Halloween is over and the countdown to Thanksgiving is on. A slew of performers have already been announced for the 2021 Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, which is returning to full strength after a limited 2020 version.
Rob Thomas, who has a new Christmas album, will be singing aboard the Hallmark Channel float, while Andy Grammer will be performing and riding on the Entenmann’s float. “A-O-K” singer Tai Verdes will be on board the Jenni-O Turkey float.
Other acts who’ll be participating include Nelly, Kelly Rowland, Darren Criss, Kim Petras, “Control” singer Zoe Wees and country stars Jimmie Allen, Chris Lane and Mickey Guyton.
The 95th Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade will air from the streets of New York City on NBC from 9 a.m. ET to noon, November 25 in all time zones.
Maren Morris‘ upcoming third studio album is complete.
When a fan reached out to the singer on Twitter about new music, she solidified the news they’ve been waiting for.
“Hi we’re ready for that album queen @MarenMorris,” the fan wrote, to which the superstar responded, “It’s finally done, Queen,” accompanied by a check mark and sparkle emoji.
The new project will follow Maren’s CMA Award-winning sophomore album, Girl, which was released in 2019. It spawned two #1 hits: the title track and the crossover hit “The Bones.”
Maren is currently climbing the charts with a duet with husband Ryan Hurd on “Chasing After You,” which is inside the top five on country radio.
Foreigner will help bring some rocking holiday cheer to the 95th Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, which will air live on NBC from 9 a.m. to 12 p.m. ET on Thursday, November 25.
The veteran rockers will be featured on “The House of Marvelous Milestones” float, sponsored by New York Life. Among the other music artists scheduled to appear or perform during the parade are Matchbox Twenty‘s Rob Thomas, rapper Nelly, R&B singer Kelly Rowland, pop singer-songwriter Andy Grammer, Broadway star Kristin Chenoweth, and country stars Carrie Underwood, Jimmie Allen, Mickey Guyton and Chris Lane.
The annual New York City event will be hosted by Today show co-hosts Savannah Guthrie, Hoda Kotb and Al Roker.
In other news, Foreigner has a series of upcoming 2021 U.S. shows, scheduled from a concert this Thursday, November 4, in Corbin, Kentucky, through a November 21 performance in Estero, Florida. The latter gig is a previously reported benefit show headlined by John Fogerty that will raise money for The Charity Pro’s organization.
Foo Fighters have shared a statement expressing their gratitude following their induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame over the weekend.
In a tweet, Dave Grohl and company thanked the Rock Hall and the city of Cleveland, as well as Beatles legend Paul McCartney, who did the inducting honors, and, of course, the fans.
“Most importantly…Thanks to all of YOU for singing along for all these years,” the Foos write. “We wouldn’t be here without you.”
“Can’t wait to see you again soon!” they add.
Along with the induction — which marked Grohl’s second, following his enshrinement with Nirvana — the Foos performed their songs “Best of You,” “My Hero” and “Everlong,” and closed out the night with a rendition of The Beatles’ “Get Back” alongside McCartney.
The 2021 Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony will premiere on HBO and HBO Max November 20. Other artists who were inducted include Carole King, The Go-Gos, Tina Turner, Todd Rundgren and JAY-Z, as well as Kraftwerk, Charley Patton and Gil Scott-Heron for Early Influence, and Randy Rhoads, Billy Preston and LL Cool J for Musical Excellence.
Foreigner and Rob Thomas will help bring some holiday cheer to the 95th Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, which will air live on NBC from 9 a.m. to 12 p.m. ET on Thursday, November 25.
The veteran rockers will be featured on “The House of Marvelous Milestones” float, sponsored by New York Life, while the Matchbox Twenty frontman will appear on the Hallmark Channel’s “Heartwarming Holiday Countdown” float.
Among the other music artists scheduled to appear or perform during the parade are rapper Nelly, R&B singer Kelly Rowland, pop singer-songwriter Andy Grammer, Broadway star Kristin Chenoweth, The Late Show band leader Jon Batiste, and country stars Carrie Underwood, Jimmie Allen, Mickey Guyton and Chris Lane.
The annual New York City event will be hosted by Today show co-hosts Savannah Guthrie, Hoda Kotb and Al Roker.
