Joan Jett has teamed up with Epiphone to introduce the Joan Jett Olympic Special, based on her favorite stage guitar.
In a video promoting the new instrument, Joan says, “What attracted me to guitar was just being able to make that kind of noise and have control over it. So when we were talking about releasing my new Epiphone signature guitar, it had to have my sound.”
The Rock and Roll Hall of Famer notes that she wanted the guitar to be made in white, so it would be a “clean slate.”
“You’re able to make it your own, paint on it, write on it, beat it up or polish it daily…the point is to make it your vision and voice,” she explains. “Being true to the music is really all about owning who you are. My guitars have become an extension of who I am. I want girls and guys everywhere to be fearless about picking up a guitar.”
The Olympic special has a reproduction of Joan’s autograph on the rear of the headstock, and comes with a specially requested detail: a “kill switch” toggle that mutes and un-mutes. Each guitar comes with a set of Joan Jett stickers and a Custom Premium Gig Bag.
It’s official! Jeannie Mai and Jeezy‘s newborn baby is…a girl!
In a clip of Wednesday’s episode of The Real, Jeannie, who previously revealed their child’s name was Monaco Mai Jenkins, had a gender reveal with her co-hosts and viewers.
The reveal came as a shock to some of her The Real co-hosts who thought that Monaco would be a boy.
“We were shocked, because everybody thought it was a boy,” Jeannie explained. “I want to say to all moms out there the superstitions like, how high your belly is, and you know, what your skin is like, all those things aren’t true. Throw ‘em out the window, I’m telling you, none of them are true.”
Jeannie, who welcomed her baby girl earlier this month, also opened up about being a girl mom.
“That’s the part that I’m still just so overwhelmed with, you know. I can’t explain to you how many visions jumped into my head this moment I put that little girl into my hands,” she shared. “I thought about my relationship with Mama Mai. That already, I can’t wait to have that bond with Monaco.”
“I also thought about all the things that I didn’t learn as a little girl, that I can’t wait to teach my daughter now,” Jeannie continued. “There’s just so many reasons why raising a little girl is such an honor to me. I would have been happy with anything, but to have Monaco, I can’t tell you, I feel chosen. It’s emotional and I can’t wait to raise a really strong, loving, empathetic, humorous, fashionable, fly, little girl.”
Shinedown has announced a new album called Planet Zero.
The seventh studio effort from Brent Smith and company will arrive April 22. You can listen to its lead single and title track now via digital outlets.
“If we shut each other down and allow ourselves to be divided by the information we consume and the way we talk to each other, we lose our humanity,” Smith says. “When you look outside of your phone, you’ll see there are so many people doing good things and trying to take care of each other. But we’re starting to see parts of society slip into an unknown.”
“Planet Zero was written for all of us,” he adds. “The fact is that we’re all here on this planet no matter what, so it’s time to actually move forward together with empathy, perseverance and strength. With that said…welcome to PLANET ZERO.”
Planet Zero follows Shinedown’s 2018 album ATTENTION ATTENTION, which spawned the singles “DEVIL,” “GET UP” and “MONSTERS.”
Shinedown launches a U.S. tour with support from Ayron Jones Wednesday night in San Francisco. They’ll hit the road with The Pretty Reckless and Diamante in April.
Here’s the Planet Zero track list:
“2184”
“No Sleep Tonight”
“Planet Zero”
“Welcome”
“Dysfunctional You”
“Dead Don’t Die”
“Standardized Experiences”
“America Burning”
“Do Not Panic”
“A Symptom of Being Human”
“Hope”
“A More Utopian Future”
“Clueless and Dramatic”
“Sure Is Fun”
“Daylight”
“This Is a Warning”
“The Saints of Violence and Innuendo”
“Army of the Underappreciated”
“Delete”
“What You Wanted”
Janet Jackson‘s two-part Lifetime/A&E documentary is coming out on Friday, and the second half of it reportedly contains an unexpected guest: Justin Timberlake.
“Justin is in it. I was told he is going to be in the documentary. It’s like this big secret. He’s the surprise, just like the Super Bowl,” a source familiar with the production told Page Six.
