(ORLANDO, Fla.) — Officials shared new horrifying details in the case of 19-year-old Miya Marcano, revealing she was found bound at her hands and feet with duct tape.
A body found Oct. 2 in a wooded area near the Tymber Skan apartment complex in Orlando, Florida, was positively identified as Marcano on Tuesday, the chief medical examiner for Orange and Osceola Counties told ABC News.
Marcano, a student at Valencia College, had been missing for over a week when her body was found. She was last seen at the Arden Villas apartments’ complex in Orlando where she lived on Sept. 24.
Orange County Sheriff John Mina shared an update on the case Wednesday, saying: “Miya was found bound with black duct tape on her feet and hands, and her mouth was also covered with black duct tape.”
Marcano was found wearing jeans, bra and a robe. Mina said her purse was found nearby containing the shirt she was last seen wearing.
Mina reiterated that Armando Caballero, 27, “is the person responsible for her death” and officials are not looking for other suspects.
Caballero was a maintenance worker at Arden Villas who was found dead Sept. 27, three days after Marcano disappeared, from an apparent suicide, authorities said.
Authorities previously said Caballero had expressed a romantic interest in Marcano but she rebuffed his advances. Caballero possessed a key fob to access apartments and his was used at Marcano’s unit just before her disappearance, authorities said.
“There is no indication that there was sexual assault of any kind” and the cause and manner of death are yet to be determined by the medical examiner’s office, Mina said.
He said officials believe that Caballero was waiting for her inside her apartment on Sept. 24. He later killed her and hid her body at the area of the other Orlando apartment complex, based off information police have so far.
Officials are still trying to determine if she left her apartment alive and whether this was a planned attack.
Police announced the discovery of the body Saturday. Mina said police were led to the Tymber Skan apartment area based on Caballero’s cellphone records that showed he was there the day Marcano went missing around 8:20 p.m. to 8:40 p.m. Mina said that Caballero had once lived at the Tymber Skan apartments.
(ARAB, Ala.) — More than 10 inches of rain pounded northern Alabama over the last 24 hours, leaving some neighborhoods underwater.
A 4-year-old girl and an 18-year-old woman died as a result of the flooding in Marshall County, located in northern Alabama, the county coroner’s office said.
In Hoover, near Birmingham, crews have been searching through the night for two people who were in a car that was swept away in the floodwaters. The vehicle is believed to be submerged, officials said, adding that divers are at the scene.
In Pelham, fire officials said they responded to 282 calls for service. Officials conducted 82 rescues from homes and over a dozen rescues from cars.
Schools in Pelham are closed Thursday due to the excessive flooding. A flash flood watch remains in effect through Thursday night.
The flash flooding threat will expand east Thursday into Georgia, South Carolina and North Carolina, where more than 3 inches of rain is expected.
Flash flooding is also possible in Tennessee and Florida.
(LONDON) — As the debate on masking in classrooms rages in the U.S, England, as with its risky move to fully reopen society in July, is chartering its own course. Despite competing scientific advice, in September millions of mostly unvaccinated children returned to school — with new government guidance. Masks, in the English classroom, are no longer recommended.
Part of the calculation stems from the success of the U.K.’s vaccination program — and the belief that parents who could potentially catch the virus from their children are mostly protected from two doses, which has led to criticism from some scientists.
More than 45 million people in the U.K. have received two doses of coronavirus vaccines, which amounts to 82.5% of the population over 16, according to government data.
Children aged 12 to 17 are now eligible for a first shot of the vaccine, and all people above 18 are encouraged to get both shots.
Since July, the weekly average of daily coronavirus cases has not fallen below 20,000. However, that has not been as bad as early predictions — Health Secretary Sajid Javid previously warned that with a full reopening cases could reach 100,000 a day, heights which have not been reached. Deaths have risen too, but the success of the vaccination rollout has prevented a return to the worst days of the pandemic, with 8,627 deaths recorded between July 1 and Oct. 1.
Yet with cases remaining high, parents have expressed concern about their children returning to school.
According to the most recent government guidance,: “As COVID-19 becomes a virus that we learn to live with, there is now an imperative to reduce the disruption to children and young people’s education – particularly given that the direct clinical risks to children are extremely low.” Pupils who test positive are still expected to self-isolate, but face coverings are not advised, as with other public spaces, with the emphasis instead on improved ventilation and hygiene.
However the government has not ruled out a reversal on this guidance in the case of increased outbreaks in schools. Asked by Sky News on Thursday if some of the contingency plans in case of outbreaks would include a return to mask mandates, the Secretary of State for Education, Nadhim Zahawi, said he was considering a range of options including masking.
