A suspected drone attack claimed by Yemen's Houthi rebels targeted a key oil facility in Abu Dhabi on Monday and killed three people The Iran-aligned Houthis claimed responsibility for the attack shortly after the Gulf state reported the incidents They did not however confirm the type or location of the attacks.  state news agency WAM reported that a fire broke out in the industrial Musaffah area near storage facilities of the state-owned Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC), which led to three fuel tanker trucks exploding a minor fire was also reported at a new construction site at ​​Abu Dhabi International Airport It said no significant damages resulted from the two incidents.  The military spokesman of the Iran-aligned Houthis was quoted by the al-Masirah news channel as saying that the group had launched a military operation in "the heart of the UAE" and would announce details in the coming hours The Saudi-led coalition fighting against the Houthis in Yemen later announced on Monday that it destroyed three drones launched in the direction of southern Saudi Arabia The UAE was part of the Saudi-led coalition that intervened in Yemen in 2015 to reinstate the internationally recognised government of Abd Rabbuh Mansour Hadi who was ousted by the Houthis in late 2014.  The Gulf country, however, announced that it has reduced its military involvement in Yemen since 2019, but analysts have pointed out it retains significant influence through backing Yemeni fighters Since 25 December, the fighting has intensified as the Saudi-led coalition launched a "large-scale" attack on Yemen's Sanaa after missiles fired by the Houthis killed two people in the kingdom The attack killed three people, and Houthi spokesperson Yahya Saree warned Saudi Arabia of a "painful" response if the coalition did not stop its "aggression" Yemen's pro-government forces have declared one of their most significant victories in the seven-year war after they drove the Houthis out of the oil-rich southeastern province of Shabwah and advanced into Houthi-held areas of Marib to the north The advance has been largely thanks to the intervention of the Giants Brigades The Houthis have frequently claimed drone and missile attacks on neighbouring Saudi Arabia during the war but they claimed only a few attacks on the UAE Two weeks ago, the Houthis said they seized a UAE-flagged ship claiming it was carrying "weapons for extremists" The 11 crew members of the ship remain hostages Abu Dhabi denounced the incident as "a dangerous escalation".  'The UAE is a tool in the hands of the US and Israel We will confront it either inside Yemen or by targeting its lands' The Yemeni rebels also turned down a UN Security Council demand to release the ship told MEE that "Ansar Allah [the Houthis] are targeting the UAE this time because it returned to the frontline of the Yemen conflict again to fight us while we were about to take over Marib" He mentioned that the recent developments in Marib and the advances by the UAE-backed Giants forces were the reasons for the latest Houthi attack on the Gulf country The Houthis want to send a message to the UAE that they can target their territories "We have weapons that can reach the Emirates If they continue to support the US in fighting us we promise them attacks like those we launch against Saudi Arabia." "The UAE is a tool in the hands of the US and Israel We will confront it either inside Yemen or by targeting its lands." International Crisis Group's senior analyst for Yemen told MEE: "The UAE claims it is not involved in frontline combat anymore but the perception among many Yemenis - and obviously the Houthis - is that the forces that have taken territory from the Houthis are UAE-aligned and overseen even if the Saudis are technically calling the shots "The Houthi stance seems to be that until these attacks against them stop Houthi spokesperson Mohammed Abdulsalam tweeted later on Monday saying that "the UAE had claimed that it had distanced itself from Yemen stating that Abu Dhabi has two choices: either stop intervening in Yemen or face consequences from the Houthis a political analyst focusing on the Middle East with an emphasis on Yemen and the Gulf told MEE that the "attack comes in the wake of significant battlefield gains by what are often described as UAE-backed forces "While the Houthis have claimed attacks on UAE targets previously There is certainly a potential for more escalation - there have already been a series of airstrikes in Sanaa in seeming response to the attack." 'While the Houthis have claimed attacks on UAE targets previously There is certainly a potential for more escalation' a senior Arabian Peninsula analyst at the Navanti Group told MEE that Abu Dhabi would likely utilise its United Nations Security Council seat for the 2022-2023 term to push for more sanctions against the Houthi leadership He claimed the UAE was also lobbying Washington to re-designate Ansar Allah as a "foreign terrorist organisation" US President Joe Biden ended offensive support for the Saudi-led coalition's operations in Yemen and also reversed the Trump designation's listing of the group as a terror organisation "I suspect the UAE will continue to provide more logistical support to the Guardians of the Republic and Southern Transitional Council (STC) forces The idea for peace and stability in Yemen would be far-fetched at this stage," Albasha said some Yemenis have doubted that the Houthis are capable of launching drones against the UAE "We know that the escalation in Shabwah and Marib against the Houthis was after getting