Getty ImagesThe man accused of brutally killing Laken Riley as she was on a morning run on the University of Georgia campus was formally indicted Wednesday, two-and-a-half months after her killing reverberated across the country. Jose Antonio Ibarra, an undocumented immigrant from Venezuela, was officially slapped with 10 charges, including felony murder, malice murder, kidnapping with bodily injury, and aggravated assault with intent to rape. Those charges had been expected for months, but prosecutors also issued Ibarra a surprise “peeping Tom” charge on Tuesday. His indictment alleged that he spied on an unnamed UGA staff member, going to an apartment near campus and looking through the woman’s window on the same morning Riley was murdered.Read more at The Daily Beast.

Photo Illustration by Erin O’Flynn/The Daily Beast/Getty ImagesOur long national nightmare is finally over. For the first time since the Obama administration—and lasting for more than a month—we did not have a Real Housewives series airing on Bravo.We Bravo fans did our best to survive. Checked in on each other. Gave hugs. Offered nod and knowing glances that said, “It’s going to be alright.” It’s been rough, but we’ve weathered this time together, knowing that the sunshine was coming after the storm: Finally, the new season of Real Housewives of New Jersey premiered Sunday night. We’re survivors.Of course, this is RHONJ—stormy weather is always in the forecast. And, if Sunday night’s premiere was any indication, we all would be wise to batten down the hatches for this new season.Read more at The Daily Beast.

Photo Illustration by Elizabeth Brockway/The Daily Beast/Reuters/Grant WoodSouth Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem reacted to outrage over her revelation that she shot her family’s “hated” 14-month-old dog dead by insisting that executing animals is just an unfortunate reality of farm life.But the leader of the farmers union in her own state says that’s a steaming pile of cow pies.“This is not a common thing at all,” South Dakota Farmers Union President Doug Sombke, a self-described “working class Democrat,” told The Daily Beast on Wednesday. “I don’t know where she comes off thinking that’s the right thing to do. It’s just not.”Read more at The Daily Beast.

WIN MCNAMEE/POOL/AFP via Getty ImagesDonald Trump wants everyone to know that he thinks it’s deeply unfair that a gag order is preventing him from making incendiary comments attacking witnesses, jurors, and court staff in his ongoing hush money trial.The former president took to Truth Social on Wednesday to lament the gag order, which he violated earlier this week resulting in a $1000 fine from Judge Juan Merchan, the 10th such infraction Trump has had to pay for since the trial began.“It is a really bad feeling to have your Constitutional Right to Free Speech, such a big part of life in our Country, so unfairly taken from you, especially when all of the sleazebags, lowlifes, and grifters that you oppose are allowed to say absolutely anything that they want,” Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social.Read more at The Daily Beast.

Photo Illustration by Elizabeth Brockway/The Daily Beast/Getty/ReutersUnapologetic conspiracy theorist and out-and-proud anti-vaxxer Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has long been accused by clearer heads of having “brain worms.”On Wednesday, it emerged that an actual worm allegedly once set up shop in the longshot presidential candidate’s brain.“[A] worm… got into my brain and ate a portion of it and then died,” Kennedy, 70, said during a 2012 deposition reviewed by The New York Times, which first published details of the previously unrevealed parasitic infection.Read more at The Daily Beast.

Photo Illustration by Luis G. Rendon/The Daily Beast/Jane Rosenberg/ReutersThe Trump defense team is expected to continue its cross-examination of actress and director Stormy Daniels. If their cross so far is any predictor, their approach seems to be a performance for their client, former President Donald Trump.Susan Necheles—the only female lead attorney on the team—is tasked with what should have been the delicate task of cross-examining Daniels, who is the centerpiece of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s election interference case narrative, because she explains why Trump was motivated to hide their interaction.The cross-examination needed to be delicate, because Daniels was likely to be viewed sympathetically by the jury based on her public demeanor and how she has come across in public appearances, including interviews. Indeed, it’s clear how worried the Trump defense team is about her likeability because they based a whole meritless motion to dismiss the case upon the mere release of a documentary film. Read more at The Daily Beast.

