The Royal Collection has launched an official Buckingham Palace wine.

The sparkling wine is a classic blend of Chardonnay Pinot Noir and Pinot Meunier using hand-picked fruit from vineyards in Kent and West Sussex and has been created in honour of Queen Elizabeth II’s Platinum Jubilee as she marks 70 years on the throne.

The luxury 12 percent abv English Sparkling Wine Platinum Jubilee Release 2022 is described as having “enticing aromas of rich and honeyed citrus fruit, white peach and hints of sweet spices” and the Royal Trust suggested that it can be paired with mature English cheddar, seafood and in particular fish and chips, noting that when enjoyed with British staple, the wine is the “perfect addition” to the Jubilee celebrations.

The trust added: “It also complements British seafood, such as crab, langoustines or classic fish and chips, making the wine a perfect addition to Platinum Jubilee celebrations this summer.”

The special edition bottle – which features a label design inspired by the gold embroidery on the Queen’s Robe of Estate worn on her Coronation Day – retails for £39, with all profits going to conservation charity The Royal Collection Trust, which oversees the care of the Royal Collection.

A set of hand-cut Champagne Flute Glasses engraved with an emblem depicting the national flowers of the United Kingdom have also gone on sale at a cost of £120 a pair.

Her Majesty, the Queen reached the Platinum milestone on February 6th and celebrations are set to take place with a four day Bank Holiday weekend in the UK from Thursday 2nd to Sunday 5th June.

Buckingham Palace English Sparkling Wine (70cl) and Champagne Flute Glasses can be purchased online via www.rct.uk/shop or in Royal Collection Trust shops in London, Windsor and Edinburgh.

By Philip Pullella and Angelo Amante

ROME (Reuters) – At a trial under way in Sicily, a 28-year-old Italian is seeking justice against a man he accuses of forcing him to perform sex acts before going on to become a priest.

The victim says the alleged abuse, committed more than a decade ago when he was a minor and the accused was a seminarian leading youth groups, included forced masturbation and oral sex in sacristies and schoolrooms. The accused denies the charges.

The victim went to the police only after the Church failed to act on his accusations, which he spelled out to two priests and at a meeting with a bishop involving his parents.

Victims’ groups say there are thousands of similar cases hidden in Church archives, and they are increasing pressure for an independent investigation in Italy to mirror recent moves in France and Germany.

Nine Italian groups have formed a consortium and on Tuesday will announce a campaign called “Beyond the Great Silence” and unveil a hashtag #ItalyChurchToo.

It aims to put public pressure on the Italian government to investigate past and present abuse in the Church or for the Church to commission an impartial investigation by outsiders.

The campaign is the latest move worldwide to force the Catholic Church to establish the full extent of sexual abuse by clergy that has cost it millions of dollars in compensation to victims.

“The state and the government have to take the initiative on this,” Francesco Zanardi, the head of one of the groups, Rete l’Abuso (The Abuse Network), which tracks clerical abuse in Italy, told Reuters.

“If the Church investigates itself, its first objective will be to protect itself,” said Zanardi, who is a victim of clergy sexual abuse.

‘POWDER KEG’

The campaigners did not say how many sexual abuse crimes they suspect have been committed in Italy, but Rete l’Abuso has documented hundreds of such cases, most of them current or recent.

The German study, released in 2018, showed 1,670 clergymen abused 3,677 minors from 1946 to 2014. The French investigation released last year and covering seven decades, said more than 200,000 children were abused in Catholic institutions.

Pope Francis has expressed shame at the Church’s inability to deal with sexual abuse cases and said the Church must make itself a “safe home for everyone”. Former Pope Benedict has acknowledged that errors occurred in handling sexual abuse cases when he was Archbishop of Munich and asked for forgiveness.

The results of an independent investigation going back decades could be devastating in Italy, where about 74% of the population are Catholic.

“The Church does not want this because it would be a powder keg,” Zanardi said.

Bishops in Italy are divided over what type of investigation should be done.

Some say the Church has the resources, such as diocesan anti-abuse committees, to do the work itself.

Cardinal Gualtiero Bassetti, who favours an internal investigation, explained his position in a newspaper interview. Paola Lazzarini, head of Women in the Church, which is part of the consortium, told Reuters that Bassetti’s position “does not satisfy us one bit”.

Other bishops, including Erio Castellucci of Modena and Paolo Lojudice of Siena, have signalled support for commissioning an outside investigation.