the green light from the UAE and we know that the Houthis want to take revenge," Mohammed Ali "However I can’t believe that the Houthis have weapons that can target the UAE," he added it means they are a strong force now that can genuinely threaten neighbouring countries." He said he believed the drones may have been sent from Iran "but the Houthis were happy to claim it to show they have modern weapons" "The coming months will show the world if it was the Houthis or not This article is available in French on Middle East Eye French edition. Copyright © 2014 - 2025. Middle East Eye Only England and Wales jurisdiction apply in all legal matters Middle East Eye          ISSN 2634-2456                      The jet-black Friesian stallion stood sixteen hands at the shoulders about a half foot taller than the petite woman who had just climbed onto his back and his mane was so robust it had to be wrangled to the side.  Sitting tall in the saddle was 64-year-old country music legend Tanya Tucker glowing in a cabernet satin shirt with mother-of-pearl buttons and enough rhinestone sparkle to cause a plane crash Her brilliant blond hair and even brighter blue contact lenses reflected the star power she’s exhibited since the age of thirteen and publicist were glued to the duo on this recent June evening It would be the first time in history that someone rode a horse onto the stage of the Grand Ole Opry.  Lauwe (rhymes with “how”) was a new visitor to the Nashville cultural institution a wide-eyed eight-year-old with lofty dreams and phenomenal confidence “Delta Dawn,” rocketed her to superstardom She’s since lost count of her Opry performances.  Tucker waits in one of the venue’s many dressing rooms before heading to the stage But Lauwe was simply too magnificent to fit through the backstage hallway so Tucker and her steed clopped their way through the loading dock and up to a door at stage right They were flanked by Tucker’s management team who were on-site to keep the currently gentle giant from spooking in such an unfamiliar environment The conversation in the room was muted; no one wanted to admit there might be a good reason that a horse had never been brought onstage at the Opry before.  Tanya Tucker would finally be inducted into its Hall of Fame But where Willie and Waylon were lauded for their misbehavior Record executives and concert promoters deemed her past her prime before she turned twenty years old There were attempts to ban her records as early as 1974 The Hall of Fame induction was a sign that the Nashville establishment had finally surrendered and admitted that yes Tucker has been a legend all along. Still after a career of following her own instincts in the face of industry disapproval it’s unclear whether she needs the recognition Tucker might choose to welcome Nashville’s belated embrace—or crush it beneath Lauwe’s sturdy hooves Even in her mid-sixties she has some outlaw moves in her she hit every note of “Kindness,” the new album’s first single.  nearly matching her ardor with every line.  more than a month passed before I was able to get some sit-down time with Tucker our allotted ninety minutes turned into a four-hour conversation about everything from her favorite microphone to her dentist to the anguish of losing a loved one—be it a parent When Tucker’s not touring she parks it on her ranch so her partner an accomplished country musician in his own right can fix what needs fixing before they head back out on the road.  even though the last time they’d seen each other “Tanya was trying to rip the side mirror off my Yukon!”) They live in a stone house originally built by his parents a surprisingly modest abode for a woman who has been rich and famous for half a century and an extra fridge on the screened porch for storing cold drinks Above the fireplace sits a portrait of the two of them on horseback with Dillingham painted as a knight in shining armor and Tucker as the fair maiden he’s just rescued.  I don’t remember what I was talking about,” Tucker said an hour or so into our conversation before deciding that we’d been talking about the singer-songwriter David Allan Coe I was just delighted to be floating down Tanya Tucker’s stream of consciousness One second we were discussing a jingle she’d written for the tequila company Cosa Salvaje Then she was complaining about her manager hiring Cindy Crawford’s makeup artist “My dog could do Cindy Crawford’s makeup I need somebody that does Joan Rivers.”  Our conversation broke whenever Tucker mentioned a song in her vault then walked over to the Bluetooth speaker her friend Hank had bought her She would spend a few minutes trying to remember how to connect her phone and find the file in her Dropbox and then the wood-paneled tour bus would fill with her voice’s trademark sonorous rasp. Tucker rattled off names faster than I could write them down and collaborators—people like Carlile She was texting with Shania Twain while I was there (it was very hard not to scream when I learned this) But Tucker seemed far more starstruck by names most people would have to look up: Charlie McCoy and other undersung studio musicians and band leaders she has revered since she was a girl.  she doesn’t have a single enemy,” Carlile says of Tucker “She is full of love.” The two grew close four years ago while working on While I’m Livin’ Carlile coproduced the album with Jennings and cowrote the Grammy-winning lead single “Bring My Flowers Now,” with Tucker and two other writers Harnessing the irreverent witticisms that spew forth from Tucker’s mouth and turning them into a song with