In 2004, Justin and Janet shocked the world when they performed JT’s song “Rock Your Body” at the Super Bowl and Justin tore off part of Janet’s costume, exposing her breast. Janet’s career suffered, while Justin emerged unscathed: He was even invited back to headline the Super Bowl in 2018.
In recent years, the entire incident has now been re-examined as an example of white privilege and systemic racism. Justin apologized to Janet last year via social media.
The Lifetime doc is four hours long, but insiders tell Page Six that only three hours have been provided to reviewers in advance. One claimed that Janet is being so secretive about the film that “Lifetime hasn’t even seen [it] yet.”
A trailer for the doc features Janet’s brother Randy telling Janet, “Justin and his team have been trying to contact us about you doing the Super Bowl,” but that’s the extent of any mention of JT.
(NEW YORK) — Dangerously cold temperatures have taken over the Midwest Wednesday before heading to the Northeast on Thursday.
Wednesday is the coldest morning so far this winter in places like Chicago, where parts of Lake Michigan are filled with ice.
The wind chill — what temperature it feels like — plunged Wednesday morning to about minus 19 in Chicago, minus 30 degrees in Minneapolis, minus 23 in Green Bay and minus 7 in Indianapolis.
The deep freeze then turns to the Northeast.
Thursday morning the wind chill is forecast to fall to minus 4 degrees in Boston, 6 degrees in New York and minus 10 degrees in Watertown, New York.
Even the South will feel the freeze. The wind chill is forecast to drop to 14 degrees in Raleigh, 23 in Atlanta and 21 in Nashville.
NBC’s Late Night celebrates its 40th anniversary February 1, and to mark the occasion, David Letterman, who launched the late-night franchise in 1982, will return to his old stomping ground.
“The 40th anniversary is next Tuesday, and to celebrate, my guest that evening will be the man who started it all, David Letterman,” Seth Meyers, the current host of Late Night announced in a video on Tuesday.
“Now that is a show that would make college-age Seth Meyers very happy. Also, current Seth Meyers is happy about this,” he added.
Letterman hosted Late Night for 11 seasons before moving to CBS in 1993, after Jay Leno took over host The Tonight Show — a job many expected would go to Letterman. He was succeeded by Conan O’Brien, who hosted the show until 2009, when Jimmy Fallon assumed hosting duties. Meyers came aboard in 2014 after Fallon moved to The Tonight Show.
Late Night airs weeknights at 11:35 p.m. ET on NBC.
It’s been 20 years since Mandy Moore starred in the coming of age film, A Walk to Remember,which begs the question — how would she feel about a reboot?
The This Is Us star, who starred in the early aught’s movie alongside Shane West, also revealed who she could see taking over her role as Jamie Sullivan telling the outlet, “I don’t know, Olivia Rodrigo or something like that.”
“Someone could redo this film. I would love to see it,” she adds. “It’s been long enough that, yeah, I feel like we’ve earned our place in cinematic history for a reboot at this point.”
(NEW YORK) — In an increasingly digitized world, almost no industry has been left unscathed by the global shortage of electronic chips.
Demand for these dime-sized building blocks needed to make cars, computers, smartphones and much more was growing even before reaching a fever pitch as the COVID-19 pandemic forced swaths of the globe to rely on tech tools for work or school. The shortage also clobbered the auto industry with disproportionate furor, leading to skyrocketing new and used vehicle prices — which in turn drove one-third of all of the painful inflation Americans saw in 2021, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
The crisis has exposed just how bedeviling the pandemic has been for policymakers and business leaders who failed to foresee the fallout from this shortage coming, as well as exposed the risks for U.S. business that results from a majority of the world’s chip supply being produced in Asia — and more specifically, political tripwire-ridden Taiwan.
“It is both an economic and national security imperative to solve this crisis,” Secretary of Commerce Gina M. Raimondo said in a blogpost Tuesday, sharing fresh data on the fragility of the semiconductor supply chain and calling on Congress to approve $52 billion in chips funding “as soon as possible.”
As the scarcity of semiconductors continues to dominate headlines two years into the pandemic, here is what economists say Americans should know about the chip shortage, and what its implications are for the future.
‘An essential part of almost every product that we use’: What are semiconductors?
“Semiconductors, or chips as we call them, are sort of the building blocks of any computer system,” Morris Cohen, an emeritus professor of Manufacturing and Logistics in the Operations, Information and Decisions Department, at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, told ABC News.
