LEWISBURG — Stephanie Balliet discovered her life’s work amid one of the most difficult times in her young life.
Following an assault by a stranger at the age of 12 while attending a sleepover at a friend’s house, Balliet received services from Transitions PA during the ensuing three-year-long court case involving her alleged abuser.
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Richard Painter, a University of Minnesota law professor who served in the White House as George W. Bush’s chief ethics lawyer, told me there is no parallel in American history for what we are witnessing. “Corruption scandals have usually involved campaign money going to politicians, from both parties,” Painter said. “This is the first time one has involved the President’s personal businesses and personal money.”
Some of the details leading up to last week’s pardon are murky. But, from reporting by several media outlets, we know quite a bit about the relationship between Binance and World Liberty Financial (W.L.F.), the crypto business that is majority-owned by the Trump family. Zhao was released from prison last September. According to a Bloombergarticle, two sources said that, shortly after Trump’s reëlection, Zhao met with the businessman Steve Witkoff, a partner of the Trumps in W.L.F. who later went on to become the United States special envoy to the Middle East, at a Bitcoin conference in Abu Dhabi. (Bloomberg also cited a source close to Witkoff who said that Witkoff doesn’t recall this meeting.) In March, the Wall Street Journalreported that Zhao was pushing for a Presidential pardon, and that representatives of the Trump family had held talks about taking a stake in the U.S. arm of Binance. (At the time, Zhao denied seeking clemency, and no deal materialized.) That same month, W.L.F. announced that it was entering the fast-growing market for stablecoins and creating its own coin, USD1.
Stablecoins are digital money designed to be less volatile than cryptocurrencies like bitcoin. Unlike other digital assets, the value of stablecoins is meant to be backed, one to one, by reserves of safe assets, such as U.S. Treasuries. W.L.F.’s decision to launch USD1 came just before Congress began considering a piece of legislation to establish a regulatory framework for stablecoins, the GENIUS Act, which Trump eventually signed this past summer. And, in rolling out USD1, W.L.F. was looking to compete with established stablecoins including Tether, which was launched in 2014 by a crypto company of the same name, and USDC, which the fin-tech company Circle issued in 2018.
As with any new crypto product, the challenge facing W.L.F. was to get USD1 widely adopted. It got a big break in May, when Binance agreed to accept a two-billion-dollar investment from MGX—a fund controlled by the U.A.E. government—that was paid for using the Trump stablecoin. A spokesperson for MGX toldForbes that Binance asked for the deal to be settled in cryptocurrency, and the parties settled on USD1 because it is “backed 1:1 by a conservative mix of U.S. dollar-denominated assets . . . all held and managed by an independent, U.S.-based custodian in externally audited custodial accounts.” For W.L.F. and its new digital dollar, the transaction was transformative. “The deal caused the amount of the cryptocurrency in circulation to erupt 15-fold and overnight become one of the world’s largest,” the Journalnoted. Also, MGX’s purchase of USD1 to close the deal sent a surge of capital to W.L.F., which, as long as Binance held onto the currency, the Trump company could invest in Treasuries and other safe securities to generate returns that Bloomberg estimated at about eighty million dollars a year.
An in-depth investigation by the Times, in September, pointed out that, two weeks after M.G.X. bought into Binance, the White House agreed to allow the U.A.E. to import hundreds of thousands of advanced computer chips that are used to train A.I. models, and which were subject to U.S. export restrictions. The Binance investment raised questions about the motivation of the U.A.E., an oil-rich Gulf kingdom, and about the Trump Administration’s security policies. But the most immediate beneficiary of the transaction was W.L.F. “We thank MGX and Binance for their trust in us,” the World Liberty C.E.O., Zach Witkoff, who is Steve’s son, said at a conference in Dubai.
