Adele has boosted her fortune by £11.5 million in the past year.

The 34-year-old singer’s company now has cash reserves of nearly £15 million, according to the Daily Mail.

Statements for her Melted Stone Ltd company show its net assets were £14,940,260 as of December 2021 – up from £3,566,954 the previous year, the publication said.

It comes after Adele released her fifth studio album ‘30’ and started her delayed Las Vegas residency.

Adele tearfully cancelled her scheduled concerts at the last minute in January but is now understood to be earning around £750,000 per show for the 32-night run.

Tickets for the concerts were on sale for up to £200,000 each on resale sites.

Other big names to have headlined Vegas in recent years include Britney Spears, Lady Gaga and Jennifer Lopez.

Adele told fans on her opening night at Caesars Palace: “I should be giving you a standing ovation, thank you so much for coming back to me.

“I really appreciate it. You look amazing and it looks just what I imagined it would look like, it’s perfect.

“I’m so scared and nervous, but I am so happy, I don’t know what I was thinking putting piano ballads at the top of the set, hopefully over time my nerves will disappear.

“I would also really like to thank Caesar’s because there have been a lot of rumours and they never once asked any questions, they’ve been amazing.

“Only legends have been through these doors, I’m so honoured. I have no idea what I’ve embarked on for five months, but I can’t wait.”

New York (AFP) – A Republican elected to Congress in November was facing a growing clamor for his resignation Tuesday after admitting that he made up large parts of his biography — but refusing to give up his seat.

George Santos’s victory in a New York district helped his party secure a narrow majority in the House of Representatives — Congress’s lower chamber.

But a New York Times investigation cast doubt on key parts of his education and work history that he touted during the campaign.

Santos admitted in two separate interviews Monday to significant fabrications of his resume, confessing that he’d neither worked at Goldman Sachs and Citigroup nor graduated from college, despite his claims to the contrary. 

The Republican refused to give up his seat in Congress, however, telling the New York Post, “I’m not a criminal” — inviting comparisons with disgraced president Richard Nixon’s infamous 1973 declaration that “I am not a crook.” 

Santos apologized for what he called “embellishing my resume” but some of his justifications for his dishonesty bordered on the absurd, particularly his defense of his false claim that he was Jewish.

“I am Catholic. Because I learned my maternal family had a Jewish background I said I was ‘Jew-ish,'” he told the Post.

Questions remain over Santos’s finances and Democrats have raised the possibility that he may have broken the law by lying in campaign disclosures. 

Several members of President Joe Biden’s party have demanded that House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy call a vote to expel Santos if he does not quit.

“His pitiful confession should not distract us from concerns about possible criminality and corruption,” New York congressman Ritchie Torres tweeted.

“The Ethics Committee MUST investigate how he made his money. Where there’s smoke, there’s fire.”

California congressman Eric Swalwell accused Santos of “defrauding the voters of Long Island about his ENTIRE resume” while Democratic strategist Kurt Bardella urged McCarthy to “demand his resignation.” 

“If he refuses, Santos should not be seated by the new Congress,” Bardella added.

Santos, who beat Democrat Robert Zimmerman in a newly-drawn district straddling Queens and Long Island, was at the vanguard of a Republican “wave” in New York that powered the party to a 222-212 House majority.

He initially posted a statement from his lawyer accusing the Times of “attempting to smear his good name with these defamatory allegations.”

McCarthy has been questioned by reporters in Congress over the allegations but has so far avoided responding.

By Nandita Bose

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The White House on Monday accused Texas Governor Greg Abbott of endangering lives after busloads of migrants from the southwest border in Texas were dropped near Vice President Kamala Harris’ home in Washington, D.C., on a cold Christmas Eve.

An estimated 110 to 130 migrants seeking asylum in the United States, many of them families with children, were placed on buses by Texas officials, immigrant aid groups said on Sunday after the migrants arrived in the U.S. capital.

“Governor Abbott abandoned children on the side of the road in below freezing temperatures on Christmas Eve without coordinating with any Federal or local authorities,” White House spokesman Abdullah Hasan said in a statement.

“The political games accomplish nothing and only put lives in danger,” Hasan added.

The Republican Abbott, a vocal critic of Biden administration immigration policies, has not acknowledged the Christmas Eve drop and his office has not claimed responsibility. President Joe Biden is a Democrat.

Texas has bused thousands of migrants to Washington, New York City and Chicago, in what some critics have labeled a stunt amid a national debate over the high levels of immigrant arrivals along the U.S. southern border.

