Jack White is headlining the 2022 High Water Festival, which will take place April 23-24 in North Charleston, South Carolina.
The bill, which is curated by Charleston folk duo Shovels & Rope, also includes Modest Mouse, My Morning Jacket, Black Pumas, Local Natives and Sharon Van Etten, among others.
Pre-sale tickets are available now, and while tickets will go on sale to the general public beginning Thursday, December 2, at noon ET. For the full lineup and ticket info, visit HighWaterFest.com.
High Water is White’s first announced live performance for 2022. The White Stripes rocker plans to release two solo albums next year: Fear of the Dawn on April 8, and Entering Heaven Alive on July 22.
(NEW YORK) — As the COVID-19 pandemic has swept the globe, more than 5.2 million people have died from the disease worldwide, including over 779,000 Americans, according to real-time data compiled by Johns Hopkins University’s Center for Systems Science and Engineering.
Just 59.4% of the population in the United States is fully vaccinated against COVID-19, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Latest headlines:
-Variant-specific vaccine could be completed in about 3 months: White House
-Greece to mandate vaccines for people 60 and older
-Global case count of omicron variant tops 200
-Omicron variant was in the Netherlands earlier than thought
Here’s how the news is developing. All times Eastern.
Nov 30, 5:50 pm
Merck pill now awaiting FDA authorization after adviser endorsement
Advisers from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration have narrowly approved an endorsement of the Merck COVID-19 pill, voting 13 to 10 in favor of the authorization.
If authorized, it would be the first easy-to-take antiviral pill for COVID-19. Pfizer is also working on a COVID-19 pill, which it hopes will be authorized early next year. The FDA typically takes the advice of its advisers but will make its own final decision.
During Tuesday’s meeting, advisers spoke positively on Merck’s pill, even though it was not found to be quite as effective in the final analysis as it was in an early, preliminary analysis.
However, the advisers expressed doubt about whether it would be safe for pregnant people to use Merck’s pill because of the potential risk of harm to the fetus as well as its use in children due to lack of data and similar concerns as in pregnancy.
ABC News’ Sony Salzman
Nov 30, 2:45 pm
Variant-specific vaccine could be completed in about 3 months: White House
If a variant-specific vaccine is needed, the process, including FDA and CDC authorization, would take about three months, White House COVID-19 coordinator Jeff Zients said at Tuesday’s White House briefing.
The omicron variant has still not been detected in the U.S. Delta “remains the predominant circulating string representing 99.9% of all sequences sampled,” CDC director Rochelle Walensky said.
Walensky said the CDC is also working on expanding a surveillance program through JFK International Airport, San Francisco International Airport, Newark Liberty International Airport and Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport that would conduct more tests on international arrivals.
Walensky added, “To be crystal clear, we have far more tools to fight the variant today than we had at this time last year.”
ABC News’ Cheyenne Haslett
Nov 30, 2:13 pm
Blanket travel bans won’t prevent international spread of omicron: WHO
The World Health Organization praised South Africa and Botswana on Tuesday for the “speed and transparency” in which they reported on the new omicron variant.
The WHO stressed that “blanket travel bans will not prevent the international spread, and they place a heavy burden on lives and livelihoods.”
“In addition, they can adversely impact global health efforts during a pandemic by disincentivizing countries to report and share epidemiological and sequencing data,” the WHO said.
South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, while on a plane to Nigeria, told reporters Tuesday that South Africa should not be “punished” with travel bans for being transparent.
“These bans must be removed,” he said.
“We have advanced in the world to a point where we now know when people travel, they should be tested, like I was tested last night and I’m happy to be tested when I arrive again,” he said.
“And for us, the tourism industry is one of the key industries. … This is discriminatory against us, and they are imposing a very unfair punishment,” he said.
ABC News’ Christine Theodorou
Nov 30, 1:35 pm
80 million eligible Americans remain unvaccinated
About 100 million Americans remain completely unvaccinated, according to federal data. Nearly 80 million of those people are over the age of 5 and therefore eligible to get the shot.
Since the beginning of November, hospital admissions have jumped by 20%, while emergency department visits have increased by 27%, according to federal data.
Minnesota and Michigan currently hold the country’s highest case rate, followed by Wisconsin, North Dakota, New Hampshire, Arizona, New York, Pennsylvania and Ohio. Puerto Rico, Florida and Louisiana currently have the nation’s lowest infection rate, according to federal data.
