Jay-Z and Beyoncé Knowles / Beyonce attend the Louis Vuitton Menswear Spring/Summer 2026 show as part of Paris Fashion Week on June 24, 2025, in Paris, France. (Photo by Edward Berthelot/Getty Images)
Kelvin Evans, the man accused of stealing unreleased Beyoncé music in Atlanta, pleaded guilty in court on Tuesday, avoiding an impending trial.
During the hearing, Evans accepted responsibility and was sentenced to five years, with two years to be served in custody and the remaining time on probation. A second charge was merged into the first count as part of the plea agreement.
As part of his probation, Evans was ordered to avoid the location tied to the case, have no contact with the victim and commit no further violations of the law.
Evans faced charges of criminal trespass and entering a vehicle with intent to commit theft, according to the October 2024 indictment.
The indictment stated that Evans allegedly entered a 2024 Jeep Wagoneer, the rental property of Christopher Grant, a choreographer for Beyoncé, on July 8 “with the intent to commit theft.”
A report filed July 8, 2025, by the Atlanta Police Department states that Grant returned to his vehicle after the alleged incident and noticed a damaged window, as well as several missing items, including two suitcases and hard drives for Beyoncé’s upcoming Cowboy Carter Tour show in Atlanta, among other things.
“The hard drives contained water marked music, some un-released music, footage plans for the show, and past and future set list,” the incident report stated.
Oli Sykes of Bring Me the Horizon attends The BRIT Awards 2025 at Intercontinental London – The O2, on March 01, 2025 in London, England. (Jim Dyson/Redferns)
Bring Me the Horizon frontman Oli Sykes has shared an update after he was hit by a phone during the band’s show in St. Louis on Monday.
As previously reported, fan-shot footage from the show showed a phone striking Sykes toward the end of performing the track “Happy Song” after seemingly being thrown by someone in the audience.
“Alright everyone – just wanted to let you know I’m all good,” Sykes writes in an Instagram Story posted Tuesday. “The phone to the head definitely smarted [hurt] and I ended up with a mild concussion, but the swelling’s gone down a decent amount already.”
According to Setlist.fm, Bring Me’s set Monday consisted of 16 songs, as opposed to the usual 17 they’ve been playing on their ongoing U.S. tour.
“Last night I was struggling a bit on stage afterwards because singing was putting a lot of pressure on the wound and making things feel a bit disorienting while performing,” Sykes’ post reads. “So I’m sorry on my part for what may of seemed like a half hearted performance.”
Sykes also thanks everyone for checking in on him and says “everything should be fine” for the next show on the tour, set for Tuesday in Kansas City, Missouri.
Nicko McBrain of Iron Maiden sits in with the 8G Band on March 15, 2017. (Lloyd Bishop/NBCU Photo Bank/NBCUniversal via Getty Images via Getty Images)
Iron Maiden drummer Nicko McBrain has announced his autobiography.
The book, titled Hello Boys and Girls!, is due out Nov. 10 in the U.S.
“I’m very excited and honoured to be working with the wonderful HarperNonFiction Team on my very own book full of lots of fun stories, anecdotes and of course my incredible experiences with some of the greatest musicians and performers from the 70s, 80s and beyond!” McBrain says in a statement. “I am blessed to be able to finally share my path to where I am today, in my own words, with the world.”
McBrain joined Maiden in 1982 in place of drummer Clive Burr and made his recorded debut with the band on 1983’s Piece of Mind. He’s remained a member of Maiden ever since, though he retired from touring in 2024 due to health issues.
McBrain will be inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame with Maiden as part of its 2026 class. The induction ceremony takes place Nov. 14 in Los Angeles.
For more on the history of Iron Maiden, you can check out the band’s new documentary, Burning Ambition, which is in theaters now.
‘An Eraser and a Maze’ album artwork. (Glacial Pace Recordings)
Modest Mouse has released a new song called “Third Side of the Moon,” a track off the band’s upcoming album, An Eraser and a Maze.
The language used will be familiar to longtime fans who remember Modest Mouse’s 2000 album The Moon & Antarctica and its opening track, “3rd Planet.”
An Eraser and a Maze, the follow-up 2021’s The Golden Casket, is due out June 5. It also includes the previously released songs “Look How Far…” and “Picking Dragons’ Pockets.”
Modest Mouse will launch a U.S. tour Tuesday in Spokane, Washington. The band currently has live dates scheduled into October.
Gracie Abrams’ new album, Daughter From Hell, has been quite a few years in the making.
Gracie’s producer, Aaron Dessner, shares on Instagram that they started working on Daughter From Hell on the same day they recorded “That’s So True” at Electric Lady Studios in New York City. That song, her breakthrough single, was released in the fall of 2024.
