Rooney Mara, a two-time Academy Award nominee for her star turn in 2011’s The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo and her lead role in 2015’s Carol, has been tapped to play Audrey Hepburn in a forthcoming biopic. Variety reports that Mara, 36, will also produce the Apple production. Luca Guadagnino, the Oscar-nominated director of Call Me by Your Name, will direct the film and the script will be written by The Giver co-writer Michael Mitnick. Depicting Hepburn will be no easy feat. The British actress and humanitarian is considered one of the all-time screen legends, with iconic performances in Breakfast at […]
Rachel Olding
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A Florida real estate agent was fatally ambushed as she tried to sell a home on Thursday, and police have arrested a 51-year-old man described by neighbors as a “disgruntled tenant” who had recently moved out of the home. Sara Trost, a young mom from the United Kingdom who started her own business flipping discount homes in South Florida, was sitting in her Jeep in the home’s driveway at 12:30 p.m. when she was shot multiple times, police said. A neighbor, Roben Cipriani, said he was on a work call at home when he heard two gunshots. “I turn to my […]
Julio Patino spoke to his son, Franco, by phone on Friday afternoon as Franco was celebrating a 21st birthday at the Astroworld Festival in Houston with his high school buddy Jake Jurinek. “He was happy and eating with his friend. He was having fun,” Patino told The Daily Beast by phone on Sunday. But by the end of the night, Franco and Jake were both dead, among the eight victims crushed and trampled by a surging crowd at a festival that several attendees have since said was poorly organized, chaotic, and understaffed. Red flags had already emerged earlier in the afternoon, […]
Travis Scott’s festival performance on Friday night wasn’t shut down for a full 40 minutes after police declared it a “mass casualty event” and asked promoters to pull the plug, according to a timeline provided by officials Saturday afternoon. Eight people died and 23 people were hospitalized after a panic-fueled crowd crush at the Astroworld Festival. Among the casualties was a 10-year-old boy who remains in critical condition. The eight victims’ ages ranged from 14 to 27. Houston Police Chief Troy Finner said a mass casualty declaration was triggered around 9:30 p.m., about half an hour into Scott’s set, and first […]
Moments before Las Vegas Raiders wide receiver Henry Ruggs III’s fiery fatal crash early Tuesday morning, a security guard noticed a Corvette flying by at incredible speed. Just 10 seconds later, Alex Hart, who was patrolling an apartment complex on Las Vegas’ South Rainbow Boulevard, “heard a vehicle trying to stop as tires were screeching, followed by a loud collision,” the complex’s owner said in a statement to 8 News Now on Friday. Hart ran down the street to find Ruggs lying on the road beside his smashed up Corvette, and a Toyota RAV4 with Tina Tintor, 23, and her 3-year-old […]
Rapper Fetty Wrap was arrested at a music festival in New York on Thursday on federal drug charges. The FBI took the musician, real name William Junior Maxwell II, into custody at Citi Field late Thursday afternoon, a law enforcement source confirmed to The Daily Beast. He was scheduled to perform at 4:45 p.m. at the Rolling Loud music festival but some festivalgoers complained on Twitter that he never appeared. He is expected to be arraigned in Central Islip Federal Court on Friday. An indictment has not yet been unsealed. Maxwell, 30, was one of six people arrested for a drug […]
The body of Miya Marcano, a Florida college student who vanished after repeatedly rejecting romantic overtures from a maintenance worker in her apartment complex, was found on Saturday morning. “Obviously this is not the update I wanted to give everyone today,” Orange County Sheriff John Mina said at a press conference. “Our hearts are broken.” Marcano was last seen on Sept. 24 and was reported missing when she didn’t board a flight home to see her family. Three days later, Armando Caballero, later named the prime suspect by cops, was found dead of an apparent suicide. Caballero, 27, worked at the […]
South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem tried to mop up the damage from a nightmare week with a three-minute YouTube video released on Friday that defected blame to “the media.” Noem has been accused of strong-arming the state into giving her daughter a real estate license. Days after Kassidy Peters’ application to become a certified real estate appraiser was rejected, Noem brought the employee in charge of the relevant agency, as well as the woman’s supervisor and the state labor secretary, to her office. Noem’s daughter was also present at the meeting, the Associated Press reported. The 70-year-old head of the state’s […]
An Arizona man who claimed he was targeted in a terrifying Proud Boys “assassination” plot has been found dead in a suspected homicide, according to authorities. Officers from the El Mirage Police Department found Thomas Christopher Retzlaff, 55, dead at his home on Sept. 1 with unspecified “fatal injuries,” spokesperson Timothy Mason told the Phoenix New Times. Police had been asked to do a welfare check by his wife. The death was ruled a homicide by the Maricopa Medical Examiner, the New Times reported. Hanszen Laporte, a law firm that was representing Retzlaff in a slew of convoluted lawsuits, confirmed his […]