verses and choruses and a sense of purpose was a formidable task “She’s a tough woman,” says Carlile “There’s a lot of proving that needs to be done before you can gain the trust of an artist like that.” It wasn’t easy for Jennings and Carlile to get Tucker back into the studio she hadn’t released an album of original songs since 2002 and her career had been off-kilter since her father’s death Boe Tucker spent years as his daughter’s manager and had been her biggest advocate since she’d started performing professionally Her career was already in rough shape by the time he died She was feuding with record companies and was starring in a TLC reality show It didn’t get better after he was gone a chemical peel that left her with second- and third-degree burns three months,” she once told the television host Larry King “I went to the bottom of the hill one day to come pick me up because I couldn’t physically walk up the hill.” Tucker said adjusting to life without her father “has been the worst thing of all.” She started singing a slightly altered line from “Waltz Across a Moment,” a song off Sweet Western Sound: “I could still hear him when the night wind comes / Daddy which way do I go?” She rarely had to second-guess herself when he was around he bought it for her and made sure it was a good deal He let her focus on being a creative force “It wasn’t Daddy’s fault that I never looked at the numbers,” Tucker told me because now I don’t know how to get a f—ing insurance policy.”   When Jennings and Carlile approached her in 2018 about recording an album Tucker had been trudging along for more than a decade It wasn’t like she’d disappeared but most of her shows were at casinos and county fairs and she hadn’t been able to persuade a label to release an album she’d self-recorded because I like that title—‘Tanya Tucker: Messes,’ ” she told me sweeping her hand in front of her as if to visualize it on a marquee.) Her career had invited so much scrutiny in her early years that she wasn’t sure she wanted to put herself back in the spotlight She also wasn’t sure she wanted to record an album of gentle Americana which is what Carlile and Jennings were pushing on her—Tucker was best known for a harder-edged sort of country music that she wanted to record an album of songs that had been picked by Jennings and by Carlile “We kept sending Tanya songs and she kept trying to back out of it—whether it was insecurity or just not understanding what was possible for her Getting her to do the record was a really long grassroots process.” When While I’m Livin’ was done Tucker had not only an album of new material but also a trusted advocate in Carlile And not just any advocate—Carlile was an avatar of a new more inclusive country scene than the one Tucker had come up in When Carlile started shopping the album around Tanya this and Tanya that,’ ” she recalls ‘But nobody’s heard from Tanya in twenty years What are you talking about?’ There was this unforgiveness and rigidity The male outlaws that did the same drugs and had the same lifestyle and said these same words are revered beyond belief To get Tanya a second chance was like a miracle She should have never been outside.” The tale of the obedient child and the overbearing stage parent is a familiar one but there are two things to keep in mind when looking at Tanya Tucker’s early career the profoundly stubborn Tanya Tucker rarely does anything she doesn’t want to do Boe Tucker raised his daughter to believe she could do anything he taught her how to drive a stick shift when she was four told him she could be a country music star he did something else not many parents would: he took her seriously “He quit a job!” Tucker recalls of her dad’s commitment to supporting her dream “He was the first one that believed in me and roughneck had grown up extremely poor in Depression-era Oklahoma As an adult he moved his family of five from the southern Panhandle town of Seminole—where Tanya and beginning in the late sixties he applied that hustle to getting his daughter on as many stages as he could.  the Tuckers frequented the local Veterans of Foreign Wars hall where Tanya sang one of Hank Williams’s most famous songs so often that everyone called her “Little Miss Cheatin’ Heart.” Boe Tucker would drive the whole family to wherever their favorite artists were playing That’s how she ended up performing with the likes of Ernest Tubb and Mel Tillis before she’d turned ten.  Billy Sherrill, a Grammy-winning songwriter and producer, had made Tammy Wynette a superstar and revived George Jones’s career but he still let a thirteen-year-old girl boss him around a little Nearly every Tanya fan is familiar with the story of how she found “Delta Dawn.” It was 1972 and she had just signed with Sherrill and Columbia Records along with several suits from the record company trying to settle on something that could work as her debut single.  One of the men started playing a copy of a newly written song called “The Happiest Girl in the Whole U.S.A.,” a joyful tune sung from the perspective of a young woman newly in love and the teenager told a room full of adult men who held her family’s financial security in the palms of their hands and that it’d make a real nice record—for somebody else Sherrill had heard Bette Midler cover the song on The Tonight Show the night before Tucker had little to no understanding of the song’s subject but as soon as she heard the line “She’s forty-one and her daddy still calls her ‘baby,’ ” she was sure the song was hers.   