Singer Neil Young performs onstage at the 25th anniversary MusiCares 2015 Person Of The Year Gala honoring Bob Dylan at the Los Angeles Convention Center on February 6, 2015 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Frazer Harrison/Getty Images)
Neil Young is back in the studio.
In a new post on his Neil Young Archives site, the Rock & Roll Hall of Famer revealed that he’s recording a new album with his band Chrome Hearts.
The post started out with Young commenting on what’s been going on in America, writing, “I am so hurt for this country. Politics today is sad and depressing for me. I can’t do it anymore.”
“I can go out and demonstrate my feelings about it,” he added, before calling President Donald Trump “the worst president in the history of our country.”
He then let fans know what he’s been up to.
“Now, thankfully, once again, I’m in the studio recording a new album with the Chrome Hearts,” he wrote. “I love the songs and the feelings of life and love. Music is. So far we have eight new songs. They make me feel.”
Young released his first album with Chrome Hearts, Talkin to the Trees, in June 2025. He was supposed to hit the road with the band this summer, but in February he canceled the tour, noting he “decided to take a break.”
President Donald Trump speaks to members of the media traveling on Air Force One while heading to Miami on March 7, 2026. President Trump and other members of the government attended the dignified transfer of six soldiers from the 103rd Sustainment Command who were killed in action by an Iranian drone strike on March 1 in Port of Shuaiba, Kuwait, during Operation Epic Fury. (Photo by Roberto Schmidt/Getty Images)
(WASHINGTON) — Ten days into the U.S. war with Iran, Americans are starting to feel the economic fallout as oil and gas prices soar.
Gas prices skyrocketed to a national average of $3.47 on Monday, up nearly 50 cents from last week, according to data from AAA. Plus, oil prices on Monday surpassed $100 a barrel for the first time since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 before falling lower later in the day.
President Donald Trump has dismissed the higher cost, telling ABC News Chief White House Correspondent Mary Bruce it’s “a little glitch.”
“I think it’s fine. It’s a little glitch. We had to take this detour,” Trump told ABC’s Bruce in an interview on Sunday before going on to tout the U.S. military campaign against Tehran.
In a social media post on Sunday night, Trump argued: “Short term oil prices, which will drop rapidly when the destruction of the Iran nuclear threat is over, is a very small price to pay for U.S.A., and World, Safety and Peace.”
Yet the cost of living remains one of the biggest issues heading into the 2026 midterms, where Trump and Republicans are seeking to maintain narrow majorities in Congress.
A poll released by NBC News on Sunday found Trump received his lowest ratings in the poll on his handling of inflation and the cost of living as 36% of registered voters approve and 62% disapprove.
On Iran, the NBC poll found a majority of registered voters (54%) disapproved of Trump’s handling of the matter.
Trump, on the 2024 campaign trail, vowed to bring gas down below $2 a gallon. During the first year of his second term, Trump routinely pointed to the drop in prices at the pump, including in his State of the Union address last month.
“Gasoline, which reached a peak of over $6 a gallon in some states under my predecessor and was, quite honestly, a disaster, is now below $2.30 a gallon in most states, and in some places $1.99 a gallon,” Trump said in his speech on Feb. 24.
Now, gas prices are closing in on $3.50 a gallon and are expected to continue to keep rising the longer the Middle East conflict lasts.
Patrick De Haan, a petroleum analyst at GasBuddy, told ABC News Live that Americans are currently experiencing “sticker shock.”
“Gas stations are seeing their costs go up in real time again today, as oil markets are jumping, and that’s going to be in another round of price increases over the course of this week, prices could jump another 15 to 35 cents a gallon for gasoline over the next three days, as long as nothing changes,” De Haan said. “And it’s going to be worse for the price of diesel, which could jump 35 to 50 cents a gallon, that would put it close to nearly a $5 a gallon national average.”
Some Democrats are seizing on the price jump to criticize Trump and the administration for the handling of the war.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, a New York Democrat, has called for President Trump to tap into the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) to alleviate the financial burden for Americans.
“American families are suffering from higher prices as the effects of Trump’s reckless war become pain at the gas pump and beyond as high gas prices trickle down making everything more expensive,” Schumer said in a statement on Sunday. “They cannot afford to simply wait and hope prices come down. The President has a solution right here at home, and he should use it.”
“Trump promised a Golden Age in America. Meanwhile. Republicans are crashing the economy, gas prices are out of control and the extremists are spending billions dropping bombs in the Middle East. You deserve better,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, also a New York Democrat, wrote on X on Monday.
