As she readies the follow-up single for her hit debut “Somebody Like That,” Tenille Arts is keenly aware that a number-one song is a tough act to follow.
“It feels like there’s a lot of pressure on the second song you put out after a big song like that,” she admits during a conversation with Kelleigh Bannen on Apple Music’s Today’s Country Radio.
Ultimately, she chose to follow her hit with “Back Then, Right Now,” a song that she says shows another side of her personal story while also dialing into a universal feeling of nostalgia.
“I was like, ‘This is the most perfect song for where we are right now, because everybody just wants to get back to simpler times,’ you know?” she explains. “And for me, even in the second verse, we mentioned my little yellow Pontiac and that was the car that I drove around my hometown and drove all the way to Nashville, and still drove up until, like, a couple of months ago.”
“Back Then, Right Now” will be included on Tenille’s recently announced new album, which she’s titling Girl to Girl.
(NEW YORK) — A salmonella outbreak in 37 states has been linked to fresh whole red, white, and yellow onions sold to restaurants and grocery stores throughout the U.S., according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
At least 652 people have reported illness with 129 hospitalizations due to the onions imported from Chihuahua, Mexico, and distributed by ProSource Inc, according to the CDC.
The company said these onions had import dates from July 1 to Aug. 27. It said they can last up to three months in storage and may still be in homes and businesses.
These onions may have stickers or packaging to indicate the brand, ProSource Inc., and the country where they were grown. They were sold in 37 states.
Investigators are working to determine if any other onions or suppliers are linked to this outbreak.
ProSource Inc. said it voluntarily agreed to recall these onions.
“While investigations into various potential sources of salmonella remain ongoing, to date no onions marketed through ProSource have tested positive for Salmonella,” the company said in a statement Wednesday. “This voluntary recall is being conducted out of an abundance of caution, in cooperation with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), based on reported illnesses which have been associated with the possible consumption of fresh onions that originated in Chihuahua, MX.”
CDC recommendations
Check storage coolers and coolers for these onions. If you can’t tell where they are from, don’t buy them or eat them, throw them away, the agency said.
Wash and sanitize any surfaces or containers that may have touched these onions with hot soapy water.
Do not buy or eat any whole fresh red, white, or yellow onions if they were imported and distributed from the above places.
Throw away any whole red, white, or yellow onions you have at home that do not have a sticker or packaging.
Salmonella symptoms
The CDC urges anyone to call their health care provider if they have any of these severe salmonella symptoms:
-Diarrhea and a fever higher than 102°F
-Diarrhea for more than three days that is not improving
-Bloody diarrhea
-So much vomiting that you cannot keep liquids down
-Signs of dehydration, such as not peeing much, dry mouth and throat, feeling dizzy when standing up
Most people infected with salmonella experience diarrhea, fever and stomach cramps. Symptoms typically start six hours to six days after swallowing the bacteria.
Recovery for most people without treatment is four to seven days, but people with weakened immune systems like children under 5 and adults over 65 may experience more severe illnesses that require medical treatment or hospitalization.
For more information about salmonella, see the CDC Salmonella Questions and Answers page here.
Paul Simon will release a new audiobook titled Miracle and Wonder on November 16 that features conversations he had with bestselling author Malcolm Gladwell and Gladwell’s Broken Record podcast co-host, Bruce Headlam.
Woven throughout the biographical presentation are previously unheard live studio performances of some of Simon’s classic compositions, as well as archival music tracks.
The audiobook, which according to Variety is five hours long, was created from 30 hours’ worth of conversations recorded at Simon’s home in Connecticut and while he was on vacation in Hawaii.
Miracle and Wonder: Conversations with Paul Simon features Simon reflecting on his childhood, his collaboration with Art Garfunkel and many other aspects of his life, while also offering commentary about some of his most famous songs, including “The Boxer,” “The Sound of Silence,” and “Graceland.”
Variety reports that the 80-year-old singer-songwriter also reveals in the audiobook that he’s working on a new project that’s tentatively titled Seven Psalms, and plays snippets of some of his new music.
Miracle and Wonder also features reflections on Simon’s work by such other artists as Sting, Herbie Hancock, Renée Fleming, Roseanne Cash and Wilco‘s Jeff Tweedy.
The audiobook can be pre-ordered now at Pushkin.fm. The website also features three preview clips from the release that include Simon discussing “The Boxer” and “Bridge over Troubled Water,” as well as talking about some of the interesting instruments he’s collected and likes to incorporate into his recordings.
Robert Plant and Alison Krauss have debuted a lyric video for their new rendition of “Can’t Let Go,” a song written by Randy Weeks that acclaimed alt-country artist Lucinda Williams previously covered for her 1998 albumm Car Wheels on a Gravel Road.
