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ABBA Ask Trump to Stop Using their Songs, but Trump Team Says they Have the OK

Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump greets supporters at a town hall with former Democratic Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, Thursday, Aug. 29, 2024, in La Crosse, Wis. (AP Photo/Morry Gash)
Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump greets supporters at a town hall with former Democratic Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, Thursday, Aug. 29, 2024, in La Crosse, Wis. (AP Photo/Morry Gash)
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ABBA Ask Trump to Stop Using their Songs, but Trump Team Says they Have the OK

Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump greets supporters at a town hall with former Democratic Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, Thursday, Aug. 29, 2024, in La Crosse, Wis. (AP Photo/Morry Gash)
Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump greets supporters at a town hall with former Democratic Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, Thursday, Aug. 29, 2024, in La Crosse, Wis. (AP Photo/Morry Gash)

Swedish supergroup ABBA has asked Donald Trump to stop using their music at campaign rallies, but the Republican presidential nominee's campaign says it has permission.
“ABBA has recently discovered the unauthorized use of their music and videos at a Trump event through videos that appeared online," said a statement to The Associated Press from the band, whose hits include “Waterloo,” “The Winner Takes It All” and “Money, Money, Money.”
"As a result, ABBA and its representative has promptly requested the removal and deletion of such content. No request has been received; therefore, no permission or license has been granted.”
A spokesman for the Trump campaign said it had obtained a license. “The campaign had a license to play ABBA music through our agreement with BMI and ASCAP,” the spokesperson told the AP.
ABBA joins a long list of performers who’ve objected to Trump using their songs. Ahead of the 2020 election, that included Bruce Springsteen, Rihanna, Phil Collins, Pharrell, John Fogerty, Neil Young, Eddy Grant, Panic! at the Disco, R.E.M. and Guns N’ Roses.
This cycle, Celine Dion has asked the candidate to stop using “My Heart Will Go On” and Beyoncé blocked Trump from using her song “Freedom” in a campaign video. In 2016, Adele asked Trump to quit playing her songs at political rallies.
Campaigns don’t need an artist’s express permission to play their songs at rallies as long as the political organization or the venue has gotten what’s known as a blanket license from the performing rights organizations ASCAP and BMI.
Swedish daily newspaper Svenska Dagbladet said its reporter in July attended a Trump rally in Minnesota where “The Winner Takes it All” was played. Universal Music in Sweden said videos had surfaced of ABBA’s music being played at least at one Trump event.
ABBA, who have scored 20 songs in the Billboard Hot 100, mostly in the 1970s and 1980s, released a comeback album, “Voyage,” in 2021.

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Varieties

NASA Delivers Harsh Assessment of Botched Boeing Starliner Test Flight

NASA duo Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams were stuck on the ISS for nine months. Handout / NASA TV/AFP/File
NASA duo Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams were stuck on the ISS for nine months. Handout / NASA TV/AFP/File
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NASA Delivers Harsh Assessment of Botched Boeing Starliner Test Flight

NASA duo Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams were stuck on the ISS for nine months. Handout / NASA TV/AFP/File
NASA duo Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams were stuck on the ISS for nine months. Handout / NASA TV/AFP/File

NASA on Thursday blamed what it called engineering vulnerabilities in Boeing's Starliner spacecraft along with internal agency mistakes in a sharply critical report assessing a botched mission that left two astronauts stranded in space.

The US space agency labeled the 2024 test flight of the Starliner capsule a "Type A" mishap -- the same classification as the deadly Challenger and Columbia shuttle disasters -- a category that reflects the "potential for a significant mishap," it said.

The failures left a pair of NASA astronauts stranded aboard the International Space Station for nine months in a mission that captured global attention and became a political flashpoint.

"Starliner has design and engineering deficiencies that must be corrected, but the most troubling failure revealed by this investigation is not hardware. It's decision-making and leadership," said NASA administrator Jared Isaacman in a briefing.

"If left unchecked," he said, this mismanagement "could create a culture incompatible with human spaceflight."

The top space official said the investigation found that a concern for the reputation of Boeing's Starliner clouded an earlier internal probe into the incident.

"Programmatic advocacy exceeded reasonable bounds and place the mission, the crew and America's space program at risk in ways that were not fully understood at the time," Isaacman said.

He said Starliner currently "is less reliable for crew survival than other crewed vehicles" and that "NASA will not fly another crew on Starliner until technical causes are understood and corrected" and a problematic propulsion system is fixed.

But the administrator insisted that "NASA will continue to work with Boeing, as we do all of our partners that are undertaking test flights."

In a statement, Boeing said it has "made substantial progress on corrective actions for technical challenges we encountered and driven significant cultural changes across the team that directly align with the findings in the report."

- 'We failed them' -

Isaacman also had harsh words for internal conduct at NASA.

"We managed the contract. We accepted the vehicle, we launched the crew to space. We made decisions from docking through post-mission actions," he told journalists.

"A considerable portion of the responsibility and accountability rests here."

In June 2024 Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams embarked on what was meant to be an eight-to-14-day mission. But this turned into nine months after propulsion problems emerged in orbit and the Starliner spacecraft was deemed unfit to fly them back.

The ex-Navy pilots were reassigned to the NASA-SpaceX Crew-9 mission. A Dragon spacecraft flew to the ISS that September with a team of two, rather than the usual four, to make room for the stranded pair.

