Barbie has had many jobs throughout the years like astronaut, chef & fashion designer! Now, she’s going to be add Queen of Christmas to her resume! Mariah Carey is officially getting her own Barbie this year in her classic sparkly red dress! Maybe she’ll sing All I Want For Christmas Is You!!
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Thirty Five stars are being added to The Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2026! The class of 2026 includes singers Miley Cyrus, Josh Groban and Air Supply. Actors Demi Moore, Timothée Chalamet, Rachel McAdams, Rami Malek, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Molly Ringwald are also on the list. As are two of the stars confirmed for the upcoming Devil Wears Prada sequel Emily Blunt and Stanley Tucci. Shaq is the only one in the Sports entertainment category next year. Comedian Gabriel Iglesias and Broadway Star and Disney Princess Legend Lea Salonga are also getting stars… she is the singing voice of Princess Jasmine and Mulan.
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A new animated Cat in the Hat movie is coming to theaters next year. The new take on the classic Dr. Suess book will follow the Cat as he “brings chaos and mischief to a pair of siblings struggling with their move to a new town.” He will travel around the world and find himself bringing joy to sad children. Bill Hader, who got his start on SNL, will voice the cat and the movie will also star Quinta Brunson. Bill Hader actually played the character once on Saturday Night Live. The Warner Brothers film will be in theaters Feb 26th.
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Local divers and police have discovered a car in Mount Sinai Harbor with human remains inside. A PT Cruiser was found about 55 yards from shore near the Cedar Beach boat ramp.
Suffolk County police confirmed that remains were recovered from the car and on Tuesday afternoon, the PT Cruiser was removed from the water. The police have not officially identified the remains yet but believe they may be a Long Island man who vanished nearly 15 years ago.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Senate Republicans hauled President Donald Trump’s big tax breaks and spending cuts bill to passage Tuesday by the narrowest of margins, pushing past opposition from Democrats and their own GOP ranks after a turbulent overnight session.
The outcome capped an unusually tense weekend of work at the Capitol, the president’s signature legislative priority teetering on the edge of approval or collapse. In the end that tally was 50-50, with Vice President JD Vance casting the tie-breaking vote.
Three Republican senators — Thom Tillis of North Carolina, Susan Collins of Maine and Rand Paul of Kentucky — joined all Democrats in voting against it.
“In the end we got the job done,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune of South Dakota said afterward.
The difficulty for Republicans, who have the majority in Congress, to wrestle the bill to this point is not expected to let up. The package now goes back to the House, where Speaker Mike Johnson of Louisiana had warned senators not to overhaul what his chamber had already approved. But the Senate did make changes, particularly to Medicaid, risking more problems ahead. House GOP leaders scheduled a Wednesday vote and vowed to put it on Trump’s desk by his July Fourth deadline, which is Friday.
It’s a pivotal moment for the president and his party, as they have been consumed by the now 887-page “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” which was its formal title before Democrats filed an amendment to strip out the name. Republicans are investing their political capital in delivering on their sweep of power in Washington.
Trump acknowledged it’s “very complicated stuff” as he departed the White House for Florida.
“I don’t want to go too crazy with cuts,” he said. “I don’t like cuts.”
Senators work around the clock
What started as a routine but laborious day of amendment voting, in a process called vote-a-rama, spiraled into an all-night slog as Republican leaders bought time to shore up support.
The droning roll calls in the chamber belied the frenzied action to steady the bill. Grim-faced scenes played out on and off the Senate floor, amid exhaustion.
Thune worked around the clock, desperately reaching for last-minute agreements between those in his party worried the bill’s reductions to Medicaid will leave millions more people without care and his most conservative flank, which wanted even steeper cuts to hold down deficits ballooning with the tax cuts.
The GOP leaders had no room to spare. Thune could lose no more than three Republican senators, and two — Tillis, who warned that millions of people will lose access to Medicaid health care, and Paul, who opposes raising the debt limit by $5 trillion — had already indicated opposition.
Attention quickly turned to two other key senators, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Collins, who also raised concerns about health care cuts, as well as a loose coalition of four conservative GOP senators pushing for even steeper reductions.
