Photo Illustration by Luis G. Rendon/The Daily Beast/Getty ImagesIt’s the question everyone in British society and in the corridors of power is thinking, but nobody will publicly ask, let alone answer: Just how sick is King Charles III? The chatter that King Charles is significantly more unwell than his aides are letting on is proliferating in British society.Speaking to friends of the king in recent weeks about his health, the most common response is a lowering of the voice by half an octave or so, followed by the sombre, drawn-out pronouncement: “It’s not good.”His officials didn’t respond to formal requests for comment on the matter from The Daily Beast. To be clear, his team have made it very clear, since the king disclosed his cancer diagnosis earlier this year—in an unprecedented act of royal transparency—that they wouldn’t be providing a “running commentary” on his health.Read more at The Daily Beast.

Jordan Pettitt/PA Images/Getty ImagesThe white horse which charged through London streaked crimson by blood is in a serious condition but still alive, British military officials said Thursday.Vida, technically known as a grey horse, is in an equine hospital after the dramatic incident in Central London Wednesday. Up to five horses either bolted or threw their riders after builders working on a construction site dropped a heavy load of concrete and rubble from height on an otherwise quiet street the horses were being ridden on.The horses are all part of the Household Cavalry, a regiment closely associated with the king which provides ceremonial escorts at state occasions such as the monarch’s birthday parade.Read more at The Daily Beast.

Benoit Tessier/ReutersQuelle catastrophe! The Moulin Rouge suffered a bit of a faux pas early Thursday when the blades fell off the iconic red windmill that stands atop the theater and crashed down into the street below.The world-famous cabaret joint in Paris said no one was hurt in the incident that unfolded shortly before 2 a.m. “The Moulin Rouge, in 135 years of history, has experienced many adventures but it is true that for the wings, this is the first time that this has happened,” General Manager Jean-Victor Clerico said, Reuters reports.The blades also appear to have wiped out the first three letters of the neon “MOULIN ROUGE” sign on their way down. Read more at The Daily Beast.

ReutersDonald Trump is tearing into his former attorney general for endorsing him in the upcoming presidential election, using the opportunity to dredge up his old insults against the man he says “let a lot of great people down by not investigating Voter Fraud in our Country.”Bill Barr, who invoked the wrath of Trump after publicly rebuking the then-president’s claim of a “stolen” election in 2020, said last week that he’d support a “Republican ticket” in the 2024 election.In an interview earlier this month with Fox News’ America’s Newsroom, Barr was asked directly if he’d support Trump despite having past “disagreements” with him.Read more at The Daily Beast.

Curtis Means/ReutersThis might be a stressful day for Donald Trump.The former president will return to a New York City courtroom Thursday for the resumption of his trial on felony charges related to the alleged falsification of business records to hide payments to a porn star. At the same time, 200 miles to the south, the United States Supreme Court will begin hearing arguments about whether he should be granted absolute immunity from prosecution for anything he did during his time in the White House.Trump has made no secret that he’d rather be in Washington, D.C., for the high court hearing, but the judge in his Manhattan case kiboshed his plans to attend. “Arguing before the Supreme Court is a big deal, and I can certainly appreciate why your client would want to be there, but a trial in New York Supreme Court… is also a big deal,” Judge Juan Merchan told Trump defense lawyer Todd Blanche as he torpedoed the idea last week.Read more at The Daily Beast.

Illustration by Elizabeth Brockway/The Daily BeastIf you were a rioter at the United States Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, you may have felt the whole world was with you—or the part of the world that supported what you did.President Trump himself had urged you to march to the Capitol Building. A crowd walked alongside you down Pennsylvania Avenue. People chanted with you about attacking Mike Pence, crashed through the police lines with you, helped you to break windows and march through the building.After your arrest, it turned out that you had always been alone. Your mob vanished. You had only your lawyer as companionship at trial. You had no friends as you sat at your sentencing hearing. You alone were imprisoned. You had not won. You were a loser.Read more at The Daily Beast.

