Andrew Lloyd/Loop Images/Universal Images Group via Getty ImagesHow do you win a race after being knocked unconscious? You could try asking 19-year-old Canadian Delaney Irving, who found out that she’d won Gloucester’s annual cheese rolling competition from a medical tent, but even she might not be able to tell you.“I remember hitting my head,” Irving told Greatest Hits Radio Gloucester on Monday, after she’d unconsciously won the women’s race. “I remember it hurting, and then I remember waking up in the tent.”Grasping her prize in hand—a seven-pound cheese roll—Irving joked, “I can eat this tonight.”Read more at The Daily Beast.

Photo Illustration by Erin O’Flynn/The Daily Beast/Getty ImagesSometime last year my then four-year-old daughter was waking up every single night. I was desperate and very, very sleep deprived. My husband and I tried sticker charts, other kinds of rewards, even going as far as to pay her to stay in bed. (Did I mention we were desperate?)But the only thing that really seemed to capture her imagination and harness her motivation was this bargain: stay in your bed for a month and I’ll take you to Walt Disney World. Since we struck that deal, I can count on one hand the number of times she has gotten out of bed in the last eight months. And that is how I—an amusement park loather who wrote her junior year English thesis on the portrayal of women in Disney movies (spoiler alert: it’s not good, even for the empowered female characters)—ended up at “the happiest place on earth” for three days in February.What does someone like me do in a situation like this—admittedly one of my own making? (My husband, who is still scarred by his own childhood trip to Disney World, told me I’m on my own). Initially my plan was to go into Jane Goodall mode and observe these unusual species—adults who like Disney World—in their natural habitat. Perhaps I’d even find a way to enjoy the theme parks that didn’t offend every sensibility of mine. Namely, hordes of princesses and overpriced food in mediocre restaurants.Read more at The Daily Beast.

KCNA via REUTERSNorth Korea’s latest missile advances mean it is now much harder for the U.S. to prevent Kim Jong Un from launching nuclear weapons.Pentagon insiders and North Korea watchers on Capitol Hill say Kim’s ability to deploy solid-fuel rockets—if proven—would complicate American efforts to launch preemptive strikes and that the Hermit Kingdom has entered a new phase of nuclear power.The North recently claimed that it flight-tested a solid-fuel intercontinental ballistic missile for the first time. The new missiles would be a breakthrough in the country’s efforts to build a harder-to-detect weapon that threatens the continental United States.Read more at The Daily Beast.

Henry Nicholls/ReutersBenedict Cumberbatch and his family have reportedly endured “many sleepless nights” after a chef attacked their home, kicking his way through an iron gate and screaming. Cumberbatch, his wife, Sophie Hunter, and their three young children were all home when chef Jack Bissell began his attack, The Times reports. Once on the premises of their London home, the chef spat on the home’s intercom before dislodging it with a fish knife. The date of the attack has not been made public.“I know you’ve moved here,” Bissell, previously a chef at the five-star Beaumont Hotel in London’s Mayfair, reportedly yelled. “I hope it burns down.” Although the chef fled the scene, DNA evidence from the intercom allowed police to make the arrest, The Times reports.Read more at The Daily Beast.

Rocco Spaziani/Archivio Spaziani/Mondadori Portfolio via GettyIt looks like the Hollywood Vampires will need to stay in their coffins—at least for at least a little while. Johnny Depp and his band have postponed their early U.S. tour dates, with Depp recovering from an ankle injury.The band said in a statement posted to Instagram that they won’t be playing their show Tuesday in Manchester, New Hampshire, and will also be putting off a few other shows until July because of Depp’s “painful injury.”Read more at The Daily Beast.

