Shortly after making his grand return to social media after a four-month hiatus, Lil Nas X is already teasing his next music chapter.
On TikTok, he shared snippets of several songs that on first listen seem to be more serious than the collection found on his debut album, Montero.
A track titled “LEAN ON ME” was among some of the songs he teased, Lil Nas X pretended to play a synth keyboard while walking on a treadmill and spat the bars, “I’m doing real s***/ Some never worried about a bill s*** / That build a house on the hills s***/ The money’s gravy/ It’s coming crazy/ My sister just had another baby.” He also rapped, “Yesterday, yesterday, everyday/ I’m on this planet turning lemons into lemonade!”
LNX also asked fans to vote on two tracks, titled “late to the party (ft. youngboy)” and “down souf h*** ft. saucy santana,” and asked them “which one y’all want first?” It appears the music he used to tease his new tracks was also a sped-up version of a future single.
When fans asked if this means a deluxe version of Montero is on the horizon, the Grammy winner declared, “nah new album close to finished.”
Lil Nas X released his debut studio album on September 17, which is up for Album of the Year and more at this year’s Grammy Awards.
The 30th anniversary edition of Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards‘ second solo album, 1992’s Main Offender, was released today.
The reissue is available in multiple formats and configurations, including a limited-edition super-deluxe box set featuring remastered CD and vinyl versions of the album, as well as a bonus live album on CD and two LPs.
A follow-up to Richards’ 1988 solo debut, Talk Is Cheap, Main Offender was released in October 1992. The album features 10 songs that Keith co-wrote with acclaimed drummer and producer Steve Jordan, who became The Stones’ touring drummer in 2021. Guitarist Waddy Wachtel, bassist/keyboardist Charley Drayton and backing singer Sara Dash — who died in 2021 — also received songwriting credits on select tunes.
Jordan, Wachtel, Drayton and Dash, along with keyboardist Ivan Neville, all were members of Richards’ side group The X-Pensive Winos. Last week, Keith reunited with most of the group to perform at the 2022 Love Rocks NYC! benefit concert at New York’s Beacon Theatre.
Main Offender peaked at #99 on the Billboard 200, while the songs “Wicked as It Seems” and “Eileen” reached #3 and #17, respectively, on Billboard‘s Mainstream Rock Tracks tally.
The live album featured in the box set, titled Winos Live in London ’92, captures a previously unreleased performance by Keith and his band that includes renditions of select songs from both Talk Is Cheap and Main Offender, as well as of The Stones’ “Gimme Shelter,” “Before They Make Me Run” and “Happy.”
The super deluxe collection also features an LP version of Main Offender pressed on smoke-colored vinyl; an 88-page, leather-bound book offering rare photos and Keith’s handwritten lyrics; and collectibles including a guitar pick, a bumper sticker and posters.
Here’s the Main Offender track list:
“999”
“Wicked as It Seems”
“Eileen”
“Words of Wonder”
“Yap Yap”
“Bodytalks”
“Hate It When You Leave”
“Runnin’ Too Deep”
“Will but You Won’t”
“Demon”
And here’s the Winos Live in London ’92 track list:
“Take It So Hard”
“999”
“Wicked as It Seems”
“How I Wish”
“Gimme Shelter”
“Hate It When You Leave”
“Before They Make Me Run”
“Eileen”
“Will But You Won’t”
“Bodytalks”
“Happy”
“Whip It Up”
Mariah Carey is the self-proclaimed “Queen of Christmas,” but now she has a new title: queen of accidental texts.
Mariah confused Shawn Mendes with her cousin and shared the embarrassing mistake to Twitter. To be fair, she did say the two have similar names.
“My cousin Shawn M and I have this silly joke where we tell each other Happy Thanksgiving on St. Patrick’s Day,” Mariah explained. “@ShawnMendes found out about it today. Sorry Shawn!!”
The text exchange begins with Mariah writing, “Happy Thanksgiving [maple leaf emoji]!!!!” and then quickly following up with, “Wrong Shawn. Sorry. Also, I do realize it is NOT Thanksgiving. Haha.”