Victims groups and some abuse experts within the Church have warned that an inside investigation will not be convincing.

“We can have the best intentions but as long as we do it in-house nobody is going to believe us,” Father Hans Zollner, who heads the department of safeguarding and prevention of sexual abuse at Rome’s Gregorian University, told Reuters.

A decision is due to be taken in May at a plenary to elect the new president of the Italian Bishops Conference because any investigation will be done during his five-year mandate.

(Reporting by Philip Pullella, Editing by Timothey Heritage)

Ghislaine Maxwell was reportedly introduced to VIP guests at Buckingham Palace as “Prince Andrew’s ex-girlfriend”.

The 61-year-old prince appears in a newly-published photograph from 2002, which shows him at his mother Queen Elizabeth’s official residence with Maxwell – who is facing 40 years in jail after being convicted of sex offences – as well as former US president Bill Clinton.

The former US leader was being given a tour of the palace with disgraced ‘House of Cards’ actor Kevin Spacey, and another member of the group claimed Maxwell seemed to know the royal residence well.

Speaking to the Daily Telegraph newspaper – who have published the photograph – the unnamed person said: “Ghislaine Maxwell was the one who led us into Buckingham Palace. We walked in the main gates and Ghislaine showed us where we needed to be. She knew her way around this area of the palace. Ghislaine was described to me [as] an ex-girlfriend of Prince Andrew’s.

“The tour was for Clinton and Spacey – they were Prince Andrew’s guests. But Ghislaine seemed to be leading the charge. The impression we all had was that there was some relationship there between Prince Andrew and Ghislaine Maxwell.

“They clearly knew each other very well. She was very friendly and cheery.”

Sources have previously insisted Andrew – who is being sued by Virginia Giuffre, who has alleged she was forced into having sex with him when she was just 17 years old – had “no recollection” of being present for the tour, which took place on 30 September, 2002.

The photograph was taken in the ballroom and shows Andrew pointing into the distance while Maxwell, to his left, looks over at Mr. Clinton while he examined two thrones.

Giuffre – who was formerly known as Virginia Roberts – has accused convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein – who committed suicide in August 2019 – and his one-time girlfriend Maxwell of arranging and forcing her into having sex with Andrew in 2001.

The prince has denied all of the allegations and in legal documents insisted he and Maxwell were not “close friends”.

Andrew – who is not facing any legal action in the UK – previously requested a trial by jury and is due to sit for a deposition in London next month.

By Elizabeth Howcroft

LONDON (Reuters) -The platform which sold an NFT of Jack Dorsey’s first tweet for $2.9 million has halted most transactions because people were selling tokens of content that did not belong to them, its founder said, calling this a “fundamental problem” in the fast-growing digital assets market.

Sales of NFTs, or non-fungible tokens, soared to around $25 billion in 2021 https://www.reuters.com/markets/europe/nft-sales-hit-25-billion-2021-growth-shows-signs-slowing-2022-01-10, leaving many baffled as to why so much money is being spent on items that do not physically exist and which anyone can view online for free.

NFTs are crypto assets that record the ownership of a digital file such as an image, video or text. Anyone can create, or “mint”, an NFT, and ownership of the token does not usually confer ownership of the underlying item.

Reports of scams, counterfeits https://www.reuters.com/article/usa-tech-art-idUKL8N2TM0VV and “wash trading” https://www.reuters.com/technology/unreal-demand-irregular-sales-worth-billions-fire-up-wild-nft-market-2022-02-07 have become commonplace.

The U.S.-based Cent executed one of the first known million-dollar NFT sales when it sold the former Twitter CEO’s tweet as an NFT https://www.reuters.com/business/media-telecom/twitter-boss-jack-dorseys-first-tweet-sold-29-million-an-nft-2021-03-22 last March. But as of Feb. 6, it has stopped allowing buying and selling, CEO and co-founder Cameron Hejazi told Reuters.

“There’s a spectrum of activity that is happening that basically shouldn’t be happening – like, legally” Hejazi said.

While the Cent marketplace “beta.cent.co” has paused NFT sales, the part specifically for selling NFTs of tweets, which is called “Valuables”, is still active.

Hejazi highlighted three main problems: people selling unauthorised copies of other NFTs, people making NFTs of content which does not belong to them, and people selling sets of NFTs which resemble a security.

He said these issues were “rampant”, with users “minting and minting and minting counterfeit digital assets”.

“It kept happening. We would ban offending accounts but it was like we’re playing a game of whack-a-mole… Every time we would ban one, another one would come up, or three more would come up.”

