Neil Patrick Harris doubts whether he would be able to reprise the role of Barney Stinson in ‘How I Met Your Father’.

The 48-year-old actor played the character in the comedy ‘How I Met Your Mother’ between 2005 and 2014 but thinks that the return of his alter ego in the spin-off would be difficult because of his brash, womanising personality.

Speaking to ‘How I Met Your Father’ star Hilary Duff in the latest edition of his newsletter ‘Wondercade’, Neil said: “As for coming on your show (insert joke here), I worry.

“Barney’s antics, his overt delusions of grandeur, would likely get everyone in trouble. So, unless he’s changed his ways or joined a nunnery (insert an insert joke here), not sure if it’s in anyone’s best interest.”

Hilary agreed with Neil’s sentiments about Barney and joked that he would likely be in prison in 2022 – although she did suggest that Francia Raisa’s character in ‘How I Met Your Father’ was inspired by the character.

The 34-year-old star said: “I’m not sure how you feel about this, but I’m pretty sure Barney would… be in jail in 2022.

“Since we’re living in the world of females coming into power, I’m assuming that’s why they made (Barney-esque character Valentina) a woman!”

Meanwhile, Hilary recently confessed that she was reluctant to take on the role of Sophie in the comedy spin-off.

She explained: “I got a call from my manager saying that there was this project they wanted me to chat about. Then I heard the title and I was like, ‘Are you kidding me? What?!’

“The original show is so, so beloved and was just so spot-on perfect, that I’m like, ‘Ohh, I don’t wanna do reboot.’ I was a little bit nervous about the sitcom of it all because I’ve never done multi-cam, but I read the script and it was just everything you want a comedy to be.”

Duncan James felt “petrified” about coming out.

The 43-year-old singer shot to fame in the boy band Blue and he’s recalled being “frightened to come out” at the time.

Duncan – who came out as bisexual in 2009, before confirming he was gay in 2017 – said: “I think being in such a public boy band, with majority of fans being female, it was really hard for me to actually have the courage to come out because I was scared on so many different levels on so many different things. And to be honest, I didn’t quite understand too much about my own sexuality at that time, I was just really confused.

“So I was kind of just like all over the place and what with the height of the fame and everything, it was just one of those things where I kind of buried it inside me and I didn’t want to accept it and want to think about it.”

Duncan was in a “secret relationship with a guy” when he turned 30.

And at that moment, he thought it was a “matter of time” before his sexuality was revealed to the public.

The ‘All Rise’ hitmaker eventually decided to “take the bull by the horns” and reveal the news himself.

He told the ‘Ry-Union’ podcast: “I didn’t know what was going to happen. And I was petrified. But to be fair, it was the best thing I ever did.

“And I think when you’re living with one of those secrets inside you, and you’re frightened to come out, I think everything is magnified on a great big level. And I was really, really, really scared that everything was gonna … my world was gonna come crashing down.

“But actually, in hindsight, it was never as bad as I thought it was going to be. And it wasn’t a big deal. And when I came out, it was obviously like, a huge weight had been lifted.”

Listen to ‘Ry-Union’, brought to you by Sky Bingo, on all podcast platforms.

Jonathan Van Ness can be “really hard” on himself.

The ‘Queer Eye’ star admitted practising “self-love” is a “conscious decision” he has to make every day and thinks curiosity is “the key” to personal acceptance, though it isn’t something he always manages.

He said: “I don’t think it was a lightbulb moment, I think it’s just constantly like a journey.

“I think, especially with self-acceptance, self-love, it’s a conscious decision you’ve got to make every day.

“And I don’t always feel [it]. There [are] times when I get really hard on myself. There’s times where I don’t always feel that [love].

“But I think we can come back to that relationship with ourself with compassion and a little bit of acceptance and some curiosity.

“I mean, really, being curious helps so much with us because when we’re not accepting of ourselves it’s like, ‘Oh, what’s going on?’ Curiosity is such an important part.”

The ‘Getting Curious with Jonathan Van Ness’ host thinks people should embrace the fact they don’t have all the answers to life’s problems in order to grow and learn.

