Dan Ladden-Hall

Gregory A. Shemitz/ReutersThe Vatican on Friday informed a Donald Trump-supporting archbishop that he is being excommunicated for refusing to recognize Pope Francis' authority after years of outspoken public attacks.Carlo Maria Vigano, an ultra-conservative who served as the Vatican’s diplomat to Washington, D.C. between 2011 and 2016, was formally accused last month of schism, which is one of the most serious offenses in canon law. Schism is “the refusal of submission to the Supreme Pontiff or of communion with the members of the Church subject to him,” according to the Vatican.“His public statements manifesting his refusal to recognize and submit to the Supreme Pontiff, his rejection of communion with the members of the Church subject to him, and of the legitimacy and magisterial authority of the Second Vatican Council are well known,” the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith said in a press release confirming that Vigano was found guilty and excommunicated.Read more at The Daily Beast.

Photo Illustration by Thomas Levinson/The Daily Beast/GettySome of Britain’s comedy political candidates proved to be only slightly more of a joke than the actual governing party on Thursday night. The incumbent Conservative Party was crushed in a general election which saw their Labour rivals sweep to power in a landslide win after 14 years in opposition—with several major Tory figures losing their seats along the way. Adding to their humiliation, in some cases, was the indignity of making their concession speeches alongside truly bizarre rival candidates.Take, for example, Jacob Rees-Mogg, a prominent Conservative lawmaker who enjoyed several roles in government before losing his seat in southwest England overnight. After delivering his concession speech in the race for the North East Somerset and Hanham district, Rees-Mogg shook hands with a man wearing a balaclava decorated with baked beans. Read more at The Daily Beast.

Yui Mok/ReutersThe British people delivered Prime Minister Rishi Sunak an unambiguous and devastating message in Thursday’s general election, ending 14 years of Conservative rule with the party’s worst electoral result in its 200-year history. With the scale of his crushing defeat to Labour leader Keir Starmer clear, Sunak began his departure Friday with an apology. “I will shortly be seeing his majesty the king to offer my resignation as prime minister,” Sunak said outside 10 Downing Street Friday before heading to Buckingham Palace for a private meeting with King Charles III. “To the country, I would like to say first and foremost: I am sorry,” he continued. “I have given this job my all, but you have sent a clear signal that the government of the United Kingdom must change, and yours is the only judgment that matters. I have heard your anger, your disappointment, and I take responsibility for this loss.”With most districts counted, Labour will sweep to power with at least 412 seats in the 650-seat House of Commons. But this being Britain, there’s the inevitable rigmarole of a royal ceremony to go through before the country officially has its new prime minister. Read more at The Daily Beast.

Susannah Ireland/ReutersItaly can’t stop giving awards to Kevin Spacey.The two-time Oscar winner will be honored with the country’s Nations Award for Lifetime Achievement in the southern town of Taormina on July 21. The distinction comes as Spacey has made several high-profile media appearances recently in an effort to move on from the allegations of sexual assault which derailed his career and damaged his reputation when they first emerged in 2017.Spacey is set to give a short performance as he accepts his new award—which is not connected to the Taormina Film Festival running this month—at a special gala event in the town’s historic amphitheater. The Nations Award is organized under the patronage of the Italian Senate and the state of Sicily.Read more at The Daily Beast.

Gina Ferazzi/Los Angeles Times via Getty ImagesRobert F. Kennedy Jr. shared nude photos of women with his friends and appeared to joke about eating dogs, according to a report Tuesday.A lengthy Vanity Fair article delving into the independent presidential candidate’s character also included a woman’s harrowing account of allegedly being groped by Kennedy while working for him family in the late 1990s. Kennedy’s campaign reportedly did not respond to questions about the alleged wrongdoing.While married to his second wife, Mary Richardson, Kennedy was allegedly known to send photos of “nude women” to his friends, according to the report. The friends assumed that it was Kennedy who had taken the images, but they were unsure if the women in them “had consented to having their genitalia photographed, let alone shared with other people.”Read more at The Daily Beast.