She still can’t quite explain where this certainty came from Sometimes she chalks it up to youthful naiveté “You know how you’re a kid and you just spit it out “Delta Dawn” came out in April 1972 and immediately bore out Tucker’s and her father’s confidence It went to number six on the Billboard country charts once barely known beyond the patrons of the VFW in Wilcox the Academy of Country Music had crowned her Most Promising Female Vocalist The following year Tucker had back-to-back number one hits with “What’s Your Mama’s Name Child” and “Blood Red and Goin’ Down,” two songs that seemed to acknowledge that the person singing them was a child one of the songs is about a man who spends his life trying to track down his daughter and dies without ever learning her true identity and the other is about a little girl who watches her daddy murder her cheatin’ mother under a honky-tonk’s neon lights With her gruff alto and her ability to convincingly put across lyrics whose meaning she couldn’t fully comprehend Tucker proved herself a master of the sort of depressing story ballad—think Marty Robbins’s “El Paso” or Bobbie Gentry’s “Ode to Billie Joe”—that had been a country music staple since the genre’s inception at around the time Tucker started looking more like a woman and less like a girl Shortly after her fifteenth birthday she released “Would You Lay With Me (In a Field of Stone),” a song that David Allan Coe had originally written for his brother’s wedding vows She still insists the song is a beautiful tribute to love and commitment and promoters forbade Tucker to sing it at their venues helped make it her third number one single “Her face was a study in wide-eyed childish innocence and her knee drops and pelvic thrusts raised the temperature several degrees around the stage,” wrote music journalist Chet Flippo The story introduces Tucker via the eyes of a 39-year-old man in the audience who is wearing a sweat-drenched T-shirt that doesn’t even cover his beer belly and is “breathing heavily and swaying in time” while “staring straight into the most beautiful navel in show business.” Tucker’s midriff may have tormented Red but she had no reservations about leaning into her newfound sexuality and  rebelliousness “She was a wild-ass bitch with a chain saw in her throat,” says Gleason now “She was fearless to the point of almost being reckless so you couldn’t take your eyes off her.” In 1978 Tucker released her first “rock” album but country fans accused Tucker of leaving Nashville in the lurch.  mocking the narrative that began to take shape during this time Her run of hits slowed down in the early eighties and the world got real upset when she started dating Glen Campbell a man 22 years her senior with a world-class cocaine habit “There was no doubt that he loved me who still looks back fondly on the relationship “I just wish I had been a little more mature.” Tucker moved to Los Angeles and her career stalled; she released three albums in the first half of the eighties “Can I See You Tonight,” cracked the top five He once persuaded her to fly to Nashville to visit her mother he was out in California moving her out of the party house she was living in and near-constant partying were tabloid fodder and countless other young starlets who had the audacity to be unkempt many journalists were just waiting for her to crash and burn.  they kept me out there,” she told me “I wasn’t making records for several years in the eighties but I was on the cover of the [National] Enquirer about every other week.” That bad reputation it was hard to persuade the boys’ club to give her another chance even Sherrill passed.) But she still had name recognition (thank you kicking off a decade-long string of successes for Tucker She earned 23 top-ten country singles and four number ones during this time Tucker had tried to bring Nashville out of the “horse-and-buggy era”—to infuse it with the grit of the rock world and the grandiosity of pop music—to mixed results A decade later she finally found a way to make it happen; songs like “Down to My Last Tear Drop,” “Girls Like Me,” and “Highway Robbery,” bolstered by guitar licks showed that she had finally lived up to a nickname that had been following her around since the mid-1970s: “female Elvis.” Though the Nashville establishment would embrace other artists who later mated country, rock, and pop, such as Garth Brooks and Shania Twain, it wasn’t impressed with Tucker. In the Country Music Foundation’s 1998 Encyclopedia of Country Music the Tanya Tucker entry devotes only one of eight paragraphs to this era of her career and it doesn’t say much about the music “The tabloid press began to take a full-time interest in Tucker again She gave them plenty to work with,” it reads before mentioning that she checked into the Betty Ford Center to deal with her substance abuse issues and that she gave birth to her daughter The passage about her being named the Country Music Association’s Female Vocalist of the Year in 1991 merely notes that she found out about the honor on the night she gave birth to her second child while “still unmarried.” There’s no discussion of What Do I Do With Me a commercial flop that so soured relations between Tucker and Capitol Records that she asked to be released from her contract.  In 2002 she released Tanya on her own label and it sold even fewer copies than Complicated By the mid-aughts the Nashville establishment was ready to write her off again and it was hard enough for Tucker to get out of bed Fans always wanted to hear Tanya Tucker sing the hits and she had more hits than she could fit into a single show There was “Delta Dawn,” “Two Sparrows in a Hurricane,” “Here’s Some Love,” “Texas (When I Die),” and one that seems like a summary of Tucker’s whole life: “Some Kind of Trouble.”  