He added to ‘Entertainment Tonight’: “It’s OK to not know it all… We don’t know it all. I’m just I’m out here, I’m learning I’m exploring and I want everyone to take from ‘Getting Curious’ that spirit of curiosity, and that it’s OK to go explore and not have all the answers.”

In ‘Getting Curious’, the 34-year-old star interviews experts on a range of topics including cooking, insects, sports and architecture and he had a great time broadening his knowledge.

He said: “I love curiosity, I love getting to learn about things and [the show] is really you kind of watching me learn about things in real time.

“The other fun thing about curiosity is it’s always changing, it’s always fluid, so there’s like endless ways that we could go learn about stuff.”

Washington (AFP) – US podcast star Joe Rogan, who has been called out by music legends Neil Young and Joni Mitchell for spreading Covid-19 disinformation on the huge Spotify streaming service, is as popular as he is provocative.

At 54, the former taekwondo champion has millions of fans, who appreciate his outspokenness, his iconoclastic ideas, and the variety of his guests. 

But he also has many detractors, starting with luminaries Young and Mitchell, who removed their music from Spotify in protest at its hosting of Rogan’s podcast.

He has spread disinformation about the coronavirus and other topics on the air. Both musicians said the false claims, and Spotify’s failure to do anything about them, was the reason for their decision. 

R&B singer India Arie followed suit, citing what she said were Rogan’s “problematic” comments on race. 

For his accusers, he is particularly dangerous because his show “The Joe Rogan Experience,” which has been broadcast exclusively on Spotify since 2020 under a deal worth an estimated $100 million, attracts a staggering 11 million listeners per episode on average.

Often with a glass of whiskey in hand, he chats casually for two to three hours with a guest on topics as varied as flying saucers, psychedelic drugs, red meat and fitness, slipping in an expletive here and there. 

Rogan, with a tongue as sharp as his arms are tattooed, was already famous when he began the program in 2009.

A comedian and martial arts commentator known for tight T-shirts and what critics have branded his “toxic masculinity,” in the 1990s he was a TV actor on sitcoms including NBC’s “NewsRadio.” 

Later he hosted the popular reality show “Fear Factor.”

When he launched the podcast, his ratings quickly took off.

People from all walks of life asked to come on. In 12 years, he has hosted nearly 1,000 guests — 88 percent of them male, according to the fan site JRELibrary. 

They include Tesla boss Elon Musk, who smoked a joint on his set, whistleblower Edward Snowden and film director Oliver Stone. 

But Rogan has also given voice to climate sceptics, conspiracy theorist Alex Jones and, since the start of the pandemic, figures in the anti-vaccine movement, earning him the label of “a veritable megaphone of right-wing lies” by progressive website Media Matters for America.

Posing as a critic of political correctness, he has attacked the left for demonising conservatives and flirted with unfounded theories held dear by former president Donald Trump’s supporters — notably about the presence of undercover FBI agents among the US Capitol attackers on January 6 2021. 

Like the former Republican president, he hates “losers.” 

“I grew up around a lot of losers and one of them was my dad,” a former police officer who was violent and who left his family, Rogan said in an interview in 2016. 

“There was a lot of desire to not be like that guy and not be like all of these people around me who had no hope and no future.” 

Yet he defends himself against accusations of being an ideologue or of voting exclusively on the right. 

An atheist who supports gay marriage, the decriminalization of soft drugs, and the preservation of gun rights, he calls himself a libertarian and said he even considered supporting self-described socialist Senator Bernie Sanders in the last Democratic primary.

As for his guests, “I’m interested in having interesting conversations with people that have differing opinions. I’m not interested in only talking to people that have one perspective,” he said in a video posted on Instagram after Young’s criticism that seemingly conflated misinformation with opinions.

“I’m not trying to promote misinformation,” he continued. “I will do my best to try to balance out these more controversial viewpoints with other people’s perspectives.”

He said he agreed with Spotify’s announcement in response to Young and Mitchell that Covid podcasts would include links to factual and scientifically sourced information. 

In a perhaps telling comment for someone who was already famous before launching his podcast, he admitted he had not been ready for the “strange” responsibility of having “this many viewers and listeners.”

