In case you missed it, Tyler Hubbard made a stop on NBC’s TODAY this week to perform his single, “5 Foot 9.” You can watch his performance now.
Randy Rogers Band celebrated the beginning of football season Wednesday with “Heart For Just One Team,” a new song that’s a tribute to their favorite football team: the Dallas Cowboys.
Danielle Bradbery has a new song, called “A Special Place,” coming out on Friday.
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Dua Lipa is trying to wiggle out of another lawsuit over “Levitating.” The Grammy-winning singer was sued by songwriters L. Russell Brown and Sandy Linzer, who claim she copied parts of their 1979 single “Wiggle and Giggle All Night” and their 1980 song “Don Diablo.”
Rolling Stone reports Dua’s attorney, Christine Lepera, petitioned Judge Katherine Polk Failla to dismiss the suit.
Linzer and Brown argue “Levitating” is “substantially similar” to their songs, adding it copies the “signature melody” and “compositional elements” of their tracks.
Lepera claims those elements are commonplace in music and cannot be protected. “The alleged similarities — a descending scale in which each pitch is repeated on evenly spaced notes, and a common clave rhythm — are unprotectable, and the result of the coincidental use of basic musical building blocks,” she argued.
Lepera also argued neither Dua, nor her song collaborators, would have heard or come across Brown and Linzer’s songs prior to writing “Levitating” because they’re obscure. She says Brown and Linzer’s suit “fails to plausibly allege a particular chain of events leading to access.”
“With respect to ‘Wiggle,’ the complaint merely alleges it achieved certain success in the Netherlands four decades ago. This does not establish ‘saturation,’ and there is no allegation that the songwriters of ‘Levitating’ were in the Netherlands — or, indeed, had even been born — at that time,” Lepera continued.
She made similar comparisons to “Diablo,” which “has been performed at certain times in Latin America.”
Both songs are available on streaming, but she argues they’re competing with “many millions of musical recordings.”
Lepera adds “Diablo” wasn’t registered with the U.S. Copyright Office prior to the suit being filed and argued, “A complaint that fails to do so must be dismissed.”
Polk Failla has not yet ruled on the matter.
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(WASHINGTON) — As states continue to regulate abortion rights across the country, abortion rights groups and state legislatures in Indiana and South Carolina are at odds amid fallout from the U.S. Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade.
Indiana abortion providers filed a lawsuit in Monroe County Circuit Court on Tuesday seeking to put an end to the state’s abortion ban before it goes into effect on Sept. 15. The South Carolina State House approved a near-total ban on abortion on Wednesday after the state’s Supreme Court temporarily blocked a 6-week ban earlier this month, while the court case moves forward. The House bill now heads to the state Senate for approval.
In a lawsuit, Indiana abortion providers claim the state’s ban, signed into law by Gov. Eric Holcomb on Aug. 5, violates the “fundamental” rights of abortion providers and patients protected under the Indiana Constitution. Indiana was the first state to pass a ban since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe.
The suit alleges the law infringes on residents’ right to privacy, violating Indiana’s guarantee of equal privileges and immunities and violate the Constitution’s due course of law clause because of its unconstitutionally vague language.
The Indiana lawsuit filed against members of the Medical Licensing Board of Indiana and county prosecutors, was filed by Planned Parenthood, the Lawyering Project, the ACLU of Indiana and WilmerHale on behalf of abortion providers including Planned Parenthood, Women’s Med Group Professional Corp and All-Options.
“The abortion ban that the legislature rushed through during a special session — nearly immediately after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade — is both dangerous and incredibly cruel,” Alexis McGill Johnson, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, said in a statement.
Indiana’s abortion ban, Senate Bill 1, is a near-total ban on abortion, making it a level 5 felony to provide abortion services, only allowing three exceptions, according to the lawsuit. Providers who violate the ban will have their license revoked and could face between one to six years in prison and a fine of up to $10,000.
