Monday

Dec. 21 (UPI) — The Powerball jackpot has climbed to $1.6 billion after no one claimed the winning ticket following Saturday’s drawing.

There have been 45 consecutive drawings with no grand-prize winner.

The new jackpot is the fourth largest in the game’s history, and the fifth biggest among all U.S. lottery jackpots, Powerball said.

Saturday’s was the second consecutive drawing with a jackpot in excess of $1 billion that produced no winner.

The last Powerball winner claimed $1.787 billion in September. There have been 45 consecutive winnerless drawings since.

Powerball winners have the choice between taking an annual payout, or a lump-sum prize. If someone wins Monday’s drawing, they will have the option of receiving a $1.6 billion annuitized payment, or a $735.5 million one-time prize.

There was no grand prize winner Saturday, but 112 ticket holders claimed a $50,000 payout, and 22 claimed $150,000 each.

Tickets sold in California, Florida, Iowa, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Hampshire and Ohio each won $1 million.

A winner of the Double Play drawing in New Jersey claimed a $500,000 prize, Powerball said.

The odds of winning the grand prize jackpot are one in 292.2 million, according to Powerball, though they are better for smaller prizes, which can range to as low as $4. Tickets are $2 each.

Drawings are held at 10:59 p.m. EST every Monday, Wednesday and Saturday.

Anthony Geary, the Daytime Emmy winner who played half of “General Hospital’s” supercouple Luke Spencer and Laura Baldwin, died Sunday. He was 78.

“The entire #GeneralHospital family is heartbroken over the news of Tony Geary’s passing. Tony was a brilliant actor and set the bar that we continue to strive for,” “GH” executive producer Frank Valentini wrote on Monday in two posts on X. “His legacy, and that of Luke Spencer’s, will live on through the generations of #GH cast members who have followed in his footsteps. We send our sincerest sympathies to his husband, Claudio, family, and friends. May he rest in peace.”

The actor died of complications a few days after having planned surgery in Amsterdam, the city he and spouse Claudio Gama called home, Soap Opera Digest reported.

“It was a shock for me and our families and our friends,” Gama told TV Insider exclusively Monday, saying that for more than three decades Geary had been his friend, companion and — for the past six years — his husband.

Geary notched almost 2,000 episodes on “General Hospital,” where he started as a cast member in 1978. Along the way he took a number of breaks from the show before wrapping up his “GH” career in 2015.

Even with those breaks, Daytime Emmys voters nominated Geary 17 times in the lead actor category. He took home the trophy eight times, in 1982, 1999, 2000, 2004, 2006, 2008, 2012 and 2015.

Despite their plot line beginning with Luke drunkenly raping Laura — played by Genie Francis — only to have her fall in love with her rapist, their love story became insanely popular in the early 1980s, appealing to a younger audience and saving the series from cancellation. The characters got married in November 1981. The audience for the wedding, which aired over two days, was around 30 million viewers and remains the highest-rated soap opera event in history.

Tony Dean Geary was born on May 29, 1947, in the town of Coalville, Utah, and raised in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. After studying theater at the University of Utah, he began his acting career with roles on shows including “Room 222,” “All in the Family,” “The Partridge Family” and “Mod Squad” in the early 1970s. “General Hospital” cast him in 1978, but not before he added shows including “Barnaby Jones,” “The Streets of San Francisco” and “Marcus Welby, M.D.” to his resume. He racked up dozens more credits in his career, but nothing that brought him the fame that “GH” did.

When Geary left “GH” for good in 2015, some former colleagues talked to The Times about working with him.

Jane Elliot, who played another Spencer love interest, Tracy Quartermaine, recalled in 2015 that she acted with Geary when he first screen-tested for the role that was supposed to be only a 13-week arc.

“It’s always awkward with an actor you don’t know,” she told The Times. “I was walking down this flight of stars, and I pass Tony, who is doodling on a piece of paper. He’s doing tic-tac-toe. I immediately know what kind of actor he is, doing something real in an unreal setting. I went up to him, put an O next to his X, and our relationship was established.”