Murkowski in particular became the subject of GOP leaders’ attention, as they sat beside her for talks. Then all eyes were on Paul after he returned from a visit to Thune’s office.
Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer of New York said Republicans “are in shambles because they know the bill is so unpopular.”
An analysis from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office found 11.8 million more Americans would become uninsured by 2034 if the bill became law. The CBO said the package would increase the deficit by nearly $3.3 trillion over the decade.
Pressure built from all sides. Billionaire Elon Musk said anyone who voted for the package should “hang their head in shame” and warned he would campaign against them. But Trump had also lashed out against the GOP holdouts, including Tillis, who abruptly announced his own decision over the weekend not to seek reelection.
Senators insist on changes
Few Republicans appeared fully satisfied as the final package emerged, in either the House or the Senate.
Collins fought to include $50 billion for a new rural hospital fund, among the GOP senators worried that the bill’s Medicaid provider cuts would be devastating and force them to close.
While her amendment for the fund was rejected, the provision was inserted into the final bill. Still she voted no.
The Maine senator said she’s happy the bolstered funding was added, but “my difficulties with the bill go far beyond that.”
And Murkowski called the decision-making process “agonizing.”
She secured provisions to temporarily spare Alaska and other states from some food stamp cuts, but her efforts to bolster Medicaid reimbursements fell short. She voted yes.
What’s in the big bill
All told, the Senate bill includes $4.5 trillion in tax cuts, according to the latest CBO analysis, making permanent Trump’s 2017 rates, which would expire at the end of the year if Congress fails to act, while adding the new ones he campaigned on, including no taxes on tips.
The Senate package would roll back billions of dollars in green energy tax credits, which Democrats warn will wipe out wind and solar investments nationwide. It would impose $1.2 trillion in cuts, largely to Medicaid and food stamps, by imposing work requirements on able-bodied people, including some parents and older Americans, making sign-up eligibility more stringent and changing federal reimbursements to states.
Additionally, the bill would provide a $350 billion infusion for border and national security, including for deportations, some of it paid for with new fees charged to immigrants.
“The big not so beautiful bill has passed,” Paul said.
Democrats fight all day and night
Unable to stop the march toward passage, the Democrats tried to drag out the process, including with a weekend reading of the full bill.
Sen. Patty Murray of Washington, the ranking Democrat on the Appropriations Committee, raised particular concern about the accounting method being used by the Republicans, which says the tax breaks from Trump’s first term are now “current policy” and the cost of extending them should not be counted toward deficits.
She said that kind of “magic math” won’t fly with Americans trying to balance their own household books.
BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) — Televangelist Jimmy Swaggart, who became a household name amassing an enormous following and multimillion-dollar ministry only to be undone by his penchant for prostitutes, has died.
Swaggart died decades after his once vast audience dwindled and his name became a punchline on late night television. His death was announced Tuesday on his public Facebook page. A cause wasn’t immediately given, though at 90 he had been in poor health, having suffered cardiac arrest last month.
The Louisiana native was best known for being a captivating Pentecostal preacher with a massive following before being caught on camera with a prostitute in New Orleans in 1988, one of a string of successful TV preachers brought down in the 1980s and 1990s by sex scandals. He continued preaching for decades, but with a reduced audience.
Swaggart encapsulated his downfall in a tearful 1988 sermon, in which he wept and apologized but made no reference to his connection to a prostitute.
“I have sinned against you,” Swaggart told parishioners nationwide. “I beg you to forgive me.”
He announced his resignation from the Assemblies of God later that year, shortly after the church said it was defrocking him for rejecting punishment it had ordered for “moral failure.” The church had wanted him to undergo a two-year rehabilitation program, including not preaching for a full year.
Swaggart said at the time that he knew dismissal was inevitable but insisted he had no choice but to separate from the church to save his ministry and Bible college.
From poverty and oil fields to a household name
Swaggart grew up poor, the son of a preacher, in a music-rich family. He excelled at piano and gospel music, playing and singing with talented cousins who took different paths: rock-‘n’-roller Jerry Lee Lewis and country singer Mickey Gilley.
In his hometown of Ferriday, Louisiana, Swaggart said he first heard the call of God at age 8. The voice gave him goose bumps and made his hair tingle, he said.