“It’s nothing that I prepared for, and it’s nothing that I ever anticipated.”

New York (AFP) – New York prosecutors said Wednesday they had charged four men in relation to the drug overdose death of “The Wire” actor Michael K. Williams.

Williams, who starred as Omar Little in the widely acclaimed television series, died of an accidental drug overdose in September.

The 54-year-old, who played the iconic Baltimore stick-up man in the groundbreaking show, was found dead in his apartment in New York.

The men have been charged with conspiracy to distribute the fentanyl-laced heroin that killed Williams, the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York said in a statement.

The prosecutor named the men as Irvin Cartagena, Hector Robles, Luis Cruz and Carlos Macci.

Cartagena allegedly sold the deadly dose, said attorney Damian Williams. He faces a mandatory minimum sentence of 20 years in prison and a maximum sentence of life if convicted.

The Emmy-nominated actor died from “acute intoxication by the combined effects of fentanyl, p-fluorofentanyl, heroin and cocaine,” New York’s chief medical examiner ruled.

Williams had been hailed for his role in “The Wire,” in which he played a gay armed robber who specialized in holding up drug dealers.

He was also well-known for the role of Albert ‘Chalky’ White on the HBO series “Boardwalk Empire.”

The actor had spoken openly of his past struggles with drug addiction and had told US media that he had spent much of his earnings from “The Wire” on narcotics.

New York (AFP) – A transgender American swimmer’s controversial career hung in the balance Wednesday after USA Swimming announced new rules, including testosterone limits, that could impact her ability to race competitively.

Lia Thomas has dominated US collegiate women’s swimming as a student athlete at the University of Pennsylvania where, just a few years ago, she competed on the men’s team.

Now, amid an uproar fueled by those who say Thomas has an unfair advantage, USA Swimming unveiled guidelines that do not mention the 22-year-old by name but will impact her future in the sport — although exactly how remains unclear.

The policy said that because swimming is “an important vehicle for positive physical and mental health,” it remains committed to “greater inclusivity” at the non-elite levels of the sport.

But critics said the new policy from the governing body for competitive swimming in the United States might achieve just the opposite.

USA Swimming said it had created a new set of guidelines for transgender athlete participation in elite competition that “relies on science and medical evidence-based methods to provide a level-playing field for elite cisgender women, and to mitigate the advantages associated with male puberty and physiology.”

It said that a three-member panel comprised of medical experts and a veteran athlete was being established to implement the new policy and to rule on specific cases.

A key criterion that the panel will look for is that “from a medical perspective, the prior physical development of the athlete as a male, as mitigated by any medical intervention, does not give the athlete a competitive advantage over the athlete’s cisgender female competitors.”

In addition, a swimmer is ineligible “unless the athlete demonstrates that the concentration of testosterone in the athlete’s serum has been less than 5 nmol/L (as measured by liquid chromatography coupled with mass spectrometry) continuously for a period of at least 36 months before the date of application.”

Doctors measure testosterone in nanomoles per liter (nmol/L). According to New York’s Mount Sinai hospital, the healthy range of testosterone in a woman is 0.5 to 2.4 nmol/L.

Thomas followed National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) rules, undergoing a year-long testosterone suppression treatment. 

But some organizations, such as the Women’s Sports Policy Working Group, have deemed these rules insufficient, especially in cases where an athlete has begun her transition after puberty.

Athlete Ally, an activist organization that combats homophobia and transphobia in sport, swiftly responded that the new USA Swimming policy appears to be targeting Thomas.

“These sweeping new restrictions appear to be a direct retaliation against Lia Thomas, a talented, hard-working athlete who has followed all guidelines, is supported by her team, and trains diligently,” said Anne Lieberman, the group’s director of policy and programs.

‘Full support’

The NCAA, which governs US college sports, said in January it would enforce rules set forth by USA Swimming, which has the authority to bar swimmers from competitions.

A swim meet for the Ivy League — a grouping of top private northeastern US universities — is scheduled for February, and the NCAA National Championships are in March.

