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Pierre Thomas' journey to uncover family history of enslavement

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Journey keyboardist asks judge to resolve deadlock with band’s lead guitarist

FILE - Arnel Pineda, Marco Mendoza, Jonathan Cain, and Neal Schon, of the band Journey, perform at Lollapalooza, July 31, 2021, at Grant Park in Chicago. (Photo by Rob Grabowski/Invision/AP, File)

FILE - Journey’s Jonathan Cain performs during a concert, Aug. 6, 2022, at the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio. (AP Photo/David Dermer, File)

FILE - Journey’s Arnel Pineda, right, and Neal Schon, left, perform, Aug. 6, 2022, at the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio. (AP Photo/David Dermer, File)

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DOVER, Del. (AP) — The rock band Journey has compiled an impressive list of hits over the past 50 years, but the song that might now be resonating the loudest for some band and crew members is “Separate Ways.”

The latest in a series of legal disputes with band founder and lead guitarist Neal Schon , longtime keyboardist Jonathan Cain is asking a Delaware judge to resolve a deadlock involving Freedom 2020, a company formed three years ago to oversee tour-related finances.

According to court filings, Schon is president of Freedom 2020, but he and Cain each holds a 50% stake in the company. In a petition filed last week, Cain said he and Schon “fundamentally disagree” on the management and operation of the company. He wants the court to appoint a custodian to act as an independent, deadlock-breaking director.

Cain’s attorneys also asked the judge to fast-track the case amid the band’s current 50th Anniversary Freedom Tour, which concludes Nov. 17 in London. During a hearing Wednesday, Cain’s attorney Sidney Liebesman told Vice Chancellor J. Travis Laster that the current situation is “dysfunctional.”

“It is in crisis,” Liebesman said. “The damage is taking place during the tour.”

Liebesman complained that Schon is wasting company assets and believes that, as president of Freedom 2020, “he can do whatever he wants.”

“It is his self-interest that is driving his decision-making,” Liebesman said.

In a court filing Monday, Schon’s attorneys said many of Cain’s allegations have no basis. They specifically rejected allegations that the tour’s production company and vendors weren’t being paid on time.

“Petitioner’s allegations that the company faces imminent irreparable harm from a purported inability of the company to meet its financial obligations has no basis in fact,” according to Schon’s attorneys, who will file a more complete response to Cain’s petition on Monday.

“Our client denies that there’s been any mismanagement,” Schon’s attorney Jack Yoskowitz told Laster, adding that any dysfunction has been caused by Cain acting in his own self-interest, including making allegations to the press that harm the band.

Laster scheduled a final hearing in the case to begin on Sept. 3, timed with Labor Day weekend, as sought by Cain’s attorneys. Schon’s attorneys sought a hearing in late September or early October, after the North American leg of the tour ends.

Cain’s attorneys say a quick resolution is needed because the deadlock has become “a very much public battle” that also has created a “toxic internal environment” during the tour.

“Rather than focusing on the band’s performances during a major international tour, the band’s business manager, lead vocalist and crew members now find themselves caught in the middle of the directors’ disputes, afraid of performing their job responsibilities, and pressured to align with one director or another,” they wrote.

Cain’s attorneys say the dispute also threatens the band’s reputation, could negatively affect its fan base, and could further strain relationships with vendors and personnel.

“Indeed, the band has lost multiple members of its crew because of such tensions over the past several months,” they wrote, adding that the company’s new business manager, its seventh, was hired two months ago.

Cain says Schon’s desire to take a $1.5 million advance from promoter AEG Presents LLC to cover tour expenses, and his opposition to Cain’s proposal for a more modest advance of $500,000, has caused “a major rift.” He also accuses Schon of “exorbitant and wasteful spending” on hotels and airfare for band and crew members. Schon, for example, has ignored the company limit of $1,500 per night for hotel accommodations and has spent up to $10,000 per night for hotel rooms for him and his wife, according to Cain.

Cain also alleges that Schon allows crew members to stay in hotel rooms during tour stops in or near their home cities, and to fly in business class. Schon also has used the company credit card for personal expenses and incurred hundreds of thousands of dollars in costs for private jets for himself, his wife and various crew members, according to Cain.