The owner of a private COVID testing clinic turned right-wing provocateur Candace Owens away for spreading COVID misinformation and discouraging mask use, according to a screenshot of an email posted online by Owens. “We cannot support anyone who has pro-actively worked to make this pandemic worse by spreading misinformation, politicizing and DISCOURAGING the wearing of masks and actively dissuading people from receiving life-saving vaccinations,” the owner wrote. “My team and myself have worked overtime, to exhaustion, unpaid and underpaid this past year, spending our own capital to ensure that our community remains protected. It would be unfair to them and to […]
Charlie Watts, one of the original members of The Rolling Stones, died on Tuesday at the age of 80, his London publicist said in a statement. “It is with immense sadness that we announce the death of our beloved Charlie Watts,” the statement said. “He passed away peacefully in a London hospital earlier today surrounded by his family.” The statement described him as “one of the greatest drummers of his generation” and a “cherished husband, father and grandfather.” Earlier this month, Watts was forced to bow out of the band’s upcoming U.S. stadium tour after undergoing an unspecified medical procedure. A […]
Shortly after 42 people were killed in Gaza City on Sunday morning, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gave a televised address in which he vowed to continue launching airstrikes “full-force.” Airstrikes on a major downtown street in Gaza City in the early hours of Sunday razed three residential buildings and killed dozens in the space of just five minutes, Palestinian health officials said. Among them were 10 children and 16 women. At least 50 people were wounded, and rescue crews spent the day sifting through the rubble, pulling out some survivors. It was the single deadliest attack in Gaza since the […]
Last summer, as Black Lives Matter protests erupted across the country and the presidential election campaign was in full swing, the FBI in San Diego was keeping a close eye on Grey Zamudio. Zamudio was part of a Facebook group called Defend East County that had been encouraging and celebrating violence against BLM protesters. “The only good liberal is a dead liberal,” Zamudio had written, according to an FBI affidavit. “It’s up to vigilantie [sic] militia to crush the liberal terrorists,” he allegedly wrote in another post, alongside photos of him in combat gear and videos of him reloading and shooting […]
Police in Houston received a tip about a possible kidnapping case on Thursday night, but what they eventually found left them shocked. After working through the night to verify the tip, police on Friday raided a two-story home on Chessington Drive, a quiet street in the southwest suburbs with manicured lawns and American flags hanging from beige homes. Inside, they found 91 people crammed onto every inch of wooden floor, Daryn Edwards, assistant chief of Houston Police’s Homeland Security Command, said in a Friday press briefing. “It was a big surprise when we got in the house and saw what we […]
The medical examiner who wrote the controversial report on George Floyd’s cause of death testified on Friday that the cops’ restraint “was just more than Mr. Floyd could take”—but he wouldn’t rule out the role of drugs and heart issues. Hennepin County Medical Examiner Dr. Andrew Baker’s testimony provided a small glimmer of hope for Derek Chauvin’s defense team after a devastating week of evidence in which the Minneapolis Police Chief said the former officer “absolutely” violated protocol, and two renowned medical experts said Floyd died of low oxygen caused by the cops’ actions alone. Baker’s official report listed Floyd’s cause […]
Two weeks before he allegedly rammed his car into two police officers guarding the U.S. Capitol, killing one of them, Noah Green posted an article on his Facebook page titled, “Lull Before the Storm.” “An Intro to the Honorable Elijah Muhammad and his divine warning to us all during these last days of our world as we know it. Satan’s rule over us is up,” the 25-year-old’s apocalyptic post said, linking to an article from Final Call, the official newspaper of the Nation of Islam. Green’s social media posts suggest he was spiraling in the lead up to the attack on […]
Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club is dealing with a coronavirus outbreak. But that doesn’t mean the parties stop. On Sunday, the club will host a 500-person fundraiser for a childrens’ charity—complete with vintage cars, Lamborghinis, Ferraris, and “everybody playing by the pool,” according to Palm Beach realtor Valentina Aved, who helped organize the event. The $375-a-head, invite-only party benefitting Place of Hope is sold out, Aved says, and nobody seems concerned about the outbreak. “It will be a very exciting event. The most beautiful cars, people, good friends,” she told The Daily Beast. The charity’s Instagram likewise promised “hundreds of historic cars […]
