American Tourist Busted for Gross Desecration of Tokyo Shrine

An American visiting Japan with his family has been arrested on suspicion of vandalism after allegedly desecrating Tokyo’s Meiji Jingu Shrine. According to Reuters, the 65-year-old (identified as Steve Lee Hayes) clawed five letters representing family names into a pillar of the Torii gates with his fingernails. He allegedly etched the characters “just for fun,” according to Tokyo Weekender, and was taken into custody at his hotel. The incident is one in a string of similar defacements, visitors having graffitied pillars at the Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo twice already this year. Reuters reports that “overtourism” may be to blame: 27 million people visited Japan between January and September, injecting the equivalent of $37.5 billion into the economy but also saddling the country with drunken, rowdy visitors who leave their trash in the streets and strain transportation systems and generally make life more difficult for locals. As for Hayes, he’s reportedly receiving assistance from the U.S. Embassy.

President-elect Donald Trump’s transition team reportedly has a list of military officers they want to boot from the Pentagon, and it could unprecedentedly include the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Two sources told Reuters, on the condition of anonymity, that Trump is still in the early stages of planning and the list could grow as he gets closer to taking office. Trump reportedly has yet to give the official go ahead for the firings, though he has spoken often in recent weeks about getting rid of “woke” generals and officers connected to the 2021 Afghanistan withdrawal. Insiders also predict that Trump could focus his firings on military officers connected to Mark Milley, Trump’s former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, reported Reuters. Milley was quoted in Bob Woodward’s book War calling Trump “the most dangerous person ever,” and someone who could not control his authoritarian tendencies while in the White House. Milley added, “I had suspicions when I talked to you about his mental decline and so forth, but now I realize he’s a total fascist.”

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A woman who claims she had sex with former Florida congressman—and current attorney general nominee—Matt Gaetz while she was a minor testified about the encounter in front of the House Ethics Committee, ABC News reported Thursday. The network cited sources familiar with the Justice Department investigation into Gaetz, which ultimately resulted in no charges against the Republican firebrand. He has continually denied all charges of impropriety. The news comes just as the committee was scheduled to meet to consider releasing a report on its findings this week. Since Gaetz is no longer in Congress, however, its release is up in the air. The lawyer for the woman who testified, John Clune, has called on the committee to make it public, saying of his client: “She was a high school student and there were witnesses.” Gaetz said following Thursday’s report that the “allegations are invented and would constitute false testimony to Congress.” He added: “This false smear following a three-year criminal investigation should be viewed with great skepticism.” The Justice Department investigation did result in an 11-year prison sentence for a former friend of Gaetz’s, Seminole County tax collector Joel Greenberg, who pleaded guilty to sex trafficking of the woman when she was under 18.

Billionaire Elon Musk has quickly become the public face of the new Trump administration. After being appointed to a government “department” that does not exist, the Tesla billionaire took time out from hobnobbing with the president-elect at Mar-a-Lago to meet with Iran’s ambassador to the United Nations, according to The New York Times. Two Iranian officials told the publication the meeting took place on Monday in New York, where their discussion focused on softening tensions with Iran and the United States. Musk requested the meeting, according to the report. Ultimately, the meeting with Musk and Ambassador Amir Saeid Iravani was “positive” and good news," said the officials, who added that the meeting, held at an undisclosed location and chosen by the ambassador, lasted for more than an hour. “We do not comment on reports of private meetings that did or did not occur,” Steven Cheung, Trump’s communications director, told the Times. Karoline Leavitt, Trump’s transition spokeswoman, said, “The American people re-elected President Trump because they trust him to lead our country and restore peace through strength around the world. When he returns to the White House, he will take the necessary action to do just that.” Just last week, the Justice Department announced federal charges in connection with a failed Iranian plot to kill Trump.

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Cult leader and killer Charles Manson admitted to committing murders before he infamously became the head of the so-called Manson Family and led his troop of followers to commit a string of brutal killings in California in 1969. The revelation comes in the form of a chilling prison phone call recording, which was released in a teaser for the upcoming Peacock docuseries Making Manson. “There’s a whole part of my life that nobody knows about,” Manson, who died in 2017, says in the clip. “I lived in Mexico for a while. I went to Acapulco, stole some cars. Got involved in a couple killings. I just got involved in stuff over my head, man. Got involved in a couple of killings. I left my .357 Magnum in Mexico City, and I left some dead people on the beach.” Manson was convicted of first-degree murder for the deaths of seven people, including the actress Sharon Tate, although he did not commit the killings himself. Earlier in life, he was in and out of psychiatric institutions and prisons for crimes that included robbery and rape. The new series, directed by Billie Mintz, explores Manson’s life before he headed up the commune populated largely by young women.

