Keith Emerson in 1977; Ed Perlstein/Redferns/Getty Images
A new book celebrating the life and music of late Emerson, Lake & Palmer keyboardist Keith Emerson can be pre-ordered now.
The official book, titled simply Keith Emerson, features a bevy of rare photos, as well as recollections, tributes and anecdotes from Emerson’s musical collaborators, fans, friends and family members.
Among the notable artists interviewed for the book are ELP/Asia drummer Carl Palmer, ex-Yes keyboardist Rick Wakeman, Yes drummer Alan White, Yes/Asia keyboardist Geoff Downes, ex-Doobie Brothers guitarist Jeff “Skunk” Baxter and many others.
The book focuses an all aspects of Keith’s musical career, including his work with ELP, The Nice, 3 and his solo band, and also looks at his personal relationships and how his legacy has inspired other musicians.
The Keith Emerson book is available in two versions — a Classic Edition and the pricier Signature edition. The limited-edition latter version is signed by author Chris Welch and Keith’s son Aaron. It comes packaged in a clamshell box and includes an high-quality art print of a portrait of Keith, a CD featuring an unheard interview with Emerson, and specially created sheet music to his first-ever original composition, “Quatermass Boogie Woogie,” which he wrote at age 12.
(WASHINGTON) — Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas faced blunt questions from lawmakers on Wednesday about how the Biden administration is handling and preparing for the eventual end of pandemic-justified border restrictions that have reduced humanitarian relief options for asylum seekers at the border.
On Monday, a federal judge in Louisiana indicated he would pause the rollback of Title 42 — the Trump-era policy that allowed migrants seeking asylum along the southern border to be expelled under the public health emergency authority of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — in order to mitigate the spread of COVID-19.
The Democratic Chair of the House Appropriations Committee, Rep. Lucille Roybal-Allard, asked Mayorkas directly if he believes it’s time to end Title 42 and, as he has done before, Mayorkas deferred to the CDC.
“Our responsibility in the Department of Homeland Security is to implement the Title 42 authority of the CDC at our border and to implement it effectively and judiciously according to the law. We are mindful that the that there can be an increase in migratory flows encountered at our southern border should Title 42 come to an end, as the CDC has determined it needs to do by May 23. Our responsibility therefore, is to prepare and plan for that eventuality.”
The CDC rescinded the policy earlier this month, and it was expected to be phased out by May 23 before the federal judge announced his intent to block the recision.
Judge Robert Summerhays said he intends to issue a temporary restraining order in the case if the Justice Department and Arizona, Missouri and Louisiana, the three states that sued to pause the rollback, can come to an agreement.
A senior administration official told reporters the administration intends to comply with the temporary restraining order the judge intends to issue, but the administration disagrees with the premise of the restraining order. For now, the administration continues to prepare for the eventual end of Title 42. Mayorkas issued a memo on Tuesday outlining the objectives DHS plans to carry out regardless of when Title 42 comes to an end.
The six-part plan explains a variety of steps the administration has already started taking to prepare for a potential surge in migration. It involves surging resources to the border including medical supplies and personnel, speeding up case processing at CBP holding centers, working with NGOs to transition migrants from government custody to local communities and stepping up efforts to crack down on human smuggling organizations.
“I’ve been to the border approximately eight times and in my last visit I heard loudly and clearly the concerns of our heroic, incredibly dedicated Border Patrol agents about their need for additional support so that they can get out into the field and interdict individuals seeking to evade law enforcement and cross our border illegally,” Mayorkas told lawmakers.
The secretary testified that about 300 case processors have been contracted to increase capacity and move those who enter without authorization through the system.
“When the Title 42 public health order is lifted, we anticipate migration levels will increase, as smugglers will seek to take advantage of and profit from vulnerable migrants,” Mayorkas wrote in a prior memo titled, “DHS Plan for Southwest Border Security and Preparedness.”
DHS officials told reporters in March they could expect to see as many as 18,000 migrants along the southern border per day, when Title 42 gets lifted.
Mayorkas has stressed Title 42 is not an immigration policy, but rather born out of the public health crisis.
“We inherited an immigration system from the prior administration that had been studiously dismantled and so was unprepared to meet the challenges posed by the high numbers of non citizens arriving at our borders today,” according to a senior Administration official who briefed reporters on Tuesday.
