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Paramount Global chairwoman and controlling shareholder Shari Redstone is battling cancer as she tries to steer the media company through a turbulent sales process.

“Shari Redstone was diagnosed with thyroid cancer earlier this spring,” her spokeswoman Molly Morse said late Thursday. “While it has been a challenging period, she is maintaining all professional and philanthropic activities throughout her treatment, which is ongoing.

“She and her family are grateful that her prognosis is excellent,” Morse said.

The news comes nearly 11 months after Redstone agreed to sell Paramount to David Ellison’s Skydance Media in a deal that would end the family’s tenure as major Hollywood moguls after four decades.

However, the government’s review of the sale to Skydance hit a snag amid President Trump’s $20-billion lawsuit against Paramount and its subsidiary CBS over edits to an October “60 Minutes” broadcast.

Redstone, 71, told the New York Times that she underwent surgery last month after receiving the diagnosis about two months ago. Surgeons removed her thyroid gland but did not fully eradicate the cancer, which had spread to her vocal cords, the paper said.

She continues to be treated with radiation, the paper reported.

The Redstone family controls 77% of the voting shares of Paramount. Since Bob Bakish was ousted as chief executive last year, the company has been managed by a trio of executives who share the title of co-chief executive.

Her father, the late Sumner Redstone, built the company into a juggernaut but it has seen its standing slip in recent years. There have been management missteps and pressures brought on by consumers’ shift to streaming. The trend has crimped revenue to companies that own cable channels, including Paramount.

The COVID-19 pandemic followed by the 2023 writers and actors strikes also took a toll on Paramount and the Redstone family’s private firm, National Amusements Inc., which owns movie theaters.

Paramount cut its dividend to shareholders two years ago, leaving the family in a financial bind.

Financial pressures contributed to Redstone’s decision to entertain offers for Paramount and National Amusements, which holds the Paramount shares.

Nearly two years ago, Ellison and Redstone began talks that culminated last July with an agreement on a multi-phased $8-billion deal that would pass the torch to Ellison.

Redstone wants to close the deal. National Amusements would receive $2.4 billion, which would pay its debts and leave the family with more than $1.7 billion.

She has urged the company to settle the lawsuit Trump filed in October, weeks after “60 Minutes” interviewed then-Vice President Kamala Harris. Trump accused CBS of deceptively editing the interview to make Harris look smarter and improve her election chances, a charge that CBS has denied.

The dispute over the edits has sparked unrest within the company, prompted high-level departures and triggered a Federal Communications Commission examination of alleged news distortion.

The FCC’s review of the Skydance deal has become bogged down. If the agency does not approve the transfer of CBS television station licenses to the Ellison family, the deal could collapse.

The two companies must complete the merger by early October. If not, Paramount will owe a $400-million breakup fee to Skydance.

Redstone, through National Amusements, also owes nearly $400 million to a Chicago banker who loaned the family money in 2023 and tech titan Larry Ellison, who is helping bankroll the buyout of Paramount and National Amusements.

Last week, Paramount nominated three new directors to serve on the company’s board following its July 2 investor meeting.

In a proxy filing, Paramount asked shareholders to expand the board to seven directors, including Redstone and three recruits: attorney Mary Boies (a member of the firm led by her husband David Boies); Silicon Valley venture capital executive Charles E. Ryan; and former Massachusetts trial court judge Roanne Sragow Licht.

They would join longtime board members Linda M. Griego, Susan Schuman and Barbara M. Byrne.

In April, Nandy said the 68-year-old sports media rights executive was the “outstanding candidate” to fill the position, despite not being on the original three-person shortlist.

She has now removed herself from the final decision, delegating responsibility to the Sports Minister.

Last month, Kogan told MPs on the Culture, Media and Sport Committee (CMS) during a pre-appointment hearing that he was being “utterly transparent” by declaring his donations.

The committee endorsed Kogan, but said he must work to “reassure the football community that he will act impartially and in a politically neutral way”. Committee chair Dame Caroline Dinenage warned that Kogan’s “past donations to the Labour Party will inevitably leave him open to charges of political bias in a job where independence is paramount”.

Kogan said he had donated “very small sums” to the campaigns, as well as thousands of pounds to Labour MPs and candidates in recent years, but had “total personal independence from all of them” and pledged “total political impartiality” if appointed.

A DCMS spokesperson said: “We have received the letter from the Commissioner for Public Appointments and we look forward to co-operating fully with his office.

“The appointment is in the process of being ratified in the usual way.”

Kogan declined to comment.

It has also emerged that Nandy has written to the CMS Committee and told them: “I heard clearly the Committee’s comments regarding David’s transparency and candour regarding previous political donations that he had made and the need for him to take concrete steps to avoid the perception of any bias or lack of independence from government.

“As a first step to avoid any risk of this, I am writing to inform you that I have delegated the final decision on the chair’s appointment to the Minister for Sport.”

Conservative shadow sports minister Louie French has previously said the failure to disclose the donations when first put forward for the role was “a clear breach of the governance code on public appointments”.