Mendes wasn’t upset he received an accidental text from the legendary singer, and texted back a genial, “hahahaha that’s okay i figured it was an inside joke.” He also included two red heart emojis in his response. Mariah used a laugh reaction to respond to his reply.
The “Fantasy” singer wasn’t the only one cracking up over the mistake — her fans had a field day in the comments by creating reaction images and memes to the unexpected exchange. One such reaction was an image of Mariah doubled over in laughter along with the caption, “laughs in 5 octaves.”
Others noted there could have been worse people to accidentally text while some wondered why Mariah would need Shawn Mendes’ number to begin with and, thus, sparked speculation that a potential collab is underway.
Tom Hiddleston, star of Marvel’s Disney+ series Loki, is engaged to actress Zawe Ashton, according to Us Weekly.
The couple sparked engagement rumors at Sunday’s 2022 BAFTA Awards, where the 37-year-old actress was photographed with a diamond ring on her left hand.
Hiddleston, 41, and Ashton reportedly met on the set of the West End’s 2019 production of Betrayal, in which they both starred.
Tom and Zawe have reportedly been living together in Atlanta Georgia, according to the outlet, but have been keeping their relationship low key. They made their red carpet debut at the 2021 Tony Awards.
(NEW YORK) — When the omicron wave hit the United States, it spread throughout the country like wildfire.
Different models estimate that anywhere from 50% to 75% of Americans had been infected with the variant by the end of the surge.
So, what does that mean for the rest of the U.S. population that did not contract COVID-19 during the last wave?
Because omicron has shown the ability to cause breakthrough infections despite vaccination status, this has led to fears that everyone will catch the virus at some point. However, it is important to clarify that the COVID vaccines continue to be highly effective in its primary purpose in preventing hospitalization and death.
However, public health experts said it’s not inevitable Americans who have not gotten COVID yet eventually will, and that there are several reasons people have been able to avoid infection so far, including certain behaviors such as being serious about masking and social distancing, vaccination rates and maybe even genetics.
Why some people haven’t gotten COVID yet
Doctors said there are several reasons millions of Americans have yet to contract the virus.
One of those reasons is human behaviors, meaning people take proper precautions to lower their risk of getting infected.
“Sometimes people don’t get infected because they’re extremely cautious,” Dr. Mark Siedner, an associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, told ABC News. “There are people who have their own health behaviors or are concerned about their own health or their loved ones’ health.”
He continued, “Maybe they have comorbidities … they may be the kind of people who are largely homebound, or not really interacting with others or are particularly careful with things like social distancing and masking, and that certainly can stop a lion’s share of infections or certainly decrease the risk to where it’s unlikely you’d be infected.”
These people are also more likely to have been vaccinated and boosted, and the experts said it’s impossible to disregard the effect vaccination rates have had on preventing infections among Americans.
Dr. Jonathan Grein said there are also social and environmental reasons that could determine why some Americans have been infected and others haven’t, including how much time people spend with others and where they interact.
“Some people may come into more contact with people more regularly than others,” Grein, director of hospital epidemiology at Cedars-Sinai in Los Angeles, told ABC News. “There’s probably environmental reasons as well, the virus is probably transmitted more efficiently in certain circumstances like classically the indoor, poorly-ventilated space compared to outside.”
However, genetics could also be playing a role.
Dr. Stuart Ray, a professor of medicine at Johns Hopkins University, said similar circumstances have been seen in people who were at high risk for HIV but did not contract the disease.
“One of the things that was discovered was people who had mutations in [a certain] receptor … and that was associated with not getting infected with HIV and in the uncommon people who do get infected, very slow progression to AIDS,” he told ABC News.
Although there has not yet been a clearly identified gene, Ray said it’s feasible some people are genetically less susceptible to COVID.
Is infection with COVID-19 inevitable?
The experts said they don’t believe that infection with COVID-19 is inevitable or at least inevitable for everyone.
“The fact that we’re now two years in and a substantial number of people have not yet been infected is good evidence that it’s not inevitable everyone will get it,” Grein said. “One thing we’ve clearly identified is that being vaccinated is the most important variable in deciding how protected somebody may be.