NBCThe Office reboot has been officially greenlit at Peacock—but it’s not going to take place at the same Scranton Dunder Mifflin offices we’ve all come to know and love.Currently untitled, the reboot is set to follow the same documentary crew that “immortalized” Dunder Mifflin’s Scranton branch in the original Office series. This time, they’ve found a new subject: a dying historic Midwestern newspaper. With a publisher attempting to revive the brand and a handful of volunteer reporters keeping it afloat, the paper serves as the perfect topic for a documentary.Two big names have already been announced to be starring in the project. About Time star Domhnall Gleeson and The White Lotus hotel manager Sabrina Impacciatore have been cast, which raises some eyebrows. Sure, these two are great actors. But what do two Europeans have to do with a Midwestern newspaper?Read more at The Daily Beast.

NewsmaxRep. James Comer (R-KY) has spent weeks defending his long stalled impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden to questioning conservative minds. On Tuesday night, even Newsmax had to state the obvious: Everyone thinks he’s lost the plot.Comer was appearing on Newsmax’s Rob Schmitt Tonight, where host Rob Schmitt noted that Comer has apparently “laid out, you know, so much evidence” of alleged corrupt acts by the Biden family, including millions of dollars allegedly stemming from Russia and China. Still, Schmitt said, that hasn’t stopped Comer’s critics from wondering why the case hasn’t left the conservative spectrum.“[Biden’s] supporters and your detractors are out there saying that, that your case, you know, the influence-peddling cases has hit kind of a wall, and it’s leveled off,” Schmitt said. “What what do you say to that, that criticism?”Read more at The Daily Beast.

Olmsted County Sheriff's OfficeConnor Bowman, the former Mayo Clinic doctor who’s accused of fatally poisoning his wife, allegedly Googled “is widow gender neutral” just days before his wife’s murder, search warrants revealed this week.The affidavit, obtained by The Daily Beast, also accused Bowman, 32, of adding “widower” to his Bumble dating profile within weeks of his wife’s death, using it to strike up conversations with matches where he allegedly lied about the nature and timing of Betty Bowman’s death.Bowman’s Google search about the word widow came on Aug. 18, two days before Betty—a 32-year-old operating room pharmacist at Mayo—died in a Minnesota hospital after fighting for her life over the course of four days. Read more at The Daily Beast.

Gage Skidmore/Wikimedia CommonsThe New Hampshire lawmaker who called teenagers “ripe” and “fertile” says the uproar over his comments was an overreaction and that he will not apologize to the “haters.”Rep. Jess Edwards sparked national outcry when he opposed a bill that would raise the age of marriage from 16 to 18, saying on the House floor that outlawing marriage for people of a “ripe, fertile age” could result in more abortions.In an interview with The Daily Beast on Tuesday night, Edwards said using the word “ripe” was a mistake, but that he did not deserve the hundreds of emails he received calling him a pedophile and worse.Read more at The Daily Beast.

Toby Melville/ReutersThe settings were a celebration in a cathedral and a garden party in the grounds of Buckingham Palace—but the messages emanating from both were more brutal than cheery.Prince Harry’s exclusion from the British royal family was starkly illustrated Wednesday when not one single member of his family turned up at a church service to commemorate the tenth anniversary of the Paralympic-style event he founded for wounded veterans.Instead, King Charles ordered all working royals (including Princess Anne and Prince Edward, and excluding Prince William and Kate Middleton) to attend a garden party for 5,000 people at Buckingham Palace taking place at the same time.Read more at The Daily Beast.

Photo Illustration by The Daily Beast / GettyUnder normal circumstances, Fox News would be the safest space for Kristi Noem to rehab her image. But the embattled governor’s disastrous, neverending puppy-killer book tour is no ordinary situation.On the same day as her combative interview on Fox’s sister network, the South Dakota governor bailed on sitting down with Fox News host Greg Gutfeld because of bad weather. In turn, the primetime star brutally roasted her.A source familiar with the matter told The Daily Beast that the governor’s team specifically cited a snowstorm in her home state of South Dakota. While there was a winter weather advisory in the Black Hills, Noem was physically in New York City, having already appeared in-studio on Fox Business and Newsmax earlier in the day. Additionally, the South Dakota capital of Pierre enjoyed temperatures in the 50s on both Tuesday and Wednesday. A representative for Noem did not respond to a request for comment.Read more at The Daily Beast.