Photo Illustration by Thomas Levinson/The Daily Beast/Getty/Dr. Jeff Gunter For US SenateWhen he launched his campaign for U.S. Senate in Nevada last year, Jeff Gunter presented himself as a gritty frontiersman and a diehard MAGA Republican.Gunter’s opening video depicts him stepping into a Ford F-150 pickup truck—cowboy boots and all—admiring the bucolic western landscape in a burgundy button-down as he talks about his credentials. And in case you had somehow forgotten which state’s Senate seat Gunter is running for in the ad, he’s also sporting a belt buckle with boldface lettering spelling “Nevada.”But despite Gunter’s breezy adoption of a rugged western persona, it appears his brand is more hat than cattle.Read more at The Daily Beast.

Anatolii Stepanov/AFP via Getty ImagesKHARKIV, Ukraine—After months of infighting on Capitol Hill, President Joe Biden has finally been able to sign off on a huge new $61 billion military aid bill for Ukraine. Delays to the bill, which got bogged down in the Republican-controlled House of Representatives, were widely blamed for impacting Kyiv’s ability to defend itself from Russian advances. After its passage last week, some members of the House waved Ukrainian flags while others cheered in celebration that Ukraine will soon receive new weapons ahead of Russia’s expected counteroffensive. Signing it into law at a White House ceremony on Wednesday, Biden promised the arms shipments would begin immediately and hailed what he called “a good day for world peace.”The reaction here, near the front lines of the war, felt very different.Read more at The Daily Beast.

Photo Illustration by Thomas Levinson/The Daily Beast/GettyLast Wednesday, dozens of students skipped class to gather outside a Payson, Utah, middle school for hours and chant, “We the people, not the animals!”—a protest launched over the dramatic accusation that their classmates were running wild as “furries” and attacking other students without consequence.Much of the hysteria, however, has been blown out of proportion.Footage from the scene showed them hoisting signs declaring, “Compelled speech is not free speech,” “We won’t be compelled,” and “We just want to learn.” A fourth sign read, “You can’t ignore us,” with a drawing of an animal print covered with a prohibition sign.Read more at The Daily Beast.

Photo Illustration by Luis G. Rendon/The Daily Beast/Getty ImagesThe first stages of the trial of the People of New York State vs. Donald J. Trump have been illuminating in a variety of ways. They have made it absolutely clear that this trial is not the legal non-event Republicans and drinkers of conventional wisdom-flavored Kool Aid said it was.It is not a case about “paperwork” or “bookkeeping.” It is not a bland little nothingburger of arcane, hard-to-prove white-collar crime. It is not just the “hush money” or the “porn star” sideshow. It is a case about an alleged attempt by a man running for this country’s highest office to systematically defraud voters and use illegal means to gain an advantage in an election. What is more, it is a case about doing so in an election cycle in which he won the electoral vote by fewer than 80,000 votes. His margin was razor-thin. The lies his friends at the National Enquirer told that were spread by others in the MAGA propaganda machine could well have tipped the balance of the election in his favor.Read more at The Daily Beast.

Photo Illustration by Luis G. Rendon/The Daily Beast/ABCThe Grey’s Anatomy fandom has never lacked for controversial characters. In fact, Grey Sloan Memorial Hospital seems to hire specifically for that quality. That said, I must ask: Have we ever seen a character redemption arc as pronounced as Amelia Shepherd’s (Caterina Scorsone)? Once perhaps the worst character wandering this hospital’s hallowed, absolutely uninsurable halls, she’s spent 13 seasons and counting becoming one of its most compelling.ABC’s chief medical drama is all about stirring up our emotions and, sometimes, our angry keyboards. From the ever-complicated Meredith Grey (Ellen Pompeo), to the lovable but rarely logical Izzie Stevens (Katherine Heigl), to the well-meaning but absolutely toxic lover Owen Hunt (Kevin McKidd), Amelia’s peers have all had their less-than-stellar moments. For a while, however, everyone in the fandom seemed to hate her with a burning passion.Maybe it was her ongoing competition with Derek that put people off, or maybe it was her short temper, but the hatred has been intense. Those who’ve been hanging out with Amelia since her time on the Grey’s spin-off Private Practice might have a deeper appreciation for her absurdly traumatic backstory. (For those who need a refresher: She watched her dad get murdered when she was just 5 years old; as an adult, she woke up one morning to find her fiancé dead from an overdose beside her; and she carried her son to term knowing he would not survive, just so that his death could become meaningful through organ donation.) Read more at The Daily Beast.