(NEW YORK) — Ghislaine Maxwell, a longtime associate of serial sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, came face to face with her first accuser in a Manhattan federal court on Tuesday.
A woman prosecutors have referred to as “Jane,” one of the three alleged minor victims whose allegations against Jeffrey Epstein’s longtime associate Ghislaine Maxwell are detailed in a federal indictment, testified on the second day of her trial, telling her story publicly for the first time.
She told the jury that she met Maxwell and Epstein while attending summer camp at the Interlochen Center for the Arts in Michigan, the beginning of what prosecutors earlier called “a nightmare that would last for years.”
After returning home to Palm Beach, Florida, “Jane” said, she began visiting Epstein at his seaside mansion, where she testified that she had her first sexual encounter with Epstein in 1994 when she was just 14. According to “Jane,” Epstein abruptly took her to his pool house, pulled down his pants and “proceeded to masturbate on me” while she remained “frozen in fear.”
The abuse escalated to include explicit massages, “Jane” said, during subsequent visits to Epstein’s house, and she identified Maxwell as the person (other than Epstein) most often in the room. Maxwell contributed, she alleged, by “leading me to a massage table and showing me how Jeffrey likes to be massaged.”
Maxwell faces a six-count indictment for allegedly conspiring with and aiding Epstein in his sexual abuse of underage girls between 1994 and 2004. She has been held without bail since her arrest in July 2020 and has pleaded not guilty to the charges.
Over the next several years, “Jane” said, she travelled with Epstein and Maxwell “maybe 10 times,” sometimes on Epstein’s private plane and sometimes on commercial flights. She visited both Epstein’s New York residence and his New Mexico ranch, she said, where she suffered further sexual abuse by Epstein. It was Maxwell, she said, who typically arranged for her travel.
Earlier in the day, Epstein’s former pilot, Larry Visoski, testified that he met “Jane” in the cockpit of Epstein’s plane, though he later acknowledged he did not know how old she was at the time and could not recall whether she had actually taken a flight.
“Jane” also described frequent orgies with Epstein and other women, the details of which, she said, are “hard to remember,” because they started to “seem the same” and she became “numb to it.”
She never told anyone about her experience, she said, until many years later.
“How do you tell or describe any of this,” she asked, “when all you feel is shame and disgust and confusion and you don’t know how you ended up here?”
It’s unclear whether Maxwell will take the stand during her trial, which is expected to last six weeks. If convicted, she could spend decades in prison.
(NOTE LANGUAGE) AMC was quick to renew its off-beat dramedy series Kevin Can F*** Himself for a second season, but the network just raised eyebrows with an announcement that the show’s second season would be its last, Variety reports.
The series stars Schitt’s Creek Emmy winner Annie Murphy as Allison McRoberts and Eric Petersen as her titular husband. The show’s conceit is that it plays out as a stereotypical sitcom focusing on a married couple in scenes where Allison is with Kevin, and then takes a dark turn when Annie’s character is by herself, showing that she’s plotting to kill her schlubby dope of a hubby.
The show had an 81% positive rating on the review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes. A few weeks ago, Petersen told ABC Audio that he was psyched to start work on the second season.
“Any time you do something new — and this show truly is something new — I mean, that just in and of itself is an accomplishment to get something on the air that really is not like anything that’s been done before,” the actor said. “And then you sort of cross your fingers that people get what we’re trying to do with it, that they enjoy it, that they find it funny and engaging and interesting. And people have, which is awesome.”
He adds, “So we’re so excited that we got season two. We’re going to start filming here in January, so it’ll be coming out next year. And I’ve already seen a few of the scripts and they’re very good, so [I’m] very excited to get going.”
Following weeks of speculation, Dr. Mehmet Oz officially declared his candidacy for Pennsylvania’s open U.S. Senate seat on Tuesday.
In a Washington Examiner opinion column announcing the run, Oz highlighted his medical experience as the undercurrent for his campaign launch, while also indicating a policy focus on the ongoing national pandemic response.
“During the pandemic, I learned that when you mix politics and medicine, you get politics instead of solutions. That’s why I am running for the U.S. Senate: to help fix the problems and to help us heal,” Oz said.
On his website, Oz added in his announcement, “Covid-19 became an excuse for government and elite thinkers who controlled the means of communication, especially social media and our major news agencies, to suspend debate. Dissenting opinions from leading scholars, even Nobel Laureates, were cancelled and ridiculed so their ideas could not be disseminated.”
