Rush released their sophomore album Fly By Night. It was the Canadian rockers’ first recording with drummer and lyricist Neil Peart.
The album marked the beginning of Rush’s eventual shift from blues-based hard rock to progressive rock inspired by science fiction, fantasy and philosophy.
Fly By Night peaked at number nine on the Canadian charts but only made it to 113 on the Billboard 200. Rush released two singles from the record: the title track, which landed at 88 on the U.S. singles chart, and “Making Memories,” which didn’t chart.
Rush’s Geddy Lee, Alex Lifeson and Peart went on to be inducted into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame in 1994 and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2013. Neil Peart passed away from glioblastoma, a form of brain cancer, in January 2020.
(EAST PALESTINE, Ohio) — Trespassing and resisting arrest charges were dismissed Wednesday against NewsNation reporter Evan Lambert, who was arrested at a press conference last week about the East Palestine, Ohio, train derailment.
“My office has reviewed the relevant video and documentary evidence, and is dismissing the charges against Evan Lambert as unsupported by sufficient evidence,” Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost announced Wednesday.
“While journalists could conceivably be subject to criminal charges for trespassing in some situations, this incident is not one of them. The reporter was lawfully present at a press conference called by the Governor of the state. His conduct was consistent with the purpose of the event and his role as a reporter,” Yost added.
Lambert had been charged with resisting arrest, a second-degree misdemeanor, and criminal trespassing, a fourth-degree misdemeanor.
According to NewsNation, Lambert was doing a live report while Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine spoke at a press conference about the cleanup efforts following a train derailment in a small Ohio village, prompting law enforcement to ask Lambert to be quiet. NewsNation said that Lambert concluded the segment before being asked to leave.
Multiple videos from the incident show officers arresting and subsequently forcibly removing Lambert.
“I’m still processing what was a traumatic event for me, in the context of a time where we are hyper aware of how frequently some police interactions with people of color can end in much worse circumstances. That is not lost on me,” Lambert said in a statement.
He continued, “At the same time, as a journalist who has spent more than a decade covering crime, courts and more recently federal law enforcement, I have great respect for the officers who do their jobs each day with integrity, civil rights, justice and safety at the core of their mission.”
DeWine’s office said he did not see the incident but heard a “disagreement,” according to his press secretary.
“Regardless of the intent, arresting a journalist reporting at a press conference is a serious matter,” Yost said. “Ohio protects a free press under its constitution, and state officials should remember to exercise a heightened level of restraint in using arrest powers.”
ABC News’ Peter Charalambous and Will McDuffie contributed to this report.
Yes has added a new member to the group. The rockers have announced that Jay Schellen is joining the band as their permanent drummer, following the death of original drummer Alan White in May, 2022.
Schellen was personally chosen by White to sit behind the drum kit for their 2016 Topographic Drama tour, and split drumming duties with White from 2018 and beyond.
“We’re all delighted to welcome Jay officially into the fold!” Yes guitarist Steve Howe shares. “He’s been a great support throughout the last seven years, and we couldn’t have found a better all round team player.”
Schellen is certainly very familiar with Yes’ music, having previously played alongside keyboardist Geoff Downes and late bassist Chris Squire. He’s also worked with both White and bass guitarist Billy Sherwood.
“I am thrilled to become the new drummer with YES,” Jay says, “I grew up playing along to YES records and I am proud to have worked so closely with my musical hero and great friend Alan White these past few years.”
Jay adds of White, “I will strive to honor his memory as we drive towards the future with the band.”
Paramore brought their new album, This Is Why, to ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel Live! on Tuesday night.
Hayley Williams and company rocked a rendition of the cut “Running Out of Time.” You can watch the performance streaming now on YouTube.
As Williams previously revealed to Apple Music 1, the frenetic “Running Out of Time” was partly inspired by Taylor Swift, for whom Paramore will be opening a pair of shows in March
This Is Why, the long-awaited follow-up to 2017’s After Laughter, was released last Friday. Its title track, which is also the album’s lead single, gave Paramore their first #1 single on Billboard‘s Alternative Airplay chart.