The dispute also has even spilled over to creative differences, including Cain’s disagreement with Schon’s selection of a substitute drummer for a Toronto performance last week, and whether Cain should play rhythm guitar during performances of the 1978 song “Wheel in the Sky.”

“Even if that decision were within the scope of Freedom 2020’s business, which seems highly doubtful, matters of song arrangement are objectively not a type of disagreement that threatens the company with irreparable harm,” Schon’s attorneys wrote.

The two band members have been at odds for several years. In 2022, for example, Schon sent a cease-and-desist letter after Cain performed the 1981 hit “Don’t Stop Believin’” at former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate. Schon said Cain, whose wife was a spiritual adviser to Trump, had no right to use the Journey brand for politics. Cain countered that Schon was the one damaging the band’s brand through his bullying tactics and reckless spending.

Tim Walz’s journey from high school football coach to VP candidate

Walz, formerly a little-known Midwestern governor, faces the urgent task of introducing himself to the country with only about three months until Election Day.

Some 20 years ago, a lawyer named Kamala Harris won her first political race, becoming the first Black and South Asian woman elected district attorney of San Francisco in 2003 after campaigning on criminal justice policy changes, including opposition to the death penalty.

Halfway across the country, in Mankato, Minn., a high school teacher named Tim Walz had a lower-profile but no less fraught daily mandate: overseeing his social studies classes, coaching the football team and occasionally wrangling the lunchroom .

The unlikely convergence of Harris’s and Walz’s paths would take place more than two decades later, with the news Tuesday that Harris had selected Walz , now the governor of Minnesota, to be her running mate.

The much-anticipated decision creates a ticket with two candidates from strikingly different backgrounds: Harris, 59, is Black and Indian American and spent much of her career as an attorney and prosecutor in deep-blue California. Meanwhile, Walz, 60, is a White veteran and hunter who has spent most of his life in rural Nebraska and Minnesota — and is the first Democratic vice-presidential pick since 1964 who did not go to law school.

2024 presidential election

Walz’s foray into politics came later in life: Born and raised in rural Nebraska, after high school he enlisted in the Army National Guard, where he would serve for the next 24 years. After losing his father to lung cancer at age 19 — which he would later say shaped his views on health care — Walz enrolled in Chadron State College in Nebraska and graduated with a teaching degree in 1989.

Walz met his future wife, Gwen, while teaching after college, and they moved in 1996 to her home state of Minnesota. He would stay at Mankato West High School as a teacher and football coach for the next decade or so, until he decided to run for public office — reportedly motivated to do so after he and some students were denied entry to a 2004 George W. Bush campaign event because organizers found out they were Democrats.

In 2006, Walz won the race to represent Minnesota’s 1st Congressional District, flipping a Republican seat in a rural part of the state.

In Congress, Walz positioned himself as a rare moderate Democrat who was a strong supporter of gun rights, earning him an A rating from the National Rifle Association. In his freshman year, he praised then-President George W. Bush for proposing to expand the Army National Guard forces but also criticized Bush for his lack of a clear mission in the Iraq War and opposed his plan to send additional U.S. troops to Iraq.

“As the mission in Iraq has evolved from [finding] weapons of mass destruction to forming a democratic government to now just stabilizing to the point where the Iraqis can take over, the president has consistently been wrong on the plan on this and … I have deep concerns in that because the devil is in the details,” Walz said in 2007. “Giving us what the end may look like is one thing but actually delivering those — we need some accountability on that.”

Walz would win reelection to his seat five more times before leaving the House to run for governor. In the 2018 gubernatorial race, Walz defeated his Republican opponent by more than 10 percentage points.

By then, Walz had shifted to the left on several key issues, including on guns. After the February 2018 shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., Walz said his then-17-year-old daughter, Hope, urged him to do more to prevent gun violence. On the campaign trail as he ran for governor that year, Walz said he in turn donated all the money he had ever taken from the NRA to charity and publicly pushed for background checks and eliminating reciprocal-carry agreements between states.

“I know basic gun safety isn’t a threat to my rights. It’s about keeping our kids safe,” Walz said last month about his evolution on the issue. “I had an A rating from the NRA. Now I get straight F’s. And I sleep just fine.”

Hope, now 23, has since made frequent appearances in videos posted to Walz’s social media accounts. In a recent MSNBC interview on Harris’s ascent, Walz said his daughter had told him it was “a brat summer” and he joked he didn’t know what she meant “but I’m sure it’s a good thing” — a reference to pop singer Charli XCX’s album that Democrats have embraced as they boost Harris to young voters.

