Entertainment
Bill Gates pledges fortune to Gates Foundation, closing in 2045

SEATTLE (AP) — Bill Gates says he will donate 99% of his remaining tech fortune to the Gates Foundation, which will now close in 2045, earlier than previously planned. Today, that would be worth an estimated $107 billion.
The pledge is among the largest philanthropic gifts ever — outpacing the historic contributions of industrialists like John D. Rockefeller and Andrew Carnegie when adjusted for inflation. Only Berkshire Hathaway investor Warren Buffett’s pledge to donate his fortune — currently estimated by Forbes at $160 billion — may be larger depending on stock market fluctuations.
Gates’ donation will be delivered over time and allow the foundation to spend an additional $200 billion over the next 20 years.
“It’s kind of thrilling to have that much to be able to put into these causes,” Gates said in an interview with the Associated Press.
His announcement Thursday signals both a promise of sustained support to those causes, particularly global health and education in the US, and an eventual end to the foundation’s immense worldwide influence. Gates says spending down his fortune will help save and improve many lives now, which will have positive ripple effects well beyond the foundation’s closure. It also makes it more likely that his intentions are honored.
“I think 20 years is the right balance between giving as much as we can to make progress on these things and giving people a lot of notice that now this money will be gone,” Gates said.
In a league of its own
The Gates Foundation has long been peerless among foundations — attracting supporters and detractors but also numerous unfounded conspiracy theories.
In addition to the $100 billion it has spent since its founding 25 years ago, it has directed scientific research, helped develop new technologies, and nurtured long-term partnerships with countries and companies.
About 41% of the foundation’s money so far has come from Warren Buffett and the rest from the fortune Gates made at Microsoft.
Started by Bill Gates and Melinda French Gates in 2000, the foundation plays a significant role in shaping global health policy and has carved out a special niche by partnering with companies to drive down the cost of medical treatments so low- and middle-income countries could afford them.
“The foundation work has been way more impactful than I expected,” Gates said, calling it his second and final career.
The foundation’s influence on global health — from the World Health Organization to research agendas — is both a measure of its success and a magnet for criticism. For years, researchers have asked why a wealthy family should have so much sway over how the world improves people’s health and responds to crises.
Gates said, like any private citizen, he can choose how to spend the money he earns and has decided to do everything he can to reduce childhood deaths.
“Is that a bad thing? It’s not an important cause? People can criticize it,” he said, but the foundation will stick to its global health work.
The Associated Press receives financial support for news coverage in Africa from the Gates Foundation and for news coverage of women in the workforce and statehouses from Melinda French Gates’ organization, Pivotal Ventures.
Major ambitions for the remaining 20 years
The foundation’s most prized metric is the drop in childhood deaths from preventable causes by almost half between 2000 and 2020, according to United Nations figures. The foundation’s CEO Mark Suzman is careful to say they do not take credit for this accomplishment. But he believes they had a “catalytic role” — for example, in helping deliver vaccines to children through Gavi, the vaccine alliance they helped create.
The foundation still has numerous goals — eradicating polio, controlling other deadly diseases, like malaria, and reducing malnutrition, which makes children more vulnerable to other illnesses.
Gates hopes that by spending to address these issues now, wealthy donors will be free to tackle other problems later.
The Gates Foundation had planned to wind down two decades after Gates’ death, meaning today’s announcement significantly moves up that timetable. Gates plans to stay engaged, though at 69, he acknowledged he may not have a say.
In its remaining two decades, the foundation will maintain a budget of around $9 billion a year, which represents a leveling off from its almost annual growth since 2006, when Buffett first started donating.
Suzman expects the foundation will narrow its focus to top priorities.
“Having that time horizon and the resources just puts an even greater burden on us to say, ‘Are you actually putting your resources, your thumb down, on what are going to be the biggest, most successful bets rather than scattering it too thinly?’” Suzman said, which he acknowledged was creating uncertainty even within the foundation about what programs would continue.
Gates is the only remaining founder
Major changes preceded the foundation’s 25th year.
In 2021, Melinda French Gates and Bill Gates divorced, and Buffett resigned as the foundation’s trustee. They recruited a new board of trustees to help govern the foundation, and in 2024, French Gates left to continue work at her own organization.
French Gates said she decided to step down partly to focus on countering the rollback of women’s rights in the U.S. At the ELLE Women of Impact event in New York in April, she said she wanted to leave the foundation at a high point.
“I so trusted Mark Suzman, the current CEO,” she said. “We had a board in place that I helped put in place, and I knew their values.”
Even as the foundation’s governance stabilizes, the road ahead looks difficult. Enduring conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza, global economic turmoil and cuts to foreign aid forecast fewer resources coming to global health and development.
