South Korean president declares martial law in move against opposition party
South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol declared martial law on Tuesday, accusing the opposition of “anti-state” activity.
In an unannounced address broadcast live late at night on YTN, Yoon said he had no choice but to take drastic measures to protect South Korean freedoms and the constitutional order. He asserted opposition parties have taken the parliamentary process hostage and thrown the country into crisis.
“I declare martial law to protect the free Republic of Korea from the threat of North Korean communist forces, to eradicate the despicable pro-North Korean anti-state forces that are plundering the freedom and happiness of our people, and to protect the free constitutional order,” Yoon said.
The White House did not immediately condemn the action by Yoon.
SOUTH KOREA’S PRESIDENT IS PICKING UP GOLF IN HOPES TO IMPRESS TRUMP
“The Administration is in contact with the Republic of Korea government and is monitoring the situation closely,” a National Security Council spokesperson told Fox News Digital.
Yoon did not say in the address what specific measures would be taken. Yonha news agency reported that the entrance to the parliament building was being blocked, according to Reuters.
“Tanks, armored personnel carriers, and soldiers with guns and knives will rule the country,” opposition leader Lee Jae-myung said in a livestream online. “The economy of the Republic of Korea will collapse irretrievably. My fellow citizens, please come to the National Assembly.”
SOUTH KOREA DEMANDS WITHDRAWAL OF NORTH KOREAN TROOPS ALLEGEDLY HELPING RUSSIA FIGHT UKRAINE
The liberal Democratic Party has controlled South Korea’s single-chamber National Assembly since Yoon, a former top prosecutor, took office in 2022. Those in the opposition have repeatedly thwarted Yoon’s agenda and the president has had low approval ratings.
In his address, Yoon cited actions by the Democratic Party as justification for martial law, including an effort this week to impeach some of the country’s top prosecutors and the national assembly’s rejection of Yoon’s proposed budget.
WHY DID YOON’S PARTY LOSE IN SOUTH KOREA’S ELECTIONS AND WHAT TROUBLES DOES HE FACE NOW?
Democratic lawmakers had moved to slash more than 4 trillion won from the Yoon administration’s budget proposal. Yoon said the budget cuts would undermine the essential functioning of government administration.
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Yoon was handed a blistering political defeat earlier this year when South Korean voters expanded the Democratic Party’s majority in the assembly. One South Korean political analyst told the Associated Press the election results rendered Yoon “a dead duck,” with even control over his own party at risk following the losses.
The South Korean president has also been beset by scandal involving his wife, first lady Kim Keon Hee. She was allegedly involved in a stock price manipulation scheme and the release of spy camera footage showed her accepting a luxury bag from a Korean American pastor, the AP reported.
Biden facing mounting pressure as critics say Hunter’s pardon sets troubling precedent
President Biden faced mounting criticism Monday for the “sweeping” pardon of his son, Hunter Biden, with critics citing fears that it could be used by Trump to further his views of a “politicized” Justice Department and erode the role of the judiciary as an important check on executive power.
In a statement announcing the pardon, Biden took aim at what he described as a politically motivated investigation.
“No reasonable person who looks at the facts of Hunter’s cases can reach any other conclusion than Hunter was singled out only because he is my son — and that is wrong,” the president wrote.
That Biden used his final weeks as a lame duck president to protect his only living son from prosecution was met with less shock among legal analysts than was the sheer breadth of the pardon itself, which spans a nearly 11-year period beginning in January 2014, the year Hunter was appointed to the board of Ukrainian energy company Burisma, and ending on Sunday, the day that the White House announced the pardon.
While that time frame includes both the federal firearm and tax evasion convictions that Hunter was convicted of this year, experts say the scope of the pardon could go much further by extending to any actions committed for more than a decade, virtually ensuring the president’s son cannot be held accountable for any activity conducted during that period.
In terms of both length and scope, the Hunter Biden pardon “could really could not be more sweeping, to be honest with you,” Trey Gowdy, a former federal prosecutor and member of Congress, told Fox News Digital in an interview.
The time frame included in the pardon covers “almost all federal statutes of limitations,” Gowdy said. “For the vast majority of federal crimes, this covers this time period and means that charges cannot be brought.”