“Can’t Let Go” will appear on Plant and Krauss’ upcoming duets album, Raise the Roof, which will be released on November 19. The track was issued as an advance digital single in August. The video, which you can check out on YouTube, features kitschy vintage-style graphics and images that include a vinyl disc spinning on a turntable.
The Led Zeppelin frontman and the lauded folk/bluegrass artist also released a second advance track from Raise the Roof earlier this month, “High and Lonesome,” an original tune that Plant co-wrote with producer T Bone Burnett.
Raise the Roof is a follow-up to Plant and Krauss’ Grammy-winning 2007 duets collection, Raising Sand. Like its predecessor, the new album was produced by Burnett and is made up mostly of covers of songs by various artists.
Los Lobos guitarist David Hidalgo and Plant’s Band of Joy collaborator Buddy Miller contributed to the album, as did a few musicians who also appeared on Raising Sand, including drummer Jay Bellerose, guitarist Marc Ribot and bassist Dennis Crouch.
Chris Brown and Kyrie Irving in 2014; Jerritt Clark/Getty Images
As many sports commentators are slamming Brooklyn Nets star Kyrie Irving for refusing to be vaccinated, Chris Brown is coming to his defense.
Breezy, who has displayed his basketball skills in several celebrity games, is praising the NBA All-Star for his anti-vaccine stance.
“THE REAL HERO!!! I stand with my brother,” the “Freaky Friday” singer wrote Wednesday in an Instagram Story over a picture of Irving. “WHOEVER DONT LIKE IT… Go live your damn life.. ITS HIS CHOICE AND A DAMN GOOD ONE. ALWAYS IN MY BROTHERS CORNER.”
Kyrie, who won an NBA championship with LeBron James as a member of the Cleveland Cavaliers in 2016, has been banned by the Nets from playing because he has not received a COVID-19 vaccine. The team began the new season Tuesday night without Irving and lost 127-104 to the defending NBA champs, the Milwaukee Bucks.
The 29-year-old player explained his position on being vaccinated on October 14 in an Instagram Live session.
“It is reality that in order to be in New York City, in order to be on a team, I have to be vaccinated,” Irving said. “I chose to be unvaccinated, and that was my choice, and I would ask you all to just respect that choice.”
Before the Nets played Tuesday night, Charles Barkley blasted Irving for refusing to be vaccinated.
“First of all, you don’t get the vaccine for yourself, you get it for other people,” the NBA Hall of Famer said on TNT’s Inside the NBA. “I got vaccinated. I can’t wait to get the booster. You get vaccinated for your family first, you get vaccinated for your teammates second. That’s what bothers me about this whole thing.”
(WASHINGTON) — In the wake of a controversial proposal by the Treasury Department and Senate Democrats to direct collection of additional data on Americans’ bank accounts, Senate Republicans — led by South Carolina’s Tim Scott — introduced a bill Thursday to prevent the Internal Revenue Service from implementing any such policy change.
“The Democrats’ plan to allow the IRS to spy on the bank accounts of nearly every person in this country, even those below the poverty line, should be deeply concerning to anyone who values privacy and economic inclusion,” Scott said in a statement provided exclusively to ABC News.
The Biden administration on Tuesday backed down on a controversial proposal that would have directed the IRS to collect additional data on every bank account that sees more than $600 in annual transactions, after widespread criticism from Republican lawmakers and banking industry representatives, who said the tax enforcement strategy represented a breach of privacy by the federal government.
Instead, the administration and Senate Democrats are proposing to raise the threshold to accounts with more than $10,000 in annual transactions, and any income received through a paycheck from which federal taxes are automatically deducted will not be subject to the reporting. Recipients of federal benefits like unemployment and Social Security would also be exempt.
According to the new GOP bill, called the Prohibiting IRS Financial Surveillance Act, “The Secretary of the Treasury (including any delegate of the Secretary) may not require any financial institution to report the inflows or outflows of any account maintained by such institution, or any balances, transactions, transfers, or similar information with respect to any such account, except to the extent that such reporting is required under any program, or other provision of law, as in effect on the date of the enactment of this Act.”
“Every American should be wary of giving the IRS more power and more tentacles into private financial transactions,” Sen. Mike Crapo, R-Idaho, said in a statement. “The IRS bank reporting proposal is one of the biggest expansions of the agency’s authority we’ve ever seen, and is fundamentally flawed. I’m proud to support Senator Scott’s legislation to stop this proposal in its tracks and protect Americans’ personal, private financial information.”
The GOP bill is sponsored by every member of Republican leadership and nearly the entire conference, a clear indication, according to a source familiar with the matter, that the party sees “this move and the unified support from leadership … as a clear indication of where we’ll focus our energies in the coming reconciliation fight.”