“Tony’s friendship and guidance has meant the world to me,” said actor Jonathan Jackson, who was only 11 when he started on the soap as Lucky Spencer, Luke’s son. “He was always extremely warm and very present, there was nothing condescending in him. He never treated me like a kid. We clicked right away.”

The “Nashville” actor returned to the show after many years away to help Geary wrap up the Spencers’ story.

”When I found out he was leaving, I knew I had to come back,” Jackson said at the time. “He was great. Having those last scenes with me were everything I hoped it would be.”

Meanwhile, on Monday, co-star Genie Francis, who is still on “GH,” remembered her former on-screen love on social media.

“This morning I woke up and went into my husband’s arms. In my sleep, my life was flashing before me and I was afraid of death.” An hour later, she wrote on Facebook, producer Valentini called to tell her that Geary had died.

“I immediately felt remorse, I hadn’t spoken to him in years, but I felt his life end in my sleep last night, and with it a big part of me, and mine,” Francis continued. “He was a powerhouse as an actor. Shoulder to shoulder with the greats. No star burned brighter than Tony Geary. He was one of a kind. As an artist, he was filled with a passion for the truth, no matter how blunt, or even a little rude it might be, but always hilariously funny. He was the anti-hero, always so irreverent, but even the most conservative had to smile. Working with him was always exciting. You never knew what might happen.

“He spoiled me for leading men for the rest of my life. I am crushed, I will miss him terribly, but I was so lucky to be his partner. Somehow, somewhere, we are connected to each other because I felt him leave last night. Good night sweet prince, good night.”

Spain’s government has fined San Francisco’s Airbnb $75 million for advertising unlicensed tourist rentals, officials said Monday.

The move is the latest government action in Spain against short-term rental companies such as Airbnb and Booking.com as the country grapples with a housing affordability problem, particularly in city centers.

The consumer rights ministry said the rentals didn’t include license numbers — a requirement in many regions in Spain — or listed license numbers that didn’t match what authorities had. Others had incorrect information about hosts, it said.

Airbnb said that it plans to challenge the fine in court.

The company said it was working with Spanish authorities to comply with a new national registration system for short-term rentals, and that more than 70,000 listings on the platform had added a registration number since January.

Spain’s leftist government and many Spaniards across the political spectrum see short-term rental companies as bearing responsibility for driving up housing costs.

The nation on the Iberian Peninsula is one of the world’s most visited countries and short-term holiday rentals have cut into many cities’ stretched housing supply.

“There are thousands of families living on the edge because of the housing crisis, while a few enrich themselves with business models that evict people from their homes,” Spain’s consumer rights minister, Pablo Bustinduy, said Monday in a statement.

In May, the consumer rights ministry ordered Airbnb to take down roughly 65,000 listings because of rule violations.

In 2024, Spain’s anti-trust watchdog fined Booking.com $448 million, saying the online travel company had abused its dominant market position in the country during the previous five years.

Local authorities in Barcelona have said they plan to phase out all of the 10,000 apartments licensed in the city as short-term rentals by 2028 to safeguard the housing supply for residents.

Busta Rhymes got a young TikTok creator all in check over the weekend after he boldly and incorrectly identified the rapper as “Saturday Night Live” alum Tracy Morgan.

The “Woo-Hah!! Got You All in Check” and “Calm Down” rap veteran, 53, sternly set the record straight for the social media troll during an exchange Sunday at Art Basel in Miami Beach. In video of the interaction, published Monday by TMZ, the musician poses with a supposed fan for a photo op. “Get the video of this, it’s Tracy Morgan out here,” the jokester, wearing a black hoodie and baggy jeans, seems to say as he points to Rhymes.

The remark immediately elicited confusion from the rapper and the surrounding crowd. “Wait, what’d you say?,” the Grammy-nominated musician asks, according to the video. “What did you just say?”