Jim Bennett/WireImage/GettySteve Albini, a legend of rock n’ roll who produced albums for Nirvana, P.J. Harvey, and The Pixies, as well as his own music, has died at 61. He suffered a heart attack Tuesday night, a staffer at Electrical Audio, the recording studio he founded in the late ’90s, confirmed to The Daily Beast.Alongside his storied producing career, Albini also performed with his band Shellac. Shellac was preparing to release its first album since 2014 just next week and had scheduled tour dates for later this year. Albini’s influence on alternative rock—particularly grunge, post-punk, and its ilk—in the mid- to late ’90s can’t be overstated. While his own bands, including Shellac and Big Black, which he fronted in the 1980s, gained esteem, it’s his work as a record producer—or rather as an engineer, his preferred title—that cemented his legacy. His credits are lengthy and arguably unparalleled: In 1993 alone, Albini worked on Nirvana’s In Utero, P.J. Harvey’s Rid of Me, and Jawbreaker’s 24 Hour Revenge Therapy—each one ranking among the greatest albums ever made. Read more at The Daily Beast.

AFP via Getty Images Andrew Tate was served with a lawsuit at his home in Romania on Wednesday by four British women who say he raped and physically assaulted them.The law firm representing the women, McCue, Jury and Partners, issued a press release confirming that the social media influencer-turned-accused-human-trafficker was presented with the civil proceedings for a case in the High Court in London.The women’s identities have been kept anonymous to “protect them from harm and harassment by Tate, his associates, and followers,” the lawyers said.Read more at The Daily Beast.

Photo Illustration by Elizabeth Brockway/The Daily Beast/GettyKing Charles decided not to meet his son Prince Harry in London this week because of Harry’s “cruel” remarks about his wife, Queen Camilla, in his memoir, Spare, a friend of Charles and Camilla has told The Daily Beast.Observers had thought that father and son could have met today, Wednesday, especially as both had events within just a couple of miles of each other—a ceremony to mark the 10th anniversary of the Invictus Games for Harry, and the first Buckingham Palace garden party of the year for Charles. But Harry released a statement saying Charles was too busy to see him, with the palace a couple of hours later saying Charles was making Prince William the head of Harry’s old regiment. Harry’s U.K. trip has fast become a snub pile-up.In Spare, Harry said Camilla “sacrificed me on her personal PR altar,” and described her as “dangerous.”Read more at The Daily Beast.

George Lange/NBCU/Getty ImagesJulia Louis-Dreyfus’ iconic Elaine dance from Seinfeld took a bit of finesse to “get the laugh,” the actress revealed this week.On the latest episode of her podcast Wiser Than Me, Louis-Dreyfus sat down with dance legend Debbie Allen, and the conversation naturally turned toward the “little kicks” dance immortalized on Seinfeld. Louis-Dreyfus said that while she considers herself a good dancer, everywhere she goes where there’s dancing, people watch her to see if she’ll bust out her sitcom character’s terrible moves.“I can feel people watch me, because obviously they’re expecting me to dance that horrible dance, the Elaine dance,” she told Allen. Read more at The Daily Beast.

Reuters/Bonnie CashJust two days after she was brutally booed on stage at Tom Brady’s roast, Kim Kardashian found herself in yet another awkward position on stage Tuesday, this time in Germany.There, she was interrupted by a pro-Palestine protester in the crowd as she spoke on stage at the OMR business festival. Between the protesters screams, Kardashian quipped “Free everybody” while nodding her head.A clip of the incident showed the protester, a woman, repeatedly yelling “free Palestine” while she was whisked out of the crowd of 7,000 by security. Others attending remained silent, with many not turning their heads to see the protester who was seated in the crowd’s back rows. Read more at The Daily Beast.

