CMT has announced its full lineup of performers for the upcoming CMT Artists of the Year special, which will honor the accomplishments of some of the genre’s most prominent artists.
Luke Combs, Gabby Barrett and Kane Brown — all honorees in this year’s show — will take the stage during the event. But that’s not all: Two more honorees will feature in exciting cross-genre collaborations.
Kelsea Ballerini will deliver a remote performance with pop superstar group The Jonas Brothers, who are her current tour mates. Also on deck is a world-premiere duet between R&B group Boyz II Men and Pentatonix’s Kevin Olusola, who are performing in tribute to Chris Stapleton.
In addition to the five 2021 CMT Artists of the Year honorees, the show will celebrate Randy Travis as this year’s Artist of a Lifetime, and Mickey Guyton as the Breakout Artist of the Year. Mickey will perform during the show, along with singer-songwriter Yola.
Plus, the show will spotlight one of this year’s breakout viral hits, as Walker Hayes gives the awards show world premiere of his smash hit, “Fancy Like.”
The 2021 CMT Artists of the Year ceremony will air live on CMT from Nashville’s Schermerhorn Symphony Center. The event takes place next Wednesday, October 13 at 9 p.m. ET.
With Star Trek icon William Shatner boldly going to space this Tuesday, some professional astronauts spoke with ABC News about Hollywood’s most famous space traveler’s upcoming journey aboard Jeff Bezos‘ New Shepard vehicle.
NASA Astronauts Raja Chari, Kayla Barron, Tom Marshburn and ESA Astronaut Matthias Maurer are also headed to the final frontier, but are scheduled to blast off in one of Elon Musk’s SpaceX Dragon rockets on October 30,bound for a six-month mission to the International Space Station.
Barron told ABC News, “I think it captures the imagination of so many of us to see Captain Kirk…getting to fly in space…Who doesn’t want to see that happen? I know I do!”
Chari offered, “…[M]y words of advice he should try to get as many catchphrases as he can while he’s weightless like ‘Beam Me Up Scotty.’…'”
Marshburn said he wasn’t a Trekkie, but noted of Shatner, “I think he’s quite brave…and so all the kudos go to him for doing this, he’s a pioneer and I hope he enjoys it.”
Maurer tells ABC News, “I watched Trek as a kid, and now to know that, Captain Kirk is now at the age of 90 is flying to space, I think that’s a marvelous idea and I think you can never be too old to live a dream.”
Shatner, who played USS Enterprise Captain James T. Kirk on Gene Roddenberry‘s beloved sci-fi series and in seven feature films, will be joined by a senior Blue Origin employee and two co-founders of space-related technology companies for the sub-orbital mission, designated NS-18.
Shatner, who turned 90 in March, will become the oldest person to fly to space, surpassing the record set in July by 82-year-old astronaut and New Shepard traveler Wally Funk.
Ed Sheeran is known for having a way with words when it comes to expressing romance. However, when he got on one knee to ask Cherry Seaborn to marry him, he almost didn’t know what to say because of her hilarious reaction.
Speaking to the Swedish talk show Skavlanon Friday, the “Perfect” singer revealed what actually happened when he popped the big question. “I remember getting down on one knee and her just being [gasps as he makes a wide eyed, panicked stare] and I was like, ‘Will you… marry me?’ And she was like, ‘Are you f****** JOKING?!'” Ed recalled.
He then added with a laugh, while mimicking the terrified expression he had at the time, “I just remember there was a long silence and I just went, ‘Please?'”
The “Shape of You” singer revealed that his wife’s reaction may have been due, in part, to her parents being unmarried because they didn’t think marriage was anything important, which meant Ed walked into the proposal “not knowing if she was going to say ‘Yes.'”
