L-Davey Johnstone, R- Elton John; Larry Marano/Getty Images
When Elton John‘s Farewell Yellow Brick Road Tour finally gets going again next week in New Orleans, you might find that the Rocket Man has added something unexpected to his show.
In the time since Elton’s tour was halted by the pandemic, he’s released The Lockdown Sessions, which features him collaborating with everyone from Stevie Wonder and Stevie Nicks to Miley Cyrus and Dua Lipa. His duet with Dua, “Cold Heart,” recently became his first U.S. top 10 hit in 24 years.
Asked if any of those guest artists might show up to perform with Elton during the tour, his longtime guitarist and musical director Davey Johnstone hints at some sort of surprise.
“How can I put this? I can’t really tell you right now, but there might be something that will happen that is a bit different, that you wouldn’t expect,” Johnstone tells ABC Audio. “It’s not quite a guest, but almost…yeah, there might be something.”
Johnstone adds that Elton’s recent success on the charts has the pop-rock legend “thrilled,” and notes that it’s Elton’s manager and husband, David Furnish, who’s been able to “create a deeper kind of niche for themselves online with people that normally wouldn’t listen to Elton’s records.”
“They’ve targeted the online market and all the social platforms…that Elton wouldn’t do, ’cause he’s not technical at all,” notes Johnstone. “But Dave has done a brilliant job in sculpting and planning that whole thing for Elton.”
The tour starts January 19 in New Orleans, but Johnstone says he and the band are heading for the Big Easy on Friday to rehearse for a few days before Elton gets there.
“He hates to rehearse. He is very impatient. There’s no way he can do rehearsal,” Johnstone laughs. “He’s just, like, useless.”
Top Row: Katy Perry, Exec. producer Megan Michaels Wolflick; Middle Row: Ryan Seacrest, Luke Bryan; Bottom: Lionel Richie/ABC
American Idol kicks off its historic 20th season next month, but despite the fact that it’ll be introducing a few new elements, it’s going to keep the focus where it’s always been: on the singers themselves.
As judge Katy Perry told reporters at the annual Television Critics’ Association press tour Wednesday, “It’s about the contestants. It’s not really necessarily about us.”
“We are just, kind of, guiding them, and supporting them and giving them cues and all of this knowledge that we’ve been able to cultivate over the decades, and I think we really, really care because we’ve been in their shoes…we want to set them up for success,” she continued.
“It’s not really about anything besides us holding that lottery ticket that we want to give to them at the end of the season and create a real superstar, and our track record shows [that],” Katy noted. “I think it’s not really comparable to other singing…competitions because there’s not really anyone, like, let alone ten people…that have had successful careers [from those shows].”
As for those new elements, first, the show is bringing back its famous alumni to mentor this season’s contestants. The executive producer told reporters, “Lots of those familiar faces who America has kind of grown to love will be seen throughout this season.”
“I want to see every one of those contestants come back,” Ryan Seacrest added. “I want to see way back to the beginning.”
And then there’s the “Platinum Ticket,” which will be given to just a few contestants during auditions. Not only will those VIPs go straight to Hollywood Week, but they’ll get to observe the rest of the talent there and pick who they want to perform with.
American Idol returns February 27 on ABC with Katy, Lionel Richie and Luke Bryan.
Nita Strauss has accomplished a Billboard chart feat not seen in over three decades.
The guitarist, who plays in Alice Cooper‘s live band, has hit number one on the Mainstream Rock Airplay ranking with her solo single “Dead Inside,” making her the first female solo artist to conquer the tally in 32 years.
The last solo woman to lead Mainstream Rock Airplay was Alannah Myles, who reached number one with “Black Velvet” in 1990.
Strauss also hits number one with her first ever single to chart on Mainstream Rock Airplay. The last artist to do that was All Good Things with their song “For the Glory” last year.
“Dead Inside,” which was released this past October, features guest vocals by Disturbed frontman David Draiman. The track follows Strauss’ 2018 debut solo album, the instrumental Controlled Chaos.
The former Creedence Clearwater Revival frontman’s latest Vegas engagement at the venue is a six-date stand scheduled for February 23, 25 and 26, and March 2, 4 and 5.
