Great American Family actor Keller Fornes dead at 32
Actor Keller Fornes, best known for his role in the Great American Family series "County Rescue," has died at 32 years old.
foxnews.com
Physician governor urges Capitol Hill to block RFK Jr.'s confirmation: 'Our children's lives depend on it'
Questions over the likelihood of Kennedy's confirmation took a turn this week after GOP Sen. Bill Cassidy, the incoming chair of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions, called out the potential future HHS Secretary for being "wrong" on the issue of vaccines.
foxnews.com
Fires Break Out Across Southern California Amid Fierce Winds
The region’s utility company said it was prepared to cut power to more than 400,000 customers to try to prevent more blazes.
nytimes.com
What to know about Florida's massive falling iguanas when temperatures drop
When temperatures drop in South Florida, it can cause a big problem for Floridians: falling iguanas. When it gets too cold, the large invasive reptiles — which can grow to be up to 5 feet long and 20 pounds — get stunned by the temperatures and will often fall out of trees onto the ground or whatever may be passing by below.
cbsnews.com
Debate over using beach cabanas at popular travel destination prompts prime minister to weigh in
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has addressed a recent debate on people reserving sand space with portable cabanas on the country's beaches. Social media users weigh in.
foxnews.com
WATCH: Road rage suspect drags mom out of vehicle, body-slams her on pavement
A Massachusetts woman was pulled out of her car and body-slammed after a fender bender. A Rhode Island was charged in the road rage attack, which was caught on video.
foxnews.com
Brittney Griner returns to year-round basketball with Unrivaled after Russia detainment drama
For the first time in nearly three years, Brittney Griner will be playing organized offseason basketball.
nypost.com
Trump Won’t Rule Out Military Action in Greenland, Panama in Fiery Press Conference
Trump aired grievances against rivals, the Justice Department, and other nations in a winding and pugnacious press conference.
time.com
What do tickets cost for the Bills vs. Broncos Wild Card game in Buffalo?
This is the first time the teams are facing off since November 2023.
nypost.com
Watch Live: Jimmy Carter set to lie in state at U.S. Capitol
Former President Jimmy Carter’s nearly week-long public farewell began in Plains, GA where he died Dec. 29 at the age of 100, past his boyhood home on the way to Atlanta. The 39th president’s casket is being transferred today to the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., for the next phase of his state funeral.
nypost.com
House passes bill named after slain nursing student Laken Riley that allows states to sue DHS for harms from illegal immigration
The House of Representatives on Tuesday passed its first major piece of legislation of the new Congress, the Laken Riley Act, to mandate immigration officials detain illegal immigrants who committed theft-related offenses.
nypost.com
‘She-Elites’ on the rise: Women with wealth emerge as leaders of luxury real estate
Wealthy women are emerging as a force to be reckoned with when it comes to snapping up high-end homes in the US — and they’re being dubbed the “she-elites.”
nypost.com
El lateral Omar Campos cumplirá pronto su sueño de jugar con el Cruz Azul
De pequeño, Omar Campos se vestía con los colores de Cruz Azul y esperaba poder algún día jugar con el club de sus amores.
latimes.com
GOP rep pushes to move federal border agency from DC to Texas
“For four years, the Biden administration opened our southern border to over 10 million illegal aliens, including murderers, gang members, and suspected terrorists—forcing Texas to be their gateway,'' said Rep. Keith Self, a Republican from Texas.
nypost.com
Reliving Rex Ryan’s wild Jets ride as he interviews for second chance
Rex Ryan interviewed Tuesday in West Palm Beach, Fla., for the Jets head coaching job. A little more than 10 years ago, the Jets announced his firing via Twitter, ending a six-year stretch that included two AFC Championship game appearances.
nypost.com
Playoffs de la NFL reciben a corredores veteranos brillando con nuevos equipos
Los corredores veteranos que cambiaron de equipo en el último receso de la NFL se han dado la oportunidad de demostrar la diferencia que pueden aportar en la postemporada.
latimes.com
Danish prime minister has blunt message for Trump: Greenland is not for sale
Denmark's Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen emphasized that Greenland is not for sale as President-elect Trump insists the U.S. should acquire the territory.
foxnews.com
Jimmy Carter's casket arrives in Washington, D.C.