“There’s been incredible advancements over the years in the capabilities of these chips, in reduction of their size and power requirements,” Cohen added. “And so we see them now embedded everywhere — in your cellphone and your computer, in your home appliances, and in your automobile.”
“These devices are used to monitor performance to control function, to capture data to send instructions and so on,” Cohen added. “They’ve become sort of an essential part of almost every product that we use.”
Awi Federgruen, a professor of management at Columbia Business School, told ABC News that the chip shortage “is being felt in no less than 169 industries.”
As the tech sector continues to expand at a rapid pace and a growing array of tools and gadgets become embedded in Americans’ daily life, an increasing number of products are becoming dependent on chips. The implications of this can be felt by consumers shopping for everything from portable gaming systems to smart kitchen appliances, and many have likely already noticed higher prices or longer wait times when searching for their products.
Meanwhile, a reliance on chips for critical medical devices, military applications, cybersecurity tools and other sectors can carry more serious ramifications for both individuals and governments.
One natural disaster away from hitting American jobs: How severe is the shortage?
The median inventory held by chip consumers (such as automakers or medical device manufacturers) has sunk from a 40-day supply in 2019 to a less than five-day supply in 2021, the Commerce Department said in an industry report released Tuesday.
This means that if a natural disaster, COVID-19 outbreak or political instability disrupts a semiconductor facility abroad for even just a few weeks, it has the potential to shut down a manufacturing facility in the U.S., the agency added, putting American workers at risk.
Moreover, median demand for chips from buyers was as much as 17% higher in 2021 than in 2019, according to the report, and the majority of semiconductor manufacturing facilities are operating at or above 90% utilization — meaning there is limited additional supply to bring online without the expensive and time-consuming process of building new facilities.
The majority of chip factories are currently based in Asia, which houses about 87% of the market share of semiconductor factories (with Taiwan alone accounting for some 63%), separate industry data indicates. The political climate in the region, and tensions between Taiwan and China, has come under renewed scrutiny as the shortage has exposed how much U.S. industry relies on these sources.
“Initially, when you go back to the origins of the industry, the majority of the capacity was in the U.S. and then it shifted outside,” Cohen told ABC News. “Now, there’s a big push to re-shore that manufacturing and bring it back, and it’s not just a business decision, it’s political, it’s a highly politicized decision.”
‘A perfect storm’: What is causing the shortage?
The supply-demand imbalances in the semiconductor industry were already fragile before the pandemic, and the Commerce Department noted in its report that underlying demand for semiconductors was already growing prior to 2020, propelled by industry shifts such as the onset of 5G and electric vehicles. The pandemic then exacerbated the crisis by causing a surge in demand for products that require semiconductors while simultaneously disrupting the supply.
Columbia’s Federgruen said the current shortage is the result of multiple factors creating “a perfect storm.”
Silicon, the raw material used in chips, became harder to come by for producers during the pandemic, according to Federgruen, because it is necessary for vaccine manufacturing.
“In addition, there was the shutdown or temporary shutdown of [semiconductor] manufacturing facilities in the Far East and elsewhere, as a direct result of the of the pandemic,” Federgruen said. “And then there is the fact that on the demand side, in many industries such as the automobile industry, there’s been an unusual ramp-up of the demand.”
“All those factors have come together and compounded upon each other to create a big, big shortage,” Federgruen said.
Why is it hitting the auto industry so hard?
Most Americans by now have heard of the shortage’s impacts on the auto industry, which has been among the most severely hit by the shortage as more cars today are being fuzed with additional electronic systems than in the past, Federgruen told ABC News.
The shortage was compounded in the auto industry because many carmakers initially thought the pandemic would crush demand and planned for this by reducing semiconductor orders. An apparent desire to avoid public transportation and plan getaways closer to home during the health crisis, however, ended up having the opposite effect on demand for autos. Chip manufacturers, already suffering from pandemic-related shocks, could not keep up with the new orders coming in from the auto industry that came as a simultaneous remote-work boom spurred demand for chips needed for computers and IT tools.
Raimondo said that the so-called legacy logic chips used in automobiles — as well as medical devices — are facing the most acute shortages.