For reference, Rhymes is a longtime hip-hop star who first rose to prominence in the late 1980s and is also known for songs “Put Your Hands Where My Eyes Can See” and Chris Brown’s “Look at Me Now.” Over the years he has collaborated with Notorious B.I.G., Janet Jackson, Mariah Carey, Pharrell, T-Pain, Missy Elliott and Ye (formerly Kanye West), among others. Morgan, on the other hand, is an Emmy-nominated comedy veteran who was part of the “Saturday Night Live” cast from 1996 to 2003 before pivoting to comedy series including “30 Rock”, “The Last O.G.” and most recently, “Crutch.”

Both Rhymes and Morgan are Black men.

The video continues with Rhymes — real name Trevor Smith Jr. — requesting an onlooker put down their camera and asking the alleged fan to explain himself. “I’m trying to understand,” he can be heard saying, patting the Tiktoker on the shoulder.

“I’m asking you a question, I ain’t calling you out,” he says, later adding, “I was taking a picture to show you love, but you trying to be funny?”

“I’m not trying to be funny at all,” the young man replied.

“What [do] you mean, ‘Tracy, my boy?’”

As Busta Rhymes continues scolding the troll, the TMZ video pans over to the crowd and identifies Kenny Brooks, an internet personality known as Funny Salesman. While it’s unclear if Brooks played a part in the viral interaction, he shared videos and coverage of the exchange to his Instagram stories on Monday.

“You don’t play with a grown man, little boy — that’s how people get f— up,” Rhymes reportedly told the young man, who can be seen walking away from the scene alongside Funny Salesman at the end of the video. Brooks attempted to distance himself from the exchange, calling out TMZ in a TikTok posted Monday: “I don’t know what happened. I wasn’t there,” he said, despite video evidence pointing to the contrary.

“I’m not Shaggy, it wasn’t me. I don’t know what’s going on. I was like Stevie Wonder, I ain’t see nothing,” Brooks said, adding he was trying to get his own video with Rhymes.

He ended his post with a nod to Rhymes’ music: “I’m trying to put my hands where my eyes can see.”

Let the legal battle begin.

On Monday, a Las Vegas-based HBO Max subscriber sued Netflix over concerns that the streamer’s plans to buy some of Warner Bros. Discovery’s assets would create an anti-competitive environment in the entertainment industry and raise subscription prices.

Netflix said last week it agreed to buy Warner Bros. Discovery’s film and TV business, its Burbank lot, HBO and the HBO Max streaming service for $27.75 a share or $72 billion. It also agreed to take on more than $10 billion of Warner Bros.’ debt, creating a deal value of $82.7 billion.

Michelle Fendelander alleges in her lawsuit that if Netflix’s deal were to go through, it would decrease competition in the subscription streaming market. She is asking the court to issue an injunction to prevent the merger from happening or issue a remedy for the anti-competitive effects.

“American consumers — including SVOD purchasers like Plaintiff, an HBO Max subscriber — will bear the brunt of this decreased competition, paying increased prices and receiving degraded and diminished services for their money,” according to Fendelander’s lawsuit, which is seeking class-action status. The lawsuit was filed in a U.S. District Court in San Jose.

Netflix on Tuesday called the lawsuit “meritless” and “merely an attempt by the plaintiffs bar to leverage all the attention on the deal.”

The Los Gatos, Calif.,-based streamer is long seen as the winner of the subscription streaming wars, boosted by having successfully entered the streaming content space earlier than rivals and for its superior recommendation technology. By buying Warner Bros. Discovery’s assets, Netflix would gain access to more franchises and characters, including Batman, “Game of Thrones” and Harry Potter. Netflix said it plans to keep Warner Bros.’ commitments to bringing its movies to theaters.

But Fendelander and some industry observers are concerned that Netflix owning one of its streaming rivals will hurt the entertainment industry because it means less competition.

“The elimination of this rivalry is likely to reduce overall content output, diminish the diversity and quality of available content, and narrow the spectrum of creative voices appearing on major streaming platforms,” according to the lawsuit by Fendelander, who has never been a Netflix subscriber.