Trump was asked over the weekend if he would use the SPR to bring some relief, but declined to say, instead criticizing former President Joe Biden’s use of the reserve. Biden released oil from the SPR several times over the course of 2022 as prices increased due to Russia’s war on Ukraine.
“I filled it up and he brought it down to the lowest level it’s ever been. We will start at the appropriate time, which is basically a gut instinct, we will start filling up,” Trump told reporters on Air Force One on Saturday.
“Biden used them so that he could get some extra votes in the election,” Trump added.
Analysts previously told ABC News that the SPR is a “valuable resource” for the administration to bring some relief to Americans and assuage market fears, but likely wouldn’t be enough oil in the long term to make up for the 20 million barrels of oil currently being prevented from passing through the Strait of Hormuz every day.
Trump told Fox News’s Brian Kilmeade in an interview on Sunday night that ships holding at the Strait of Hormuz need to “show some guts” and push through the channel.
Several war-risk insurers have canceled their coverage for vessels amid the widening conflict. Trump said the U.S. government was going to provide some risk insurance and guarantees, and if necessary the U.S. Navy would escort tankers through the strait.
Like Trump, several Republicans are contending that higher gas prices will be temporary.
“The prices will come back down as soon as we get out of Iran, as soon as we finish turning them into fish food, which will be pretty soon,” Republican Sen. John Kennedy said on Fox News on Sunday.
How long the Iran war will last remains an open question. President Trump initially estimated four to five weeks for the U.S., though he later said the timeline would be whatever it takes.
On Sunday, Trump told ABC’s Bruce: “I don’t know. I never predict. All I can say is we are ahead of schedule both in terms of lethality and in terms of time.”
GasBuddy’s De Haan told ABC News Live that the longer the conflict lasts, the more time it will take to see oil and gas prices to get back to their previous levels
“Every day the situation continues, it could add another several weeks to the recovery time,” De Haan said.
ABC News’ Isabella Murray, Nicholas Kerr, Soo Youn and Max Zahn contributed to this report.
Timothée Chalamet attends the 32nd annual Actor Awards, March 1, 2026, in Los Angeles. (Amy Sussman/Getty Images)
With less than a week to go before the 2026 Oscars, Timothée Chalamet is facing backlash for comments he made about opera and ballet in a recent interview.
The actor has specifically been criticized by some in the arts community for saying “no one cares” about ballet and opera, suggesting they are dying arts.
“I admire people — and I’ve done it myself — [who] go on a talk show and go, ‘Hey, we gotta keep movie theaters alive, you know, we gotta keep this genre alive,'” Chalamet said during a town hall with Matthew McConaughey in late February, presented by CNN and Variety. “And I don’t wanna be working in ballet or opera or things where it’s like, ‘Hey, keep this thing alive,’ even though it’s like, no one cares about this anymore.”
Chalamet quickly added, “All respect to the ballet and opera people out there,” as the crowd laughed.
“I just lost 14 cents in viewership,” he said.
Megan Fairchild, a principal dancer with New York City Ballet, responded to Chalamet’s comments on Instagram last week, sharing a video of herself alongside a caption that read in part, “Artists supporting artists matters. None of these paths are easy, and there’s no need to put ballet or opera down along the way.”
“Ballet and opera aren’t niche hobbies people opt out of for fame,” Fairchild said in the video. “They’re disciplines you can only enter if you have the rare ability for them in the first place.”
Conductor Alondra de la Parra also joined the chorus of pushback in a viral Instagram video in which she walks out of a prop coffin, saying jokingly, “I’m coming out of my coffin, because… we’re dead.”
The Seattle Opera, meanwhile, seized on Chalamet’s comments as an opportunity to promote its production of “Carmen,” giving operagoers 14% off tickets with the promo code “TIMOTHEE.”
“Timmy, you’re welcome to use it too,” the company wrote in the caption of an Instagram post Friday.
Chalamet has previously spoken about his family’s own history in the arts, particularly his mother’s, grandmother’s and sister’s ballet careers.
“I grew up backstage at the New York City Ballet. My grandmother danced in the New York City Ballet, my mother danced in the New York City Ballet, my sister danced in the New York City Ballet,” he said in an interview last December promoting Marty Supreme, which has since resurfaced online.
The pushback comes just days ahead of the 98th Academy Awards, which take place Sunday at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles. Chalamet has been on a roll this award season, winning best actor statuettes at the Golden Globes, Critics Choice Awards and more.
Chalamet started off award season as the Oscar favorite for lead actor, though in recent weeks Sinners star Michael B. Jordan has emerged as another strong contender.
