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Tina Turner, the pioneering rock’n’roll star who became a pop behemoth in the 1980s, has died aged 83 after a long illness. An outpouring of tributes emerged online following the announcement.
In a statement on Wednesday night, her publicist, Bernard Doherty, said: “Tina Turner, the ‘Queen of Rock’n’Roll’ has died peacefully today at the age of 83 after a long illness in her home in Küsnacht near Zurich, Switzerland. With her, the world loses a music legend and a role model.”
Turner affirmed and amplified Black women’s formative stake in rock’n’roll, defining that era of music to the extent that Mick Jagger admitted to taking inspiration from her high-kicking, energetic live performances for his stage persona.
On Instagram, Jagger shared his grief over Turner’s death. “I’m so saddened by the passing of my wonderful friend Tina Turner,” he wrote. “She was truly an enormously talented performer and singer. She was inspiring, warm, funny and generous. She helped me so much when I was young and I will never forget her.”
The singer Diana Ross shared a picture of herself with Turner on Twitter, writing: “Shocked. Saddened. Sending condolences to Tina Turner’s family and loved ones.”
When did her career start? In the 1960s with her abusive husband Ike Turner. After two decades of working with him, she struck out alone and – after a few false starts – became one of the defining pop icons of the 1980s with the album Private Dancer. Her life was chronicled in three memoirs, a biopic, a jukebox musical, and in 2021, the acclaimed documentary film, Tina. Read her obituary here.
What was the cause of death? It’s unclear but she had suffered ill health in recent years, being diagnosed with intestinal cancer in 2016 and having a kidney transplant in 2017.
Florida governor Ron DeSantis announces 2024 presidential bid
The governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis, has officially declared his candidacy for the Republican nomination for president, rolling out the news with a campaign video and a glitch-riddled event on Twitter with the owner of the social media site, Elon Musk.
DeSantis filed paperwork yesterday with the Federal Election Commission, before his planned event with Musk and an interview with Fox News later yesterday evening.
As governor of Florida, DeSantis has pursued divisive, culture war-focused policies, including signing a six-week abortion ban and targeting the teaching of LGBTQ+ and race issues in public schools.
In his campaign video, DeSantis said he was running to “lead our great American comeback” and pitched Florida as a model for the nation. “We proved it can be done,” DeSantis said in a voiceover. “We chose facts over fear, education over indoctrination, law and order over rioting and disorder.”
How did the Twitter launch go? Not well. The event marked the first time a major candidate had announced their run for president on social media and nearly 600,000 listeners tuned in to Spaces, Twitter’s dedicated audio streaming feature, but the results were a disaster. As the live stream began, the audio line experienced feedback, outages and garbled audio. Many users reported their Twitter apps crashing or logging them out as they tried to join the stream.
What do we know about DeSantis? The Florida governor claims “blue-collar roots” and an Ivy League education but has pursued hard-right policies as he seeks to take on Donald Trump. Here are 10 things to know about Ron DeSantis.
US lawmakers blame each other for debt ceiling standoff: ‘They are not negotiating’
Lawmakers exchanged sharp criticism about who was to blame for the protracted standoff over the debt ceiling yesterday.
As the country nears its deadline to avoid a federal default, talks between Joe Biden and the House speaker, Kevin McCarthy, continued on Wednesday, as negotiators met again to hash out the details of a potential deal. But both parties simultaneously traded pointed remarks, underscoring that an agreement is not yet in reach.
Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal, the chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, pushed back against Republicans’ insistence on spending cuts. Jayapal said she spoke on Tuesday to White House officials who informed her that Republican negotiators had already rejected $3tn worth of deficit-reduction proposals, such as ending tax subsidies for large oil companies and closing the carried-interest loophole.
“It is not actually about debt or deficit,” Jayapal said at a press conference Wednesday afternoon. “It is about keeping the cash flowing to the wealthiest Americans and biggest corporations.”
What are the stumbling blocks? McCarthy said that he would not support a “clean” bill raising the debt ceiling without cutting government spending and accused Biden of acquiescing to the “extreme” wing of his party. Rejecting the White House’s efforts to reduce the federal deficit by raising more tax revenue, McCarthy insisted that any agreement must focus on the spending side. “We have to spend less than we spent last year,” McCarthy said. “It’s not a revenue problem. It’s a spending problem.”
