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As Robert Pattinson has learned, you either die an Edward, or you live long enough to see yourself become the Jacob. While discussing his character Antinous in The Odyssey, the actor compared the role in the Christopher Nolan-helmed movie to Taylor Lautner’s Jacob in the Twilight movie franchise, nearly 15 years after Pattinson last played […]

Louise Lasser, the star of the soap opera parody “Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman,” died at her home in Manhattan on Monday. She was 87.

Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer will convene around a dozen leaders to discuss the programme in Ankara.

The last time a Senate seat came open in Michigan, fewer than 20,000 votes separated Democrats from their victory in 2024 and what would have represented a dramatic end to a long-running winning streak. 

Almost two years later, with another Senate seat at risk, the party is now facing a polarizing inflection point over how to win again in a far different political environment. The Aug. 4 primary race and a contentious Tuesday debate represent a bigger choice for Democratic voters: who can actually beat a GOP opponent in November. That choice comes with higher stakes than recent contests in New York and Colorado, where U.S. House contenders who are farther to the left don’t have a challenging general election awaiting them in the fall. 

“The one thing that I do is I win tough races,” said Rep. Haley Stevens, who also claimed during the debate that her Democratic rival, progressive candidate Abdul El-Sayed, is attempting to become “a celebrity senator.” 

The public display showed how fraught the contest has become between the moderate and progressive factions within the left. 

“There’s a reason that both Chuck Schumer and Donald Trump don’t want to see me on the inside of the U.S. Senate, because I’m a threat to politics as usual,” said El-Sayed, who also countered that “we also don’t need politicians bought off by corporations.” 

The stakes are significant for Democrats. If they lose Michigan, their already narrow path to winning back the Senate from Republicans in this fall’s midterms would effectively be done in. The party likely has to hold purple seats like this one, then win back four seats from the GOP to take the majority through races that include redder parts of the country that have drifted away from Democrats in recent years. 

Losing in Michigan would only add to the likelihood that the GOP keeps control of the chamber for President Donald Trump’s final two years in the White House. 

Yet no Republican has won a U.S. Senate race in Michigan in more than 30 years. 

Less than a month before Michigan’s Senate primary, Stevens has the overwhelming advantage when it comes to outside spending supporting her run.

An MS NOW analysis of federal campaign finance records found that so far more than $23 million has been spent by super PACs and other well-funded organizations seeking to affect the outcome of the Aug. 4 primary — outside of the candidates’ campaigns. 

Of that, roughly $19 million has been spent outright supporting Stevens. 

To date, the biggest spending group for Stevens is the United Democracy Project, a super PAC deeply associated with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. That outfit has already spent close to $11 million in the race, federal campaign finance records show, all since the start of June. Another $9.6 million supporting Stevens has come from a group called A Stronger Michigan. That group came together only recently, according to disclosures. 

Stevens’ approach during Tuesday’s debate hinged on trying to describe El-Sayed as being the candidate Republicans see as more beatable in the fall, while arguing that she has a record of work in Congress that shows what she can bring to voters in Michigan if she wins. 

“I am not someone trying to go viral and shouting into a bullhorn about problems. I am delivering. That is not something my opponent can say. He’s great at attacking,” Stevens said. 

The tension over the Democratic Party moving farther to the left nationally, and in a way that could make the difference in Michigan’s Senate race, also played into Tuesday’s debate. It will likely continue to do so for weeks to come, at least. 

“If you want your politics dictated to you by AIPAC or Chuck Schumer, then I’m not your guy,” El-Sayed said. 

The actions of Israel’s government overseas is a major point of contention in national Democratic politics. Michigan’s Senate race reflects similar divisions. 

“I believe in international law,” El-Sayed said. “I believe we have to hold every country to international law, which means to me that we need to stop funding the Israeli military [with] unilateral blank checks.” 

