The News

 There had been some talk among NFL fans that veteran running back Derrick Henry had lost a step. Or, to put it bluntly, that the 30-year-old was past the peak and was "washed."

It didn't take long for Henry to silence his doubters during the 2024 season.

With the Baltimore Ravens playing in primetime on Monday Night Football against Josh Allen and the Buffalo Bills in Week 4, it was Henry and the Ravens who struck first in explosive fashion.

On Baltimore's first play from scrimmage, Henry received a handoff up the middle and went untouched for 87 yards, taking the ball to the house for six points. According to the team's editorial director Ryan Mink, that was the longest rush from scrimmage in franchise history, a feat the four-time Pro Bowl back achieved in his fourth game with the organization.

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— Adam Schefter (@AdamSchefter) September 30, 2024

That wasn't the only bit of Ravens history that Henry achieved in Week 4. Henry has now scored a rushing touchdown in each of his first four games of the season, a feat only replicated by Jamal Lewis back in 2003

 FOX Sports: NFL (@NFLonFOX) September 30, 2024

Anyone who suggested that Henry was exiting his prime was sorely mistaken. He's up to five touchdowns on the year and is proving to be a perfect fit for the Baltimore offense.

 “It’s with heavy hearts that we announce the passing of Drake Hogestyn. He was thrown the curve ball of his life when he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, but he faced the challenge with incredible strength and determination. After putting up an unbelievable fight, he passed peacefully surrounded by loved ones.

Executive Producer Ken Corday added, “This is a very difficult one for all of us. Hogey was the ultimate team player and there are not sufficient words to express how deeply he will be missed. His impact on our show, personally and professionally, was profound and will forever remain unmatched.”

A Legendary Life

Born Donald Drake Hogestyn in Fort Wayne, Indiana on September 27, 1953, the future soap superstar left his home state after graduating from high school to attend the University of South Florida on a baseball scholarship. There, he majored in pre-dentistry, graduating with a double major in microbiology and applied sciences, with the intention of becoming an oral surgeon. But after he finished college, he was drafted by two Major League Baseball teams, the St. Louis Cardinals and the New York Yankees. He opted to sign with the Yankees, and played third base on one of the organization’s farm teams in Oneonta, NY.

After an injury in 1977 ended his promising baseball career, Hogestyn began his pivot into showbiz, entering a nationwide talent search conducted by Columbia Pictures with 75,00o entrants. He was one of 30 actors chosen to participate in an acting training program sponsored by the studio and headed to Los Angeles. He made his television debut in the 1982 series Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, which ran for one season on CBS. Hogestyn played the role of Ben McFadden, the second oldest of the seven McFadden sons; Richard Dean Anderson, fresh from his breakout role as Jeff Webber on General Hospital, played Hogestyn’s older brother, Adam McFadden.

After that show wrapped, Hogestyn notched a few more roles in prime-time, such as Kort on CBS’s short-lived sci-fi series Otherworld in 1985. In 1984, he auditioned for the role of Kyle Sampson on Guiding Light, which went to Larkin Malloy. The following year, he was invited to audition for DAYS, but when he first showed up for the try-out, Hogestyn hardly had his heart set on the job — in no small part because his heart was back in Indiana, in the form of his future wife, Victoria. He recalled to Soap Opera Digest in 2015, “I had begun courting Victoria and I was flying back to Fort Wayne and DAYS was my last audition, as far as I was concerned. I pulled my Jeep up and I thought, ‘This is perfect. This is exactly where I started, at Columbia Pictures in the talent program. This is the first gate I walked through and it will be the last I go through. Let’s get it over with.’ ”

Fortunately, he continued, “[I] stopped myself and said, ‘What kind of attitude is that? Let’s get this over with?’ Got back in my Jeep, drove it around the block, pulled back into the parking lot and said, ‘Give ’em hell.’ And I walked in and when [Casting Director] Doris Sabbagh started describing the character, I pulled [the book] The Bourne Identity out of my briefcase and said, ‘Doris, are you talking about Jason Bourne?’ And she said, ‘Yes, but we’re calling him John Black! It’s only going to last a couple of months, through sweeps period, and then you’ll be free to do what you want to do.’ ”

Hogestyn made his Salem debut on January 24, 1986, and in a 2015 interview with Digest, he admitted that as a newcomer on the DAYS set, he felt “overwhelmed. When I started on the first day, I sat there all day long. I stayed on the set in everybody’s scenes all week long, just to see how they did it. I remember watching Mac [Carey, who played Tom Horton] and Frances [Reid, who played Alice Horton] and Quinn Redeker [who played Alex Marshall] and John Clarke [who played Mickey Horton]. [And] Deidre [Hall, who plays Marlena Evans], of course, took me by the hand and said, ‘This is how you do this, this is how you do that.’ ”

It was in no small thanks to Hogestyn’s chemistry with Hall that the show abandoned its plans to make John Black a short-term role. Introduced as “The Pawn” (click here for a refresher on that landmark storyline), John was revealed to be Marlena’s thought-to-be-dead husband, Roman Brady, who had been played by Wayne Northrop from 1981-84.

