“Stranger Things” breakout Grace Van Dien is opening up about a bad experience on a recent movie set that is causing her to be more selective with her acting projects. In a Twitch stream on Tuesday, Van Dien — who played Chrissy Cunningham on the most recent season of “Stranger Things” — revealed that she has turned down four movie roles in the last two and a half weeks and will be focusing more of her time on streaming. “Here’s the thing, I have seen that some people are upset with me for turning down acting projects and deciding to stream more, but the fact of the matter is the last few projects I’ve worked on I didn’t have the best experiences with some of the people I had to work for,” Van Dien said. She then alleged that a film producer made unwanted sexual advances toward her on set. “One of the last movies I did, one of the producers asked me to… like, he hired a girl that he was sleeping with and then he had her ask me to have a threesome with them,” Van Dien said. “So… that’s my boss. And then I didn’t and I cried and I was so upset. But when people are like, ‘How is streaming better for your mental health?’ That’s how. I get to stay inside my house and play video games and I don’t have my boss asking me to have sex with them.”

Chaim Topol, the Israeli actor who played Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof, died Thursday (Mar. 9) in Tel Aviv at age 87. In a statement, Israeli President Isaac Herzog said Topol was “one of the greatest Israeli performers.” Topol began acting after he enlisted in the Israeli army force in 1953, where he joined an entertainment troupe, per The Jerusalem Post. After settling down with his wife Galia Finkelstein after the war, he began his own... [How do you not lead off with Dr Hans Zarkoff from Flash Gordon]

Actor Robert Blake, who starred in the 1970s cop show Baretta and was later acquitted of killing his wife in a high-profile murder trial, has died at the age of 89. He died on Thursday from heart disease, his niece tells our sister site Deadline. Blake began his Hollywood career as a child actor, playing

Apple. Tree. Etc.

On a Saturday afternoon in August 2019, South Dakota Republican state Rep. Fred Deutsch sent an email to 18 anti-trans activists, doctors, and lawyers with the text of a bill he planned to introduce that would make it a felony for doctors to give transgender children under 16 gender-affirming medical care. “I have no doubt this will be an uphill battle when we get to session,” Deutsch warned the group. “As always, please do not share this with the media. The longer we can fly under the radar the better.” The message was one in a trove of emails obtained by Mother Jones between Deutsch and representatives of a network of activists and organizations at the forefront of the anti-trans movement. They show the degree to which these activists shaped Deutsch’s repressive legislation, a version of which was signed into law in February, and the tactics, alliances, and goals of a movement that has sought to foist their agenda on a national scale. 

A federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit filed by a Black real estate agent who was held at gunpoint with his client and 15-year-old son by the police in Wyoming, Michigan, in 2021. According to MLive, the judge also dismissed claims against the city of Wyoming and police Chief Kimberly Koster. U.S. District Judge Hala Jarbou issued an opinion on Feb. 28 in Lansing dismissing the lawsuit. Brown, who is Black, was meeting with his client, Roy Thorne, who is also Black, in August 2021 to show him a vacant house he was selling on Sharon Avenue SW.

An Azerbaijani cargo plane landed last Thursday at the Ovda Israeli air force base north of Eilat. After two hours on the ground, as usual, the old Ilyushin-76 airlifter took off, flew over central Israel, continued north over Turkey and then to the east – returning to its home field in Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan. An investigation by Haaretz, based on publicly available aviation data, reveals that over the past seven years, 92 cargo flights flown by Azerbaijani Silk Way Airlines have landed at the Ovda airbase, the only airfield in Israel through which explosives may be flown into and out of the country. Israel has had a strategic alliance with Azerbaijan for the past two decades, and Israel sells the large Shi’ite-majority country weapons worth billions of dollars – and in return, Azerbaijan, per sources, supplies Israel with oil and access to Iran. According to foreign media reports, Azerbaijan has allowed the Mossad to set up a forward branch to monitor what is happening in Iran, Azerbaijan’s neighbor to the south, and has even prepared an airfield intended to aid Israel in case it decides to attack Iranian nuclear sites. Reports from two years ago stated that the Mossad agents who stole the Iranian nuclear archive smuggled it to Israel via Azerbaijan. According to official reports from Azerbaijan, over the years Israel has sold it the most advanced weapons systems, including ballistic missiles, air defense and electronic warfare systems, kamikaze drones and more.