In 2022, Walz handily won reelection to his second term while Democrats also flipped the state Senate, securing a trifecta for Democrats in St. Paul that has allowed them to pass liberal priorities. Democrats under Walz’s governorship have enshrined the right to abortion , allowed undocumented immigrants to obtain a driver’s license, expanded background checks for gun transfers, legalized recreational marijuana and offered protections for people seeking or providing gender-affirming health care.

Walz also signed an executive order that removes the college degree requirement for 75 percent of Minnesota’s state jobs, a move that garnered bipartisan support and several states have also adopted. Democrats have also offered funding for free meals at schools and free college tuition for students from low-income families in Minnesota.

Asked in a July 28 interview with CNN if such policies would be fodder for conservative attacks, Walz responded sarcastically: “What a monster. Kids are eating and having full bellies, so they can go learn, and women are making their own health-care decisions.”

He later added: “So, if that’s where they want to label me, I’m more than happy to take the [liberal] label.”

In the days after President Biden announced he would no longer seek reelection , Walz made numerous appearances on television, and his folksy demeanor and willingness to use plain language to criticize former president Donald Trump and Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio) helped catapult him onto Harris’s vice-presidential shortlist. In interviews, Walz cast Trump and Vance as not just a threat to democracy but, simply, “weird,” an attack that quickly caught on for Democrats and that struck a nerve for Republicans.

“Who’s asking for this crazy stuff? Who’s asking to raise the price of insulin? Who’s asking to get rid of birth control? … Who’s sitting in a bar in Racine, Wisconsin, saying, ‘You know what we really need? We need to ban “Animal Farm.”’ Nobody is!” Walz told MSNBC last month , later adding: “Yes, they’re weird. They prove that every day. It’s an observation.”

Walz, formerly a little-known Midwestern governor, now faces the urgent task of introducing himself to the country with only about three months until Election Day. Harris and Walz held their first rally together on Tuesday in Philadelphia, the first stop in a four-day tour of battleground states.

For Walz, the timing will coincide with the “excitement in the air” that the start of a new school year brings, he said in a video posted last week .

“As a football coach, we’re back on offense,” Walz said, referring to Democratic optimism. “Vice President Harris is bringing the energy, making sure she’s going to be there to protect the democracy and get folks fired up, making sure we’re protecting reproductive rights, working for the middle class and bringing back some joy to our politics — so get out there, feel the excitement, get engaged.”

Election 2024

Follow live updates on the 2024 election and candidates Vice President Harris and former president Donald Trump from our reporters on the campaign trail and in Washington.

VP picks: Harris has officially secured the Democratic presidential nomination and chose Walz, a Midwestern Democrat and former high school teacher , to be her running mate. GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump chose Sen. JD Vance (Ohio) , a rising star in the Republican Party. Here’s where JD Vance and Tim Walz stand on key policies .

Presidential polls: Check out how Harris and Trump stack up, according to The Washington Post’s presidential polling averages of seven battleground states.

Paris 2024 Olympics: Women's football finals - Schedule, preview, and how to watch live

T he grand finale of the women's football tournament at Paris 2024 is almost here, and it promises to be a match for the ages. The United States Women's National Team (USWNT) will go head-to-head with Brazil in a battle for the gold medal. This is the third time these two giants of women’s football have met in an Olympic final, and the stakes couldn’t be higher.

Match Preview: USA vs Brazil

Usa's path to the final.

The USWNT has been unstoppable so far in the tournament, winning all five of their matches. Led by coach Emma Hayes, the team has demonstrated both attacking flair and rock-solid defence. They dominated Group B with three straight wins, including a 2-1 victory over Australia.

In the knockout rounds, the USA secured 1-0 wins over Japan and Germany, showing their ability to grind out results when it matters most. The USWNT is determined to add a fifth to their collection with four Olympic gold medals already in the bag.

Brazil's Journey to the Gold Medal Match

Brazil’s journey to the final has been one of grit and determination. After a challenging group stage where they only just made it through as one of the best third-placed teams, Brazil came alive in the knockout rounds. They edged out host nation France with a 1-0 win in the quarter-finals, then put on a dazzling display to beat Spain 4-2 in the semi-finals - all without their star player Marta, who was suspended.