“Everything seemed different after that day in front of the Arcade Theater,” he said in a 1985 interview with the Jacksonville Journal-Courier in Illinois. “I felt better inside. Almost like taking a bath.”
He preached and worked part time in oil fields until he was 23. He then moved entirely into his ministry: preaching, playing piano and singing gospel songs with the barrelhouse fervor of cousin Lewis at Assemblies of God revivals and camp meetings.
Swaggart started a radio show, a magazine, and then moved into television, with outspoken views.
He called Roman Catholicism “a false religion. It is not the Christian way,” and claimed that Jews suffered for thousands of years “because of their rejection of Christ.”
“If you don’t like what I say, talk to my boss,” he once shouted as he strode in front of his congregation at his Family Worship Center in Baton Rouge, where his sermons moved listeners to speak in tongues and stand up as if possessed by the Holy Spirit.
Swaggart’s messages stirred thousands of congregants and millions of TV viewers, making him a household name by the late 1980s. Contributors built Jimmy Swaggart Ministries into a business that made an estimated $142 million in 1986.
His Baton Rouge complex still includes a worship center and broadcasting and recording facilities.
The scandals that led to Swaggart’s ruin
Swaggart’s downfall came in the late 1980s as other prominent preachers faced similar scandals. Swaggart said publicly that his earnings were hurt in 1987 by the sex scandal surrounding rival televangelist Jim Bakker and a former church secretary at Bakker’s PTL ministry organization.
The following year, Swaggart was photographed at a hotel with Debra Murphree, an admitted prostitute who told reporters that the two did not have sex but that the preacher had paid her to pose nude.
She later repeated the claim — and posed nude — for Penthouse magazine.
The surveillance photos that crippled Swaggart’s career apparently stemmed from his rivalry with preacher Marvin Gorman, who Swaggart had accused of sexual misdeeds. Gorman hired the photographer who captured Swaggart and Murphree on film. Swaggart later paid Gorman $1.8 million to settle a lawsuit over the sexual allegations against Gorman.
More trouble came in 1991, when police in California detained Swaggart with another prostitute. The evangelist was charged with driving on the wrong side of the road and driving an unregistered Jaguar. His companion, Rosemary Garcia, said Swaggart became nervous when he saw the police car and weaved when he tried to stuff pornographic magazines under a car seat.
Swaggart was later mocked by the late TV comic Phil Hartman, who impersonated him on NBC’s “Saturday Night Live.”
Out of the public eye but still in the pulpit
The evangelist largely stayed out of the news in later years but remained in the pulpit at Jimmy Swaggart Ministries, often joined by his son, Donnie, a fellow preacher. His radio station broadcast church services and gospel music to 21 states, and Swaggart’s ministry boasted a worldwide audience on the internet.
“My dad was a warrior. My dad was preacher. He didn’t want to be anything else except a preacher of the gospel,” Donnie Swaggart said in a video message shared on social media Tuesday following his father’s death. “That’s what he was put on this earth to do.”
The preacher caused another brief stir in 2004 with remarks about being “looked at” amorously by a gay man.
“And I’m going to be blunt and plain: If one ever looks at me like that, I’m going to kill him and tell God he died,” Jimmy Swaggart said, to laughter from the congregation. He later apologized.
Swaggart made few public appearances outside his church, save for singing “Amazing Grace” at the 2005 funeral of Louisiana Secretary of State Fox McKeithen, a prominent name in state politics for decades.
In 2022, he shared memories at the memorial service for Lewis, his cousin and rock ‘n’ roll pioneer. The pair had released “The Boys From Ferriday,” a gospel album, earlier that year.
Donnie Swaggart said he promised his father that “I will continue the work” — distributing Bibles, sharing the gospel and “proclaiming the message of Christ.”
Swaggart is survived by his wife, Frances, son Donnie, daughter-in-law Debbie, grandson Gabriel, daughter Jill, granddaughter Jennifer, son-in-law Clif, son Matt, daughter-in-law Joanna and nine great-grandchildren.
NEW YORK (AP) — The jury in Sean “Diddy” Combs’ sex trafficking trial said Tuesday that it has reached a verdict on four of five counts against the hip-hop mogul. But the partial decision remained under wraps as they kept deliberating on the top charge, racketeering conspiracy.