Abbott has said previously his state was purposefully busing migrants to sanctuary cities, where law enforcement is discouraged from deporting immigrants.

Hasan said the Biden administration was willing to work with Democrats and Republicans on solutions to the migrant issue.

Amy Fischer, an organizer with the Migrant Solidarity Mutual Aid Network, told NPR the migrants were immediately transferred onto city-provided buses in Washington and moved to a church that distributed hot food and clothes.

In a letter to Biden on Dec. 20, Abbott said the state was overburdened with thousands of men, women and children crossing into Texas everyday who risk freezing to death on city streets.

(Reporting by Nandita Bose in Washington; Editing by Howard Goller)

Rian Johnson admitted it was a “very special privilege” to direct Angela Lansbury and Stephen Sondheim in their final on-screen roles.

The late stars – who died in October 2022 aged 96 and November 2021 aged 91 respectively – have a cameo in ‘Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery’ and though the director admitted the pair only feature in a small scene, it meant a lot to him to work with the Hollywood greats.

He said: “I don’t want to blow it up too much, it’s just one little fun moment that they have.

“But what it meant for me, besides just how special it is to have both of them in the movie, it meant that I just got to spend 10 minutes with each of them to film this little moment.

“Getting to meet them, getting to tell Angela Lansbury what her work meant to me, telling her about watching the filmed version of ‘Sweeney Todd’ that was on cable when I was a kid and how that really kind of started me loving musical theater… It felt like a very special privilege to get to do that.”

The film isn’t a direct sequel to ‘Knives Out’ as Daniel Craig’s character, Detective Benoit Blanc, is investigating a new mystery with a different set of characters and Rian admitted he and his lead had such a great time making the first movie, they vowed at the time to keep making new installments.

He told ‘Entertainment Tonight’: “Coming off of the first one, Daniel and I, even when we were making it, we were having so much fun, we were like, ‘It’d be fun to keep doing these.’

“The idea was always to kind of take inspiration from what Agatha Christie did with her books, where it wasn’t a continuation of the last one, it wasn’t kind of just turning the crank on the same sort of thing. Christie really took huge different swings with every single book that she did in terms of not just the mechanics of the murder mystery, but also the setting, also the characters, and the themes, so that was kind of the starting point is just, let’s write a whole new movie that is the whole reason for being all it’s own.”

But the filmmaker admitted the hardest part of crafting the sequel was “figuring out what’s your story.”

He explained: “By that, I don’t mean the murder or the mystery or anything.

“I mean, what is the thing that the audience is going to care about? The thing that’s going to actually keep their butts from getting numb, that’s going to keep them engaged and leaning forward — you want them leaning forward as opposed to leaning back and, like, stroking their chin.”

(Reuters) – A congressional panel investigating Donald Trump and his supporters’ role in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on Congress issued its final report this week, urging federal prosecutors to charge the former president with four crimes, including obstruction and insurrection.

Additionally, the U.S. House Ways and Means Committee this week said some of Trump’s tax records showed his income and tax liability fluctuated dramatically in recent years, raising questions about the legitimacy of some of his deductions and about the Internal Revenue Services’ presidential audit program.

The moves add to the host of legal threats facing Trump, who last month announced he will seek the White House again in 2024.

Below are some of the ongoing investigations and lawsuits:

U.S. CAPITOL ATTACK

A special House of Representatives committee investigating the deadly 2021 assault by Trump supporters on the U.S. Capitol called on the Department of Justice to charge Trump with corruption of an official proceeding, conspiracy to defraud the United States, conspiracy to make a false statement and inciting or aiding an insurrection.

Its request, which is non-binding, came as it also released its final 845-page report on Thursday concluding its nearly 18-month-long probe into the actions taken to try to overturn Trump’s 2020 election defeat, including when rioters sought to block Congress from certifying Trump’s loss.

Trump has called the panel’s investigation a politically motivated sham.

He also faces separate civil lawsuits over the riot.

Only the Justice Department can decide whether to chargeTrump with federal crimes but the lawmakers’ referral may increase pressure on prosecutors to bring a criminal case against Trump and some of his allies.

U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland last month appointed former war crimes prosecutor Jack Smith to oversee the department’s investigation.

MISSING GOVERNMENT RECORDS

Smith has also been tasked with overseeing the Justice Department’s criminal investigation of Trump for retaining government records, including some marked as classified, after leaving office in January 2021.