However, Ray said he thinks Americans who are unvaccinated but haven’t contracted the virus yet eventually will.
“As these variants have become more and more infectious, the likelihood that those people will get infected seems significant,” he said. “I do think it’s likely that people who have not been vaccinated and not had COVID will eventually get it because we are not going to be tracking infections as closely as we have in the past and so there will be less awareness as the virus renters the community … and at some point their bubble will burst if they are not immune.”
Dr. Peter Chin-Hong, an infectious diseases specialist at the University of California, San Francisco, said the COVID situation in Hong Kong is a “horror story” of what can happen in an unvaccinated country.
Hong Kong currently has the world’s highest COVID-19 death rate with a seven-day rolling average of 37.68 per million people, according to Our World in Data.
“Many people were vaccinated in Hong Kong, but it was the reverse of the U.S.,” he said. “In the U.S, so many seniors are vaccinated and boosted, but in Hong Kong, it was the opposite. Very few seniors were vaccinated so that when they did get it, even something ‘milder’ like omicron, many people were still dying, so that is a cautionary tale.”
There is no number that determines when the U.S. has enough immunity
Early in the pandemic, Dr. Anthony Fauci and other public health experts said the U.S. needed to vaccinate 75% to 85% to achieve herd immunity.
Currently, only 65.3% of all Americans are fully vaccinated.
Then, when U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced last month he would be dropping the remaining COVID-19 restrictions in England, supporters said one of the reasons was because government figures showed more than 98% of the adult population in England has detectable COVID-19 antibodies either from previous infection or from vaccination.
But officials said there is no number in the U.S. for which officials can declare there is “enough immunity.”
“The game has been changed to some extent because the virus has been able to infect so many people and evolve,” Ray said. “It’s level of infectivity right now is so high that the levels of antibodies required to prevent infection, the level we need to achieve is hard to sustain for a long period of time.”
(WASHINGTON) — With President Joe Biden’s $15.6 billion request for COVID-19 relief stalled in Congress, the federal government plans to begin significantly cutting the number of viral treatments available to the states, according to internal planning documents obtained by ABC News, which show a decrease of some 30%.
The drawdown, which begins Monday, includes monoclonal antibodies that have been shown to work against the omicron variant. Their ability to curb hospitalization rates, particularly among unvaccinated high-risk patients, has made them a key component in Biden’s COVID plan.
Weekly allocations of the monoclonal antibody Sotrovimab from GSK and Vir Biotechnology will be cut from 52,250 to 35,000 through at least the next three weeks, according to the documents, which were verified by two people familiar with the situation.
Weekly allocations of Eli Lilly’s recently authorized monoclonal Bebtelovimab, which has so far worked against both the omicron and BA.2 subvariant, will be cut from 49,000 to 30,000 doses.
The White House has also warned that antiviral pills from Pfizer and Merck could run out by September if the government doesn’t place more orders soon.
Also starting Saturday, unordered doses in each distribution cycle will be reclaimed and reabsorbed into the federal inventory for later redistribution, according to the planned allocation schedule. The monoclonal Evusheld, which is meant for highly vulnerable groups like immunocompromised people to protect them even before exposure to the virus, will be allocated on a monthly basis, and unordered doses will be swept up at the end of each month, starting March 31.
This new supply policy comes as the COVID funding cuts threaten to force the government to ration lifesaving drugs.
The White House has warned that with funding stalled in Congress “critical COVID response efforts” will grind to a halt; absent that cash infusion, the nation will not be able to keep up with testing, supplies of antibody treatments, boosters and antiviral treatments.
A new purchase of hundreds of thousands more monoclonal courses planned for next week will also be canceled. The White House predicts the U.S. will fully exhaust the supply by May.
“The allocation projections are subject to change and should be used for planning purposes only,” the planning document advises. “Of course, the COVID-19 environment remains dynamic.”
ABC News’ Anne Flaherty, Cheyenne Haslett, Ben Gittleson, Eric M. Strauss and Sony Salzman contributed to this report.
(GRAND RAPIDS, Mich.) — A hospital in Michigan is giving birthing parents a new way to stay connected during a cesarean section delivery.