SPECIAL COUNSEL, IRS WHISTLEBLOWERS SAY DON’T BUY BIDEN ‘SPIN’ ABOUT HUNTER BIDEN LEGAL SAGA
Critics note that Biden broke his own repeated declarations that he would not pardon Hunter earlier this year. First, after he was found guilty in June on three felony firearm charges, and then in September after he pleaded guilty to separate federal charges of tax evasion.
“I am not going to do anything,” Biden said this summer. “I will abide by the jury’s decision.”
This week, Biden did the opposite.
White House officials insist that Biden still backs his contention this summer that “no one is above the law.”
“As he said in his statement, he has deep respect for our justice system,” a spokesperson told Fox News Digital. “And as a wide range of legal experts have pointed out, this pardon is indisputably within his authority and warranted by the facts of the case.”
“The pardon power was written in absolute terms, and a president can even, in my view, pardon himself,” George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley wrote in an op-ed for Fox News Digital.
“However, what is constitutional is not necessarily ethical or right,” Turley said, adding that in his view, Biden’s decision to pardon Hunter is “one of the most disgraceful pardons even in the checkered history of presidential pardons.”
“His portrayal of his son as a victim stands in sharp contrast to the sense of immunity and power conveyed by Hunter in his dealings,” Turley said.
BIDEN PARDONS SON HUNTER BIDEN AHEAD OF EXIT FROM OVAL OFFICE
Some lawmakers and legal analysts separately cited fears that the pardon could further erode public trust in the Justice Department, giving more credence to Trump’s frequent complaints that the Department of Justice is a political apparatus capable of being “weaponized” rather than a department that strives to act independently and largely without political influence.
In granting the pardon, Biden is “essentially endorsing Trump’s long-held opinion that the Department of Justice is politicized and isn’t acting impartially,” longtime GOP strategist and communicator Ryan Williams told Fox News in an interview.
Gowdy said Biden’s pardon reflects his longtime view that the Justice Department has been too politicized in recent years and needs to be reformed, citing a swirl of investigations during recent administrations, including probes that were led by House committees, and which looked into the actions of both Biden and Trump family members.
“When I was a prosecutor, politics had nothing to do with the job,” Gowdy said. “I didn’t know the politics of a single one of my co-workers.” The focus, he said, should be shifted back not to “targeting people, but targeting fact patterns.”
“Prosecuting your political enemies, involving family members, all of this stuff is new, and all of it’s really dangerous.”
Special Counsel David Weiss, who brought both cases against Hunter Biden, has defended his actions against claims that the prosecutions were politically motivated, noting in a court filing Monday that Hunter Biden’s team had filed “eight motions to dismiss the indictment, making every conceivable argument for why it should be dismissed, all of which were determined to be meritless.”
Weiss added, “There was none and never has been any evidence of vindictive or selective prosecution in this case.”
PRESIDENT BIDEN’S PARDON OF SON HUNTER A POLITICAL GIFT FOR TRUMP GOING FORWARD
Still, some have objected to the intense investigation surrounding Hunter Biden, noting that if not for his father’s presidency, he likely would not have faced charges in the gun case.
Gowdy, a former Republican House member, said he ultimately agreed with that contention.
“I prosecuted gun cases for six years,” Gowdy told Fox News Digital. “I would not have taken this case.”
“There’s a lot of really serious federal violent crime out there, and I would not have wasted the resources on the gun part of this,” Gowdy explained.
But the former South Carolina lawmaker also said that doesn’t mean he would have let Biden’s son off the hook.
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“I definitely would have gone forward on the taxes and allegations of corruption,” Gowdy said of the other allegations against Biden.
Ultimately, the Justice Department and FBI need to be “significantly reformed,” Gowdy said.
“They need to get out of the business of politics.”
Republicans stunned at blue city dropping millions on migrants instead of Americans
Colorado Republicans are sounding off on “out-of-touch” Democrats after Denver Mayor Mike Johnston vowed to station police to block ICE agents from carrying out deportations and a report showed that the city has spent over $356 million in taxpayer dollars on services for migrants.
The sum, which amounts to $7,900 per foreign national in the city and equates to 8% of the city’s total 2025 budget, was revealed by an updated analysis last week by the Common Sense Institute.
Rose Pugliese, leader of the Republican caucus in the Colorado State Assembly, told Fox News Digital that the massive influx of migrants in the state has resulted in heavier burdens on both local and state resources.