Paramore will launch a U.S. headlining tour in support of This Is Why in May.
Despite having to do damage control following recent reports of her allegedly needing an intervention, Britney Spears and husband Sam Asghari still managed to have a sweet Valentine’s Day on Tuesday.
On his Instagram Story, Sam posted a photo of the card Britney gave him, which says on the front, “Thank you for loving me as I am.” Inside, it reads, “You bring out the best in me, and because of you, I feel anything is possible. I love you.”
Britney also added a handwritten note: “I love you Hesam” — Sam’s birth name — “love, Britney.”
Sam also posted an unseen photo of himself and Britney on their wedding day last June: The black-and-white snap shows the two in their wedding finery, sitting in a horse-drawn carriage and kissing.
“Happy Valentine’s Day to my valentine,” he wrote in the caption.
As for Britney, she posted the wedding photo to her Instagram account and also added two “Happy V-Day” posts, asking fans, “Have you had your chocolate yet?”
(EAST LANSING, Mich.) — Three students were killed and five others were wounded in Monday night’s mass shooting at Michigan State University.
The Michigan State University Police Department has released the names of the young lives lost.
Arielle Anderson
Arielle Anderson was a junior from Grosse Pointe, Michigan.
Her family remembered her as a “precious daughter, granddaughter, sister, niece, cousin, and friend” in a statement shared Tuesday evening through her mother’s employer, Comerica Bank.
“As much as we loved her, she loved us and others even more,” the family said. “She was passionate about helping her friends and family, assisting children and serving people.”
Anderson, who was described as “sweet and loving with an infectious smile,” wanted to be a surgeon, her family said.
“Driven by her aspiration to tend to the health and welfare of others as a surgeon, she was working diligently to graduate from Michigan State University early to achieve her goals as quickly as possible,” the family said.
“We are absolutely devastated by this heinous act of violence upon her and many other innocent victims,” the statement added.
Brian Fraser
Brian Fraser was a sophomore, also from Grosse Pointe.
Fraser’s “light shined bright with love, leadership and kindness,” according to a statement from his church.
Fraser was president of the Phi Delta Theta fraternity at Michigan State.
“As the leader of his chapter, Brian was a great friend to his Phi Delt brothers, the Greek community at Michigan State, and those he interacted with on campus,” Phi Delta Theta said in a statement.
Fraser was on his high school’s swimming and diving team.
“Brian had an infectious smile and sense of humor that could light up the pool deck and bring laughter to the entire team,” the team said in a statement.
Alexandria Verner
Alexandria Verner was a junior from Clawson, Michigan.
Verner was a “tremendous” student and athlete while at Clawson High School, Clawson Public Schools said in a statement.
She “exemplified kindness every day of her life,” the school district said. “If you knew her, you loved her and we will forever remember the lasting impact she has had on all of us.”
Billy Shellenbarger, a family friend and Verner’s high school principal, described her as empathetic, humble and a leader who carried herself with integrity.
“Very, very kind to everyone she came in contact with. Always positive. Incredibly compassionate. Just embodied so many of those things you would want in your daughter, your student, your sister,” Shellenbarger, now the Clawson Public Schools superintendent, told ABC News.
Verner was a forensics major at Michigan State. She was in her lab class at Berkey Hall when she was shot, Shellenbarger said.
Verner is survived by her parents, older brother and younger sister.
Shellenbarger asked others to “be kind, like Al was.”
“Help somebody like Al did. And walk a path of impact like she was doing,” he continued. “And if you can do that in her honor, then we’re taking some steps in the right direction, because that was exactly the path that she was walking.”
Metallica is doing what it can to help those affected by the recent earthquake in Turkey and Syria. The band announced on social media that their All Within My Hands Foundation has donated $125,000 each to two organizations helping those in need.