Spectrum Health Butterworth, a hospital in Grand Rapids, Michigan, allows parents to watch the birth on a monitor display next to the operating table.
That’s how Amanda Koop got the first glimpse of her son, Charlie, when she gave birth to him at Spectrum Health Butterworth on Nov. 24, 2021.
“They turned the camera toward me right when they were going to pull him out,” Koop told “Good Morning America.” So, similar to a vaginal birth, I saw him come up and out, which was great.”
Koop, 36, had an unplanned C-section with Charlie, her first child.
She said that once it was decided she would be undergoing a C-section, a nurse asked her if she wanted the option to watch the delivery, which she otherwise would have not been able to witness. As is typical with a C-section, Spectrum Health Butterworth uses a drape to separate the expectant parents from the surgical procedure.
“I wanted to use the camera, because it could be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, and I didn’t want to miss those moments, his first breath, that can be something that sometimes you could miss in a C-section,” said Koop, who added that the camera also made the C-section “less anxiety-provoking.”
“For me to be able to see him in those moments, OK, he’s out and he looks great, that was extremely calming and reassuring,” she said. “There’s a lot happening in those [operating rooms]. They’re loud and they’re bright, and I could kind of focus right on him, which was really nice.”
The camera and monitor system is the same one that doctors themselves use in other surgical procedures, such as laparoscopic surgeries, according to Dr. Cheryl Wolfe, a practicing, board-certified OBGYN and vice president and department chief of women’s health at Spectrum Health, a Michigan-based health system.
Wolfe said Spectrum Health Butterworth, which delivers around 7,500 babies annually, is the only hospital she knows of in the country that has applied surgical camera technology to C-sections.
“We’re using this technology that’s been around but using it in a different way, and that is not the norm across the country,” she said. “I’m hoping that there will be more hospitals and labor and delivery units that opt to put this in place. I think their patients will be asking for it.”
Nearly 32% of all births in the United States are done by C-section, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Since the majority of C-sections are not expected, it can often feel startling for expectant parents to go from the comfort of the labor and delivery room to the sterility of the operating room, according to Wolfe.
She said the goal of giving parents the option to watch the delivery is to “flip the script” and make it a more personal experience.
“Anytime you have something unplanned, especially around something as momentous as having your child, you’re going to have some trepidation about, ‘Oh, now I need a C-section. Now I need surgery. What does that mean?'” Wolfe said. “Now you’re given an option where you can actually … watch the process, something previously you were unable to do because the technology wasn’t in place.”
The medical team is able to move the monitor so that parents can watch what they want of the delivery, as was the case during Koop’s C-section.
“I did not want to see the initial incision and getting down to the baby, so I just saw those parts that I thought were important,” Koop said, adding that the monitor’s location and flexibility also gave her husband the chance to stay by her side while choosing what he wanted to see.
“I think it can be kind of scary for people, what am I going to see, but the team does an amazing job of kind of blocking things that you don’t need to see and really focusing on that little baby,” she said. “I just thought it made such a difference in my delivery. I didn’t miss a thing.”
Pete Davidson won’t be blasting off to space this month after all.
Late Thursday evening, Jeff Bezos‘ space exploration company Blue Origin tweeted that the 20th flight of its New Shepard rocket will now be blasting off on Tuesday, March 29, and “Pete Davidson is no longer able to join the NS-20 crew on this mission.”
The company added, “We will announce the sixth crew member in the coming days.”
The stand-up comic, Saturday Night Live cast member and King of Staten Island star was supposed to be aboard the space exploration company’s fourth human flight on March 23.
His fellow travelers were to be Party America CEO Marty Allen; property developer Marc Hagle and his wife Sharon Hagle, who runs a science education non-profit; entrepreneur Jim Kitchen; and Commercial Space Technologies president Dr. George Nield.
For the record, former Obama White House staffer and Designated Survivor actor Kal Penntweeted a “raised hand” emoji in response to Blue Origin’s announcement, to try to fill Pete’s seat.