“The greatest uncertainty for us is the generosity that will go into global health,” Gates said. “Will it continue to go down like it has the last few years or can we get it back to where it should be?”
Even facing these obstacles, Gates and the foundation speak, as they often do, with optimism, pointing to innovations they’ve funded or ways they’ve helped reduce the cost of care.
“It’s incredible to come up with these low-cost things and tragic if we can’t get them out to everyone who needs them,” Gates said. “So it’s going to require renewing that commitment of those who are well off to help those who are in the greatest need.”
Entertainment
Taylor Swift-approved singer scores invite to her wedding celebration with Travis Kelce: report

Sombr will remember the night.
The singer has scored an invite to pal Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce’s wedding celebration.
According to TMZ, sources shared that the artist is set to attend the couple’s July 3 party at New York City’s Madison Square Garden.
A rep for Sombr didn’t immediately respond to Page Six’s request for comment.
The artists have become close friends in recent months, even hanging out together after a New York Knicks game in The Big Apple.
Sombr also performed during Swift’s induction into the Songwriters Hall of Fame earlier this month.
At the ceremony, Sombr and Kelce shared a hug and chatted for a bit, per a TikTok video.
Karlie Kloss, Zoë Kravitz, Ed Sheeran, Suki Waterhouse, the Haim sisters, Gigi Hadid and Selena Gomez are among other A-listers who have reportedly received invites.
TMZ previously reported that Swift was calling friends to personally invite them to her special day and that she had an a ironclad non-disclosure agreement in place.
The outlet noted that guests who received a wedding invitation were required to sign an NDA before receiving anymore details about the event.
Sources added that when a guest confirmed their attendance, they were then sent the link to sign.
Guests are prohibited from sharing details about the wedding and will be penalized if violations occur.
Rumors originally swirled the Swift and Kelce, both 36, would tie the knot in Rhode Island, before it was revealed that the couple is saying “I do” at MSG.
As the duo’s pre-wedding festivities amp up, Page Six revealed that Kelce partied with close friends at Bird Streets Club on Friday night.
Meanwhile, on Wednesday, a small group of women wearing black, with one dressed in white, were spotted on one of the rooftop balconies of Swift’s Rhode Island mansion.
One of the songwriter’s best friends Abigail Anderson Berard was later seen on the property carrying her toddler.
The Kansas City Chiefs player proposed to the Grammy winner after two years of dating in August 2025.
Swift and Kelce confirmed the news on Instagram at the time, writing alongside proposal shots, “Your English teacher and your gym teacher are getting married.”
The tight end popped the question in the backyard of his Lee’s Summit, Missouri, mansion.
“He got her out there, they were about to go out to dinner, and he said, ‘Let’s go out and have a glass of wine,’ … They got out there, and that’s when he asked her, and it was beautiful,” Kelce’s dad, Ed, told ABC News 5 Cleveland at the time.
Ed gushed, “They started FaceTiming me and their mother [Donna Kelce] and her folks [mom Andrea Swift and dad Scott Swift] to make sure everybody knew. So, to see them together is great.”
Entertainment
Daveigh Chase’s mom breaks silence on actress’ death

Daveigh Chase’s mother, Cathy Chase, revealed her stunned reaction to her daughter’s death in an emotional new interview.
“I was devastated. It felt like something inside of me squeezing all of the air out of me, and at the same time, It felt like I was exploding outwardly,” she told the Daily Mail in comments published on Friday.
She told the outlet that after hearing about her daughter’s death on Tuesday at age 35, she was in disbelief.
“I let out this guttural scream and I just was running,” she recalled. “And these weird sounds were coming out of me, these kind of, like, primeval sounds.”
“And I went out into the backyard, and I was screaming, “No, no, no, no!” I am in so much pain but I hope her soul heard me,” she said.
Cathy told the outlet that on Tuesday evening — the day before news of the “Lilo & Stitch” star’s death emerged — she’d been searching online forums for clues of where her “sunshine” daughter might be, something she’s done on a nightly basis.
“The Ring” actress and her mother had not seen each other since 2019. Cathy, who lives in Los Angeles, told the outlet that she’d frequently check the LA County Medical Examiner’s system for her daughter’s name, as well.
“I would look at their list of unidentified bodies,” Cathy divulged. “It was very difficult, but you do everything you can as a mother.”
When TMZ broke the news that the “Spirited Away” voice actress — who had reportedly been living near Los Angeles’ infamous Skid Row — had died after battling meningitis and a blood infection leading to sepsis, Cathy confessed she thought it was “fake news.”
“But then all of a sudden, it’s all of these different legitimate sites had her name and I realized that it wasn’t fake,” she shared.