Under the law, abortions up to certain stages in pregnancy are permitted if the pregnant woman’s life is in danger, the fetus is diagnosed with a fatal anomaly or if the pregnancy was a result of rape or incest, according to the lawsuit.
The lawsuit alleges that the ban will “severely limit access to abortion care, prohibiting nearly all pregnant [residents] from accessing care in Indiana.”
If the law goes into effect, “thousands” of Indiana residents who seek abortion care each year will have to disrupt their lives to travel out of state for care, “significantly delaying their abortions and causing them to incur higher expenses,” the lawsuit alleges.
The ban also eliminates abortion clinics in the state, further restricting access, the lawsuit says.
“By slashing the number of facilities providing abortion, which will be limited to hospitals concentrated in and around Indianapolis, S.B. 1 will materially burden even the few people who may qualify for the ban’s extremely limited exceptions,” the lawsuit alleges.
The cost of an abortion procedure increases as the pregnancy advances, so patients pay more for care when they have to wait, the lawsuit says.
The lawsuit also warns that patients unable to travel will “resort to self-managing their abortion outside of the medical system” or be forced to continue a pregnancy against their will.
The state’s medical licensing board and the Indiana Prosecuting Attorneys Council did not immediately respond to ABC News’ request for comment.
The South Carolina State House on Wednesday, meanwhile, approved a near-total ban on abortion which only provides exceptions for pregnancies that are a result of rape and incest. If the bill is approved by the State Senate, it would head to the governor’s desk for approval.
In a statement to ABC News, South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster’s office said he will “carefully consider any legislation that ultimately reaches his desk, but he believes this is a good starting point for the Senate to begin its deliberations.”
In February 2021, the Republican governor signed a package of bills into law that ban abortions after fetal cardiac activity is detected. The ban took effect June 27 — after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.
The law was temporarily blocked by the South Carolina Supreme Court while justices review a lawsuit filed by Planned Parenthood in July that alleges the ban is an invasion of privacy and violation of equal protection under the state constitution.
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Kate Bush‘s “Running Up That Hill” has been running long enough to be named Spotify’s Song of the Summer.
The 1985 single, which became a resurgent hit this year thanks to its placement in the fourth season of Stranger Things, was the most played song on Spotify in the U.S. during the summer, which the streaming service measured between May 29 and August 29.
“Running Up That Hill” was also #2 on the global Song of the Summer ranking, sitting behind only Harry Styles‘ “As It Was.”
Since Stranger Things season 4 premiered in May, “Running Up That Hill” has given Bush her first-ever top-five Billboard Hot 100 hit and broke several records on its way to #1 in the British artist’s home country.
The renewed interest in “Running Up that Hill” was so massive that the normally press-shy Bush has given several public statements commenting on its newfound popularity and even gave a rare interview.
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What was supposed to be a luxury cruise aboard the Diamond Princess in January 2020 turned into a floating horror story when passengers and crew members were infected with COVID-19.
That’s the subject of Peacock’s upcoming documentary Hell of a Cruise, the teaser for which just dropped. The streamer teases, “When passengers and crew members boarded … they had no idea that the deadly novel coronavirus boarded the ship with them,” and what began as a floating paradise became a “claustrophobic nightmare.”
Passengers and crew members were quarantined aboard the ship for 14 days, many in tiny rooms, turning the ship into a floating prison.
“The Diamond Princess was ground zero” for the pandemic, one interviewee says in the snippet.
The film boasts hours of never-before-seen self-shot footage from people who found themselves stranded aboard the ship, as case numbers rose — and fear and uncertainty reached epidemic levels.
Making matters worse, a week after their trip to nowhere began, other cruise ships were put to sea, “where the same nightmare occurred again.”
The documentary debuts September 14.
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Madam C.J. Walker, the first self-made female millionaire in the United Stats, is being honored by Mattel as the next female role model to be featured in Barbie’s line of Inspiring Women dolls.
Walker made her fortune beginning in 1910 in Indianapolis by developing a line of haircare products and cosmetics designed for Black women. In 1998, the U.S. Postal Service issued a Madam C. J. Walker commemorative stamp as part of its Black Heritage Series.
