Beyoncé channels Pamela Anderson in 'Baywatch' for Halloween video asking viewers to vote

ENT

Beyoncé channels Pamela Anderson in 'Baywatch' for Halloween video asking viewers to vote

2024-11-06 02:08 Last Updated At：02:11

NEW YORK (AP) — In a new video posted early Election Day, Beyoncé channels Pamela Anderson in the television program “Baywatch” – red one-piece swimsuit and all – and asks viewers to vote.

In the two-and-a-half-minute clip, set to most of “Bodyguard,” a four-minute cut from her 2024 country album “Cowboy Carter,” Beyoncé cosplays as Anderson's character before concluding with a simple message, written in white text: “Happy Beylloween,” followed by “Vote.”

At a rally for Donald Trump in Pittsburgh on Monday night, the former president spoke dismissively about Beyoncé’s appearance at a Kamala Harris rally in Houston in October, drawing boos for the megastar from his supporters.

“Beyoncé would come in. Everyone’s expecting a couple of songs. There were no songs. There was no happiness,” Trump said.

She did not perform — unlike in 2016, when she performed at a presidential campaign rally for Hillary Clinton in Cleveland – but she endorsed Harris and gave a moving speech, initially joined onstage by her Destiny’s Child bandmate Kelly Rowland.

“I’m not here as a celebrity, I’m not here as a politician. I’m here as a mother,” Beyoncé said.

“A mother who cares deeply about the world my children and all of our children live in, a world where we have the freedom to control our bodies, a world where we’re not divided,” she said at the rally in Houston, her hometown.

“Imagine our daughters growing up seeing what’s possible with no ceilings, no limitations,” she continued. “We must vote, and we need you.”

The Harris campaign has taken on Beyonce’s track “Freedom,” a cut from her landmark 2016 album “Lemonade,” as its anthem.

Harris used the song in July during her first official public appearance as a presidential candidate at her campaign headquarters in Delaware. That same month, Beyoncé’s mother, Tina Knowles, publicly endorsed Harris for president.

Beyoncé gave permission to Harris to use the song, a campaign official who was granted anonymity to discuss private campaign operations confirmed to The Associated Press.

What to know about the unprecedented floods that killed more than 200 in Spain

2024-11-06 02:09 Last Updated At：02:10

BARCELONA, Spain (AP) — In a matter of minutes, flash floods caused by heavy downpours in eastern Spain swept away almost everything in their path. With no time to react, people were trapped in vehicles, homes and businesses. Many died and thousands of livelihoods were shattered.

A week later, authorities have recovered 218 bodies — with 213 of them in the eastern Valencia region. Police, firefighters and soldiers continued to search Tuesday for an unknown number of missing people.

In many of the over 70 impacted localities, mostly located in the southern outskirts of the city of Valencia, people still face shortages of basic goods. Water is back to running through pipes but authorities say it is only for cleaning and not fit for drinking. Lines form at impromptu emergency kitchens and food relief stands in streets still covered with mud and debris.

Spain’s Consortium for Insurance, a public-private entity that pays insurance claims for extreme risks like floods, said Tuesday that it had received 21,000 claims of home insurance, 12,000 for business properties, and 44,000 for motor vehicles for flood damage. Those numbers are expected to grow.

“We can estimate that we are facing the biggest payout for a weather-related event that Spain has ever suffered,” said Mirenchu del Valle Schaan, president of Spain’s Association of Insurance Companies.

Thousands of volunteers are helping soldiers and police reinforcements with the gargantuan task of cleaning up the mire and the countless wrecked cars.

The ground floors of thousands of homes have been ruined. Inside some of the vehicles that the water washed away or trapped in underground garages, there were still bodies waiting to be identified.

The frustration over the crisis management boiled over on Sunday when a crowd in hard-hit Paiporta hurled mud and other objects at Spain’s royals, Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez and regional officials when they made their first visit to the epicenter of the flood damage.

Another four people died in Castilla La Mancha and one in Andalusia.

Here are a few things to know about Spain’s deadliest storm in living memory:

The storms concentrated over the Magro and Turia river basins and, in the Poyo canal, produced walls of water that overflowed riverbanks, catching people unaware as they went on with their daily lives on Tuesday evening and early Wednesday.