In addition to the two hearings on Wednesday, Mayorkas goes in front of the House Judiciary Committee on Thursday.
Last week, Rep. Jim Jordan, an Ohio Republican, wrote to Mayorkas in anticipation of his testimony.
“The Biden Administration’s radical immigration policies have caused a humanitarian and security crisis along our southwest border,” Jordan wrote. “The American people deserve answers and accountability for the Biden Administration’s lawlessness along the southwest border.”
(CHIPPEWA FALLS, Wis.) — Police said Tuesday they’ve arrested a suspect in connection with the death of a 10-year-old girl whose body was found on a Wisconsin walking trail.
Lily Peters, a fourth grader, was reported missing by her father on Sunday night, said police in Chippewa Falls, a city about 100 miles east of Minneapolis.
Lily had been at her aunt’s house on Sunday and never made it home that night, police said.
On Sunday night officers found Lily’s bike in the woods by a walking trail near her aunt’s house, police said.
Around 9:15 a.m. Monday, Lily’s body was found in a wooded area near the walking trail, Chippewa Falls Police Chief Matthew Kelm said at a news conference.
On Tuesday evening, Kelm said the police arrested an unidentified juvenile suspect who was not a stranger to the girl. Kelm said that the suspect was known to the family.
“While nothing will bring back Lily Peters, we are grateful to deliver the news of an arrest to the family,” he said at a news conference.
The chief said the police received over 200 tips, and some were critical to the arrest.
The investigation was ongoing. Kelm had earlier said police are considering this a homicide investigation.
ABC News’ Matt Foster and Darren Reynolds contributed to this report.
The Greta Gerwig-directed live-action Barbie movie has been given a release date of July 21, 2023, and with Warner Bros.’ announcement came the first image of Margot Robbie as the titular toy come to life.
Oscar nominee Robbie, who produced the movie, is seen smiling in the driver’s seat of a classic pink Corvette, which, as you might imagine, is Barbie’s Dream Car.
As reported, Barbie also stars Ryan Gosling as Ken, as well as SNL‘s Kate McKinnon, tick…tick..BOOM!‘s Alexandra Shipp, Superstore‘s America Ferrera, Shang-Chi‘s Simu Liu, Will Ferrell, and And Just Like That… actor Hari Nef.
(MINNEAPOLIS) — The Minnesota Department of Human Rights will release findings Wednesday from its investigation into the Minneapolis Police Department two years after filing a charge of discrimination against the city.
The investigation is aimed at determining whether MPD engages in a pattern or practice of racial discrimination in violation of the Minnesota Human Rights Act, the state’s civil rights law.
The filing came shortly after the murder of George Floyd on May 25, 2020, by then-Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin. Chauvin was convicted of the killing April 20, 2021.
“Community leaders have been asking for structural change for decades,” Commissioner Rebecca Lucero said in June 2020 during the department’s announcement. “They have fought for this and it is essential that we acknowledge the work and the commitment of those who have paved the path to make today’s announcement possible.”
U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland and the Justice Department also opened a pattern or practice investigation into the city of Minneapolis and the Minneapolis Police Department in 2021. That investigation is still ongoing.
Following the announcement, the Department of Human Rights obtained a temporary court order from Hennepin County District Court that forced the city of Minneapolis and the Minneapolis Police Department to implement immediate policy changes.
MPD was required to ban chokeholds, officers were required to report or intervene in unauthorized use of force by other officers, get police chief approval on crowd control weapon use and more.
Since the start of the human rights investigation, groups like the Minnesota Justice Center, the Policing Project at NYU Law and the Minneapolis Foundation have offered recommendations for MPD in independent reviews on the department.
(WASHINGTON) — U.S. and Russian officials have been negotiating the prisoner swap for Trevor Reed for months, according to senior administration officials Wednesday, with talks intensifying in recent weeks amid concern about his health.
As the Marine veteran, held since August 2019, was released, he met with U.S. special presidential envoy for hostage affairs Roger Carstens — and was described by an administration official as being in “good spirits” — before traveling onward to the U.S., the officials said.
This diplomatic exchange continued even amid Russia’s war in Ukraine — but the senior administration officials made clear, the talks never touched on the war or U.S. sanctions.