The Madam C.J. Walker doll features a rendition of the entrepreneur holding her original product, “Wonderful Hair Grower.”
Walker’s great-great granddaughter A’Lelia Bundles worked with Mattel on the collaboration and introduced the doll in an Instagram video.
“As a collector of Black dolls, I can tell you this really makes my heart sing!” she commented. Bundles is elated that Walker follows other trailblazing women in this special Barbie collection.
“I love that she joins Ida B. Wells, Rosa Parks, Maya Angelou, Sally Ride and Eleanor Roosevelt,” added Bundles, who wrote the 2001 biography On Her Own Ground: The Life and Times of Madam C. J. Walker.
The Barbie Inspiring Women Series pays tribute to incredible heroines of their time; courageous women who took risks, changed rules and paved the way for generations of girls to dream bigger than ever before.
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(NEW YORK) — Pennsylvania Senate hopeful John Fetterman recently attended a fundraiser in the Hamptons, a previously unreported appearance as he recovers from a stroke and ramps up to face Republican Dr. Mehmet Oz — whom he often attacks as an elitist celebrity versus his blue-collar style.
Photos posted to a public Instagram on Aug. 19 show Fetterman, Pennsylvania’s lieutenant governor, at a gathering in Amagansett on Long Island.
“Another fun one with our guy #johnfetterman #winning,” Quinn Blackwell wrote in a caption. Blackwell declined to comment when reached by phone; he also made his account private.
An account tagged in the photos, “jamesalexandernyc,” appears to belong to James Alexander, a director at the Cassia Group, according to a Linkedin page with his photo.
According to its website, Cassia Group is a private company that advances projects in various industries abroad, including energy ventures in oil-rich Middle Eastern countries.
Alexander did not respond to messages from ABC seeking comment, nor did Cassia Group when contacted by phone and email.
Suffolk County records for the address of the Hamptons home show that it was sold by a trust in Alexander’s name to Margaret Street LLC in 2012. Alexander’s name did not appear either in Federal Election Commission campaign finance data or on a list of Fetterman’s individual donors that spanned from June 2021 to June 2022.
A Fetterman campaign spokesperson, Joe Calvello, told ABC in a statement: “The only reason a dude like John would ever go to the Hamptons is because his campaign needs to raise money to fight back against the unprecedented onslaught of attacks and negative ads from Dr. Oz and his rich friends.”
Calvello did not answer specific questions about the fundraiser.
The pictures posted online from the event are standard fare, showing Fetterman — in his traditional hoodie — mingling with a group of people with name tags and posing with others in front of an outdoor pool. And it’s not, of course, unusual for Republicans and Democrats to raise money in the Hamptons during an election year.
Just this summer, according to CNBC, Democratic candidates from across the country attended or were scheduled to attend fundraisers there, including New York Gov. Kathy Hochul and gubernatorial hopefuls Stacey Abrams, of Georgia, and Wes Moore, of Maryland.
Oz, Fetterman’s opponent, has also spent time in the Hamptons and attended a July 4th weekend “white party” there this summer.
But Fetterman’s stop occurred as he has launched a number of high-profile attacks on Oz, accusing the former TV host of being out-of-touch with everyday voters in Pennsylvania — and more at home in the New York City area and its tony vacation enclaves.
“We just can’t be more different. We have a guy that lives in New Jersey, a guy that has — what is it, nine or 10 houses?” Fetterman told a crowd at a recent event in rural Mercer County, in one of his first in-person campaign appearances after his stroke in May.
Fetterman was in the Hamptons exactly one week after he returned to the trail at an energized rally in Erie as he continues to recover from his stroke. He has had a limited schedule since then, but he appeared at public events on consecutive days over the weekend — the first time he has done so since his health scare.
Some of Fetterman’s supporters downplayed his Hamptons visit.
Geraldine Eckert, who lives in Sharon, Pennsylvania, told ABC News that she wanted to do her own research on the event but said she “wouldn’t hold it against him.”