Adam Rose/NetflixEach night, John Mulaney’s Everybody’s in L.A. loosely organizes itself around a theme. Friday’s premiere of the six-episode Netflix live special was all about coyotes (well, mostly), while Monday’s follow-up tackled palm trees. Tuesday night might’ve been the cleverest theme work yet: While the episode ostensibly about helicopters, Mulaney’s real focus actually seemed to be the late O.J. Simpson, whose infamous Bronco chase was all captured by helicopter.At first, it seemed like Mulaney would make only a passing reference to O.J. As with each previous episode, Mulaney welcomed a pair of guests after his opening monologue. (“The official bird of California is the quail,” the comedian declared during his solo introduction, “but the official bird of Los Angeles is a helicopter circling an STD billboard.”) Alongside comedian Nate Bargatze, who once faced a helicopter-related incident while taping a special, Mulaney’s second panel guest was Zoey Tur—the journalist-slash-helicopter pilot who captured O.J.’s slow-speed car chase from the sky. If that wasn’t enough, O.J. prosecutor Marcia Clark also showed up later on.“I caught your criminal,” Zoey told Clark as she arrived.Read more at The Daily Beast.

Alex Slitz/Getty ImagesA Georgia appeals court on Wednesday agreed to review a ruling from a lower court that allowed Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis to remain in the election interference case against Donald Trump.The decision is the latest legal move in a months-long saga into whether Willis should be disqualified from the racketeering case because of her affair with former special prosecutor Nathan Wade. In a 51-page appeal, Trump and his co-defendants asked the appeals court to overturn a March 15 decision that allowed Willis to remain on the case if Wade stepped aside.The court’s Wednesday decision likely means another delay in the Fulton County case, where prosecutors allege Trump and his co-defendants tried to interfere with the Georgia 2020 election results. There is currently no set trial date for the criminal case, but CNN reported Willis wanted to try it this summer. Read more at The Daily Beast.

Mel Bouzad/GettyA wealthy heiress and her reality TV producer husband, who own a California home once belonging to Marilyn Monroe, on Monday filed a lawsuit against the city of Los Angeles in an effort to stop the house being designated a landmark—which would prevent them from demolishing it.Brinah Milstein and Roy Bank, who bought the Brentwood property for $8.35 million last summer, were granted a demolition permit from the city, but their plans to tear down the building were temporarily halted by the council in September before the Los Angeles Cultural Heritage Commission recommended historic cultural monument status in January. Milstein and Bank are now attempting to stop the status from going through.In their lawsuit filed in Los Angeles Superior Court, the plaintiffs accused city officials of “illegal and unconstitutional conduct” with respect to the “house where Marilyn Monroe occasionally lived for a mere six months before she tragically committed suicide 61 years ago,” according to KCAL-TV. They also accuse officials of “backdoor machinations” in order to preserve “a house which in no way meets any of the criteria” for a historic cultural monument.Read more at The Daily Beast.

Scott Dudelson/Getty Russian media went wild Wednesday with claims Kanye West was on his way to the Russian capital for a massive concert next month.The concert plans were first announced by the Kremlin-friendly Mash Telegram channel, which declared that the “genius” and “rap icon” would be performing on his birthday “IN RUSSIA!” of all places. Citing unnamed organizers, Mash said a contract had already been signed for a June 8 concert at Moscow’s Luzhniki Stadium.Representatives of Luzhniki Stadium quickly shot down that claim, however, as did the general director of a company helping to organize performances by international stars.Read more at The Daily Beast.

Code Pink/YouTubeA Palestinian-American activist filed a police report for assault against a Republican congressman over a confrontation Tuesday in which he appeared to hit a cellphone out of her hand.Footage shared by the antiwar group Code Pink shows Rep. Mike Ezell (R-MS) walking in a hallway ahead of a House committee hearing in Washington, D.C., as two activists ask him about Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza. One of the activists can be heard asking Ezell whether he thinks Israel should accept a ceasefire proposal to which Hamas had agreed or if he wants “this genocide to continue?”Another person off-camera asks: “You want the killing of my people, my Palestinian people?”Read more at The Daily Beast.

Jerry Jackson/The Baltimore Sun via Getty ImagesThe body of the last missing victim killed in the Francis Scott Key Bridge collapse in Baltimore was recovered on Tuesday, officials said.José Mynor López, 37, was identified as the final victim to be located in the wake of the March 26 disaster. He and five other members of a work crew filling potholes on the bridge were killed when the Dali container ship collided with one of the bridge’s support columns, triggering the collapse.Salvage teams located López’s body and notified authorities.Read more at The Daily Beast.