“Multiple songs on this album were made in that time,” Aaron writes. “Since then we have searched and searched for songs in [my studio] Long Pond, in London and back at Electric Lady.”
He adds that on the album, “You’ll hear us expanding our musical vocabulary and pushing into uncharted waters sonically, and most of all the sharpening and deepening of Gracie’s lyricism and expression in ways that continue to astound me.”
Describing the album as “absolutely the most moving and powerful work we have done together,” Aaron writes that “it feels elevated in every way.”
“We will share more details soon on all the dear friends who helped us along the way.”
Aaron also writes, “I can’t believe it’s been 6 years since Gracie and I started making songs together. I’m deeply grateful for every song we have made and the way we have kept challenging ourselves and growing together as collaborators and friends, sometimes hitting the wall, and then pushing and breaking through.”
Daughter From Hell comes out July 17. The first single, “Hit the Wall,” will arrive Thursday at 8 p.m. ET.
Brandon Clarke #15 of the Memphis Grizzlies runs up court against the Detroit Pistons in the second half of an NBA game at Little Caesars Arena on January 24, 2020 in Detroit, Michigan. (Dave Reginek/Getty Images)
(MEMPHIS, Tenn.) — Memphis Grizzlies player Brandon Clarke has died, the team confirmed on Tuesday. He was 29.
“We are heartbroken by the tragic loss of Brandon Clarke,” the team said in a statement on social media. “Brandon was an outstanding teammate and an even better person whose impact on the organization and the great Memphis community will not be forgotten.”
The circumstances surrounding his death are not known at this time.
The Canadian-American forward began playing in the NBA in 2019. He was selected in the first round of the 2019 NBA draft by the Oklahoma City Thunder and immediately traded to Memphis.
He was named to the NBA’s All-Rookie First Team in his rookie season.
“As one of the longest-tenured members of the Grizzlies, Brandon was a beloved teammate and leader who played the game with enormous passion and grit,” NBA Commissioner Adam Silver said in a statement. “Our thoughts and sympathies are with Brandon’s family, friends and the Grizzlies organization.”
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
Ashley Cooke’s the baby blues world tour (Courtesy Ashley Cooke/Sweet Talk Publicity)
Ashley Cooke will launch the baby blues world tour this fall, with an itinerary set to take her both across the U.S. and across the pond.
The 28-date trek kicks off Sept. 17 in Cleveland, Ohio, and will pass through Washington, D.C., New York City and Los Angeles before wrapping Feb. 25 at Nashville’s historic Ryman Auditorium.
In January, the “your place” hitmaker will play half a dozen dates in the United Kingdom and Ireland.
Timmy McKeever, McCoy Moore, Just Jayne, Aniston Pate and Hannah McFarland will join her at different times on the run, named after a track on her self-titled sophomore album that arrives Aug. 14.
Tickets for Ashley’s baby blues world tour go on sale Friday.
KISS’ Gene Simmons has enlisted some of his rock star friends for a new Las Vegas fan experience.
The rocker has just announced details for the Gene Simmons’ Legends of Rock Expo, taking place Sept. 25-27 at the Westgate Las Vegas Resort & Casino.
The weekend will be filled with concerts, autograph sessions, photo ops, parties and panels. In addition to Simmons performing with his Gene Simmons Band, Black Sabbath’s Geezer Butler, The Police’s Stewart Copeland and The Kinks’ Dave Davies will also take part in the weekend.
Other artists confirmed for the expo include Simmons’ KISS bandmates Eric Singer and Tommy Thayer, former KISS guitarist Bruce Kulick, Ratt’s Stephen Pearcy, Disturbed bassist John Moyer, Vanilla Fudge drummer Carmine Appice, Dio drummer Vinny Appice, former Megadeth bassist David Ellefson and Lita Ford.
“This is an opportunity for everyone to rub elbows with musicians from their favorite rock bands,” says David Heynen, promoter and owner of Fanboy Expo. “The kind of access most of us can only dream of!”
Tickets for the Legends of Rock Expo are on sale now.
(SAN ANTONIO) — Six people, including a teenager, were found dead inside a shipping container at a Texas rail yard near the U.S.-Mexico border, officials said.
A seventh person who was found dead along train tracks in an area outside San Antonio is also believed to have been part of the same group in what is a suspected smuggling incident, authorities said.
The six bodies were discovered Sunday at the Union Pacific rail yard in Laredo, police said. An employee at the rail yard called police after discovering the bodies during a routine rail car inspection, police said.