Streamers over the years have steadily raised their prices, and some analysts said they would not be surprised if subscription prices continued to go up.

Netflix executives said they believe their deal to acquire WBD’s assets will benefit key stakeholders.

“It’s going to mean more options for consumers,” said Netflix Co-CEO Greg Peters on a call with investors last Friday. “It’s going to be more opportunities for creators, more value for our shareholders. Together, we’ve got the chance to bring great stories, cutting edge innovation and more choice to audiences everywhere.”

Peters also pointed out at a UBS conference on Monday that Netflix combined with the assets it is acquiring from Warner Bros. Discovery would still amount to a smaller share of U.S. TV viewing than YouTube.

Whether the deal will get over the finish line remains to be seen, although Netflix executives say they believe it will. On Monday, Paramount said it would directly appeal to shareholders to offer an alternative bid.

ORLANDO, Fla. — It’s been an offseason of few acquisitions thus far for the Dodgers.

So much so that, on the first day of MLB’s annual winter meetings at the Signia by Hilton Orlando on Monday, the most intriguing rumor surrounding the team had to do with a potential subtraction from their big-league roster.

According to multiple reports, Teoscar Hernández has come up in the Dodgers’ trade talks with other teams this winter. USA Today went as far as saying the club was “shopping” the two-time All-Star, who is entering the second season of the three-year, $66-million deal he signed last offseason.

However, both manager Dave Roberts and general manager Brandon Gomes downplayed that notion while addressing reporters on Monday.

Dodgers right fielder Teoscar Hernández hits a sacrifice fly to score Dodgers’ Will Smith during the Game 7 of the World Series against the Toronto Blue Jays on Nov. 1.

(Robert Gauthier/Los Angeles Times)

“Teo certainly fits [our roster still],” Roberts said. “He’s helped us win two championships. He’s one of my favorites.”

“That doesn’t feel likely,” Gomes added of the possibility of trading Hernández. “Obviously, you can never say never on those types of things. I know that’s come up [in reports]. But that’s not something we anticipate at all.”

The idea of the Dodgers trading Hernández has felt like a long shot from the start. Though the 33-year-old slugger suffered an inconsistent and injury-plagued regular season in 2025 — both at the plate, where he had 25 home runs but hit only .247, and especially defensively, where he had several notable lapses after moving to right field — the 10-year veteran has made crucial contributions in each of the Dodgers’ two World Series runs the last couple years, and has served in a mentor role to young players in the clubhouse; none more so than Andy Pages.

Granted, moving Hernández could help the Dodgers get younger, which has been a goal for the front office this offseason as they try to navigate their aging and expensive roster. And his salary could be repurposed if the team were to make a splashier free-agent signing.

But for now, the Dodgers continue to express belief in their current core, with Roberts noting Monday that “we’re very confident with where the roster is right now” and that “there’s really no big splash we feel needs to be made.”

Plus, moving Hernández would also only further exacerbate the team’s pre-existing need for outfield help, as the club continues to evaluate both the free agent market (where players such as Cody Bellinger or Harrison Bader figure to be better, and more affordable, fits than a likely $400-million signing of top free-agent option Kyle Tucker) and trade possibilities (such as Brendan Donovan or Lars Nootbaar of the St. Louis Cardinals, Jarren Duran or Wilyer Abreu of the Boston Red Sox or — in a less likely scenario — Steven Kwan of the Cleveland Guardians).

Roberts did leave the door open to potentially moving Hernández back to left field, where he spent the majority of 2024 for the Dodgers before shifting over to his more natural right field position last year.

Still, in Roberts’ eyes, Hernández’s defense was “at least average” in right after an August series in Colorado when he made a couple particularly glaring mistakes on fly balls. His career-long defensive metrics have also been stronger in right field than left.

“I do think that with the versatility [of our roster] and how we potentially shape this roster, there’s some options,” Roberts said. “But right now, he’s our right fielder.”

Paramount is refusing to accept defeat in the Warner Bros. Discovery auction, launching a $78-billion hostile takeover of its rival Monday after being spurned last week in the bidding.

