L-Davey Johnstone, R-Elton John; J. Meric/Getty Images
It’s been almost two years since Elton John‘s Farewell Yellow Brick Road Tour was sidelined because of the COVID-19 pandemic, but the trek relaunches tonight in New Orleans, the first show of a lengthy two-part 2022 North American leg.
With the U.S. and many other areas around the world still dealing with COVID-related issues because of the Omicron variant, Elton’s longtime guitarist and musical director Davey Johnstone tells ABC Audio he doesn’t know if the tour will go off without postponements, but he says every precaution is being made to help ensure the musicians and crew remain healthy.
“It seems it changes so much, and we’ve got to kind of be ready for anything,” Johnstone says. “So, I know there’s no backstage, there’s no guests. There are no backstage passes. There are no wives or girlfriends or anything…[E]verybody’s [going to be] super masked up and getting tested every two days to make sure everybody on the tour stays safe.”
He adds, “I think there’s like a hundred people [who] travel around, between the crew and the production staff and…the band and all that. So it’s a lot of people to keep safe. So…it’ll be a different animal, but, you know, I think we’ll be O.K., as long as we can just keep to the program.”
Asked if, after a nearly two-year layoff, there might be some changes to Elton’s set list, Johnstone says he and the other band members are more focused on delivering an exciting show.
“[W]e just get out there and play some kick-a** rock ‘n’ roll, and that’s what we’ll do,” he declares. “And there might be a couple of subtle changes…but nothing too drastic.”
The Whisker Bomb Po’ Boy is a fried green tomato sandwich that Gibbons devised in collaboration with Antone’s executive chef Alex Padilla. The sandwich is available now at both of Antone’s full-service sandwich shops in Houston, the bearded rock legend’s hometown.
“Antone’s has been notable for presenting one of the greatest sandwich collections and that fact remains unchallenged,” Billy says in a statement. “Their attention to perfection in the world of po’ boys made the draw a natural for teaming up and bringing a new twist and [a] tasty addition with Antone’s line of flavor sensations.”
The Whisker Bomb Po’ Boy features buttermilk-dipped fried green tomatoes, harissa, chipotle mayo, Gibbons’ Whisker Bomb Have Mercy hot sauce, goat cheese, spices and arugula served on warm French bread.
The po’ boy, which is priced at $9.95, is the last offering in Antone’s “H-Town Originals” sandwich series charity initiative, and will be available until June 1. Proceeds from sales of the sandwich will benefit The Clifford Antone Foundation, an Austin, Texas-based organization dedicated to preserving the local music culture and community “by caring for our elders and investing in our youth.”
Gibbons selected the foundation as his beneficiary because of his connection to the historic Austin venue Antone’s Nightclub.
“It’s surreal to be able to partner with Billy F Gibbons, someone who grew up on Antone’s po’ boys, at the same time I grew up watching him on stage,” Antone’s Famous Po’ Boys CEO Craig Lieberman. “[W]e are honored to have a Texas legend like Billy to be a part of [our 60th anniversary].”
(WASHINGTON) — On the eve of the one-year anniversary of his inauguration, President Joe Biden is set to hold a formal news conference at the White House Wednesday at 4 p.m. ET, and is bound to face questions on waning public support for his handling of the pandemic, the economy and legislative agenda.
With Biden facing the limits of what he can accomplish with an evenly-divided Senate, unable to get either his signature social spending package or major voting rights reform through Congress in recent weeks, and with the pandemic still raging well into its second, President Biden’s approval rating in polls has hit an all-time low. A Jan. 12 Quinnipiac poll found his approval rating to be 33%, a 3-point drop from November.
Still, Biden is expected at the news conference to tout his successes over the year, including administering more than 200 million COVID-19 vaccine doses, and hitting record-low unemployment rates in many states.
“You don’t get everything done in the first year. But what we feel good about … is that coming in to an incredibly difficult circumstance, fighting a pandemic, an economic a massive economic downturn, as a result, an administration that was prior to us that did not effectively deal with a lot of these crises, that there’s been a lot of progress made,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Tuesday.
“We need to build on that. The work is not done, the job is not done, and we are certainly not conveying it is, so our objective and I think what you’ll hear the president talk about tomorrow is how to build on the foundation we laid in the first year,” she added.