I’ve been in this business forever but I don’t know a damn person,” Tucker told me trying to explain why it took so long for the Country Music Association to induct her into the Hall of Fame but I don’t know a lot of the new ones I just feel like the longer I’m in this business the less I know about it.” She’s never had much use for the politicking side of showbiz “That’s why everybody says I’m not in there already.” “Tanya has come in and out of Nashville for quite some time and she’s not worried about what’s happening on Music Row—she’s worried about where she’s going to find the next great song Everybody just finally looked around and thought Tanya’s not in the Hall of Fame.’ ”  Not that the official imprimatur means all that much “Tanya’s a once-in-a-century artist,” says Carlile with no hint that she’s engaging in hyperbole She’s talking about Tucker’s singing and stage presence but she’s also talking about what Tucker means to her listeners Her rebelliousness made her a queer icon decades before Maren Morris and Kacey Musgraves began showing up at the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) awards She’s beloved by a slew of female country artists—such as Miranda Lambert and Gretchen Wilson—who are proud graduates of the Tanya Tucker School of Not Giving a F— “She sounded like a brawler,” Carlile explains As a queer kid growing up in rural Washington State Carlile loved country music but was drawn to Tucker in particular “Tanya’s voice was standing out from all the others and there was something about that that suited how I understood myself in that time.”  Carlile isn’t alone. “I grew up as a queer kid in the Deep South, and you would grab on to any kind of misfit or rule breaker that you could find,” says Kathlyn Horan, the director of the 2022 documentary The Return of Tanya Tucker: Featuring Brandi Carlile “Because of who she is and how she lived her life—being a hundred percent herself and unapologetic—Tanya represented that to the gay community.”  “Our favorite LGBTQ+ icons are a dichotomy of varying qualities—strength “Tanya Tucker is all of those things.” (He also notes that “I own every record she’s ever put out a study showed that women represented just 11 percent of the songs heard on country radio.  “There’s a grit to it and an audacity to it It’s like ‘camel toe’ country,” says Carlile using an off-color slang term to describe Tucker’s belligerently feminine style and influence referring to Nashville’s newest celebrated ingenue “There’s no way they’re not influenced by Tanya even if they’re influenced by somebody who’s been influenced by Tanya.” At that performance she had turned her exhaustion into a bit joking with the audience that whoever sets her schedule must have it in for her.  when we were due to take photographs for the cover of this magazine Tucker’s arm hurt so badly that she lay down in the tour bus am I gonna have to weather the old “She’s out there not doing her shit” story again?’ ” (A few weeks later after she had surgery to alleviate the pain rambling poem about horseback riding into the sunset with Willie Nelson and Kris Kristofferson “OH MY GOODNESS what kind of pain meds are they giving me here!!!”) She’s aware of the double standard her career exemplifies—“If I acted like Hank Williams Jr. I’d be tarred and feathered!”—but she mostly thinks about the work in front of her Creating music is as joyous for her as it was when she was a teen It’s the perfect combination of the two things she loves the most—singing with passion and being around the people she loves and who love her right back Which may be one reason she never bothered to lobby for a Hall of Fame slot—the people whose approval means the most to her are already at her side Tucker surrounds herself with family or with people who feel like family Her daughter Presley sings backup at every show her daughter Layla opened both nights that Tucker performed at Nashville’s Ryman Auditorium last June Most of her touring band has been with her for years how to pick up and play when she starts breaking into a random old gospel song that just popped into her mind She has a habit of holding on to those she bonds with who helps organize Tucker’s life in Briggs when Tucker hired her from a home health-care service to help her recover from an ankle injury Johnson is still a big presence in Tucker’s life even though Tucker’s ankle has long since healed enough that she can shake and shimmy with abandon onstage.  At one point, Tucker insisted that I watch the video she had just shot for “When the Rodeo Is Over,” the second single off Sweet Western Sound.  The song was chosen by Shooter Jennings who had no idea that it was cowritten by Dillingham twenty years ago she talked about it at all five concerts I attended this summer.) Tucker hired longtime friend Joanne Gardner to direct forty miles west of Kerrville—one of Tucker’s favorite places in all of Texas—with a cast full of retired rodeo riders that Tucker has known over the decades “That’s my ex!” she told me proudly champion saddle rider Bobby “Hooter” Brown She then spent a long time trying to find the video she shot last year with Kristofferson and Dennis Quaid going into detail about how she found the song and how she persuaded Kristofferson to do it and how she got John Carter Cash (June and Johnny’s boy) to direct.  