As the walls closed in on New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo on Friday with dozens of Democratic lawmakers calling for him to go, he invoked a new defense to accusations of sexual harassment: It’s cancel culture. “Politicians who don’t know a single fact but yet form a conclusion and then [an] opinion are, in my opinion, reckless and dangerous,” he said during a phone briefing that was supposed to be about coronavirus. “That, my friends, is politics at its worst. People know the difference between playing politics, bowing to cancel culture, and the truth.” Pressure for him to resign reached fever […]
New York health officials have undercounted the number of COVID-19 nursing home deaths by up to 50 percent in some cases, the state’s attorney general has revealed in a bombshell report. Attorney General Letitia James said the Department of Health’s public data dramatically obscured the true number of deaths in a state that has already logged more deaths than any other state. New York was ravaged by the virus early in the pandemic, and its effects were felt most acutely in the state’s nursing homes. More than 42,000 deaths have been recorded, of which 8,500 were nursing home residents. Gov. Andrew […]
President Trump will spend the last 12 days of his presidency cut off from Twitter completely after the company imposed a permanent suspension on his personal account Friday due to the risk of “further incitement to violence.” “After close review of recent Tweets from the @realDonaldTrump account and the context around them — specifically how they are being received and interpreted on and off Twitter — we have permanently suspended the account due to the risk of further incitement of violence,” the company said in a blog post. A Facebook source told The Daily Beast that a permanent ban from their […]
COVID-positive Rudy Giuliani called into another cringe-worthy “hearing” on election fraud claims on Thursday and managed to take his already-ludicrous conspiracy theory up another notch. Speaking before Georgia State House Republicans, he claimed that a video of election officials counting ballots in Atlanta’s State Farm Arena not only showed them “stealing votes” but also passing out drugs. Giuliani initially claimed last week that the “smoking gun” clip showed officials usher observers and reporters out of the room at 11 p.m. then pull out suitcases of stolen votes. On Thursday, he added: “Look at that woman, look at her taking those ballots […]
President Donald Trump’s son, Don Jr., has become the latest figure in the Trump orbit to test positive for the coronavirus, The Daily Beast has confirmed. He tested positive at the start of the week and has been quarantining in his cabin, a spokesperson said. “He’s been completely asymptomatic so far and is following all medically recommended COVID-19 guidelines,” the spokesperson added. Bloomberg first reported his positive test result. The virus continues to cripple the White House and Trump’s inner circle, even after the president himself was hospitalized with the virus weeks before the Nov. 3 election. On Friday, Rudy Giuliani’s […]
Legendary guitarist Eddie Van Halen, who co-founded the rock band Van Halen, has died at 65 following a years-long battle with throat cancer. “I can’t believe I’m having to write this,” his son Wolf Van Halen, who became Van Halen’s bassist in 2006, wrote on Twitter. “He was the best father I could ever ask for. Every moment I’ve shared with him on and off stage was a gift. My heart is broken and I don’t think I’ll ever recover from this loss.” Eddie, who was born in Amsterdam, formed Van Halen with his brother and drummer Alex Van Halen, bassist […]
President Trump’s daughter-in-law Lara Trump knocked on doors in Florida on Tuesday for Laura Loomer, the bigoted conspiracy theorist and notorious internet troll vying for a seat in Congress. Before she won the Republican primary in Florida’s deeply-blue 21st District, Loomer was most famous for chaining herself to Twitter’s front door while wearing a yellow Star of David, spreading conspiracy theories about the 2017 Las Vegas mass shooting, being permanently banned from Uber Eats for calling for an Uber without a Muslim driver, and bragging about being a #ProudIslamophobe. None of that has discouraged Trump campaign surrogate Lara Trump from hopping aboard the Loomer […]
Steve Bannon, former chief strategist to President Donald Trump, was arrested in New York Thursday on charges of using the viral “We Build the Wall” fundraising campaign to enrich himself. Hundreds of thousands of donors who gave a total of $25 million to the crowdfunding campaign were defrauded, Audrey Strauss, acting U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, said in a statement. Three others were indicted along with Bannon: Brian Kolfage, Andrew Badolato and Timothy Shea. “As alleged, the defendants defrauded hundreds of thousands of donors, capitalizing on their interest in funding a border wall to raise millions of […]
Herman Cain, the one-time Republican presidential candidate and prominent businessman, has died a month after he was hospitalized with COVID-19. “We knew when he was first hospitalized with COVID-19 that this was going to be a rough fight,” a post on his website said Thursday. “He had trouble breathing and was taken to the hospital by ambulance. We all prayed that the initial meds they gave him would get his breathing back to normal, but it became clear pretty quickly that he was in for a battle.” The post said there were “hopeful indicators, including a mere five days ago when […]