The duo, both now retired, were finally able to arrive home safely in March 2025.

"They have so much grace, and they're so competent, the two of them, and we failed them," NASA associate administrator Amit Kshatriya told Thursday's briefing.

"The agency failed them."

Kshatriya said the details of the report were "hard to hear" but that "transparency" was the only path forward.

"This is not about pointing fingers," he said. "It's about making sure that we are holding each other accountable."

Both Boeing and SpaceX were commissioned to handle missions to the ISS more than a decade ago.

Varieties

Abandoned Baby Monkey Finds Comfort in Stuffed Orangutan

A baby Japanese macaque named Punch sits next to a stuffed orangutan at Ichikawa City Zoo, in Ichikawa, Chiba Prefecture, Japan, February 19, 2026. REUTERS/Kim Kyung-Hoon
A baby Japanese macaque named Punch sits next to a stuffed orangutan at Ichikawa City Zoo, in Ichikawa, Chiba Prefecture, Japan, February 19, 2026. REUTERS/Kim Kyung-Hoon
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Abandoned Baby Monkey Finds Comfort in Stuffed Orangutan

A baby Japanese macaque named Punch sits next to a stuffed orangutan at Ichikawa City Zoo, in Ichikawa, Chiba Prefecture, Japan, February 19, 2026. REUTERS/Kim Kyung-Hoon
A baby Japanese macaque named Punch sits next to a stuffed orangutan at Ichikawa City Zoo, in Ichikawa, Chiba Prefecture, Japan, February 19, 2026. REUTERS/Kim Kyung-Hoon

At a zoo outside Tokyo, the monkey enclosure has become a must-see attraction thanks to an inseparable pair: Punch, a baby Japanese macaque, and his stuffed orangutan companion.

Punch's mother abandoned the macaque when he was born seven months ago at the Ichikawa City Zoo and when an onlooker noticed and alerted zookeepers, they swung into action.

Japanese baby macaques typically cling to their mothers to build muscle strength and for a ‌sense of security, ‌so Punch needed a swift intervention, zookeeper ‌Kosuke ⁠Shikano said. The keepers ⁠experimented with substitutes including rolled-up towels and other stuffed animals before settling on the orange, bug-eyed orangutan, sold by Swedish furniture brand IKEA.

“This stuffed animal has relatively long hair and several easy places to hold," Shikano said. "We thought that its resemblance to a monkey might help ⁠Punch integrate back into the troop later ‌on, and that’s why ‌we chose it."

Punch has rarely been seen without it since, ‌dragging the cuddly toy everywhere even though it is ‌bigger than him, and delighting fans who have flocked to the zoo since videos of the two went viral, Reuters reported.

“Seeing Punch on social media, abandoned by his parents but still trying ‌so hard, really moved me," said 26-year-old nurse Miyu Igarashi. "So when I got the ⁠chance to ⁠meet up with a friend today, I suggested we go see Punch together.”

Shikano thinks Punch's mother abandoned him because of the extreme heat in July when she gave birth.

Punch has had some differences with the other monkeys as he has tried to communicate with them, but zookeepers say that is part of the learning process and he is steadily integrating with the troop.

"I think there will come a day when he no longer needs his stuffed toy," Shikano said.

Varieties

Trump Says he’s Ordering Release of Data on UFOs, Aliens

US President Donald Trump speaks aboard Air Force One (AP)
US President Donald Trump speaks aboard Air Force One (AP)
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Trump Says he’s Ordering Release of Data on UFOs, Aliens

US President Donald Trump speaks aboard Air Force One (AP)
US President Donald Trump speaks aboard Air Force One (AP)

US President Donald Trump said on Thursday he is ordering federal agencies to begin “identifying and releasing” government files related to UFOs and aliens, a move sought for decades by some Americans.

“Based on the tremendous interest shown, I will be directing the Secretary of War, and other relevant Departments and Agencies, to begin the process of identifying and releasing Government files related to alien and extraterrestrial life, unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP), and unidentified flying objects (UFOs),” Trump posted on his Truth Social platform.

Trump claimed earlier Thursday that his predecessor, former President Barack Obama, made classified information public when he confirmed the existence of extraterrestrial life.

“He gave classified information. He's not supposed to be doing that,” he told reporters on Air Force One. “He made a big mistake.”

During an ⁠interview with podcast host Brian Tyler Cohen released ‌on Saturday, Obama was asked if aliens were real.

“They're real, but I haven't seen them, and they're not being kept in ... Area 51. There's no underground facility unless there's this enormous conspiracy and they hid it from the president of the United States,” Obama said.

Area ⁠51 is a classified Air Force facility in Nevada that fringe theorists have speculated holds alien bodies and a crashed spaceship. CIA archives released in 2013 said it was a test site for top-secret spy planes.

“I saw no evidence during my presidency that extraterrestrials have made contact with us. Really!” Obama said in an Instagram post on Sunday.

In the post, Obama explained his belief that aliens exist by saying the statistical odds of life beyond Earth were high because the universe is so ⁠vast. He added that the chances of extraterrestrial life visiting Earth were low given the distance.

Following his comments ⁠on Obama, Trump added that he had not seen evidence that aliens exist, saying, “I don't know ⁠if they're ⁠real or not.”