The grieving mother identified her daughter’s body on Thursday at a Los Angeles hospital, and prayed with a chaplain while “touching the glass” because it was “as close as we could get.”
“It was a beautiful experience, and, and I feel very blessed, too, have been able to share that with my daughter.”
Cathy told the outlet that her daughter’s problems began in 2016, when she was injured in a motorcycle accident and began taking painkillers.
After that, Cathy said the “Big Love” actress was “seeking drugs and was partying with the wrong people,” and said despite rumors, she “never kicked [her] daughter out.”
“She wanted freedom and these people got her hooked on some drugs,” Cathy claimed. “That was the beginning.”
Cathy said she’d last seen her daughter during a jail visit after she faced two counts of alleged burglary in 2019, describing Daveigh as “completely gone, like out of her mind.”
“I honestly thought there was something wrong with her,” she recalled. “My daughter was never diagnosed with mental health other than PTSD. But the drugs took hold of her.”
Cathy claimed she had an agreement to pick up Daveigh when she was released from jail, but her daughter “never waited. She went back to the streets and I couldn’t find her,” she said.
The bereaved mom said it “upsets”. her that “people are saying I must’ve been a bad mother,” but insisted she “never gave up” on the “Donnie Darko” actress.
“As a mother, you don’t give up on your child. I was hoping she would still come home,” she said.
Just prior to her death — which was first reported by TMZ — Roy Hernandez, a man claiming to be Daveigh’s boyfriend, set up a fundraiser for the actress.
But the actress’s former manager, John Ryan, cast doubt on the fundraiser’s legitimacy, telling The Post on Wednesday that “apparently, a man claiming to be her ‘boyfriend’ that none of us friends or her family has heard of has set up a GoFundMe on ‘her and her families behalf’ that he set her up as the organizer.”
He added, “I can confirm Daveigh has a trust account set up at SAG to cover all costs.” Hernandez, meanwhile, insisted to TMZ that anything gained from his fundraiser would go toward a “proper memorial” for Daveigh.
Ryan — who also said he’d attempted to locate the troubled actress prior to her hospitalization for malnutrition and subsequent death — also claimed the actress left behind millions in residuals.
Ryan told the outlet that Daveigh was “too far gone” on illicit drugs to claim the funds, despite his attempts to get in touch.
Almost ten years prior to her death, Daveigh shared her final Instagram post — a grainy photo of her standing next to a unicorn balloon in Los Angeles in 2017.
In 2009, she shared with Interview magazine that she hoped to “do things that will change someone’s life, not something they’ll forget about tomorrow.”
Entertainment
Hit 90s movie franchise returns after 24 years, star confirms

A hit film from the 90s and noughties is about to get revived after 24 years.
Austin Powers, the comedy spy franchise that has given us three flicks, plenty of big belly laughs, and memorable characters, is finally getting a fourth installment.
The news was confirmed by star and creator Mike Myers (who plays the lead Austin Powers), who offered up the confirmation of another sequel, but with no further details.
While attending Trevor Noah’s World Cup Watch Party this week, the actor was asked the big question by a bold fan.
“Are we ever going to see an Austin Powers 4?” they quizzed.
Myers didn’t need any time at all to respond, swiftly replying: “yes” to the fan.
But that’s all the details fans are getting for now, with the actor avoiding elaborating any more – including what the new flick will be about and which A-listers might be signing up as a cameo.
“Austin Powers” is a much-loved spoof of classic spy movies centring on a highly-sexed, cryogenically frozen 1960s secret agent who wakes up in modern times.
We were first introduced to the franchise in 1997 with the release of “Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery.” Two years later, in 1999, Myers returned with “Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me,” and in 2002, we were given “Austin Powers in Goldmember.”
In the trilogy, comedy mastermind Myers famously plays multiple roles, including the velvet-suited hero and his bald, pinky-biting nemesis, Dr. Evil. He also transforms into characters Goldmember and Fat Bastard.
The hilarious franchise boasts wild A-list cameos, including appearances by Tom Cruise, Gwyneth Paltrow, Britney Spears, and Beyoncé.
Over at the box office, the three films have raked in an impressive $US 676 million combined and have snagged over 20 awards, including an Oscar nomination for best make-up as well as a Grammy win for Madonna’s title track for Beautiful Stranger – a song penned for the second film in the franchise.
The news of a fourth film comes 24 years after the third flick hit cinemas.
Since its release, Myers has been hinting that the secret agent may return.
Most recently, speaking to Entertainment Tonight at the 2024 AFI Life Achievement Award Gala, Myers dropped his biggest hint.
“I can neither confirm nor deny the existence or non-existence of such a project… It’s likely to be from Dr. Evil’s point of view,” he teased.
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