This is Brazil’s third time in an Olympic final, and they are hungry for their first gold. Their performances in the knockout stages have shown they have the heart and skill to go all the way.

Key Match Details

Fixture: usa vs brazil, date: sunday, 10 august, kick-off time: 4:00 pm bst, venue: parc des princes, paris, head-to-head: usa vs brazil.

When it comes to Olympic finals, the USWNT has had the upper hand, winning both of their previous encounters with Brazil—in Athens 2004 and Beijing 2008. Overall, these teams have met 40 times, with the USA winning 32 of those matches. Brazil has only managed to win three times, but they’ll be looking to change that in Paris.

How to Watch the USA vs Brazil Gold Medal Match

If you’re keen to catch all the action live, here’s where you can watch:

• Europe: Discovery Eurosport
• Australia: Nine
• France: France Télévisions
• Germany: ARD/ZDF
• Japan: Fuji TV/NHK/Nippon TV/TBS/TV Asahi/TV Tokyo
• MENA Region: beIN Sports
• New Zealand: SKY NZ
• South Africa: SuperSport
• United Kingdom: BBC
• United States: NBC

Additionally,  DAZN  users in Italy, Germany and Spain can watch the match live on the platform. 

As the USA and Brazil prepare to face off for Olympic gold, the anticipation is at an all-time high. The USWNT is looking to continue their dominance in women’s football, while Brazil is aiming to make history with their first gold medal. Whether you're rooting for the USA or Brazil, this is a match you’ll want to see. Make sure to tune in via your local broadcaster or DAZN to witness what promises to be a thrilling showdown.

BREAKING: Deputy who killed Sonya Massey to remain in jail; sheriff steps down

With Harris and Walz, Democrats put abortion rights at the top of the agenda

Months before he was selected as Vice President Kamala Harris’ running mate , Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz toured a Planned Parenthood clinic in his state alongside Harris — the first time a sitting president or vice president had visited an abortion provider.

That visit in March put Minnesota’s efforts to safeguard reproductive rights in the spotlight.

Now, Harris and Walz represent a Democratic ticket that vocally supports access to abortion and fertility treatment, during an election in which those issues are expected to be important to voters and a focus of many Democratic campaigns.

Minnesota was the first state to pass a law protecting abortion rights after the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision in 2022. The law, w h ich Walz signed in January 2023, stipulates that local governments — cities, counties, towns, etc. — cannot regulate a person’s choice to obtain an abortion or other reproductive services.

A few months later, Walz signed a second abortion-rights law — that statute prohibits the arrest of abortion providers in Minnesota and protects people who travel there to avoid another state’s abortion ban. According to the law, Minnesota officials do not have to turn over a patient’s health records in response to another state’s subpoena or court order. 

The share of people who traveled from other states to Minnesota for abortions tripled between 2020 and 2023, according to data from the Guttmacher Institute , a research organization that supports abortion access. 

Abortion-rights advocates pointed to these actions when expressing support for Walz on Tuesday.

“By choosing Gov. Walz as her running mate, Vice President Harris has put forward the most pro-reproductive freedom ticket in history,” Alexis McGill Johnson, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood Action Fund, said in a statement. “Gov. Walz is a longtime champion of sexual and reproductive health care and has been a fierce abortion rights champion as governor.”  

Minnesota, which traditionally votes for Democratic presidential candidates, has some of the most progressive abortion policies in the country. Abortion has been legal there since the Roe decision in 1974. In 1995, the Minnesota Supreme Court ruled that abortion rights were protected by the state’s constitution. 

Since Roe was overturned, the state has adopted additional measures to make abortions easier to obtain. In July 2022, a district court judge struck down several requirements that hindered access , including a rule that only physicians could perform abortions and a mandatory 24-hour waiting period. Abortions are also covered by state Medicaid funds. 

As governor, Walz also slashed funding for a grant program under the Minnesota Department of Health that supported so-called crisis pregnancy centers, which offer pregnant people counseling and supplies while often trying to persuade them not to get abortions. Some of these centers have been known to provide inaccurate or misleading information .

National Right to Life, the largest anti-abortion organization in the U.S., said Tuesday that Walz’s move to defund crisis pregnancy centers in his state was a “huge blow” to families.