Courtesy of Sony Pictures ClassicsEveryone remembers their first brush with death. Whether you’re 5 or fortunate enough to be 75, coming face-to-face with your own mortality for the first time is an experience that remains permanently seared into your mind; you can remember where you were, what you were thinking, and, probably, being engulfed in a new kind of sadness that you don’t quite understand.That’s certainly the case for Malik (Blake James Cameron) and Eric (Gian Knight Ramirez), the two children at the heart of We Grown Now, a fresh, empathetic new indie that lands in theaters April 26 after receiving a warm critical reception at last fall’s Toronto International Film Festival.In the fall of 1992, Malik and Eric spend their days enjoying their lives and close-knit friendship as residents in Chicago’s Cabrini-Green public housing complex. But the terrible thing about idyllic childhood joy is that there’s a countdown clock on how long it lasts. Innocence slips away faster than we can anticipate, so when a horrific tragedy rocks Cabrini-Green, Eric and Malik find their friendship challenged and the simplicity of their daily lives forever altered.Read more at The Daily Beast.

NetflixDepending on your personal interpretation, you may subscribe to the notion of ghosts as unquiet spirits, haunting the realm of the living until some injustice they suffered in life or at the moment of their death is corrected, amended, forgiven. Ghosts, then, are the perfect clients for a certain type of private investigator motivated to simply provide closure to lost souls. It’s a heady intellectual conceit, and it’s also the hook that provides the backbone to Dead Boy Detectives, Netflix’s mystery series based on Neil Gaiman’s comic-book characters. And make no mistake: While there’s plenty of talk about life, death, and the afterlife, the show is light on its feet, a teen adventure series whose unquiet spirits are nothing compared to the trials of growing up—even if you’re already dead.Prim and proper former English schoolboy Edwin Payne (George Rexstrew) and erstwhile streetwise punk Charles Rowland (Jayden Revri) are ghosts who have chosen to remain in the world of the living, solving ghost mysteries in order to send other spirits in need to whatever afterlife awaits them. The eight episodes of the first season take a throwback case-of-the-week approach, subtly building a season-long arc while its main characters are busy finding out how and why people died, whether that means breaking a curse, revealing some hidden treachery, or fighting a giant ectoplasmic toadstool. They’re joined in their quest by Crystal Palace (Kassius Nelson), a medium with a literally demonic ex-boyfriend, and Niko (Yuyu Kitamura), Crystal’s doe-eyed best friend with a sizable collection of anime boy posters on her walls.Being a Greg Berlanti production, it’s good, but you have to be on its wavelength. It’s a Sandman spinoff, but there’s less of The Sandman’s ethereal musings on the nature of life and death and dreams, and more of a teen-adventure-drama vibe, like a slightly more eldritch Scooby-Doo. It’s good in the way that Riverdale (another Berlanti production) was “good”: It’s absurd, it’s melodramatic, and everyone’s delivering their parcel of gobbledygook lines in extra-heightened cadences. It also looks a lot like those shows, especially Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, another Netflix comic adaptation with a similar dimly-lit, misty atmosphere that immediately advertises the presence of witches and spells and the undead. (It also means you won’t be able to see this one in the daytime, either.)Read more at The Daily Beast.

ABCJimmy Kimmel and Kanye West have a tumultuous history—and, based on the roasting he gave Ye on Wednesday, the late-night host seems just fine keeping it that way.Earlier this week, reports surfaced that West was in the planning stages of launching his very own porn studio. On Wednesday, the rapper seemed to confirm those reports when he tweeted a message: “Yeezy Porn Is Cumming.”Kimmel barely raised an eyebrow upon hearing the news.Read more at The Daily Beast.

