Police drummer Stewart Copeland has teamed up with Grammy-winning Indian-music composer Ricky Kej to record an epic album titled Divine Tides that was released this week via all major streaming platforms.
According to a press statement, the nine-track album, which also includes contributions by a variety of musicians from across the globe, is a “tribute to the magnificence of our natural world and the resilience of our species,” and “features a diverse musical canvas of soundscapes, melodies, lush ambient textures and pulsating rhythms.”
Explaining how he got involved in the project, Copeland says, “One day during the Apocalypse I got a call from Ricky Kej about making an album. He had assembled an amazing collection of exotic musicians, or perhaps I should say deeply traditional musicians, in the exotic context of his inspired production style. The flow of ideas soon became a torrent of recording and music.”
He adds, “The spiritual ambience…infused my aggressions upon inanimate objects with loving passion. The timpani were ringing! The crotales were singing! Making this record has been a unique adventure in both music and divine awareness.”
Meanwhile, Kej, who won a 2015 Grammy in the Best New Age Album category for Winds of Samsara, says working with Copeland on Divine Tides “was one of the best, most fulfilling personal and musical experiences I could have ever asked for,” adding, “Stewart is not only a living legend but an extremely humble human being, filled with positive energy, that pushed us to deliver our very best.”
Copeland and Kej are planning to release music videos for eight of Divine Tides‘ nine tracks, two of which — “Himalayas” and “Art of Devotion” — have already premiered and can be viewed on YouTube.
Here’s the album’s full track list:
“Wonders of Life”
“Himalayas”
“Our Home”
“At of Devotion”
“Pastoral India”
“I Am Change”
“Prayer”
“Gandhi”
“Mother Earth”
Seven years after his death, Robin Williams‘ son is commemorating what would be a milestone for the late actor — his 70th birthday.
On Wednesday, the comedian’s 38-year-old son, Zachary or “Zak,” shared a heartfelt Instagram post remembering his father.
Alongside a black-and-white still of Robin, Zak wrote, “Dad, on what would be your 70th birthday, I would want you to know that your incredible spirit lives within us.”
“Our family will be celebrating you and your memory today,” he added. “We miss you and love you always!”
Zak wasn’t the only one missing the Academy Award winning actor, as his comments were flooded with users sharing they missed the Mrs. Doubtfire star as well. Robin died by suicide at the age of 63.
If you are struggling with thoughts of suicide, or worried about a friend or loved one, help is available. Call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255 [TALK] for free confidential emotional support 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Even if it feels like it, you are not alone.
If you regularly hug your kids, lots of new research shows you’re setting them up to be emotionally stable and healthy adults! Here’s why:
First, a simple hug changes kids at the molecular level! Research from the University of British Columbia found, the more children were held, the more genes were activated that helped kids better manage stress and boosted their immune system!
Hugging also boosts a child’s tolerance for pain! A study from the Cleveland Clinic found that gentle touches from a loved one stimulate a child’s brain in a way that helps them better regulate their pain response, compared to when they rarely experience affection. And kids who were hugged the most tended to have the fewest behavioral issues, and the highest tolerance for both emotional AND physical pain!
And according to psychotherapist Shonda Moralis, we can MAGNIFY the calming benefits of hugs by using her “three-breath hug” technique. That’s where you embrace someone in a strong bear hug, and then share three deep inhales and exhales while still holding each other. Moralis has found that even when kids are on the verge of a meltdown, offering a three-breath hug is incredibly calming, and can stop a meltdown in its tracks!
(WASHINGTON) — When the pandemic hit Alexandria, Virginia, the economic outlook was bleak.
In April 2020, the city projected a budget shortfall of up to $100 million as businesses shut down and workers lost their jobs, eliminating key revenue from sales, tourism and income taxes.
“Early on it was catastrophic for us,” Alexandria Mayor Justin Wilson told ABC News. “Every week, unfortunately, I was getting a notification from hotels, large restaurants, telling us that they were shedding workers.”