The FBI seized 11,000 documents from Trump’s Mar-a-Lagoestate in Florida in a court-approved Aug. 8 search. About 100documents were marked as classified, and some were designatedtop secret, the highest level of classification.

Trump, a Republican, has accused the Justice Department ofengaging in a partisan witch hunt.

An independent arbiter had been tapped to review the seized documents to determine whether any are protected by executive privilege, as Trump has claimed, but a federal appeals court reversed the appointment in a Dec. 1 ruling backing the Justice Department’s challenge to the so-called special master.

Executive privilege is a legal doctrine under which apresident can keep certain documents or information secret, but the 11th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals’ decision restored federal authorities’ access to unclassified materialstaken in the search.

Trump did not appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.

NEW YORK ATTORNEY GENERAL CIVIL LAWSUIT

New York Attorney General Letitia James said in a civillawsuit filed in September that her office uncovered more than200 examples of misleading asset valuations by Trump and theTrump Organization between 2011 and 2021.

James, a Democrat, accused Trump of inflating his net worthby billions of dollars to obtain lower interest rates on loansand get better insurance coverage.

A New York judge ordered that an independent monitor beappointed to oversee the Trump Organization before the case goesto trial in October 2023.

James is seeking to permanently bar Trump and his childrenDonald Jr., Eric and Ivanka Trump from running companies in NewYork state, and to prevent them and his company from buying newproperties and taking out new loans in the state for five years.

James also wants the defendants to hand over about $250million that she says was obtained through fraud.

Trump has called the attorney general’s lawsuit a witchhunt. A lawyer for Trump has called James’ claims meritless.

James said her probe also uncovered evidence of criminalwrongdoing, which she referred to federal prosecutors and theInternal Revenue Service for investigation.

DEFAMATION CASE

E. Jean Carroll, a former Elle magazine writer, sued Trumpfor defamation in 2019 after he denied her allegation that heraped her in the 1990s in a New York City department store.Trump accused her of lying to drum up sales for a book.

Trump appeared for a deposition in the case on Oct. 19,according to his and Carroll’s lawyers, with the trial scheduled to start April 10, 2023.

Trump has argued that he is shielded from Carroll’s lawsuitby a federal law that immunizes government employees fromdefamation claims.

The Manhattan-based 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals inSeptember said Trump was a federal employee when he calledCarroll a liar, but left open the question of whether he wasacting as president when he made the statement.

A Washington appeals court will separately consider that question in oral arguments scheduled for Jan. 10, 2023.

Carroll in November also sued Trump for battery and intentional infliction of emotional distress under New York state law. That case would continue even if the defamation lawsuit is dismissed, although Carroll has requested one trial combining the lawsuits. Trump is also seeking to have the battery case tossed out of court.

GEORGIA ELECTION TAMPERING PROBE

A special grand jury was empanelled in May for a Georgiaprosecutor’s inquiry into Trump’s alleged efforts to influencethat state’s 2020 election results.

The investigation focuses in part on a phone call Trump madeto Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, a Republican,on Jan. 2, 2021. Trump asked Raffensperger to “find” enoughvotes needed to overturn Trump’s election loss in Georgia.

Legal experts said Trump may have violated at least threeGeorgia criminal election laws: conspiracy to commit electionfraud, criminal solicitation to commit election fraud andintentional interference with performance of election duties.

Trump could argue that his discussions were constitutionallyprotected free speech.

In a separate lawsuit, a California federal judge said onOct. 19 that Trump knowingly made false voter fraud claims in aGeorgia election lawsuit, citing emails the judge reviewed.

NEW YORK CRIMINAL PROBE

While Trump was not charged with wrongdoing, his real estate company was found guilty of tax fraud in New York state and now faces up to $1.6 million in fines.

In a Dec. 6 decision, jurors convicted the Trump Organization, which operates hotels, golf courses and other real estate around the world, on three tax fraud charges and six other counts in the criminal case brought by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg.

A Trump Organization lawyer has said it would appeal the decision, while Trump has defended his company’s operations.

Allen Weisselberg, the company’s former chief financialofficer, pleaded guilty and was required to testify againstthe Trump Organization as part of his plea agreement. He is alsoa defendant in James’ civil lawsuit.

Bragg also announced in December that he has hired a former senior Justice Department official who has investigated Trump to now investigate financial crimes for the Manhattan District Attorney’s office, which has been conducting a criminal probe into whether the Trump Organization inflated its assets.