There was not even senior-level U.S. official travel to Russia to negotiate the exchange, according to the officials.
“This is a discrete issue on which we were able to make an arrangement with the Russians. It represents no change — zero — to our approach to the appalling violence in Ukraine,” a senior administration official told reporters.
“Let me just emphasize this again because it’s so important — the discussion with the Russians that led to this exchange were strictly limited to these topics, not a broader diplomatic conversation or even the starting point,” they added.
Topics around the war “weren’t broached. They were never intended to be broached” during the high-stakes secrets talks, a second senior administration official said.
After months of talks, President Joe Biden made “a very hard decision” to commute the sentence of Konstantin Yaroshenko, a Russian drug smuggler convicted of conspiring to import cocaine into the U.S.
But the senior administration officials emphasized Yaroshenko was not pardoned, and argued he “has already paid a steep price in the U.S. justice system for his crime. In fact, he’s already served the majority of his sentence.”
Serving a nine-year sentence in a remote prison camp, Reed went on a second hunger strike in late March to protest his treatment, according to his family. After a reported exposure to tuberculosis in December, his family was increasingly concerned about reports he was coughing up blood or experiencing fevers, especially when he was transferred to a prison hospital on April 1.
Appearing publicly for the first time in months, Reed told a Russian court via video teleconference on April 12 that it had been two weeks since he’d coughed up blood or had a fever, but he said he wasn’t receiving medical care for a broken rib.
While American Paul Whelan, another Marine veteran, has been held longer than Reed, it was Reed’s failing health and his family and the U.S. government’s concern that led to his case being raised in the exchange.
The officials declined to say more about Reed’s condition now or when and where he is expected to arrive in the U.S., out of privacy concerns for him and his family.
Yaroshenko is in Russian custody now, they confirmed.
But they repeatedly emphasized the Biden administration’s commitment to securing the freedom of U.S. citizens unjustly detained around the world.
“We will continue to work on and attempt to find ways to address other cases as best we can,” the senior administration official said when asked about Whelan and American WNBA star Brittney Griner, detained in Russia since February.
Whelan was also a tourist in Russia when he was arrested on espionage charges that he, his family, and the U.S. government have said are spurious.
Whelan has been detained since December 2018 and was sentenced to 16 years in prison in June 2020 — transferred to a prison colony eight hours southeast of Moscow.
Olympic gold medalist Brittney Griner, has been held since being accused of having hashish oil in her suitcase while returning to Russia to play basketball.
She remains in pre-trial detention, with a court extending her detention until May 19.
Jerritt Clark/Getty Images for Machine Gun Kelly’s UN/DN LAQR
Apparently, Machine Gun Kelly and Megan Fox weren’t joking when they said they drank each other’s blood.
You may recall that Fox made the claim earlier this year when announcing her engagement to MGK. In a new interview with Glamour UK, Fox confirms that the blood drinking had actually, really happened.
“It’s just a few drops, but yes, we do consume each other’s blood on occasion for ritual purposes only,” Fox says.
The Transformers actress also clarifies some misunderstandings she thinks people might have about the practice of, again, drinking someone else’s blood.
“I guess to drink each other’s blood might mislead people or people are imagining us with goblets and we’re like Game of Thrones, drinking each other’s blood,” Fox says, perhaps misunderstanding herself that people aren’t confused by the amount of blood drank, but the drinking of any blood at all.
“When I do it, it’s a passage or it is used for a reason,” she continues. “And it is controlled where it’s like, ‘Let’s shed a few drops of blood and each drink it.’ [Kelly’s] much more haphazard and hectic and chaotic, where he’s willing to just cut his chest open with broken glass and be like, ‘Take my soul.'”
Elsewhere in the interview, Fox shares that she feels she’s been “manifesting” Kelly since she was four years old.
“I think I made him,” she says. “My thoughts and intentions grew him into the person that he is, who knows what he would’ve looked like or been like if it wasn’t for me.”
(NEW YORK) — Parents eager to vaccinate their toddlers and preschoolers last fall were told a COVID shot for the youngest age group was on its way, with data expected by the end of the year. That deadline slipped. Then it slipped again.
