June 14, 2022 by WDNY Radio

(NEW YORK) — Multiple military reviews have found a cargo-plane crew acted appropriately and broke no rules in the course of a deadly incident during the chaotic U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan last year, the Air Force announced Monday.

On Aug. 16, an Air Force C-17 landed at Kabul’s Hamid Karzai International Airport bringing equipment to assist in the evacuation of civilians when it was swarmed by hundreds of Afghans who had breached the airport perimeter, military officials said.

“Faced with a rapidly deteriorating security situation around the aircraft, the C-17 crew decided to depart the airfield as quickly as possible,” an Air Force statement said a day later.

Harrowing video of the scene showed a large crowd surround the moving aircraft — with some clinging on as it took off and some falling through the air.

Upon landing at Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar, human remains were found in the wheel well of the plane. The aircraft was temporarily impounded to give time for it to be inspected and for the remains to be recovered.

Among the dead, local authorities said, was teenage soccer player Zaki Anwari. The General Directorate of Physical Education and Sports said in a statement on Facebook at the time that he had fallen to his death.

“He was kind and patient, but like so many of our young people he saw the arrival of the Taliban as the end of his dreams and sports opportunities,” an agency spokesman told The New York Times then.

On Monday, the Air Force announced that reviews by the staff judge advocate offices of U.S. Central Command and Air Mobility Command had agreed the crew “was in compliance with applicable rules of engagement specific to the event and the overall law of armed conflict.”

The crew’s operational leadership also reviewed the mission and found that it had “acted appropriately and exercised sound judgment” by getting the plane airborne as quickly as possible, given the situation, according to Air Force spokeswoman Ann Stefanek.

“The aircrew’s airmanship and quick thinking ensured the safety of the crew and their aircraft,” she said.

Stefanek also acknowledged the Afghans who died.

“This was a tragic event and our hearts go out to the families of the deceased,” she said.

Inside the Trump-backed effort to take ‘control’ of elections ahead of 2022 and 2024

June 14, 2022 by WDNY Radio

(WASHINGTON) — In late April, after a year and a half of former President Donald Trump and his associates pushing false claims of election fraud, a few hundred attendees gathered at a golf resort in Williamsburg, Virginia, for an “Election Integrity Summit” organized by Trump allies who were at the forefront of his effort to overturn the 2020 election.

Inside a ballroom at the Kingsmill Resort, Cleta Mitchell, a longtime conservative lawyer who played a key role in the former president’s efforts to hold onto power, took the microphone and urged summit attendees to recruit and create election “task forces” in their communities ahead of the upcoming midterms to avoid a repeat of the last presidential election.

“Imagine if we had had local task forces in these counties? What if we had citizens like you in 2020, overseeing this?” Mitchell said at the private summit, which ABC News attended by purchasing a ticket.

“We could have stopped it,” Mitchell told the crowd. “That’s why we’re doing what we’re doing here tonight.”

‘Task forces’ around the country

The Virginia event is one of the latest in a blitz of summits being held in swing states across the country, led by Mitchell and organized by the “Election Integrity Network,” a project of the Conservative Partnership Institute, a right-wing nonprofit organization that is spearheaded by Trump’s former chief of staff, Mark Meadows, who is a senior partner, and Mitchell, who serves as a senior fellow.

The series of summits comes after Trump, who continues to spread false claims that the 2020 election was stolen, made donations amounting to $1 million from his political action committee’s war chest to CPI — one of his largest donations in the current election cycle. Despite there being no evidence of widespread voter fraud, many Republican voters say they agree with Trump’s assertions that the election was “stolen” and “rigged” — with 71% of Republicans agreeing with the former president’s claims that he was the rightful winner, according to a recent ABC News/Ipsos poll.

Meadows, amid the Jan. 6 House committee’s ongoing investigation into the Capitol insurrection, has emerged as a key figure who at times acted as a mediator for Trump as he worked to overturn Biden’s win leading up to the Jan. 6 attack. Mitchell made headlines when she was one of the pro-Trump lawyers on the phone call in which the former president demanded of Georgia election officials that they “find” enough votes to reverse Biden’s win, which sparked an ongoing investigation.