Prior to the Sin City residency, Fogerty will play two shows later this month in Southern California — taking place January 21 in Valley Center and January 22 in Rancho Mirage.
The 76-year-old Rock & Roll Hall of Famer also has a one-off East Coast concert scheduled for April 14 in Red Bank, New Jersey.
In addition, in May, Fogerty will head to Los Cabos, Mexico, for the Roxfest Classic festival. The four-day event, scheduled for May 11-14, also will feature performances by Pat Benatar & Neil Giraldo, The Beach Boys and Heart‘s Ann Wilson. Visit MusicGetaways.com for more info.
Lastly, Fogerty has a brief European tour leg that runs from a June 3 concert in Kvaerndrup, Denmark, through a June 12 gig in Sankt Goarshausen, Germany.
(MONTGOMERY COUNTY, Md.) — One of the largest school districts in Maryland is asking for help at the highest level to address its bus driver shortage brought on by the omicron surge.
Montgomery County Public Schools asked county officials to urge the state to deploy the National Guard and have them drive the district’s school buses.
On Wednesday, staffing shortages resulted in 40 to 80 routes being canceled, according to Montgomery County Public Schools spokesman Chris Cram.
The school system serves more than 162,000 students and includes 1,400 buses.
Cram told ABC News the state hasn’t responded to the school district’s request as of Wednesday evening.
Montgomery County’s request is among some of the extraordinary moves that school districts have made to fill staffing shortages caused by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.
On Wednesday, the Kansas Board of Education voted on a measure to change the requirements for hiring substitute teachers.
Anyone over 18 who has a high school diploma and passes a background check can apply to be a substitute teacher. The new regulation will remain in effect until June, officials said.
School districts in Palo Alto, California, and Hays County, Texas, have also reached out to parents to help fill the shortages caused by sick substitute teachers and other staff.
(NEW YORK) — Kids who have recovered from COVID-19 may have an increased risk of developing diabetes, according to a new study from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The study, which looked at databases with information for over 2.5 million patients under 18, found that children diagnosed with COVID-19 were about 2.5 times more likely to receive a new diabetes diagnosis a month or more after infection.
The health care data, taken from the first full year of the coronavirus pandemic, showed that other, non-COVID-related infections were not found to be associated with increased risk of diabetes diagnosis, leading researchers to look for reasons for this possible link between COVID and diabetes diagnoses.
A possible link between COVID-19 and an increased risk of diabetes has also been found in adults. In June, two studies were released that showed the virus’s ability to infect pancreatic beta cells, decrease insulin secretion and effectively yield Type 1 diabetes.
In Type 1 diabetes, the body completely stops making insulin, requiring daily insulin injections, via shots or an insulin pump, to stay alive.
In Type 2 diabetes, the body continues to make insulin but develops insulin resistance, meaning the cells do not respond to insulin correctly.
The CDC’s new study on children ages 18 and under, released Friday, included cases of both Type 1 and Type 2 diabetes in its analysis.
The new concern for kids comes as the United States continues to see its most significant COVID-19 infection surge yet, which is heavily impacting children.
Last week alone, 580,000 children tested positive for COVID-19, nearly three times more than two weeks prior, according to a weekly report from the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Children’s Hospital Association.
Here are three things for parents to know about kids, COVID-19 and diabetes.
1. Not all kids with COVID will get diabetes.
Sanjoy Dutta, Ph.D., vice president of research for the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation, a nonprofit organization focused on Type 1 diabetes research and advocacy, said parents should be aware that the new research shows an association between COVID-19 and diabetes, but does not identify how the virus could or whether it actually does increase the risk of diabetes in kids.
“I would not necessarily go about raising the alarm bell right now that it is increasing Type 1 diabetes,” said Dutta. “There is no mechanism yet to suggest that it is doing it or how it is doing it.”
The study did not include information about who may have had preexisting conditions that could lead to diabetes and did not include laboratory data confirming the new diagnoses.
The study also did not include people without commercial health insurance, which excludes over one-third of children in the U.S.
2. Getting vaccinated remains important.
The study’s findings highlight the importance of getting vaccinated against COVID-19, according to the CDC.