She said the Democrat-controlled legislature has spent an estimated $563 million on illegal immigrants since 2021, with $352 million of that on education spending alone.
“Without question, illegal immigration in Colorado has cost the state a significant amount of money that could have been spent supporting our constituents, roads, public safety, and other state services,” she said.
CNN HOST VISIBLY STUNNED BY INCOMING BORDER CZAR SAYING HE’LL ‘JAIL’ DENVER MAYOR FOR REFUSING DEPORTATIONS
Pugliese called Mayor Johnston “out of touch on this issue,” saying that the results of the 2024 election “mandated illegal immigration as a top concern throughout America.”
“Removing and deporting illegal immigrants who have committed crimes against our citizens is a reasonable position,” she said. “Unfortunately, there is no public estimate by the state regarding illegal immigrants in Colorado. This is due to policy decisions by the majority in the state legislature over the last ten years.”
“Preventing an accurate accounting only aggravates the issue for local and state budgets when planning,” she continued, adding that “if you don’t know the numbers, you can never be right.”
DENVER MIGRANT ADVOCATES SAY SIX MONTHS OF FREE RENT, FOOD NOT ENOUGH: ‘A SLAP IN THE FACE’ AND ‘OFFENSIVE’
Meanwhile, Roger Hudson, a city councilman for Castle Pines, a small town just south of Denver, told Fox News Digital that “there’s nothing kind, there’s nothing hopeful” about what Democrats have done to the city.
According to Hudson, Denver has accepted over 45,000 migrants since 2022. He said that these migrants have taken up much of the funding meant for important services in the city, including public schools and parks.
“Now they’re not mowing the grass in parks, the fountains are down, rec centers are closed, the homeless problem is completely out of control,” he said. “What they’ve done to Denver is horrific.”
He also called out Democrats for shipping migrants to communities around the city, such as Aurora, where members of the Venezuelan gang “Tren de Aragua” terrorized an entire apartment building.
VENEZUELAN MIGRANT GANG TREN DE ARAGUA NOW OPERATING IN 16 STATES: REPORT
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“These migrants are preying on each other, they are abusing women, elderly women, elderly individuals, people who are disabled, they are robbing, they are causing a drug problem that wasn’t here before in our state.”
“What the Democrats and what our liberals and progressives have done in our state is obscene, and it shows, and our residents are tired of it,” he went on. “In the past, it had been filled with hope. I mean, you have the Rocky Mountains in the background where there’s nothing but hope and aspiration. Now, when you look down, and you look at the streets, they are filled with people begging not for food, but for their next fix or for a bottle of alcohol, and their souls are crushed.”
A representative for the Denver City Council declined to comment on the $356 million spent on migrant services. Instead, the representative told Fox News Digital: “The Denver City Council is the legislative branch of the city government and isn’t involved in the day to day operations of these services.”
CNN host slams President Biden for ‘lying’ about pardon for Hunter
CNN host Jake Tapper argued that President Biden’s choice to pardon his son after he and his surrogates denied he would do so is an indictment of his administration.
During the opening segment of his show on Monday, Tapper juxtaposed Biden and his surrogates’ denials that he would pardon Hunter Biden with NBC’s reporting that the president had been discussing a pardon for his son with his aides since June.
“President Biden lying about this, of course, makes others in his administration and allies either credulous or complicit, including White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, who‘s been saying this for months to the American people,” he said, before showing Jean-Pierre denying plans to pardon Hunter multiple times.
HUNTER BIDEN SAYS HIS MISTAKES WERE ‘EXPLOITED’ FOR POLITICAL SPORT, SAYS HE WON’T TAKE PARDON FOR GRANTED
“There was, of course, a political benefit to President Biden and his allies telling this lie,” Tapper said. “In June, when Hunter Biden was found guilty on three felony gun charges, his father, the president, was still running for re-election against former President Donald Trump and Democrats and progressives saw this as an opportunity to contrast the current and former president.”
President Biden issued a sweeping pardon for Hunter Biden on Sunday after he had repeatedly said he would not do so. The first son had been convicted in two separate federal cases earlier this year. He pled guilty to federal tax charges in September, and was convicted of three felony gun charges in June after lying on a mandatory gun purchase form by saying he was not illegally using or addicted to drugs.
The president argued in a statement that Hunter was “singled out only because he is my son” and that there was an effort “trying to break Hunter” in order to “break me.”