Now, months out from the 2022 midterms and with an eye on the 2024 presidential election, the group led by Meadows and Mitchell is working to put in place so-called “election integrity task forces” around the country. Their multi-day summits feature recruiting and training sessions for poll watchers and election officers, as well as panels hosted by Mitchell and others speaking on topics ranging from “The Left’s Plans to Corrupt the 2022 Election” to “Voting Systems and Machines” and “Building the Election Integrity Infrastructure.”

So far this year the group has held half a dozen summits in swing states including Georgia, Michigan, Arizona, Florida, Pennsylvania and Virginia, according to the group’s website. In June the group will host summits in North Carolina and Wisconsin. Tickets start at $30, and influential conservative groups including Heritage Action and Tea Party Patriots Action have already participated in previous summits.

Meadows himself was announced to appear as the keynote speaker for summits in Georgia and Arizona, and was listed to speak on “What Happened in 2020 and What We Must Do to Protect Future Elections in Arizona,” according to a schedule posted by the group online. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis spoke at a Florida summit hosted by CPI earlier this year, according to social media posts.

Neither Meadows nor Mitchell responded to a request for comment from ABC News. Officials with Trump’s Save America PAC also did not respond to a request for comment.

Inside the summit

The Virginia summit attended by ABC News in late April began with a two-hour “Poll Watcher & Election Officer Training Workshop” led by Clara Belle Wheeler from the conservative group Virginia Fair Elections.

“It takes an army,” Wheeler told the group gathered for the first session of the summit, urging attendees to become poll watchers or election officers ahead of the midterms, and then walking attendees through the process of how to register to volunteer.

Wheeler pointed to the 2021 Virginia gubernatorial election, won by Republican candidate Glenn Youngkin, as a proof of concept heading into 2022.

“We made such an impact in the 2021 election that every major news outlet across the country talked about the army of poll watchers in Virginia,” Wheeler said.

Following the training session, attendees were moved into a ballroom to watch the 42-minute film from Citizens United president and close Trump ally David Bossie called “Rigged: The Zuckerberg Funded Plot to Defeat Donald Trump,” which claims that Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg swung the 2020 election through the $419 million he donated to support voter turnout and education efforts. Attendees gave the screening a standing ovation, after which Citizens United’s JT Mastranadi took questions from the crowd.

Gowri Ramachandran, senior counsel at the Brennan Center for Justice, a bipartisan public policy institute, warned that the efforts by CPI to recruit poll workers and election officers could be dangerous given the rhetoric used and the emphasis placed on false claims about the last election.

“It’s not healthy to recruit folks to either be poll workers or poll watchers with such an extreme hostile level of suspicion towards both election workers and their fellow citizens and their fellow voters,” Ramachandran told ABC News. “Especially because there is no reason to think that there was something that needed to be stopped in 2020. That’s a lie that the election was rigged. So telling people that becoming a poll worker or poll watcher is a way to stop something that that didn’t even happen in the past is just not a healthy way to bring people into the process.”

Ramachandran said that while it’s good that people are engaged in the process and have an interest in how elections are run, “it’s not good to, without context, without understanding, have a bunch of people who’ve been fed a diet of lies for the last year and a half about elections, have them go out and do this sort of [work] without context.”

Mitchell moderated multiple panels during the Virginia summit, including one titled, “The Left’s Plans to Corrupt the 2022 Election with Our Tax Dollars and How to Protect the Vulnerable Votes from Leftwing Vote Manipulators.”

According to a schedule obtained by ABC News, the Virginia summit also included panels featuring Tea Party Patriots cofounder Jenny Beth Martin and former Trump adviser Mike Roman, who pushed unsubstantiated claims about voter fraud after the 2020 election.

‘Control the local apparatus’

Beyond its own marketing, the summit series has received broad promotion from pro-Trump channels, including extensive promotion on Trump White House adviser Steve Bannon’s popular “War Room” podcast.

Bannon featured multiple guests from the summits, including Mitchell, in the lead-up to the Virginia summit, which he encouraged viewers to attend.

During a “War Room” appearance days before the Virginia event, Mitchell described the program as “arming people to fight back against the radical left,” saying her goal was to “keep them from stealing it ever again.”

“Are these active workshops where they actually understand how to take over and grab hold of and control the local apparatus in their local elections?” Bannon asked Mitchell.

“Absolutely,” Mitchell said. “That’s absolutely what we’re doing.”