Photo Illustration by Luis G. Rendon/The Daily Beast/FXDo you hear the ceremonial bagpipes playing? That’s the sound of a few ruddy Celtic men, bellowing into their horns to honor the dearly departed spirit of our darling Siobhan Corbyn. We knew her for less than a year, but what we had together felt like a lifetime.If that name strikes you funny, perhaps you should brush up on your Irish royal history. Siobhan was Kim Kardashian’s suspiciously named character on American Horror Story: Delicate, an uber bitchy, high-powered Hollywood publicist with a strange obsession with her pregnant client, actress Anna Victoria Alcott (Emma Roberts), and Anna’s unborn child. (Warning: spoilers ahead.)Read more at The Daily Beast.

CNNHouse Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA), speaking to CNN right after his cold reception by pro-Palestine Columbia University student protesters, said he wasn’t surprised by the situation, since he was there to essentially issue a reprimand.Johnson told Erin Burnett that he and the other Republican lawmakers who joined him on campus had a message for the students.“I’m not surprised that they didn’t welcome our visit, because we’re calling out their activities,” Johnson said. “The point we tried to make today is that this is not who we are as Americans. This is not an expression of the First Amendment. This is not an exchange of ideas. This is threats and intimidation of violence against Jewish students for who they are, for their faith, and that’s a terrible trend that’s going on in the country right now.”Read more at The Daily Beast.

Buckingham Palace via InstagramWhat timing!Buckingham Palace posted a high-production advertisement Wednesday for its own brand of strawberry jam—just days after Meghan Markle unveiled her own jam line as part of a new lifestyle brand called American Riviera Orchard.The ad was posted to the palace’s Instagram on Wednesday morning, showing a woman’s hand slathering strawberry jam on a scone, a crumpet, a croissant, and on toast.Read more at The Daily Beast.

Reuters/Paul MorigiRep. Donald Payne Jr. (D-NJ) died Wednesday, succumbing to complications from a heart attack he suffered earlier this month, New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy announced Wednesday. He was 65.Payne had been unconscious since his heart attack on April 6, which his office said stemmed from diabetes.He was in the middle of his sixth term in Congress, representing Newark and parts of Essex, Hudson, and Union Counties. Read more at The Daily Beast.

Scouted/The Daily Beast/Retailers.Scouted selects products independently. If you purchase something from our posts, we may earn a small commission.I have a reputation as a thoughtful gift-giver. Of course, as any great athlete will tell you, playing your best means being unafraid to take a big shot, and those shots don’t always make it in. As my wife and I approach our 9th wedding anniversary, I can assure you I’ve swung and missed quite a few times. However, the best athletes also never hang their heads after a loss, and instead use it as a learning experience.With that approach in mind, I’ve decided to turn my Ls into Ws by offering you my hard-earned wisdom. What follows is advice on what NOT to give your partner this Mother’s Day, paired with some winning alternatives to consider instead. Whether for your own wife, mother, mother-in-law, or stepmom, here is what to avoid gifting the moms in your life on Mother’s Day. Read more at The Daily Beast.

Marc J. FranklinThe last Uncle Vanya to cause a stir in New York was far more modest in physical size than the Broadway production opening tonight at Lincoln Center Theater’s Vivian Beaumont Theater (to June 16), yet left a more emphatic impression. It took place in a Flatiron loft, with the audience seated in two rows running the length of the property’s living room, with its brilliant actors—including Bill Irwin, Marin Ireland, David Cromer, and Will Brill (now starring in the season’s deserved biggest hit, Stereophonic)—performing inches from audience members’ feet. As hearts broke, guns appeared, and so many feelings went unsaid, all felt viscerally immediate and clear.The much-anticipated LCT production—the Hollywood star Steve Carell’s Broadway debut—is, first of all, such an odd duck to look at. The Beaumont stage is Lincoln Center’s biggest, but what fills it here? Not much, and not much logically and engagingly. A picnic table. Random tables, chairs (kind of looks mid-century modern). The actors are in modern dress, and drift and shimmy all over the expanse—the floor looks like the cross section of tree. They sometimes seem to get lost, and so—despite some standout performances—unfortunately do we.This production of Vanya, directed by Lila Neugebauer, has been adapted by Heidi Schreck, the playwright and performer of the exquisite, and rightly acclaimed, What the Constitution Means to Me for which she received Tony nominations for Best Play and Best Actress (this season, Playbill reports, it’s America’s most produced play). Schreck told Playbill she is a “big Russian literature nerd” who first fell in love with Chekhov when performing in a production of Three Sisters while in college. She studied Russian, taught in Siberia, and worked as a journalist in St. Petersburg. She and her husband, director Kip Fagan, met while working on a production of The Seagull. “Chekhov’s been a very big part of my life for a long time,” Schreck told Playbill.Read more at The Daily Beast.