The risk of death in unvaccinated children, according to the U.K. government’s vaccine surveillance reports, remains very low. In one study published in July by researchers from University College London, and the Universities of Liverpool, Bristol and York during the first 12 months of the pandemic, 25 under 18-year-olds died from COVID in England, which amounts to a mortality risk of 2 in a million.
However, a study in the U.S. found that masking in classrooms significantly decreases the risk of COVID outbreaks.
Experts across the U.K. disagree even on the effectiveness of masks to protect kids from getting the virus. Professor Calum Semple, a member of the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies, recently told BBC Radio 4 that ventilation was in fact the best measure to prevent infection.
“If I had to invest in a single activity to improve the environment both for the children and the adults, I’d be looking at improving the ventilation… improving air exchanges,” he said, adding “that would be a much more effective way to reduce transmission in schools.”
Dr. Deepti Gurdasani, an epidemiologist and senior lecturer at Queen Mary University of London, told ABC News that too little is known about the long-term risks in children to allow high exposure to schools in COVID, and that the government’s laissez-faire approach has been “reckless.”
“These sort of policies are essentially fueling transmission in the name of reducing education disruption and in fact making that education disruption worse,” Gurdasani said.
Many schools have continued to encourage mask-wearing, she said, despite the central policy that they are now compulsory.
“The measures are so basic and simple,” Gurdasani said, adding, “it’s extremely important to keep schools open. But if you want to keep them open, you cannot be anti-mitigation and anti-vaccine because that is the only way to keep them open.”
Although 99.9% of U.K. state-funded schools are now open, recent reports suggest more students have missed school for COVID-related reasons in September.
Just over 2% of pupils — 186,000 students — across all state-funded schools were out of school on Sept. 30 because of suspected or confirmed COVID infections, according to government data.
“We have to make our own risk assessment as parents or grandparents and we have to decide if we are comfortable with our children going to school and if we’re not why are we not,” said David Heymann, a professor of infectious disease epidemiology at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine. “And if it’s because of the fear of getting infected ourselves, then we should get vaccinated. If it’s a fear about children not wanting to wear a mask, then we should find out whether children really do or don’t want to wear a mask.”
According to the information currently available, Heymann said, there appears to be greater risks in areas like nightclubs, which are now fully open in the U.K., but more data is needed on transmission in schools.
“The best way to be evaluating this is to look at children in school and their families, and if you could test students once a week and test their parents once a week and see if there is any increased transmission in them as compared to the general community,” he said. “Now there’s lots of ways of doing this, it’s just that we are so early on, it’s only 18 months and we don’t have all the data we need because of the lockdown of last year.”
Battery charges against Chris Brown stemming from an incident in the summer have reportedly been dropped.
The Los Angeles City Attorney decided to dismiss the charges due to insufficient evidence, according to TMZ. Police were called to his home in the California San Fernando Valley in June, where a woman claimed that Breezy assaulted her on the back of her head. An arrest was not made.
Police also arrived at his home in May to break up Brown’s 32nd birthday party, attended by over 400 guests, after receiving multiple calls about loud music and cars double-parked all over his neighborhood.
The Grammy winner is facing more legal problems, however. He and Drake were sued this week for copyright infringement for their RIAA-certified eight-times platinum song “No Guidance,” according to Billboard. The track, from Brown’s 2019 Indigo album, reached number five on the Billboard Hot 100 and was nominated for a Grammy for Best R&B Song.
Singer Braindon Cooper and producer Timothy Valentine claim that the song lifted elements from their 2016 track, “I Love Your Dress.”
The Offspring has premiered the video for “The Opioid Diaries,” a track off the band’s new album, Let the Bad Times Roll.
The clip provides a visual representation of the dangers of addiction, interspersed with statistics regarding overdosing and criticism of the pharmaceutical industry and what many say is its complicity in the U.S. opioid crisis.
“I wrote this Offspring song about addiction,” says frontman Dexter Holland. “While drug addiction is certainly not a new issue, the opioid epidemic in America is different. It’s different because it was created by, and driven by, Big Pharma — and I wrote this song to say that the pharmaceutical industry should be held accountable for its consequences.”
Walker Hayes has brought Kesha along for the ride in the new video for the remix of his viral hit, “Fancy Like.”
Kesha may be a pop star but she grew up in Nashville, where her mom was a songwriter whose works were recorded by Dolly Parton, among others. So when Kesha joins Walker to sing about “chillin’ in the deep South” and going to Waffle House, she knows what she’s talking about.
In the clip, Walker, Kesha and a bunch of friends pull up to the parking lot of a diner in LA, where they unload a truck and set up an impromptu barbecue, then have fun skateboarding and participating in makeshift games of limbo, horseshoes and mini-golf until the sun goes down.