“Penn Athletics has been informed of the new USA Swimming transgender participation policy,” the university’s sports department said in a statement. 

“We continue to work with the NCAA regarding Lia Thomas’ participation in the 2022 NCAA Swimming and Diving Championship.”

Thomas said she began her transition in May 2019 with hormone replacement therapy — a combination of estrogen and testosterone suppressants.

In early December at a meet in Ohio, she notched the best times of the year at the university level in the 200m and 500m freestyle.

Her performances have renewed a long-running debate about the fairness of a transgender woman competing against those who were born biologically female.

Members of the Penn swimming team and diving team issued a statement supporting their transgender teammate.

“We want to express our full support for Lia in her transition,” they said in the statement released late Tuesday, apparently after one teammate spoke out about Thomas.

“We value her as a person, teammate, and friend. The sentiments put forward by an anonymous member of our team are not representative of the feelings, values, and opinions of the entire Penn team, composed of 39 women with diverse backgrounds.”

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Republican U.S. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said on Tuesday that he opposes leniency for those who pleaded guilty to committing crimes during the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol by supporters of former President Donald Trump.

McConnell made his remarks days after Trump said he would consider pardons for people convicted of joining the attack if elected to a second term in 2024.

“I would not be in favor of shortening any of the sentences for any of the people who pleaded guilty to crimes,” the top Senate Republican said at a news conference, when asked about Trump’s remarks at a rally on Saturday in Conroe, Texas.

“What we saw here on Jan. 6 was an effort to prevent the peaceful transfer of power, from one administration to another, which had never happened before in our country,” McConnell said.

A frequent target for Trump’s invective, McConnell also repeated his view that an 1887 law used as the basis for Republican Trump’s attempts to overturn his November 2020 election defeat to Democrat Joe Biden should be changed. Democrats and Republicans in the Senate are moving toward possible enactment of reforms intended to prevent future attacks.

Thousands of Trump supporters stormed the Capitol in the worst assault on Congress since the War of 1812. They were motivated by Trump’s false claims that the election was stolen from him through fraud.

McConnell also took issue with those claims. “The election of 2020 was decided December 14 of 2020, when the Electoral College certified the winner of the election,” he said.

At least 165 of the 725 people charged with taking part in the U.S. Capitol riot have pleaded guilty, according to the Justice Department.

During Saturday’s rally Trump also called for protests against prosecutors in New York and Georgia investigating him and his company.

(Reporting by David Morgan and Caitlin Webber; Editing by Tim Ahmann, Scott Malone and Grant McCool)

Washington (AFP) – After music legends Neil Young and Joni Mitchell quit Spotify over a Covid misinformation row, some lesser-known artists have said they simply couldn’t afford to leave the world’s largest music streamer — despite their concerns.

The row sparked a discussion about other artists exiting the platform of more than 170 million subscribers in a stand against Spotify’s partnership with podcaster Joe Rogan, who has been accused of promoting vaccine falsehoods on his show.

But the opportunity for less well-known artists to reach a large audience and potentially get paid for streams of their music means they feel obligated to stick with Spotify, even though many say the streaming giant unfairly compensates them.

“For me, Spotify is kind of a necessary evil,” said Leo Sidran, musician and host of the podcast “The Third Story.” “To leave Spotify would be a decision to eliminate an enormous potential for people to find me.”

The music business has always been a tough one for performers, but the decline in major record labels’ absolute power as industry gatekeepers has given rise to a new landscape that has its own pitfalls.

Acts with smaller followings have to do a lot of their own promotion, which makes platforms like Spotify or other streaming programs — and their music-hungry audiences — a way to get onto listeners’ playlists.

“It’s crucial to be heard,” said New York-based jazz guitarist Michael Valeanu. “I think those platforms are how people consume music these days.”

Valeanu had not listened to the Rogan podcasts in question and so was undecided on the controversy at hand — but said he was willing to quit Spotify simply because he says the platform does not fairly distribute revenue among artists.

For example, Valeanu said he has been paid only about $500 across platforms, largely from Spotify, for his roughly 10-year-old first album that has been streamed “thousands” of times.