(Reporting by Luc Cohen in New York and Jacqueline Thomsen and Susan Heavey in Washington; Additional reporting by Patricia Zengerle and Jonathan Stempel; Editing by Daniel Wallis)

By Kanishka Singh

(Reuters) – An Arizona judge on Saturday rejected defeated Republican gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake’s effort to overturn the results of her election loss in the state’s governor race.

The order by Superior Court Judge Peter Thompson was filed on Saturday.

Lake was one of the most high-profile Republican candidates in the midterm elections to embrace former Republican President Donald Trump’s false claims of voter fraud in 2020.

Earlier this month, Lake sued Arizona elections officials to challenge the counting and certification of the November electoral contest and ask to be declared the winner despite a lack of evidence of voter fraud.

Her lawsuit targeted Lake’s Democratic opponent, Governor-elect Katie Hobbs, currently Arizona’s secretary of state, along with top officials in Maricopa County.

In November, Trump-backed Lake lost the governor’s race to Hobbs but refused to concede and continued making unconfirmed claims about election improprieties on her Twitter feed.

The order on Saturday confirmed the election of Hobbs and said it did not find any “clear and convincing” evidence of misconduct that impacted the outcome of the election.

Lake tweeted on Saturday that she would appeal the ruling.

The findings in the order were in line with judgments against Abe Hamadeh and Mark Finchem, the unsuccessful Republican candidates for attorney general and secretary of state, respectively, who also challenged their losses.

In her lawsuit, Lake had called on the state court to declare her the winner of the governor’s race, or alternatively throw out the results and require Maricopa County to conduct a new election. The suit claimed “hundreds of thousands of illegal ballots infected the election” in Maricopa, the state’s most populous county.

Lake, a former television news anchor, was one of a string of Trump-aligned Republican candidates who lost battleground state races in the midterm elections.

During her campaign, Lake vowed to ban the state’s mail-in voting, which conspiracy theorists falsely claimed was vulnerable to fraud, sowing distrust about the safety of a voting method used by hundreds of thousands of Americans.

(Reporting by Kanishka Singh in Washington; editing by Diane Craft)

KABUL (Reuters) -Afghanistan’s Taliban-run administration on Saturday ordered all local and foreign NGOs to stop female employees from working, in a move the United Nations said would hit humanitarian operations just as winter grips a country already in economic crisis.

A letter from the economy ministry, confirmed by spokesperson Abdulrahman Habib, said female employees of non-governmental organisations (NGOs) were not allowed to work until further notice because some had not adhered to the administration’s interpretation of Islamic dresscode for women.

It comes days after the administration ordered universities to close to women, prompting global condemnation and sparking some protests and heavy criticism inside Afghanistan.

Both decisions are the latest restrictions on women that are likely to undermine the Taliban-run administration’s efforts to gain international recognition and clear sanctions that are severely hampering the economy.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Twitter he was “deeply concerned” the move “will disrupt vital and life-saving assistance to millions,” adding: “Women are central to humanitarian operations around the world. This decision could be devastating for the Afghan people.”

Ramiz Alakbarov, the U.N. deputy special representative for Afghanistan and humanitarian coordinator, told Reuters that although the U.N. had not received the order, contracted NGOs carried out most of its activities and would be heavily impacted.

“Many of our programmes will be affected,” he said, because they need female staff to assess humanitarian need and identify beneficiaries, otherwise they will not be able to implement aid programs.

International aid agency AfghanAid said it was immediately suspending operations while it consulted with other organisations, and that other NGOs were taking similar actions.

The potential endangerment of aid programmes that millions of Afghans access comes when more than half the population relies on humanitarian aid, according to aid agencies, and during the mountainous nation’s coldest season.

“There’s never a right time for anything like this … but this particular time is very unfortunate because during winter time people are most in need and Afghan winters are very harsh,” said Alakbarov.

He said his office would consult with NGOs and U.N. agencies on Sunday and seek to meet with Taliban authorities for an explanation.

Aid workers say female workers are essential in a country where rules and cultural customs largely prevent male workers from delivering aid to female beneficiaries.

“An important principle of delivery of humanitarian aid is the ability of women to participate independently and in an unimpeded way in its distribution so if we can’t do it in a principled way then no donors will be funding any programs like that,” Alakbarov said.

When asked whether the rules directly included U.N. agencies, Habib said the letter applied to organisations under Afghanistan’s coordinating body for humanitarian organisations, known as ACBAR. That body does not include the U.N., but includes over 180 local and international NGOs.

Their licences would be suspended if they did not comply, the letter said.

Afghanistan’s struggling economy has tipped into crisis since the Taliban took over in 2021, with the country facing sanctions, cuts in development aid and a freeze in central bank assets.