But a year later, those dire budget projections still haven’t become a reality. In fact, the city just passed its spending plan for the first tranche of $30 million in aid it had received from the federal government’s American Rescue Plan Act of 2021. The proposal includes investments in infrastructure, food assistance and a guaranteed basic income pilot program giving out $500 to about 150 families.
“We’re working on a variety of different ways to try to help our residents: food insecurity, housing insecurity [and] other efforts to ensure that they get back on their feet in the aftermath of this,” Wilson said.
It’s a story playing out from coast to coast. Thanks to generous federal relief funds, a rebound in consumer spending and stock market gains, state and local governments that had predicted economic calamity are now finding themselves flush with cash.
“So far, we are seeing that a lot of states [that] talked about how they were going to have to raise all sorts of taxes and cut all sorts of spending, and it didn’t happen,” Richard Auxier, a senior policy associate at the Tax Policy Center, told ABC News.
Auxier said that while it’s too soon to say that states are out of the woods, federal support has helped keep them afloat during the pandemic.
The American Rescue Plan Act passed in March included $350 billion in direct aid to state, local and tribal governments. A Treasury Department spokesperson told ABC News about $200 billion of that funding has already been paid out.
Unlike the previous two COVID-19 relief laws, there are fewer restrictions on how states can use the money, which must be obligated by 2024 and spent by 2026.
“By the time the third major piece of legislation came around in 2021, there was a big desire to give them that freedom, to have some slack on how they want to spend it,” Auxier said.
President Joe Biden is now urging some cities to use some of the funds toward fighting crime — for example, by paying overtime to police officers.
The Cherokee Nation is receiving $1.8 billion from the American Rescue Plan Act as well. Principal Chief Chuck Hoskin Jr. told ABC News the funding is going toward $2,000 stimulus checks for every resident, as well as investments in mental health, broadband internet and a new hospital.
“The number one plan was to get relief directly to our citizens,” Hoskin told ABC News.
In the meantime, 13 Republican state attorneys general are suing the Biden administration because they want to use the federal aid to fund tax cuts, which is one of the few restrictions under the current law.
“It’s not a matter for the federal government to decide Arkansas’s own tax structure,” Arkansas Attorney General Leslie Rutledge told ABC News. “That’s where the federal government’s overreaching.”
In Maryland, Comptroller Peter Franchot established a working group to determine where the federal money has been going. He said the funding has been a “game-changer” that it helped the state avoid bankruptcy. But he added that it’s clear some of the money isn’t going to the hardest-hit communities that need it the most.
“Some of it will be well spent, [but] a lot of it probably won’t be,” Franchot told ABC News. “That’s the nature of having a fire hydrant of cash come into the state suddenly.”
(JACKSONVILLE, Fla.) — Hospital officials in Northeast Florida are urging people to get vaccinated as the number of COVID-19 patients is approaching or exceeding levels they saw during the worst of the pandemic amid “rampant” spread of the more transmissible delta variant of the coronavirus.
UF Health Jacksonville, in Florida’s most populous city, has seen an “exponential” rise in the number of COVID-19 patients admitted in recent weeks, Chad Neilsen, director of infection prevention at the hospital, told ABC News.
The previous record for the highest number of daily COVID-19 patients across its two campuses — 125 — was set in January; the hospital surpassed that three days ago, Neilsen said, and is currently at 136, with about 40 people in the intensive care unit.
Last week, there were 75 COVID-19 patients in the hospital, 45 the prior week and 20 the week before that, according to Dr. Leon Haley Jr., CEO of UF Health Jacksonville.
“We knew it was most likely due to the delta variant taking a bigger footprint here in the Northeast Florida region because it was so rapid of an increase,” Nielsen said. “Everybody in town is suffering the same fate we are.”
At the Mayo Clinic’s Jacksonville hospital, there has been a “significant” increase in COVID-19 hospitalizations over the past three weeks, “approaching our previous peak numbers,” Dr. Ken Thielen, CEO of Mayo Clinic in Florida, said during a COVID-19 press briefing Wednesday with Jacksonville Mayor Lenny Curry and other local health care leaders.
“This represents a five-fold increase in COVID hospitalizations, and follows many weeks when we only had a handful of hospitalized COVID patients,” Thielen said.
