NEW YORK — In response to a troubling incident involving “Today” show co-host Craig Melvin, security measures are being heightened on the set. This decision follows an alarming episode where an intruder accosted Melvin in a vestibule, using a racial slur and consequently being arrested on hate crime charges, a recent report reveals.

“We are reaching out with crucial information regarding studio access for ‘Today’ interviews,” reads an excerpt from an email that show staff has distributed to Hollywood PR firms, initially published by Variety. “Following recent developments, we are enforcing stricter security protocols immediately.”

The most significant change being implemented is a restriction on the number of people accompanying guests. Going forward, only two individuals such as stylists, spokespeople, social media aides, or other necessary personnel will be allowed alongside each guest, according to the report.

“We leave the decision to you regarding which two individuals should accompany you, but there will be no exceptions or additional personnel allowed in the studio during the interviews,” the communiqué stated. Any additional staff members will need to stay in the green room, away from the studio itself.

The report comes a week after Andrew Truelove, a 41-year-old Virginia native, allegedly snuck in behind someone going through a security gate leading into a restricted area of the NBC studio at Rockefeller Center. He was allegedly hunting for Al Roker and found Melvin instead — then allegedly screamed a racial slur at him just before 9 a.m., according to city police.

No one was physically hurt, the show said in a statement, but the security lapse reportedly cost one guard his job.

“NBC and ‘Today’ take the safety and security of our employees, talent, staff and guests extremely seriously,” the show’s statement continued. “We are reviewing the incident and our security protocols and remain committed to providing a safe and secure environment for everyone who works at and visits our studios.”

“Today” show clips from that morning show Truelove loitered outside the ground-floor studio’s window for at least a half-hour, appearing in multiple shots between 8:03 .m. and 8:34, when actress Anne Hathaway was on set to discuss her role in the latest adaption of “The Odyssey.”

The incident comes just six months after another “Today” co-host’s mother was the victim in a home invasion abduction from her house in Tucson. Savannah Guthrie’s mother Nancy remains unaccounted for, and no suspects have been publicly identified.

Truelove, the man accused of hate crime burglary and menacing in the Melvin attack, had felony convictions in his home state and more than a dozen pending charges in New York before the incident. He is currently being held at a New York City jail on $10,000 bail.

Truelove pleaded not guilty at his arraignment last week and his lawyers waived an appearance at a follow-up hearing Wednesday. He’s due back in court on Aug. 5.

In October 2007, Truelove was accused of trying to abduct an 8-year-old from a school in Norfolk, Virginia. He was convicted at trial and sentenced to 10 years in prison, of which six were suspended, followed by 10 years on probation, court records show.

A psychiatrist testified he had symptoms of bipolar disorder and had stopped taking medications before the incident because they made him gain weight, according to The Virginian-Pilot.

Other charges in Virginia included trespassing, making bomb threats, destruction of property and repeated probation violations.

In 2014, he was arrested on charges of stealing signs from memorials dedicated to the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting victims.

And in 2023, after getting off of probation, he left Virginia for Southern California, where he was profiled in the Los Angeles Times in a lengthy story on his battle with homelessness.

Steven Spielberg’s latest cinematic offering, Disclosure Day, now available on VOD platforms like Prime Video, defies the typical alien invasion narrative. Unlike his 2005 film, War of the Worlds, Disclosure Day pivots away from worldwide destruction. Echoing elements of Spielberg’s 1977 classic, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, this new film invites speculation, yet stands apart as neither a direct sequel nor part of Spielberg’s imagined alien saga. As it coincidentally hits screens near the 30th anniversary of Independence Day, Disclosure Day weaves a compelling story of human intrigue rather than cataclysmic invasions. Central to its plot are the people profoundly affected by alien interactions, who are now on a mission to release once-secret information about these otherworldly beings to the global public.

In a twist that leans more towards the realm of journalism than alien fantasy, the film’s climax is strikingly reminiscent of Spielberg’s The Post, sparking varied reactions. Some call it a touch naive, reflecting a Boomer mindset, while others find it deeply touching. Even younger audiences, like my 10-year-old daughter, expressed mixed feelings, viewing the ending as a bit of a narrative shortcut. So, what message is Spielberg communicating through his famously unpredictable and quintessentially Spielbergian conclusion? Let’s delve into the movie’s entirety, spoilers and all, to uncover its true essence.