“That is the most human I have ever felt. The most. Because in my career, sometimes… I’ll be like, ‘Can I do this?’ And people will be just like, ‘Yep!’ You kinda get to a certain point where it becomes normal,” explained Sheeran, 30. “Then you are in a situation where you are literally on your knees being like, [‘Will you marry me?’]. And it’s such a huge life decision someone has to make in the blink of an eye.”
“Thankfully, she did say yes,” Ed grinned, before revealing, “This is the first time I’ve ever told this story!”
The couple welcomed their first child, a daughter named Lyra Antarctica, last summer.
It’s been 17 years since Tears for Fears have released new music but on Thursday, the English rockers confirmed they have a new album on the way. The “Everybody Wants to Rule the World” singers revealed that their seventh studio album, named The Tipping Point, is due out early next year.
“‘The Tipping Point.’ out feb 25, 2022,” the band tweeted, along with a link to a video for the title track, which is about the grief of watching someone you love lose a long battle with disease.
Tears for Fears, comprised of members Roland Orzabal and Curt Smith, last released new music in 2004 with their sixth studio album, Everybody Loves a Happy Ending, which fans waited nine years to hear following their 1995 album Raoul and the Kings of Spain.
Of their reunion, Curt Smith says, “When you’ve known each other as long as we have, and have worked together as long as we have, there’s a bond there that becomes familial…It’s the kind of bond that you can’t really break. It can fall apart at times. You separate for periods, which I also think is healthy, really. But in the end, we always seem to find each other again.”
You can pre-order The Tipping Point on the official Tears for Fears website.
(NEW YORK) — With COVID-19 vaccine mandates proliferating across the country in the public and private sectors as well as some school districts, the pushback from those unwilling or hesitant to get their shots is heating up.
The vaccination effort has raised new questions about exemptions because mandates for adults are generally rare outside of settings like healthcare facilities and the military, and the inoculations are relatively new.
While there is no overall data yet on exemptions for COVID-19 vaccines, a number of companies and state governments have seen interest in religious exemptions — a protection stemming from the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
This leaves employers in the difficult and legally precarious position of determining whether the requests are valid. As such, some states have tried to do away with non-medical exemptions overall for their employees.
In school settings, where vaccines have long been recognized as crucial to preventing communicable diseases, state-level mandates are common and have been tested in the courts.
“One of the most important public health practices we have to alleviate outbreaks and things like measles and whooping cough are vaccines required for school or for daycare entry,” Dr. Joshua Williams, an assistant professor of pediatrics at the University of Colorado School of Medicine, told ABC News.
In addition to California announcing that it is adopting a state-wide mandate, individual education boards in cities like Los Angeles have started adding the Pfizer vaccine, which was granted full FDA approval in September and is currently the only vaccine approved for children older than 12, to their list of immunization requirements.
Experts say other school districts are likely to follow suit and have strong legal ground to enforce the requirement set forth in the 1944 Supreme Court case Prince v. Massachusetts.
Here’s what to know about the debate over non-medical exemptions:
On the rise in schools
Data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) shows that while requests for medical exemptions in schools remain low and fairly constant (around 0.3%), non-medical exemptions (including religious and personal belief exemptions) have risen from 1.4% in the 2011-’12 school year to 2.2% in the 2019-’20 school year (a 57% increase).
In Idaho, for instance, in the 2019-’20 school year, 7.2% of kindergarteners had non-medical exemptions, according to the CDC data. That contrasts with around 1% for states like Massachusetts, Louisiana and Alabama.
Ellen Wright Clayton, a professor of pediatrics, law and health policy at the Vanderbilt University Law School, believes that schools should take a stand against religious exemptions in the interest of protecting public health.
“The fact of the matter is, parents are not entitled, for any reason, to expose other people’s children or other people to [COVID-19] for religious reasons,” Clayton said.
Schools from all 50 states have historically required immunization starting in kindergarten level to curb the spread of contagious diseases such as measles.