DEM REP CONFRONTED WITH CLIP OF HIMSELF CL:AIMING BIDEN WOULDN’T PARDON HUNTER: ‘WHAT DOES THAT FEEL LIKE?’
One Biden ally Tapper highlighted was MSNBC legal analyst Andrew Weissman, who had previously praised Biden as truly “living the rule of law, he is living it in the most personal way, he is not pardoning his son, which he could do. He is not doing it because he is living what it means to have a rule of law in this country.”
“Living the rule of law,” Tapper said with apparent irony, “Beyond the pardon and beyond the lie about the pardon, President Biden is doing what he claimed he would not do. He is undermining his own Justice Department.” Tapper went on to quote Biden’s grievances with Hunter’s treatment by the legal system.
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Tapper noted that special counsel David Weiss has since called out the president, saying, “There was none and never has been any evidence of vindictive or selective prosecution in this case.”
General who went viral in Biden’s botched Afghanistan withdrawal gets new promotion
Lt. Gen. Christopher Donahue – who was seen in the viral, night vision photo showing the final American soldier out of Kabul, Afghanistan – was quietly confirmed by the Senate on Monday to lead U.S. Army forces in Europe and Africa.
Donahue, who headed the 82nd Airborne Division during the 2021 withdrawal from Afghanistan, was tapped by President Biden for the promotion to four-star general, but the confirmation was left out of a series of a hundred other military promotions green-lighted by the Senate before Thanksgiving recess. The delay was caused by one senator holding Donahue’s confirmation, according to Politico.
Several outlets reported that Sen. Markwayne Mullin, R-Okla., was responsible for the procedural hold.
MAJ. GEN. CHRIS DONAHUE: WHO IS THE LAST AMERICAN SOLDIER TO HAVE LEFT AFGHANISTAN?
Mullin has been a vocal critic of the Biden-Harris administration’s handling of the botched withdrawal mired by the killing of 13 U.S. service members and roughly 170 Afghan civilians during a suicide bombing at Hamid Karzai International Airport’s Abbey Gate. Donahue was responsible for the 82nd Airborne as it was tasked with securing the airfield at the Kabul airport during evacuations before the country fell to the Taliban.
The senator called out Donahue, as well as other officials, in an Aug. 24, 2024, statement on the three-year anniversary of the suicide bombing attack.
“Three years later, not one person has been held accountable for the disaster–not Gen. Milley, Gen. McKenzie, Gen. Donahue, U.S. Ambassador to Tajikistan John Pommersheim, or anyone at the State Department,” Mullin said at the time. “To this day, no one has testified before Congress as to who gave this directive. No one has been held accountable for the 13 brave American heroes who died at Abbey Gate, or the countless Americans who lost their lives trying to escape Kabul.”
President-elect Trump’s former defense secretary turned Trump critic, Mark Esper, had defended Donahue’s nomination, and urged last month for the hold to be lifted.
“Responsibility for the disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021 rests with the White House, not the Defense Dept, and certainly not with the uniformed leaders who faithfully executed Pres Biden’s misbegotten decisions,” Esper wrote on X.
ARMY UNIT POSTS PHOTO OF LAST US SOLDIER TO LEAVE AFGHANISTAN
Trump had promised on the campaign trail to fire senior officers involved in the withdrawal, though not Donahue specifically.
One U.S. official told NBC News last month that the Trump transition team was compiling a list of senior current and former U.S. military officers to be potentially court-martialed over the pullout.
The Senate ultimately confirmed Donahue’s promotion to be the commander of US Army Europe-Africa by unanimous consent on Monday, as the hold was dropped. Mullin had not publicly commented about the hold.
Donahue has headed the 18th Airborne Corps at Fort Liberty, North Carolina, since 2022.
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He has also been leader of the Special Operations Joint Task Force Afghanistan and served as the Joint Chiefs of Staff’s deputy director for special operations and counterterrorism.
Jets fans groan as Trump announces his pick for US ambassador to UK
President-elect Donald Trump’s decision to name billionaire investment banker Warren A. Stephens as the U.S. ambassador to the United Kingdom burst the bubble of New York Jets fans on Monday.
Trump made the announcement in a post on Truth Social. The Senate will be required to confirm the selection.
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“Warren has always dreamed of serving the United States full time. I am thrilled that he will now have that opportunity as the top Diplomat, representing the U.S.A. to one of America’s most cherished and beloved Allies,” Trump wrote in the post.