“MONEY CHASING MONEY”

Such problems may come into greater focus as major brands join the rush towards the so-called “metaverse”, or Web3 https://www.reuters.com/article/tech-yearender-buzzwords-idCAKBN2IZ11H. Coca-Cola and luxury brand Gucci are among companies to have sold NFTs, while YouTube https://www.reuters.com/technology/youtube-will-explore-nft-features-creators-2022-01-25 said it will explore NFT features.

While Cent, with 150,000 users and revenue “in the millions”, is a relatively small NFT platform, Hejazi said the issue of fake and illegal content exists across the industry.

“I think this is a pretty fundamental problem with Web3,” he said.

The biggest NFT marketplace, OpenSea, valued at $13.3 billion after its latest round of venture funding, said last month https://twitter.com/opensea/status/1486843201352716289? more than 80% of the NFTs minted for free on its platform were “plagiarized works, fake collections and spam”.

OpenSea tried limiting the number of NFTs a user could mint for free, but then reversed this decision following a backlash from users, the company said in a Twitter thread, adding that it was “working through a number of solutions” to deter “bad actors” while supporting creators.

“It is against our policy to sell NFTs using plagiarized content,” an OpenSea spokesperson said.

“We are working around the clock to ship products, add features, and refine our processes to meet the moment.”

To many NFT-enthusiasts, the decentralised nature of blockchain technology https://www.reuters.com/technology/what-is-metaverse-2021-10-18 is appealing, allowing users to create and trade digital assets without a central authority controlling the activity.

But Hejazi said his company was keen on protecting content-creators, and may introduce centralised controls as a short-term measure in order to re-open the marketplace, before exploring decentralised solutions.

It was after the Dorsey NFT sale that Cent started to get a sense of what was going on in NFT markets.

“We realized that a lot of it is just money chasing money.”

(Reporting by Elizabeth Howcroft, Editing by Louise Heavens and Andrew Heavens)

By Raphael Satter

(Reuters) – A reported trucker protest planned to coincide with the Super Bowl appears to be going nowhere, a social media monitoring firm that has been tracking the issue said on Saturday.

After media reported on a U.S. Department of Homeland Security memo warning of potential disruption around Sunday’s Super Bowl, there was a notable increase in social media mentions about a convoy of anti-vaccine truckers purportedly planning to descend on Los Angeles.

The memo drew attention amid signs that the Canada’s “Freedom Convoy” protests, started in the national capital Ottawa by Canadian truckers opposing a vaccinate-or-quarantine mandate for cross-border drivers, is inspiring copycat demonstrations elsewhere.

But while protests and traffic blockades inspired by the Ottawa protests have gained steamed in Australia, New Zealand, and Europe, similar rallies in the United States have been slower to take off despite plenty of chatter in extremist circles and favorable coverage by right-wing outlets such as Fox News. On Friday, U.S. organizers, including Penny Faye of an organization dubbed “Convoy to Save America,” told Reuters they were planning convoys for this weekend or early next month.

“I think they ran out of time,” Welton Chang, whose Washington-based firm, Pyrra, has been following online talk about the plan to protest the Super Bowl, said Saturday. He also cited the lack of consensus around whether the marquee sporting event was an appropriate target.

A Reuters review of social media has also found little support for a Super Bowl plan.

There was scant mention of a Super Bowl protest on TruckersForFreedom, a popular Telegram channel devoted to sharing news from the protests in Canada and abroad, for example.

A partner channel purportedly devoted to the Super Bowl rally just had a single poll surveying participants on whether they planned to participate in a Super Bowl protest; the overwhelming majority of the 8,000 users who voted said they couldn’t come.

(Reporting by Raphael Satter; Editing by Aurora Ellis)

Adam Lambert has dealt with his “share of anxiety”.

The ‘For Your Entertainment’ singer – who first shot to fame as a runner-up on ‘American Idol’ in 2009 – has opened up about his battle with mental health, which was exacerbated amid the COVID-19 pandemic, and admitted anxiety is “a beast”.

Speaking to the digital edition of Hunger Magazine – of which he is the cover star – Adam shared: “I think something that I haven’t gone into a lot of detail about, that I’ve definitely been experiencing over the past five years, is that my journey with mental health has been really interesting. I think that’s something that’s becoming less taboo for people, but it’s not something that’s at the forefront of the line of questioning. I’ve definitely dealt with my share of anxiety. What’s great is that the more we all talk about it, the more we realise it’s pretty common, especially in this day and age. Especially after the year and a half we’ve had. Anxiety’s real. It’s a beast.”