In other news, Foreigner has a series of upcoming 2021 U.S. shows, scheduled from a concert this Thursday, November 4, in Corbin, Kentucky, through a November 21 performance in Estero, Florida. The latter gig is a previously reported benefit show headlined by John Fogerty that will raise money for The Charity Pro’s organization.
(GLASGOW, U.K.) — As the leaders of the world gather in Glasgow to discuss the fate of the climate crisis, the power to save the planet from destruction caused by humans does not only lie in the hands of those in power.
While the majority of reductions in greenhouse gases will need to be accomplished by transformation in policy and industry, individual actions can also help prevent further warming, according to the experts.
“As individuals, we have to pursue collective action to actually move the needle on this,” Jason Smerdon, a climate scientists for Columbia University’s Lamont Doherty Earth Observatory, told ABC News.
This is what individuals can do to help slow down climate change, according to experts:
Discuss climate change at the dinner table
Recent polling shows that global warming is “one of those controversial subjects that don’t get discussed at the dinner table,” but according to Smerdon, that is a mistake.
“People often say that you shouldn’t talk about religion or politics at the dinner table … and that’s a significant disadvantage,” he said. “People need to be discussing what it means for us individually, what it means for our communities, the regions where we live.”
Smerdon encourages people who are educated and worried about the issue to talk to their loved ones and inner circles about what climate change would mean for them.
Continue to talk about climate change to transform the culture and “mobilize at the scale we need,” Dr. Ayana Elizabeth Johnson, a marine biologist, environmental policy expert and founder of the Urban Ocean Lab, a think tank for urban coastal cities, told ABC News.
Use the power of the vote
It’s up to the voter to put politicians in place to implement solutions already available, such as renewable energy, restoring ecosystems, practicing regenerative farming and making transportation greener, according to the experts.
Actions taken during the Trump administration, such as the decision to roll back dozens of environmental protections and remove the U.S. from the Paris Agreement, as well as holding the Biden administration accountable on their promises, illustrate why it is so important to vote in every single election, Johnson said.
Lawmakers will need to address the structural deficiencies and ensure that climate legislation is passed and implemented swiftly, Smerdon said.
“The biggest, the most important things with regard to addressing climate change are addressing so many of the threats to our democracy that are unfolding currently in the United State,” Smerdon said, adding that gerrymandering, the filibuster, the strong money lobby within politics and voter disenfranchisement are all “real, serious impediments to passing climate change legislation.”
Carefully select who to do business with
A relative few number of companies are responsible for an overwhelming percentage of the world’s industrial greenhouse gas emissions, why it’s important for consumers to know where they are putting their money, activists say.
Just 100 companies worldwide are responsible for 71% of the world’s industrial greenhouse gas emissions since 1988, according to a report by the non-profit Carbon Disclosure Project, published in 2017.
It is important to “look at the institutions that are financing and expanding and digging us more deeply in this climate hole,” Lindsey Allen, executive director of the non-profit Rainforest Action Network, told ABC News.
Individuals should think about where their money “sleeps at night” and remove it from the banks they believe do not have a commitment to the climate fight, Allen said.
“I think there really is an opportunity if consumers engage with their dollars and vote with their wallets to really increase the ambition of financial institutions with what the climate crisis demands,” she said.
In addition, donate time or spare cash to organizations dedicated to the fight against climate change, Johnson said.
Eat sustainably
On of the easiest thing individuals can do in their daily lives to make an impact in the climate fight is simple switches to their diets, according to experts.
Individuals do not need to become a vegetarian or give up animal products altogether to reduce the carbon footprint of their meals.
“We’re not turning them into vegans,” Marty Heller, senior research specialist at the University of Michigan’s Center for Sustainable Systems, told ABC News. “We’re just saying, hey, eat something that is an average [carbon] footprint.”
The easiest way to make a meal more sustainable is to eat less meat and more organic, plant-based foods — the closer they were grown, the better, according to the experts.
Meat consumption is the largest culprit of greenhouse gas emissions in American diets. Individuals should cut back on beef consumption, which has a “monumental” carbon footprint compared to any other meat, Smerdon said.
Individuals should also choose foods that are grown regeneratively, which restores carbon to the soil, “where it belongs” and plant trees and grow their own food, even if with just a small plot of land, Johnson said.
We can no longer wait on large changes from the federal government
Individuals will find more success addressing the impacts of climate change on their local communities rather than wait on the federal government to pass sweeping legislation, Smerdon said.