“I can say that Israel has a right to peacefully exist alongside the people of Palestine and in Gaza,” Stevens said, before taking issue with Israel’s prime minister. “It is very clear that Mr. Netanyahu has not made us safer, has not brought us closer to peace, and he’s endangered Jews here in America and around the world.”

Whoever wins in August is set to face Republican Mike Rogers this fall. Rogers, a former congressman, was also the GOP’s standard-bearer in the 2024 Senate race, when he ran behind Trump’s numbers and lost. 

But he may represent conservatives’ best opportunity to flip a Senate seat, given a tough midterm environment for the incumbent president’s party and concerns about candidate quality in a different presidential battleground down south in Georgia. 

Michigan is critical to Democrats’ ambitions of winning back the White House in 2028. And the cracks that have emerged in the party more broadly — between Sen. Bernie Sanders’ movement backing El-Sayed and those allied with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, who is supporting Stevens — could influence how the state may be approached over the next several years.

The post After Trump’s 2024 Michigan win, Democrats approach divisive Senate crossroads  appeared first on MS NOW.

BRUNSWICK, Maine — The effort to push Graham Platner out of the Maine Senate race has some Democrats flashing back to 2024 — and making them worry about abandoning their nominee.

Platner has seen a dramatic drop in support within the party and has lost his biggest financial backers after POLITICO reported that a woman said he forced her to have sex with him, which he denies. Democrats in Maine are already jockeying to replace him on the ballot and take on GOP Sen. Susan Collins — all before Platner has even dropped out of the race.

That series of

The shocking chain of events unfolded on Feb. 8, when the 18-month-old child was found face-down in an in-ground pool during a Super Bowl gathering, according to police.

Rep. Haley Stevens (D-Mich.) and former Wayne County health director Abdul El-Sayed sparred on a Tuesday debate stage in the must-win Senate race for Democrats. The Democratic primary debate, hosted by Nexstar’s WOOD TV8, marked the first meeting between Stevens and El-Sayed since state Sen. Mallory McMorrow (D) suspended her campaign over the weekend. Her exit paved…

A man was killed by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in Texas during a traffic stop on Tuesday, the agency told The Hill. “On July 7, 2026, at approximately 6:50 AM CT, ICE law enforcement attempted to conduct a vehicle stop as part of a targeted enforcement operation to arrest an illegal alien,” a spokesperson…

Prince Harry is having a bad week — and the royal relatives ostracizing him aren’t looking great either.

Harry, the younger son of Britain’s King Charles III, and six other high-profile defendants lost a privacy case Tuesday against Associated Newspapers Ltd., publisher of the Daily Mail and the Mail on Sunday. A British judge dismissed all claims by the defendants, who included the singer Elton John and his husband, David Furnish, and actors Sadie Frost and Elizabeth Hurley. They argued that the tabloids used unlawful tactics such as phone hacking to unearth details of their personal lives for articles published between 1993 and 2011.

In legal filings, Harry said it was “disturbing to feel that my every move, thought or feeling was being tracked and monitored just for the Mail to make money out of it.” Testifying emotionally in January, he called articles about his dating life “disgusting” and “creepy” and said it was “beyond cruel” to report “confidential discussions” he had after a photo of his dying mother was published in Italian media. “They continue to come after me,” he said of the tabloids. “They have made my wife’s life an absolute misery.”

The Mail publisher argued that the articles at issue were generated from lawful sources, such as information from aides, friends and publicists. In a statement summarizing the 400-plus-page ruling, Judge Matthew Nicklin of the U.K. High Court wrote that the claimants failed to prove “that the information complained of had been obtained unlawfully” and that “suspicion, even where understandable, was not enough.”

Harry has filed several lawsuits against British tabloid publishers alleging illegal methods of obtaining information. Previous efforts have met with better results. In December 2023, the prince won damages in a privacy lawsuit against Mirror Group Newspapers, publisher of the Daily Mirror, Sunday Mirror and Sunday People, when a judge ruled his phone had been hacked. In 2025, Rupert Murdoch’s News Group Newspapers settled a lawsuit with the prince while admitting “unlawful” conduct by private investigators hired by the Sun, one of its tabloids. 