In the blink of an eye, the muddy water covered roads and railways, and entered houses and businesses in towns and villages on the southern outskirts of Valencia. Drivers had to take shelter on car roofs, while residents took refuge on higher ground.

Spain’s national weather service said that in the hard-hit locality of Chiva, it rained more in eight hours than it had in the preceding 20 months, calling the deluge “extraordinary.” Other areas on the southern outskirts of Valencia city didn't get rain before they were wiped out by the wall of water that overflowed the drainage canals.

When authorities sent alerts to mobile phones warning of the seriousness of the flooding and asking people to stay at home, many were already on the road, working or covered in water in low-lying areas or underground garages, which became death traps.

Scientists trying to explain what happened see two likely connections to human-caused climate change. One is that warmer air holds and then dumps more rain. The other is possible changes in the jet stream — the river of air above land that moves weather systems across the globe — that spawn extreme weather.

Climate scientists and meteorologists said the immediate cause of the flooding is called a cut-off lower-pressure storm system that migrated from an unusually wavy and stalled jet stream. That system simply parked over the region and poured rain. This happens often enough that in Spain they call them DANAs, the Spanish acronym for the system, meteorologists said.

And then there is the unusually high temperature of the Mediterranean Sea. It had its warmest surface temperature on record in mid-August, at 28.47 degrees Celsius (83.25 degrees Fahrenheit), said Carola Koenig of the Centre for Flood Risk and Resilience at Brunel University of London.

The extreme weather event came after Spain battled with prolonged droughts in 2022 and 2023. Experts say that drought and flood cycles are increasing with climate change.

"Climate change kills, and now, unfortunately, we are seeing it firsthand,” Sánchez said Tuesday after announcing a 10.6-billion-euro relief package for 78 municipalities where at least one person had died.

Spain’s Mediterranean coast is used to autumn storms that can cause flooding, but this episode was the most powerful flash flood event in recent memory.

Older people in Paiporta, at the epicenter of the tragedy, say the floods were three times as bad as those in 1957, which caused at least 81 deaths. That episode led to the diversion of the Turia watercourse, which meant that a large part of the town was spared of these floods.

Valencia suffered two other major DANAs in the 1980s, one in 1982 with around 30 deaths, and another one five years later that broke rainfall records.

The flash floods also surpassed the flood that swept away a campsite along the Gallego river in Biescas, in the northeast, killing 87 people, in August 1996.

Management of the crisis is in the hands of the regional Valencian authorities, who asked the central government for help in mobilizing resources.

Some 15,000 soldiers, National Police officers, and Civil Guard gendarmeries have deployed to the area in the largest peacetime mobilization of military and security forces inside Spain. Military trucks, heavy road equipment, Chinook helicopters, and a navy transport vessel are aiding with the distribution of relief aid, the cleaning, and the search for bodies.

The national government said that as of Tuesday authorities had rescued over 36,000 people, restored electricity 147,000 homes, and distributed some 130,000 bottles of water and 21,000 food rations.

When many of those affected said they felt abandoned by the authorities, a wave of volunteers arrived to help. Carrying brooms, shovels, water and basic foods, hundreds of people walked several kilometers to deliver supplies and help clean up the worst-affected areas.

The Valencian regional government has been heavily criticized for not sending out flood warnings to cellphones until 8 p.m. on Tuesday, when the flooding had already started in some places and well after the national weather agency issued a red alert indicating heavy rains.

Medrano reported from Madrid.

Beyoncé channels Pamela Anderson in 'Baywatch' for Halloween video asking viewers to vote

ENT

Beyoncé channels Pamela Anderson in 'Baywatch' for Halloween video asking viewers to vote

Next Article

What to know about the unprecedented floods that killed more than 200 in Spain

The Latest: Trump and Harris cede stage to voters who’ll also decide control of House and Senate

Election Day voting unfolds generally smoothly with some scattered issues and delays

Stock market today: Wall Street rallies on Election Day as economy remains solid

Middle East latest: Dozens killed in Gaza as Israel says it targeted a weapons facility

Western officials suspect Russia was behind a plot to put incendiary packages on cargo planes

A turbulent campaign nears its finale as Americans choose between Harris and Trump

Ruby slippers from ‘The Wizard of Oz’ are for sale nearly 2 decades after they were stolen