“In 2021, auto prices drove one-third of all inflation, primarily because we don’t have enough chips,” Raimando wrote in her blogpost. “Automakers produced nearly 8 million fewer cars last year than expected, which some analysts believe resulted in more than $210 billion in lost revenue.”
Cohen, from the Wharton School, added that over the last decade or so, “the amount of computer systems that are put into a car has just increased enormously.” While carmakers have become big users of chips for managing vehicles’ entertainment, climate, fuel systems and more, they have continued to rely on outsourced production and suppliers for these parts.
Automakers historically did not consider producing chips to be their core competency, but many have come to the realization now that they can’t afford to be dependent on outside suppliers for chips if their absence can bring production and assembly lines to a screeching halt.
Raimondo called new partnerships with semiconductor producers recently announced by Ford and General Motors “encouraging” in her blogpost Tuesday, saying the announcements “demonstrate that chip consumers and producers are coming together to solve their supply chain issues.”
What is being done to address the shortage, and how long will it last?
The Commerce Department’s report said that industry players do not see the significant, persistent mismatch in the supply and demand for chips going away in the next six months.
The report identified the main issue as the need for additional semiconductor factories (also called semiconductor fabrication plants or fabs). Construction of new fabs, however, is expensive and can take years before making an impact in the supply.
In addition to the steps taken by players in the auto industry such as Ford and GM, some companies have also announced new and dramatic actions to ameliorate the crisis and bring semiconductor manufacturing back to the U.S.
Intel announced late last week that it was investing more than $20 billion to build two new chip factories in Ohio — a headline-grabbing announcement that came on the heels of the firm saying last October that it had began construction on two chip factories in Arizona. Samsung similarly announced plans late last year to build a $17 billion semiconductor factory near Austin, Texas.
“It’s great that they’re doing that but it’s not going to solve today’s problems, that’s for sure,” Cohen told ABC News of the recent announcements. “It’ll take years for this to take place, and in the interim, we’re still going to have to source these products from the places they come from now. We don’t have an alternative.”
The situation may improve slightly if demand cools off, Federgruen noted, but similarly said that it will take years for the “big change” to occur when these new U.S. facilities begin actually pumping out chips.
Why should Americans care and what does this mean looking ahead?
Cohen said that having studied the industry for a long time, a lot of what we’re seeing now could have been anticipated to some degree, especially among industry players.
“Companies who operate in this environment have been aware of these issues for a long time and have dealt with it,” he said. “This is just the nature of being competitive in those industries.”
If a new fab costs billions of dollars and takes years to construct, companies in an increasingly globalized world will likely turn to offshore suppliers for chips instead. Cohen said the pandemic, however, has made Americans more aware of risks and fragility of this dependence on outside suppliers.
“Most consumers didn’t know and didn’t care where their chips came from: ‘You turn the car on, it should go, I don’t really care who made the chip and what country it was built in,'” Cohen said. “But now, all of a sudden, these issues become really important, and so I think we become more sensitized to how dependent we are, how interdependent we are, how things can be disrupted.”
“We became a globalized economy because there were a lot of advantages,” Cohen added. “Because of that, we as consumers have enjoyed access to an amazing array of products and incredibly low prices, which has increased our standard of living.”
With chip supply now just one natural disaster or major disruption away from potentially impacting American livelihoods, Cohen predicts it is “going to be difficult to maintain the status quo.”
“We will have more expensive products, we’ll have things that will take longer,” he said. “Therefore, our standard of living to some extent will be lower. It’ll cost us more time and money to earn what it takes to buy a car, to buy a house.”
Federgruen added that he hopes policymakers and business leaders can learn from the lessons exposed by the crisis and make better decisions moving forward that don’t just take into account short-term profits.
“In general, there’s been the recognition that we need to make our supply chains much more resilient, and that we need to build in safety buffers on the supply side for situations like this,” Federgruen told ABC News. “That lesson comes up with every crisis and is then forgotten, unfortunately, but hopefully it will stick now.”
Sam Raimi, who directed Columbia Pictures original Spider-Man trilogy starring Tobey Maguire, recently discussed his reaction to seeing his original cast reprise their roles in Sony’s Spider-Man: No Way Home.