White House Communications Director Kate Bedingfield cited the $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief law, the American Rescue Plan, and a major, bipartisan infrastructure package as two achievements Biden will highlight in an appearance on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” Wednesday. But she also acknowledged the president can do more on other issues.
“He has been laser-focused on taming COVID and growing the economy. He would be the first to say we’re not where we need to be on those,” Bedingfield said.
Wednesday’s session marks just the second time Biden has held a solo formal press conference at the White House. The first such news conference was held March 25, 2021.
Since then, he held five news conferences on foreign trips, and three in partnership with other foreign leaders at the White House, for a total of nine news conferences. While Biden often answers questions shouted by the press at other events, his tally of formal news conferences is the lowest for any president since Ronald Reagan, according to data from University of California Santa Barbara’s American Presidency Project.
(WASHINGTON) — In a rare event, the Senate will convene on Wednesday morning with all Democrats instructed to be in their seats inside the chamber when the business begins as they try to move forward on voting rights legislation and a challenge a long-standing Senate rule, efforts poised to fail without the support of a single Republican and likely even some Democrats.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said Tuesday that Democrats will seek a carveout to the filibuster rule to pass voting rights legislation by replacing the current 60-vote threshold needed to break a filibuster with an old-fashioned “talking filibuster.”
“We feel very simply: on something as important as voting rights, if Senate Republicans are going to oppose it, they should not be allowed to sit in their office,” Schumer said Tuesday following an evening caucus meeting. “They’ve got to come down on the floor and defend their opposition to voting rights, the wellspring of our democracy. There’s broad, strong feeling in our caucus about that.”
“To anyone who says, ‘Oh, well you may not win.’ Don’t do it. Look at history,” Schumer added, preemptively defending the effort as a moral win, if not a legislative one.
Under a talking filibuster, senators are required to “hold the floor” during debate, testing their stamina as they must stand and speak to block bills. Once a party runs out of steam and gives in, the chamber would then pass the bill that was filibustered by a simple majority. So, in theory, Vice President Kamala Harris, as president of the Senate, would serve as a tie-breaking vote for Democrats to pass the once-filibustered bill.
But both Democratic Sens. Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema have repeatedly made clear their opposition to changing the filibuster rule to pass voting rights, although they say they support the underlying legislation.
“I don’t know how you break a rule to make a rule,” Manchin told reporters Tuesday, shooting down the proposed talking filibuster.
And without the support of every single Democrat, it’ll be a non-starter in the chamber.
Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell gave a highly critical speech on the floor Tuesday of the effort after weeks of warning of “scorched earth” if Democrats made a filibuster carveout.
“Does the Senate exist to help narrow majorities double down on divisions or to force broad coalitions to build bridges?” McConnell said. “This fake hysteria does not prove the senate is obsolete it proves the Senate is as necessary as ever.”
Both parties have supported filibuster carveouts in the past decade for judicial nominees – first under then-Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, who lowered the threshold for judicial nominees to 51 votes to make way for then-President Barack Obama’s nominees in 2013. McConnell, as Senate majority leader in 2017, also used the so-called “nuclear option” to confirm then-President Donald Trump’s first Supreme Court nominee, Neil Gorsuch.
The Senate rules change vote is expected in the early evening.
Across Pennsylvania Avenue, President Joe Biden – one day shy of one year in office – will hold a press conference from the White House around the same time, where he’ll likely take questions on his stalled legislative agenda.
The election reform bill at hand in the Senate would make Election Day a federal holiday, expand early voting and mail-in-voting, and give the federal government greater oversight over state elections. And would come at a time when nearly 20 states have restricted access to voting fueled by false claims in the wake of the 2020 election, according to the Brennan Center for Justice.
Fleetwood Mac drummer and co-founder Mick Fleetwood is set to executive produce the music drama 13 Songs, currently in development at Fox, according to Deadline.
The series reportedly follows an aging rock star who’s diagnosed with terminal cancer. Given just a few months to live, he reconnects with his old band to write and record 13 final songs as a final love letter to his fans and hopefully leave his mark on the world forever.