Fox NewsJesse Watters, who is still not done complaining about how Donald Trump is being treated unfairly during his New York criminal trial, compared the indicted former president to King Kong on Wednesday, only to be reminded by his colleagues that the giant, gorilla-like monster in the original creature feature dies at the end of the film.If you had thought the Fox News host had got all of his gripes out of the way on Monday’s episode of The Five, think again. Just two days later, Watters suggested that requiring Trump to adhere to the courtroom rules and trial schedule could result in violent consequences.Democrats, Watters began, feel threatened by Trump “because he can play on their turf in the Rust Belt, and he can play in their base with Blacks, hispanics, young people.”Read more at The Daily Beast.

Photo Illustration by Thomas Levinson/The Daily Beast/GettyAn Arizona grand jury indicted seven attorneys and aides linked to Donald Trump’s 2020 presidential campaign on Wednesday, including his onetime Chief of Staff, Mark Meadows, and his former lawyer, Rudy Giuliani. The felony charges are tied to their alleged efforts to overturn Joe Biden’s victory in the state and have Trump be named winner—despite him losing the state by 10,000 votes. The state’s attorney general announced the indictments, which were obtained by The Daily Beast. Others charged alongside Meadows and Giuliani were Jenna Ellis, a Trump campaign lawyer; John Eastman, a Trump lawyer who presented him with the now-infamous “coup memo,” which included a roadmap to implementing the fake elector plot and overturning the election; Christina Bobb, a Trump lawyer; Boris Epshteyn, a top campaign adviser; and Mike Roman, a campaign aide. Read more at The Daily Beast.

Reuters/Radovan StoklasaHackers broke into a Czech news service site and spread a fake story about an assassination plot against the newly elected president of Slovakia on Tuesday.“BIS prevented an assassination attempt on the newly elected Slovak President Peter Pelligrine,” the fraudulent headline said, referring to a Czech spy agency, the Security Information Service (BIS). In their rush to post the story, the hackers apparently got a little sloppy: they misspelled the politician’s last name, Pellegrini.The fake story suggested that Ukrainian citizens, including Ukrainian Chargé d’Affaires Vitaliy Usatyy, planned the murder attempt. It also claimed Czech Foreign Minister Jan Lipavský had commented on the fake plot as well.Read more at The Daily Beast.

John Chapple/ShutterstockPrincess Beatrice’s former boyfriend turned up dead in a Miami hotel earlier this year from a suspected drug overdose, Florida cops confirmed to The Daily Beast on Wednesday.Cops said they were called to a downtown hotel room on Feb. 7 at the citizenM Miami Worldcenter, where the 41-year-old Paolo Liuzzo was discovered and pronounced dead at 3:34 p.m.An official cause of death is yet to be released, but Miami cops said his death is being “investigated as an overdose death.” Cops did not say whether foul play was suspected or not.Read more at The Daily Beast.

John Taggart/Pool via ReutersOn Wednesday morning, The Daily Beast published a report detailing how Donald Trump’s presidential campaign and four associated PACs have been using a GOP compliance firm to pay legal fees, obscuring who is the ultimate recipient of millions of dollars in legal payments.By Wednesday night, the Trump campaign and the four PACs were facing a new ethics complaint over the arrangement.The complaint, which nonprofit watchdog Campaign Legal Center filed with the Federal Election Commission Wednesday afternoon, argues that Trump and his associated PACs aren’t just violating federal reporting rules; they’re also violating the ban on corporate contributions.Read more at The Daily Beast.