Going to be discovered

Spotify told AFP that as of 2020, it has paid over $23 billion in royalties to rights holders — including over $5 billion in 2020 alone.

Artists’ streaming payments are tied to how in-demand they are, so there will be a financial impact for popular performers such as Mitchell and Young — and for their record companies.

Billboard magazine estimates Young’s decision to pull his music from Spotify will cost him personally around $754,000 annually, while the impact will be a roughly $272,000-per-year loss for Mitchell.

Young’s Twitter account directed fans to head to Amazon Music to stream his tunes, providing a link and noting “all new listeners will get four months free.”

“He is standing up to Spotify… (And) now he’s pointing people to Amazon Music, which actually doesn’t make any difference,” said a singer-songwriter who performs under the name Pilsner Man, noting both are streaming platforms that don’t favor less famous acts.

The 29-year-old Pennsylvania-based artist said he makes less than $200 a month via Spotify, noting that losing that money by leaving the app would hurt his professional prospects — but maybe not as much as losing the exposure.

“A lot of it has to do with algorithms as well — people find music on playlists,” he added. “So if you’re on (Spotify), you’re going to be discovered by people who aren’t even really looking for you.”

Some artists complained that bigger acts like Young, Mitchell and others had stepped away from the platform over misinformation, not in support of criticism of streaming pay rates.

Last straw

While singer-songwriter India.Arie cited Rogan in her social media post announcing her departure from Spotify, she went a little further.

“Paying musicians a fraction of a penny? And (Rogan) $100 million?” she wrote. “This shows the type of company they are and the company they keep.”

Sidran, the musician and podcast host, said the only way he sees the current system changing is for the biggest names in music to withdraw their work — and so far, they haven’t.

“(If) Adele, or Billie Eilish, or some really big contemporary pop artists were to leave, maybe it would make a difference,” he said. “But for the independent artists to leave, it doesn’t really impact Spotify, it impacts the artists.”

But independent performer Miles Blackwood, a 31-year-old known as Baze Blackwood, said the Rogan episode came on top of his concerns about the pay rate, citing other platforms he thinks are more equitable.

“I’m in the process of removing all my music from Spotify,” the Boston-based musician told AFP on Monday. “I think this was really more of the final straw.”

Rita Moreno has said she tried to “end her life” after being “mistreated” by Marlon Brando.

The 90-year-old actress – who is known for playing the role of Anita in original film version of ‘West Side Story’ – claimed that while her eight-year relationship with late Hollywood icon Marlon Brando in the 1950s was “exciting”, he was a “bad guy” towards women.

She said: “Ultimately, it was exciting to be with Marlon. Oh, my God, it was exciting. He was extraordinary in many, many ways, but he was a bad guy. He was a bad guy when it came to women. I was such a different person then. I had all the makings of a doormat.

“So whenever he lied, I would look at him and I’d say, ‘Marlon, look at me.’ And he’d start to grin this kind of — I don’t want to use the bad word — that poop-eating grin. I could read him like a book and that’s why he loved me, and that’s why he mistreated me in so many ways. I tried to end my life with pills in his house. That’s how I tried to do it.”

Speaking to fellow actress Jessica Chastain for Variety’s ‘Actors on Actors’ series, Rita explained that she experienced confusion over wanting to kill the “trod-upon” version of herself.

She added: “I didn’t understand that if I was going to kill this pathetic, sad, trod-upon Rita, the rest of Rita was also going to go with me. I really didn’t seem to understand that. But that’s what the attempt was. It was an attempt.”

The Oscar-winning star – who was later married to her manager Leonard Gordon from 1965 until his death in 2010 – went on to reveal that Marlon had wanted to reunite after she had settled down.

She said: “What’s interesting is that he wanted to renew. I was now married. I had a beautiful child, Fernanda. He was ready to have a go again. I didn’t want that. But he did. He lost a big part of himself, I think. The good part of him, the good Marlon that Rita loved. It was very complicated. Really, really complicated.”

Tommy Dorfman’s husband has filed for divorce.

The ’13 Reasons Why’ star came out as transgender in July 2021, and now, her husband Peter Zurkuhlen has submitted documents, obtained by TMZ this week, to end their marriage after five years.