Currently, all children ages 5 and older are eligible to receive the Pfizer vaccine. Children ages 12 and older, and certain immunocompromised children ages 5 to 11, are also now eligible to receive a third dose of the Pfizer vaccine.
Pediatricians say the safety of the vaccine is far more proven than the uncertainty of potential complications from COVID-19 for kids.
“We have never had a vaccine that we’ve ever given, going back 100 years, that long-term suddenly something showed up that didn’t show up within the first two to three or four months,” Dr. Stanley Spinner, chief medical officer and vice president of Texas Children’s Pediatrics and Texas Children’s Urgent Care, told ABC News earlier this month. “So we are very comfortable about the safety long-term of these vaccines.”
“What we don’t know is what the long-term effects of COVID can be to kids, even when they get over it now,” he continued. “Parents need to know that if your child gets COVID and seems to be OK with it, great, but what’s going to happen maybe six months or a year or five years down the road, because we definitely don’t know.”
3. There are warning signs of diabetes to look for.
The CDC is urging parents, pediatricians and caregivers to be aware of the warning signs of diabetes.
Symptoms of diabetes include thirst, hunger, frequent urination, unexplained weight loss, blurry vision and fatigue, according to the CDC.
Dutta added that parents should watch for unusual behavior patterns in their kids.
“Any unusual pattern of change in behavior in a short window of time is what I would look out for as a sign of needing to consult a doctor,” he said. “It’s not intentional, but it’s very easy to overlook some of the signs of a disease.”
Concerned parents should contact their child’s medical provider, or in the case of an emergency, seek immediate help. A delay in diagnosis can lead to diabetic ketoacidosis, a serious complication of diabetes that can be life-threatening, according to Dutta.
A diabetes diagnosis can typically be made through a blood test.
ABC News’ Sony Salzman and Robert Rowe, a resident in the ABC News Medical Unit, contributed to this report.
(NEW YORK) — More rainy days and extreme rainfall likely will hurt global economies, according to new research from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research.
“This is about prosperity — and ultimately about people’s jobs,” Leonie Wenz, a lead scientist, told ABC News. “Economies across the world are slowed down by more wet days and extreme daily rainfall, an important insight that adds to our growing understanding of the true costs of climate change.”
“We know from previous work that flooding associated with extreme rainfall can damage infrastructure, which is critical to economic productivity, and also cause local disruptions to production,” said Wenz, adding that the new findings also suggest everyday disruptions caused by more rain will have “a disruptive effect on businesses, manufacturing, transportation.”
The analysis, conducted by a team of scientists who examined 40 years of data in more than 1,500 regions across the globe, shows that as wet days go up, economic growth goes down.
“Intensified daily rainfall turns out to be bad, especially for wealthy, industrialized countries like the U.S., Japan or Germany,” Wenz said. But smaller, more agrarian economies can see some benefits.
More rainfall is occurring as the planet warms because warm air holds more water vapor. While global precipitation trends vary wildly, and are extremely complex because of factors including geography and terrain, extreme precipitation is increasing — it’s widely accepted by many climate scientists that regions already prone to intense rainfall events will see them more frequently.
“It’s rather the climate shocks from weather extremes that threaten our way of life than the gradual changes — by destabilizing our climate, we harm our economies,” said Anders Leverman, a co-author of a study.
Some of those extremes can include devastating flooding that has massive consequences, Stamford University researcher Frances Voigt Davenport explained to ABC News in 2021.
“We’re seeing that climate change increases extreme precipitation and makes the most extreme events bigger,” said Davenport, adding that nearly one-third of U.S. flood damage from 1988 to 2017 — costing roughly $73 billion — resulted from long-term changes in precipitation.
Other recent extreme rainfall events have resulted from tropical cyclones or severe weather outbreaks, which cost the U.S. some $101 billion last year. Among the 10 costliest events from extreme rainfall, tropical cyclones and severe weather in the U.S., nine have happened since 2004.
Dr. Kai Kornhuber, a climate researcher from Columbia University, told ABC News in an interview how these extreme events have both direct and indirect consequences.
“Extreme rainfall,” Kornhuber explained, “often leads to floods, and thereby can cause significant economic damage — directly, by destroying property, and indirectly by disrupting supply chains, infrastructure and production sites.”