As a guest on Digest‘s podcast, Dishing with Digest, in 2022, his DAYS leading lady Deidre Hall (Marlena) recalled the beginnings of her long working relationship with Hogestyn. She said, “Drake came in to audition/screen test, I guess. I had agreed to test with everybody. I ran with everybody the same amount of time, practiced with everybody the same amount of time, and did the scene with Drake. Later, everybody was saying, ‘I don’t know, what do you think?’ ‘I don’t know, what do you think?”’ And they said, ‘What do you think?’ And I said, ‘I don’t think there’s any contest.’ ‘Who do you think it is?’ I said, ‘I think it’s Drake. I mean, he’s got everything you need. I think it’s a good look. I think we look well together. I think he’s got an intensity. He’s got a strength and a masculinity but a sexiness. Of everybody that you brought in, I think he’s your best choice.’ And they had been in the same place but kind of waited for me to say it, I guess. And so he was hired. I guess none of us stopped to think, ‘He’s not really what you would call a terribly experienced actor.’ I mean, he’d been a sports guy, a baseball player.” From the start, she smiled, “He was dreamy. He loved to rehearse, wanted to get it right, very serious about the work…. I think it worked from the very first moment.”

Julie Nathanson

Hall with leading lady Deidre Hall early in his DAYS career.

Hogestyn, of course, agreed to a longer stay — and while his professional life was on the upswing, that success paled in comparison to the happy tidings in his personal life: He and Victoria wed and began raising their family — daughters Whitney, Alexandra and Rachael and son Ben (who, for a time, appeared on General Hospital as Lucas Jones) — in California. In 2018, he shared his thoughts on how to have a lasting marriage with Digest, noting, “Stay married! You just stay married. And then you just fall in love with that same person over and over and over again…. I fell in love with Victoria when I was 15, she was 12, on the baseball field. She’s on the handlebars of her girlfriend Lisa Miller’s bike, I’m playing center field, go figure. That moment she just shocked me and I just screamed, ‘No! I have too much to do with my life,’ and from then on that was it! I look at her, I see her, I can see her when she was 12, when she was 13, when she was 14, 15, 16 … all the moments.”

When Hall left DAYS in 1987, Roman moved on to other romantic pairings, most significantly opposite Genie Francis (Laura, General Hospital), who played Diana Colville, and Staci Greason, who played Isabella Toscano. In 2015, Francis told Digest, “Drake was adorable and funny,” and in 2022, Greason told Digest, “Drake really took me under his wing.” Then, in 1991, DAYS seized the opportunity to bring not only Hall, but the original Roman, Wayne Northrop, back to the show, which is how Hogestyn went back to playing John Black. The actor recalled to Digest in 2015, “I felt in a sense of fair play, I hadn’t created that character [of Roman]. Wayne did and had great success with it…. It was a good opportunity to re-explore John Black.” In 2018, he told Digest, “I hold those years [of playing Roman] very close to my heart, and I’m very proud and protective of my interpretation of Roman Brady.”

Hogestyn played John through 2009, when both he and Hall were dropped from the cast due to budget cuts. They were rehired in 2011. “I didn’t spend a lot of time thinking that DAYS was ever going to make the phone call to come back,” Hogestyn told Digest that year, adding, “Did I hope it would happen? Absolutely…. I was welcomed back with open arms. It brought a tear to my eyes.”

In May 2016, Hogestyn experienced brain injuries that kept him off the show for several months. Opening up to Digest upon his return to work in 2017, the actor said,

“I don’t know if I’m being reflective or not, but you know, this whole thing with losing Joe Mascolo [ex-Stefano, who passed away in 2016]  … I really loved that guy. I thought that he was going to live forever. I really did. I mean, his mom and dad lived up to their hundreds. So, as we go through weddings and funerals on the show, we do it in our own lives, too, and it’s kind of crazy.”