**Spoilers for Disclosure Day follow**

The film thrusts viewers into the action with an opening scene of high tension: Daniel Kellner, played by Josh O’Connor, is engaged in a tense negotiation. He trades a hardware device packed with classified material to secure the release of his girlfriend, Jane, portrayed by Eve Hewson. Yet, the pair subvert expectations by brandishing a mysterious weapon, subduing her captors, and escaping with the vital files intact. The narrative follows a private contractor determined to reclaim the evidence, which showcases undeniable proof of Earthly visits by extraterrestrial life.

Running parallel to Daniel’s saga is the story of Margaret, played by Emily Blunt, a TV weather presenter who inadvertently acquires the ability to speak multiple languages and employ sense-bending powers. Her newfound skills draw her into Daniel’s orbit, culminating in the revelation that both she and Daniel interacted with aliens during their childhoods—each bestowed with unique abilities. Daniel intuitively comprehends the mathematical language of the aliens, while Margaret has been granted the gift of universal communication. This shared revelation is dramatically explored through a reenactment of Margaret’s childhood home, a poignant setting that helps unlock their buried memories.

Ultimately, Margaret decides to join Daniel’s quest to liberate this information and broadcast “full disclosure” of the alien contact to the whole world. Jane, who once trained to become a nun before deciding she couldn’t go through with it, has worried that this revelation will destroy or irrevocably alter the faith of many religious believers, because they’ll be faced with a different form of “higher power” than they’ve been trained to expect. Similarly (albeit less humanistically), the company in pursuit of Daniel and the files argues that it is too dangerous for humanity at large to be made aware of otherworldly life. There’s also the matter of the footage itself, some of which features abject cruelty and experimentation visited upon these creatures by the U.S. government and others.

Disclosure Day Ending Explained: What Happens When Aliens Go Public?

The climax of Disclosure Day involves Margaret using her broadcasting experience to deliver proof of 70 years’ worth of alien encounters to the world. Spielberg depicts this as an epochal breaking news event, cutting to viewers around the world stopped dead in their tracks to watch these revelations unfold, whether on televisions or smartphones — though notably, the broadcast itself is from an old-fashioned network affiliate in Margaret’s Kansas City home. That particular medium, the composite nature of the movie’s UFO lore (the aliens look like stereotypical aliens, grayish and slim with big, dark eyes), and the shots of people staring wide-eyed at this footage (rather than shrugging it off as an A.I. deepfake, or muttering that the aliens had it coming for not coming onto this planet the right way) have prompted some to describe Spielberg’s depiction of this whole section as hopelessly corny and out-of-touch.

There’s even an escalating global conflict in the background of the movie, serious enough for characters to be doing apocalyptic-style supply runs even before hearing anything about aliens, that seems to freeze in its tracks as the world watchtes the alien footage. After the events of the past quarter-century, how can this filmmaker’s view of humanity be anything but a Baby Boomer delusion that should have been expired years ago? Or was maybe even actively murdered by a quorum of Boomers themselves?

With that in mind, the actual closing moments of the movie are arguably even more enervating. An actual alien is wheeled out (from where? Chaperoned by who?) into the TV studio, and whispers something to Margaret, who, remember, has the gift of communication and understanding. She turns to the camera to impart what the alien has said to the world at large — which is now, we’ve seen, watching intently. She says, to the TV camera and to Spielberg’s: “Listen.” And then the movie cuts to black. Roll credits.

This is intentionally open-ended, with two obvious (and potentially overlapping) meanings: “Listen” as in, “Listen up, here are the details of what the alien just whispered to me,” or the simple, single-word command, or possibly plea: listen to each other, rather than reacting with violence or hostility. Even if the latter isn’t literally all that Margaret is going to say, that’s all we hear, and so it’s more than fair to interpret it that way. It’s the ultimate confirmation of Spielberg’s soggy, centrist, milquetoast, inane, quasi-apolitical intentions.

Or is it? I’m not so sure that’s exactly what Spielberg is up to here. Disclosure Day is a much more optimistic film than his War of the Worlds, an alien invasion movie that itself felt like an answer to the cosmic mysteries of Close Encounters, the gung-ho-but-hands-clean warfare of Independence Day, and the real-life horrors of 9/11 all at once. Yet there’s a clear sense, based on War of the Worlds and other Spielberg movies of the past 20 years, that Disclosure Day isn’t so much his vision of how the world is, but what he hopes it could still be.