Jets fans had hoped Trump would tap team owner Woody Johnson as the ambassador to the U.K. as he did in his first term from 2017 to 2021. Christopher Johnson, Woody’s brother, took over operations for the team and made personnel decisions.
BRONCOS OUTLAST JAMEIS WINSTON’S 497 PASSING YARDS TO BEAT BROWNS IN PRIMETIME
The Jets’ best record was 7-9 in 2019. Since 2016, the team has only won seven games in a season. They won 10 games in 2015 and have not made the playoffs since 2010.
New York fans, fed up with the way the season has gone, made their opinions known as Trump’s decision came down. However, Johnson could always be appointed to another position.
The Jets are 3-9 this season after all the hype and hope for a playoff run with Aaron Rodgers back at full health. Instead, the team fired Robert Saleh and Joe Douglas in the middle of the season, and the acquisition of Davante Adams has yet to bear fruit.
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New York is sitting in third place in the AFC East with a few more weeks left in the season.
Meghan Trainor’s smile makeover is latest celebrity plastic surgery disaster
In Hollywood, stars often place a high importance on looking young and beautiful.
Many celebrities undergo various procedures, from invasive plastic surgery to injectables that can be done in a doctor’s office. Often, there are no complications or regrets involved.
However, some celebrities like Meghan Trainor, Christina Applegate, and Ariana Grande have been open about getting some work done that they regret or that did not turn out the way they expected.
Here’s a look at some Hollywood plastic surgery disasters.
SOFIA VERGARA WANTS ‘EVERY PLASTIC SURGERY THAT I CAN DO’
Meghan Trainor
Trainor revealed in a recent episode of her podcast that she “got too much Botox” – so much that she has lost the ability to smile.
“Someone convinced me with my little lips that if you did a lip flip, you put filler right above your upper lip, that you could have a beautiful flip on your upper lip. And I could have one for the first time in my whole 30 years of living — it was not true,” she said on the “Workin’ On It with Meghan Trainor & Ryan Trainor” podcast.
“I cannot smile anymore,” she complained, adding, “Everywhere I go, I cannot smile. My face hurts to smile, to even try.”
When sharing what lesson she learned from her experience, Trainor said, “It taught me my smile does light up a room, and when it’s not there, it’s a dim light. I feel like I’m not happy because I can’t smile.”
MEGHAN TRAINOR ‘CANNOT SMILE ANYMORE’ FROM ‘TOO MUCH BOTOX’
Still, she has plans for plastic surgery; she wants to have her breasts done.
After two pregnancies, she said that she currently has “saggy sacks as boobs.” The “All About That Bass” singer said that she wants to get “just a little lift,” and “maybe a little implant just so they’re like, ‘We are boobs,’ ‘cause right now, they are not.”
Christina Applegate
In July, Applegate shared her plastic surgery story on her “MeSsy” podcast, revealing that when she was younger, she underwent a procedure to have the bags under her eyes removed.
She said she was 27 at the time, and she recalled a producer on a show she was working on told her, “‘Hey we’re having trouble lighting under your eyes. The bags under your eyes are so big.'”
She added, “He goes, ‘I suggest you get them removed.'”
Applegate explained that the eye bags are “hereditary,” joking that her father has “Louis Vuitton luggage under his eyes,” but noted that she did feel “shame” at the producer’s suggestion and did not feel like she could push back.
SELENA GOMEZ HITS BACK AT PLASTIC SURGERY RUMORS: ‘LEAVE ME ALONE’
“These seeds they plant into your head … Our shame,” she said.
“And you know what I did? At 27 years old, I had the only plastic surgery I’ve ever had was to remove the bags under my eyes.”
Ariana Grande
“Wicked” stars Grande and Cynthia Erivo were October’s Vanity Fair cover stars, and as part of their interview, they each underwent a lie detector test.
In Grande’s portion of the test, she was asked about plastic surgery. She said that she has never had a nose job, a breast augmentation or a facelift, although she did admit to having an interest in having a face-lift in the future. She also denied having had an eye lift, something she is accused of often.
MELISSA GILBERT ADMITS COSMETIC PROCEDURES LEFT HER LOOKING LIKE ‘SPAWN OF SATAN’
Speaking about what she has had done, she said, “I’ve had fillers in various places and Botox, but I stopped like four years ago, and that is the extent.”
