Daily Beast

Alex Wong/Getty ImagesA fire at the office of Senator Bernie Sanders (D-VT) in Burlington, Vermont on Friday was intentionally lit, authorities say. The Burlington Fire Marshal’s office deemed the fire “incendiary in nature,” according to a press release. An investigation found that an accelerant had been sprayed on the door of Sen. Sanders downtown office, according to NECN. Personnel in the building and surrounding structures were evacuated. Sanders was not in the office at the time, and no staffers were injured.Read more at The Daily Beast.

Photo Illustration by Kelly Caminero / The Daily Beast / GettyThe prospect of Eagle Pass, Texas, becoming the first municipality in America to see the total solar eclipse on April 8, 2024, triggered visions in the border town of big crowds preceded by a big music festival.The city’s marketing and tourism director, Aide Castano, told a 2023 meeting of the Eagle Pass Rotary Club that the city of 28,000 should prepare to host nearly four times its population for the event.“Mark your calendar for the eclipse, get your grocery shopping done, we’re gonna have 100,000 people in Eagle Pass, we’re gonna have millions of dollars in sales for downtown Eagle Pass,” Castano said, according to the recollection of resident Amerika Garcia-Grewall, who attended the meeting.Read more at The Daily Beast.

Kevork Djansezian-Pool/Getty ImagesMichael Jackson’s estate is fighting his accusers’ request to unseal police records that contain nude photos of Jackson that were taken by police, according to a filing obtained by The Daily Beast.Wade Robson and James Safechuck were the subject of the documentary Leaving Neverland, in which they describe, in grueling detail, being groomed and assaulted by Jackson over the course of several years from the ages of 7 and 10 years old, respectively—including repeated instances in which they were allegedly forced to either kiss Jackson or engage in anal or oral sex with him.The two now grown men are currently in the process of suing Jackson’s estate for allegedly enabling their abuse at the hands of the pop superstar. The latest bid by Robson and Safechuck’s legal team to obtain the old police records and photos is to prove their belief that Jackson “collected sexually provocative” photos of children, according to their attorney John C. Carpenter. Read more at The Daily Beast.

Photo Illustration by The Daily Beast / GettyIt takes a lot of work to become a feature film director. Often, you’ll spend years slogging away in film school and on sets, networking, and working your way up the food chain until one day, a studio executive decides to give you a shot. Maybe you make some short films, or, in the 2020s, you build your brand on YouTube.…Or, if you’re very lucky, you’re Elizabeth Hurley’s son, Damian Hurley, so you spend some time on the Gossip Girl set as an 8-year-old, cameo on The Royals a couple times, make a short film in the Caribbean, and presto! Lionsgate is on your doorstep, ready to make your childhood dreams come true.Strictly Confidential, Damian’s feature directorial debut, hit theaters with a limited release on April 5 and is also available on VOD platforms including YouTube and Google Play, and there’s been seemingly no limit to the amount of press this 20-year-old has managed to attract. Publications like People and Vogue and Entertainment Weekly have all gotten in on the action, as has TMZ—which naturally zeroed in on the fact that, in this film, Damian directed his mother in a steamy, queer sex scene. For the morbidly curious, the trailer for Strictly Confidential is about three hours long and spells out most of the plot, minus one major twist.Read more at The Daily Beast.

Ronen Tivony/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty ImagesThe judge in Donald Trump’s Manhattan hush-money case has squashed the former president’s bid to subpoena NBCUniversal over a Stormy Daniels documentary, calling it “the very definition of a fishing expedition.”In late March, Trump subpoenaed NBCUniversal for information on a documentary about one of the trial’s key witnesses, adult film star Stormy Daniels, who Trump is accused of having paid-off through his former attorney Michael Cohen. Trump’s team had hoped to demonstrate collusion between Daniels and the media company about the Stormy documentary release date, which they contended was purposefully slotted in proximity to the trial’s start date.Read more at The Daily Beast.