(WASHINGTON) — Two American women remain missing more than a week after their plane crashed off the coast of Panama, as their families plead with the United States government for assistance in the recovery effort.
Debra Ann Velleman, 70, of Waukesha, Wisconsin, and Sue Borries, 57, of Teutopolis, Illinois, both retired public school teachers, were part of a community of snowbirds and expats living in the area of Chame, Panama.
The two friends were traveling with their husbands back to Chame after spending New Year’s Eve weekend at a bed and breakfast on the Panamanian island Isla Contadora on Jan. 3 when the crash occurred. The small plane, piloted by the owner of the bed and breakfast, suffered an engine failure and crashed off the coast of Chame, according to friends and family.
Their husbands, Anthony Velleman and Dennis Borries, as well as the pilot were rescued by Panamanian search and rescue teams, though the women have yet to be found despite continued search efforts, according to Albert Lewitinn, a representative for the Velleman family. The women are believed to be in the unrecovered plane wreckage, he said.
The Panamanian government had requested that the U.S. deploy assets including Navy salvage divers and sonar to aid in the search effort and locate the wreckage, but the request was denied this week due to a lack of assets and jurisdiction, according to a family statement.
The families are continuing to “implore” the U.S. government to send equipment and personnel to aid in the search and recovery effort.
“The only acceptable outcome is that our loved ones are found and recovered so that our families can begin the long and difficult grieving process,” the Borries and Velleman families said in a statement. “Until our loved ones are recovered and brought home, that cannot occur. It is the United States government’s duty to provide much needed assistance in accomplishing this.”
ABC News has reached out to the U.S. Embassy in Panama for comment.
The Velleman family has been in touch with two of their Wisconsin representatives, Sen. Tammy Baldwin and Rep. Scott Fitzgerald, as they seek assistance in the search and recovery effort.
Baldwin’s office told ABC News it has contacted the Embassy and the State Department “to share our concern that Ms. Vellemen has not yet been located.” The office said it has also contacted the U.S. Coast Guard and the Department of Defense “to urge them to deploy and use any resources that may be available to help in the search effort.”
According to Baldwin’s office, the U.S. Coast Guard has provided Panamanian authorities with technical modeling to support the search for the aircraft.
“The Department of State, through its Embassy in Panama City, is working in close coordination with the National Transportation Safety Board and USCG to support the Panamanian search operation,” Baldwin’s office said. “The U.S. Embassy is also maintaining contact with the families of those missing and the Panamanian government throughout this response.”
A spokesperson for Fitzgerald’s office told ABC News it cannot comment on ongoing casework.
The surviving passengers continue to recover following the crash. Anthony Velleman will travel by air ambulance back to Wisconsin after having spinal surgery in Panama and “will need months of extensive medical care,” Lewitinn said.
Meanwhile, the Vellemans’ two sons are looking for closure.
“It’s been a week, and they are American citizens,” Josh Velleman told ABC Milwaukee affiliate WISN from Panama. “I believe the U.S. should do the right thing, bring those Americans home where they belong.”
Rapper-singer Cordae has announced that his upcoming second studio album, From a Bird’s Eye View, will feature a star-studded lineup of guest artists, including Stevie Wonder.
Wonder contributes to a track called “Champagne Glasses” that also features veteran rappers Nas and Freddie Gibbs.
Other artists appearing on From a Bird’s Eye View include Eminem, Lil Wayne, H.E.R. and Roddy Ricch. The 14-track project will be released Friday, and can be pre-ordered and pre-saved now at CordaeMusic.com.
From a Bird’s Eye View is the follow-up to Cordae’s 2019 debut album, The Lost Boy.
(NEW YORK) — A winter storm is expected to bring up to 8 inches of snow across the Midwest beginning Thursday evening.
Winter storm watches are in effect for parts of South Dakota, Minnesota and Iowa into Friday.
The system is expected to move southeast this weekend.
Some southern states, including Tennessee, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia and South Carolina, could see snow and ice.
The storm may then move up the East Coast, potentially bringing wintry impacts to the Northeast Sunday night through Monday.
In the meantime, the Northeast, which saw its coldest day in nearly three years on Tuesday, will experience another cold blast Saturday, with wind chills plunging below zero in New York City and across New England.