The Flight Attendant‘s second season takes off April 21 on HBO Max. The premium cable channel dropped the new teaser trailer on Thursday. Kaley Cuoco returns as flight attendant Cassie Bowden, who is now “living her best sober life in Los Angeles while moonlighting as a CIA asset in her spare time,” per HBO. “But when an overseas assignment leads her to inadvertently witness a murder, she becomes entangled in another international intrigue”…
Squid Game breakout HoYeon Jung has been tapped for a role in writer-director Alfonso Cuarón’s upcoming thriller series Disclaimer, according to The Hollywood Reporter. The South Korean model-turned-actress joins stars Cate Blanchett, Kevin Kline, Sacha Baron Cohen and Kodi Smit-McPhee in the series that follows Blanchett’s “successful and respected television documentary journalist whose work has been built on revealing the concealed transgressions of long-respected institutions.” However, she herself ends up as the key character in a novel written by a widower — played by Kline — that reveals a dark secret she thought was buried in her past. Hoyeon plays Kim, who is described as an “ambitious, hardworking, and eager-to-please” employee of Blanchett’s character…
CBS has cast Alice Eve as the star of its Early Edition reboot, according to Variety. She’ll play an “ambitious but uncompromising” journalist named Beth, who “starts receiving tomorrow’s newspaper today and finds herself in the complicated business of changing the news instead of reporting it.” Eve’s credits include recurring roles on the TV series Entourage and Iron Fist. She’s also appeared the films She’s Out of My League, Men in Black 3, Star Trek Into Darkness and Before We Go…
Hulu has revealed a first look at the upcoming original limited series Candy, starring Jessica Biel, Timothy Simons, Melanie Lynskey, Pablo Schreiber and Raúl Esparza. The series, set in 1980, is based on the true story of Texas killer Candy Montgomery, a wife and mother who seemed to have it all before inexplicably killing her church friend with an ax. Candy premieres May 9, kicking off a five-night event leading up to the finale on May 13…
(NEW YORK) — States nationwide are grappling with ongoing debates over critical race theory, sexual orientation and book censorship.
In many ways, some of the most contentious and deeply divisive issues in politics are anchored in the classroom and playing out in school boards across America.
Republicans across the country have been zeroing in on how social issues are covered by teachers, including lessons on race, gender identity, sexual orientation and more.
At least 35 states have introduced what is being called anti-critical race theory legislation that limits lessons about race and inequality which are perceived to be divisive by Republican bill supporters.
The country saw the power of “parental rights” and education play out in the Virginia election, where the now-governor was propelled to victory by focusing on those exact issues.
Experts say that Democrats have to pay close attention to these debates and shift the conversation away from the culture wars to avoid losses at the ballot box in 2022.
But students themselves are caught in the middle, especially those in vulnerable groups who are suffering as a result, experts say.
Parental Rights
While education has always been a key issue in America, it has gained steam in the past two years a proxy for the culture wars that were intensified during the pandemic.
Many Republicans have been pushing back against what they believe to be aspects of public education systems run amok, first with COVID-related restrictions and then with issues like race and sexuality, attempting to restrict and refocus discussions.
The Florida legislature recently passed the deeply controversial Parental Rights Education Bill, dubbed the “Don’t Say Gay” bill by LGBTQ activists, which would limit what some classrooms can teach about sexual orientation and gender identity.
Under the new legislation, these lessons “may not occur in kindergarten through grade 3 or in a manner that is not age-appropriate or developmentally appropriate for students in accordance with state standards.”
It’s an effort that gives parents and guardians more control over what their children learn in school and that opponents say is overly broad.
Similar bills from Republican legislators restricting LGBTQ education have crept up in several other states, including Tennessee, Arkansas, Montana and Georgia.
However, a new ABC News/IPSOS poll found that 62% of Americans oppose legislation that would prohibit classroom lessons about sexual orientation or gender identity in elementary school, while 37% of Americans support legislation that would.
There have also been attempts to impart issues like structural racism and comprehensive sex education into school curricula. Especially since protests sparked by the killing of George Floyd, there has been a renewed push to highlight the role of racism in American history and institutions.