Even that hope is relatively open-ended. The people gathered around their screens aren’t necessarily experiencing newfound togetherness. We don’t see what pundits and talking heads start blabbing about as soon as the news breaks, or what statements governments (including our own) issue in response. We don’t see more than a few minutes’ worth of reactions from anyone, really; we only see the pause. We instinctively hope that it doesn’t precede a storm. Margaret asks us to listen, maybe we learn forward in our seats, and the movie ends, leaving the ultimate fate of this information in this world unknown. Spielberg isn’t asking for a lifetime’s worth of disbelief to be suspended indefinitely. He’s asking for a moment, and not even necessarily a moment of peace (though would that be so bad?) but a moment of quiet.

In this sense, it’s possible to read Disclosure Day as a reverse course from War of the Worlds, where aliens stood in for a terrorist attack, mankind quickly became stand-ins for insurgent responses to invasion, and, as in the original source material, Earth is saved mainly by a whim of nature, not our ability to band together and persevere — or to listen. Yet I don’t know that Spielberg is so much repenting for that movie, either; it’s more like he’s arguing with himself (both-sides-ing himself, even?) about where humanity is headed. Disclosure Day also feels like a conscious throwback to a lot of pre-9/11 alien material. There’s the aforementioned ID4, as well as more conspiracy-minded stories on The X-Files, both of which take government cover-ups of alien visitation as a given. Is Spielberg attempting to challenge the notion that the world was a simpler and more optimistic place in the 1990s, and reconcile those tropes with our fraught contemporary situation?

It’s not entirely clear, and for an entertainer sometimes criticized for coddling the audience or holding its hand, the optimistic yet open-ended nature of Disclosure Day‘s finale is too interesting (or, for some, too moving) to be ascribed to a cheap cop-out into hopecore territory. If anything, it’s a different sort of filmmaker’s fantasy: That images really do still have the power to stop us in our tracks, even if they won’t necessarily all suddenly transport us to the same page.

Spielberg may not know where humanity is headed, and may not be so starry-eyed as to believe in our innate goodness. But he certainly believes in cinema.

Jesse Hassenger (@rockmarooned) is a writer living in Brooklyn. He’s a regular contributor to The A.V. Club, Polygon, and The Week, among others. He podcasts at www.sportsalcohol.com, too.

On the set of The View, Whoopi Goldberg and Sunny Hostin made a clear call to action, encouraging Americans to support midterm candidates who challenge the Trump administration.

The conversation was sparked on Thursday when Goldberg, 70, dismissed a discussion among her cohosts about prospective presidential candidates for 2028. She deemed these speculations as irrelevant at the moment. 

“I don’t care what happens in 2028 right now. I want this,” she emphatically stated, gesturing towards the panel’s table to emphasize her point.

Clarifying the timeline, Sunny Hostin interjected, “2026, November,” prompting Goldberg to agree with the correction.  

“Let us—I beg you all. I beg you all,” Goldberg implored. She acknowledged that her fellow panelists’ concerns about certain progressive figures eyeing the Democratic presidential nomination might be justified. 

‘But I don’t know. But I’m telling you, we must re-adjust what’s going on,’ she said.

‘Right the ship,’ Hostin, 57, again clarified.

‘Right now,’ Goldberg agreed emphatically. ‘We have to right the ship.’ The comments come just months after FCC Chairman Brendan Carr opened a probe into the program concerning political speech.

The investigation is looking for potential violations of a 92-year-old guidance known as the ‘Equal Time’ rule, which was revived by FCC earlier this year.

Exemptions enacted in the ’90s have seen shows like The View treated as a ‘bona fide’ newscast rather than a partisan program. 

For the former, guests are booked based on newsworthiness, not relevance.    

The guidance was originally designed to ensure broadcast stations provided equal time to opposing political candidates when it was passed in the 1930s. 

Carr, a Trump appointee, also ordered an early review into ABC’s already scheduled license renewals for eight of its stations back in April.

The early renewal order was made following an investigation into ABC parent company Disney’s DEI initiatives that Carr said found the company’s local affiliates were not operating in the public interest.

The Equal Time probe, though, is threatening to thrust the arrangement The View has enjoyed into jeopardy.

Still, Sara Haines laughed on Thursday’s episode ‘Clean this ship up!’ after Hostin agreed with Goldberg.