Prosecutors, Combs’ defense team and Judge Arun Subramanian reasoned that after just two days of deliberations, it was too soon to give up on reaching a verdict on all counts. So rather than taking a partial verdict, Subramanian told the jury to continue weighing the remaining charge. Deliberations will continue Wednesday.
The developments came late Tuesday afternoon, when the jury sent a note saying it was unable to reach a unanimous verdict on the racketeering conspiracy charge because there were jurors with “unpersuadable views” on both sides.
After hearing about the note, Combs appeared morose as his lawyers explained to him what was happening. At one point, lead defense lawyer Marc Agnifilo stepped away from the huddle, returned with a piece of paper and handed it to Combs, who read it solemnly. The hip-hop mogul ‘s mother and several of his children returned to the courtroom.
Combs stood with his hands in pockets as jurors came into the courtroom for the judge’s guidance.
“It is your duty as jurors to consult with one another and to deliberate with a view to reaching an agreement,” Subramanian told them, recapping an instruction he’d read before deliberations began.
Jurors are weighing charges that Combs used his fame, wealth and violence to force two girlfriends into drug-fueled sex marathons with male sex workers known as “freak-offs” or “hotel nights.”
He has pleaded not guilty, and his lawyers contend prosecutors are trying to criminalize Combs’ swinger lifestyle and that, if anything, his conduct amounted to domestic violence, not federal felonies.
Combs, 55, could face 15 years in prison to life behind bars if he is convicted of all charges.
Racketeering conspiracy — count 1 on the jury’s verdict sheet — is the most complicated of the charges because it requires the jury to decide not only whether he ran a “racketeering enterprise,” but also whether he was involved in committing some or all of various types of offenses, such as kidnapping and arson.
The charge falls under RICO, the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act. It is best known for being used in organized crime and drug cartel cases.
Earlier Tuesday, the jury asked to review critical testimony from one of the prosecution’s most important witnesses: the hip-hop mogul’s former longtime girlfriend Cassie, the R&B singer born Casandra Ventura.
The panel of eight men and four women asked for Cassie’s account of Combs beating, kicking and dragging her at a Los Angeles hotel in 2016 — an assault captured on now-infamous security camera footage.
They also asked to see Cassie’s testimony about an incident in which she said Combs accused her of taking drugs from him and kicked her off of their yacht at the Cannes Film Festival in France in 2013. On their way back to the U.S., she said, he threatened to release explicit videos of her having sex.
In addition, the jury asked for Cassie and stripper Daniel Phillip’s testimony about her jumping into his lap at a New York City hotel after. Phillip testified that he suspected Combs had been slapping and slamming her around an adjacent room.
“Her whole entire body was shaking, like she was terrified,” said Phillip, who was at the hotel for a sexual encounter with Cassie sometime between 2012 and 2014.
Phillip testified that he told her she was in real danger. Cassie, he said, “basically tried to convince me that it was OK: ‘It’s OK. I’m fine, I’ll be OK.'”
Tuesday’s court session began with the lawyers and judge considering the jury’s request late Monday for clarification about what qualifies as drug distribution, an aspect of the racketeering conspiracy charge.
Subramanian ultimately reminded jurors of instructions he’d already given on that part of the case.
On Monday, the panel deliberated over five hours. Barely an hour into the closed-door discussion, the foreperson sent a note complaining that there was one juror “who we are concerned cannot follow your Honor’s instructions.”
The judge responded to that first note by reminding jurors of their duties to deliberate and their obligation to follow his instructions on the law.
At the trial, Combs chose not to testify as his lawyers built their arguments for acquittal mostly through lengthy cross examinations of dozens of prosecution witnesses, including former Combs employees who testified reluctantly and only after being granted immunity.
“F1” won the box office this weekend with $144 million worldwide. The movie has a stacked cast including Brad Pitt, Damson Idris, and Javier Bardem. This is actually a career- best opening for Brad Pitt.