She played me songs she’d recorded for Messes including one with the line “It ain’t hard for a girl like me to be one of the boys.” Tucker’s voice had a recognizable fervor—the “chain saw” that Holly Gleason mentioned—something that was in short supply on While I’m Livin’ but is more prominent on Sweet Western Sound It’s as if the recent recognition from Nashville had given her the leeway to foreground the fearlessness that made her stand out in the first place Maybe she doesn’t need the approval of the Country Music Hall of Fame but if the organization is going to offer it up Tucker was more concerned with how to get Lauwe involved in her Hall of Fame induction which will take place at the Country Music Hall of Fame’s CMA Theater on October 22 “He can’t go into the building because he’s too big,” she says “But I want to ride him up to the door This article originally appeared in the October 2023 issue of Texas Monthly with the headline “The Outlaw.” Subscribe today Hair: Rod Landers; Makeup: Kati Swegel; Styling: Cristina Facundo; Wardrobe provided by Double D Ranch Donald Trump revisited his recent comments about NATO as he left a Manhattan courtroom Thursday after a judge decided the former president’s hush-money trial will go ahead beginning March 25th Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump speaks at a campaign rally at Charleston Area Convention Center in North Charleston Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump arrives to speak at a campaign rally at Charleston Area Convention Center in North Charleston A supporters holds up a sign as Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump speaks at a campaign rally at Charleston Area Convention Center in North Charleston walks onto stage before Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump at a campaign rally at Charleston Area Convention Center in North Charleston ambassador and his last major rival in the GOP presidential race has been condemning Trump’s remarks for days about her husband Michael Haley who is deployed in Africa with the National Guard Trump on Wednesday insulted Nikki Haley and highlighted his wide lead in polls over her but he focused more of his attention on President Joe Biden whom he’s expected to face in the 2024 general election Trump has opposed the aid and said Wednesday that the U.S “Why should you just hand it over to them?” he said A spokesperson for Biden’s reelection campaign said Wednesday “Donald Trump just gave Vladimir Putin the best possible Valentine’s Day present: his pinky-promise to give Putin the green light to mow down our allies in Europe if he’s elected president.” “I’m not a Nikki fan and I’m not a Pelosi fan and when I purposely interposed names they said Though Haley has had more campaign appearances lately than Trump she did not appear at any events Wednesday failed New Hampshire Senate candidate and retired brigadier general held a news conference earlier Wednesday aimed at Trump’s criticism of Michael Haley has been playing its latest ad on a mobile billboard in the area of Trump’s Wednesday night rally a spot calling Trump “sick or clueless” for criticizing the military Trump’s negativity toward Haley has ramped up as the season’s votes have gotten underway and the campaign has moved to her home state Trump essentially ruled Haley out as a potential running mate He said Wednesday night that his criticism of her means that “she will never be running for vice president,” a comment that was met with loud cheers from the audience “You’re a much better candidate for me than you were for yourself,” Trump told Scott While serving as South Carolina’s governor has been introducing Haley at her events and several times referred to Scott as “Sen Judas,” a reference to the Biblical story of the disciple who betrayed Jesus Christ MARTIN COUNTY — A Sheriff's Office investigation into men having sex in Martin County parks was charged with gross lewd and lascivious behavior Tuesday after deputies identified him as a man caught on video performing sex acts at Joe's River Park in the 3500 block of Northeast Ocean Boulevard which was captured during the larger investigation July 5 at about 5:30 p.m. showed Lauwe and another man previously identified as Steven Couzens meeting at the park The two committed a sex act on a bench on the boardwalk while another citizen fished nearby 6 when he was stopped on the Jensen Beach Causeway during a traffic stop A deputy recognized Lauwe's vehicle and matched his driver's licence photo to the surveillance video put in place by the Sheriff's Office Couzens was identified as an assistant public defender. The investigation was launched after Martin County residents complained about lewd sexual activity at the park Of the 46 men arrested as part of the investigation, 26 of the men identified in the videos received trespass warnings and are banned from all Martin County parks according to a Sheriff's Office Facebook post.  