He continued, “Doctors were forbidden from prescribing legal medications for the first time in our nation’s history. I tried to fund clinical trials to re-purpose an already widely used drug for possible benefits against Covid-19, but they were banned. Instead, government mandated policies that caused unnecessary suffering.”
In a video posted to Twitter, Oz said he is running as a Conservative Republican.
Oz joins a crowded Republican primary in what is shaping up to be one of the nation’s most-watched midterm races. As a pivotal 2020 campaign battleground that tipped the scales for President Joe Biden, Pennsylvania’s Senate race is now slated to help determine which party controls the Senate in 2022.
The current field of leading Democratic candidates includes Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, Rep. Conor Lamb, state representative Malcolm Kenyatta and Montgomery County Commissioner Val Arkoosh, who is also a physician.
(OXFORD, Mich.) — Three students were killed in a shooting at Oxford High School in Oxford, Michigan, on Tuesday, authorities said.
They were a 16-year-old male student and two female students, ages 14 and 17, authorities said.
Eight others were shot and injured, including a teacher, authorities said. They were transported to three different local hospitals. Two were in surgery and six in stable condition with varied gunshot wounds, Oakland County Undersheriff Mike McCabe said during a briefing Tuesday evening.
All parents of the victims have been notified, he said.
The suspected shooter, a 15-year-old male student, was taken into custody within five minutes, authorities said. A semiautomatic handgun has been confiscated, the Oakland County Sheriff’s Office said.
The student lives in the Village of Oxford and attended school Tuesday, authorities said.
Authorities said they believe he acted alone. The teen has not mentioned a motive, authorities said.
He is being held at the Oakland County Children’s Village and is lodged as a juvenile, McCabe said. The county prosecutor could choose to charge him as an adult, he said.
The suspected shooter’s parents have not granted him permission to talk to authorities and have hired a lawyer, the undersheriff said. Authorities are executing a search warrant at his house, he said.
Over 100 calls poured into 911 as the shooting unfolded, authorities said.
The shooting occurred primarily in one area of the school and there is a “fairly large crime scene,” McCabe said.
Oxford is about 40 miles north of Detroit.
Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer attended an evening briefing on the shooting, saying she wanted to be there “because I think this is an important moment for us to support one another, to support this community. And I want to thank our first responders.”
She called the incident a “uniquely American problem that we need to address,” and got visibly emotional discussing the tragedy.
“I think this is every parent’s worst nightmare,” she said, crying.
President Joe Biden said Tuesday afternoon, “My heart goes out to the families during the unimaginable grief of losing a loved one.”
Cardi B, Ciara and her husband, Russell Wilson, were among the celebrities looking to make the holidays brighter on Giving Tuesday. They partnered with Meta, formerly known as Facebook, to focus on humanitarian acts.
The “WAP” rapper premiered a new episode of “Cardi Tries” on Facebook Watch and hilariously worked as a grocery clerk in Canoga Park, California with Karrueche Tran. Following their antics chopping watermelons and cleaning up a dog food spill, the duo ended the episode by gifting the workers at the store with two weeks worth of paychecks, and a card shouting-out essential workers for all they did during the pandemic.
Ciara and Russell, quarterback for the Seattle Seahawks, raised money for their favorite non-profit organizations as they hosted a Live Audio Room, dubbed “Get Into Giving Tuesday w/ Russell & Ciara,” to share more about their philosophy of giving.
As part of the “Giving Tuesday” campaign, Meta will match up to $8 million in eligible donations made to Facebook Fundraisers for nonprofits in the United States.
Dave Grohl and Greg Kurstin‘s The Hanukkah Sessions continues on night three of the Jewish holiday with a rendition of the Barry Manilow hit “Copacabana.”
The pair stays true to the disco style of the original 1978 tune with the cover, which could comfortably sit on Foo Fighters‘ Hail Satin Bee Gees tribute compilation.
“Barry Pincus — not only one of the greatest songwriters of the 20th (or any) century, but a mega-mensch to boot!” Grohl says, referring to Manilow by his birth name.
You can listen to the “Copacabana” cover streaming now on YouTube.
Grohl and Kurstin launched The Hanukkah Sessions in 2020 with covers of eight different Jewish artists for each night of the holiday. This year’s series has so far included Lisa Loeb‘s “Stay (I Missed You)” and The Ramones‘ “Blitzkrieg Bop.”