A judge ruled the report can be used as evidence in the civil case against an ex-NOPD officer who sexually assaulted a teenage rape victim. Between 2014 and 2020, a complaint of sexual misconduct, intimate partner violence, or harassment was made against New Orleans police officers about every 10 days, according to a report published late last year by the Umbrella Coalition, a coalition of 13 local and national nonprofit and civil rights organizations. According to the report, nearly 190 of New Orleans’ police officers had complaints of this nature filed against them with the department’s public integrity unit. But, in that time, the department sustained only three percent of complaints involving sexual or intimate partner violence, according to a spokesperson for the New Orleans Police Department. The Umbrella Coalition found that, among other claims, officers were accused of watching pornography at work, sexually assaulting arrestees, stalking former partners, sexually harassing a restaurant server while drinking alcohol on duty, posting revenge porn of a woman, threatening a former partner with a gun, sexually harassing fellow employees, beating a child, punching a woman in the jaw, and numerous other allegations of domestic battery and rape, including one incident in which an officer allegedly sexually assaulted someone while another officer watched. The department currently employs about 950 officers, but that number fluctuated during the years the Umbrella Coalition studied, and at least 500 officers who worked for NOPD during those years have since resigned or retired.

Since the start of the pandemic, the Baric Lab has been the target of internet conspiracy theories, ranging from accusations of engineering SARS-CoV-2 — the virus that causes COVID-19 — to allegations of bioweaponry. There is no evidence to support these claims. In 2021, the National Intelligence Council determined the virus “was not developed as a biological weapon” and most intelligence agencies assessed that COVID-19 was likely not genetically engineered. “When things happen that hurt people — and a virus that crosses the planet and kills a lot of people definitely hurts people — they want to have a reason for why that happens,” Rachel Graham, an assistant professor of epidemiology, said.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Over the past 11 months, someone created thousands of fake, automated Twitter accounts — perhaps hundreds of thousands of them — to offer a stream of praise for Donald Trump. Besides posting adoring words about the former president, the fake accounts ridiculed Trump's critics from both parties and attacked Nikki Haley, the former South Carolina governor and U.N.

Capitalizing on the pressure to pass the Affordable Care Act, a conservative lobbyist created an exception for faith-based health coverage, opening the door for “bad actors.”

A 25-year-old man was arrested Wednesday, two days after City of Miami Commissioner Manolo Reyes’ city-issued truck was vandalized outside his Coral Way district office, authorities confirmed.

Never get on a cruise ship.

This month marks the 20th anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, a giant con that heralded a thousand more

“I think no regular person could read this and look at Fox like a news organization at this point.” In the wake of bombshell legal filings showing that Fox News executives and stars seemingly sought to pacify their disgruntled MAGA viewers by airing election lies, while punishing and censoring the employees attempting to deliver the actual truth, the above observation has become commonplace within media circles. But some of the shots are being fired from within the conservative cable giant. According to nine Fox News staffers and insiders, the pre-trial filings in Dominion Voting Systems’ $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit against Fox News further impugn and sully the reputation of the network’s “straight news” journalists, especially since they show Fox was “operating out of fear” over losing viewers to smaller right-wing competitors following its Decision Desk’s early (and accurate) Arizona election night call for President Joe Biden. “We are not happy,” one reporter told The Daily Beast.

Just months before Silvergate Capital Corp. announced that it was winding down, banking’s first casualty from the crypto industry’s implosion, a company called Block.one was boosting its investment. Silvergate’s stock was plummeting, depositors were fleeing and the short-sellers were circling — but Block.one and its chief executive officer Brendan Blumer were big buyers. In November, they purchased stock amounting to a 9.27% stake in the lender, according to a statement late that month. By the end of December, the firm, whose long-time backers include Peter Thiel and Alan Howard, had boosted that position so that Block.one, together with Blumer, became Silvergate’s biggest holder with a combined 9.9% holding.

The top trade group for mortgage companies is engaged in an effort on Capitol Hill to safeguard against, and potentially capitalize on, a future Supreme Court ruling that could render the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s funding mechanism unconstitutional. The Prospect has confirmed that the Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) is circulating a document in Congress that includes rules it would like to see turned into statutory law, protecting safe harbors and other benefits for mortgage companies that would go away if the CFPB were invalidated. Critics charge that the MBA’s effort reveals private anxiety over the Supreme Court upholding a Fifth Circuit ruling made by three Trump-appointed judges last October, even though the trade group’s official response has been relatively muted. It shows how mortgage and other financial players actually welcome the CFPB’s role in making markets function smoothly, no matter how much they rail against them in public. The behind-the-scenes action also reveals the quiet terror financial companies and lobbyists are feeling over the court case, though they have not openly sided with the CFPB.

LANSING, Mich. (AP) — Michigan's Democratic-led Legislature moved Wednesday to repeal the state's “right-to-work” law that was passed more than a decade ago when Republicans controlled the Statehouse.

WWE is in talks with state gambling regulators in Michigan and Colorado to legalize betting on high-profile matches.

Looking forward to new character, Hard’R’bert.