Will Reiser, who wrote the Joseph Gordon-Levitt-led comedy feature 50/50, will script the project, along with American Soul creator Jonathan Prince.
It will be directed by Jonathan Levine, who directed Hulu’s Nine Perfect Strangers.
Additionally, Fleetwood “will lend his creative and musical voice” to the project, according Deadline.
13 Songs is the latest in a series of musical dramas being prepped at Fox, along with Monarch, the country music family dynasty series starring Susan Sarandon and Trace Adkins, and Icon, an anthology drama series profiling some of the world’s biggest music legends, starting with country music duo The Judds.
Bruno Mars already has a residency in Las Vegas, so it’s no wonder that his side project Silk Sonic is following suit.
“Its happening! The sexiest party of the year! Them Silk Sonic Boyz are performing Live in Las Vegas!” Bruno wrote on his socials. His Silk Sonic partner Anderson .Paakadded, “THE TERMS ARE LOCKED AND VEGAS MIGHT NOT EVER BE THE SAME JACK!! YOU’RE INVITED TO THE HOTTEST SHOW IN SIN CITY!”
The residency kicks off February 25 at the 5,200-seat Dolby Live theater at the Park MGM, which is where Bruno does his residency. A pre-sale starts at 1 p.m. ET today, while tickets go on sale to the general public at 1 p.m. ET on Friday.
So far, the dates the duo will play are February 25, 26, March 2, 4, 5, 16, 18, 19, 23, 25, 26, 31 and April 2.
(LONDON) — It may take weeks to repair an undersea fiber-optic cable connecting Tonga to the rest of the world, which was severed during Saturday’s massive eruption of a submarine volcano near the South Pacific archipelago nation.
New Zealand’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade said in a statement Wednesday that U.S.-based company SubCom, which builds underwater cable networks across the globe and is the repair contractor for more than 31,000 miles of cable in the South Pacific Ocean, “advises it will take at least four weeks for Tonga’s cable connection to be repaired.”
The ministry added that Caribbean-based mobile network provider Digicel has set up an interim system on Tonga’s main island, Tongatapu, using the University of South Pacific’s satellite dish, which may allow a 2G connection to be established Wednesday, though the ministry said it will be “limited and patchy.”
Domestic and international communications for Tonga were cut off due to damage to the undersea cable. While limited communication within Tonga has been restored through satellite telephones and high-frequency radio, the internet is still down, the Tongan government said in a statement Tuesday.
Satellite images captured the blast of the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai volcano on Saturday evening, with NASA’s Earth Observatory calling it “one of the most potent volcanic eruptions in decades.”
The explosion “obliterated” the small, uninhabited South Pacific island where the submarine volcano was located, about 40 miles north of Tonga’s capital, Nuku’alofa, and “produced an atmospheric shock wave and tsunami that traveled around the world,” the observatory said in a statement Saturday.
Nearly 50-foot tsunami waves crashed ashore on several of Tonga’s 170 islands, devastating villages, while a huge mushroom-shaped cloud of volcanic ash, steam and gas covered the entire Polynesian kingdom, according to the Tongan government. A search-and-rescue mission was launched the following morning and at least three people have been confirmed dead — a British national and two Tongan citizens. There were also a number of injuries reported, the Tongan government said.
New Zealand’s foreign ministry confirmed Wednesday that no further deaths were reported in Tonga.
The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said in a statement Wednesday that its humanitarian partners on the ground reported the entire population of Tonga — more than 100,00 people — had been impacted by volcanic ash and tsunami waves. There’s been no reported evidence of ongoing volcanic or tsunami activity within the region in the last 24 hours, according to OCHA.
“However, activity could resume at any time without warning,” the agency said.
Data from surveillance flights over Tonga showed up to 100 homes “severely damaged” on Tongatapu and 50 on the nearby island of ‘Eua. Mango and Niniva were also “heavily impacted” with structures destroyed and trees uprooted, but those islands are only thinly populated, according to OCHA.
The Tongan government has declared a state of emergency that will last until at least Feb. 13.
Sea and air transportation have been impacted due to continuing large waves in the waters surrounding Tonga as well as volcanic ash blanketing airport runways. Water supplies have also been “seriously affected,” the Tongan government said.