Now, with summer travel just around the corner, parents of kids under 5 are fed up. They describe feeling stuck in a kind of cruel pandemic time warp, even as much of the country moves on and people have stopped wearing masks, including on airplanes.
Many parents are ready to assign blame.
“I want you, Joe Biden, to call the FDA (US Food and Drug Administration) and tell them that they need to act with all possible speed because every day they delay there are children being infected and some of those children could die,” said Sarah Liebman, a mom outside Portland, Oregon, whose 2-year-old remains too young for a shot.
Emmie Fital, a mom of two boys ages 4 and 1, living outside Philadelphia, has opted to keep her kids home from school because her oldest son’s asthma has resulted previously in a hospital stay after he contracted the common cold.
“We’ve been kind of living in Groundhog’s Day, every day for two years … It is ludicrous what we are having to deal with as parents right now,” Fital told ABC.
In coming weeks, the nation’s two big vaccine makers — Pfizer and Moderna — are poised to deliver key pieces of data that the FDA needs to authorize a vaccine.
Moderna was expected by week’s end to submits its official request for FDA authorization for its 2-shot version. Pfizer says it expects to have final data on its three-shot version by the end of June.
How soon though regulators will give either shot a green light remains unclear. Government and industry officials say the data sets for vaccine trials can be complex, and Moderna will likely submit additional information on a rolling basis even after its official request is made.
The FDA has declined to comment on pending vaccine applications — necessary to avoid legal hot water — but suggested its hands are tied until company officials submit their data. The agency also has promised to make public a new tentative timeline for advisory committee meetings, a final step before authorization of any vaccine.
“Just remember that we can’t actually finish our reviews until we actually have complete applications in the FDA,” said Peter Marks, director of the FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, told a Senate panel on Tuesday.
Parents though say they are frustrated by these kinds of cryptic comments and that they seem to be learning more about the vaccine’s progress from press leaks than regulators. Last week, a Politico report suggested the FDA might wait on Moderna’s authorization request until Pfizer could offer more data on its version.
In an interview with CNN+, Biden’s top medical adviser Dr. Anthony Fauci confirmed there were concerns within the FDA about authorizing the two different vaccines — with different amounts of dosing and shots — on separate timelines. Authorizing them together would give parents a side-by-side comparison before they made their choice, some officials thought.
“What the FDA wants to do is to get it so that we don’t confuse people,” Fauci said.
His comments sparked swift pushback from frustrated parents, including Liebman.
“We were told over and over that the best shot was the first one to get into your arm,” she said. “So I don’t understand why the FDA seems confused. I am not confused. I’m not at all confused.”
Fatima Khan, who helped to start up a grassroots advocacy group and Facebook page called “Protect Their Future,” which advocates for swift authorization of a pediatric vaccine, said she wishes the FDA was more transparent about what it needs from vaccine makers and what concerns it has.
“I feel like we’ve been getting yanked around a lot. You know, no one really gives anyone a clear answer, and it shouldn’t be that difficult,” said Khan.
Still plenty of questions remain, including whether at the FDA should send parents down the path of a two-dose vaccine if an alternative three-dose is found to be more effective just a couple of weeks later.
Moderna has said its two-dose vaccine produced the same level of immune response as seen in adults. But because none of the participants in the study became severely sick, Moderna couldn’t give an estimate of how effective the vaccine is at preventing severe illness.
Dr. Julie Morita, a pediatrician who has advised the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in the past, said premature or complex data can make speaking openly difficult for regulators.
“You want to be careful about what information you’re sharing because you don’t want to have misunderstandings. Because once you the information is out there it’s really hard to pull it back,” said Morita, executive vice president of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.
Overall, children are at significantly less risk of hospitalization and death of COVID-19 compared to adults.
Still, the number of children who became infected in recent weeks due to the omicron variant is staggering. The American Academy of Pediatrics estimates that nearly 124,000 kids were infected in the past month alone.
Since the pandemic began two years ago, 468 children have died as a result of complications from the virus.
Fital said she is irked hearing public health officials say repeatedly that the best way to protect yourself and others is to get vaccinated, when so many kids can’t.
“What do you say to the 20 million children that have no option?” she asked. “They have nothing.”
ABC News’ Sony Salzman contributed to this report.