“We’re at a loss for words to describe the devastation in southern Turkey and northern Syria,” they shared. “The 7.8 magnitude earthquake has reduced the entire region to rubble. The death toll continues to rise, tragically exceeding 36,000 lives lost.”
The donations will go to two All Within My Hands Foundation partner organizations: Direct Relief and chef José Andrés‘ World Central Kitchen. The band notes both entities “have boots on the ground providing medical aid and food to the victims of this disaster.”
Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck are making their love a little more permanent — with a pair of tattoos.
Taking to Instagram on Tuesday, the actress and singer revealed the tattoos that they got to honor their love. Jen’s new ink is the infinity symbol with both of the love birds names on it with an arrow going through the middle. Ben’s is a pair of criss-cross arrows, bearing both their initials.
“Commitment,” the 53-year-old pop star captioned a carousel of snapshots. “Happy Valentine’s Day my love.” She added the hashtags #CommitmentIsSexy #ThisIsUsThen#ThisIsUsNow #ThisIsMeNow and said she’ll soon be sharing more Valentine’s Day details on her website On the JLo.
Jen and Ben, 50, tied the knot in July 2022 after rekindling their romance in 2021 following their engagement and breakup in the early aughts.
Bailey Zimmerman already has his second top 10 hit, after topping the chart with “Fall in Love” back in December.
And the newcomer reveals one of the things that keeps him from getting stuck between a “Rock and a Hard Place” is his friendship with Morgan Wallen.
“I met Morg at [the] Country Thunder [festival], and then we just kinda kept in touch since then,” Bailey tells ABC Audio. “And he, like, kinda gives me advice a lot and, like, just kinda helps me out with just questions I have.”
They’re also co-writers on “Trainwreck” from Bailey’s debut, Leave the Light On, though Bailey reveals they did it in an untraditional way.
“Actually, I didn’t even write that song really with him,” Bailey explains. “He wrote that song way back in the day, like 2016, ’17ish, ’18, whatever it was.”
“And I just rewrote it because it was in his ‘graveyard’ and he was like, ‘Yeah, you can rewrite it. I don’t really care what you do with it,'” he recalls.
The friendship certainly doesn’t end there. Bailey’s one of the openers on Morgan’s One Night at a Time World Tour, which kicks off next month in Auckland, New Zealand.
(NEW YORK) — The culture wars, fought nationwide in school board meetings and college classrooms, have entered a new arena: Wall Street.
A sharp political divide has emerged over environmental, social and governance investing, or ESG, a type of investing that takes into account non-financial information about a company, such as its climate impact and staff diversity.
Prominent Republican politicians, such as Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, have assailed ESG as “woke” capitalism that prioritizes liberal goals over investor returns, harming U.S. companies deemed insufficiently progressive and, in turn, hindering the wider economy.
Supporters of ESG, including financial firms that manage trillions in assets, have said considerations beyond the bottom line deliver the best financial gains. In weighing the economic threat posed by climate change, for instance, investors ensure the long-term health of their portfolio.
“There’s some risk that we could have red and blue banks, red and blue supermarkets,” Witold Henisz, faculty director of the ESG Initiative at The Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania, told ABC News. “America is more and more polarized.”
Here’s what to know about ESG and the political backlash against it:
What is ESG investing?
For decades, prevailing corporate wisdom held that companies face a choice between actions that are socially beneficial and ones that maximize shareholder value, said Alison Taylor, a professor of business at New York University who focuses on corporate responsibility and ethics.
ESG, by contrast, is an approach to investing that examines a company’s social or environmental impact precisely because it considers non-financial information useful for determining whether the company would deliver strong investor returns.
“The business would do good for the world and make more money,” Taylor told ABC News.
Depending on a given investor or policy, ESG takes into account a range of business practices, such as the release of carbon emissions or pollution, the treatment of employees and the presence of minorities within a company’s leadership.
Sustainable investment based on ESG criteria has grown to a $35.5 trillion industry, according to a study from the Global Sustainable Investment Alliance in 2020.
How has ESG risen to prominence on Wall Street?