He went on to say, “I feel life is good…. Time’s going by. That’s just it. It’s amazing. It’s remarkable. We live a dual life here, you know what I mean? We not only have our real life, but we come here and have another life, and it’s really, really unusual. I wish everybody could experience this. It’s really rich and it’s really full and I’m very blessed. It’s a great way to go through life. I was texting with a [mentor] of mine [and] he said, ‘Hollywood really is a meat grinder,’ and I said, ‘Yeah. You have to know when you’re on top of the roller-coaster ride and be prepared for what’s coming next.’ Because that roller coaster goes up and goes down, and you have to have a very, very strong support group and sense of self and be very realistic. He was saying, ‘It’s amazing that you’ve had a gig half your life working in the entertainment industry on a show, and being passionate about what you love to do. How fortunate are you?’ And I said, ‘Yes. Exactly.’ ”

Hogestyn is survived by his wife, Victoria, their four children Rachael, Ben, Whitney, Alexandra and their partners, and seven grandchildren.

 YouTube said it was "unable to reach an equitable agreement" with performing rights organization SESAC before their contract expired.

Songs by Adele, Kendrick Lamar, Bob Dylan, Nirvana, Green Day and Mariah Carey, among others, are currently unavailable on YouTube due to a contract dispute between the platform and SESAC, a performing rights organization.

A YouTube spokesperson shared in a statement with The Hollywood Reporter on Saturday, “We have held good faith negotiations with SESAC to renew our existing deal. Unfortunately, despite our best efforts, we were unable to reach an equitable agreement before its expiration. We take copyright very seriously and as a result, content represented by SESAC is no longer available on YouTube in the US. We are in active conversations with SESAC and are hoping to reach a new deal as soon as possible.”

 An Ogden mother who has been fighting for life after being diagnosed with a rare terminal cancer has now been given three months to live, and she’s decided to spend it with her kids. People across the country have rallied around her, donating over $750,000 to her GoFundMe, which had an original goal of only $5,000.

Erika Carr, 30, is a single mother of two children — Jeremiah, 7, and Aaliyah, 5. She calls them her “whole life, light and soul … and what keeps [her] going.”

On May 7, 2022, Carr was diagnosed with Stage 4 Small cell lung carcinoma, a “high-grade neuroendocrine carcinoma,” she stated on her GoFundMe. Her diagnosis came the day before Mother’s Day, and she’s been battling for her life for over two years now.

Doctors told her, “I hope you have a good support system at home because you’re going to need it, you have a long and hard journey ahead of you.”

Her condition had improved — positive scans giving her the opportunity to stop treatment and see how she progressed. During this time, on Jan. 17, 2024, she developed Cushing’s syndrome — a rare hormonal disorder that occurs when the body is exposed to too much cortisol for an extended period. It has had a multitude of difficult impacts on her body, including rapid weight gain and swelling, muscle and bone deterioration, high blood pressure, and Type 2 diabetes.

Though she restarted treatment, on Sept. 18, 2024, doctors told her that she had three months to live. She’s chosen to discontinue treatment and spend that time cherishing her two children.

Carr’s been given the seemingly impossible task of planning her own funeral, and she decided to create a GoFundMe to help cover the costs. She set a modest goal, asking for only $5,000, hoping that maybe she’d be able to leave some extra money behind for her children.

She has since received over $750,000.

There have been over 26,000 donations given to her cause. She’s now created a trust fund, and she’s thankful her children will be okay when they grow up.

“It happened overnight. I never expected that,” she told ABC4. “I never expected to have a big funeral service, or a lot of people reach out and help me. With the way it’s went, I’m just in shock … just very grateful for everybody and everything that’s been there.

 Dozens killed. Hospital-goers scrambling to rooftops to be whisked away in helicopters. Mayors frantically telling citizens to flee. And inmates desperately removed from a jail directly in the path of floodwaters.

Helene has brought a cascade of destruction across the Southeast. The record-breaking storm hit Florida as a hurricane with wind speeds of 140 mph that flattened buildings. It has since weakened to a post-tropical cyclone with 25 mph winds, but the deluge of rain it carries is leaving parts of North Carolina and Tennessee underwater, and some 3.8 million are without power Saturday morning.

“It’s destroyed,” Jordon Bowen of the Florida State Guard Special Missions Unit told The Palm Beach Post, part of the USA TODAY Network, about the area where Helene made landfall. “Not accessible, debris, lots of hazards, downed power lines, houses cut in half.

Meanwhile, eye-popping rainfall totals were measured in the North Carolina mountains, including 29.6 inches at Busick and 24.2 inches at Mount Mitchell, the highest peak east of the Mississippi River and a landmark along the Blue Ridge Parkway.

Helene made landfall at about 11:10 p.m. ET Thursday near Perry, Florida, becoming the first known Category 4 storm to hit Florida’s Big Bend region since records began in 1851. The storm continued its push across western Kentucky on Saturday, and is expected to slowly move southeast, then east along the Kentucky-Tennessee border through the weekend, the National Hurricane Center said.