Deputies are still deciding whether or not to issue a warning to Lauwe Lauwe bonded out of the Martin County Jail on Tuesday This website is using a security service to protect itself from online attacks The action you just performed triggered the security solution There are several actions that could trigger this block including submitting a certain word or phrase You can email the site owner to let them know you were blocked Please include what you were doing when this page came up and the Cloudflare Ray ID found at the bottom of this page Burlington: 905-632-3333     Grimsby: 905-945-2755     Stoney Creek: 905-664-4222 info@smithsfh.com The Family Interactive feature enhances An Amazing Life Authorized family members can securely access their loved one's memorial website settings at any time Please enter the name and email details so that we can send your friend a link to the online tribute No names or addresses will be collected by using this service Please enter your question or comment below: A receipt has been emailed to the address provided Agreement with Policy and Continued Use of Site We encourage you to share your most beloved memories of Leona here so that the family and other loved ones can always see it and can even comment on those shared by others it will also remain on this memorial website in perpetuity PLEASE NOTE: The reproduction of any copyrighted images is forbidden without express written permission from the copyright holder any image in violation of any copyright laws you will receive two daily updates containing all new stories one week prior to the anniversary of death The email will only serve as a reminder should you choose to connect with the family at what will no doubt be a difficult time Please select your relationship to the deceased and add your email address before submitting About Us History Our Services Facilities Obituaries Order Flowers Resources Why Preplan Cremation Q&A Green Funerals Preplanning Options Travel Protection The market economy is changing Mongolia and people’s lifestyle. A large part of the rural population is now moving to the cities. Transitioning from large open spaces to a city lifestyle requires enormous social adjustments. In her series Foyers (Urbains) Mongols, French photographer Lucile Chombart de Lauwe documents the changes in the Mongolian way of life by following the once rural now urbanized population into their new way of life The series is focused on the relationship between families and their new environments “In 2011 I decided to go back and to photograph the settlement issues Foyers is more about the way people build a new home the evolution of the Mongolian society and its influences.” All images © Lucile Chombart de Lauwe Tanya Tucker on Friday became the first artist in the Grand Ole Opry's near century-long history to ride a horse onstage -- during a weekend that saw her invite an eclectic group of artists including Brandi Carlile Jelly Roll and Gretchen Wilson to the stage at the Ryman Auditorium This is the same artist whose 1978 album "T.N.T" sold one million copies and a genre where the canonization of the outlaw spirit occupies a thin line between legendary superstardom and being an also-ran cast into the abyss of a record store's cut-out CD bins Tucker took the stage astride world champion 12-year-old Black Friesan stallion Lauwe The Magnificent Upon dismounting and performing at the Opry expressed gratitude at having a fanbase that still pays homage to hits like "Delta Dawn" and "Two Sparrows In A Hurricane" -- had keyed her continued stardom "God's sprinkling magic dust on these people or something My father always told me that he was the best to ever do it and the songs always needed a little bit of him in the interpretation." when Tucker was announced as part of the Country Music Hall of Fame's Class of 2023 two months ago she rode amid a teeming crowd of onlookers to the intersection of 5th and Broadway next to the Bridgestone Arena to announce her June 3 and 4 dates at the Ryman given that The Ryman is considered country music's hallowed "Mother Church." I don't think there's better sound in any other room plus I have so many important memories there." Tucker recalled getting to see a recording of the Grand Ole Opry at the Ryman where the show was put on before moving to its current Opry House location It was after a "miserably hot" day filled with the despair of her first childhood Nashville recording session gone wrong Tucker and her father had been on Music row where he noticed his daughter was gazing down at the names of the hall-of-famers embedded in the Music Row sidewalk "Look down at all them stars right now because you'll never be down there." Grammy-winning singer-songwriter Carlile -- who joined Tucker onstage for the entire second hour of her Sunday Ryman appearance -- stated the following about the soon hall of famer's latest album "Sweet Western Sound." "[Tucker's 2020 release "While I'm Livin'"] was about Tanya's life but many of these [new] songs are in Tanya Tucker's own words…which are colorful white shirt and black satin Western necktie -- strode onstage with an acoustic guitar to invoke the second half of Tucker's performance (after an excellent opening set from Tucker's Fantasy Records' signed daughter Layla Nashville-based singer-songwriter Jerry Laseter) "Tanya," is a caustic ode that plays well as a companion piece to her 2020 hit and Grammy Song of The Year Sent initially to Tucker as a voice memo by the song's legendary writer Billy Joe Shaver it states that Tucker "looks like a heavenly angel," but in reality is "meaner than hell." Tucker wasn't mean at all for her two hours onstage She's in her fourth return to a level of country music stardom that most artists barely see once While singing her 1987 hit "Love Me Like You Used To," she was surprised by an appearance from Gretchen Wilson who followed with her 2004 classic "Redneck Woman." still "know the words to every Tanya Tucker song," but Tucker was able to reciprocate the kindness to Wilson A Hall of Famer impacts country's present and futureYes she's also still throwing back multiple shots of her own Cosa Salvaje tequila after singing 1978's "Texas ('Til I Die)." Plus she's still capable of blowing away an audience's expectations by being joined by bluegrass stars Daley and Vincent and reviving her teenage-recorded