The move comes four days after Warner’s board unanimously selected Netflix as the winner.

Paramount has beefed up its offer with backing from Middle Eastern sovereign wealth funds, including Saudi Arabia, a Chinese firm and President Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner’s investment firm Affinity Partners, according to a Monday regulatory filing.

The presence of a member of the president’s family in a proposed corporate takeover, which includes news channel CNN and the historic Warner Bros. properties, immediately complicates an already fraught regulatory picture.

Last week, Netflix had offered $72 billion — or $27.75 a share — for a big chunk of the company: Warner Bros. film and television studios, which hold the rights to Batman, Bugs Bunny and Harry Potter, the expansive lot in Burbank and HBO and HBO Max. Additionally, Netflix would take on more than $10 billion in Warner Bros. debt for a total deal value of $82.7 billion.

Paramount, backed by billionaire Larry Ellison’s family, had entered the final week of the auction with a $25 a share, all-cash offer for all of Warner Bros. Discovery, according to people involved in the auction who were not authorized to comment. In the final hours, Paramount upped its offer to $30 per share — but still came away empty-handed.

Paramount confirmed Monday that it submitted its $30-per-share offer just a few hours before Netflix was announced as the winner.

“We never heard back,” Paramount Chairman and Chief Executive David Ellison told CNBC on Monday morning. “We’re really here to finish what we started.”

Despite the decision by Netflix and Warner Bros. Discovery to pursue a deal, Paramount is directly appealing to shareholders to vote on their offer in what is commonly known as a hostile takeover.

Historically, hostile takeover bids are difficult to pull off, but there have been some notable exceptions, including Elon Musk’s $44-billion acquisition of the company formerly known as Twitter in 2022. Two decades ago, Comcast failed in a hostile takeover bid for Walt Disney Co.

Warner Bros. Discovery said Monday that its board would “carefully review and consider Paramount Skydance’s offer in accordance with the terms of Warner Bros. Discovery’s agreement with Netflix.”

Warner’s board remains supportive of Netflix’s bid, the company said. Shareholders will receive recommendations from the Warner board within 10 business days. The company has long wanted the auction to be wrapped up by Christmas.

“Warner Bros. Discovery stockholders are advised not to take any action at this time with respect to Paramount Skydance’s proposal,” the company said in a statement.

Paramount began its pursuit of Warner in mid-September. It is now bypassing Warner’s board, management and bankers and appealing directly to shareholders in a hostile takeover effort. In a statement, Paramount said its bid was a “superior alternative” to Netflix’s, which will face a rigorous and lengthy antitrust review.

Netflix co-Chief Executive Ted Sarandos said Paramount’s move was “entirely expected.”

“We have a deal done and we are incredibly happy with the deal,” Sarandos said at a UBS conference, adding that he believes Netflix’s takeover of the historic company would be great for shareholders, consumers and Hollywood workers. “We’re superconfident we’re going to get it across the line and finish.”

Already, the biggest weakness in Netflix’s deal was concern that the tech company may not be able to win regulatory approval. The company has more than 300 million streaming subscribers worldwide, and adding HBO Max would more than double the number of subscribers for competing video-on-demand subscription services.

In a statement, Paramount called Netflix’s offer “inferior,” one that would expose Warner shareholders “to a protracted multi-jurisdictional regulatory clearance process with an uncertain outcome.” Paramount has long counted on its warm relationship with President Trump to smooth the regulatory process, at least in the U.S.

Warner Bros. Discovery continues to believe that Netflix submitted the best offer.

Netflix is not buying Warner’s basic cable channels, including CNN, TBS, Food Network and TLC, and Warner figures it can spin off those assets into a separate company, Discovery Global, that would be worth about $3 to $4 a share.

When adding the Discovery Global value with Netflix’s price of $27.75 a share, Warner believes that its shareholders will come away with more than $31 a share for the company — more than what Paramount has offered.