Cheatham County Sheriff’s OfficeToni Alcaraz says that she usually speaks with her sister, Nikki Alcaraz, almost every day. For three weeks now, however, Toni hasn’t heard a word from Nikki—who was last seen on a cross-country trip with her boyfriend, Tyler Stratton.Nikki Alcaraz, also known as Nikki Cunningham, is a 33-year-old mother of two, Oklahoma’s News 4 reports. She reportedly Tennessee left for California with Stratton and a dog in her black 2013 Jeep Wrangler, which sports a “Mama Tried” sticker, camo seats, and a “BGL3539” tag.Nashville’s WKRN reports that Stratton—named in fliers shared by the Cheatham County Sheriff’s Office on Facebook as Steven Tyler Stratton—is wanted Tennessee on an unrelated charge for “failure to appear on a probation violation that stems from a theft charge.” Read more at The Daily Beast.

HBOSuccession is over, and so too are the CEO dreams of the Roy siblings, whose quest for power collapsed in a boardroom showdown of almost perfect (by which I mean, wholly inevitable) dysfunction. It was an ideal conclusion for Jesse Armstrong’s seismic HBO hit, which offered glimpses of its protagonists’ pitiable humanity and then stark reminders of their greedy, desperate, me-first ugliness.To the end, it was a series that slyly sought to inspire sympathy for its devils. In doing so, it made its viewers complicit in its characters’ madness, as well as no different, really, than the Roy kids themselves with regards to their (pathetic, needy, misbegotten) love for their rancid paterfamilias, Logan (Brian Cox).In many respects, the Succession finale resembled any other preceding episode, with Kendall (Jeremy Strong) striving to solidify support for his bid to block Waystar RoyCo’s sale to Lukas Matsson’s (Alexander Skarsgård) GoJo, Shiv (Sarah Snook) trying to secure her own spot at the head of the table, Roman (Kieran Culkin) acting like a sniveling, damaged creep, and Tom Wambsgans (Matthew Macfadyen) groveling at the feet of anyone who might throw him a crumb—all as his sycophantic minion Greg (Nicholas Braun) feigned fealty while angling to improve his own spot among this wretched lot.Read more at The Daily Beast.

Stephane Cardinale/GettyMartin Scorsese might’ve dropped some big news during his tour through Italy following the Cannes Film Festival in France. After a meeting with Pope Francis, the director now says he has “responded to the pope’s appeal to artists in the only way I know how: by imagining and writing a screenplay for a film about Jesus.” Scorsese made the comments during a conference at the Vatican, where he reportedly said he’s “about to start making” the film, Variety reports. Scorsese’s manager, Rick Yorn, did not respond to the trade publication’s request for comment. Read more at The Daily Beast.

HBONow that Succession has ended, and we know the final successor, everyone has been waiting for one big answer. It’s the answer that will put a button on this life-changing series. It’s do or die. It’s all anyone can talk about on the internet. Everyone will be hypothesizing about this specific detail throughout the rest of the weekend, if not the rest of the year, if not through TV history, and maybe even the rest of our lives—an ending as jarring as The Sopranos’ final shot. We’re all wondering it.Will Waystar Royco have to change its name?Perhaps there are more pressing topics to discuss than the future of Waystar Royco, especially considering we’ll see none of what lies ahead after tonight’s final CEO selection. We now know who runs the company. (It might not be who you think!) We now know who was screwed over. (It’s not how or why you would think!) And we know who is left sat staring at the sunset. (This might be the only one you can predict!)Read more at The Daily Beast.

Photo Illustration by Thomas Levinson/The Daily Beast/GettyIn singling out federal programs for the deepest cuts during the haggling over raising the debt ceiling, the GOP is tapping into the myth that those who rely on public assistance are undeserving and can’t be trusted to responsibly receive government benefits.It goes back to President Ronald Reagan’s elevating and exaggerating an anecdotal “welfare queen” who drew checks from multiple agencies and spent the money on luxury food and drink. Democrats recoiled from the characterization, rightly so, this was belittling lower income people, who were the Democrats’ base.What’s different today is that a lot more of the people depending on government assistance vote Republican. They work low-income jobs, and they’re the ones who will be hurt by the deal the GOP wants. “You can’t have the kind of cuts the Republicans are talking about without hurting people, and a lot of those people are going to be Republicans,” says Jack Pitney, Professor of American Politics at Claremont McKenna College.Read more at The Daily Beast.