There are other similarities among the area’s hospitals — the COVID-19 patients they are admitting are largely unvaccinated, and they are younger than what they’ve previously seen during the pandemic.
Among UF Health Jacksonville’s COVID-19 patients, 90% are unvaccinated, and nearly 70% range in age from 40 to 69, Neilsen said. Prior to this surge, 75% of the COVID-19 patients were ages 60 and up, he said.
“We’re definitely seeing a shift into a younger demographic of people,” he said.
According to Tom VanOsdol, president and CEO of Ascension Florida and Gulf Coast, which operates a hospital in Jacksonville, over 96% of its COVID-19 patients are unvaccinated.
“Our median age of our hospitalized patients is 49 — it was in the mid-60s in prior waves of this pandemic,” VanOsdol said during Wednesday’s press briefing. “So it’s a younger demographic who are not getting vaccinated that unfortunately are contracting COVID, and these cases are requiring hospitalization for treatment.”
At Baptist Health in Jacksonville, the COVID-19 patients are “younger, sicker and getting sicker quicker,” Chief Medical Officer Dr. Timothy Groover said during the briefing.
In the past month, 44% of COVID-19 patients at the hospital were in their 40s or younger, and “most were previously healthy,” he said.
As the delta variant has quickly become the dominant variant spreading in the United States, Florida is one of four states reporting the highest weekly COVID-19 case rates per capita, with over 200 cases per 100,000 residents, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
As of Monday, the seven-day average of new cases went up 107.48% in Duval County, where Jacksonville sits, according to the CDC.
At the same time, fewer than half of the state’s residents are fully vaccinated, according to the CDC. Rates are lagging in Duval County, where 41% of residents are fully vaccinated.
“Vaccines are stagnant here in Northeast Florida, and the delta variant is just running rampant amongst the unvaccinated folks,” Neilsen said.
Neilson attributes the latest surge in part to delta’s rise coinciding with Fourth of July gatherings, but said it’s hard to predict where hospitalizations might be heading “because it spreads so quickly.”
Hospitals in the region are worried about staff burnout and shortages as the pandemic wears on and unvaccinated staff are exposed in the community and also get sick.
“We’re facing a real staffing crisis if this continues,” Nielsen said.
The area health care leaders offered a plea for people to get vaccinated if they haven’t already, and to continue mask-wearing, social distancing and hand-washing.
Curry also urged residents to get vaccinated — but stopped short of issuing any restrictions.
“The path to moving beyond the surge and preventing future ones is increasing our percentage of vaccinations,” he said during Wednesday’s briefing. “The math is clear — vaccines work. Restrictions to our economy and personal freedoms are not the answer. The answer is getting vaccinated.”
“Hospitals are full and busy because of unvaccinated people, so the solution here is to get the vaccine,” he added.
(MIDDLETOWN, Ohio) — A 14-year-old girl died Tuesday evening after she was pulled from the water at an Ohio theme park, officials said.
Police were called to the Land of Illusion Aqua Adventure Park in Middletown after the teen went under water and did not surface, the Butler County Sheriff’s Office said.
The sheriff’s office said in a press release that the girl went under at about 5 p.m. and she wasn’t located until a half hour later.
The victim was identified by authorities as Mykiara Jones.
Mykiara was airlifted to Dayton Children’s Hospital, where she later died, police and other officials said.
“This is a tragedy no parent should have to endure,” Butler County Sheriff Richard Jones said in a statement. “These are the calls first responders dread and have difficulty dealing with. Our thoughts and prayers go out to the family.”
An investigation is ongoing.
In a statement released on its Facebook page, Land of Illusion’s owners said it closed down the water park and is cooperating with investigators to determine what happened.
“We ask that you join us in sending thoughts and prayers and our deepest condolences to our guest’s family and friends, as well as to the team members and guests who were onsite last evening during this tragedy,” the owners said.
The Middletown School District put out a statement alerting the community about Mykiara’s death.
Superintendent Marlon Styles said Mykiara was going to be a freshman at Middletown High School in the fall and the teen’s mother worked in the school system.