It was Warner Bros. night to shine in Sin City at the annual CinemaCon expo on Tuesday, and the studio amped up the star power onstage, as well as showed snippets of its forthcoming films.
Among them were Barbie, starring and produced by Margot Robbie; the Baz Luhrmann-directed biopic Elvis, starring Tom Hanks and Austin Butler; The Flash, starring Ezra Miller and Michael Keaton; Wonka, starring Timothee Chalamet; and the superhero sequels Shazam! Fury of the Gods; and Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom.
Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson was there to not only introduce Black Adam, but also to collect the movie theater owner confab’s Entertainment Icon of the Decade trophy.
Other celebs who showed up to showcase their wares included Olivia Wilde, there to promote her second film as a director, the thriller Don’t Worry Darling, which stars Oscar nominee Florence Pugh and Wilde’s boyfriend, Harry Styles.
The cast of the Shazam! sequel were on hand as well, including returning players Zachary Levi, Asher Angel and Jack Dylan Grazer, and series newcomer Helen Mirren.
The Batman‘s director Matt Reeves appeared to announce a sequel to his hit with Robert Pattinson, as reported. And speaking of the Caped Crusader, an onscreen appearance of Michael Keaton back in action as an older Batman in the preview to The Flash brought down the house, according to The Hollywood Reporter. The footage shown even had him calling back his “Let’s get nuts!” line from the 1989 original.
(NEW YORK) — New research on the connection between sleep and Parkinson’s disease is being hailed as a “first step” toward curing and preventing the condition, a brain disorder that causes uncontrollable movements.
The research, led by the Parkinson’s Progression Markers Initiative, funded by The Michael J. Fox Foundation, is working to make a concrete connection between Parkinson’s and REM sleep behavior disorder, or RBD, which causes a person to “physically act out vivid, often unpleasant dreams” during deep sleep, according to the Mayo Clinic.
Studies have found that up to 41% of Parkinson’s patients experience RBD before their diagnosis, with 65-75% of these patients being men. Researchers say they are hoping that a concrete connection between Parkinson’s and RBD can help us learn more about Parkinson’s.
“People who live with RBD can help researchers understand how and why Parkinson’s comes on from the very earliest moments so that we can work on getting to that cure and even preventing the disease from happening,” said Dr. Rachel Dolhun, a board-certified neurologist and movement disorder specialist and the head of medical communications for The Michael J. Fox Foundation.
“It’s one of our first steps toward curing and preventing Parkinson’s, something that we can’t do today,” she said of the research.
Parkinson’s is currently incurable and there is no way to diagnose the condition through blood or laboratory tests. The diagnosis is based mainly on clinical symptoms, how it presents and the history of the disease in the patient.
An estimated one million people in the United States are affected by Parkinson’s, according to The Michael J. Fox Foundation.
Gary Rafaloff is one of those one million people. He said he was diagnosed with Parkinson’s a decade ago after suffering for years from sleep issues, later diagnosed as RBD, that included making strange noises and waking up while violently lashing out during dreams.
“It’s a terrible symptom that is really not spoken about a lot, and there’s not a lot of research on it,” said Rafaloff. “I’m lucky if I average three hours of good sleep at night.”
Rafaloff said that after years of sleep issues, it was a shock to be diagnosed with Parkinson’s.
“When I was first diagnosed, I really didn’t know much about Parkinson’s disease, so, of course, you hear something like that and you think it’s the worst,” he said. “And I didn’t have any idea what life expectancy was going to be, what life would be like.”
Parkinson’s disease occurs when nerve cells in the area of the brain that control movement and release the brain chemical dopamine become impaired and/or die, according to the National Institutes of Health.
While symptoms differ in everyone, common symptoms may include tremors in the hands, arms, legs and head; muscle stiffness; slowness of movement; difficulty with balance and a tendency to fall; difficulty swallowing; and chewing and skin problems, according to the NIH. Non-motor symptoms may also include constipation, depression and memory problems.
Most people first develop Parkinson’s around age 60, but about 10 to 20% of people experience early-onset Parkinson’s before age 50.
With no blood or lab test for diagnosis, doctors usually diagnose Parkinson’s through a person’s medical history and a neurological examination, according to the NIH.