In a Vogue interview last year, Grande got emotional talking about her former use of fillers.
“I’ve had a ton of lip filler over the years, Botox…I stopped in 2018 because I just felt so…too much,” she said then, tearing up. “I just felt like hiding. For a long time, beauty was about hiding for me, and now I feel like maybe it’s not.”
She went on, “I want to see my well-earned cry lines and smile lines; I hope my smile lines get deeper and deeper, and I laugh more and more.”
Grande said she would consider a face-lift in the future, but it seems that for now, she prefers aging naturally.
Valerie Bertinelli
Last summer, a social media user made a rude comment about Valerie Bertinelli’s appearance, telling the actress and former Food Network star, “The Botox looks great.”
PARIS HILTON CALLED OUT BY FANS AFTER INSISTING SHE’S NEVER HAD PLASTIC SURGERY, BOTOX OR FILLERS
“I know you didn’t mean that as a compliment, but let’s talk about it, shall we?” she said in a video she made in response. “I have tried Botox…and I hated it.”
She shared a picture of herself from six years ago, when she had the procedure done, and explained, “As you can see from that picture, it doesn’t look like me. It sort of like changed the shape of my eyebrows.”
Bertinelli continued, “And what I thought it was going to do was help me with my genetically puffy eyes. They’ve always annoyed me. I’ve always wanted those deep-set eyes. Don’t have ’em. Never going to get ’em. So, just live with it.”
She said that she made the video to talk about the comment because the person who made it was another woman. She asked her, “What made you go out of your way to try to shame me? … We’re women. We have to stick together, OK? Don’t shame somebody if they want to do something, anything, to make themselves feel better as they go out into this insane, flippin’ crazy world, OK?”
Kylie Jenner
With Kim Kardashian as an older sister, Kylie Jenner has been in the spotlight from a very young age. As she aged, she was accused of having a number of plastic surgery procedures. She has said that while she has had lip fillers, she has never had surgery done on her face – but just before she became pregnant with her first child, daughter Stormi, she had a breast augmentation.
“I wish I never got them done to begin with,” Jenner declared on a 2023 episode of “Keeping Up with the Kardashians.” She also said that she would “recommend anyone thinking about it to wait after children.”
KRISTIN DAVIS SAYS SHE HAS ‘SHED TEARS’ AFTER BEING ‘RIDICULED RELENTLESSLY’ FOR USING FILLERS
“I don’t want my daughter to do the things I did,” she said of Stormi, who she had in 2018 at 20, saying she would be “heartbroken” if she followed in her footsteps in that way.
“I wish I never touched anything to begin with,” she admitted.
In the August issue of British Vogue, Jenner spoke further about her decision to have plastic surgery at such a young age.
“I just have to be gentle with myself because although I carried so much responsibility in the moment, I was just trying to do what was best for me. I was just trying my best as a human. I have to realize: ‘It’s OK, Kylie,’” she said. “Looking back, I’m like, ‘God, I was 17, 18 [years old].’”
Amber Tamblyn
In October, actress Amber Tamblyn wrote in a piece for The New York Times that when she was just 12 years old, she underwent surgery to have her ears pinned back.
Tamblyn, who began working as a child and is known for her roles in “The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants” movies and “Joan of Arcadia,” explained, “As a little girl I had ears that stuck out like big butterfly wings. Some kids at my school in Los Angeles would make fun of them, and I’d often stare at myself in the mirror wishing my ears would lay flat against my head.”
“But it wasn’t until landing my first major role on a TV show at age 12 that I opted to undergo ear-pinning surgery, a decision I’ve never made public until now.”
She wrote that at the time, she considered herself to be a “fiery young feminist who raged against the patriarchy,” but “in changing my own body, I was also a hypocrite who gave in to it — because how could anyone not?”
KIM KARDASHIAN REVEALS BOTOX MAY HANDICAP ACTING CAREER, FEARS SHE’LL ONLY ‘LOOK GOOD’ FOR 10 MORE YEARS
In her eyes, “Going under the knife felt like choosing a weapon I could wield in self-defense against my own disposability. It showed the world I understood the assignment of assimilation — that I could do whatever it took to fit in, never stand out, the way my ears once did.”