The victims include a 14-year-old boy and a 24-year-old man from Honduras, as well as a 29-year-old woman and two men — aged 45 and 56 — from Mexico, according to the Webb County Medical Examiner’s Office.
So far, the woman has been confirmed to have died from hyperthermia, according to the Webb County Medical Examiner’s Office, which said it is “highly probable that hyperthermia was the cause of death for the entire group.”
The body of the seventh person was found Monday afternoon near tracks in Bexar County, some 150 miles north of Laredo, according to authorities. The man, whose identity has not yet been confirmed, was carrying a Mexican voter registration card, according to Bexar County Sheriff Javier Salazar.
“At this point, the prevailing theory is that he’s a resident of Mexico that was among that group that was being smuggled into the country in one of these shipping containers,” Salazar said during a press briefing on Monday.
It is unclear if the man had died while in the shipping container and his body was dumped, or if he died in a fall from the train, he said, noting that the medical examiner will be determining the cause and manner of death.
Salazar said the shipping containers can only be opened from the outside, and that sensors go off when they are opened.
He said the train is believed to have originated in Del Rio, Texas, where the sensor did go off, presumably to load people on. The sensor went off again near where the body of the seventh person was found in Bexar County, he said.
“The fact that a sensor hit from here indicates someone opened that from outside,” Salazar said. “Our belief at this point is that it was most likely smugglers, coyotes that opened it from the outside.”
It is unclear if there were more people on the train who were successfully let out at that point, he said.
Salazar said the train continued on and was split up at a station, with half of it going to Houston and the other half to Laredo, where the six other people were found dead.
One of the people found dead in Laredo is believed to have contacted a relative on Saturday from inside the shipping container, saying in a message that “it was getting very, very hot, and that they were having some physical trouble as a result of it,” Salazar said.
The relative, who lives in a different state, contacted police, and San Antonio officers were dispatched to a location several miles from where the body was found in Macdona and did not find anything, he said.
The Webb County Medical Examiner’s Office said in a statement Tuesday it is “working in close coordination with the Mexican Consulate to facilitate communication with the families of the deceased, ensure positive identification, and assist in the repatriation process as efficiently as possible.”
Homeland Security Investigations and Texas Rangers are also investigating the incident, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection.
Union Pacific said it is “saddened by this incident and is working closely with law enforcement to investigate.”
ABC News’ Laura Romero contributed to this report.
A sign displays the prices of unleaded gasoline and diesel fuel at a Chevron gas station in Los Angeles on Monday, May 4, 2026. (Kyle Grillot/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
(LOS ANGELES) — A Chevron gas station in Los Angeles elicited headlines in recent weeks for charging an eye-popping $8.71 a gallon, becoming an emblem for the spike in fuel costs set off by the Iran war.
Sky-high gas prices nationwide owe primarily to a historic oil shock that followed Iran’s effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz. But a lesser-known contributor helps account for just how high prices have gotten, at least at some name-brand stations selling fuel from the likes of Chevron, Shell and ExxonMobil.
Branded stations, which make up almost half of gas stations nationwide, charge about 6 cents more per gallon on average than their unbranded counterparts, according to data from the Oil Price Information Service (OPIS), a Dow Jones company, for the week ending on May 2. That price gap marks little change from where it stood before the war, OPIS data showed.
In at least one state, the price disparity runs significantly higher. Gas at a Chevron station in California costs an average of 48 cents more per gallon than the price at an unbranded station, the California Energy Commission (CEC) found in 2024. After Chevron, the most expensive average gas prices in California were found at Shell, 76 and Arco-branded stations, the CEC said.
Some analysts said the higher price of branded gas is due to additional costs, such as proprietary additives in the fuel, as well as a producer’s marketing budget and the payment forked over by stations for guaranteed access to its gas – costs that are passed on to consumers.
Other analysts and a California state watchdog, however, have said that the price disparity may stem from the market dominance of a handful of companies, allowing them to drive up the retail price.
The scrutiny comes as some large oil companies like British Petroleum, Valero and Marathon Petroleum report soaring profits amid the Iran war, though Chevron and Exxon saw profits decline due in part to one-time paper losses stemming from financial hedges meant to protect them against a possible price drop.
The price of an average gallon of gas currently stands at $4.52, an increase of $1.54 per gallon since the war began on Feb. 28, AAA data showed. That amounts to a nearly 52% jump in about two-and-a-half months.
Patrick Penfield, a professor of supply chain practice at Syracuse University, said the recent surge in prices could prompt a reexamination of the costs baked into the price at the pump, including the added charge for branded gas.
“When you see such big price increases for gasoline, everything should be looked at,” Penfield said.