Goldberg riffed: ‘Clean this ship up, and then we can talk about what can and cannot happen.

‘Because until we get to a place where everybody has a shot – you know, where people aren’t saying, “well, you’re a woman, you can’t do this.”

‘There’s just a lot of stuff people are saying that have to do with a lot of the stuff we fought and removed to make it so everybody could do it,’ she concluded.

The Daily Mail has approached ABC News for comment.

Intriguing excerpts from the initial ransom note associated with the Nancy Guthrie case have surfaced. The revelations come after a seasoned Arizona journalist presented them during a popular true crime podcast episode on Wednesday.

Briana Whitney, who was part of the Phoenix-based AZ Family news team when the case made headlines, joined Ashley Flowers on the “Crime Junkie” podcast. There, they delved into the ransom note and a peculiar “wrench attack” hypothesis that gained traction back in May.

A representative for “Crime Junkie” confirmed that the podcast wouldn’t release the ransom text itself, as it lacks independent verification. Nonetheless, Whitney captivated listeners by reading selections during the broadcast:

“Hello Savannah, We have your mother Nancy,” she began, reading from what she said was the first note sent to local media. “She is safe but scared. She will be held for ransom, and once payment is received, she will be released unharmed. We will be holding her for a maximum of seven days.”

As previously conveyed by authorities, the sender gave two deadlines with increased money demands the longer it took.

“Once payment is received to the Bitcoin address below, she will be released within 12 hours of deposit to a safe drop-off location back in Tucson,” Whitney read. “If the payment is not received by the last deadline on Monday the 9th at 5 p.m., she will be killed. Your mother is aware of this, and her life is in your hands.”

The sender left no room for further dialogue.

“It is in the best interest of everyone to have this completed as soon as possible,” the note reportedly continued. “You will not be able to contact me from here on out. There will be no negotiation. Do not play games. Law enforcement will not be able to help you.”

The note also included details that may have only been available to investigators and the suspect at the time, including the location of Guthrie’s Apple watch and details about the smashed floodlight in her backyard.

She also read from a purported second note, which claimed that the kidnappers had underestimated Guthrie’s health and that she had died shortly after being taken. That note reportedly included an apology at the end.

Guthrie was taken from her Tucson home in the early morning hours of Feb. 1, according to the Pima County Sheriff’s Department and the FBI.

The only known suspect remains publicly unidentified — a masked intruder who appeared on Nest doorbell camera video that the FBI recovered with help from Google.

He is described as standing between 5 feet, 9 inches and 5 feet, 10 inches tall with an average build. He was wearing a black Ozark Trail backpack.

The sum of rewards in the case is over $1.2 million.

Anyone with information is asked to dial 1-800-CALL-FBI. Tips can also be submitted anonymously to Tucson’s Crime Stoppers affiliate at 520-88-CRIME.

Can the Los Angeles Dodgers be dethroned in the National League, or are they destined for a historic third consecutive pennant win?

This burning question forms the heart of a lively debate between California Post baseball columnists Dylan Hernandez and Jack Harris in the latest episode of the Dodgers Post podcast. Their discussion follows the Dodgers’ recent series victory over the Phillies, which further cements the team’s ambitions for a World Series trifecta.

The Phillies were anticipated to be formidable opponents for the Dodgers this season, alongside other potential rivals in the NL such as the Brewers, Braves, and Cubs.

However, with the Dodgers clinching two of three games at Citizens Bank Park, Hernandez and Harris delve into the pressing question of whether any team in the league genuinely stands a chance of thwarting the Dodgers’ quest for another World Series title.

Later, the two also discuss Kyle Tucker’s ongoing slump, the latest updates on Shohei Ohtani’s knee injury and Dalton Rushing’s progress while serving as starting catcher in Will Smith’s absence.

They also analyze the team’s plans for the upcoming trade deadline, and why — as of now — the Dodgers still seem unlikely to make any splashy acquisitions.

Then, as always, they open up the mailbag and answer questions from the audience, including whether the team would have been better off re-signing Cody Bellinger this winter.

Finally, they wrap up by reviewing their predictions from last week, making new ones for the Dodgers’ upcoming series against the Mets and quizzing each other with trivia.

All that and more on the latest episode of the Dodgers Post podcast. Subscribe on YouTube or follow along on Apple and Spotify.