Tamblyn confessed that she does not know how she would feel today if she had not gotten the surgery but said that she thinks about it “often.”
“I don’t apologize for what I’ve done, or for what I haven’t,” she wrote. “My relationship to my body has changed, healed even, as I’ve become more protective, compassionate and honest.”
Sharon Osbourne
Three years ago, Sharon Osbourne had a face-lift that did not turn out as planned.
“That was the worst thing that I ever did,” she recalled in an interview with The Times last year. “I looked like Cyclops. I had one eye here and one eye there and my mouth was all skewwhiff, and then I had to wait for that to heal before I could go back and have it corrected.”
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When asked why she got the surgery, she bluntly answered, “Vanity. Ego. ‘Oh, you look great for your age.’ But I know what I really look like. When I look in the mirror, I see the real me.”
“I’ve been messed up many times,” Osbourne said. “This last one was a kind of fix-it job from the guy that did it before. I kind of looked liked Quasimodo.”
In an April 2023 interview with The Sun, she said that she won’t have another face-lift.
“That one put me off and it frightens me,” she shared. “I really f—ing pushed it with the last face-lift, and I am now like, no more. Time is against me, I cannot have another face-lift.”
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Courtneney Cox
For Courteney Cox, she has one big regret when it comes to beauty: fillers.
The “Friends” actress admitted on the “Gloss Angeles” podcast last year that she “can’t believe” she thought she “looked OK” when she was getting fillers – something she said she no longer does.
“Thinking I was getting older when I was really young, that’s just a bummer, a waste of time; it’s a domino effect,” she explained. “It’s like you don’t realize that you look a little off. So, then you keep doing more ’cause you look normal to yourself.”
Cox said, “You look in the mirror and go, ‘Oh, that looks good,’ you think. And you don’t realize what it looks like to the outside person and just doing too many fillers and having to have them removed, which, thank God, they are removable. I think I messed up a lot, and now, luckily, I can… I was able to reverse most of that. Now, I’m actually just older.”
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Daniel Penny prosecutors make controversial final pitch to jurors over defense objection
NEW YORK CITY — Manhattan prosecutors again accused Daniel Penny of failing to recognize the “humanity” of Jordan Neely during their closing arguments Monday, weeks after being accused of unfairly hinting at racial undertones in a case that does not involve hate crime charges.
“He didn’t recognize that Jordan Neely was a person,” Manhattan prosecutor Dafna Yoran told the jury. “He saw him as a person that needed to be eliminated.”
She claimed that Penny “was so reckless with Neely’s life because he didn’t seem to recognize his humanity.” She replayed video of Penny’s police interrogation, where he referred to Neely as a “crackhead” and told detectives, “You know these guys, they’re pushing people in front of trains and stuff.”
“We’ve all spoken dismissively about people like Jordan Neely,” she said. “Maybe we, too, have lumped them all together like this, but the context is very telling here. When the defendant is talking like this about Mr. Neely, he knows he very likely had killed him. Can you imagine a reasonable person speaking like this about a human being that he or she had just killed?”
DANIEL PENNY RETURNS TO COURT FOR CLOSING ARGUMENTS IN SUBWAY CHOKEHOLD TRIAL
Penny was not told about Neely’s death when he voluntarily agreed to speak with NYPD detectives.
Yoran used similar language earlier in the trial during her opening statement, and her team also allowed witnesses to describe Penny as “the White man” and a “murderer,” prompting Penny’s defense lawyers to object and ask the court to declare a mistrial over the language.
Saying Penny didn’t see the humanity in Neely unfairly invoked race, according to his defense, and combined with the other language, it would make it impossible to get a fair trial. The judge denied that earlier motion to declare a mistrial.
During the defense’s closing arguments Monday, which came before Yoran’s remarks, Penny’s defense attorney, Steven Raiser, argued that the 26-year-old architecture student stepped in after the city of New York failed passengers on the subway car when Neely, a 30-year-old homeless man high on drugs and suffering from schizophrenia, barged in and started threatening riders.
DANIEL PENNY DEFENSE CALLS FORENSIC PATHOLOGIST TO WITNESS STAND: ‘THE CHOKEHOLD DID NOT CAUSE THE DEATH’
“The government wasn’t there. The police weren’t there. Danny was,” Raiser told the jury. “And when he needed help no one was there. The government has the nerve to blame Danny because police weren’t there? Blame Danny for holding on when police weren’t there?”
