CNN

By Chris Lau, CNN

(CNN) — Beyoncé has joined the ranks of billionaires, according to Forbes, becoming the fifth musician to be crowned the elite status.

The Grammy Award-winning superstar now stands alongside Taylor Swift, Bruce Springsteen, Rihanna and her husband Jay-Z, according to a report published by the outlet Monday.

The 44 –year-old’s financial ascent follows a landmark year in her career. . Beyoncé took home the industry’s top trophy, winning Album of the Year at the 2025 Grammy for her country album “Cowboy Carter,” released the year prior. She also made history as the first Black woman to win the award for Best Country Album.

With 35 Grammy wins and 99 nominations, she is the most-awarded artist in the history of the awards, including those she won with Destiny’s Child, a chart-topping girl group that helped launch her storied career.

The “Cowboy Carter Tour” grossed more than $400 million, making it the highest-grossing country tour in history, Reuters reported, citing Live Nation.

In 2024, music charting site Billboard named her the greatest pop star of the 21st century highlighting “her full 25 years of influence, impact, evolution,” Billboard’s Andrew Unterberger wrote.

Her 2023 “Renaissance World Tour” drew massive crowds, with fans – known collectively as the BeyHive – flocking to see her perform across Europe and North America.

In Stockholm, where she kicked off the tour, fanfare drove up hotel and restaurant prices and even slowed down Sweden’s declining inflation, according to economists.

In addition to her musical achievements, Beyoncé has built a diverse business empire. She has launched successful clothing and hair care lines, and expanded into the beverage industry with a whisky brand named after her great-grandfather, SirDavis. Her entrepreneurial ventures have contributed to her growing fortune.

Beyoncé’s road to superstardom began in the early 1990s, when she appeared on “Star Search” as part of Girl’s Tyme, a six-member group. She later joined Destiny’s Child, which became one of the best-selling girl groups in the late 90s and early 2000s.

The group’s other members, Michelle Williams and Kelly Rowland, reunited with her on stage earlier this year during her “Cowboy Carter” tour in Las Vegas.

Since Destiny’s Child announced its hiatus in 2001, Beyoncé has released a series of acclaimed solo albums, starting w

The post Municipal Winemakers Announces Closure of Funk Zone Tasting Room after 15 Years appeared first on edhat.

By Piper HudspethBlackburn, CNN

(CNN) — The Kennedy Center has been hit with a string of abrupt cancelations in the wake of its board of trustees’ adding President Donald Trump’s name to the landmark performing arts institution.

Just days before they were set to perform twice on New Year’s Eve, the jazz group the Cookers backed out of the gig.

“With deep regret, we must share that we are unable to perform as planned on New Year’s Eve,” the group said in a statement, explaining that the decision came together very quickly. “We remain committed to playing music that reaches across divisions rather than deepening them.”

While the group did not provide details behind the decision, Billy Hart, the Cookers’ drummer, told The New York Times that the center’s name change “evidently” played a role in the cancelation, noting concerns about the potential for retaliation.

New York City-based dance company Doug Varone and Dancers also announced on Monday that they’re canceling their performances set for April, because “with the latest act of Donald J. Trump renaming the center after himself, we can no longer permit ourselves nor ask our audiences to step inside this once great institution.”

Kristy Lee, a folk singer-songwriter who was slated to perform on January 14, also canceled her show due to the name change. “When American history starts getting treated like something you can ban, erase, rename, or rebrand for somebody else’s ego, I can’t stand on that stage and sleep right at night,” she said last week in a social media post.

CNN has reached out to the Kennedy Center for comment. The center’s president, Richard Grenell, dismissed the cancelations as “a form of derangement syndrome” in a post to X on Monday night.

“The artists who are now canceling shows were booked by the previous far left leadership,” he said. “Their actions prove that the previous team was more concerned about booking far left political activists rather than artists willing to perform for everyone regardless of their political beliefs.”

The cancelations come after the board of trustees of the voted earlier this month to rename the center “The Donald J. Trump and The John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Art,” marking the president’s latest effort to leave his mark on the Washington, DC, arts institution. The center updated its website with the new name hours later, and and signage that added Trump’s name to the front of the building was installed the next day.

The change prompted the longtime host of the Kennedy Center’s annual Christmas Eve jazz performance to cancel last Wednesday’s concert.

“I’ve been performing at the Kennedy Center since the beginning of my career and I was saddened to see this name change,” musician Chuck Redd told CNN last week.

Grenell criticized Redd in a letter the center shared with CNN, calling the drummer and vibraphonist’s decision to cancel “classic intolerance and very costly to a non-profit Arts institution.” Grenell also faulted Redd for the financial fallout of the cancelation and said the center will seek $1 million in damages.

Prior to the renaming, Trump’s aggressive push to reshape the Kennedy Center had already prompted some artists to back away from the venue.

After Trump’s handpicked board elected him chair in February, Read more

By Hadas Gold, CNN

(CNN) — One week ago, 23-year-old Nick Shirley was relatively unknown in the public sphere. But in recent days, he has gained hundreds of thousands of followers and millions of views, amplified by Elon Musk, Vice President JD Vance and FBI Director Kash Patel.