Netflix offered a cash and stock deal. On Friday, the company said it would take a year to 18 months to gain the necessary regulatory approvals. Paramount is banking on investors being concerned about a possible regulatory fallout with the Netflix deal.

“Look, we’re sitting on Wall Street, where cash is still king,” Ellison told CNBC. “We are offering shareholders $17.6 billion more cash than the deal that they currently have signed up on Netflix. We believe when [Warner shareholders] see what is currently in our offer, that that’s what they’ll vote for.”

Since mid-September, Paramount has submitted six bids for all of Warner Bros. Discovery.

Trump said Sunday that Netflix’s deal to buy Warner Bros. Discovery “could be a problem” because of the size of the streaming service’s combined market share. Trump said he “would be involved” in his administration’s decision whether to approve any deal.

Paramount said its $30 per share, all-cash offer represents a 139% premium to Warner’s $12.54 stock price on Sept. 10, the day before Paramount’s pursuit was leaked in the media. With the absorption of Warner’s cable channels and its heavy debt load, the Paramount deal would have an enterprise value of $108.4 billion.

That’s roughly what AT&T paid to buy the company, then called Time Warner Inc., in 2018 after spending nearly two years fighting in court with the first Trump administration.

A federal judge finally cleared the way for AT&T’s takeover, but after three years the phone company wanted to flee Hollywood and made a deal with Discovery’s David Zaslav, allowing his smaller company to take over in 2022.

“The Trump card is the best card Paramount-Skydance has but it could backfire in multiple directions,” New Street Research media analyst Blair Levin said Monday in a note to investors. “As they say in Hollywood, ‘stay tuned.’”

Warner and Netflix could claim that Trump’s Justice Department, if it seeks to intervene, was trying to squash their deal simply because of politics. The inclusion of Kushner in the deal also could open the door to conflict-of-interest arguments.

“Courts, and the public, in the past, have regarded Presidential involvement in antitrust challenges as problematic,” Levin wrote in his note.

Paramount’s 11th-hour offer for Warner contained “opaque” details about its financing, a person involved in the auction who was not authorized to speak publicly told The Times over the weekend. The fuzzy nature of Paramount’s backers gave the Warner board pause in contrast to the Netflix offer, which spelled out its financing, the person said.

In a Securities & Exchange Commission filing Monday, Paramount disclosed that Larry Ellison’s family has provided an $11.8-billion commitment. An additional $24 billion would come from three sovereign wealth funds from Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Abu Dhabi.

The controversial Chinese tech firm Tencent would provide an additional $1 billion, Paramount said. It said RedBird Capital Partners, an investor in Paramount, and Kushner’s Affinity Partners would also provide an undisclosed level of debt financing.

When asked about his son-in-law’s involvement in the Paramount bid, Trump told reporters at the White House: “I don’t know. I’ve never spoken with him about that. He’s really trying to work on Gaza.”

Should Paramount prevail, it would confront a heavy debt load that would bring more layoffs in an industry already reeling from downsizing. “As with Netflix, Paramount’s expected hostile bid for WBD raises significant concerns for our members and the industry,” a spokesperson for the Directors Guild of America said in a statement.

Just like with the AT&T deal for Time Warner, the Trump administration may not have the final say. If the U.S. Justice Department sues to block the Netflix deal, the matter will go before a federal judge.

However, Paramount hired Trump’s former antitrust regulator — Makan Delrahim — in the hope of steering a successful regulatory review. Delrahim joined Paramount in October as its chief legal officer.

“We believe our offer will create a stronger Hollywood. It is in the best interests of the creative community, consumers and the movie theater industry,” David Ellison said in a statement. “We believe they will benefit from the enhanced competition, higher content spend and theatrical release output, and a greater number of movies in theaters as a result of our proposed transaction.”

Paramount’s tender offer is set to expire Jan. 8, 2026, unless it’s extended.

Shares of Warner Bros. jumped 4.4% on Monday to $27.23. Paramount gained 9% to $14.57 a share while Netflix lost 3.4% to $96.79.

Times staff writers Wendy Lee and Stephen Battaglio contributed to this report.