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Prince Harry testifies in phone-hacking lawsuit against UK tabloid

June 7, 2023 / 02:52

Media intrusiveness is deeply personal to Harry, who blames press aggression for the death of his mother, Diana, Princess of Wales, in a 1997 car crash. He has likened media hounding of his American-born wife, Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, to his mother’s experience. Harry and Meghan stepped away from royal life in 2020; they now live in California with their two children, Prince Archie and Princess Lilibet.

Tuesday’s ruling emerged during the second of a five-day visit Harry is making to England to promote charities such as the Invictus Games. But the trip was already overshadowed by an unusually public spat between the prince and palace officials.

The short version: Harry announced he would travel to Britain. Then came reports that Meghan and the kids might go, too. Accommodation in a royal residence was reportedly offered. All four would travel to Britain, presuming they would be provided with police security — protection that was rescinded after Harry and Meghan moved away. Then came clarifications: Police security would not be provided outside of royal residences. Meghan and the kids would not go. Harry’s security team said there were terrorist threats. Harry would travel on his own. He had accepted the offer of royal accommodation.

At that, palace staff announced that the prince had missed his deadline to accept their offer and there was not enough time to prepare. (You read that right: Somehow, the monarchy does not have time or staff enough to figure out sheltering the king’s visiting son in multi-hundred-room Buckingham Palace.)

This trip, coming nearly a year after Harry last saw his father, might have been a step toward warming the family relations that have been icy since Harry and Meghan opted out of royal life. Such ties went into deep freeze with the couple’s Oprah Winfrey interview, Netflix docuseries, the prince’s 2023 memoir, “Spare,” and his separate lawsuit to reinstate his police security.

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Prince Harry’s book ‘Spare’ reveals deep divides, infighting

January 9, 2023 / 03:17

The thaw, it seems, will have to wait. 

As Harry’s camp and palace aides squabbled on Monday, the king visited a British army regiment and was photographed riding around in a tank. The image symbolized duty and dithering at once. While Charles privately funds a home for Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, his disgraced brother whose royal titles were revoked last year over his connections to Jeffrey Epstein, he is letting a “no room at the palace” kerfuffle play out around his son. Although Harry has been openly critical of the government over security issues, and called the dismissal of the case against the Mail publisher “a complete and obvious whitewash,” the question is less whether Harry can be trusted not to spout off than what Charles wants to prioritize.

Charles could make a simple announcement: Harry will be guarded like the son of the king when he is in the United Kingdom. Charles could privately cover the cost from Duchy of Lancaster funds, income to the sovereign separate from the Crown Estate revenue that funds official royal duties. If such an offer noted that Harry is the son of the sovereign has received credible terrorist threats, it would not necessarily extend into the next reign. But it would allow Charles, a 77-year-old living with cancer, to see his son and grandchildren. Instead of carping about accommodation deadlines, palace aides should say that the king is taking care of his family and threats exist during even private visits.

Police security isn’t some on-demand service — but Harry and Meghan aren’t ordinary celebrities. If Charles is willing to subsidize Andrew despite public outrage over his brother, offering security to a couple who say threats keep them out of Britain should not be a hard sell. As things stand, the cold-shoulder bickering that’s playing out in public is just a reminder that for people who grew up hunting on vast estates, the Windsors are remarkably adept at shooting themselves in the foot.   

The post Prince Harry lost a privacy lawsuit. But he could still get his royal family back. appeared first on MS NOW.

Dramatic body camera video shows a Michigan sheriff’s deputy and good Samaritans racing to free a man trapped in a burning pickup truck.

McConnell, 84, has been in hospital for more than four weeks, and his staff have not yet said why he was admitted.

Hilton said the facility “failed the children”, as regulators cited neglect and use of unnecessary restraints.