Mario Anzuoni/ReutersTwo 19-year-olds who were arrested late at night last month near Oprah Winfrey’s ranch in Hawaii are suspected of illegal hunting, authorities said.The young men were stopped just before midnight on June 21, the state Department of Land and Natural Resources said in a news release Monday. They were allegedly spotted using a hunting spotlight on a public road which runs through Winfrey’s property in the Kula area on the island of Maui.“This happened near the intersection of Thompson Road and Kamaʻole Road,” the release said, adding: “Thompson Road is a public road that runs through private property owned by the Oprah Winfrey Ranch.” Read more at The Daily Beast.

Photo Illustration by Thomas Levinson/The Daily Beast/GettyCLACTON-ON-SEA, England—British parliamentary elections have not been kind to Nigel Farage. He’s previously failed in no fewer than seven attempts to win a seat in Westminster, one of which nearly killed him, but he remains undeterred. On Thursday, as U.K. voters head to the polls in the general election, the right-wing populist Reform U.K. leader—promising MAGA-style immigration crackdowns and a “patriotic” curriculum in schools—might just secure a place in the House of Commons for the first time.He’ll be mounting his most recent effort at a moment when European voters appear to have developed something of a taste for more hard-core right-wing politics. The latest example came in France, where Marine Le Pen’s hard-right National Rally won the largest vote share in the first round of the parliamentary election on Sunday. But whether Britain, a country that overwhelmingly views Donald Trump unfavorably, is ready to embrace a man who seems to be doing just about everything he can to emulate the Republican former president isn’t certain.On Sunday, Farage held a U.S-style political rally—which is extremely rare in the U.K.—in which he attacked the media, referred to his political rivals with mocking nicknames, and complained about how the left had ruined Doctor Who. Reform’s chief executive Paul Oakden even vowed to “Make Britain Great Again” at the event. In the past week, in an interview with The Daily Beast, Farage said Biden is “a disaster” and that Trump’s “strength” would restore order to a chaotic world.Read more at The Daily Beast.

Christopher Polk/Billboard via GettyWill Smith put on a fiery show at the 2024 BET Awards on Sunday night, performing his new single featuring Sunday Service Choir and Fridayy, “You Can Make It.”“I don’t know who needs to hear this right now,” the 55-year-old said before launching into the new tune, which dropped on Friday. “But whatever’s going on in your life, I’m here to tell you: You can make it.”The Oscar-winning actor’s return to his musical roots comes more than two years after his shocking onstage slap of Chris Rock at the 2022 Academy Awards. Smith lashed out after apparently getting upset about a joke Rock made about Smith’s wife, Jada Pinkett Smith. Smith later apologized for the incident and now appears to be having something of a career renaissance. Read more at The Daily Beast.

Chris J Ratcliffe/ReutersJust a week out from Britain’s general election, Nigel Farage’s rightwing Reform U.K. was rocked by an explosive exposé showing people associated with the party using racist and homophobic language.The damning undercover report Thursday from Channel 4 News captured the slurs used by a Reform volunteer and a Farage campaign events organizer in Clacton, the district Farage is hoping to represent in Westminster on July 4. But now Donald Trump’s most high-profile British ally is claiming the whole thing is a “setup.”A Reform canvasser identified in the report as Andrew Parker was filmed making racist and Islamophobic remarks in front of an undercover journalist, even using an offensive British term to describe British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, who is of South Asian descent.Read more at The Daily Beast.

Justin Sullivan/Getty ImagesPresident Joe Biden’s supporters might have hoped that his performance in Thursday night’s debate against Donald Trump would stamp out burning questions about his age and his ability to secure another term in office. Instead, his stumbling and error-prone display poured gasoline on the flames.The conflagration reached all the way to the opinion pages of The New York Times, where not a single one of a panel of 12 writers concluded Biden had won the head-to-head with his opponent, a recently convicted felon. Worse still, a host of columnists at the newspaper were outright calling for him to abandon his re-election bid altogether.“I watched the Biden-Trump debate alone in a Lisbon hotel room, and it made me weep,” wrote Thomas Friedman, a political commentator and friend of Biden. “I cannot remember a more heartbreaking moment in American presidential campaign politics in my lifetime—precisely because of what it revealed: Joe Biden, a good man and a good president, has no business running for re-election.”Read more at The Daily Beast.