“We will be wrapping our arms around her during this extremely difficult time,” Styles said of Mykiara’s mother.
The school provided students, faculty and other members with information on counseling services.
“We extend our deepest sympathy and prayers to the family, friends, and teachers of Mykiara. We pray the family finds peace and comfort during this difficult time,” Styles said.
(TOKYO) — An American volleyball player tested positive for COVID-19 upon arrival to Japan and is reportedly no longer participating in the Tokyo Olympics.
“In alignment with local rules and protocols, the athlete has been transferred to a hotel,” USA Volleyball said in a statement on Wednesday.
The player’s name has not yet been officially released.
The athlete is the second member of Team USA to test positive for the virus just two days ahead of the opening ceremonies.
The International Olympic Committee reported 71 people accredited to the games have tested positive for COVID-19, including a growing number of international athletes within the Olympic Village in Tokyo.
As of Wednesday, Japan reported 3,600 new cases of COVID-19 and the country remains in a state of emergency due to large outbreaks in the greater Tokyo area.
A limited-edition 20-CD live Grateful Dead box set, featuring seven full previously unreleased concert performances that the band played in St. Louis in 1971, 1972 and 1973, will be issued on October 1.
Listen to the River: St. Louis ’71 ’72 ’73 includes audio of shows that took place December 9-10, 1971, and October 17-19, 1972, at the Fox Theatre, as well as October 29 and 30, 1973, performances at Kiel Auditorium.
The box set comes with an 84-page hardbound book that features several essays about the concerts, including one penned by The Dead’s tour manager during that time, Sam Cutler.
The shows featured the band playing 60 different songs, including covers of three tunes by St. Louis’ own Chuck Berry — “Run Rudolph Run,” “Johnny B. Goode” and “Around and Around.”
“The seven shows in this boxed set perfectly summarize 22 months of Grateful Dead music, performances, and growth,” says Grateful Dead archivist David Lemieux, who also produced the collection.
Only 13,000 copies of the 20-CD box set, each individually numbered, will be available. You can pre-order copies now exclusively from Dead.net. High-res digital versions also are being sold at the website.
In advance of Listen to the River‘s arrival, a performance of “Sugaree” from the December 10, 1971, show has been made available digitally and via The Grateful Dead’s official YouTube channel.
Also on October 1, the December 10, 1971, concert will be released individually at traditional retail outlets as a three-CD set, a five-LP collection, and digitally. In addition, the October 18, 1972, performance will be issued as a limited-edition two-LP set titled Light into Ashes: Fox Theatre, St. Louis, MO (10/18/72) that will be available exclusively at Dead.net.
As the Kings of Leon family gets bigger, the band will be down one Followill on the live stage for a bit.
Guitarist Matthew Followill, cousin of brothers Caleb, Nathan and Jared Followill, just welcomed a new baby with his wife Johanna, and therefore will not join his band mates on their upcoming tour.
“During this special time, Matt has decided to be home with his family,” the Kings write in an Instagram post.
In Matt’s stead, the Followill brothers have recruited past and present touring KoL members Timothy Deaux and Chris Coleman.
“We look forward to welcoming [Matt] back soon,” the post reads. “And seeing all of you even sooner!”
Kings of Leon’s tour kicks off in August. They’ll be supporting their new album When You See Yourself, which was released in March.
The Beach Boys‘ Brian Wilson has unveiled dates for a 2021 U.S. solo tour that kicks off August 29 in Long Beach, California, and is followed by a run of October concerts in the Northeast and Midwest.
The fall dates start with an October 5 show in Huntington, New York, and are mapped out through an October 23 performance in Waukegan, Illinois. The tour has been dubbed “Greatest Hits Live!” and, as in recent years, Brian and his band will be joined by two fellow Beach Boys alums: Al Jardine and Blondie Chaplin.
Pre-sale tickets for most shows are available now; visit BrianWilson.com for more details and the full list of dates.
In other news, Wilson recently relaunched his official website, which features a new Timeline that looks at different eras of his life and career. The various sections feature historical recaps, photos, images of memorabilia, audio commentary and rare recordings, including previously unheard demos, outtakes and live performances.