Former President Jimmy Carter's casket has arrived in Washington, D.C., as the nation prepares to honor the 39th president of the U.S. CBS News senior White House correspondent Weijia Jiang reports.
cbsnews.com
Adult star trashes man’s behavior at the gym — but she doesn’t get the support she hoped for
A woman has claimed that a man acted inappropriately toward her at the gym, however when she shared footage of their interaction online, she didn’t get the support she was hoping for.
nypost.com
A TikTokker has this demand for restaurants — and the internet agrees
If you’re someone who likes to do a little research before visiting a restaurant, you know the Google listing layout all too well.
nypost.com
Georgia GOP boots ex-Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan from party, claiming the Harris supporter wasn’t a loyal Republican
The Georgia Republican Party’s State Executive Committee has voted to expel former GOP Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan from being associated with the party.
nypost.com
Jennifer Lopez will keep $5M engagement ring from Ben Affleck after settling divorce
Lopez will have the unique green diamond, which Affleck had engraved with a personal message, after the pair settled their divorce.
nypost.com
Daniel Penny demands dismissal of civil lawsuit from Jordan Neely's father
Daniel Penny's lawyers want a judge to dismiss the lawsuit filed by Jordan Neely's father, after their client was acquitted of homicide in criminal court.
foxnews.com
Margaret Josephs ‘mortified’ by ‘entitled’ Jennifer Aydin’s Jersey Mike’s rant: ‘Stop acting’ like a ‘villain’
Aydin was slammed on social media after she posted several Instagram Stories where she age- and job-shamed a Jersey Mike's employee.
nypost.com
Despite freezing temperatures, Chinese swimmers dive into a river for health and happiness
Even as the mercury dropped well below freezing, enthusiasm soared among about a dozen hardy swimmers during a daily ritual in northeast China’s “ice city” of Harbin.
nypost.com
Trump claims he'll rename the Gulf of Mexico to 'Gulf of America'
President-elect Donald Trump took aim at Mexico again Tuesday boasting that he would rename the Gulf of Mexico in retaliation for his issues with Mexico.
abcnews.go.com
What to know about DOGE and its quest to slash government waste, spending
Proponents of the Department of Government (DOGE) say that it will work with Congress to slash up to $2 trillion in government waste and spending bringing more transparency.
foxnews.com
McDonald’s ending some DEI practices, joining a growing list of companies
The fast-food chain is the latest high-profile brand to scale back its diversity goals amid a rocky legal landscape and pressure from conservative activists.
washingtonpost.com
How Canada Fell Out of Love With Trudeau
Canada and much of the world were once awash in "Trudeaumania." But voters eventually grew tired of him.
time.com
Sting operation nets Orange County teacher who allegedly sent sexually explicit texts
An Orange County middle school teacher was arrested after a sting operation allegedly caught him sending sexually explicit text messages to an adult posing as a teen.
latimes.com
‘RHONJ’ star Jennifer Aydin removed from cruise ship gig after viral Jersey Mike’s meltdown: ‘We made adjustments’
Aydin was set to set sail on a Fans at Sea cruise with her co-stars Teresa Giudice and Dolores Catania in September for the line's "Wives on the Waves" getaway.
nypost.com
Online holiday sales jump nearly 9% as retailers lure bargain-hungry customers
Retailers, including Walmart and Target, spent more on ads and offered early discounts and targeted promotion.
nypost.com
Warsaw Holocaust memorial vandalized with Gaza war graffiti
The Umschlagplatz monument is only the latest Holocaust memorial to recently be defaced in the Polish capital.
nypost.com
Trump: Carter was a 'very fine' person but Panama Canal moves were 'a big mistake'
President-elect Trump criticized Jimmy Carter's diplomacy that led to the Panamanians regaining control of the PCZ nearly 100 years after Teddy Roosevelt helped the U.S. take it over.
foxnews.com
A mom was convicted of murder after her abuser killed their baby. Now she could be freed
Gender bias led to a Central Valley mother being convicted of murder in the 2018 killing of her infant son, the California Supreme Court ruled.
