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Princess Anne adds royal badge to Jackie Bird’s storied career

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Princess Anne adds royal badge to Jackie Bird’s storied career


Princess Anne adds royal badge to Jackie Bird’s storied career

Veteran broadcaster Jackie Bird has added a royal accolade to her impressive career, receiving an MBE from Princess Anne at Windsor Castle.

The journalist was a familiar face on Reporting Scotland for more than 30 years and was honoured for her services to broadcasting and charitable work.

Bird has served as president of the National Trust for Scotland since 2022, also played a key role hosting BBC Scotland’s Children in Need over the years.

“I’m absolutely thrilled completely surprised and delighted,” she said after the ceremony, her signature warmth shining through.

Her career began at DC Thomson’s Jackie magazine, where she climbed the ranks to become pop editor before moving across print and radio, including stints at The Sun and Radio Clyde. 

She later cut her teeth at Television South Maidstone before landing at BBC Scotland in October 1989 that would define her career.

Over three decades, Bird guided viewers through some of Scotland’s most momentous events. 

Her reporting brought clarity, compassion, and authority to homes across the nation.





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Actor Timothy Busfield turns himself in following child sex abuse allegations in New Mexico

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Actor Timothy Busfield turns himself in following child sex abuse allegations in New Mexico


Timothy Busfield turned himself into police on Tuesday after authorities in New Mexico issued an arrest warrant for the director and Emmy Award-winning actor accused of child sex abuse.

A spokesperson for the Albuquerque Police Department confirmed to CBS News that Busfield had surrendered. He was booked into the Metropolitan Detention Center in Bernalillo County on a child sex abuse charge. The arrest warrant, which was signed by a judge, said the charge was for two counts of criminal sexual contact of a minor.

An investigator with the Albuquerque Police Department on Friday filed a criminal complaint which alleged a child reported that Busfield touched him inappropriately. The acts allegedly occurred on the set of “The Cleaning Lady,” a TV series that Busfield directed and acted in.

In a video provided to TMZ, Busfield said the allegations “are all lies.”

“I did not do anything to those little boys,” the 68-year-old actor said in the video appearing to show him in Albuquerque. He said he arrived in the city after driving 2,000 miles. Busfield’s attorney did not immediately return a message seeking comment Tuesday.

Actor Timothy Busfield after being booked into the Metropolitan Detention Center in Bernalillo County, New Mexico. Jan. 13, 2026. 

Bernalillo County Metropolitan Detention Center


The criminal complaint filed by an investigator with Albuquerque police says the boy reported that he was 7 years old when Busfield touched him three or four times on private areas over his clothing. Busfield allegedly touched him five or six times on another occasion when he was 8, the complaint said.

The child was reportedly afraid to tell anyone because Busfield was the director and he feared he would get mad at him, the complaint said.

The boy’s twin brother told authorities he was touched by Busfield but did not specify where. He said he didn’t say anything because he didn’t want to get in trouble.

When interviewed by authorities, Busfield suggested that the boys’ mother was seeking revenge for her children being replaced on the series. He also said he likely would have picked up and tickled the boys, saying the set was a playful environment.

The mother of the twins — who are identified only by their initials in court records — reported to Child Protective Services that the abuse occurred between November 2022 and spring 2024, the complaint said.

“The Cleaning Lady” aired for four seasons on Fox, ending in 2025. It was produced by Warner Bros., which according to the complaint conducted its own investigation into the abuse allegations but was unable to corroborate them. 

Busfield is known for appearances in “The West Wing,” “Field of Dreams” and “Thirtysomething,” the latter of which won him an Emmy for outstanding supporting actor in a drama series in 1991. He is married to actor Melissa Gilbert, who deactivated her Instagram account amid the allegations.

Gilbert indicated through a publicist that she won’t speak publicly at the request of attorneys for Busfield while the legal process unfolds.

“Her focus is on supporting and caring for their very large family,” publicist Ame Van Iden said in a statement. “Melissa stands with and supports her husband and will address the public at an appropriate time.”

The investigation began in November 2024, when the investigator responded to a call from a doctor at the University of New Mexico Hospital in Albuquerque. The boys’ parents had gone there at the recommendation of a law firm, the complaint said.

According to the complaint, one of the boys has been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder and anxiety. A social worker documented him saying he has had nightmares about Busfield touching him.



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Scott Adams, Dilbert comic strip creator, dies at age 68 after battle with prostate cancer

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Scott Adams, Dilbert comic strip creator, dies at age 68 after battle with prostate cancer


Scott Adams, the cartoonist who created the “Dilbert” comic strip, has died at the age of 68, his first ex-wife revealed on Tuesday.  Adams said last year that he was diagnosed with an aggressive prostate cancer.

Adams’ ex-wife, Shelly Miles, announced the news of his death during a live stream of his YouTube show, “Real Coffee with Scott Adams.” 

She read a “final message” from Adams on the show, in which he wrote that he had “an amazing life” and gave it everything he had. He urged people to “be useful” and said, “please know I loved you all to the very end.” 