It took seven minutes for police to respond to the 911 call and 20 minutes before medics arrived, he said. Neely was “on a collision course with himself,” and a “broken system” failed everyone involved, the lawyer said.
Penny is on trial facing charges of manslaughter and criminally negligent homicide.
Neely had a lengthy arrest record, a documented history of severe mental illness, a drug abuse problem and an active arrest warrant when he boarded the F train car on May 1, 2023, and started screaming death threats, trial testimony revealed over the past three weeks.
Raiser noted that Penny used “a less aggressive” restraint than what he’d been taught in the Marine Corps, arguing he intended to hold Neely down but not hurt him.
“What Danny did was not textbook,” he said. “He applied what he learned as a Marine in a less aggressive manner … because the softer side of Danny informed him to apply something less than a textbook Marine blood choke, by choosing not to squeeze Neely to unconsciousness.”
DANIEL PENNY DEFENSE CALLS FORENSIC PATHOLOGIST TO WITNESS STAND: ‘THE CHOKEHOLD DID NOT CAUSE THE DEATH’
Penny repeatedly eased up when Neely stopped struggling and only squeezed to hold him down when he started trying to break free, Raiser said.
“When you have doubt that Penny squeezed Neely to the point of a chokehold death, you need to look for another cause of death,” he said, noting how defense expert Dr. Satish Chundru testified that he believed Neely had died from a combination of his use of the synthetic drug K2, his sickle cell genetic disorder, psychosis and exertion from the struggle.
“Danny could not foresee a sickling death,” the lawyer said. “So he is not guilty.”
DANIEL PENNY DEFENSE RESTS AS FINAL WITNESS REVEALS JORDAN NEELY HAD OPEN WARRANT, DEFENDANT DOESN’T TESTIFY
Chundru’s testimony contradicted the official autopsy findings of Dr. Cynthia Harris of the New York City medical examiner’s office who blamed Neely’s death solely on the chokehold after watching video of the altercation before toxicology results had come back.
The defense also replayed bodycam video of responding officers, with one of them repeatedly saying Neely was still breathing.
Raiser painted a scene for the jury: The F train pulled into a station and the “tall and muscular” Neely stepped on board, shouting erratically, high on drugs. Neely had schizophrenia and a severe case of paranoia and psychosis, he said. The former Michael Jackson impersonator hallucinated conversations with the late rapper Tupac Shakur and thought he heard the devil’s voice. Neely stormed onto the train, threw his jacket on the floor and declared that he didn’t care if he died or wound up in prison, allegedly threatening to “kill a motherf—er.”
“Will it be me? Will it be my children?” Raiser asked. “Everyone was frozen with fear.”
He went through testimony from multiple female passengers, each of whom described fear and panic. He replayed bodycam footage from officers who spoke with them at the scene. They all had the same thing in common, he added.
“Daniel Penny is the one to protect them,” he said. “Why? Because he had something unique to him: his training. When Danny acted, he didn’t know if Jordan was armed.”
Some of those passengers braved protesters outside the courthouse to repay the favor, risking their own safety to testify at trial, he added.
He played 911 calls: early reports of a knife or gun, confusion and a delayed police response.
Penny waited until officers arrived, he said, then spoke with them willingly without a lawyer present, unaware that Neely had even died.
Yoran gave a closing on behalf of the prosecution.
“No one had to die on May 1, 2023,” she said. “Jordan Neely did enter the subway car in an extremely threatening manner … so much less physical force would have done the job … Daniel Penny easily could have restrained Neely without choking him to death. We are here today because the defendant used way too much force for way too long in way too reckless of a manner.”
Yoran argued that Penny could have let go when bystanders asked him to, replaying video of the incident repeatedly, some of it hard to hear in court.
She alleged that Penny knew Neely was “likely” dead but didn’t care when he remained at the scene and voluntarily spoke with police officers. They didn’t tell him Neely was dead, and they didn’t arrest him. He surrendered 11 days later after Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office secured a grand jury indictment against him.
If jurors don’t reach a consensus by the end of the day Tuesday, Judge Maxwell Wiley asked them to return Wednesday to continue deliberations. Since the start of the trial, the court had been in recess on Wednesdays.
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Penny faces a maximum of 15 years in prison if convicted of the top charge of manslaughter. He is also accused of criminally negligent homicide.