Dolly Parton was a country music legend known for timeless hits including "Jolene," "9 to 5" and "I Will Always Love You." Dolly Parton was born Jan. 19, 1946, in Sevier County, Tennessee, and grew up in a large family in the Smoky Mountains. Dolly Parton built a career that spanned country music, pop culture, film, television, business and philanthropy. Dolly Parton starred in beloved movies including "9 to 5," "Steel Magnolias" and "The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas." Dolly Parton founded the Imagination Library, a literacy program that provided free books to children around the world.

One night in 1973, Dolly Parton had a song on her mind. She was thinking about a bank teller who had been flirting with her spouse. "She got this terrible crush on my husband," Parton told NPR in 2008. "And he just loved going to the bank because she paid him so much attention." Needing a name for this tall, redheaded temptress, she thought of another flame-haired girl, an 8-year-old who approached her for an autograph after a taping of "The Porter Wagoner Show," the TV series on which she was featured. That child's name was Jolene.

In December 1977, Dolly Parton submitted to an interview with ABC Television's Barbara Walters, much against her friends' advice. Walters was not noted for her deep love and understanding of country music. She was a notoriously tough cookie, a Boston-born, Sarah Lawrence-educated journalist who had battled scarcely believable sexism to become the first female co-host of an American news programme. The month before she met Parton, she had interviewed Anwar Sadat and Menachem Begin while they were working out the terms of the Egypt-Israel peace treaty. It was all a very long way from Parton's world, and the interview has something of the anthropological exercise about it. Walters looks aghast as Parton shows her around her tour bus, her collection of wigs and her "hand-washable and wrinkle-free" stage outfits ("you really like this? To me, it seems like horror"), and sits impassively as Parton sings Coat of Many Colours to her: an impressive feat, given the song's saga of rural povert…

President Trump's approval rating for his second term has reached a new low, according to a new poll. In the Reuters/Ipsos poll, the president's approval rating hit 33 percent, a 14-point slide from the start of his second term, when it was at 47 percent, and a 4-point slide from about a month ago, when it was at 37 percent.

A U.S. judge rejected Ghislaine ​Maxwell's bid to throw out her conviction and 20-year prison sentence for helping the late financier Jeffrey Epstein sexually ‌abuse teenage girls. In a decision made public on Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Paul Engelmayer in Manhattan said Maxwell's claims were all meritless, and all or almost all were frivolous.

Andrew Stuttaford has been a devoted chronicler of the "gray zone" provocations that cannot be directly pinned on America's adversaries but sure do have a conspicuous tendency to advance their interests. His latest dispatch on the subject follows the discovery of an explosive drone discovered at Leipzig airport, in Germany, earlier this month. German Chancellor Friedrich Merz has pledged that the people or groups behind this and other hybrid attacks on German soil "will pay for them." But, Andrew asks, how? The logic of the "gray zone" attack is that there is no return address, no chain of custody that links the attacker to the state sponsor.

Second lady Usha Vance offered a classy response to controversial Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed, who invoked her background to attack her husband, Vice President JD Vance. "I have to admit I kind of laughed," she told Fox & Friends, adding she always felt comfortable with Vance's relatives in Ohio. El-Sayed lobbed the attack on Saturday after Vance criticized his adherence to Sharia law. El-Sayed suggested the practice would be completely alien to Vance's grandfather, whom the vice president calls "Papaw."

A Massachusetts judge ruled Tuesday that the Trump administration violated a nationwide injunction by finalizing a rule that would significantly overhaul mail voting if allowed to take effect. Why it matters: The order allows the Trump administration to publish the rule Wednesday, but the U.S. Postal Service remains barred from making the dramatic changes to mail-in ballots. Driving the news: "Defendants cannot contend that they misunderstood the scope of the court's order, " U.S. District Court Judge Indira Talwani wrote in a five-page filing Tuesday afternoon.

A series of firings and feuds initiated by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has left the Army essentially rudderless as it struggles to deal with the threat posed by cheap, deadly drones and missiles that have pounded U.S. bases in the Middle East. The Army has not had a chief of staff, the service's top officer, since Mr. Hegseth fired Gen. Randy George without explanation in April, and there are no signs that he is close to filling the position, said current and former officials speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive personnel matters.

A blunt ultimatum from a dedicated social worker can completely redirect the life of a child navigating the foster care system. Decades ago, one professional gave a traumatized teenage girl a stark choice: attend a comedy camp or go to psychiatric therapy. That single decision laid the groundwork for an international comedy career. During a recent live set, Tiffany Haddish experienced a remarkable full-circle moment. A voice called out from the audience, and when the woman identified herself as Coleta, Haddish immediately stopped the show. She rushed off the stage to embrace her former social worker, Coleta Lewis. Haddish’s childhood was marked by severe trauma. As reported by Rolling Stone, her mother suffered brain damage in a car accident. View this post on Instagram “When she came home, it was like a different person came into the house,” Haddish recalled. At 12 years old, she entered the foster care system. She experienced abuse and witnessed devastating violence in her neighborhood. During an appearance on the SHE MD podcast, she revealed that she never expected to survive her youth. “I didn’t even think I would make it to 21,” she said. “I thought I would die before I was 21, because people were getting shot around me. I had been to so many funerals. So many of my friends were getting killed. It was so much devastation around me that I just … I didn’t think I would make it.” To cope with her trauma, she used humor as a defense mechanism. “I learned from Roger Rabbit that if you make people laugh, they’ll do anything for you — which is almost true,” she noted. Lewis recognized this survival tactic and presented the troubled teenager with an ultimatum. “Look, you’ve got two choices. You can go to Laugh Factory Comedy Camp, or you can go to psychiatric therapy, because something is wrong with you, child,” Lewis told her. Haddish chose the Laugh Factory. “I won all the drama festivals and asked you, ‘Which one of them got drugs?’ and you said, ain’t no drugs in therapy,” she recalled tearfully from the stage. The comedy camp provided a desperately needed creative outlet and set her on a path toward stardom. Speaking to People, Haddish reflected on the lasting impact of Lewis’ intervention. “When you’re in foster care, if the right person comes into your world, even for just a moment, they can help you reset and restart. She realized the gift I had, and she got me to a place where I could nurture that. It opened up my world,” she said. Back in the present, Haddish held Lewis in the crowd and openly wept while acknowledging how profoundly the social worker had changed the trajectory of her life decades earlier. “You saved my life. I’m where I’m at right now because of you,” Haddish told her. “You changed my life. See, I know there was a reason I was all in my feels today.” The post Tiffany Haddish broke down in tears on stage after spotting the woman who rescued her from the foster system appeared first on Upworthy.