John Lamparski/Getty ImagesKristi Noem has spent the past few weeks fighting a firestorm of criticism about the contents of her new book—the one in which she boasts about murdering her pet dog, Cricket, in a gravel pit, discusses botching the execution of a goat, and dishes details on a dubious meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.So she’ll probably be somewhat relieved that Amazon appears to have imposed a limit on reviews for No Going Back: The Truth on What’s Wrong With Politics and How We Move America Forward, which was published Tuesday. The online retail giant said it had “noticed unusual reviewing activity” on the book and therefore restricted the reviews, which are now completely invisible on the memoir’s page as of Wednesday morning—though reports about what was being said before the restriction came into force will be difficult reading for the South Dakota governor.Goodreads, the Amazon subsidiary where bookworms share their literary recommendations and reviews, has similarly imposed “temporary limitations on submitting ratings and reviews” of Noem’s book. “This may be because we’ve detected unusual behavior that doesn’t follow our review guidelines,” an explanatory note reads when attempting to add a review as of Wednesday morning.Read more at The Daily Beast.

Photo Illustration by Luis G. Rendon/The Daily Beast/Getty images/ReutersOld (internet) habits die hard.When The Daily Beast revealed in January that Rep. Jamaal Bowman had promoted 9/11 conspiracy theories on his blog while working as a public school principal, the New York Democrat maintained it was just a bygone phase, and that his days of marinating in the nether-swamps of online paranoia were long over. But his personal YouTube account, where he continued to follow new channels and create playlists as recently as last month, indicates his taste for fringe content has endured into his tenure on Capitol Hill.Bowman’s page, which uses his longtime screen name “Inner Peace” and features his image and videos from the middle school he once led, subscribes to dozens of bewildering and bizarre accounts—including known Russian and Chinese disinfo peddlers, flat earthers, musings about UFOs and “signs you’re being prepared to cross to the new earth,” a U.S.-born Muslim influencer who killed a German citizen and provoked attacks on American businesses in Egypt, and many arcane online realms in between.Read more at The Daily Beast.

Photo Illustration by The Daily Beast / Photo by Jennifer Clasen / HBOThe last time Nikki Glaser was on The Last Laugh podcast, our conversation ended up producing material for her stand-up act. Now, in her return to the show, she apologizes for throwing me “under the bus” before sharing even more unfiltered thoughts about her objections to motherhood, her struggles with suicidal thoughts, and the very tricky balance between self-censorship and saying something she knows could get her “canceled”—all of which are integral to her latest HBO special Someday You’ll Die.The comedian also reveals her approach to roasting Tom Brady at Netflix’s epic live event last weekend; explains why she decided to leave it all on the table with her jokes about Ted Cruz, Marjorie Taylor Greene, and other political figures while guest-hosting Jimmy Kimmel Live; and shares how she’s feeling about turning 40 next month.Before we can talk about her new special, we have to clear the air about the moment in her previous special, Good Clean Filth, when she directly called out the headline that topped her first appearance on this podcast: “Nikki Glaser Would Rather Be Fuckable Than Funny.”Read more at The Daily Beast.

Photo Illustration by Thomas Levinson/The Daily Beast/GettyA lyrical feud that began simmering between megastar rappers Drake and Kendrick Lamar two months ago has, within the past short week, escalated into all-out war, with Drake suggesting in his latest releases that Kendrick tried to cover up allegations of committing violence against one of his partners. Kendrick, on the other hand, has perhaps gone even further in suggesting that Drake is a pedophile who keeps “sex offenders...on a monthly allowance” at his self-founded record label OVO Sounds. And these are just a small proportion of the bombs that Kendrick and Drake (real name Aubrey Drake Graham) have lobbed at one another via the six new songs dropped since April 30 (four are by Kendrick; two by Drake). Rap stars publicly beefing with one another in the form of diss tracks—songs written exclusively to criticize or insult a rival—is a well-established tradition, and the best diss tracks can be measured by how willing the artist is to really go there. Read more at The Daily Beast.

