GRIF MAG

Survivor season 50 ended on May 20

NEED TO KNOW

• For only the second time in 50 seasons, the winner won $2 million

• Losing players didn't go home empty-handed, though; they also won prize money depending on their performance

Survivor 50: In the Hands of the Fanshas already broken many of the show's barriers, and the final prize is no different.

For only the second time inSurvivorhistory, the show introduced a $2 million prize for the winner of the historic season — doubling the traditional $1 million that's been given out for 48 of the last 49 seasons.

The pot increased after internet personalityMrBeast surprised the contestantsand revealed that they could double the reward if they flipped a coin the right way. Luckily, Rick Devens had fate on his side, as he correctly tossed up the coin to score a $2 million total prize pot.

In addition to the $2 million for the winner, the show also announced that the$100,000 Fan Favorite vote, nicknamed the Sia Prize, returnedand is “in the hands of the fans.”

While only one person gets to take home the grand prize at the end of each season, the remainder of the contestants reportedly also receive some amount of money depending on how well they did in the competition.

"I think people are always surprised to learn that we do earn money,” Corinne Kaplan, who played on seasons 17 and 26, said in a September 2021 episode of theTrading Secretspodcast. “The same pot of money exists no matter how many players there are.” CBS did not immediately respond to PEOPLE's request for comment.

So, how much money have the past winners and contestants onSurvivorwon? Here's everything to know about what theSurvivorwinner gets.

What does the winner ofSurvivorget?

Ever sinceSurvivorpremiered in 2000, the contestants have competed to win the grand prize and the title of Sole Survivor. For 48 seasons, the prize was $1 million but in 2020 and 2026, the pot increased to $2 million.

However, the winner doesn't get to pocket the entire prize, since thousands of dollars have to go to federal and state taxes. The total amount of money a winner receives depends on their state's income taxes.

It's crucial that the winner pay the taxes, as season 1 winner Richard Hatch spent nearly three years in federal prison for not paying up. He told PEOPLE in April 2023 that legal fees and missed work "more than wiped out the money."

HasSurvivorever increased the prize fund?

The $1 million prize fund has mostly stayed the same since season 1 in 2000.

However, the CBS show doubled the jackpot to $2 million twice: once to celebrate the 40th season,Survivor: Winners at War, in 2020, and again to celebrate the 50th season. The former season featured 20 winners from past seasons ofSurvivorto compete for the highest prize fund in history.Tony Vlachoswas named the winner.

"The $2 million prize was all CBS," hostJeff ProbsttoldEntertainment Weeklyin January 2020. "The truth is, Kelly Kahl is the guy at CBS who back in season 2 movedSurvivorto go up againstFriends. And we beatFriendsin the ratings and his career was really made in that moment."

Probst continued, "He's been invested inSurvivorforever. And he has given us free rein to do what we want for a long time. And this season he said, 'Can you try to make winners happen? And can we give them a $2 million prize?' "

In 2026, MrBeast helped raise the pot to $2 million.

How much do the second and third-place finishers get?

Even though they didn't snag the title of Sole Survivor, contestants who get second and third place also walk away with a significant amount of money.

Advertisement

The runner-up receives $100,000 and the third place finisher gets $85,000, according toToday. Kaplan confirmed the prize amounts during a 2021 appearance on theTrading Secretspodcast.

Do allSurvivorcontestants get paid?

Every contestant who has appeared onSurvivorhas reportedly been paid some amount of money for their time.

Kaplan claimed during herTrading Secretspodcast appearance that the amount of money a contestant wins depends on how they placed and how many people are competing on a certain season.

According to Kaplan, "the same pot of money exists no matter how many players there are." So if there are more contestants in a season, then each person gets less money. The sooner the contestants get eliminated, the less money they take home. (Season 50 featured thelargest group of contestantsever at 24.)

"So, what happens is, roughly, the first person voted out makes like $2,500, [and] it goes up very incrementally," Kaplan claimed. "Those people only make a few thousand, and there's a couple hundred [dollars] difference between them."

However, once there are enough people eliminated and people qualify to be members of the jury, their payout "starts going up by $10K," according to Kaplan.

"It works backwards," she said, claiming that each person on the jury makes $10,000 less than the contestant who made it one place ahead of them (excluding the winner).

Do contestants get paid to appear on the live reunion?

For several years,Survivorheld alive reunionafter the season finale. The special episode was paused ahead of season 40 because of the COVID-19 pandemic and resumed forSurvivor50.

When the live reunion was in its heyday, it was another opportunity for every contestant to take home more money. Kaplan claimed that regardless of where a contestant finished in the season, everyone was offered $10,000 to participate in the reunion.