Binance’s involvement with W.L.F. reportedly went beyond accepting USD1 as a means of payment and holding onto it. Bloomberg, citing three unidentified sources, reported that “Binance wrote the basic code to power USD1.” (A World Liberty spokesperson told the outlet that its report was “factually deficient.” A spokesperson for Binance said it followed “its standard listing process.”) The Journalreported on a partnership between W.L.F. and the crypto-trading platform PancakeSwap that was intended to boost adoption of USD1. PancakeSwap was created in 2020 by anonymous developers, who, according to the Journal, worked at Binance. The article also quoted Trevor Xu, a crypto entrepreneur based in Melbourne, Australia, who said, “The main narrative in the ecosystem is that Binance is supporting USD1.”
PEABODY — A Danvers man was arrested after he allegedly stole a car, sped away from police and crashed into two other vehicles on Lynn Street on Friday morning, Peabody police said.
Timothy Crane, 32, was traveling down Lynn Street toward Washington Street around 10:30 a.m. when police were alerted that the vehicle he was driving, which was allegedly stolen, was in the area, Peabody Police Lt. David Bonfanti said.
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Police investigated 129 complaints in September, according to the newspaper on this day in 1940. Among those were 28 arrests for drunkenness, four reports of sidewalk defects, 23 calls due to lights being out, and 27 calls for lights left…
SALEM — The trial of a wounded North Andover police officer could get underway as early as January, after an Essex County Superior Court judge pushes for the case to be tried sooner rather than later.
Kelsey Fitzsimmons’ lawyer, Timothy Bradl, and state prosecutor James Gubitose agreed to a pretrial assignment conference Nov. 25 to set a trial date after a pretrial conference Tuesday with her lawyer absent from the courtroom.
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CONCORD, N.H. — Two men have been charged with murder in connection with the fatal stabbing of a man in Derry in May.
New Hampshire Attorney General John Formella, New Hampshire State Police Col. Mark Hall and Derry Police Chief George Feole announced the arrests of Jeffrey Li, 18, and Marco Junior Marquez Vera, 20, on Monday.
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It has been far too long since we’ve read a speculative novel as powerful and political as Helena Haywoode Henry’s debut novel, Last Chance Live! This book centers around a reality TV show of the same name starring ten death row inmates between the ages of 18 to 21. The winner gains clemency, and the losers receive the death penalty within a week of exiting the show.
Last Chance Live! has all the makings of any popular reality show: drama, sabotage, secrets, and betrayals. Viewers root for and decide which contestant deserves a second chance at freedom. It sparks conversations among the general public and readers of which capital crimes can be forgiven, especially when the perpetrators are so young.
We sped through Last Chance Live! within a day, and we have a feeling it’ll stick with us for years to come. Its social commentary and themes of justice, mercy, and agency are too compelling to ignore. Here are three things that stood out to us about Helena Haywoode Henry’s Last Chance Live!
Image Source: Penguin Random House
Book Overview: Last Chance Live!
Content warnings: death, murder, death penalty, suicide, suicidal thoughts, bodies/corpses, prison, graphic violence, gore, torture, rape, sexual abuse, cutting, bullying, fatphobia, slurs, guns, car accident, attempted arson, swearing (Please read at your discretion!)
Summary:Last Chance Live! is the most popular reality show in America—and eighteen-year-old death row inmate Eternity Price’s last chance to live. Getting cast on the show could win her clemency preventing her execution… if she can convince the viewing audience she deserves a second chance. The catch? If America doesn’t vote for her, she loses the chance to appeal her sentence, and she’ll be executed within a week of being eliminated from the show. And since Eternity’s been unpopular her whole life, she’s terrified America won’t pick her. But any chance of getting out of prison and back to her little brother Sincere, no matter how slim, is better than rotting away in her cell.
Eternity never expected to find her first real friends in a reality TV house full of people battling for survival after being convicted of capital crimes, but that’s exactly what happens. So when she gets the opportunity to sabotage them and secure her own victory, she has a choice to make: protect the friendships and acceptance she’s always longed for at the cost of her own life, or sacrifice her newfound community. Eternity must ultimately decide what forgiveness, family, and freedom mean to her, and how far she’ll go to win a game where the stakes are literally life or death.