Over roughly the past 15 years, ESG has shifted from an upstart financial trend to a mainstream strategy touted by industry titans, experts said.
The rise of ESG has been propelled by growing awareness about the negative effects of some corporate practices, in part due to the rise of social media, said Taylor of New York University. She also credited a young generation of investors, which has brought a focus especially on the role that companies play in exacerbating climate change.
Financial leaders have also taken up the cause. One major promoter of ESG, Larry Fink, the CEO of BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager, has highlighted for years the importance of non-financial information in assessing investment opportunities.
“Stakeholder capitalism is not about politics,” Fink said last year in a letter to CEOs. “It is not a social or ideological agenda. It is not ‘woke.’ It is capitalism, driven by mutually beneficial relationships between you and the employees, customers, suppliers, and communities your company relies on to prosper.”
The surge of ESG adoption has also coincided with a slew of studies that demonstrate its effectiveness in yielding stronger returns than traditional investing, as well as a host of findings that question its comparative benefit, Taylor said.
“There have been thousands of studies,” she said. “The jury is out on whether ESG delivers higher returns.”
Why have some Republican officials criticized ESG investing?
Republican politicians have criticized ESG because they say they consider it an effort to use financial tools for the purpose of advancing liberal political goals.
In some cases, Republicans have condemned the investing approach as a departure from free market capitalism, since it takes into account non-financial factors.
In a Wall Street Journal op-ed last year, former Vice President Mike Pence said, “The woke left is poised to conquer corporate America and has set in motion a strategy to enforce their radical environmental and social agenda on publicly traded corporations.”
“For the free market to thrive, it must be truly free,” he added.
In response to such attacks, proponents of ESG reject the notion that they’re deviating from investment fundamentals, since looming threats like climate change will have a profound impact on how the economy operates, Taylor said.
“Whether you’re on the left or right, you’re currently making the argument that you’re the rational capitalist and your opponent is the partisan hack,” she said.
Criticism leveled at ESG has not only come from the right, however. Progressives have criticized the practice for imposing vague or weak standards on companies, offering the imprimatur of virtue without the requirement of substantive action.
“Everybody hates ESG,” Taylor said. “The left hates ESG because they say we should not just think about issues when they have an impact on a company’s bottom line. There’s an imperative to address racism and climate change.
In response to criticism of ESG, BlackRock told ABC News in a statement: “Over the past year, BlackRock has been subject to campaigns suggesting we are either ‘too progressive’ or ‘too conservative’ in how we manage our clients’ money. We are neither. We are a fiduciary.”
“We put our clients’ interests first and deliver the investment choices and performance they need. We will not let these campaigns sway us from delivering for our clients,” the statement added.
What have Republican officials done to oppose ESG?
So far, attacks on ESG have primarily arisen at the state level, where some Republican-led states have divested their pension funds from firms that engage in ESG investing, while others have put forward legislation that would ban any public entity from carrying out financial business with such firms, including routine local policy decisions like raising money through selling bonds.
In August, 19 state attorneys general sent a letter to Fink criticizing the firm’s use of ESG criteria in overseeing state pension funds. That month, DeSantis approved a resolution that eliminates the consideration of ESG from decisions used in managing Florida’s pension investments.
On Monday, DeSantis took the effort further, proposing a set of measures that prohibit the consideration of ESG criteria by financial institutions in Florida, as well as banning the use of such criteria in all investments made at the state and local level, among other provisions.
“By applying arbitrary ESG financial metrics that serve no one except the companies that created them, elites are circumventing the ballot box to implement a radical ideological agenda,” DeSantis said in a statement on Monday.
Republican states face financial consequences for such measures, Henisz said, noting the higher fees charged by smaller financial institutions that forego ESG investing. Texas cities will pay between $303 million and $532 million in additional interest on $32 billion in bonds due to the state’s ESG ban, a Wharton School of Business study found in July.
“The cost to the taxpayers in these states will limit how far they go,” Henisz said. “It’s more rhetoric than reality in terms of how divided the financial services sector gets.”