Emergency response operations, including distribution of disaster relief supplies, initial assessments of the damages and clean-up of the airports, were still underway Tuesday, according to the Tongan government. New Zealand’s foreign ministry said the work to clear airport runways in Tonga is expected to be completed Wednesday.
Australia and New Zealand have dispatched naval ships carrying relief supplies and clean drinking water to Tonga, their South Pacific neighbor. New Zealand’s vessels are expected to arrive by Friday, depending on weather conditions, according to New Zealand’s foreign ministry.
OCHA said it is understood that ships will be able to dock at Tonga’s ports. Meanwhile, relief flights from both Australia and New Zealand are on standby until the Fuaʻamotu International Airport on Tongatapul is operational, according to OCHA.
(NEW YORK) — Exxon Mobil Corp. announced on Tuesday an “ambition” to reach net-zero greenhouse gas emissions in its operations in the next three decades, but fell short of making any commitments to offset or reduce the massive amounts of Earth-warming emissions from the fossil fuels that account for the company’s profits.
The net-zero aspirations were outlined in the company’s Advancing Climate Solutions 2022 Progress Report, and builds upon previously announced emission-reduction initiatives.
“ExxonMobil is committed to playing a leading role in the energy transition, and Advancing Climate Solutions articulates our deliberate approach to helping society reach a lower-emissions future,” Darren Woods, Exxon Mobil Corp.’s chairman and chief executive officer, said in a statement. “We are developing comprehensive roadmaps to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from our operated assets around the world, and where we are not the operator, we are working with our partners to achieve similar emission-reduction results.”
As the vast majority of greenhouse gas emissions from the oil and gas industry stem from the consumption of its products, scientists and environmental researchers have slammed the headline-grabbing announcement from the U.S. energy giant as ineffective and insufficient at a time when climate change is already harming communities around the globe.
“ExxonMobil’s emissions reduction pledge misses the mark and is too little, too late,” Kathy Mulvey, accountability campaign director in the Climate and Energy program at the nonprofit Union of Concerned Scientists, told ABC News in a statement. “This commitment solely covers operational emissions, known as scope 1 and 2, which make up only a small portion of the global warming emissions associated with a fossil fuel company’s business.”
“By not making any commitment to reduce the emissions that come from burning oil and gas, known as scope 3, ExxonMobil is shifting blame for the bulk of its emissions onto consumers who are using its products exactly as the company intended,” Mulvey added.
Exxon Mobil, the largest oil company in the U.S., confirmed in a press release Tuesday that “the net-zero aspiration applies to Scope 1 and Scope 2 greenhouse gas emissions.”
Scope 1 emissions refers to the direct emissions coming from the company and Scope 2 refers to the emissions associated with energy they purchase or use to run their operations, according to Tim Donaghy, a senior research specialist at climate advocacy group Greenpeace USA. Scope 3 emissions, which Exxon’s goals make no mention of, refers to the emissions that result from the products they sell — in this case, fossil fuels.
“For an oil and gas company, 90% of their emissions are Scope 3,” Donaghy told ABC News. As a result, Donaghy says Exxon Mobil’s net-zero announcement is “obscuring the real issue here.”
“We need to keep our eye on the ball,” Donaghy added. “The climate system, the laws of physics don’t really care about a press release, they care about actual concrete emissions reductions into the atmosphere.”
Donaghy noted that global climate goals, as outlined in the 2015 Paris climate agreement, are to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.
Since data directly ties the rising average surface temperature on our planet to greenhouse gas emissions from humans, the Paris Agreement called for nations to drastically reduce emissions. In a subsequent calculation, the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said that in order to keep global warming below the dire 1.5 degrees Celsius benchmark, the world must bring its emissions to “net-zero” levels by 2050.
In the years since the Paris Agreement, scientists told ABC News, policymakers and the private sector have put a dangerous emphasis on the vague “net” part of these “net-zero” commitments — shifting the focus from actually reducing emissions to “offsetting” them with nature and tech-based solutions that simply don’t exist yet at the scale necessary to meet the need.