Chevron did not directly respond to an ABC News request for comment. However, Jim Stanley, director of media relations at the Western States Petroleum Association, a industry trade group, contacted ABC News at Chevron’s request.
Drivers choose branded gas stations as a matter of customer preference centered on issues like lighting, bathroom cleanliness or location, Stanley said.
“Any branded product – whether it’s medication or groceries or clothing – is going to generally cost more than a generic alternative,” he added.
Stanley further said roughly 95% of branded gas stations operate as franchises, meaning they enter into agreements with big-name companies but retain self-ownership.
“Branded gas stations can have these brand standards that they hold their franchisees to: a higher standard than an independently owned store,” Stanley added.
Kelly Davila, a spokesperson for Exxon, said the company doesn’t “own or operate our retail stations.”
Shell declined to respond to ABC News’ request for comment.
Phillips 66, the parent company of 76, did not respond to ABC News’ request for comment. Neither did Marathon Petroleum, the parent company of Arco.
Branded gas stations account for about 45% of stations nationwide, selling gas under the name of a major fuel company, OPIS data shows. Each of the brands touts a unique blend of additives that it says improves the gasoline and eases its effect on car engines. The extra ingredients go beyond the minimum standards mandated by federal and some state regulators, Denton Cinquegrana, chief oil analyst at Dow Jones Energy, told ABC News.
“At the end of the day, all gasoline has to meet a federal standard,” Cinquegrana said. “The branded gasoline goes above and beyond that minimum requirement.”
Higher prices charged by name-brand stations – a dynamic that stretches back decades – can be traced in part to spending on the development and production of the additives, Cinquegrana added: “They’re trying to recoup some of that investment.”
Some analysts, however, said it remains unclear whether the added ingredients deliver a meaningfully improved product.
“Regardless of each company’s claim, there is not sound evidence supporting the fact that additives do indeed improve the quality of gasoline, at least to the extent that the consumers perceive it to,” a study issued by the non-profit RAND corporation found in 2010.
The California Division of Petroleum Market Oversight (DPMO), a state watchdog agency, last year said it was “unable to independently verify claims that branded gasoline is superior to unbranded gasoline.”
When asked about studies disputing the value of additives, Stanley, of the Western States Petroleum Association, declined to comment.
The higher price of branded gas also owes to marketing budgets borne by the big-name companies as well as elevated costs paid by retailers as part of agreements with the brands that guarantee them priority access in the event of a supply shortage, the U.S. Government Accountability Office said in a study of the issue published in 2005.
“Gas stations pay more for a contract for branded gasoline because they have a guarantee of supply. And they have a major global brand backing them up,” Cinquegrana said.
Some analysts and a California watchdog disputed those explanations. Rather, they said, the higher prices may reflect market power enjoyed by the large firms, giving them leeway to raise prices without fear of competition.
“My own reading of the data is that the branded companies are able to take advantage of a lack of a competitive market and are acting almost like an oligopoly,” Paasha Mahdavi, a professor of energy governance and political economy at the University of California, Santa Barbara, told ABC News, using a term that describes an industry dominated by a small number of companies.
Mahdavi focused on the relatively large price gap in California between branded and unbranded gas, which has widened in recent years.
In 2019, branded gas from companies like ExxonMobil, Arco, Valero and Chevron cost an average of 20 cents more per gallon in California; within five years, that price disparity had climbed to 31 cents, according to a DPMO study issued last year. Over that same period, the profitability of oil refiners in California has increased, DPMO said.
The rise in refinery profitability may be traced to the “exercise of market power by gasoline suppliers,” DPMO added, saying 90% of in-state refining capacity is controlled by four companies. As a result, elevated wholesale prices could be passed along the supply chain, DPMO said.
The largest companies appear to have “pretty strong control of not only upstream assets like oil and gas, but also control of the gas stations that are preferred by consumers based on location,” Mahdavi said. “They’re able to charge a higher premium.”
Valero did not respond to ABC News’ request for comment.
Stanley, of the Western States Petroleum Association, said he is unsure why California features a larger gap in price between branded and unbranded gas than other states. One contributor, he said, could be the relatively low density of gas stations in the state.
“Competition brings down costs. When a retailer doesn’t see that same level of competition, you can see that reflected in higher prices.”
Stanley faulted environmental regulations in California for high overall gas prices.
“Branded or unbranded, gas in California is the most expensive in the country. That’s because of supply constraints that have been created by state policies.”
Mahdavi further said that the locations of branded gas stations may carry additional costs due to higher rents, accounting for some of the price gap.
The rise in prices during the Iran war offers an opportunity to revisit the factors that contribute to the price at the pump, according to Mahdavi.
“We can shine more light on what is driving these higher prices,” he said.