The Church of Scientology, famed for its shadowy rituals and celebrity followers, received hundreds of thousands of dollars in government-backed coronavirus relief. Scientology branches in New York, Washington, D.C., and Belleair, Florida, received small business loans of $150,000 to $300,000, according to a full list of recipients released by the U.S. Treasury. The three churches were among tens of thousands of mosques, synagogues, and other religious institutions to receive forgivable loans as part of the Trump administration’s $2 trillion CARES Act, designed to provide economic relief during the coronavirus pandemic. The list of religious organizations to receive loans was heavily skewed […]
Billionaire rapper and shoe designer Kanye West’s company has received a multimillion-dollar loan as part of the federal government’s coronavirus stimulus package, according to records released Thursday by the U.S. Treasury’s Small Business Administration. The money was handed out in the latest round of the Paycheck Protection Program, part of the Trump administration’s $2 trillion CARES Act designed to provide economic relief to small businesses during the coronavirus pandemic. Yeezy LLC, a California company, is listed in the Treasury’s log as a recipient of a loan worth between $2 million and $5 million. The company self-identified as being male-owned and a […]
Ramon Olorunwa Abbas, who went by the name Ray Hushpuppi, made no secret of his extraordinary wealth. On an Instagram account with 2.3 million followers, he posted photos of himself dripping in high-end watches, wearing robes with his name emblazoned on the back, and driving a $300,000 Mercedes or a white Rolls Royce Cullinan with the hashtag #AllMine. He took private jets to Paris, shopped at Gucci and Louis Vuitton, and indulged in cakes depicting himself surrounded by Fendi bags. His address was 1706 Palazzo Versace in Dubai. On Snapchat, under the username “hushpuppi5,” he called himself “The Billionaire Gucci Master!!!” […]
Ghislaine Maxwell, Jeffrey Epstein’s closest confidante, was arrested by the FBI in New Hampshire on Thursday. Who is Ghislaine Maxwell? She’s a 58-year-old British heiress, born in France as the youngest of nine children to Elizabeth and Robert Maxwell, and raised in a 53-room mansion in Oxford. Robert Maxwell, a publishing tycoon who once served in the British Parliament, was a charismatic but shady businessman who died in mysterious circumstances in 1991 when he disappeared from the deck of his yacht, the Lady Ghislaine, anchored off the Canary Islands. Family observers previously told The Daily Beast that it was not strange […]
When Allyson Watterson went missing just before Christmas Day last year, her boyfriend’s father told investigators his son had been out hiking with Watterson in North Plains, a rural area on the outskirts of Portland, before the pair became separated. Watterson’s mother, Misty, said her daughter and her boyfriend, Benjamin Garland, had been in North Plains to visit a friend when their car broke down. But there was no evidence to suggest either story was true, the Washington County Sheriff’s Office later revealed. On Friday, Watterson’s disappearance took a tragic turn when the Washington County Medical Examiner’s Office confirmed her body […]
Fifteen days after he cried out for his mother as he couldn’t breathe, George Floyd was laid to rest alongside her in Houston on Tuesday. Floyd’s gold casket was taken to the cemetery from a church on the southwest side of the city, where the last of three memorial services was held for Floyd, 46, who died after a white Minneapolis police officer knelt on his neck for almost nine minutes. “My mom, if she was here today, I honestly can say this, that she would be on that casket right now trying to get in there with him,” one of […]
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo openly hypothesized on Tuesday about overthrowing NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio after rampant looting and destruction swept across Manhattan on Monday night, overwhelming the NYPD and leaving the city looking like a war zone. “I’m disappointed and outraged by what happened in New York City last night. That criminal activity hurt everyone,” he said. De Blasio had doubled NYPD officers out on the streets to 8,000 on Monday night and imposed an 11 p.m. curfew after three nights of protests against police brutality were overshadowed by violence. But it was not enough to stop rampant looters […]
The wild plot involved faking his own death, stealing the identity of a Florida attorney, using an app to disguise his voice, and pretending to have prostate cancer, bone cancer, and a brain aneurysm. Unemployed Virginia man Russell Louis Geyer was so determined to hide his assets in bankruptcy proceedings, he even threw his own wife under the bus—duping her into handing over $70,000 and using her email address to inform an attorney he was dead. Geyer, 50, pleaded guilty on Wednesday to contempt of court, bankruptcy fraud, wire fraud, and aggravated identity fraud. He faces up to life in prison. […]