Racial disparities in traffic fatalities wider than previously estimated: Study

June 14, 2022 by WDNY Radio

(NEW YORK) — Philadelphia resident Latanya Byrd’s 27-year-old niece Samara Banks and three of Banks’ sons were struck and killed by a speeding driver in 2013. They were crossing Roosevelt Boulevard, a 12-lane road that passes through some of the city’s most diverse and lowest-income neighborhoods.

“It was just so devastating,” Byrd told ABC News. “We lost two generations in one swoop. I mean, just an instant snap of the finger.”

As the local population has swelled, Byrd said outdated transportation infrastructure — grass paths instead of pavements, dangerously short pedestrian signal cycles, overcrowded bus stops, to name a few — can partially explain why this road is one of America’s deadliest.

Byrd’s story exemplifies a larger trend of racial disparities and inequity in traffic fatalities, as reported by the Governors Highway Safety Association and National Highway Traffic Safety Administration last year.

And a new study published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine last week reveals that these disparities may be even wider than initially estimated, especially for “vulnerable” modes of travel such as walking and cycling.

Previous estimates were derived by calculating national traffic fatality counts by race and ethnicity across travel modes, sometimes adjusting for the population of each racial and ethnic group.

“But that assumes that everyone of all races and ethnicities cycle, walk or drive the same number of miles, and that we find is not true,” Matthew Raifman, a Boston University School of Public Health doctoral candidate who co-authored the new study, told ABC News.

Using 2017 national traffic fatality and household travel data, Raifman and co-author Ernani Choma, a research fellow at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, analyzed the travel activity of different racial and ethnic groups by the additional variables of travel mode, distance traveled, time of day and urbanicity.

They found that when examining only car drivers or passengers, the traffic fatality rate per mile traveled was 1.8 times higher for Black Americans than white Americans.

That rate increases to 2.2 times and 4.5 times when considering only pedestrians and cyclists, respectively.

The rates for Hispanic Americans follow similar, though less severe, patterns. Asian Americans had the lowest fatality rates across all modes of travel.

During the nighttime, racial and ethnic disparities in traffic deaths were exacerbated.

Byrd partially attributed these disparities to systemic underinvestment in protected walking and cycling infrastructure in working class neighborhoods, which are disproportionately communities of color — while most road repairs occur elsewhere.

“It can be the same road that’s getting fixed every year, and it’s nowhere near as bad as the roads in the lower-income section of the city,” she said.

The fact that Black and Hispanic Americans die at higher rates due to traffic accidents yet bike and walk fewer miles in aggregate is a problem in itself, Choma told ABC News.

“It might indicate that, for example, Black Americans or Hispanic Americans are less able to cycle, they don’t have access to transportation in that way,” he said. “Maybe it’s less bike lanes. Maybe they don’t even bike because they feel unsafe.”

Raifman said their analysis could also indicate racial inequity in the medical service chain — emergency response times, quality of care, access to health insurance and pre-existing conditions.

“Traffic fatalities don’t necessarily occur at the point of the collision,” he said. “Some people die in a hospital or an emergency room or en route to an emergency room.”

Choma added that without safe access to bike lanes and pedestrian crossings, Black and Hispanic Americans also lose out on the health benefits that come from physical activity, as well as the environmental benefits like reducing air pollution.

Byrd co-founded the advocacy group Families for Safe Streets Greater Philadelphia to confront the “epidemic” of traffic violence. She successfully lobbied for automated speed cameras, which were placed at eight intersections on Roosevelt Boulevard in June 2020.

The U.S. Department of Transportation created the Safe Streets and Roads for All program in May to allocate federal transportation funding to cities and local governments. President Joe Biden also recently signed the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, providing $550 billion in spending on roads, bridges, transit and more.

With more complete data on specific streets, walking and cycling activity levels, as well as other social costs of traffic crashes, like injuries and property damage, Raifman and Choma said they hope future research will spur local policymakers to address the root of racial disparities in traffic deaths.

“We have these two big challenges. We have structural racism, and we have traffic fatalities, and they’re related. They’re interlinked,” Raifman said. “Instead of just investing in reducing traffic fatalities, why not do it in a way that’s also addressing the systemic, structural racism challenges in our society?”