The 40-year-old star – who is Queen’s touring frontman – admitted it’s important that people who are suffering have an “open dialogue” with others.

The ‘Starstruck’ judge added: “I think it’s really important not to feel like there’s something wrong with you. I think it’s more common than we all realise. It’s now becoming more of a conversation, but I think for people that are older it’s been a taboo thing. This is all cliché, but it is okay to ask for help. I feel some people think that if they don’t ask for help then it’s not real. So, people avoid admitting themselves and getting the help they need because they’re in denial. You’ve got to be real with yourself and honest with yourself. If people in your inner circle aren’t volunteering that, you need to be like, ‘Hey, do I seem okay today?’ It needs to be an open dialogue that people care about.”

Read the full interview here: www.hungertv.com/editorial/from-american-idol-to-queen-adam-lambert-is-going-all-the-way.

New York (AFP) – New York City was poised to sack roughly 3,000 municipal workers on Friday for failing to meet a deadline to get vaccinated against Covid-19.

The expected dismissals come amid growing discontent in North America against coronavirus restrictions and as states unilaterally lift mask mandates.

New York requires all city employees, including police, firefighters and teachers, to receive at least one dose of a vaccine under orders passed by former mayor Bill de Blasio last year.

“We’re not firing them. People are quitting,” his successor, Eric Adams, said on Thursday.

“The responsibility is clear. We said it: if you’re hired, if you get this job, you have to be vaccinated. If you are not following the rules, you are making that decision,” he added.

Like mandatory mask-wearing, mandatory vaccinations have been a controversial political issue in America, with Republican-led Texas going as far as banning them.

Hundreds of workers who oppose New York’s vaccine requirement were due to march on City Hall in Manhattan on Friday. 

Approximately 95 percent of the city’s municipal workforce has received at least one dose of a vaccine.

The 3,000 number represents less than one percent of the Big Apple’s 370,000 municipal workers.

Several thousand others remain unvaccinated but have applied for either medical or religious exemptions to avoid losing their jobs.

Friday’s deadline comes after New York state let an indoor mask mandate expire on Thursday.

Several other states, including California, New Jersey and Massachusetts announced this week the lifting of mask mandates for either businesses or schools.

The moves come as the US government grows increasingly concerned about copycat trucker-led protests against coronavirus restrictions that have shut down the Canadian capital Ottawa and three US border crossings.

Supporters of the movement in the United States have called on a convoy of truckers to gather in California in early March for a two-day rally before possibly heading towards the capital Washington.

Adele shocked onlookers by pole dancing at G-A-Y’s Porn Idol event at Heaven nightclub in London on Thursday night (11.02.22).

The ‘Easy On Me’ hitmaker had been enjoying a night out with friends at the club, which was hosting the famous strip contest with a cash prize, and was seen singing along to disco hit ‘It’s Raining Men’ by the Weather Girls.

Adele then stepped on stage with ‘RuPaul’s Drag Race UK’ star Cheryl Hole to give the audience something else to cheer.

The 33-year-old singer – who won a trio of BRIT Awards earlier this week – wrapped her leg around the stripper pole on the stage and spun around in her all-white Fendi suit sending the audience wild.

An onlooker told the Daily Star Online: “Adele was absolutely loving the event. She was having a great time with friends and loved watching the show.

“After the contest was over she stormed the stage and the crowd went wild. No one was expecting a music icon to be there.”

A video shared by a fan also shows Adele asking to have “the final say so” in the stripping contest as Cheryl tells her “you can have the final say, you’re f***ing adele and I’m little old Cheryl!”

Adele then picked a topless woman as the winner, referring her BRITs controversy by saying: “I’m going to go with my girl! I know I’ve had a lot of s**t the last couple of days.”

A delighted Cheryl shared a photo with Adele on Instagram, confirming the music megastar came to meet her backstage.

The 28-year-old drag queen wrote: “Confirmed: @Adele was devastated when I was eliminated on Drag Race too. Love you divalina.”

In her acceptance speech at the BRIT Awards for the Artist of the Year prize Adele enthused about being “a female artist” despite the switch to gender neutral categories at the ceremony in 2022.

She told the crowd: “I understand why the name of this award has changed but I really love being a woman and a female artist. I’m really proud of us.”