latimes.com
I can’t stop watching Mr. Beast’s new game show and I hate myself
Jimmy Donaldson, a.k.a. MrBeast, on the set of Beast Games. The point of Beast Games is laid out with chilling starkness in the first 60 seconds of its premiere. A thousand people are competing for a $5 million grand prize that, we’re told, is the “largest in entertainment history.” But its host, 26-year-old Jimmy Donaldson, better known as the massively successful YouTuber styled “MrBeast,” refers to this pile of money in another way: “generational wealth.” This might sound like an oddly academic way of describing a jackpot, but only if you were unfamiliar with Mr. Beast’s defining quality: his desire to test exactly what people are willing to do for cash. The next thing viewers hear on Beast Games is the contestants describing their motivations for competing on the show. The first is a Black woman who says that she grew up homeless and that she would use the money to help other homeless kids. The second is a young white guy who says, “If I win $5 million, I could use that to make passive income for the rest of my life.” Beast Games, whose first four episodes are now streaming on Amazon Prime, knows what it is doing when it shows you one contestant presumably worthy of the prize and another presented as far more sinister by comparison. It knows what it is doing when it shows you a millennial with pink hair crying hysterically because they knocked over a tower of blocks, or any other instance of grown adults acting like toddlers. It knows that it has taken Squid Game, a show about how, actually, our glee at watching poor people debase themselves for money might be a bad thing, and drawn the exact opposite conclusion. Beast Games exists to make you hate it and other people, and for you to keep watching regardless. In this, it’s an extraordinary success. The gist is that 1,000 people wearing tracksuits compete in challenges to win the prize over the course of 10 episodes. They start the contest in a giant warehouse before moving to “Beast City,” which looks like a life-size Brio train set, then onto “Beast Island,” a private $1.8 million Panamanian island. Future episodes move those remaining to the Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas. Despite reportedly costing more than $100 million to make, it’s marked by nonsensical writing, ugly graphic design, and frequent ads for MoneyLion, a payday loan company that markets itself as a cool fintech brand. Every moment of the show is designed to capture and keep your attention, and it does, even as you hate yourself more with every passing second. Beast Games exists to make you hate it and other people, and for you to keep watching regardless. In this, it’s an extraordinary success. The logic of the show is so poisonous that the moments designed to strengthen viewers’ faith in humanity — like when all four team captains choose to forgo an offer of $1 million rather than betray their teammates — made me want to scream at them from my couch. “Don’t you know that literally the only reason you’re here is to win a bunch of money?” I wanted to say, before reminding myself that I am an adult woman watching Beast Games. But this cynicism is justified when one of said team captains then becomes a cultlike figure among a faction of his fellow contestants, spewing bizarre Christian sermons in order to further his identity as a martyr. The large-bearded Jeremy claims that it is in fact God who is guiding him through Beast Games, and God who told him to take mostly his fellow male teammates along with him to the next round, even after he promised to help the women. This leads to a hilarious moment where a female contestant says, “I speak to God every day and I know for a fact he didn’t tell him that.” Those who are Beast-fluent know that Donaldson typically shies away from more complicated narratives about gender and race, preferring instead to keep the tone to toddler-level simplicity: “Mr. Beast give poor guy money, Mr. Beast God!” There is an almost shocking lack of conflict in many of his YouTube videos; any tension is only surface-level. This is where the Amazon show innovates, pitting the men and women and the white and non-white players against each other, forming the central narrative of the show. It’s horrific and infuriating to witness two brothers gleefully convince a sobbing woman to sacrifice herself for them, or when a white guy takes back his promise to the two Black people he’s sharing a prison cell with. (God, this shit is bleak.) By the third episode, I was ready to wield pitchforks to defend the good-hearted players from the evil ones, forgetting entirely that all of it was a fallacy orchestrated by the world’s most famous YouTuber and a multibillion-dollar corporation with a long track record of exploitation. Mr. Beast, famously uncharismatic, is useless when it comes to the task of comforting contestants who get booted off the show (or in some cases, dropped into an abyss); the scenes that require him to show human emotion are painful to watch, and not just because he spends the entire show wearing a hideous shiny suit over a black hoodie. His crew — Donaldson’s friends-slash-employees known as the “Beast Gang” — are worse. They are awkward, soyfacing bros who do nothing but attempt to emulate surprise about a game they designed while repeating whatever internet slang they think is most popular (drink every time they shout “Locked in!”). None of them are capable of interacting normally with other human beings, which I suppose is understandable when the only time you have to interact with normal people is when they’re begging you for money. This, again, is the logic of the Mr. Beast universe, composed of wealthy 20-something hustle-bro influencers