Carrie Underwood’s son has “quite the hefty savings” from household chores

June 14, 2022 by WDNY Radio

It sounds like Carrie Underwood and Mike Fisher‘s son Isaiah is quite the little helper at home!

The country couple lives on a property in Franklin, Tennessee, just outside of Nashville, and their 7-year-old son has been getting his hands dirty on the farm.

“My son’s been doing chores around our farm trying to earn money,” she explains to Entertainment Tonight, adding that mom and dad do give him a stipend for his work, such as pulling weeds in Carrie’s garden. And like his mom, who’s donating $1 from every ticket sold for her upcoming Denim & Rhinestones Tour to Tunnels to Tower Foundation, Isaiah has a giving heart.

“He has quite the hefty savings, and he donates some,” Carrie shares of what her son does with his earnings.

With Father’s Day just around the corner, the superstar singer is also encouraging her son to spend some of his cash on a gift for his dad. “You’re gonna buy your daddy a Father’s Day present, you earned that money,” Carrie laughs, adding, “He ain’t my daddy.”

Carrie and Mike are also parents to 3-year-old son Jacob.

Hunter Biden’s ex-wife speaks out to ABC News in first TV interview

June 14, 2022 by WDNY Radio

(NEW YORK) — Kathleen Buhle was married to Hunter Biden, the son of President Joe Biden, for over two decades and raised three daughters with him before their divorce five years ago.

Now, Buhle has penned a memoir, If We Break: A Memoir of Marriage, Addiction and Healing, sharing the first glimpse into her experience in their 24-year marriage.

In an exclusive interview with ABC News’ Amy Robach, Buhle opens up what it was like to watch her husband disappear into drug and alcohol addiction.

“I think with addiction especially, there’s so much shame surrounding it that it becomes something that we don’t talk about,” Buhle told Robach in an interview airing Tuesday on Good Morning America.

Tune into Good Morning America on Tuesday, June 14, between 7 and 9 a.m. EST, to watch Amy Robach’s full interview with Kathleen Buhle.

Sting is “having a ball” with newly extended Las Vegas residency: “It’s fantastic!”

June 14, 2022 by WDNY Radio

My Songs, Sting‘s Las Vegas residency show at the Colosseum at Caesars Palace, first launched last November and is running this week. Sting just announced that he’s expanding the show in 2023, which proves he’s really changed his attitude toward Vegas. As he tells ABC Audio, initially he wasn’t sure he wanted to do a residency at all.

Sting admits, “I was kind of apprehensive at first but it’s really wonderful; the audiences are great.”

It turns out the thing that concerned the former Police front man the most about playing Las Vegas was just that: the audiences. Specifically, he wasn’t exactly sure who’d be filling the seats in the Colosseum.

“I wasn’t sure who the audience would be. I thought just a bunch of tourists,” he explains. “But no. People come from all over the world, all over America, to see my show, and … they’re determined to have a great time.”

“We’re at the best venue in Vegas at Caesars Palace,” he adds. “And we’re just having a ball. It’s fantastic!”

As for how Sting manages to keep the set list — which includes his solo hits and songs by The Police — fresh for these shows, he tells People, “It’s my job to find something new every night in a song that I may have been performing for decades, and I always do. It’s something incremental. It may not be noticed by anyone but me.”

The 2023 dates for Sting’s My Songs — April 1, 2, 5, 7, 8 and 9 — go on sale this Friday at 10 a.m. PT. Fan club members can access tickets starting Tuesday at 10 a.m. PT. Visit Sting.com for more information on how to join.

Emo Nite organizers reflect on genre’s sudden resurgence: “We told you it was cool!”

June 14, 2022 by WDNY Radio

Before My Chemical Romance announced their reunion and before Machine Gun Kelly switched to pop punk, two Los Angeles residents started Emo Nite.

Created in 2014 by T.J. Petracca and Morgan Freed, Emo Nite began as a simple DJ set at a bar allowing two grown-up emo kids to play the music they loved, back when it wasn’t “cool.” Eight years later, Emo Nite has grown into a touring event that also makes appearances at big festivals, including Coachella, all while artists like MGK and Travis Barker, Avril Lavigne, Yungblud and WILLOW are bringing the scene back into the mainstream.

Being inside their emo bubble for so long, it wasn’t until recently that Petracca and Freed realized how big their genre had gotten.