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NEW YORK (AP) — Jury deliberations got underway on Monday in Sean “Diddy” Combs’ federal sex trafficking trial and hit a snag almost as soon as they started. But, by the end of the day, jurors indicated they were making progress weighing complex charges that could put the hip-hop mogul in prison for life.
The first day of deliberations saw a flurry of notes from the jury and Combs and his supporters bowing their heads in prayer in the courtroom — but no verdict.
The jury of eight men and four women are sifting through seven weeks of sometimes graphic and emotional testimony about the rap, fashion and reality TV impresario ‘s propensity for violence and his sexual predilections, including drug-fueled sex marathons dubbed ” freak-offs ” or “hotel nights.”
About an hour in, the foreperson reported that a juror might be having trouble following the 61 pages worth of instructions the judge had just read to them.
“We are concerned (the juror) cannot follow your honor’s instructions,” the foreperson said in a note to Judge Arun Subramanian just after 12:30 p.m.
After the judge originally proposed asking the jury foreperson the nature of concerns about the fellow juror, defense lawyer Marc Agnifilo suggested caution and that it was better to say less than more.
“We can always ratchet it up. We can’t ratchet it down,” Agnifilo said.
Subramanian sent his response to the jury around 2 p.m., reminding the panel to deliberate and to follow his instructions on the law.
The jury sent another note about three hours later asking for clarification on the part of the instructions addressing drug distribution — an allegation included in Combs’ racketeering conspiracy charge.
As deliberations were happening, Combs prayed with his family and friends in the courtroom. Wearing his customary sweater and khakis, he stood facing his contingent in the audience and bowed his head with them. As they finished, they applauded, along with Combs.
Combs also showed off two books he’s reading: “The Power of Positive Thinking,” by Norman Vincent Peale and “The Happiness Advantage,” by Shawn Achor.
As he sent the jury to deliberate, Subramanian told the five alternate jurors to remain on standby at home in case they’re needed at a later point.
Jurors were provided with a laptop loaded with all of the exhibits shown in court, including text messages, photographs and videos of the sexual encounters at the heart of the case.
Combs, 55, has pleaded not guilty to federal charges of racketeering conspiracy, two counts of sex trafficking — relating to two of his ex-girlfriends — and two counts of transportation to engage in prostitution for allegedly arranging to fly his girlfriends and sex workers across state lines.
In closing arguments last week, federal prosecutors and Combs’ defense team took their last shots at convincing jurors to convict or acquit the Grammy Award-winning founder of Bad Boy Records.
“The defendant used power, violence and fear to get what he wanted,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Christy Slavik said. “He thought that his fame, wealth and power put him above the law.”
She said that he used his “close inner circle and a small army of personal staff, who made it their mission to meet the defendant’s every desire, promote his power and protect his reputation at all costs.”
Defense lawyer Marc Agnifilo countered, “This isn’t about crime. It’s about money.” He noted that one of Combs’ accusers in the criminal case also sued him in civil court.
“He is not a racketeer. He is not a conspirator to commit racketeering. He is none of these things. He is innocent. He sits there innocent. Return him to his family, who have been waiting for him,” the lawyer told jurors.
In all, 34 witnesses testified, headlined by Combs’ former girlfriends Cassie — the R&B singer born Casandra Ventura — and ” Jane,” who testified under a pseudonym. Both women said he often was violent toward them. Cassie said he forced her into hundreds of sexual encounters with paid male sex workers while Jane recounted numerous “hotel nights.”
Jurors also saw now-infamous security camera video of Combs beating, kicking and dragging Cassie at a Los Angeles hotel in 2016 and clips from videos of sexual encounters.
Combs chose not to testify, and his lawyers didn’t call any witnesses in their defense case. His attorneys elected instead to challenge the accusers’ credibility during lengthy cross-examination questioning.
The defense has acknowledged that Combs veered into violence, but his lawyers maintain that the sex acts were consensual. They contend that prosecutors are intruding in Combs’ personal life and that he’s done nothing to warrant the charges against him.
Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman announced Monday that there will be increased efforts to search the waters for sharks after a woman was believed to be bitten by a small sand tiger shark last week at Jones Beach. The additional measures will include using drones, helicopters and boats to scan the waters off Long Island to look for sharks or other hazards, such as riptides, to keep swimmers safe.