What has the White House said? The White House voiced optimism that a deal could still be struck, saying the talks remained “productive”. “If it keeps going in good faith, then we can get to an agreement here that is bipartisan and that will get out of the House and get out of the Senate,” said Karine Jean-Pierre, the White House press secretary.
In other news …
An investigation into a massacre in a destroyed Palestinian village carried out by Israeli forces in the 1948 war surrounding Israel’s creation has identified three possible mass graves beneath a present-day beach resort. In recent years, a growing body of evidence for the Tantura massacre has generated significant controversy in Israel.
Tucker Carlson’s home studio at his house in Maine has been dismantled by Fox News workers. On Wednesday, a source with knowledge of the situation told the Guardian: “We removed the equipment (which we own) after building a custom studio at our expense – we did not tear down the studio.”
A state-sponsored Chinese hacking group has been spying on a wide range of US critical infrastructure organisations and similar activities could be occurring globally, western intelligence agencies and Microsoft have said. Targets include US military facilities on Guam that would be key in an Asia-Pacific conflict.
The Nobel peace prize laureate Ales Bialiatski has been transferred to a notoriously brutal prison in Belarus and has not been heard from in a month, his wife has said. Natalia Pinchuk said that Bialiatski, who is serving a 10-year sentence, has been kept in an information blackout since his transfer.
Stat of the day: One in five deaths among young Californians tied to fentanyl
Overdoses involving fentanyl were behind one in five deaths of people aged 15 to 24 in California, the latest indicator of an emergency that shows no signs of slowing. Drug overdoses now kill two to three times as many people in the state as car accidents, according to data compiled by the consulting group California Health Policy Strategies. Since 2017, deaths related to the synthetic opioid, which is 50 times stronger than heroin, have increased 1,027%. The crisis, which has visibly unfolded on city streets from San Francisco to Los Angeles, has sent officials scrambling for solutions. This year California’s governor, Gavin Newsom, proposed spending an additional $172m for a project distributing Naloxone, an overdose medication. But experts warn that more is needed and that the effects of the crisis will probably continue for years to come.
Don’t miss this: ‘This is an epidemic’– inside the Thai clinic taking on westerners’ gaming addictions
Muay Thai and meditation, mindfulness and massage: the schedule at the Cabin addiction treatment centre could easily be mistaken for that of a wellness retreat or luxury hotel. The Cabin previously catered to people with substance and alcohol addictions. But in 2016 it launched a specialised programme for gaming addicts. In 2022, the World Health Organization added “internet gaming disorder” to its International Classification of Diseases, defining the addiction, which affects between 2% and 3% of users, as a pattern of gaming behaviour that “takes precedence over other interests and daily activities”. In some cases, gamers can forget to eat or sleep, losing jobs and relationships in the process. In one incident in South Korea, a newborn starved to death while her parents gamed, and last year a 12-year-old Australian boy killed himself amid a gaming addiction.
Climate check: Invasion of Ukraine ‘has fuelled funding boom for clean energy’
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has helped ignite a boom in clean energy investment which will significantly outpace spending on fossil fuels, according to the International Energy Agency. A report from the IEA has found that clean energy investment is on track to reach $1.7tn (£1.4tn) this year as investors turn to renewables, electric vehicles, nuclear power, grids, storage and other low-carbon technologies. At the same time investment in coal, gas and oil will rise to just over $1tn, the IEA said. The Paris-based agency found that clean energy investments have been boosted by many factors including periods of strong economic growth and volatile fossil fuel prices, as well as heightened concerns about energy security after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Last Thing: What lies beneath – Florida man finds iguana lurking in his toilet bowl
Hearing “splashing” coming from his toilet, a 58-year-old Florida man looked into the bowl and found an iguana. “I look down, and I see this frightened-looking reptile looking back at me,” John Riddle, of Hollywood, told the Orlando Sentinel. An attempt to use a pool net to remove the lurking lavatorial lizard came to no good, so Riddle “worked up enough nerve to try to grab him” with his bare hands. The iguana swam “all the way into the toilet, into the pipe. I couldn’t see any of him,” Riddle said. “I’m used to [iguanas],” Riddle said, “but I’m just not used to them in my toilet bowl.” Iguanas in toilets may sound like an urban myth on a par with alligators in the sewers of New York City but in Florida they have become a very real problem.
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