Forty-four states and the District of Columbia currently offer religious exemptions to vaccines, of which 15 offer broader personal belief exemptions for personal, moral or spiritual ideologies. The remaining six states — California, Connecticut, Maine, Mississippi, New York and West Virginia — only offer medical exemptions.
More religious exemptions despite decreasing religiousness
Williams, from the University of Colorado, noted that despite a decrease in religiosity among Americans, there has been an increase in religious exemption requests for vaccination, implying that these exemptions are “no longer serving their original purpose.”
It has increased even as some religious leaders, including Pope Francis and Rabbi Chaim Kanievsky, a leading authority in Israel’s ultra-Orthodox Jewish community, have made clear that vaccines are necessary for the common good and take precedence over religious beliefs.
In his research, Williams also investigated the influence of the availability of personal belief exemptions in states on the rate of religious exemptions for childhood vaccinations. In 2016, Vermont eliminated its personal belief exemption policy which was followed by an increase in religious exemption applications from 0.5% to 3.7%.
This suggests that “perhaps people were increasingly using that religious exemption category, even though they might not necessarily have a religious objection to vaccines,” Williams said.
“One thing that people have done previously has shown that the harder it is to obtain an exemption, the lower the rate of exemptions becomes,” he added.
Unlike personal belief exemptions, which are relatively broad, religious exemptions have to be integrated into a holistic belief system, said Dorit Reiss, a professor of law at UC Hastings College of the Law.
“You can’t just grab onto a biblical verse when it’s convenient,” Reiss, who has written about the legality of vaccine mandates in law journals, said.
How the exemptions work
Individuals’ rights to claim a religious exemption from immunization is protected under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. However, as seen in some states, this right can be overruled in the interest of public health.
In the wake of the 2019 measles outbreak in the states of New York and Washington, where most cases were reported among the unvaccinated, the states eliminated religious exemptions.
In the face of a religious exemption application, employers or schools have the right to probe the exemption and question the applicant. In other words, it is on them to assess the sincerity of the belief, not the accuracy or validity.
Employers can require their employees to explain the basis of their belief in detail and don’t need to accept a cursory attestation to grant the exemption, Reiss said.
“You can’t try and assess if the belief is rational,” Reiss clarified. “You can ask them a tough question to gauge sincerity.”
However, employers cannot discriminate in favor of organized religions and hence aren’t allowed to request letters from clergy or priests as proof. Employees’ rights to challenge accommodations provided by their employer are also protected by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission with whom they can file an official complaint.
Employers can maintain high proportions of vaccinated individuals and still make accommodations for those with sincere religious beliefs as demonstrated by the Conway Regional Health System.
But allowing religious exemptions on the basis of how convincing the justification is, Reiss explained, is problematic because it opens the door for people who’ve attended anti-vaccine workshops or “people who are just better liars” to game the system.
Building trust for vaccinations
According to Williams, vaccine hesitancy and the misuse of religious exemptions can be attributed to not only a gap in knowledge caused due to vaccine misinformation and disinformation, but also due to a lack of trust between individuals and public health experts.
“It comes down to something scaring them of the vaccine and they’re using the religious exemption as a cover,” Reiss said.
A common concern among vaccine opponents is the use of fetal cell lines in vaccine research and development, although not an actual ingredient in the vaccine.
When asked about alternatives to curb the spread of misinformation regarding vaccine side effects and composition and the misuse of religious exemptions, Williams suggested a collaboration with religious and faith leaders whom individuals have already built trust with.
“All major faith traditions support vaccinations. And they all support COVID vaccines as well,” Williams said. Reverends and bishops across the country have started collaborating with governments to build trust in the COVID-19 vaccine. It then often comes down to individual interpretations of scripture that lead to religion-based anti-vaccine beliefs.
According to Williams, facilitating an ongoing conversation between faith leaders, public health experts and community members would provide for a safe space for individuals to voice their concerns and get answers in a comfortable environment.