Reuters/Yuki IwamuraThe latest fallout of Donald Trump’s election lies arrived Wednesday, with prosecutors in Michigan revealing that the former president, along with his onetime Chief of Staff, Mark Meadows, and his former lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, are unindicted co-conspirators in the criminal case concerning the state’s false elector plot which sought to overturn the state’s presidential election results in 2020.Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel charged 16 Republicans with forgery and conspiracy to commit election forgery for allegedly attempting to swap Michigan’s electoral votes from Joe Biden to Trump on Jan. 6, 2021.The Michigan special investigator Howard Shock subtly revealed Wednesday that Trump was a co-conspirator, answering “yes” when asked by a defendant’s attorney if the ex-president was considered to be one.Read more at The Daily Beast.

Oklahoma State Bureau of InvestigationA fifth suspect has been arrested in connection with the deaths of two women who went missing last month and were later found buried in a rural Oklahoma cattle pasture.The Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation announced it picked up 31-year-old Paul Grice on Wednesday, who was booked into the Texas County Jail on two counts of first-degree murder, two counts of kidnapping, and one count of conspiracy to commit murder in the first degree. He and four others are accused of killing 27-year-old Veronica Butler and 39-year-old Jilian Kelley, who disappeared on March 30.The two were driving to pick up Butler’s two kids for a weekly visit amid an intense custody battle between Butler and the youngsters’ grandmother, 54-year-old Tifany Machel Adams, when they were ambushed and murdered, according to police.Read more at The Daily Beast.

Photo Illustration by Luis G. Rendon/The Daily Beast/Getty ImagesA corporate restructuring attorney at a high-powered New York City law firm is suing his ex-boyfriend for allegedly dognapping his beloved miniature poodle and holding her hostage at an apartment in Midtown Manhattan, plunging him into a grievous state of emotional distress.In a six-figure civil lawsuit obtained by The Daily Beast, Akin Gump associate Taylor Leighton says he wants back his pet—who is named for onetime child actress Raven-Symoné and a member of The Real Housewives of New York City cast—plus more than $200,000 in damages.“Raven is more than a dog to me,” Leighton wrote in an affidavit submitted alongside a complaint filed Tuesday in New York State Supreme Court. “I consider her to be my child. As an illustration to this Court of my love for Raven, I planned an extravagant first birthday party for her in the apartment. I spent several days planning and decorating, including blowing up hundreds of balloons and placing decals on the wall to give Raven a special day. Defendant, of course, participated in the festivities but it was me who took the lead on all planning and implementation.”Read more at The Daily Beast.

Reuters/David Dee DelgadoHouse Speaker (R-LA) Mike Johnson trekked to Columbia University’s New York City campus on Wednesday—and was immediately greeted with a chorus of boos.The crowd loudly heckled and booed Johnson as he approached a podium and launched into his speech, railing against “antisemites” who “gnash their teeth and demand to wipe the State of Israel off the map and attack our innocent Jewish students.”Moments after making that declaration, a loud chant broke out of “we can’t hear you,” to which Johnson responded, “Enjoy your free speech.”Read more at The Daily Beast.

Timothy A. Clary/AFP via Getty ImagesSeveral pro-Palestinian protesters were arrested by law enforcement on Wednesday at the University of Texas at Austin, as they gathered to oppose Israel’s brutal military campaign in Gaza, with more arrests likely to follow.Local police, alongside state troopers in riot gear, were dispatched to the South Lawn at UT Austin, where hundreds of students gathered to call on the school to cut ties with weapons manufacturers that have continued to arm Israel. At least 10 protesters have already been arrested by police after they were told to disperse, according to the Texas Tribune. Troopers with the Texas Department of Public Safety threatened to arrest any protesters who remained on the South Lawn for trespassing, according to KXAN’s Ryan Chandler. The arrests quickly turned violent, with one video of the protest showing police pushing into the crowd of protesters, shoving them to the ground, and handcuffing them.Read more at The Daily Beast.