A record 28 million Afghans are estimated to need humanitarian aid next year, according to AfghanAid.

(Reporting by Kabul newsroom; additional reporting by Susan Heavey in WashingtonEditing by Mark Potter and Josie Kao)

King Willem-Alexander of the Netherlands on Sunday welcomed the apology for slavery made by Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte at the beginning of the week.

No one alive in the Netherlands could be blamed for the inhumanity perpetrated on men, women and children in the former colonies of the Netherlands, Willem-Alexander said during his Christmas Day address to the nation.

“But by viewing our joint history in an honest way and by acknowledging the crime against humanity that slavery was, we are however laying the foundations for a joint future,” the king said.

In his government address on Monday, Rutte expressed apologies on behalf of the country for the crimes around 150 years after slavery was abolished in Dutch colonies. Its effects remain visible up to the present, he said.

The Dutch government plans to confront the country’s slavery history, with 2023 declared as a year of commemoration.

Willem-Alexander said the royal house would participate actively in this. The aim was to oppose all forms of discrimination, exploitation and injustice, he said.

The Netherlands is believed to have enslaved an estimated 600,000 people before abolishing slavery officially on July 1, 1863, as one of the last European nations to do so.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Busloads of migrants were dropped over Christmas weekend near Vice President Kamala Harris’ residence in Washington amid freezing temperatures, having traveled from the southwest border in Texas, immigrant aid groups said on Sunday.

Approximately 110-130 of the migrants seeking asylum in the United States, many of them families with children, were placed on buses by Texas officials, said Tatiana Laborde, managing director of SAMU First Response, a relief agency working with the city of Washington, D.C.

She said by phone that aid groups had been informed of their journey and awaited their arrival late on Saturday to hand out blankets and then transport them to a church in the city’s Capitol Hill neighborhood.

Aides to Texas Governor Greg Abbott were not available to comment on whether the state coordinated their transportation.

The Republican governor, a vocal critic of the Biden administration’s immigration policies, and some other Republican governors have been transporting migrants to Democratic-controlled cities in the northern United States.

Texas has bused thousands of migrants to Washington, New York City and Chicago, in what some critics have labeled a stunt amid a national debate over the high levels of immigrant arrivals along the U.S. southern border.

Laborde said that in the past week, nine busloads of migrants have been dropped off in Washington.

“Lately, what we’ve been seeing is an increase in people from Ecuador and Colombia,” Laborde said. Previously, many Venezuelans had been arriving by bus, she added.

Many of the most recent arrivals, Laborde said, are now attempting to go to New York or New Jersey where they have relatives or other community support.

(Reporting by Richard Cowan; Editing by Howard Goller)

Miley Cyrus will be joined by ‘Saturday Night Live’ stars Chloe Fineman and Sarah Sherman on her New Year’s Eve special.

The ‘Wrecking Ball’ hitmaker’s end-of-year NBC extravaganza, ‘Miley’s New Year’s Eve Party’, will also feature performances from the band Liily and singer Fletcher, it has been announced.

In addition, ‘Please Don’t Destroy’ comedy trio Ben Marshall, John Higgins and Martin Herlihy will also be joining in the fun.

The stars join previously-revealed performers Sia, Latto and Rae Sremmurd in appearing on the show, which Miley will co-host with her godmother Dolly Parton this year.

The 2021 special – the ‘We Can’t Stop’ singer’s first – was co-hosted with Pete Davidson, but he will not be involved this year.

Miley previously teased the guest list for the programme was “very me”.

She added: “It is curated in a way that makes no sense, but makes total sense.”

Meanwhile, Dolly recently spoke of her excitement at joining her goddaughter for the show.

She said: “We’re going to be doing some skits. I know that anything can happen live with the two of us.

“I’m sure we’ll be wearing some bizarre costumes and we’ll be singing some serious songs, some fun songs [and] we’ll be bringing in the new year in fun fashion, I’m sure.

“I’m looking forward to that and being in Miami at that time of year. When she first asked me, when she talked about doing the New Year’s show I thought it might be from New York and I wasn’t gonna do it ’cause I didn’t want to get that cold, you know.

“She said, ‘No, that’s why I don’t do it in New York. That’s why I’m going to Miami.’ So, we’re gonna do it there, so that should be a lot of fun. I’ve never spent much time in Miami.”

Miley and ‘Saturday Night Live’ showrunner Lorne Michaels will executive produce the special, which will be recorded live from Florida.