With its relatively recent onset, experts agree that it might be too early to talk about the rate of religious exemptions on the COVID-19 vaccine mandate rollout.
It’s important to highlight how problematic it is to misuse religious exemptions is, Reiss pointed out. “Because in a real sense, it’s abusing religion. It’s making a mockery of real belief and encouraging people to lie about religion, which no religion I think supports.”
Rich Fury/Getty Images for U.N. World Food Programme
The Weeknd has an important new job.
The chart-topping star has been named a Goodwill Ambassador for the United Nations World Food Programme, which provides food assistance to over 100 million people in more than 80 countries annually. In his new role, the singer, born Abel Tesfaye, will use his platform to advocate for ending global hunger.
“The U.N. World Food Programme is doing urgent and important work to change and save lives on a daily basis and I feel passionately about addressing world hunger and helping people in need,” said the Canadian artist in a statement. “Our partnership is an authentic extension of all our efforts and intentions to help those in need and bring an end to so much suffering.”
The Weeknd has already been a huge supporter of the WFP. Not long ago, he donated $1 million to the organization’s relief efforts in Ethiopia, his parents’ home country.
The WFP’s executive director said in a statement that the Weeknd’s “compassion and commitment to helping the world’s hungriest people is truly inspirational.”
Maybe this is why The Weeknd’s been spotted with Angelina Jolie lately. The actress is a former U.N. goodwill ambassador and current U.N. special envoy.
(WASHINGTON) — Hiring in the U.S. fell far below expectations last month, with employers adding just 194,000 jobs versus the expected 500,000, the Department of Labor said Friday.
The unemployment rate dipped slightly to 4.8%, the DOL added, but the latest hiring data comes after dismal job growth seen in August as well. Some 366,000 jobs were added in August, according to revised data released on Friday, and over a million jobs were added in July.
The more-contagious delta variant’s impact on the recovery is likely reflected in the disappointing figures, as the labor market still finds itself at the mercy of the virus. The unemployment rate still remains elevated compared to the pre-pandemic 3.5% seen in February 2020.
Notable job gains last month occurred in the hard-hit leisure and hospitality industry, which added some 74,000 jobs. Employment in leisure and hospitality is still down by some 1.6 million jobs, or 9.4%, compared to data before the COVID-19 shock.
Job growth in September was also seen in professional and business services (where hiring rose by some 60,000), retail trade (which saw an increase of 56,000 jobs), and transportation and warehousing (which gained 47,000 jobs).
Some labor economists say that despite the disappointing top line numbers in the latest employment report, there is still reason to have optimism about the recovery going forward.
“Despite the weak growth in September, today’s report is a glimpse in the rearview mirror,” Daniel Zhao, a senior economist at hiring site Glassdoor, said in a commentary shared with ABC News on Friday. “With the Delta variant wave receding, the worst of the Delta wave may be behind us.”
Disparities in the pandemic’s impact is still reflected in the latest data. The unemployment rate for white workers was 4.2% last month compared to 7.9% for Black workers and 6.3% for Hispanic workers.
Zhao also noted that the latest report from the Labor Market is the first to reflect the expiration of federal enhanced unemployment benefits, yet the unemployment rate fell only slightly to 4.8%.
“The decelerating jobs growth in September is likely to disappoint employers and policymakers that hoped the expiration of enhanced UI benefits would push Americans back into the labor force,” he said. “Ultimately, the September report will not be the final word in the debate over the impact of UI benefits.”
“As we head into the fall, the resumption of school reopenings and expiration of UI benefits may push some workers back into the labor force, but red-hot labor demand is likely to keep labor shortages top of mind for employers,” Zhao added.
The demand for labor is reflected in part in the rise in wages seen in recent months. In September, hourly earnings for all employees rose by 19 cents to some $30.85, and average hourly earnings for production and nonsupervisory employees rose by 14 cents to $26.15.