Kelley Carter, ABC News entertainment contributor, pointed to the timing of the backlash to Chalamet’s February town hall remarks, saying it is important to keep in mind that “awards season is a political campaign.”
“While you’re not going to see outright smear campaigns, you are going to see people resurfacing maybe unfavorable interviews at times,” she said.
ABC News has reached out to Chalamet’s representatives for comment.
Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. (Photo by Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images)
(NEW YORK) — Stocks closed higher on Monday, recovering from sharp losses earlier in the day as markets whipsawed in response to developments in the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran.
The dramatic reversal on Wall Street came after U.S. oil prices turned lower on Monday afternoon. Crude prices settled at about $85 per barrel, unwinding a surge hours earlier that had reached as high as nearly $120 a barrel.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed up 230 points, or 0.4%, while the S&P 500 jumped 0.8%. The tech-heavy Nasdaq increased 1.3%.
The Dow had fallen as much as 750 points on Monday morning, before reversing those losses in the afternoon.
Oil prices fell into the red and stocks raced into the green after comments made by President Donald Trump to a CBS reporter, who posted on X that the president had said “the war is very complete, pretty much.”
Crude markets began to calm on Monday morning amid a meeting of the Group of Seven (G7) finance ministers about a possible coordinated release from their respective strategic petroleum reserves.
The G7 announced on Monday its decision to forego a release of reserve oil at this time, but traders appeared to view the group as willing to take such action.
Still, indexes fell worldwide on Monday as the jump in oil prices rippled through global markets. Tokyo’s Nikkei 225 index plunged 5.2%, while pan-European STOXX 600 index slipped 0.6%.
U.S. crude oil prices hovered at about $85 per barrel on Monday afternoon, which marked a roughly 6% decline from a day earlier. Since a month ago, however, oil prices have soared 34%.
In a social media post on Sunday night, President Donald Trump downplayed the rise in oil prices.
“Short term oil prices, which will drop rapidly when the destruction of the Iran nuclear threat is over, is a very small price to pay for U.S.A., and World, Safety and Peace. ONLY FOOLS WOULD THINK DIFFERENTLY!” Trump said.
Soon after the war with Iran began on Feb. 28, U.S.-Israeli forces killed Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in Tehran. His son Mojtaba Khamenei was chosen on Sunday to succeed him.
Lil Poppa performs onstage at Little Caesars Arena on November 13, 2024, in Detroit, Michigan. (Photo by Aaron J. Thornton/Getty Images)
A funeral service for Lil Poppa was held Saturday at Shiloh Metropolitan Baptist Church in Jacksonville, Florida, where he was laid to rest in a gold casket, according to XXL. During the service, his manager addressed fans’ social media comments and theories, and emphasized that the rapper was loved, cared for and often given words of encouragement throughout his journey.
“I said, ‘Don’t ever stop praying.’ I said, ‘You have a son to live for,'” she said, in part. “I said, ‘You have a family of people that need you and depend on you.'”
“Everybody has to deal with they own things on they own time,” she added. “And, if you really knew Poppa, you knew this is what Poppa wanted. Poppa was never happy with life. It had nothing to do with anybody. He just feel like he wasn’t making nobody happy. And that wasn’t the way it was supposed to be. Because, in truth, he made all of us happy.”
Poppa, born Janarious Wheeler, died by suicide on Feb. 18. He was 25 years old.
Yo Gotti, to whom Lil Poppa was signed, was in attendance. His CMG label paid tribute to the star upon news of his passing. “Thank you for sharing your gift with the world,” the caption read.
If you are in crisis or know someone in crisis, contact the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline by dialing 988, by calling 1-800-273-TALK (8255), or by visiting 988lifeline.org. You can also contact the Crisis Text Line by texting HOME to 741741.
Bruno Mars “just might” be topping multiple charts.
As his album The Romantic debuts atop the Billboard 200, the first single off that album, “I Just Might,” has bounced back to the top of the Billboard Hot 100.
The song initially became Bruno’s first #1 debut on the chart and was his 10th #1 hit overall. It spent its first two weeks on the chart back in January. This week it jumps to #1 again from the #5 spot.
Another song off The Romantic, “Risk It All,” debuts at #4, making it Bruno’s 22nd top-10 song.
Bruno posted the chart feats in an Instagram slideshow on Monday, along with a final slide of his head pasted on an exaggerated muscular body, with the caption, “Slide For The Vibe!”
Bruno’s The Romantic Tour kicks off April 10 in Las Vegas.