The pair became engaged in April 2015, after meeting through a mutual friend, and tied the knot a year later.

Tommy previously admitted the pair had transitioned into friends rather than lovers.

She said: “I was in a nine-year relationship in which I was thought of as a more male-bodied person, with a gay man.

“I love him so much, but we’ve been learning that as a trans woman, what I’m interested in is not necessarily reflected in a gay man. So we’ve had incredible conversations to redefine our relationship as friends.”

Meanwhile, Tommy previously explained that her “spirit was attuned to whatever it means to be a woman”.

She said: “A trans elder asked me what I see myself as when I’m older, when I’m 60, 70, 90. It was so clear, I just saw Cate Blanchett. But I really couldn’t imagine not being a mother or a grandmother.

“My spirit was so attuned to whatever it means to be a woman. I’ve walked in the privilege of a male body, but [being a woman] is all I’ve known on the inside. Trans women would clock me all the time and be like, ‘Hey, girl, what’s up?’ because it’s sort of a thing you recognise.”

Tommy has received positive reactions from unexpected places since coming out, including from people she grew up with that she thought she would “never see again”.

She added: “There are some people that I grew up with in the South who I thought I was never going to see again. So it was nice to get text messages and calls from people I grew up going to NASCAR with or who you would expect to be incredibly conservative and not accepting. But to see me, someone they knew as a child, stepping into this space in a public way helped them wrap their heads around it.”

The 29-year-old actress has been taking hormones and is already seeing the positive effects.

She said in August: “I just switched my hormones, and I’ve never felt better in my life. I spent 28 years of my life suicidal and depressed and recovering from alcoholism and drug addiction. I don’t think I’ve ever been genuinely happy until this past year. I look at the Internet chronicle of photos of me since I started working, and I can see how f****** unhappy I was in every photo. It’s wild.”

By Tyler Clifford

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo will not face criminal charges related to sexual harassment claims that led to his resignation last year after the last county prosecutor investigating allegations from one of several women said he had no legal basis to pursue a case.

“To be clear, this decision is based solely upon an assessment of the law and whether the People can establish a legally sufficient case under controlling precedent,” Oswego County District Attorney Gregory Oakes said in a statement on Monday about accusations by Virginia Limmiatis

“In no way should this decision be interpreted as casting doubt upon the character of credibility of Ms. Limmiatis, or how harmful the acts she experienced were,” Oakes said.

Cuomo resigned in August after an investigation by New York Attorney General Letitia James concluded that he sexually harassed 11 women. The Democrat was in his third term as governor.

Limmiatis, who works for an energy company, last March accused Cuomo of touching her chest inappropriately at an event in 2017. She said she feared reporting him because he was a powerful figure.

The Oswego district attorney’s decision does not mean Cuomo is innocent of abusing his power, an attorney for Limmiatis said in a statement.

“Not every violation of law results in a criminal prosecution,” Mariann Wang, the attorney, said.

Limmiatis’ claims were included in James’ report, which said Cuomo violated the law and created a “toxic” workplace when he groped, kissed or made suggestive comments to women.

Cuomo has said his accusers had misinterpreted his words, gestures and demeanor.

Rich Azzopardi, a spokesman for Cuomo, said on Monday that James’ report was a “political hit job”.

“As now five DAs have verified, none of the accusations in Tish James’ fraud of a report have stood up to any level of real scrutiny,” he told Reuters. “As we’ve said since the beginning, the truth will come out.”

James’ office did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.

James had declined to charge Cuomo after announcing the findings of her report in August.

Oakes’s decision not to charge Cuomo follows similar moves by prosecutors in Manhattan, Nassau, Westchester and Albany counties.

(Reporting by Tyler Clifford in New York. Additional reporting by Kanishka Singh in Bengaluru and Jonathan Stempel in New York, Editing by Donna Bryson and Angus MacSwan)

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A Georgia prosecutor who is conducting a criminal investigation of Donald Trump has asked the FBI for a risk assessment and security protections, citing the former president’s “alarming” rhetoric about prosecutors and the Jan. 6 Capitol attack.