Climate change is already here and impacted communities, as seen in the recent superstorms to hit the South and the wildfires burning in the drought-ridden West.
“So we have to engage locally,” he said. “We have to engage our local networks, our local institutions, our local decision makers, to think about the impacts of climate change in our communities and make our communities more resilient and interconnected.”
‘Individual efforts only go so far’
While there are several things people can do to reduce their carbon footprint, there are more reasons why placing the burden on individuals is “simply not enough,” Smerdon said.
The guilt that people associate with the their carbon footprint and the carbon footprint of others is not actually helping to slow down global warming, he added.
“And when people start to feel guilty about what they are doing or not doing, it can lead to a sense of paralysis and a feeling of guilt that’s not productive,” Smerdon said.
Smerdon gave an example of the pandemic, and how it stalled the transportation sector across the globe in 2020.
“Despite all of the individual sacrifices that we made — staying in our homes or apartments, not traveling, not going out much at all — that made a very minimal dent in the overall emissions,” he said. “And so that really indicates that these are systemic characteristics of how we do business, how we create energy on the planet.”
(AMBOVOMBE, Madagascar) — “Kere” is a word that echoes around southern Madagascar. It means hunger, and the people here know it all too well.
For the past four years, the lack of food has become a constant in their lives.
But unlike other countries, where extreme hunger and near-famine conditions are caused by war, conflict, or isolated weather events, in this part of Madagascar, the cause is so far unique: southern Madagascar is on the verge of becoming the world’s first climate-change induced near-famine in modern history.
Arduino Mangoni, the deputy country director of the World Food Programme in Madagascar, told ABC News he had “never seen people, especially children, in this situation that we’re seeing here.”
“I have seen people eating cactus leaves, insects, and surviving upon nothing, and the lack of water is probably the most striking element,” he said.
“World News Tonight” anchor David Muir and his team traveled to Madagascar to report on the worsening situation, as aid organizations and the Malagasy government rush to fill in the gaps of food and water in this region.
Southern Madagascar is experiencing its worst drought in 40 years, making the land here too arid to farm and leading to crop failure. For the past four years, the severe lack of rain has led to depleted food sources and dried-up rivers. Climate change has also led to sandstorms affecting these lands, covering formerly arable land and rendering it infertile.
“As they cannot plant, it’s affecting their food security,” Patrick Vercammen, the World Food Programme’s emergency coordinator here, told Muir during a visit to Akanka Fokotany, an affected village. “Having sandstorms in this kind of landscape is not something usual and having the effects of sandstorms shows that nature is changing, the environment is changing, and the climate change is affecting this area more than the rest of Madagascar.”
The situation has led to widespread malnutrition affecting more than 1 million people, and pockets of what the United Nations classifies “catastrophic” food insecurity signaling deepening hunger.
Madagascar has produced 0.01 percent of the world’s annual carbon emissions in the last eight decades, but it is suffering some of the worst effects.
“It is not fair…these people have not contributed to climate change because they do not have electricity, they do not have cars etc., and they’re paying probably the highest price in terms of the consequences of climate change,” Mangoni said.
The children are the most affected, with at least half a million kids under the age of five expected to be acutely malnourished, according to the World Food Programme and UNICEF.
In fact, the agencies say about 110,000 children are already in severe condition, suffering irreversible damage to their growth.
As the country enters the lean season – that dangerous time during which people wait for the next successful harvest — the need to provide food to those at risk of starvation has become more urgent. Aid workers warning that, without action, they could run out of food resources by the end of the year.
The World Food Programme is working together with the Malagasy government to alleviate some of the most acute needs in this region; prevent and treat children experiencing malnutrition; and build infrastructure and knowledge to make the population of southern Madagascar more resilient in the face of drought. They’re supporting more than 700,000 people in dire need, and the need is expected to grow.
Lil Nas X‘s album Montero has been praised for its deeply personal songs detailing the rapper’s life as an out gay man in hip-hop and his struggles when he was younger. But LNX says it took some outside help for him to be able to tap into that part of himself.
Speaking to WSJ.Magazine, which is honoring him with its Music Innovator Award, the “Industry Baby” artist says that while working on the album with his production team, he tried psychedelic mushrooms for the first time. His production team stayed sober and sat with him throughout the trip, discussing and reflecting on life. When it was over, Nas says he no longer felt self-conscious about his music.