L-R: Slim Jim Phantom, Brian Setzer and Lee Rocker of The Stray Cats/(Photo credit: Suzie Kaplan)
After canceling their 2025 tour due to frontman Brian Setzer’s health, The Stray Cats are headed back out on the road this summer.
All three original members — Brian Setzer, Lee Rocker and Slim Jim Phantom — are set to kick off a new monthlong cross-country trek on July 24 in Las Vegas, wrapping Aug. 16 in Morristown, New Jersey.
“It’s good to be healthy and strong again,” Setzer says. “Come on out and have some fun with us this summer.”
“The Stray Cats are back and ready to blast off!” Rocker adds. “It’s an amazing feeling to join up with Brian and Slim, hit the stage and Rock across America.”
Finally, Phantom notes, “With The Stray Cats, there’s always some extra magic around the summertime shows. It’s the perfect time for the Cats & Kittens to get dolled up, put the top down and cruise to the greatest Rockabilly show on earth!”
An artist presale for tickets will begin Tuesday at 10 a.m. local time, with tickets going on sale to the general public Friday at 10 a.m. local time.
The Stray Cats’ 2025 tour was supposed to begin in October, but was canceled so Setzer could address what was described as a “serious illness.”
It was supposed to be the band’s first tour since February 2024. It was also supposed to be their first tour since Setzer’s February 2025 announcement that he’d been diagnosed w
Elijah Wood attends a screening of ‘Rabbit Trap’ at Brain Dead Studios on Sept. 9, 2025, in Los Angeles, California. (Michael Tullberg/Getty Images)
Elijah Wood doesn’t want anyone else to play Frodo.
The actor, who portrayed the hobbit Frodo Baggins in all three of The Lord of the Rings films, recently told The Sunday Times he does not want his iconic part to be recast in the future.
“I certainly wouldn’t want anybody else to play Frodo,” Wood said, continuing, “as long as I’m alive and able.”
While it is still unconfirmed if Wood will return as Frodo in the 2027 Lord of the Rings film The Hunt for Gollum, Ian McKellen has said he will come back to play the role of Gandalf.
When asked if he will appear in the upcoming Andy Serkis-directed movie, Wood played coy.
“It hasn’t been officially announced, but at a convention last August, Ian sort of let the cat out of the bag,” Wood said. “So there is a good chance. I’m not able to officially say anything until it’s announced, but I will say I’m thrilled with the prospect of another film.”
Wood continued, saying it is “always a little nerve-racking when people talk about new movies for a world like Middle-earth.”
“Everyone gets a little protective and hopes it retains its level of integrity, but this story is fun, thrilling,” Wood said. “There is a genuine feeling of getting the band back together.”
‘Antichrist Superstar’ album artwork. (Interscope Records)
Marylin Manson has announced a pair of concerts celebrating the 30th anniversary of his 1996 album, Antichrist Superstar.
The shows take place Oct. 31 and Nov. 1 at The Wiltern in Los Angeles.
“I’m celebrating 30 years of Antichrist Superstar at The Wiltern with a set that dives deep into this defining record and spans the milestones that followed,” Manson says in an Instagram post. “It’s a tribute to where I began – and everything I have become.”
Presales begin Tuesday at 10 a.m. PT, and tickets go on sale to the general public on Friday at 10 a.m. PT. For all ticket info, visit MarilynManson.com.
Antichrist Superstar marked the second Marilyn Manson album and spawned the single “The Beautiful People.”
Manson’s most recent album is 2024’s One Assassination Under God – Chapter 1, which marked his first since being accused of abuse by his ex Evan Rachel Wood in 2021. Manson has denied the allegations, and an investigation into him was dropped by the Los Angeles district attorney in 2025.
Manson will launch a U.S. spring tour in April, followed by a run with Rob Zombie kicking off in August.
Alex Kapranos of Franz Ferdinand performs onstage during a concert at O2 Academy Leeds on February 25, 2026 in Leeds, England. (Andrew Benge/Redferns)
Franz Ferdinand has announced a run of U.S. summer tour dates in continued support of their latest album, 2025’s The Human Fear.
The headlining outing spans from Aug. 2 in Buffalo, New York, to Aug. 15 in Dallas. Tickets go on sale Friday at 10 a.m. local time.
For the full list of dates and all ticket info, visit FranzFerdinand.com.
The Human Fear marked the sixth Franz Ferdinandalbum and spawned the single “Audacious.”
Franz’s upcoming live schedule also includes playing the 2026 Osheaga festival in Montreal and opening for My Chemical Romance at New York City’s Citi Field.