Fulton County, Georgia, District Attorney Fani Willis, who is investigating whether Trump tried to influence the state’s handling of the 2020 election, told the FBI’s Atlanta field office that her concerns were driven by Trump’s comments in Texas on Saturday, when he attacked “radical, vicious racist prosecutors” and encouraged protests in Washington, New York and Atlanta.

In a letter dated Sunday, Willis said her staff has already made security accommodations around the Fulton County courthouse and government offices.

“Security concerns were escalated this weekend by the rhetoric of former President Trump at a public event in Conroe, Texas,” she wrote, adding that the event was “undoubtedly watched by millions.”

“This rhetoric is more alarming in light of his statements” concerning pardons for those convicted of crimes in last year’s deadly attack on the U.S. Capitol.

Willis asked the FBI for an immediate risk assessment and protective resources including intelligence and federal agents.

She said it was important the resources were in place well before a special grand jury convenes in the case on May 2.

The FBI field office did not return a request for comment.

The investigation by Willis, a Democrat, is the most serious probe facing Trump in Georgia after he was recorded in a phone call pressuring Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to overturn the state’s election results based on unfounded claims of voter fraud.

(Reporting by Doina Chiacu in Washington; Editing by Matthew Lewis)

By Tom Hals and Mike Spector

(Reuters) – Members of the Sackler family who own Purdue Pharma LP are nearing an agreement to boost their more than $4 billion offer to resolve sprawling opioid litigation after negotiating with states that had objected to terms of the OxyContin maker’s bankruptcy reorganization, according to a court filing.

Sackler family members and states objecting to terms of Purdue’s bankruptcy reorganization are “close to an agreement in principle” to contribute additional cash beyond the $4.325 billion they had pledged to settle opioid litigation, according to a mediator’s interim report filed on Monday.

An agreement involving members of the Sackler family and several state attorneys general could potentially end a legal challenge that has prevented Purdue from exiting bankruptcy, and clear the way for a plan aimed at helping to abate the opioid crisis.

The mediation kicked off in January among Sackler family members and several states after a U.S. district judge overturned the original settlement, which was the cornerstone of Purdue’s bankruptcy reorganization plan.

The judge found the reorganization plan improperly shielded Sackler family members, who had not filed for Chapter 11 themselves, from opioid litigation.

The mediator, former U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Shelley Chapman, said any additional contribution from the Sacklers would be solely for opioid abatement. She asked that talks be extended to Feb. 7, a request that could be considered at a bankruptcy-court hearing on Tuesday.

The report described marathon negotiating sessions held on Jan. 25-26 in New York that ran more than 12 hours each day and involved two unidentified state attorneys general who participated in person and another who joined by Zoom.

The settlement agreement had been opposed by at least eight state attorneys general, including Bob Ferguson in Washington state and William Tong in Connecticut.

Purdue, the maker of the highly addictive OxyContin opioid painkiller, filed for bankruptcy in 2019 in the face of thousands of lawsuits accusing it and the Sacklers of fueling the U.S. opioid epidemic through deceptive marketing. The opioid abuse crisis has led to nearly 500,000 overdose deaths over two decades, according to U.S. data.

Sackler family members have denied wrongdoing. Purdue pleaded guilty in November 2020 to three felonies arising from its handling of OxyContin.

Several members of the Sackler family testified during Purdue’s bankruptcy trial that their contribution to the settlement was conditioned on receiving “global peace” from opioid litigation.

(Reporting by Mike Spector in New York; writing by Tom Hals in Wilmington, Delaware; Editing by Bill Berkrot)

By Jason Lange and Alexandra Ulmer

(Reuters) -Donald Trump’s fundraising slowed in late 2021 but the former leader still amassed more than $100 million in cash that could help Republicans in their bid to win congressional majorities later this year, disclosures released on Monday showed.

Trump’s main fundraising committee, known as Save America, took in about $23 million between July and December of last year, down from $62 million in the first half of 2021, according to reports to the Federal Election Commission.