“If I were putting myself in Fetterman’s shoes, I guess I would go where I thought I could get money for my campaign and I would be honest with my constituents,” she added.
“He’s for the common people. He’s for the middle class. I can identify with him on a much easier scale than I can with any of the Republicans who are out there,” Jack Figaretti, a Democrat, told ABC News outside a campaign event.
Cassia Group, Alexander’s firm, appears to be engaged in business in conflict with some of Fetterman’s campaign issues. Cassia’s website touts work in metal mining and in various aspects of oil production, including “enhanced oil and gas recovery” and drilling. The website also described a 2016 project that involved collaboration with a firm linked to the Kuwaiti national oil company.
Fetterman’s website urges a “transition to clean energy as quickly as possible … in a way that preserves the union way of life for the thousands of workers.”
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Miley Cyrus deposited an impressive $14.5 million into her bank account after selling her home in Franklin, Tennessee.
Dirt reports the “Malibu” hitmaker can now claim to have the second-highest real estate deal of the year.
Reese Witherspoon has her beat after buying a home in an affluent Nashville neighborhood of Belle Meade.
It also should be noted Miley bought the home in 2017 for a deal — $5.8 million dollars, meaning she inflated the house’s price by a whopping 150 percent. Even better, Miley didn’t have to deal with open houses and showings to sell her home because this deal was made entirely off the market.
The five-bedroom, five-bathroom farmhouse-style home sits on a 33.5-acre lot. The abode offers roughly 7,000 square feet of living space as well as a detached barn-style guest house, which the publication believes could have been used as a recording studio.
The home sits at the end of a cul-de-sac and is fully gated. It offers 2 powder rooms, a kitchen with premium appliances, a master suite on the main floor with a soaking tub as well as a swimming pool and putting green.
Dirt also found out who bought the house: It’s Dairy Queen mogul Matt Frauenshuh, who owns the biggest DQ franchise in the world with over 200 stores.
This isn’t the only home Miley has parted ways with recently. She sold her home in Hidden Hills for $7.2 million last year and unloaded her home in Malibu for $1.7 million in 2020.
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Ashley Judd takes an unflinching look back at the traumatic final moments of Naomi Judd’s life in a new op-ed penned for The New York Times.
In it, she recounts the experience of finding her mother, who died by suicide: “The trauma of discovering and then holding her laboring body haunts my nights.”
She recalls feeling forced into cooperating with an investigation in the immediate aftermath of that devastating experience — never realizing, at the time, that the information she divulged could be made public.
“I felt cornered and powerless as law enforcement officers began questioning me while the last of my mother’s life was fading,” she writes, saying that she was forced to give four interviews to police the same day that Naomi died.
In the wake of the country legend’s death, her family members headed to court in an attempt to keep the records of Naomi’s death investigation sealed from the public. At the time of the op-ed’s publication, the family was still awaiting the court’s decision.
In the Times, she explains that privacy surrounding the day of Naomi’s death is an important part of preserving her dignity.
“And for those left behind, privacy avoids heaping further harm upon a family that is already permanently and painfully altered,” she continues.
Naomi died by suicide on April 30 at the age of 76. She used a firearm to end her life, a detail that Ashley subsequently shared during an emotional Good Morning America interview. The day after her death, Naomi and her daughter Wynonna were inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame for their work as The Judds.
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Anthrax won’t be thrashing through Europe this fall as planned.
The “Madhouse” metallers have announced that their upcoming tour of the continent has been canceled.
“Sadly due to ongoing logistical issues and 2022 costs that are out of our control, we have no other option but to cancel the European leg of our upcoming 2022 tour,” the group writes in a Facebook post.
Those who purchased tickets may receive a refund at point of purchase.
British Anthrax fans are in luck, though, as the band will still play their eight scheduled shows in the United Kingdom in September and October.
Anthrax has spent the summer touring the U.S. while celebrating the group’s 40th anniversary. The outing, which also included Black Label Society on the bill, just wrapped up over the weekend.
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