Evgenia Novozhenina/ReutersU.S. Senator Lindsey Graham’s recent comments during his Friday meeting with the President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky in the war-torn country caused outrage and fury in Moscow, with the head of RT Margarita Simonyan calling for his assassination.In a video clip of the meeting, Graham’s comments were spliced in a way that made it seem that the Senator stated that the fact that Russians “are dying” in the invasion is “the best money we’ve ever spent.” In fact, Graham said that the U.S. aid to Ukraine—and not specifically the deaths of the Russians—was a valuable investment in global security for the United States.“Senator [Lindsey] Graham has something to compare with. One of their [US] investments led to World War II and the Holocaust,” Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova claimed in a statement on Telegram. State TV host Vladimir Solovyov followed Zakharova’s lead on his program, Sunday Evening With Vladimir Solovyov, as he angrily exclaimed: “Your dirty American money also fully supported the Nazi regime in Germany! You are a Nazi beast and you’re following in the footsteps of your predecessors. I’ll repeat it once again: you will croak, but the Russian people will live forever!”Read more at The Daily Beast.

Murad Sezer/ReutersTurkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan held a roughly 5-percent lead over his presidential run-off opponent Kemal Kilicdaroglu on Sunday, according to preliminary returns from Turkish news agencies.Erdogan led with 52.3 percent of the vote compared to Kilicedaroglu’s 47.7 percent, according to the Associated Press. It comes weeks after Erdogan narrowly missed an outright win during the country’s presidential elections on May 14, where he held 49.5 percent of the vote.If Erdogan wins, he will extend his 20-year tenure as Turkey’s leader by an additional five. He previously served as the country’s prime minister before that position was abolished, and he has been the country’s president since 2014.Read more at The Daily Beast.

CNNLess than 24 hours after the White House inked a deal with House Republicans to raise the debt ceiling and avoid a default, Republicans are already conceding they won’t be united on it.Rep. Dusty Johnson (R-SD), one of the deal’s negotiators and a member of some moderate Republican caucuses, conceded to CNN’s Jake Tapper on Sunday that some Republicans will not vote for the bill. However, he said, the bill was still a complete and total win for Republicans.Let’s be honest, Bob Good will not vote for this thing,” Johnson said on State of the Union, referring to his GOP colleague from Virginia. “It doesn’t matter if Mother Teresa came back from the dead and called him, he’s not voting for it. He was never going to — this is going to pass.”Read more at The Daily Beast.

REUTERS/Yui Mok/PoolQueen gave ‘express approval’ for booksQueen Elizabeth’s former dresser Angela Kelly is not departing quietly to the grace and favor home in the north of England given to her by King Charles. After last week’s revelation that he had gifted her the residence in exchange for her signing her an NDA—after she was forced to leave her home in Windsor—the Mail on Sunday reports that the late queen wrote a letter to her former dresser “granting express approval” for her to publish three books.Only two books by her have so far been published, and Charles—by reportedly getting Kelly to sign an NDA in exchange for her new digs—might have thought that the possibility of more behind-the-scenes Palace secrets being revealed had been safely extinguished. Read more at The Daily Beast.

via Telegram Russians visiting an official website of the Russian Orthodox Church this weekend were greeted with what must have been a jarring message: Vladimir Putin’s top holy man, Patriarch Kirill, cheering on Ukraine’s counteroffensive.The main page of the official website for Patriarch Kirill’s residence in Peredelkino near Moscow was hacked to show a message to visitors that read, “Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia blesses the Ukrainian Armed Forces’ counter-offensive.”A video of Ukrainian troops preparing to “take back what’s theirs” was still playing on the website as of Saturday night. The video, released by Ukraine’s Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces Valeriy Zaluzhny, was widely seen as heralding the start of a large-scale counteroffensive to take back territories currently under Russian occupation.Read more at The Daily Beast.

