Carrie Underwood, Kane Brown, Luke Combs, Dan + Shay and Thomas Rhett will be honored as the country's top stars at the 10th annual CMT Artists of the Year television special.
The 90-minute special airing live from Nashville, Tennessee on Oct. 16 will include tribute performances to each of the honorees, which were selected by CMT for having chart-topping albums and singles and selling out arenas across the country.
Brown, Combs and Dan + Shay are all receiving this recognition from CMT for the first time, while Rhett has been honored before and Underwood will be receiving her fifth CMT Artists of the Year recognition.
Combs' 2017 record breaking debut album, "This One's For You," is double platinum and he has had six No. 1 Billboard Country Airplay singles in just two years. Dan + Shay picked up a Grammy Award this year for their performance of "Tequila," a pop radio crossover hit single.
And Brown, who has been snubbed for nominations at the upcoming CMA Awards in November, has had four No. 1 country airplay singles and has made a name for himself with cross-genre collaborations with Marshmello, Khalid, Becky G and more.
Rhett is one of country's most consistent hit-makers in recent years with 13 No. 1 singles and is the reigning Academy of Country Music male artist of the year. And Underwood, a seven-time Grammy winner, became the first woman ever to land four country albums at the top of the all-genre Billboard 200 chart last year with her latest record "Cry Pretty."
Performers for the show, to be held at the Schermerhorn Symphony Center, will be announced at a later date.
WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. intelligence officials have determined that Russian President Vladimir Putin likely didn’t order the death of imprisoned opposition leader Alexei Navalny in February, according to an official familiar with the determination.
While U.S. officials believe Putin was ultimately responsible for the death of Navalny, who endured brutal conditions during his confinement, the intelligence community has found “no smoking gun” that Putin was aware of the timing of Navalny's death — which came soon before the Russian president's reelection — or directly ordered it, according to the official.
The official spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive matter.
Soon after Navalny’s death, U.S. President Joe Biden said Putin was ultimately responsible but did not accuse the Russian president of directly ordering it.
At the time, Biden said the U.S. did not know exactly what had happened to Navalny but that “there is no doubt” that his death “was the consequence of something that Putin and his thugs did.”
Navalny, 47, Russia’s best-known opposition politician and Putin’s most persistent foe, died Feb. 16 in a remote penal colony above the Arctic Circle while serving a 19-year sentence on extremism charges that he rejected as politically motivated.
He had been behind bars since January 2021 after returning to Russia from Germany, where he had been recovering from nerve-agent poisoning that he blamed on the Kremlin.
Russian officials have said only that Navalny died of natural causes and have vehemently denied involvement both in the poisoning and in his death.
In March, a month after Navalny’s death, Putin won a landslide reelection for a fifth term, an outcome that was never in doubt.
The Wall Street Journal first reported about the U.S. intelligence determination.
FILE - Russian opposition politician Alexei Navalny gestures while speaking during his interview to the Associated Press in Moscow, Russia on Dec. 18, 2017. U.S. intelligence officials have determined that Russian President Vladimir Putin likely didn't order the death of Navalny, the imprisoned opposition leader, in February of 2024. An official says the U.S. intelligence community has found "no smoking gun" that Putin was aware of the timing of Navalny's death or directly ordered it. (AP Photo/Alexander Zemlianichenko, File)