The Show’s Contestants
Last Chance Live! gives us a diverse group of young convicted criminals with a wide range of crimes. When we watch any reality show (or in this case, read about it), it’s easy to root for more than one contestant to win. But when the show’s sole winner gets freedom for a new life and the rest inevitably gets the death penalty, we learned not to get too attached to the characters. Even so, we had so many conflicted feelings toward each person, especially after the reveal of their crime. Like Eternity, the more the show went on, the more we wanted multiple contestants to survive and make it out.
Eternity’s Strategies
When the cast of Last Chance Live! are all death row inmates, it’s safe to say there are a lot of morally gray areas to consider. Eternity and the other contestants are fighting for their literal lives. They need to curry favor with the public, making sure their image on the show gives them the most votes. They also need to be ruthless no matter what. Eternity learns this the hard way after trying to set up an alliance with all the Black contestants. She twists and sabotages her way through each vote, somehow making it farther than she expected. But things come to a head when she starts to see how much her actions affect others, and she doesn’t only want herself to win anymore.
The Narration In Verse
Another thing that stood out to us in Last Chance Live! is the use of verse in Eternity’s narration. These poems allow us to slow our reading and really take in each word. We aren’t quite sure if there are any clear patterns behind each section of verse. And we never know when they’ll happen. They’re abrupt, cutting in to the prose and then reverting right back almost as if they didn’t happen. This unabridged access to Eternity’s thoughts puts us directly into her shoes, feeling her anxiety and terror as a result of her environment. Now we’re the ones in survival mode—in fight, flight, freeze, or fawn mode.
It didn’t take much for us to be hooked on Helene Haywoode Henry’s chilling speculative novel, Last Chance Live! From its themes of justice and agency to its masterful characterization and narration, we already want to reread it and uncover even more layers.
Last Chance Live! by Helena Haywoode Henry comes out October 7th, and you can order a copy of it here!
What do you think of the concept behind Last Chance Live! by Helena Haywoode Henry? Did you connect with her debut novel as much as we did? Let us know on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram!
METHUEN — The city has followed up a “declaration of war” against human trafficking with the investigation of another business and the creation of a task force.
On Monday, city inspectors shut down Eastern Bodywork Therapy, which officials allege is a front for human trafficking. Mayor D.J. Beauregard, who had announced the crackdown on Sunday, said in a press release that the task force would hold both the perpetrators and landlords accountable.
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METHUEN — The manager of Beauty Garden Spa on Wallace Street is facing human trafficking charges after a lengthy police investigation.
Suping Zhu, 38, of Flushing, New York, is to be arraigned Monday in Lawrence District Court on charges that include deriving support from prostitution and trafficking person for sexual servitude.
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METHUEN — The manager of Beauty Garden Spa on Wallace Street is facing human trafficking charges after a lengthy police investigation.
Suping Zhu, 38, of Flushing, New York, is to be arraigned Monday in Lawrence District Court on charges that include deriving support from prostitution and trafficking person for sexual servitude.
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NASHUA, N.H. — A man charged in a fatal shooting at a New Hampshire country club where authorities say restaurant patrons acted quickly to stop the gunman made a brief initial court appearance Monday and was ordered to return in early October.
One person was killed and two others were wounded by gunfire Saturday at Sky Meadow Country Club in Nashua.
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Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
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By PATRICK WHITTLE and HOLLY RAMER – Associated Press
ALLENSTOWN, N.H. — It’s one of the most well-known Doe cases in the United States, and one that has haunted amateur sleuths, podcasters, and the public for more than two decades. Now, the DNA Doe Project has determined the identity of the little girl found in a barrel in Bear Brook State Park in 2000.
Her name was Rea Rasmussen, daughter of Terry Rasmussen and Pepper Reed. Terry Rasmussen, a serial killer believed to be responsible for the Bear Brook murders, may have also murdered Pepper Reed, who went missing in the late 1970s.
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SALEM, Mass. — An off-duty North Andover police officer who was shot in her home by a colleague serving a restraining order will be released to the custody of her mother and stepfather under GPS-monitored home confinement as she awaits trial.
Kelsey Fitzsimmons, 28, of North Andover pleaded not guilty Thursday following her arraignment on a charge of assault by means of a dangerous weapon in Essex County Superior Court.
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