Of course, they also do the famous “Fancy Like” TikTok dance and drink plenty of “Natty” — that’s Natural Light beer, in case you don’t know — and box wine.
The original version of “Fancy Like” is on Walker’s latest EP, Country Stuff.
The official video for “Move” — the single that reunites “Smooth” duo Carlos Santana with Matchbox Twenty frontman Rob Thomas — has arrived.
The black-and-white clip features Thomas singing alone under a stormy, lightning-filled sky, while Santana tosses off his signature guitar licks standing on a mirror in a black void.
In the second verse, American Authors singer Zac Barnett joins Santana on the mirror, which begins to crack. Later, Santana stands on top of a massive pile of speakers, playing the maracas.
“Move” is from Santana’s new album, Blessings and Miracles, which arrives October 15.
Regarding the song, Santana previously said it’s “about awakening your molecules. Ignite and activate yourself – you know, move. When Rob and I work together, we have a sound that’s splendiferous.”
Dave Grohl is flashing back to 1991 on his The Storyteller book tour.
During his stop in New York City earlier this week, the Foo Fighters frontman brought a drum kit to the stage and played along with the studio recording of Nirvana‘s “Smells Like Teen Spirit.”
You can watch fan-shot footage of the performance streaming now on YouTube.
Grohl released The Storyteller, his debut memoir, earlier this week. His tour is set to continue Thursday in Washington, D.C.
Meanwhile, Nirvana will be releasing a 30th anniversary reissue of Nevermind on November 12. The expanded collection includes the full live recordings of four Nirvana concerts from 1991 and 1992.
Hip hop legend N.O.R.E. and wife Neri are one of the couples featured on the new season of WE tv’s Marriage Boot Camp: Hip Hop Edition.
N.O.R.E. says that although he and his wife of 10 years prefer to be private, opening up about their marital issues on national television didn’t deter them from joining the reality-based series.
“I’m fan of the process,” N.O.R.E. tells ABC Audio. “I’m a fan of these programs, so it’s literally like me sitting at home and watching basketball and saying, ‘I could do that.'”
N.O.R.E’s wife concurs, noting that the show gave her the opportunity to “see [her] husband in a different form.”
“Most of the time, our problems are kept privately at home, but now since airing it out in front of other couples, in front of [Dr. Ish Major], in front of [Judge Lynn Toler] — I got to see him open up,” she says. “So for us to be open…in front of other couples, it was a different light that I saw him in. And… it was kind of good to see him in that light, because I’m always seeing him… privately.”
Meanwhile, for N.O.R.E., the real sell of the show came after he spoke with fellow rapper and The Lox member Styles P, who was featured on a previous season with his wife, Adjua.
“My friend Styles P… [was] telling me that it actually improved his marriage,” N.O.R.E. shares. “It was something I was interested in, besides being a fan of the show…and the therapy and all of that… So I figured, why not learn something? Why not have some fun and do a little business in the process? So it was a win-win.”
WE tv’s Marriage Boot Camp: Hip Hop Edition premieres tonight at 9 p.m. ET.
John Mellencamp, the Indiana-born singer/songwriter who came to fame in the early ’80s under the name John Cougar, was born 70 years ago today.
Known for his roots-rock songs often celebrating small-town life in America, Mellencamp enjoyed his major commercial breakthrough with his fifth studio album, 1982’s American Fool, released under the John Cougar moniker.
American Fool is John’s only album to date to top the Billboard 200 chart, spending nine weeks at #1. It features his classic songs “Jack and Diane” and “Hurts So Good,” which peaked at #1 and #2, respectively, on the Billboard Hot 100.
Starting with his next album, 1983’s Uh-Huh, he began releasing his records under the name John Cougar Mellencamp, and beginning in 1991, he dropped “Cougar” altogether.
Among the other hits Mellencamp has scored during his long career are “Crumblin’ Down,” “Pink Houses,” “Lonely Ol’ Night,” “Small Town,” “R.O.C.K. in the U.S.A. (A Salute to ’60s Rock),” “Cherry Bomb,” and a cover of Van Morrison‘s “Wild Night,” the latter a duet with Me’Shell Ndegéocello.
In 1985, Mellencamp, along with Willie Nelson and Neil Young, organized the first Farm Aid concert, and the charity event continues to raise money to support family farms each year.
Mellencamp was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2008, and the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2018.
John’s resumé also includes a collaboration with horror author Stephen King on the Southern Gothic stage musical Ghost Brothers of Darkland County, which premiered in 2012. In addition, Mellencamp is an accomplished painter whose artwork has been exhibited numerous times.
Mellencamp’s latest release is a duet with Bruce Springsteen titled “Wasted Days,” and the track also will appear on John’s next studio album, Strictly a One-Eyed Jack, due out in 2022.