Meanwhile, approximately 13.2% of workers teleworked last month due to the pandemic, the DOL said, reflecting a trend that economists predict is likely here to stay even when the virus threat recedes.
On the newest episode of their Facebook Watch series Red Table Talk, Gloria and Emilio Estefan shared their heartbreaking stories about fleeing Cuba as young children when FidelCastro‘s coup threatened their lives.
“I left Cuba when I was literally two and a half years old. In May of 1960 I was brought to the U.S. because my father was a police officer for the Cuban government,” Gloria explained. “The night of the coup… My father came home and he told my mother, ‘We’re in trouble.'”
The singer said her father and grandfather, the latter an army commander, were arrested for their ties to the previous government. Both were jailed, but after they were released a few months after, they arranged to flee the country.
“They knew who Fidel Castro was, what was coming,” Estefan recalled.
Gloria said she still has the round-trip Pan American air ticket she was given to fly from Cuba to the U.S.
Emilio then opened up about his memories of leaving the only country he’s ever known, saying, “I was 11 years old when they came to my house looking for dollars because Castro decided to change the money.”
Emilio said he cried himself to sleep that night because of the terrifying search, even though Castro’s forces found nothing. His family was able to escape four years later, when he was “almost military age.”
“My mom’s family was from Spain,” he explained. “One of the hardest things for me is when my grandfather and uncles gave me a photograph and said, ‘You better remember me because you will never see me again.’… I never saw them again.”
The couple also shed light on Cuba’s humanitarian crisis, where they said protests over shortages of food and medicine are being met with military force.
The season two finale of Ted Lasso drops today on Apple TV+, coming not long after the show’s first season dominated the Emmys a few weeks ago.
Brett Goldstein won an Emmy for playing the team’s gruff but lovable team captain, Roy Kent. He’s also a writer on the show, and he tells ABC Audio that if season two felt a little different, or there were some surprising choices, that was all part of the plan
“What people really like is to be surprised. And that’s what people liked about the first [season] is they weren’t expecting it,” says Goldstein, who also appeared alongside Ted Lasso star Jason Sudeikis in the films We’re the Millers and Horrible Bosses 2.
“They weren’t expecting the way any of the characters[or] any of the stories. And so really, what you have to do is keep surprising people. You shouldn’t do what people are expecting because inevitably they’ll feel slightly disappointed because they’re like, oh, yeah, I guess that’s what I wanted to happen,” he continues. “Whereas what you were impressed with the first time was the surprise. And I think that’s the trick is to keep people on their toes.
Juno Temple plays Keeley Jones, who works as the team’s public relations person. She says she’s excited that people are loving the series.
“[I]t meant a lot to us when we were making it, you know? And so the fact that people not just are enjoying it, they say like, ‘it really meant a lot to me and it made me feel good,” says the 32-year-old actress, who wholeheartedly agrees, noting, “I fully concur that it made me feel good making it.”
Kim Kardashian will make her anticipated Saturday Night Live hosting debut this weekend, with Halsey starring as musical guest.
To amp up the audience ahead of Saturday’s show, the two ladies, along with Cecily Strong, provided a taste of what’s to come in a series of promos while also preparing the reality star for her big debut.
“So, Kim are you nervous about doing sketch comedy?,” Strong asks in one promo. Kardashian replies by asking if she should be: “Why? I don’t have to write sketches do I?” She also wonders if she has to “memorize lines.”
Both answers are, of course, no. Halsey and Strong explain that the comedy has been handled by the pros and that all there is to do is keep an eye on the cue cards.
“Everyone else won’t look as good as me, will they?” Kim finally asks, resulting in her companions emphatically dispelling any doubts that she will be outdone.
That leads to the reality star flicking a wrist and grinning, “This is so easy!”
Strong’s smile wavers as she hesitantly agrees: “Yeah… I guess it is.”
We will see how Kim handles the pressure of a live studio audience when SNL returns Saturday night at 11:30 p.m. ET on NBC.