Kaplan claimed, "The reason that that ticket is so high is because most people, if they were wronged on the show or whatever, if there wasn’t a big ticket attached to it, you might just be like. 'F--- it I’m not going,' so they make that very high."

What is the Sia Prize?

Like manySurvivorfans, singerSiahasn't always been thrilled by who won the reality TV show. The superfan decided to take matters into her own hands in 2016 when she gaveTai Trang$50,000 of her own money after he didn’t win season 32. She then decided to continue giving money to her favorite contestants, nicknaming the award the “Sia Prize.”

The award continued for eight years and 14 seasons, during which time she gave a total sum of over $1 million to her favorite contestants. However, Probst announced in 2024 that theSia Prize would endafter season 46.

"After eight years, 14 seasons, 19 players and over $1,000,000 awarded, Survivor is officially bringing the Sia Prize to a triumphant end!” he posted on his Instagram Stories in May 2024. “So it is with tremendous gratitude and admiration to Sia that we bring to a close one of the most unique relationships a TV show could ever have with a pop star of Sia’s global wattage.”

Among the special Sia Prize winners included seven players to whom she gave $100,000 — including Rick Devens (season 38), Elaine Stott (39), Janet Carbin (39), Drea Wheeler (42), Jesse Lopez (43),Carolyn Wiger (44)and Katurah Topps (45).

The other 11 contestants who won the coveted money were Donathan Hurley (36), Davie Rickenbacker (37), Aurora McCreary (38), Joe Anglim (38), Jamal Shipman (39), Owen Knight (43), Ryan Medrano (43), Lauren Harpe (44), Carson Garrett (44), Jake O’ Kane (45) and Kaleb Gebrewold (45).

Sia brought the prize back forSurvivor 50, promising to give whomever won a fan vote for favorite player $100,000, perVariety.

Read the original article onPeople

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Ukrainian drones smashed into another Russian refinery overnight, starting a fire that produced huge clouds of black smoke, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Thursday, in what appeared to be the latest long-rangeattack on Moscow’s vital oil industry.

Russia Ukraine War

The drones targeted the Syzran oil refinery, located more than 800 kilometers (500 miles) inside Russia, Zelenskyy said on social media, where he posted a video of the aftermath.

It was not possible to verify the video or independently confirm the attack. The governor of Russia’s Samara region, Vyacheslav Fedorishchev, said that two people were killed by Ukrainian drones in Syzran but he didn’t mention the refinery. Russia’s Astra news outlet said that Ukrainian drones struck the Syzran refinery owned by oil and gas giant Rosneft.

Ukraine has expanded its mid- and long-range strike capabilities, deployingeye-catching drone and missile technologythat it has developed domestically as it battles to defeatRussia’s 4-year-old invasion. Ukrainian weaponry and expertise are nowsought by other countries, whereas earlier in the war Kyiv had to plead for massive foreign military aid.

Ukrainian drones hit another refinery the previous day, Zelenskyy said, as attacks on Russian oil assets that play a key part in funding the invasion have become almost daily occurrences.

“Overall, our long-range plan for May is being carried out largely in full,” Zelenskyy said in a social media post late Wednesday. “The key targets are Russian oil refineries, storage facilities, and other infrastructure tied to these oil revenues.”

The escalating attacks have hurt Moscow’s revenue at the same time as it feels the economic pinch of international sanctions. With some attacksreaching more than 1,500 kilometers(900 miles) into Russian soil, the strikes have contributed to some Russians feeling unsafe due to the war and heaped pressure on Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Ukraine’s new reach has also helped it push Russian troops back along parts of the front line, with Ukrainian forces making their most significant battlefield gains since 2024, according to the Institute for the Study of War.

“Ukraine’s intensified midrange strike campaign against Russian logistics, military equipment, and manpower since early 2026 has also degraded Russian forces’ ability to conduct offensive operations across the theater and has also likely supported recent Ukrainian advances,” the Washington-based think tank said in an assessment late Wednesday.

Advertisement

Russia’s Defense Ministry said that air defenses downed 121 Ukrainian drones between late Wednesday and early Thursday.

In the Belgorod region that borders Ukraine, eight people were injured by Ukrainian drones, according to the regional governor, Alexander Shuvayev.

Russia has also invested heavily in drones, using them to bombard civilian areas of Ukraine throughout the war and killing more than 15,000 civilians, according to the United Nations.

Ukraine’s air force said Thursday it shot down 109 out of 116 drones that Russia launched overnight.

One civilian was killed and at least six others were wounded in the strikes in the north, south and east of the country, emergency services said.

Hatton reported from Lisbon, Portugal.