The changes made by Democrats — a clear indication of how politically volatile the issue is — would exempt millions of Americans from the reporting requirement, and help the IRS target wealthier Americans, they say, especially those who earn money from investments, real estate, and other transactions that are more difficult for the IRS to track.
“Under the current system, American workers pay virtually all their tax bills while many top earners avoid paying billions in the taxes they owe by exploiting the system. At the core of the problem is a discrepancy in the ways types of income are reported to the IRS: opaque income sources frequently avoid scrutiny while wages and federal benefits are typically subject to nearly full compliance. This two-tiered tax system is unfair and deprives the country of resources to fund core priorities,” Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said in a statement Tuesday.
“Today’s new proposal reflects the Administration’s strong belief that we should zero in on those at the top of the income scale who don’t pay the taxes they owe, while protecting American workers by setting the bank account threshold at $10,000 and providing an exemption for wage earners like teachers and firefighters,” Yellen said.
A Treasury fact sheet says, “Imagine a taxpayer who reports $10,000 of income; but has $10 million of flows in and out of their bank account. Having this summary information will help flag for the IRS when high-income people under-report their income (and under-pay their tax obligations). This will help the IRS target its enforcement activities on those who are actually evading their tax obligations—decreasing costly and burdensome audits for the vast majority of taxpayers who pay what they owe.”
The proposal is a long way from being enacted. It’s currently included in a multi-trillion dollar social spending package lawmakers and the White House have been negotiating for months. If that package is passed and signed into law, the requirement wouldn’t begin until December 2022.
Senate Finance Committee Chairman Ron Wyden, D-Ore., who spearheaded the effort to revise the proposal, disputed Republican claims that the goal is to snoop on Americans’ financial transactions.
“The bottom line is, wealthy tax cheats are ripping off the American people to the tune of billions and billions of dollars per year. Tax cheats thrive when the reporting rules that apply to them are loose and murky. Democrats want to fix this broken approach and crack down on the cheating at the top,” Wyden said in a press conference on the announcement Tuesday.
Wyden made clear that even Americans who might make a large purchase over $10,000 wouldn’t be subject to the additional reporting.
“If you don’t have $10,000 above your paycheck, Social Security income, or the like coming in or going out, there’s no additional reporting. We’ve also addressed the scenario where an individual spends a significant amount of savings for a major purchase. There will be no additional reporting in this scenario, as long as the amount of money coming into the account does not exceed wages +$10,000,” Wyden said.
Still, Republicans insisted millions of Americans will be affected and voiced concern that the IRS would be given far too much power.
“The Biden administration’s plan to allow the IRS to monitor Americans’ bank accounts is a dangerous idea that will only prove to be worse over time,” said Senator Pat Toomey, R-Pa. “Today the administration wants to know your annual account inflows and outflows. What will they demand access to tomorrow?”
ABC News’ Sarah Kolinovsky contributed to this report
(NEW YORK) — Ivory poaching has led to a “rapid evolution” of tuskless African elephants, as elephants without tusks were far more likely to survive during the height of the ivory trade, according to new research.
Much of the distress on the species occurred during the Mozambican Civil War from 1977 to 1992, when the ivory poaching in the region was at its most intense, according to a new study published Thursday in Science. During the conflict, armed forces on both sides relied heavily on the ivory trade to finance the war efforts, according to the researchers.
The elephant population in the region declined more than 90% due to the war, and the mass hunting of the mammals for their tusks resulted in a phenotype of the species that had a better chance of survival — specifically, female elephants.
During the conflict, a tuskless female would have five times the chances of survival than a female with a tusk, Shane Campbell-Staton, an evolutionary biologist at Princeton University, told ABC News.
“So it actually seems to be a very strong selection over a very short period of time,” he said.
The explanation for the trait evolving in female elephants and not males has to do with the genetics of tooth development, according to the study. Specifically, an X chromosome male-lethal syndrome that diminishes the growth of lateral incisors,
Campbell-Staton began hearing about the rise of “tusklessness” elephants years ago when he was in graduate school, but the research to find an explanation for the phenomenon had not yet occurred, he said.
“In regions where there’s intensive poaching, there seem to be more animals without tusks,” he said. “But we had no idea what was going on, why it happened … the degree with which it happened.”
The scientists investigated the impacts of ivory hunting on the evolution of African elephants in Gorongosa National Park in Mozambique, during and after the civil war.
The findings shed new light on just how powerful an effect human exploitation can have on wildlife populations, the researchers said.
“The selective killing of species – whether for food, safety, or profit – has only become more common and intense as human populations and technology have grown,” the authors wrote. “So much so, it’s suggested that wildlife exploitation by humans has become a powerful selective driver in the evolution of targeted species.”