Everett Collection“I was always moaning about the original film, because there was no real joy in it,” Ringo Starr recalls to The Daily Beast of the 1970 documentary film Let It Be, which was released just weeks after news of the Beatles’ split had hit the press.Since Peter Jackson’s Get Back documentary premiered on Disney+ in 2021, even the most casual Beatles fan knows what Starr is talking about. The Let It Be film and album were a dismal affair for all involved. Salvaged from the ashes of Paul McCartney’s idea for the Beatles to “get back,” literally, to their roots by writing and recording a new album, the nearly 60 hours of footage filmed by director Michael Lindsay-Hogg during January 1969 chronicled the end of the greatest creative collaboration of the last century.But Let It Be got only a limited theatrical release in 1970, after which it remained unavailable to see for decades. Now, at long last, a restored version arrives on Disney+ this week.Read more at The Daily Beast.

Photo Illustration by Thomas Levinson/The Daily Beast/Getty/Apple TV+Dark Matter is the second Apple TV+ series in the past two and a half months to revolve around quantum entanglements, flip-side doppelgangers, and intertwined multiverses, as well as to initially let viewers get out ahead of its central mystery. Yet unlike the listless Constellation, writer Blake Crouch’s adaptation of his own 2016 novel is a descent down a what-if rabbit hole that continually ups the head-spinning ante. Mining its now-familiar conceit for maximum reality-warping madness, such that every new twist builds logically and crazily from its last, this nine-part drama, premiering May 8, is a superior slice of small-screen science fiction. It’s a series that knows exactly what it wants to be and where it wants to go—the two precise things that elude its protagonist, who winds up at war with himself in ways that are both figurative and loopily literal.(Warning: Minor spoilers ahead.)In modern-day Chicago, Jason (Joel Edgerton) teaches quantum physics at Lakemont College to kids who don’t seem to care much about his lecture on Schrödinger’s Cat and quantum superpositions—a paradox which argues that objects can simultaneously exist in two different states. Jason lives in a cozy home with his art gallery curator wife Daniela (Jennifer Connelly) and their teenage son Charlie (Oakes Fegley), and by all reasonable accounts, they appear to be a close-knit and content clan. Even so, when Jason is encouraged by Daniela to join his old friend Ryan (Jimmi Simpson) at the local bar in order to celebrate Ryan winning a Pavia prize in physics, his old, lingering regret—about giving up his promising research career for quiet, modest domesticity—bubbles to the surface, this despite the fact that Ryan offers Jason a lucrative gig in his forthcoming start-up venture.Read more at The Daily Beast.

Apple TV+As if being a freelancer weren’t hard enough, try being a freelancer chasing down invoice payments halfway around the world, after already getting conned into shelling out thousands of dollars in pursuit of your biggest Tinseltown dreams. That’s the reality that more than 500 people were put through—to varying levels of severity—in the grandiose scam chronicled by Hollywood Con Queen, the new three-episode docuseries dropping on Apple TV+ May 8.What begins as a record of an impressively detailed swindle gnarls itself into a portrait of online deception, mirroring scandals big and large, from the Harvey Weinstein case to something as relatively niche as a recent scam by a disgraced RuPaul’s Drag Race contestant. Hollywood Con Queen is a quick binge that has everything fraud-obsessed viewers could want, as long as one of those things isn’t an overarching point. While the show is a blast to watch, it’s another instance of a docuseries spinning its wheels, needlessly bloating itself to keep its audience engaged. But even though the ending might leave something to be desired, the show’s journey there is compelling, thanks to some novel firsthand documentation and one egocentric enigma behind the whole thing.If you’re familiar with the 2014 Sony hack and its subsequent info leaks—or if you’re a chronically online social media user, hypnotized by her wig at the Challengers premiere—the name Amy Pascal might ring a bell. Pascal is the former chairperson of Sony Pictures Entertainment whose name appeared several times in those leaked documents almost 10 years ago, mostly in an innocuous correspondence with Rooney Mara over a scrapped Girl with the Dragon Tattoo that still haunts me. In 2017, Pascal once again found herself inadvertently at the scene of a crime, when a fraud used Pascal’s name to impersonate the mogul and deceive freelance photographer and videographer Will Strathman. The fake version of Pascal repeatedly lured Strathman to Bali, at his expense, to photograph storyboards for an equally bogus project. It was a months-long process that ended only after Strathman’s father got in touch with Pascal’s people, who told him the harrowing truth: They had received numerous complaints of the same nature.Read more at The Daily Beast.