Alpine ski racer and Olympic gold medalist Lindsey Vonn is hitting the slopes again. Five years ago, Vonn retired from competitive skiing because of pain in her right knee. Now, seven months after knee replacement surgery, she’s re-joining the United States ski team with hopes to compete in the World Cup circuit this winter and possibly the 2026 Olympics. Vonn called her return to professional skiing “amazing and definitely not planned,” in an interview with the New York Times Thursday. “I’m not chasing anything; I’m not trying to prove anything to anyone,” she said. “With what I’ve done in my career, I’m thankful I can be in this position. I don’t have any pressure. It’s just me and the mountain like it was in the beginning.” Vonn has 82 World Cup victories and has appeared at four Olympic Games, winning three medals.

Former Trump staffer Alyssa Farah Griffin told The View her story about interacting with Attorney General nominee Matt Gaetz—which allegedly led to days of Trump tweeting conspiracy theories about MSNBC host Joe Scarborough. Griffin said she once met Gaetz outside the Oval Office, where she begged him not to show Trump a folder full of “printed out conspiracy theories that Joe Scarborough, of Morning Joe and a former congressman, had murdered his staffer.” Scarborough previously represented Florida’s first congressional district—the same district Gaetz represented from 2017 until his resignation on Wednesday. In 2001, his former staffer Lori Klausutis was found dead in Scarborough’s congressional office in Fort Walton Beach. A subsequent autopsy revealed the 28-year-old had an undiagnosed abnormal heart rhythm. She died from head trauma after passing out and falling, according to an Associated Press fact check. After the meeting, Trump spent days “tweeting false, malicious claims,” Griffin alleged, which eventually led to Klausutis’ husband begging Twitter to take down the posts. Griffin said the interaction “speaks to his character, integrity, and judgment.” Griffin previously told the same story to the House Select Committee on Jan. 6 when she was interviewed in 2022. In her testimony, Griffin said the story was “anecdotal” but included it to show that Trump was a “product of his advisors.”

Police arrested four people in Los Angeles after they staged phony animal attacks on a trio of luxury cars as part of a failed insurance fraud scheme that included donning a bear suit. The suspects told the California Department of Insurance that a bear had entered their 2010 Rolls Royce Ghost, worth nearly six figures, and destroyed its interior while it was parked at Lake Arrowhead, near San Bernardino National Forest, according to a press release. In the claim they filed, the fraudsters even included a video with surveillance camera footage that they said showed the bear wreaking havoc. But the insurance department wasn’t fooled. “Upon further scrutiny of the video, the investigation determined the bear was actually a person in a bear costume,” it said in a press release. The department said it showed the footage to biologists at the California Department of Fish and Wildlife to confirm that it showed a human, and not a bear. Detectives reportedly also uncovered two additional false claims the fraudsters filed with different insurance companies, also alleging a bear attack—but on two other valuable vehicles: a 2015 Mercedes G63 AMG and a 2022 Mercedes E350. In total, the four suspects—Ruben Tamrazian, Ararat Chirkinian, Vahe Muradkhanyan, and Alfiya Zuckerman—defrauded the insurance companies of $141,839.

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As Donald Trump begins filling seats in his administration, the president-elect announced that Jamie Dimon would not be joining his future Cabinet. “I respect Jamie Dimon, of JPMorgan Chase, greatly, but he will not be invited to be a part of the Trump Administration,” Trump wrote in a social media post Thursday. Despite Dimon never endorsing Trump and claiming the chances of him joining a Trump administration were “almost nil,” the JPMorgan Chase CEO was speculated as a potential pick for Secretary of the Treasury prior to the election. The president-elect’s announcement, however, confirmed a report from Reuters last week in which a source said Dimon would remain at the bank, which he has run for nearly two decades. With the billionaire banker out of the running, sources claim that billionaire banker Howard Lutnick and investor Scott Bessent are the current top contenders for the Cabinet role.

Sen. Ted Cruz refused to commit to confirming Rep. Matt Gaetz as attorney general, instead saying he’ll be assessed on his “merits.” Speaking on NewsMax Thursday, Cruz avoided giving a definitive response when questioned directly by the anchor. “I will say that was a pick that was, I think, very surprising to the entirety of the Senate,” Cruz said. “And so we’ll assess the nominee on the merits. But there is a process that will unfold that examines a particular nominee’s background, their experience and their suitability for a role.” Cruz also spoke about the need to “root out partisan bias” at the Department of Justice, which is headed by the attorney general. “I think it’s critical to have someone there who will follow the law, who has integrity, who is a constitutionalist, and who has the courage to root out the incredible partisanship and weaponization that has infested this DOJ,” Cruz said. Gaetz was previously investigated by the DOJ for sex crimes.