Anderson Cooper has announced the birth of his second child, Sebastian Luke Maisani-Cooper.

The 54-year-old presenter introduced his son Wyatt’s new baby brother, who was also born via surrogate, to the world during Thursday’s (10.02.22) episode of ‘Anderson Cooper 360’.

He told viewers: “This is Sebastian Luke Maisani-Cooper. He was 6.8 lbs. at birth and he was healthy and happy and even his occasional hiccups, are to me, adorable.”

Anderson quipped: “He mostly just sleeps and eats and certainly poops, but he already seems like a wise and thoughtful little chap.”

The ’60 Minutes’ correspondent also revealed that his ex-partner Benjamin Maisani will co-parent both boys and that he is in the process of adopting 21-month-old Wyatt, who will have the double-barrelled surname Maisani-Cooper.

He said: “Wyatt and Sebastian are being raised by my best friend and former partner, Benjamin Maisani. We’re co-parents.”

He continued: “Wyatt calls me ‘daddy’ and Benjamin ‘papa.’ We’re a family. Benjamin is also in the process of adopting Wyatt, whose last name will be changed to Maisani-Cooper as well.”

Anderson also admitted he can “already feel” his late mom Gloria, dad Wyatt and brother Carter’s “love for Sebastian”.

He added: “When I announced Wyatt’s birth, I said I liked to imagine my mom and dad and brother, all who are no longer alive, their arms around each other, smiling and joyful at his birth,” Cooper said. “These past 22 months, I felt them watching over us very strongly and I already feel their love for Sebastian. The family I was born into may be gone, but I feel them alive in the family we’ve created, new love, and new life.”

Despite their split in 2018, Anderson previously revealed he and Benjamin still live together to co-parent.

He said last year: “We get along really well. It’s weird, but it works. He wasn’t really sure he wanted to have a kid, which was one of the reasons we broke up. But then he came around the idea, and now he is just such a great parent.”

Washington (AFP) – A US court has struck down a Trump-era decision to remove federal protections for gray wolves across much of the country, in a move hailed by conservationists who said the listing was vital for the species’ recovery.

A 26-page ruling issued Thursday by Judge Jeffrey White in a case brought by wildlife groups found the Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) had erred in its October 2020 decision to remove the apex predators from the Endangered Species Act (ESA), where they were first listed in the 1970s.

Though the decision to delist gray wolves across most of the lower-48 states was taken by the administration of former president Donald Trump, Joe Biden’s government had continued to defend the move in court.

“It really is a win for wolves across the country,” Collette Adkins of the Center for Biological Diversity, told AFP.

“And I hope it finally convinces the Fish and Wildlife Service to really focus on recovering wolves instead of prematurely removing their protections.”

A quarter million gray wolves — long a symbol of the free spirit of the American wilderness — once roamed from coast to coast before the arrival of European settlers and eradication campaigns that endured into the 20th Century.

At the time of the decision to de-list them, the wolves had recovered from a low of 1,000 to around 6,000 — but hundreds were subsequently legally killed, either through hunting or conflicts with livestock operators.

In one egregious example, hunters in Wisconsin killed over 218 wolves in less than three days in February 2021, using packs of dogs, snares and leg-hold traps — well beyond the state’s own limit of killing 119 wolves.

The 2020 decision to remove the species’ protections had been opposed by 1.8 million Americans in public comments, as well as hundreds of scientists, veterinary professionals, and the iconic conservationist Jane Goodall.

Even the researchers commissioned by the FWS to carry out a review of the science found it did not support de-listing.

“Both under Democratic and Republican administrations, there has been this year-to-year desire to just be done recovering wolves,” said Adkins. 

“It’s been frustrating because the Endangered Species Act envisions a recovery of these animals so that they can fulfill their ecosystem role,” she added.

Research has confirmed the wolf’s importance in thinning over-browsing herds of elk, which in turn prevents destruction of habitat, for example. And a recent study from Wisconsin found that wolves kept deer away from roads, reducing collisions between deer and cars.

Adkins said she was hopeful of a change in policy after interior secretary Deb Haaland this week penned an op-ed in USA Today criticizing some western States in the northern Rocky mountain range, which have stepped up hunting campaigns in recent months.

The gray wolves of the northern Rockies haven’t been covered by the Endangered Species Act since a 2011 Congressional act, but Halaand wrote she could reinstate federal protections specifically for them if necessary.