While promoting the horror film You’re Dead Hélène, Raimi told Variety “It was so much fun” watching Maguire, Willem Dafoe and Alfred Molina suit up as their respective characters Peter Parker/Spider-Man, Norman Osborn/Green Goblin and Otto Octavius/Doctor Octopus, once again.
“I love No Way Home and the audience I was with went crazy,” he says. “It was delightful to watch Alfred play his role, and Willem Dafoe, just seeing these guys take it to the next level. And Tobey was awesome as always. The best word I can say is it was refreshing for me.”
Spider-Man: No Way Home, which unites three movies’ worth of Peter Parkers — Maguire, Tom Holland and Andrew Garfield — has grossed $1.7 billion worldwide so far.
As for his next directorial project, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, Raimi tells Variety, “I think we’re done, but we just cut everything. We’re just starting to test the picture and we’ll find out if there’s anything that’s got to be picked up. If something’s unclear or another improvement I can make in this short amount of time left, I’ll do it.”
“One thing I know about the Marvel team is they won’t stop,” he adds. “They’ll keep pushing it until it’s as close to being great as it could.”
Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness — which is rumored to have some multiverse surprises of its own — is slated to hit theaters May 6, 2022 from Marvel Studios.
Marvel Studios is owned by Disney, the parent company of ABC News.
(GENEVA) — Even as the omicron COVID-19 variant continues to sweep the globe, scientists are now monitoring a new mutation of omicron, dubbed BA.2.
The World Health Organization maintains that BA.2 is not a “variant of concern,” meaning there is no current evidence to suggest this new subvariant will worsen COVID-19 transmission, illness severity, or efficacy of vaccines and public health efforts like masking and social distancing.
BA.2 numbers around the world are rising, with at least 40 countries reporting cases to a global variant tracking database, but the subvariant has spread rapidly in Denmark and the UK, with almost half of recent cases in Denmark attributed to BA.2.
The subvariant has already been detected in several U.S. states, with Washington State confirming two cases Monday.
While over 8,000 BA.2 cases have been identified since November 2021, it is unclear where BA.2 originated. Even though the first sequences were submitted from the Philippines, numerous cases have since been detected in various places, from Europe to South Asia.
Given the rising numbers, health care organizations, like the WHO, are asking scientists to watch and study the new subvariant separately from omicron, to see if it behaves differently.
“It is the nature of viruses to evolve and mutate, so it’s to be expected that we will continue to see new variants emerge as the pandemic goes on,” said Dr. Meera Chand, the COVID-19 incident director at the UK Health Security Agency, in prepared remarks. “So far, there is insufficient evidence to determine whether BA.2 causes more severe illness than Omicron BA.1, but data is limited.”
The evolution of COVID-19 subvariants is not new. The delta variant also had several subvariants, but scientists referred to all of them as delta. BA.2, however, has earned its own designation due to rising numbers across several nations.
Although it’s been called the “stealth” omicron variant, the new subvariant, “can absolutely be detected through traditional surveillance mechanisms whether through rapid testing or PCR,” said Dr. John Brownstein, chief innovation officer at Harvard University’s Boston Children’s Hospital and ABC Medical Correspondent.
Conventional COVID-19 tests can show a positive or a negative result, but they can’t determine specific variants. For that, scientists need to do additional genetic sequencing. Conveniently, the omicron variant has a particular genetic signature that allows scientists to quickly and easily determine if the sample is omicron or not.
The new BA.2 subvariant does not have that feature, meaning scientists can no longer use this shortcut — though they can still identify the subvariant using genetic sequencing technology. Because of this, the BA.2 subvariant has sometimes been referred to as the “stealth” variant. But for the general public, conventional COVID-19 tests will still work to detect the new subvariant.
Ultimately, while scientists and public health officials are urging continued research and surveillance, experts say there is little reason to worry.
“BA.2 is important from a public health perspective, but it doesn’t fundamentally change at this moment, how we think about the impact in the population,” Brownstein said. “A lot more work needs to be done to understand severity, breakthrough infections, and immunizations before you can make any statement about clinical relevance.”
“While it’s important to understand that in the family of omicron, there is a sub-lineage that is potentially more transmissible, it’s not necessarily a cause for panic,” Brownstein added.
Nitya Rajeshuni, M.D., M.S., a pediatrics resident at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania, is a contributor to the ABC News Medical Unit.