At least 43 people have died under Helene’s onslaught as of late Friday, according to authorities and media reports across the Southeast. Officials have said they expect the death toll to keep rising as they go door-to-door in the aftermath of the storm. Millions lost power and many lost their homes altogether or suffered extensive damage to their properties.

The destruction brought by Helene will continue to unfold even after its passing as the water it dumped flows into populated areas. But millions of people are beginning to take stock of what the storm took from them. 

Why did Helene cause so much rain?

A confluence of weather patterns over the eastern U.S. set up the historic flooding that forced people from their homes in the dead of night Friday along the Nolichucky River in Tennessee, as officials warned of dam failures and raging torrents ravaged communities.

SOURCE 

 Dame Maggie Smith, one of the world’s most distinguished actresses, has died. She was 89.

"She passed away peacefully in hospital early this morning, Friday 27th September," they continued. "An intensely private person, she was with friends and family at the end. She leaves two sons and five loving grandchildren who are devastated by the loss of their extraordinary mother and grandmother."

"We would like to take this opportunity to thank the wonderful staff at the Chelsea and Westminster Hospital for their care and unstinting kindness during her final days," Stephens and Larkin added.

The brothers concluded, "We thank you for all your kind messages and support and ask that you respect our privacy at this time."

Smith, who appeared in over 50 films, won two Academy Awards for The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1969) and California Suite (1978). She also nabbed four Golden Globe Awards and had four additional Oscar nominations.

The actress was well-known for her portrayals of Professor Minerva McGonagall in the Harry Potter film series, as well as Violet Crawley in the Downton Abbey series.

Born in Ilford, England, in 1934, Smith made her stage debut in 1952, playing Viola in a stage production of Twelfth Night. Her career spanned over 70 years, and included starring roles in television, film and theater.

Smith’s first film credit was in an uncredited appearance in 1956’s Child in the House, which she followed with a larger role in the crime drama Nowhere to Go in 1959.

A decade later, Smith won her first Oscar for Best Actress for her portrayal as an idealistic and unorthodox school teacher in The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie. Her second Academy Award came almost a decade later, for California Suite.

In 1990, the actress won a Tony Award for Lettice and Lovage. That same year, she was made a dame by Queen Elizabeth II, for her contributions to the performing arts.

In that period of time, Smith starred in several high-profile films including Sister Act (1992), Sister Act 2: Back in the Habit (1993), Hook (1991) and Tea with Mussolini (1999).

Smith introduced herself to a new generation of moviegoers in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone as Professor Minerva McGonagall: no-nonsense transfiguration teacher, head of Gryffindor house and, later, Hogwarts headmistress. The 2001 blockbuster movie spawned seven more films, with Smith reprising her beloved role in each one.

She continued acting and showing off her range in the popular BBC series Downton Abbey playing the Dowager Countess Violet Crawley, for which she won three Emmy Awards.

Speaking about her reputation, Smith once said, "It’s true I don’t tolerate fools, but then they don’t tolerate me, so I am spiky," according to the Associated Press.

'“Maybe that’s why I’m quite good at playing spiky elderly ladies," she quipped in addition.

Smith also spoke about the added mainstream fame she gained from her Downton Abbey role to The Telegraph in a 2014 interview, saying, “That’s never happened to me before,” when she explained fans had taken to recognizing her on the street.

“It’s television that does it. It was awful. I love wandering around on my own and I just couldn’t,” she said. “I don’t go places, and if I do I nearly always have to have a friend. It’s very difficult when you’re on your own because you have no escape.”

When asked about her legacy after being awarded the Evening Standard Icon Award for her work in theatre, Smith told the publication, “Everything’s an icon. If you have been around long enough you are an icon. A rather dusty icon, or a national treasure.”

The actress continued working in films such as The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel and The Lady in the Van. Her final role in a film released before her death was as Lily Fox in 2023's The Miracle Club.

Smith had two sons, Stephens and Larkin, whom she shared with her ex-husband, actor Robert Stephens. The two married in 1967 and divorced in 1975.

She married playwright Beverley Cross in 1975 and they remained married until his death in March 1998. When asked if she was lonely in a rare interview on 60 Minutes in 2013, Smith replied, “It seems a bit pointless, going on one’s own and not having someone to share it with.”

The star told The Telegraph she used work to keep her mind occupied.

“They say it goes away but it doesn’t,” she said of grieving over the loss of Cross. “It just gets different. It’s awful, but what do you do? After the busyness, you are more alone, much more. A day that is absolutely crowded keeps your mind away from why you are alone but when it stops there is that deafening silence.”

Smith is survived by her sons and five grandchildren.

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