The MAGA leaders promoted Shirley’s video of himself and a Minnesota activist investigating federally funded facilities in the state that allegedly posed as daycares without any children present. It’s part of what many on the right say is widespread government assistance fraud perpetuated by the Somali community there.

Shirley’s experience could only happen in today’s media and political environment – where seemingly anyone can go viral, helped along by social media gatekeepers like Musk. His Minnesota investigation video has garnered over 116 million views on X and 1.6 million views on YouTube – a number that most traditional newsrooms would trumpet as a major success.

Shirley and others like him present themselves as the future of journalism. They often claim the lack of traditional editing, fact checks and guardrails makes them more trustworthy. Meanwhile, the audience for mainstream media has been falling for years, and public trust in traditional journalists is at historic lows, amplified by political figures who make denigrating journalists part of their brand.

Who is Nick Shirley?

Shirley has not always presented himself as an “independent journalist” as he does now. His YouTube account’s early videos are more along the lines of “shock content” and pranks. Six years ago, as a 16 year-old, he filmed himself flying to New York with his friends without parental consent. Three years after that, he posted a video titled “I Tricked TikTokers Into Auditioning For a Justin Bieber Music Video.”

Though he found modest success with these videos, Shirley started really gaining views once he shifted focus to political issues.

In December 2021, Shirley announced he was quitting in to serve on a mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Santiago, Chile. Two years later, he resurfaced with his current video format – content that focuses exclusively on political issues. His first several videos focused on illegal immigration at the border.

Immediately, he gained significantly more views on YouTube than his prior videos. He surpassed 1 million views for the first time with “I investigated the NYC Migrant Crisis,” posted in February 2024. A video titled “I infiltrated Rio, Brazil’s most dangerous gang” is his biggest to date, with more than 4.3 million views. His YouTube channel currently has 1.21 million subscribers.

By 2025, Shirley was well-known in the MAGA universe and was invited to speak at the White House in October during a roundtable with President Donald Trump about Antifa, an anti-fascist movement with no leadership or organization.

The Minnesota video

Shirely’s video in Minnesota was posted during a typically quiet day for news: December 26.

Although the video has done relatively well on YouTube, X said his video has garnered more than 116 million views on the platform.

The explosion in viewership came after a boost from other conservative figures, including Nick Sortor, Gunther E

By Nadeen Ebrahim, CNN

(CNN) — Before the horrors of October 7, Aya Shahar never considered leaving her busy life in the bustling metropolis of Tel Aviv and moving south to an agricultural life in a kibbutz near the Gaza border.

“It wasn’t the future I planned for myself,” Shahar told CNN.

But after Hamas-led militants stormed through border fence in 2023, killing more than 1,200 in Israel and taking more than 250 people hostage, Shahar felt a need to help rebuild the kibbutzim that were ravaged and subsequently emptied in the wake of the attacks.

A kibbutz is a type of Jewish agricultural commune built on socialist principles. Much of the area along Israel’s border with Gaza is made up of kibbutzim, and the communities have played an important part in the national psyche throughout the country’s existence.

“What happened there made me understand that I have no way of living my life without connecting (it) to what is going on here,” Shahar said.

The 29-year-old is one of nearly 2,500 new residents who moved to kibbutzim close to the Gaza border since October 2023, according to data from the Tekuma Administration, the Israeli government agency responsible for the rehabilitation of communities in the area.

The new arrivals join some 62,000 returnees who have gradually come back to their homes after a lengthy displacement, during which the area was declared a closed military zone.

Some have returned home in defiance of the war, while others who never previously lived there have moved to help repopulate the empty kibbutzim.

Reviving a peace movement

Shahar joins a group of peace activists who want to revive a leftist movement that first flourished in Israel in the 1950s.

Hashomer Hatzair, “The Youth Guard” movement, was founded in eastern Europe on the eve of the First World War, based on a Zionist ideology espousing socialism and farming, with life in the kibbutz perceived as the correct way of living.

Aided by the Kibbutz Movement Rehabilitation Fund – which is dedicated to supporting and guiding communities on their recovery – some 100 members of Hashomer Hatzair have started new lives in kibbutzim just miles from the Gaza border.

Yarden Machol, spokesperson for Hashomer Hatzair, said that the movement is calling for an end to the fighting and future co-existence.

“We need to do a peace agreement. It would be the best thing ever,” Machol told CNN. “We’re really into peace.”

Israelis publicly calling for peace with Palestinians has become increasingly rare since October 7.

In the Peace Index survey from Tel Aviv University, which was published in March, only 20% of Israeli Jews said they believed in the creation of an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel, but 92% said they believe the continuation of the conflict harms their country. A total of 47% supported the establishment of Israeli civilian settlements in Gaza after the end of the war, and 71% supported Israel providing incentives that would lead to the voluntary departure of Palestinians from the strip.

Nonetheless, the majority of Israelis believe it is time to end the conflict in Gaza, according to multiple polls. A survey by the Israel Democracy Institute in September found that two years on from the Hamas attacks, 66% of Israelis said the time has come to end the war in the battered enclave.

The shrinking peace movement in Israel is seen by many Israelis as aspiring to an unachievable fantasy, with some of its proponents saying they face mockery.

Shahar says that when she says she is pro-peace, people ask her, “Do you not want to be safe?”

Avshalom Zohar Sal, 28, who moved to Nir Oz in August with his girlfriend after