“If elected, a Harris-Walz Administration would push for the most extreme abortion agenda policies of any administration,” Carol Tobias, president of National Right to Life, said in a statement. 

In addition to his support for abortion access, Walz has championed in vitro fertilization. Many abortion rights supporters worry that access to the fertility treatment is under threat post-Dobbs, since IVF often involves discarding embryos due to genetic abnormalities or because they are no longer needed. Some who believe in the notion of fetal personhood have opposed that practice. National Right to Life, for instance, says frozen embryos should be given to other couples rather than destroyed. 

Walz told the Minneapolis Star Tribune in March that his two children were born with the help of fertility treatments, which his wife had been receiving for seven years before getting pregnant with their daughter.

In February, Walz criticized an Alabama Supreme Court ruling that said embryos created through IVF were considered children, meaning people could theoretically be sued for destroying them. The ruling prompted several IVF providers in Alabama to pause their services; they resumed once the state passed legal protections for fertility doctors and clinics.

“This issue is deeply personal to our family and so many others,” Walz wrote on Facebook at the time. “Don’t let these guys get away with this by telling you they support IVF when their handpicked judges oppose it. Actions speak louder than words, and their actions are clear.”

Walz has also expressed support for a bill introduced last year in the Minnesota House of Representatives that would require Minnesota health plans that offer maternity coverage to also cover fertility treatment. He has also called for language to be added to the Minnesota abortion-rights law signed in January 2023 that would further guarantee access to IVF and other fertility treatments.

Walz’s office did not respond to a request for comment. A representative for the Harris campaign said that restoring the protections that Roe afforded “is the position of the ticket.”

Aria Bendix is the breaking health reporter for NBC News Digital.

Harris campaign highlights Tim Walz family's IVF journey

Kamala Harris introduced her VP running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz , on Tuesday, spotlighting his personal experience with in-vitro fertilization (IVF). 

Her campaign emphasized how Walz and his wife, Gwen, overcame years of fertility challenges to conceive their daughter, Hope, through IVF. This could indicate a strategy for the newly formed ticket moving forward.

“Governor Walz and Mrs. Walz struggled with years of fertility challenges and had their daughter, Hope, through reproductive health care like IVF — further cementing his commitment to ensuring all Americans have access to this care,” the Harris campaign said in a statement .

More: Tim Walz is Kamala Harris' VP pick: Minnesota governor named running mate: Live updates

In February, the Alabama Supreme Court ruled that frozen embryos outside the womb are “children,” citing an 1872 law. This ruling sparked concerns about the future of IVF in the state, as clinics could face wrongful death lawsuits if anything happened to an embryo.

Although former President Donald Trump criticized the Alabama ruling and expressed support for IVF, his running mate, Sen. JD Vance , previously voted against the Right to IVF Act, which would have expanded nationwide access to fertility treatment. 

On World IVF Day, July 25, Walz called Vance’s decision to vote against the bill “a direct attack” on families like his. 

“Even if you’ve never gone through the hell of infertility, someone you know has,” he wrote on X . “When Gwen and I were having trouble getting pregnant, the anxiety and frustration blotted out the sun... JD Vance opposing the miracle of IVF is a direct attack on my family and so many others.”

Jeremy Yurow is a politics reporting fellow based in Hawaii for the USA TODAY Network. You can reach him at [email protected] or on X, formerly Twitter @JeremyYurow

Shivani Verma (Brahma Kumari) Age, Husband, Family, Biography & More

Some lesser known facts about shivani verma.

• Shivani Verma, best known as BK Shivani, was born and brought up in Pune, Maharashtra.
• She is a gold-medalist from Pune University in Electronics Engineering (batch-1994).
• She also served for two years as a lecturer in Bharati Vidyapeeth College of Engineering, Pune.
• She has been a Brahma Kumaris teacher and a member of the ‘Brahma Kumaris World Spiritual University’ since 1995.
• Initially, she started working on the back end production of Brahmakumari television presentations for Sony TV.
• In 2007, she was asked to start answering viewers queries herself due to the unavailability of teachers which led to the television program titled, “Awakening with Brahma Kumaris”.
• She now promotes organ donation and does parenting programs at the Delhi Islamic Cultural Centre.
• Her TV series-‘Happiness Unlimited’ was adapted into a best seller book by the same name.