“I was able to open up a lot,” he explains. “I was able to write actual stories about my life and put it into my music. I actually did that for the first time.”
Nas also shares that going forward, he’d love to work with Rihanna, make country music, get into acting and give away a lot of the money he’s making, because he’d rather take friends and family on shopping sprees than buy stuff for himself.
As for what he doesn’t want to do, the rapper says he’s not interesting in dating right now; he just got out of a relationship and isn’t ready for a new one.
Summing up, he says, “At the end of the day, I want to exist. I want to have fun. I want to cause chaos sometimes. I want a long, legendary, fun life.”
You can register to watch Lil Nas X being honored tonight by WSJ. Magazine at 8 p.m. ET by visiting 2021InnovatorsAwards.com. The issue is out November 13.
(NEW YORK) — Elon Musk’s SpaceX is gearing up to send a crew of astronauts to the International Space Station for the fourth time.
The mission, dubbed Crew-3, will carry NASA astronauts Raja Chari, Tom Marshburn and Kayla Barron, along with European Space Agency astronaut Matthias Maurer, to the ISS for a six-month stay in orbit.
The spaceflight, moved to Wednesday from Sunday because of weather, will be the first for three of the four crew members.
The veteran on the mission is Marshburn. The doctor and former NASA flight surgeon, making his third trip to space, said this research could one day answer bigger questions about human existence.
“It’s every one of us who has looked into the night sky and wondered, ‘How does the universe work, and how did life come to our planet Earth?'” Marshburn told ABC News.
Barron, an astronaut who has experience on submarines, said her time in Navy has helped prepare her for this moment — and that she made a playlist for the ride out.
“There are some strong millennial favorites on my playlist and throwbacks to the ’90s,” she joked.
They will launch aboard SpaceX’s Crew Dragon spacecraft and Falcon 9 rocket.
The crew is scheduled to spend 22 hours in the capsule before docking with the ISS. The team decided to call the new capsule “Endurance” — a tribute to the human spirit and a historic sailing vessel used by Antarctic explorer Ernest Shackleton.
SpaceX launched two NASA astronauts to the ISS successfully for the first time in June 2020, which cleared them to continue conducting flights with their rocket and Crew Dragon. It was the first crewed launch to depart from American soil in nearly a decade.
Last month SpaceX’s Inspiration4 mission made history as civilians traveled the greatest distance away from Earth — 367 miles — even farther than the International Space Station.
But on that flight they discovered an issue with the toilet inside the Crew Dragon that almost hampered the Crew-3 launch. A tube became unglued and spilled urine onto fans beneath the floor.
“It had no impact on Inspiration4 at all,” William Gerstenmair, SpaceX’s vice president, said during a press conference. “We didn’t really even notice it, the crew didn’t notice it, until we got the vehicle back and we looked under the floor and we saw the fact that there was contamination.”
Engineers eventually fixed the problem.
SpaceX is contracted to launch up to six crewed flights for NASA, with two more scheduled for 2022.
It’s a Halloween miracle: Production on Hocus Pocus 2 is officially underway.
Disney announced Monday that the long-awaited sequel to the beloved 1993 movie has begun filming in Rhode Island, with stars Bette Midler, Sarah Jessica Parker and Kathy Najimy returning as Winifred, Sarah and Mary Sanderson, respectively.
The film, which will arrive on Disney+ next fall, is directed by Anne Fletcher, director of Step Up,27 Dresses, and The Proposal.
“Fans around the world have embraced these characters and have made this film a Halloween tradition whose popularity continues to grow,” Fletcher said in a press release. “And how lucky am I to be back at Disney with these three extraordinarily talented ladies in the iconic roles they created, as well as our fabulous additions to the cast?”
Returning alongside Midler, Parker and Najimy from the original Hocus Pocus is Doug Jones, who played Billy Butcherson.
New additions to the cast include Whitney Peak, Lilia Buckingham, and Belissa Escobedo as, respectively, Becca, Cassie, and Izzy, three young women in present-day Salem who will come face-to-face with the Sanderson sisters.
Rounding out the list of new cast members are Ted Lasso Emmy winner Hannah Waddingham, Veep alums Tony Hale and Sam Richardson, plus Juju Brener, Froy Gutierrez, Taylor Paige Henderson and Nina Kitchen.