Scott Adams, cartoonist and author and creator of “Dilbert,” poses for a portrait in his home office on Jan. 6, 2014 in Pleasanton, California. 

Lea Suzuki/The San Francisco Chronicle via Getty Images


Adams said on an episode of his show last May that he had “the same cancer that Joe Biden has … prostate cancer that has also spread to my bones.”

He made the announcement a day after Biden announced his own diagnosis. 

President Trump posted about Adams’ death on Tuesday, calling him “a fantastic guy, who liked and respected me when it wasn’t fashionable to do so.”

“He bravely fought a long battle against a terrible disease,” Mr. Trump said on Truth Social. “My condolences go out to his family, and all of his many friends and listeners. He will be truly missed. God bless you Scott!”

Vice President JD Vance called Adams “a true American original, and a great ally to the President of the United States and the entire administration.”

Dilbert the comic strip first appeared in 1989, poking fun at office culture. It ran for decades in numerous newspapers until 2023, when it was canceled by most newspapers over comments by Adams that various publishers denounced as racist, hateful and discriminatory.  

Among other things, Adams referred to Black people as members of a “hate group” and urged White people “to get the hell away from Black people.” Newspapers such the Los Angeles Times and the USA Today network as well as distributor Andrews McMeel Universal announced they would no longer work with the cartoonist or run his strip.

Adams took to YouTube at the time to defend himself and disclosed details about the impact of losing business, saying he was likely to lose 80% of his income from Dilbert due to the cancellations.

In the message Miles read on the show Tuesday, Adams said that he wanted to explain his life. He said he spent the first part of it focusing on making himself a worthy husband and parent as a way to find meaning, then later “donated” himself to the world and evolved from Dilbert cartoonist to “an author of what I thought would be useful books.”

“From that point on I looked for ways I could add the most to peoples’ life, one way or another,” he wrote.

Poking fun at corporate culture and, later, “wokeness” 

Adams earned a bachelor’s degree from Hartwick College and an MBA from the University of California, Berkeley. He worked a corporate job at the Pacific Bell telephone company in the 1980s, sharing his cartoons to amuse co-workers. He drew Dilbert as a computer programmer and engineer for a high-tech company and mailed a batch to cartoon syndicators.

The first “Dilbert” comic strip officially appeared April 16, 1989, long before such workplace comedies as “Office Space” and “The Office.” It portrayed corporate culture as a Kafkaesque world of heavy bureaucracy and pointless benchmarks, where employee effort and skill were underappreciated.

Adams was the 1997 recipient of the National Cartoonist Society’s Reuben Award, considered one of the most prestigious awards for cartoonists. That same year, “Dilbert” became the first fictional character to make Time magazine’s list of the most influential Americans.

“Dilbert” strips were routinely photocopied, pinned up, emailed and posted online, a popularity that would spawn bestselling books, merchandise, commercials for Office Depot and an animated TV series, with Daniel Stern voicing Dilbert.

While Adams’ career fall seemed swift, careful readers of “Dilbert” saw a gradual darkening of the strip’s tone and its creator’s mindset.

He attracted attention for controversial comments, including saying in 2011 that women are treated differently by society for the same reason as children and the mentally disabled — “it’s just easier this way for everyone.” In a blog post from 2006, he questioned the death toll of the Holocaust.

In June 2020, Adams tweeted that when the “Dilbert” TV show ended in 2000 after just two seasons, it was “the third job I lost for being white.” But, at the time, he blamed it on lower viewership and time slot changes.

Adams’ views were reflected in some of his strips. In one in 2022, a boss says that traditional performance reviews would be replaced by a “wokeness” score. When an employee complains that could be subjective, the boss said, “That’ll cost you two points off your wokeness score, bigot.”

Adams put a brave face on his fall from grace, tweeting in 2023: “Only the dying leftist Fake News industry canceled me (for out-of-context news of course). Social media and banking unaffected. Personal life improved. Never been more popular in my life. Zero pushback in person. Black and White conservatives solidly supporting me.”



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X (formerly Twitter) recovers after brief global outage affects thousands

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X (formerly Twitter) recovers after brief global outage affects thousands


X (formerly Twitter) experienced a significant but brief outage on Tuesday morning, January 13, disrupting access for tens of thousands of users worldwide.

Initial reports began around 9:00 a.m. ET, with outage tracking website Downdetector reporting a peak of over 28,000 problem reports in the United States.

Users in the United Kingdom and Canada also reported widespread difficulties, mainly due to refreshing their home feeds, while other sections of the site remained accessible.

Service began to be restored rapidly around 9:30 a.m. ET, with reports falling sharply. The platform was restored completely by 10:00 a.m. ET.

Authorities have not yet revealed the cause. However, in recent months, X users have faced similar problems.

The outage is reported just days after X owner Elon Musk announced plans to open-source the platform’s recommendation algorithm, aiming for greater transparency. 





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