Gabe Ginsberg/Getty ImagesOn Friday, pop star Aaron Carter’s sister announced that a posthumous album by Carter, consisting of previously unreleased music, will be released on May 24th as part of Mental Health Awareness Month. A single, entitled “Recovery,” is slated to drop on April 26th, according to the announcement. “I understand why the RECOVERY album didn’t see the light of day for almost 10 years,” songwriter and producer Aaron Pearce, who worked on the album, posted on Instagram. “There is a bigger purpose for it now. Aaron would be so grateful that his story lived beyond the tragedy bringing awareness and hope to future generations.”The “Aaron’s Party” teenage idol was found dead in his bathtub in Lancaster, California in November 2022—authorities eventually ruled that Carter had accidentally drowned after taking Xanax, and huffing compressed difluoroethane. Read more at The Daily Beast.

AlamyNetflix knows how to get my attention. In its announcement that the series White Collar, which ran from 2009 to 2014 on USA, is now available on Netflix, the streamer posted on X that “it takes one episode for Matt Bomer to steal your heart in White Collar.”The accompanying photo, a still from the show’s pilot, is of Bomer walking around shirtless in pajama pants. My heart, among other things, was duly stolen.There’s good reason to pay attention to the White Collar Netflix launch, and it’s not just Bomer’s drool-worthy physique. Even though the show has been off the air for a decade, it’s poised to follow in the well-tailored footsteps of another USA drama series and become the biggest streaming show in the world. White Collar is basically about to become the next Suits.Read more at The Daily Beast.

Fatih Aktas/Anadolu via Getty ImagesThe 4.8-magnitude earthquake that rattled the New York City area and frayed residents’ nerves on Friday morning was the biggest temblor to hit the region in nearly 150 years—and experts say it’s well past time to start taking the seismic threat seriously.According to the New York City Area Consortium for Earthquake Loss Mitigation (NYCEM), “thousands” of earthquakes with magnitudes of 2.0 or greater have occurred in New York State over the past few centuries and there is a 20 to 40 percent chance of a 5.2 magnitude earthquake occurring within the next 50 years, and “[c]atastrophic events with Magnitudes 6 and larger are possibilities.”“Even a moderate event (Magnitude 6) could result in an estimated 1,110-1,200 deaths, as well as igniting up to 900 fires simultaneously in the NY-NJ-CT region,” a 2003 NYCEM study warned. “Considering the large population (18.5 million) and the region’s building inventory (predominantly unreinforced masonry), it is clear that even a moderate earthquake would have critical consequences on public safety and the economy of this area.”Read more at The Daily Beast.

Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Times via GettyA day after Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s campaign sent a fundraising email that called Jan. 6 rioters “activists,” it released a new statement on Friday suggesting that some of the insurrectionists may have been unfairly prosecuted by the Biden administration.“January 6 is one of the most polarizing topics on the political landscape. I am listening to people of diverse viewpoints on it in order to make sense of the event and what followed. I want to hear every side,” the email began.Though the message, attributed to Kennedy himself, acknowledged that many of the rioters had broken the law, he said he was “concerned about the possibility that political objectives motivated the vigor of the prosecution of the J6 defendants, their long sentences, and their harsh treatment.”Read more at The Daily Beast.

Mike Segar/ReutersMuch of New York City was shaken by an earthquake on Friday that morning that shut down some transit options and forced a brief ground stop for all flights out of the region’s international airports, federal authorities said.The earthquake’s magnitude was estimated to be 4.8 by the United States Geological Survey, which placed its epicenter as being in Lebanon, New Jersey, about 50 miles away Manhattan. The tremor began at 10:23 a.m., with residents as far south as Philadelphia and as far north as Long Island reporting they felt violent shaking.There were no immediate reports of major damage, but the city’s major international airports, John F. Kennedy and Newark Liberty, were issued a ground stop by the Federal Aviation Administration in the quake’s wake.Read more at The Daily Beast.