Trump, now about one year out of office after losing the 2020 presidential election to Democrat Joe Biden, remains popular among Republicans as he continues to falsely state he lost the election due to fraud.

The slowdown in his fundraising raised eyebrows among Republicans.

“The further Trump gets away from the White House, the harder it seems to be for him to raise money,” said Dan Eberhart, a prominent Republican donor and the CEO of oilfield services company Canary, LLC.

While Trump has strongly hinted he could run for president again in 2024, campaign finance rules forbid him from funding his own candidacy with money raised by Save America.

But Trump is spending large sums to hold political rallies that ostensibly support Republican candidates but which feature his own speeches as the main event.

“Trump very well may find a way to spend the money he raised in 2021 in support of a 2024 campaign and get away with it,” said Paul Ryan, a campaign finance specialist at Common Cause, a nonpartisan group that advocates for government reform.

In the second half to 2021, Save America paid event management company Event Strategies, Inc more than $1.4 million, according to Save America’s financial disclosure.

Trump has endorsed dozens of Republican candidates, including several who are mounting challenges against Republicans who voted with Democrats to impeach Trump on a charge he incited a deadly assault on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

Save America, which ended 2021 with $105 million in cash, has contributed just $1.35 million to “like-minded causes and endorsed candidates,” according to sums released by Trump’s office.

The group in July made a $1 million donation to the Conservative Partnership Institute, which currently lists Trump’s former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows as a senior partner.

Trump’s former campaign committee, now dubbed the Make America Great Again PAC, had $6.7 million in cash at the end of the year, with much of its outlays in the second half of the year going to legal expenses, according to a separate financial disclosure.

Save America and the former campaign together spent more that $290,000 on rent, catering, meetings and lodgings at Trump properties during the period, the disclosures showed. In addition, Make America Great Again spent more than $52,000 in rental and meeting expenses at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida, according to its filing.

In the statement about the fundraising haul, Trump spokesperson Taylor Budowich said the former leader’s movement “is set to crash across the midterms and carry forward all the way through 2024.”

Democrats, who hold slim majorities in Congress, are bracing for a difficult election season as Biden’s popularity has slumped among voters worn down by the COVID-19 pandemic and its toll on the economy.

(Reporting by Jason Lange and Alexandra Ulmer; Editing by Stephen Coates)

Whoopi Goldberg has apologised after saying the Holocaust “isn’t about race”.

The 66-year-old star – who was met with fierce backlash over her comments on Monday’s episode (31.01.22) of ‘The View’ – has offered her “sincerest apologies” for the offence she caused.

Appearing on the show, she said: “Let’s be truthful about it because Holocaust isn’t about race. It’s not about race. It’s not about race. It’s about man’s inhumanity to man…

“These are two white groups of people! The minute you turn it into race it goes down this alley. Let’s talk about it for what it is.

“It’s how people treat each other. It doesn’t matter if you’re Black or white, Jews, it’s each other.”

In a statement shared on social media, Whoopi has now said she “stands corrected”.

She wrote: “On today’s show, I said the Holocaust ‘is not about race, but about man’s inhumanity to man’. I should have said it is about both.

“As Jonathan Greenblatt from the Anti-Defamation League shared, ‘The Holocaust was about the Nazi’s systematic annihilation of the Jewish people – who they deemed to be an inferior race.’ I stand corrected.

“The Jewish people around the world have always had my support and that will never waiver. I’m sorry for the hurt I have caused.

“Written with my sincerest apologies, Whoopi Goldberg.”

Many people took to social media to criticise Whoopi over her original comments, with David Harris – the CEO of the American Jewish Committee – urging her to “rethink” and apologise.

He tweeted: “Whoopi Goldberg absurdly claims the #Holocaust ‘isn’t about race.’ Nazi Germany considered all Jews a ‘subhuman race.’

“That’s why they wanted to exterminate the entire Jewish people, including my family, & almost succeeded. Please rethink & apologize. (sic)”

And Israeli writer Hen Mazzig added: “Being Jewish means watching white nationalists call for your death because you’re ‘not white’ while ladies on national TV say the Holocaust was ‘white people killing white people…y’all go fight amongst yourselves.’”