Follow the AP’s coverage of the war in Ukraine athttps://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine

Sofia Richie Grainge celebrated her daughter Eloise's second birthday with sweet Instagram photos featuring family moments

NEED TO KNOW

• The family welcomed son Henry in March and shared a touching photo of Eloise reaching for her baby brother's hand to mark the milestone

• Richie Grainge previously shared heartfelt tributes to Eloise, calling her daughter her “purpose” and “heaven on earth”

Sofia Richie Grainge's little girl is two!

On Wednesday, May 20, the model, 27, shared anInstagram carouselof beautiful shots of hertoddler daughter, Eloise, to mark her second birthday.

“Two years of loving you,” she captioned the images, which featured her enjoying some time in a ball-filled bounce house with her little girl and tenderly kissing her cheek.

Other snaps included her cradling her bump while pregnant with her daughter, Eloise enjoying some daddy-daughter time with her music executive husband,Elliot Grainge, 32, and a sweet snap of Richie Grainge and her daughter sporting matching green pajamas.

One heartwarming image showed Eloise's little hand reaching out to hernew baby brother, Henry, who joined the family back in March.

The family announced that they were now a family of four on March 25 when Richie shared a picture of her baby boy, Henry, cuddling with his big sister, Eloise, in a post onher Instagram.

"Henry Cecil Grainge 💙 03/18/26," Richie Grainge wrote in her caption. "Loves of my life."

Advertisement

Richie Grainge and Grainge first became parents when theywelcomed Eloise in May 2024andannounced their family was growing again in October.

Sharing an Instagram snap of her bump, Richie Grainge shared, "On my way to launch these babies 👶🏼 +@srgatelier.”

During her second pregnancy, Richie Grainge shared several updates, includinga touching stomach-to-stomach moment with Graingein a "Bump shot bts 😂🫣" back in December.

She also marked the five-month mark of her pregnancy with a candid photo onher Instagramshowing her sprawled on a daybed in her bathroom. "This is month five🤰," she wrote in her caption.

Never miss a story — sign up forPEOPLE's free daily newsletterto stay up-to-date on the best of what PEOPLE has to offer​​, from celebrity news to compelling human interest stories.

To mark Eloise's first birthday on May 21, 2025, the proud mom shared a peek at the toddler onInstagramalongside a heartfelt caption revealing her daughter had given her “purpose.”

“I am nothing without her,” she continued in tribute. “Elliot and I couldn't love anything in this life more. I don't know what I did to deserve my little buggie, but all I know is my heaven is right here on earth with her 💕so beyond blessed,” she added in her caption.

Read the original article onPeople

Miles Teller was asked in a new interview about “bad press” he endured earlier in his screen career

NEED TO KNOW

• The Michael star brought up a 2015 Esquire profile in which he was repeatedly called a “dick”

• “That was so mishandled,” Teller said of the viral piece, which “felt like such a violation of what actually transpired”

Miles Tellercame under some criticism in 2015.

In a new interview withIndieWire, Teller, 39, addressed an oldEsquireprofileabout the then-rising star, which concluded he was "kind of a dick.” Asked about having "to counteract some bad press" throughout his career, theMichaelstar brought up the old profile.

“That was so mishandled. The reason why I have not done profiles is because I said, ‘Wow, if I'm not doing this interview on camera, this person can misquote things or put things out of order or say things that didn't happen,' ” the actor said.

TheEsquirepiece “felt like such a violation of what actually transpired,” added Teller. “I told my team, ‘Guys, I don't think I'm doing this again, because I'm reading this and this doesn't sound like me to me.' ”

He continued, “It's unfortunate that being a good person, that doesn't sell. People want to click on the negativity.”

Ultimately, said Teller, “how you treat people truly, that's what matters… The actors, the directors, the crew, the producers, you can't hide who you are when you're on set.”

Advertisement

Reflecting on the early phase of his career, after breaking out with 2010'sRabbit Holeand 2014'sWhiplash, Teller noted that most actors are “just hoping to get a role.”

“I used to be more critical of work other people were doing, because you get thrown into this rat race when you're first starting out,” he said of that time. “As I've gotten older, I appreciate and have respect for longevity, if you can hang around. I always wanted to contribute.”

Never miss a story — sign up forPEOPLE's free daily newsletterto stay up-to-date on the best of what PEOPLE has to offer, from celebrity news to compelling human interest stories.

Following sci-fi filmThe Gorgeand fantastical romance filmEternity, Teller next appears inPaper Tiger, which premiered at theCannes Film Festivalon May 16. The James Gray-directed, Neon-distributed drama costarsAdam DriverandScarlett Johansson.

Teller most recently played lawyerJohn Brancain theMichael JacksonbiopicMichael(in theaters now), teasing to IndieWire that a sequel may be in the works.

Read the original article onPeople

By AJ Vicens

May 20 (Reuters) - Early fears that Anthropic’s new AI model, Mythos, could dramatically turbocharge hacking are looking overstated a month after its release.