Would you’d like to stay in a real-life location of a Christmas classic, or perhaps you just want to escape from all the noise, noise, noise, noise, noise, noise of the holidays?
In either case, Dr. Seuss Enterprises and the vacation rental platform Vacasa have your back: You and your friends — provided you have any, other than a dog named Max — can soon stay in the Grinch’s cave.
Located “Three thousand feet up, Up the side of Mt. Crumpit,” according to How the Grinch Stole Christmas — but in reality, carved into a stone mountain outside of Boulder, Utah — the home has been meticulously created to mimic the crib of the Christmas curmudgeon.
“There’s a kitchen stocked with roastable beast, Who-pudding, and an emergency stash of Who-hash,” Vacasa says of the 5,700-square foot lodging.
“A music room includes the Grinch’s organ alongside Max’s drum set leading into the study, main bedroom, guest bedroom, and more,” the booking platform promises.
Bookings will be taken starting Dec. 3 for stays Dec. 13 – 23 — all for the nightly rate of $19.57, in honor of the classic book’s 1957 release date.
So if your heart is three sizes too small — or once was — feel free to check it out, or at least take a 3D virtual tour of the Grinch’s digs.
(DENVER, Colo.) — Denver is making weather history this year as the city patiently waits to receive its first measurable snow of the 2021 winter season. This is the latest the city has ever waited for snow, according to the National Weather Service.
For a snowfall to be considered measurable by the weather service, it must be greater than a tenth of an inch.
Denver will begin the month of December without any snowfall for the first time in history — and there’s still no snow in sight for the near future. The previous record for the latest first snowfall in the city was set on Nov. 21, 1934.
The Mile High City has now gone 223 consecutive days without snow as of Tuesday, and is just 12 days away from passing the all-time record of 235 snowless days, a record that was set in 1887, 134 years ago.
“With no snow expected for the next several days, a move up to second place is certainly possible by next weekend,” the weather service said of the consecutive snowless streak on Monday. Currently, this year ranks as the fourth longest without snow, just behind a 224-day record set in 1889.
Sitting on the downslope of the Rocky Mountains at 5,500 feet above sea level, dry weather isn’t exactly abnormal for Denver. This is partially because during the winter months, weather systems, which generally form west to east, precipitate higher up in the mountains. As the system moves down the mountains toward the city, much of the leftover moisture evaporates.
Additionally this year’s Pacific jet stream, a high altitude wind current that can affect weather, is following a La Nina pattern, which could also be contributing to the region’s lack of snow and precipitation.
But the West has also seen the effects of climate change over the years as weather has gotten drier and winters have shortened.
The underwhelming snow figures come amid an ongoing drought in the western United States, where about 49% of the region is under extreme or exceptional drought conditions, according to the National Drought Mitigation Center at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
In Colorado, 40% of the state is in a severe drought, and Denver has received between zero and 25% of its normal precipitation in the last 30 days, according to the National Integrated Drought Information System.
These conditions have led to increased fire danger in Boulder, where county authorities ordered stage one fire restrictions to be put into effect on Tuesday over the lack of moisture and above-average seasonal temperatures.
The Boulder County Sheriff’s Office added in a press release that “moderate to severe drought conditions” and low resource availability could impact the ability to obtain “vital suppression resources” if a fire were to erupt.
The abnormally warm and dry weather has also begun to impact the famous Colorado ski season, which typically starts in the late fall.
One hundred fifty miles northwest of Denver, the Steamboat Springs Ski Resort has also seen less than average snowfalls. Crews were forced to generate more than 20 acres of snow across five trails using artificial snow blowers after the mountain initially delayed its season’s opening by one week, citing an “unseasonably warm” fall and little snow.
“Normally this time of year we’ve had more than 20 inches of snowfall, a 10-20-inch mid-mountain base and 200 hours of snowmaking under our belt,” Dan Hunter, vice president of resort operations, said in a statement. “This year we haven’t been able to capitalize on extended snowmaking temperatures and windows.”
Loryn Duke, director of communications for Steamboat Springs Ski Resort, noted that snowmakers this season have now logged just over 100 hours of snow production, with the resort now open to skiers. Duke said that the mountain would have been well on its way to 300 hours of production in past seasons by this point, with mild temperatures this year hampering snow generation efforts.
“Even though temperatures will continue to be on the warm side (for Steamboat and Colorado),” Duke said, “our crews will continue to work around the clock taking advantage of conditions prime for snowmaking and opening new terrain and lifts as soon as possible.”