in a variety of different flavors and their armies of wannabe copycats. Here, the sort of money jargon used by Mr. Beast and his contestants — “generational wealth,” “passive income” — amounts to gospel. Mr. Beast and his ilk are obsessed with rags-to-riches narratives, both their own and other people’s, and with dangling the dream of “financial freedom” to viewers by showing off Lamborghinis, Rolexes, and their success with women. To them, money is the key to all of it; it is the be-all, end-all of human life. As Katie Notopoulos wrote on Threads, “‘Beast Games’ is money-obsessed; the first ep challenges are mindgames about winning money, not physical challenges. It’s a game show where ‘wanting money’ is the entire entertainment.” The nihilism at the heart of Beast Games is, of course, nothing new. As Emily Nussbaum catalogs in her history of the genre, Cue the Sun!: The Invention of Reality TV, making poor people prostrate themselves in an attempt to win cash is older than color television broadcasting. 1945 saw the debut of Queen for a Day, a radio show in which working-class housewives competed to win a slate of prizes by sharing their sob stories to an audience, who would determine the winner via applause-o-meter. Crucially, she writes, “You couldn’t be queen if the prize was for you. It had to be for your preemie baby, your sick aunt — and the more showily self-abnegating you were, the more likely other women would let you win.” You could argue that there are plenty of reality TV shows more diabolical than Beast Games — the 2000s alone saw such ethical disasters as The Swan, Kid Nation, Cheaters, The Biggest Loser, and Jon & Kate Plus Eight. As ugly as Beast Games is to watch, it appears to have been even uglier behind the scenes. Contestants reportedly had to sign contracts that acknowledged “I understand that such activities may cause me death, illness, or serious bodily injury.” In a lawsuit filed against the show, several contestants said they experienced sexual harassment, were “degraded” by the experience, and that they lacked access to food and medicine. (Neither representatives for Amazon MGM studios nor Mr. Beast have commented on the lawsuit.) A few of the contestants also left the arena in stretchers, while others were hospitalized. “We signed up for the show, but we didn’t sign up for not being fed or watered or treated like human beings,” one contestant told the New York Times. Over the past few years, it’s begun to feel a little bit like many of us are contestants in a reality game show, one where our job is to sell sob stories to maximize the amount of attention and money we can squeeze out. It’s been illuminating to see which sorts of people thrive on this particular show, and watching Beast Games, at the very least, helped me understand better the dark, festering desires at the heart of the American id. It’s Mr. Beast’s world now. Game on.
vox.com
Verizon settlement payments go out to customers in measly amounts
Verizon customers reported receiving settlement payments well below the minimum of $15, as stipulated in agreement.
cbsnews.com
Winter blast turns deadly as U.S. fights frigid temperatures
Power outages are being reported across the U.S. as frigid temperatures and snow sweep through the U.S., and several weather-related deaths are being reported. CBS News Philadelphia's Nikki Dementri reports from Cape May, New Jersey, and CBS News Bay Area Jessica Burch has the latest weather forecast.
cbsnews.com
Appeals court rejects Trump's latest attempt to get Friday's hush money sentencing called off
A New York appeals court judge has denied President-elect Donald Trump’s latest bid to delay this week’s sentencing in his hush money case.
latimes.com
MTA boss Janno Lieber slammed over mismanagement as NYC congestion toll takes effect — as he dismisses ‘grievance politics’
Janno Lieber brushed off concerns about the agency's mismanagement of its massive $20B budget, dismissing scrutiny of congestion pricing from state lawmakers as "grievance politics."
nypost.com
What's next after Jimmy Carter's casket arrives in D.C.
Jimmy Carter's casket is being transported to Washington, D.C., where mourners will get to honor the former president. CBS News senior White House and political correspondent Ed O'Keefe reports.
cbsnews.com
Gen Z employee goes viral after rejecting job offer: ‘Wages that don’t match inflation are out’
Alice Raspin, 28, took to social media to declare that “wages that don’t match inflation are out” for the New Year.
nypost.com
Hugh Jackman and Sutton Foster confirm their relationship with public gesture after months of romance rumors
After months of speculation, Hugh Jackman and Sutton Foster seemingly confirmed their romantic relationship after being spotted walking hand-in-hand during a stroll in LA.
foxnews.com
Costco triples down on ‘wokeness’ as board member defends DEI practices, rebukes companies scrapping policies
A Costco board member has taken aim at companies rolling back diversity, equity and inclusion policies, calling for businesses to "maximize" DEI instead.
nypost.com
How will Jayden Daniels and the Commanders fare in the playoffs?
Sports columnist Barry Svrluga and Commanders beat writers Nicki Jhabvala and Sam Fortier will answer your questions starting at 2 p.m. Tuesday.
washingtonpost.com
Chick-fil-A makes change to waffle fries recipe and people are noticing
Chick-fil-A announced on its website that its waffle potato fries are now made with a new recipe, but many customers say they prefer the old version. The change purportedly means the fries are crispier.
foxnews.com
The Post’s Larry Brooks earns prestigious New York sports media award
Brooks was one of five New York Post writers to reach the seven-person finals for the award.
nypost.com