classics "Blood Red and Going Down" and David Allan Coe-written"Would You Lay With Me (In a Field of Stone)." it's when nervously diving into her recently recorded new album material like "When The Rodeo is Over Where Does The Cowboy Go" (and being joined onstage by her current boyfriend and the song's writer Craig Dillingham and Carlile) that her greatest skill-set of the moment appears It's 2023 and Tanya Tucker is a Grammy-winning Country Music Hall of Famer-to-be currently in an album release run where she routinely rides stallions and celebrates herself as a relevant artist amidst 100 years of the genre's past it was notable when after a solid set of interpretations of "Ready As I'll Never Be," "Hard Luck" (during which she broke into a kung-fu dancing-style homage to her idol and mentor Elvis Presley) and "Two Sparrows In A Hurricane," she stopped and acknowledged a song outside of her mountainous catalog "There's a guy backstage right now and I want to bring him out," Tucker said "He sings one helluva song right now and I want to hear him do it." It was as if she were transposed in time a half-century ago and she were Ralph Emery hosting a night at the Grand Ole Opry and introducing an emerging star to the crowd rapper-turned-singer Jelly Roll walked onstage even though he has a recent chart-topping country radio single he humbly introduced himself as a "new" artist before belting out the 2022-released "Son of a Sinner." The only thing missing was that he wore a baggy jacket jeans and backward baseball cap instead of clad head-to-toe in a Western suit by Nudie Cohn she makes the following honest assessment of her belief in the power of her art and the entertainment quality of her live performances "I never know what songs the people are gonna like just an hour after she was announced as part of the Country Music Hall of Fame's Class of 2023 Tanya Tucker sat astride a world-champion black stallion Cell phone cameras were held aloft as thousands of onlookers -- lunch-returning white-collar downtown Nashville types more than a few tourists on bachelorette party buses and pedal taverns -- gawked at the event To celebrate not only the announcement of her fall induction into the Country Music Hall of Fame but also forthcoming concert dates at the Ryman Auditorium the official announcement of her 26th studio album and updates regarding her Cosa Salvaje tequila brand Tanya Tucker advised her management and marketing team that she had an idea the "Delta Dawn" vocalist wanted to announce the Ryman dates ridden three blocks from the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum to the intersection of 5th and Broadway next to the Bridgestone Arena With blue streaks dyed into her white-blonde hair Tucker was clad in a blue equestrian show shirt with rhinestone encrusted collar and sleeves The horse was similarly appointed but with white and blue roses in its mane "Tanya's passionate about horses -- they're on her album covers in her music videos and incorporated throughout her messaging," stated her manager and publicist Scott Adkins to The Tennessean concerning Tucker's concept The plan for the social media moment developed quickly as Adkins agents Lenore Kinder and Kiely Mosiman at Wasserman Music Fantasy Records and more reached out to the office of Mayor John Cooper the Nashville Convention and Visitors Corporation Metro-Nashville Police Department and notably Sergeant Vickie Dills of the department's Horse Mounted Patrol Unit to procure a rolling street closure for the announcement "Once the mayor's office realized that we were using drones (for which the drone operator was licensed) and multiple cameras to shoot not a movie -- but social media content instead -- they waived the typical filming permits required for the types of shots captured in downtown Nashville on Monday afternoon," Adkins says He added that when the Covenant School tragedy occurred on Monday all involved parties were initially okay with scrapping the impromptu plans for April 3 plans were set for Tucker's surprising ride by late in the weekend before Monday morning "We didn't know that Metro-Nashville Police (and related authorities) would shut down Broadway for us," Adkins said Tucker associate, singer-songwriter and Oakdale, Tennessee native Ricky Cook connected Tucker's team with Annika Bruggeworth, the owner of Lawrenceburg, Kentucky's Siren Song Stables -- a breeder and owner of Friesan stallions is a world champion undefeated in hand and harness showings Tucker's gallantry show was linked to her music and Cosa Salvaje the tequila line she co-founded with entrepreneur Elle France and is now available in 14 U.S Numerous bottles in the line feature art of Tucker astride black stallions Adkins said that the media moment was also meant to raise awareness of Tucker's longtime support of Redemption Road Rescue Horses being considered livestock instead of pets in Tennessee places the "gross overwork" or "unreasonable failure to provide necessary food, water, care or shelter" of horses in violation of the state's Consolidated Cruelty Statutes the organization has helped horses and horse owners in need by accepting and housing and miniature horses in various stages of rehabilitation These surrendered and/or seized animals of different ages sizes and levels of handling and training are successfully rehabilitated and then offered for adoption Tucker adopted a colt and its mother from the service For lifelong equestrian and current horse owner Tucker "the care and proper treatment of horses will always remain an important issue," Adkins added