Moreover, while many of the individual climate goals announced by companies and countries continue to use this “net-zero by 2050 language” as a guide, later U.N. data has indicated that the world is already on track to surpass the carbon budget necessary to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius at around 2030.
As a result, scientists have been sounding the alarm that many of the more recent “net-zero” emissions pledges, especially from businesses, are already coming much too late to be meaningful and in some cases are even becoming a dangerous distraction that lets them continue business as usual.
“To limit global warming to 1.5 degrees, the fossil fuel industry needs to shrink by 2050, and we need to wean ourselves off of using dirty energy and switch away to clean energy,” Donaghy said. “This particular announcement doesn’t really touch on that question, but we know that these oil companies like Exxon Mobil are making investments today, they’re spending money on new extraction and drilling projects that they’re hoping they are going to continue to produce oil and profits for decades to come.”
“The question of whether their business model is consistent with net zero by 2050 is a little more complicated than just our Scope 1 or Scope 2 emissions,” he added, “because the way the oil and gas industry works today isn’t consistent with a stable climate.”
Data indicates that burning fossil fuels — coal, natural gas and petroleum — accounts for an outsized share of greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S.
Fossil fuel combustion for energy accounted for 92% of the total U.S. carbon dioxide emissions and 74% all greenhouse gas emissions in 2019, per the Energy Information Administration. The same agency said that petroleum use in 2020 alone was the source of nearly half (45%) of total U.S. energy-related CO2 emissions and natural gas accounted for 36%.
While Exxon Mobil’s net-zero “ambition” doesn’t go far enough in his eyes, Donaghy said he sees a bright spot in the fact that an oil industry giant is even acknowledging climate realities. He attributes this noticeable shift in part to the climate movement, especially as young activists like Greta Thunberg accuse the fossil fuel industry of robbing her generation of a future.
“I would say it’s a testimony to the climate movement, that’s really made it so there’s nowhere to hide anymore,” Donaghy said. “It’s really just not feasible in 2022 to be a serious person and deny that the climate crisis is upon us.”
“I think it’s a victory that we’re seeing these companies put out even weak statements, that they’re forced to at least pay attention to it,” he said.
If you’re looking to score some last-minute tickets for Adele‘s Las Vegas residency at the Colosseum at Caesar’s Palace, be prepared to shell out some big bucks.
On Gametime.co, an app and website for last-minute tickets to major events, a pair of tickets in the orchestra section for this Friday’s opening show are going for over $96,950 — or $48,475 per seat, including service fees.
For those looking to go easy on their wallets, the lowest-priced seats, for her January 22 show, are available for $885 each.
Adele’s Weekends With Adele Las Vegas residency kicks off January 21 and runs through April 16.
NBC has canceled the Ellen Degeneres game show Ellen’s Game of Games after four seasons, coinciding with the conclusion of DeGeneres’ long-running daytime talk show, Ellen, set to end in the spring after 19 seasons, according to Deadline. DeGeneres served as host and executive producer of Ellen’s Game of Games, which includes supersized versions of the most popular games from the talk show…
Paramount+ has set March 3 for Star Trek: Picard‘s highly anticipated second season, the streamer announced on Tuesday. New episodes of the Patrick Stewart-led series will air weekly after that. Picard was renewed for a third season in September. Star Trek: Discovery and the upcoming Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, have also picked up early renewals. Discovery, which kicks off the second half of season four February 10, has been picked up for a fifth installment, while Strange New Worlds, premiering May 5, scored a season two pickup ahead of its launch…
Entertainment Tonight reports F. Murray Abraham, Adam DiMarco, Tom Hollander and Haley Lu Richardson have been added to the cast of HBO’s The White Lotus, joining Aubrey Plaza, Michael Imperioli and season one star Jennifer Coolidge, who’s also rumored to be returning, though HBO hasn’t officially confirmed it. The second installment, which is the follow-up to Mike White’s breakout social satire limited series, will leave Hawaii behind for a new White Lotus property, rumored to be Italy. Abraham will play Bert Di Grasso, an elderly man traveling with his son and grandson; DiMarco will play his grandson; Albie Di Grasso; Hollander will play an English expat named Quentin, who is vacationing with his friends and his nephew; and Richardson will appear as Portia, a young woman traveling with her boss, according to ET…