“Like, maybe a couple months ago, I was, like, ‘Holy s***, this is something!'” Freed says. “It’s not just, like, us and our community anymore.”

Bringing Emo Nite to Coachella, Petracca feels, was also a big step.

“That’s just traditionally not been a space where our genre was allowed,” he says. “It was for all the cool indie bands, for all the cool EDM bands, but never emo and pop punk.”

However, the resurgence of emo and pop punk didn’t really hit Petracca until the When We Were Young festival was announced, which set social media on fire with its lineup headlined by MCR and Paramore.

“We’ve been trying to, like, make it cool and accepted and fun and respected,” Petracca says. “It feels good to be, like, ‘We f***ing told you guys! We told you it was cool!'”

Emo Nite is touring throughout the summer. It’ll hold its New Orleans Vacation event, headlined by Bring Me the Horizon, September 29 to October 2.

Pat Benatar & Neil Giraldo playing Las Vegas show in September; Invincible musical premiering this fall

June 14, 2022 by WDNY Radio

Pat Benatar and her husband, guitarist Neil Giraldo, have added a September 3 concert in Las Vegas at the Pearl Concert Theater at Palms Casino Resort to the end of the upcoming summer leg of their De Novo 2022 Tour.

The couple’s 39-date North American trek kicks off this Saturday, June 18, in Cincinnati.

According to the Las Vegas Review-Journal, Benatar and Giraldo’s show is the first new performance to be confirmed for the venue, which last hosted a concert in March 2020.

Tickets for the Vegas show go on sale to the general public this Friday, June 17 at 10 a.m. PT at Ticketmaster.com.

Citi cardmembers will be able to purchase presale tickets starting today, June 14 at 10 a.m. PT via the Citi Entertainment program; vist CitiEntertainment.com for more information.

Members of the Palms resorts Club Serrano, as well as Live Nation and Ticketmaster customers, will be able to buy presale tickets beginning this Thursday, June 16, at 10 a.m. PT.

As previously reported, Benatar and Giraldo are among the artists who will be inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame this year at a ceremony held November 5 in Los Angeles.

In other Benatar-related news, Invincible — The Musical, a new stage production featuring the music of Pat and Neil, will gets its world premiere this fall at Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts in Beverly Hills, California, according to Playbill.com.

The musical, which offers a modern-day reimagination of William Shakespeare‘s Romeo and Juliet, will open on November 22 and run through December 17. The production includes orchestrations and arrangements by Giraldo.

Reflecting on Juneteenth, 157 years later

June 14, 2022 by WDNY Radio

On June 19, 1865, the news of the Emancipation Proclamation — a document issued by President Abraham Lincoln that freed enslaved Black Americans — first reached Galveston, Texas, two years after its signing. In honor of Juneteenth this Sunday, musicians and entertainment professionals share what the holiday means to them.

Emmy-winning actor Courtney B. Vance reflected on the resiliency of Black people in the United States.

“Our people are great, and we started with nothing and came into something,” he said. “And so any opportunity I have just to teach, starting with our children, about how great we are and how great our ancestors are and were– Yes, things may be difficult now, but when you go past the first Google page and just look and see what our people had to deal with and still they rose. Everywhere they looked was a no.”

Vance noted the creation of Juneteenth — a celebration born out of the struggle facing Black people — but also expressed hope.

“It’s a message for us all that sometimes life is difficult and it’s going to be trial. But if we just press on, there will be a victory.”

President Joe Biden signed Juneteenth into law June 17, 2021, making it a federal holiday. But it has been celebrated in the Black community for more than a century. Essence Magazine CEO Caroline Wanga shared her thoughts by asking, “If you think about how long it took for Juneteenth to happen, then what are the things that you currently aren’t celebrating that you should be that are already yours, that you don’t know about?”

In addition to the usual festivals and gatherings, Wanga suggests a different way to celebrate.

“That’s what I would love people to spend Juneteenth doing is recognizing that that holiday was about the last of us finding out that we were freer than we thought,” she said. “What I want us to do is never have to do Juneteenth again and celebrate all the things that are true about us that are already here right now that we just don’t know about. Go Google something and celebrate that on Juneteenth.”

The 157th anniversary of Juneteenth, also known as Freedom Day or Black Independence Day, is this Sunday, June 19.

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