However, if the ivory trade were to continue to decline and elephant populations were to rebound, there is a chance that the evolution of tuskless elephants could be reversed, Campbell-Staton said, adding that researchers already see this to be the case.
In Gorongosa National Park, which he described as a “success story” due to the climbing population, the children of female elephants that survived the war are inheriting the trait, but only by about 50%, Campbell-Staton said.
While the notion that rapid evolution is not new, the findings were surprising to Campbell-Staton due to the long life spans of African elephants, which can live up to 70 years, and the long gestation periods, which are typically about two years.
Although its road to launch was rocky, Starz’ three episode event The Continental is getting on track quickly.
After Colin Woodell was cast in the John Wick spin-off’s central role as Winston, five new cast members have been added to join him and Mel Gibson, who was previously cast as a character known as Cormac.
The series takes place in New York City in the 1970s, and shows how Woodell’s character came to be the suave owner of The Continental, the hitman hotel seen in the John Wick films; Winston is played in the films by Ian McShane.
The show has just added The Good Lord Bird‘sHubert Point-Du Jour, who’s been cast as a character named Miles; Jessica Allain, who starred with Meryl Streep in The Laundromat, will play Lou; Michelle Prada from Starz’ Vida will play KD; Vietnamese import Nhung Kate will play Yen; and Animal Kingdom‘s Ben Robson has been cast as Frankie.
John Wick fans might be wondering who will play The Continental‘s enigmatic concierge, Charon, who’s played in all the films by Lance Reddick. So far, it seems at this age — Woodell is 29 — Winston hasn’t yet met his eventual right-hand-man.
To get fans hyped for his upcoming Wonder world tour, Shawn Mendes is releasing a concert he filmed recently in New York City, which marked his return to live performance post-COVID.
“A few weeks ago we filmed an extremely special show…where I was lucky enough to be joined by incredible friends & activists,” Shawn captioned the announcement on Instagram. “It was my first show back in almost 2 years and it made me realize how much I missed live shows, but more importantly how crucial it is to raise our voices for change.”
“I’m so honoured to be able to share that night with you,” he added.
A Wonder Concert & Conversation comes out Friday at 12 p.m. ET/9 a.m. PT on Watch Together via Messenger and on Instagram.
(WASHINGTON) — Attorney General Merrick Garland told lawmakers on Thursday that the Justice Department will follow “the facts and the law” if the House of Representatives votes to refer former President Donald Trump’s ally Steve Bannon for criminal prosecution for defying a congressional subpoena.
“I will say what a spokesperson for the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the District of Columbia said I think yesterday or a day before,” Garland said in response to a question on Congress’ potential contempt referral for Bannon. “If the House of Representatives votes for a referral of a contempt charge — then the Department of Justice will do what it always does in such circumstances, we will apply the facts and the law and make a decision consistent with the principles of prosecution.”
Garland’s first appearance in front of the House Judiciary Committee came on the same day that the House is set to vote on whether to hold Bannon, who formerly served as a White House advisor to Trump, in contempt of Congress.
Historically such prosecutions are rare and politically fraught — but Garland’s potential decision on the referral would have significant ramifications for the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 assault on the U.S. Capitol as it seeks to compel cooperation from individuals who allegedly had communications with Trump around that day.
The matter was further complicated over the weekend when President Joe Biden told reporters he hoped the department would move forward with prosecutions of those, like Bannon, who defy the select committee’s subpoenas. A DOJ spokesperson swiftly released a statement following Biden’s remarks restating the department’s independence, and White House press secretary Jen Psaki clarified afterward that the president was in no way giving direction to Garland on the issue.
“The Department of Justice will make its own independent decisions in all prosecutions based solely on the facts and the law. Period. Full stop,” spokesperson Anthony Coley said.
In the hearing, Garland also defended the Justice Department’s handling of its sprawling investigation into the Jan. 6 insurrection. He testified Thursday that more than 650 people across the country have been charged in the more than nine months since the attack.
“The violence we witnessed that day was an intolerable assault, not only on the Capitol and the brave law enforcement personnel who sought to protect it, but also on a fundamental element of our democracy: the peaceful transfer of power,” Garland said.
Republicans on the panel expressed concern about the treatment of some of the rioters being detained ahead of trial, after judges ruled they either presented a threat to the general public or a risk of flight and obstruction of justice.
Last week, a federal judge overseeing one case of a rioter being held in detention pending trial did make a referral to Garland to investigate whether jailed rioters are having their rights violated based on their status as Capitol riot defendants. Garland confirmed in Thursday’s hearing that the U.S. Marshals Service subsequently conducted an inspection of their conditions and the Civil Rights Division is reviewing the findings.