Photo Illustration by Erin O'Flynn/The Daily Beast/Getty ImagesIt has been said that Donald Trump is more of a charismatic cult leader than a traditional politician. When it comes to trying to replace him, could it be that Ron DeSantis is, once again, taking a page from the master by trying to build his own cult following?I’ve spent the last several days trying to understand why Ron DeSantis would announce his campaign on Twitter Spaces—and then spend his time focused on very online topics that are generally reserved for right-wing podcasts—and nothing else makes sense.Most Americans aren’t on Twitter, and average Republican voters are presumably more interested in stemming inflation than in ESGs, bitcoin, debanking, and other insidery topics that DeSantis focused on.Read more at The Daily Beast.

Apple TV+Has there ever been a woman who has said less on TV than Nate’s (Nick Mohammed) girlfriend, Jade (Edyta Budnik), on Ted Lasso? The internet will likely correct me, so I must state that I’m being hyperbolic. Jade speaks, though infrequently, and never about herself nor any of her own passions, desires, or goals. And that is why she has become the worst character on Ted Lasso.Ted Lasso, through its wobbly Season 3, has done one thing right: Its characters are all still lovable, and all feel true to the same people they were when we met them in Season 1. I love Jamie (Phil Dunster) more than I ever have before. Roy (Brett Goldstein) is still whipping out the word “f*ck” over and over again in a way that feels fresh every time. Keeley (Juno Temple) is struggling with her life, but I love her unabashed optimism nonetheless.Each character is engaging—even footballers like Colin (Billy Harris), Isaac (Kola Bokinni), and Sam (Toheeb Jimoh) get some time in the spotlight. Who would say no to more of Trent Crimm (James Lance)? But Jade is one character that Ted Lasso has spent so little time developing that she’s become a complete non-entity compared to the rest of the cast. And it’s such a glaring problem that it’s starting to tarnish the final episodes of the season.Read more at The Daily Beast.

Photo Illustration by Luis G. Rendon/The Daily Beast/FacebookIn his 15 years at Mercy Hospital, Dr. John Forsyth never missed a shift without letting someone know. The 49-year-old emergency medicine physician even parked his luxury RV outside of the Cassville, Missouri, hospital so he would always be steps away from his patients.So when Forsyth did not show up for his 7 p.m. ER shift on May 21, alarm bells immediately went off. When his colleagues couldn’t reach the father of seven, they got worried and alerted authorities, a hospital spokesperson said.“He wouldn’t miss a shift even if his eyeballs were hanging out of their sockets,” Forsyth’s younger brother, Richard Forsyth, told The Daily Beast. “It was an immediate red flag.”Read more at The Daily Beast.

Leah Millis/ReutersAs the deadline for the nation’s first-ever default looms, key White House and GOP negotiators finally struck a deal in principle to raise the debt ceiling and cap federal spending Saturday, anonymous sources told The New York Times. The past few weeks have brought chaos between the White House and Republican lawmakers as fears of an economic crisis have spiraled across the political arenas. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen warned Friday that the department will run out of cash to pay U.S obligations by June 5, raising the alarm on the quickly-ticking clock both parties have to iron out a deal and move it through Congress.House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and President Joe Biden, who have continued to butt heads on the issue, talked through their remaining points of tension Saturday evening and gave their thumbs up on the new agreement. In a tweet, McCarthy said it was “worthy of the American people.”Read more at The Daily Beast.

Photo Illustration by Luis G. Rendon/The Daily Beast/HBO MaxThe Other Two may be the funniest show on TV right now. So why do we keep crying while watching it?Season 3 of the Max series continues to follow siblings Brooke (Heléne Yorke) and Cary (Drew Tarver), who weather incessant exasperation when the professional success and personal fulfillment they feel they deserve keeps eluding them—all while navigating the tension between their deep love for their family (Case Walker’s Chase Dreams and Molly Shannon’s Pat) and their jealousy of their respective good fortunes.(Warning: Some spoilers for Season 3 of The Other Two.)Read more at The Daily Beast.