By Jonathan Stempel and Jody Godoy

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Sarah Palin fell victim to the New York Times’ power when it published a 2017 editorial linking her to a mass shooting six years earlier, a lawyer for Palin said on Friday at her defamation trial against the newspaper.

In his closing argument in federal court in Manhattan, Palin’s lawyer Kenneth Turkel urged jurors to ignore politics and find that the Times and its former editorial page editor, James Bennet, harmed the reputation of Palin, a former Alaska governor and 2008 Republican U.S. vice presidential candidate.

Alluding to Palin’s testimony about being a mother and grandmother still living in her Wasilla, Alaska, hometown, Turkel accused the newspaper of being “keen” on “turning a blind eye” to the facts.

The crux of the dispute “is power, and lack of power,” Turkel said. “The Times resurrected a horrific, false accusation (that) in its simplest form accused Governor Palin of inciting the murder of six people.”

A lawyer for the Times is expected to deliver a closing argument later on Friday.

The trial is in its seventh day.

Palin has signaled that if she lost, she would use the case to challenge New York Times v. Sullivan, the landmark 1964 U.S. Supreme Court decision that established strong legal protection for American news media organizations against defamation claims by public figures.

Palin’s lawsuit concerns “America’s Lethal Politics,” a June 14, 2017, editorial addressing gun control and lamenting the increase in incendiary political rhetoric.

It incorrectly linked Palin to the January 2011 shooting in a Tucson, Arizona, parking lot where six people were killed and then-Democratic U.S. congresswoman Gabby Giffords was wounded.

The editorial was written after a shooting at a congressional baseball practice in Alexandria, Virginia where Republican U.S. congressman Steve Scalise was wounded.

Bennet inserted language that drew an incorrect connection between the Giffords shooting and a map from Palin’s political action committee that the editorial said put 20 Democrats, including Giffords, under crosshairs.

“The link to political incitement was clear,” the editorial said. It was corrected the next morning.

In 3-1/2 hours of testimony over two days, Palin, 58, likened herself to the biblical underdog David to the Times’ Goliath, saying the editorial left her feeling “powerless” and “mortified,” upset her sleep, and caused people to think less of her.

But while Palin has for many years had a lower public profile than in 2008, she failed under questioning from Times lawyer David Axelrod to offer specific examples of how the editorial hurt her reputation or caused her harm.

Axelrod also focused on various TV appearances that Palin has made.

Jurors will decide whether Palin offered clear and convincing evidence that the Times and Bennet acted with “actual malice,” meaning they knew the editorial was false or had reckless disregard for the truth. Palin cannot obtain punitive damages.

(Reporting by Jody Godoy and Jonathan Stempel in New York; Editing by Noeleen Walder and Jonathan Oatis)

US woman Denyse Holt always shared her daily Wordle score, so when she missed a day, her daughter immediately knew something was wrong

Washington (AFP) – A woman in the US city of Chicago was rescued from being held hostage for hours, after her failure to share her daily Wordle score alerted her family something was wrong.

Denyse Holt, 80, was alone at home on the night of February 5 when a man broke into her house and pointed a pair of scissors at her.

The man — identified as James H Davis III, aged 32 — was naked and covered with cuts and blood after he broke a window to gain entrance.

Police suspect Davis suffers from a mental illness.

Holt said Davis assured her he wouldn’t harm her, but he did force her, fully clothed, to take a bath with him before locking her in the basement.

“I didn’t think I was going to live,” she told the local CBS station.

Holt’s eldest daughter Meredith Holt-Caldwell, who lives in Seattle, first twigged that something was amiss when her mother did not send her daily Wordle score.

The game consists of guessing one five-letter word per day in just six tries. Its popularity has skyrocketed since the start of the year, with millions of people playing it daily.

Holt said her missing score was “disconcerting” to Holt-Caldwell, who knew her mother never missed this part of their daily routine.

Holt-Caldwell called the Chicago police, who conducted a wellbeing check on her mother on February 6, only to discover she was being held hostage in her own home.

An hours long standoff between police and Davis ensued. SWAT officers eventually used a stun gun to incapacitate him and rescue Holt.

Police say Davis faces a range of charges including home invasion with a deadly weapon and aggravated kidnapping.

Holt was in shock after her rescue but otherwise unharmed.

“I never thought in a million years this is what was happening, but it was,” she told CBS. “I’m very lucky.”

The New York Times announced at the end of January it had bought Wordle for an “undisclosed price in the low seven figures.”

Other versions of the game have sprung up around the globe, in languages ranging from German to Urdu.