The company warned at launch in April that Mythos had uncovered thousands of software vulnerabilities — including flaws across every major operating system and browser — and said the fallout from its spread could be severe.

Governments took notice. Officials in multiple countries huddled ‌with banks to assess risks, and by early May the White House was weighing rules to control how new models are released after safety testing.

But inside the cybersecurity world, the reaction has been ‌more measured — with some saying the broader response has been overblown, and that access to a Mythos-level large language model will not immediately enable hacking operations previously out of reach for bad actors.

“I think there’s a really big communication gap between practitioners and policymakers,” said Isaac Evans, ​founder and CEO of software security firm Semgrep. The model represents “a real technical advance,” he said, but the response “is not substantiated by what we actually know about how those capabilities will translate in the field.”

To be sure, experts who have used the model in controlled environments have reported substantial improvement in vulnerability discovery, and banking industry IT staffs are working to fix scores of system weaknesses in large and small bank technology stacks, Reuters reported on May 12.

The worry has been heightened further by continued revelations of criminal and state-linked hacking cases involving AI, including Google’s announcement on May 11 that it had detected the first-ever case of a major cybercrime group using AI to discover a previously unknown software flaw and planning ‌a mass exploitation event.

PRACTITIONERS SEE MEASURED RISK

The gap between the extent of the ⁠threat seen by security professionals and that seen by policymakers has fueled a narrative that puts Mythos at the center of a looming security crisis — even as comparable capabilities have been available for some time.

“We’ve been able to use AI to find more bugs than we know what to do with for months if not years,” said one person with ⁠extensive vulnerability research experience with early access to Mythos. The challenge is not finding vulnerabilities, they said, but validating, prioritizing and fixing them without breaking systems.

Organizations’ ability to process and validate a flood of newly discovered vulnerabilities is generally not where it needs to be, the person said, and that is the bigger challenge introduced by Mythos-level models, even as they acknowledged that the model is an improvement. “It is capable of finding more with a weaker prompt than the models that came before it,” the person ​said, ​referring to the instructions a user provides the model to attempt to achieve a goal. Existing models required more detailed and ​complicated instructions, the person said, meaning the barrier to entry has been lowered.

Advertisement

Anthony Grieco, senior ‌vice president and chief security and trust officer at Cisco, said one new and helpful aspect of Mythos is its ability not only to identify vulnerabilities, but to scan much faster vast amounts of code for those vulnerabilities and help experienced practitioners lower the rate of false positives. This, he said, allows defenders to focus on the most pressing cyber risks in their contexts. The model also has fewer guardrails than previous models, allowing users to craft more specific instructions that enable activities that previous models would not.

PROJECT GLASSWING TESTS DEFENSES

Grieco said to fully maximize the power of Mythos, organizations need both proper computing power as well as a rigorous harness, a term used to describethe computerenvironment within an organization where a large language model runs with specific instructions and limitations.

"If you have a Formula One car but you've only ever driven a bike, you might be able to get it to go straight," ‌Grieco said. "But you're not going to maximize the track time out of the gate."

Even so, Anthropic’s framing — and its decision to invite ​select firms to test defenses under a program dubbed Project Glasswing — helped push the conversation about the model well beyond typical security circles. ​The result: an all-hands-on-deck response that amplified both the perceived threat and the company’s stature, even as ​the Pentagon labeled Anthropic a supply-chain risk while other parts of the government clamored for access.

The White House is discussing with AI labs more widespread use of their technology, a ‌White House official told Reuters. An Anthropic spokesperson said the company is working “closely with the ​U.S. government to quickly advance shared priorities,” and working with ​the government to give more parties access to Mythos.

FINDING VULNERABILITIES WITH AI IS ONLY THE START

Mythos — and to some extentOpenAI’s GPT-5.5 — has dominated national security discussions about AI. But those debates often gloss over a simpler point: vulnerability-hunting AI is not new. The real problem is what comes next.

“Our adversaries have gotten really good without AI,” said Cynthia Kaiser, a former senior FBI cybersecurity official now at Halcyon. “Ransomware attacks are ​happening in under an hour,” she said, adding that most threats still don’t ‌rely on AI at all.

For now, Mythos' scale and computing and infrastructure demands also limit who can use it. But those barriers are unlikely to last.

“I don’t think the architecture is optimized,” said ​Nick Adam of financial-services company State Street during a panel discussion at Vanderbilt University. He pointed to the computer processing infrastructure and harness issue identified by Grieco. “There’s a barrier to entry there — ​but it will be solved pretty quickly.”

(Reporting by AJ Vicens in Detroit; Editing by Chris Sanders and Matthew Lewis)