HBOPrior to the beginning of its final season, HBO’s Succession was lauded as the latest in a long line of iconic television shows, spearheading the new generation of TV’s golden era. It was looked at as a natural successor— if you will— to other sublime shows of the last two-plus decades (The Sopranos, The Wire, and Breaking Bad, among others).Like other great shows, Succession eclipses the realm of a regular drama, where a focus on action-based plots take a backseat to epic dialogue, emotional turmoil, and the sad absurdity of the human condition. It’s more of a Greek tragedy or a Shakespeare play than its drama contemporaries, camouflaged by the struggle for a successor in a media empire. For every classic plot twist or suspenseful moment you might see in a show like Lost or M*A*S*H*, there’s ten several-minute monologues that use words like “corpuscles” and “geysers.”A commonality in all of these shows is also elite writing. We root for murderous hit men, DEA agents and Donald Trump Jr.-inspired nepo babies, not because we like them but because good writing makes us feel things and sympathize with these characters on a flawed, human level. As it turns out, dramatic lifestyles provide a wonderful canvas for telling the story of life as we know it, on a level that makes sense and resonates with us.Read more at The Daily Beast.

Photo Illustration by Erin O'Flynn/The Daily Beast/Amazon Prime StudiosIn the end, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel didn’t opt for an alternate history conclusion to Lenny Bruce’s story—no matter how much fans wished for it to be, in the context of this show, a fictional love story.But while there is no happily ever after for Midge (Rachel Brosnahan) and Lenny (Luke Kirby), after the two comics finally banged in the Season 4 finale, that pivotal night in the New York snow is revisited in the last-ever episode of the Prime Video comedy. The reality and fantasy of Bruce’s story are depicted, maintaining the playful elements of this world created by Amy Sherman-Palladino and Daniel Palladino, while not shying away from the truth.“It was a fine line, and they had to do a delicate dance, but I'm glad they did it that way,” Luke Kirby tells The Daily Beast’s Obsessed. Flashforwards have revealed Midge’s ascent to fame all season, with one significant presence missing. Lenny’s return in the series finale is bittersweet, recognizing what happened in real life, while basking in the intimacy and ease these characters share.Read more at The Daily Beast.

Photo Illustration by Kelly Caminero / The Daily Beast / GettyAs I entered Dadkhai—a remote, picturesque village on top of a hillock surrounded by the mighty Himalayas—the most immediate thing I noticed was the stark silence. There are no children playing games and screaming loudly, no adults gossiping and laughing and haggling, and none of the sort of bustling noises you’d typically hear in any other village in the Indian-administered side of Kashmir.That’s because Dadkhai—inhabited by about 300 families, according to locals—is known as the “silent village.” It has the highest proportion of deaf and mute people as part of its population than any other community on Earth. A 2014 investigation by the government-funded Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) found that Dadkhai has the world’s highest prevalence of non-syndromic deaf mutism (meaning the loss of hearing and speech is not associated with conditions affecting other parts of the body). Villagers say many of the children born here are unable to speak or hear.Naturally, the village operates quite differently from the rest of the world. It’s common to see people staring at each other without saying a word. Villagers are identified not by names but by marks on their bodies. Even those able to hear and speak normally have adapted to the quiet nature of communication.Read more at The Daily Beast.

Photo Illustration by Luis G. Rendon/The Daily Beast/ReutersTimes are tough for both Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin. Since they are two of the world’s most repulsive and dangerous people, that might be considered good news.But, not so fast. Because there is one thing that can save Trump from the dark realities of legal accountability—and it happens to also be the only thing that is likely to turn the tide in Putin’s disastrous war in Ukraine. That is the reelection of Donald Trump.Once again the interests of Trump and Putin are aligned, but this time the stakes for both are much higher than they were in 2016. That should worry us all. It should worry us a lot.Read more at The Daily Beast.

Elizabeth Frantz/ReutersThe Texas House of Representatives voted to impeach the state’s embattled attorney general, Ken Paxton, on Saturday—just days after investigators levied wide-ranging corruption allegations against the state’s top lawyer.Paxton is accused of breaking a litany of laws in office, including an egregious allegation that he requested $3.3 million in state funds to settle a whistleblower lawsuit filed by former employees he tried to silence.The 60-year-old is also accused of covering up a potential sex scandal and retaliating against aides who reported his misconduct. Investigators say he even used his office to leak confidential FBI documents to a donor.Read more at The Daily Beast.