A spokesman for the Prime Minister added Kogan had been appointed through a “fair and open competition”, and the BBC has been told his donations were below the threshold that requires declaring.

The Football Governance Bill, which is currently passing through Parliament after being reintroduced by the Labour government in October, will establish a first independent regulator for the professional men’s game in England.

The legislation will hand power to a body independent from government and football authorities to oversee clubs in England’s top five divisions.

Kogan – a former BBC journalist who also previously advised the Premier League, EFL and other leagues on broadcast rights – said he wants to put “fans at the heart of the regulator” and help the football pyramid.

May 30 (UPI) — The Federal Reserve chair, Jerome Powell, has told President Donald Trump that monetary policy will not be influenced by politics.

Powell and Trump had a meeting Thursday as the president has been pressuring the central bank to lower interest rates.

A statement published by the Reserve following the meeting said that Powell and Trump discussed economic issues, including growth, employment and inflation.

What Powell did not discuss was his expectation for monetary policy, according to the sternly worded statement, “except to stress that the path of policy will depend entirely on incoming economic information and what that means for the outlook.”

“Chairman Powell said that he and his colleagues on the [Federal Open Market Committee] will set monetary policy, as required by law, to support maximum employment and stable prices and will make those decisions based solely on careful, objective and non-political analysis,” the statement said.

The meeting was held at Trump’s invitation, it added.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt confirmed during a press conference Thursday that Trump saw the statement and that it was “correct.”

“However, the president did say that he believes the Fed chair is making a mistake by not lowering interest rates, which is putting us at an economic disadvantage to China and other countries,” she said.

The announcement comes as the Trump administration has been seeking to influence Powell and the Fed to lower interest rates.

The Fed has steadily cut the interest rate from a high of 5.5% since the summer of 2024 but has maintained a lending rate of between 4.25% and 4.5% throughout the Trump administration due to uncertainty over the president’s ever-changing tariff policies.

The Fed issued its most recent hold on the interest rate earlier this month over concerns about tariff-related inflation and slower economic growth.

“Uncertainty about the economic outlook has increased further,” the Fed said in its May 7 statement.

Trump has repeatedly lashed out at the Fed and Powell.

On May 2, he took to his Truth Social platform to broadcast “THE FED SHOULD LOWER ITS RATE!!!” As a reason, he pointed to a recent drop in gas prices.

After the Fed maintained its interest rate hold about a week later, Trump called Powell “a FOOL, who doesn’t have a clue.”

Visiting Moorten Botanical Garden in Palm Springs is a step back in time, and worth the visit not just for the plants but the commentary from its gregarious, white-haired proprietor, Clark Moorten, who usually greets visitors at the entrance.

This quirky, endearing garden is one of the last remnants of old Palm Springs, when there was time to watch little birds flit fearlessly among the thorns, marvel at a palm that grows sideways about 8 feet before it grows up and listen spellbound to Moorten’s wonderful and seemingly endless stories.

The garden itself is small — roughly an acre of mature, artfully arranged cactuses and desert plants along shady dirt paths with hand-lettered signs, decaying desert artifacts and the famous “cactarium,” a word invented by Moorten’s mother, Patricia, who with his father, Chester “Slim” Moorten, began expanding the garden, established in 1938, after they bought the property in 1955.

The cactarium, by the way, is a small weathered Quonset hut stuffed with weird and rare cactuses — some of which wind along the ground like snakes or grow upside down from their pot like a prickly stalactite.

There’s a nursery here too, for people who want to take some plants home. This is a garden visitors can easily traverse in a few minutes, but honestly you’ll want to give yourself time to sit on a bench, browse in the nursery, and, if he’s around, listen to at least a few of Moorten’s stories about old Palm Springs and his remarkable parents. His father, for instance, was a logger as a teenager, who hitchhiked to Hollywood in the 1920s to become a Keystone Kop, then moved to the desert to fight off tuberculosis where he discovered that raising cactus paid better than gold mining — especially when Walt Disney asked him to suggest plants for “a little amusement park” he was creating in Anaheim, and he ended up supplying the plants for Frontier Land.

Moorten, 82, was an only child, and he still talks about his parents as though they’ll walk around the corner at any moment. “I was born with stickers in my butt,” he says on the website, and enough memories and stories to make this endearing garden glow.

Hours: Depends on the season. Between Oct. 1 and May 31, the garden is open every day but Wednesdays from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. In the summer, June 1-Sept. 30, when the heat is at its fiercest, the garden is open Fridays through Sundays only, from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m.

Admission: $7 adults and seniors; $5 veterans, $3 children 5-12. Children under 5 enter free.

Food: No food is sold at the garden, but there is a drinking fountain and they sell bottled water at the entrance. There are tables where visitors can bring prepared food into the garden to eat.

Other: There are restrooms at the back of the garden. The garden trails are compact dirt and wide enough to accommodate wheel chairs, but the cactarium’s narrow aisles and steps are not wheelchair-accessible.