Many of those efforts have been lumped under the banner of “critical race theory,” a discipline in higher education that teaches about racism in U.S legal systems. While it is not taught in K-12 classes, many legislators have been invoking critical race theory broadly in their arguments to attempt to restrict discussions of race in the classroom.
What is taught in schools has typically been a state and local issue (with relatively recent exceptions like No Child Left Behind), impacting governor races across the country, according to experts. However, many experts now predict that the importance of education may extend nationally to the midterm elections.
A recent CNN poll found that 81% of respondents said education was either extremely or very important to them heading into the 2022 elections.
Shavar Jeffries, the national president of political advocacy organization Democrats for Education Reform, said he believed that growing frustrations from parents on their involvement in education may be swaying them at the polls.
Jeffries pointed to Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s win in Virginia, after making education a centerpiece of his campaign and promising to “invest more in schools, raise teacher pay, and demand better performance from our schools.” His slogan: “parents matter.”
“The 2022 midterms will hinge on Democrats’ ability to learn from these lessons and lead on education,” said Jeffries in a press release on Youngkin’s win.
Republicans steer education debate
Joanna Rodriguez, a spokesperson for the Republican Governor Association, told ABC News that Republican governors said they are hearing from parents that they want a say in their children’s education. Now, governors are channeling that energy, and believe a parent’s say “needs to be codified into law.”
Most, if not all, legislation that restricts LGBTQ content or race education in schools comes from Republican legislators.
“As we begin to see those successes — with those surface-level successes, and public opinion changing — we also begin to have these very big conversations around the nation’s history and inequality within the nation’s history,” Rigueur told ABC News.
The debate even made it into the White House, with the Trump administration issuing its 1776 Report in opposition to the 1619 project which reframes the story of America by placing “slavery and its continuing legacy at the center of the [country’s] national narrative,” according to the project website.
Rigueur said that so-called “culture warriors” are trying to channel the fears and vulnerabilities of some parents to turn back the clock on social progress.
“One of the fastest ways to get parents to rally around a cause is to [imply] that schools are teaching something that’s inappropriate … something dangerous,” Rigueur said.
“It is a relatively easy way to get parents, who often feel powerless in the education process, deeply invested in order to change both the curriculum and the subject matter that their children have access to.”
On anti-LGBTQ legislation, Cathryn Oakley, state legislative director and senior counsel at the Human Rights Campaign, said education is the key to combating fear-mongering and the demonization of LGBTQ people.
“It is about painting a picture that is just completely not true,” Oakley said of this legislation. “The American public needs to understand that they’re being lied to by the folks who are putting these bills forward.”
As the midterm elections approach, Rigueur said Democrats have to fight to combat the forces against them.
Not only does the party of the incumbent president typically have a much harder time during the midterms, but the pandemic has also piled on the pressure in several political spheres, Rigueur said.
Rigueur added that a lot of these culture wars have been tied to the pandemic. The debate about freedom regarding mask mandates and vaccines highlights the growing want for parental control amid the dramatic changes that COVID-19 has caused.
“Part of what Democrats can do is really push the issue back to these bread-and-butter issues that the vast majority of Americans signify over and over again that they care about,” she said, like the economy and health care.
However, as politicians fight these ongoing political battles, students lie in their wake according to Becky Pringle, the president of the National Education Association (NEA).
“True learning only happens when students feel supported and celebrated in the classroom,” Pringle said in response to the Florida anti-LGBTQ bill.
Battleground heads to the classroom
Some students have circumvented book bans by delivering restricted readings to other students, holding sit-ins in the state Capitol building, or walking out of their classrooms in protest of bills that are anti-race education and anti-LGBTQ.
“Students, pre-K through [12th grade] are always silenced,” CJ Walden, a youth activist in South Florida, told ABC News. “Lawmakers need to know that this is not a game that they are playing.”
Other activist organizations, including the NEA, LGBTQ suicide prevention group The Trevor Project and the Human Rights Campaign, have highlighted the impact this will have on students in the classroom.
“We will not fall for the politics of division and distraction, in Florida or anywhere — we will continue to join together to ensure all students can learn, grow, and thrive,” Pringle said.
