Aurelia Butler

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    Can Eurovision Avoid Politics in Neutral Switzerland?

    The competition is run by an opaque Swiss organization that wants to sidestep controversies that could spoil the fun.At the Eurovision Song Contest, one rule stands above all others: no politics.That order is enforced by the competition’s organizer, the European Broadcasting Union, an opaque federation of nearly 70 public service broadcasters, based in Geneva. It scrutinizes performers’ lyrics, their outfits and even their stage props in hopes of bringing some Swiss neutrality to the contest and avoiding anything controversial that could spoil the fun.Yet when the Eurovision final takes place this Saturday on the European Broadcasting Union’s home turf in Basel, Switzerland, politics will still be bubbling in the background, even if the organizers manage to keep such topics off the stage. At a time when the effects of Israel’s war in Gaza are still rippling through cultural life, and Russia and Belarus are pariahs because of the invasion of Ukraine, the question of who gets to compete in Eurovision brings politics to the fore. And the question of what is actually political can be slippery, and one for which the European Broadcasting Union sometimes lacks a consistent answer.In recent weeks, broadcasters in Spain, Ireland and Slovenia have called for a debate on Israel’s participation, rehashing a furor that threatened to overshadow last year’s competition. Before the last final, in Malmo, Sweden, some Eurovision performers signed petitions and made statements calling for Israel’s exclusion because of its actions in Gaza. Some crowd members booed Israel’s singer during the final, though others cheered. Yuval Raphael, representing Israel, at a Eurovision rehearsal in Basel. Broadcasters in Spain, Ireland and Slovenia have called for a debate on Israel’s participation.Alma Bengtsson/EBUEurovision officials responded with a line that the competition has clung to at previous moments of tension: Eurovision, it said, is a contest between broadcasters, not nations. That means a government’s actions should have no bearing on the contest.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Key Moments in the Third Day of the Sean Combs Sex-Trafficking Trial

    Casandra Ventura, the singer and model known as Cassie, said that the relentless sexual demands and routine violence she experienced from Sean Combs over the course of their decade-plus relationship left her emotionally devastated and led her to consider suicide. In dramatic testimony on Wednesday, Ms. Ventura spent a full day of Mr. Combs’s federal trial describing physical violence that she said culminated in a rape after she left him in 2018.Ms. Ventura is widely considered the star witness at the trial, where Mr. Combs is charged with sex trafficking and racketeering conspiracy. He has pleaded not guilty, and his lawyers have vehemently denied that any of his sexual arrangements were not consensual.After maintaining her composure for most of her two days on the stand, where she had remained largely dispassionate, Ms. Ventura finally broke down while discussing why she entered drug rehab and trauma therapy in 2023. “I was spinning out,” she said. “I didn’t want to be alive anymore at that point.”Beginning to cry, Ms. Ventura recalled putting their children to bed one night and telling her husband, “You can do this without me. You don’t need me here anymore.” She tried to walk out of the door into traffic, she said, but he stopped her.It was the emotional peak of a day of testimony that saw Ms. Ventura spend lengthy stretches responding to a prosecutor’s questions about individual instances of physical violence delivered by Mr. Combs. Her testimony on Wednesday afternoon began with her recollection of the first time that he physically abused her in 2007 or 2008. It was early in their relationship, she said, and she had caught him flirting with someone else at dinner. Later, in a car, he hit her on the side of her head, in view of the driver and security guard, sending her flying onto the floor.“I was just shocked,” she said.Answering questions about events that did not always follow a linear timeline, Ms. Ventura appeared weary, even resigned at times, as she cataloged her injuries — bruises on her body, a gash on her eyebrow, a busted lip — which were documented in photos that were shown to the jury as evidence.She testified that there were times she initiated violence against Mr. Combs and fought back against his abuse but, Ms. Ventura said, it did not stop his attacks.During one night out early in their romance in 2009, Ms. Ventura testified, she punched him in the face after he insulted her. His demeanor changed. “I remember his eyes went black,” she said, and he beat her in a car, stomping on her face with his foot. She said she was then sneaked into a hotel to heal in secrecy.When she went with some friends to a party in Los Angeles where Prince was to perform — a “once-in-a-lifetime experience” — she was afraid to tell Mr. Combs, she said. According to her account, he appeared at the event and she rushed out, falling into some bushes in out front, and fled to a hotel. He burst into the room, she said, where they fought, and he beat her. “He was throwing luggage at me, just calling me all kinds of names,” she testified.Ms. Ventura also testified about Mr. Combs’s reaction when he learned — by looking through her phone during a freak-off — that she had begun dating the rapper Kid Cudi, whose real name is Scott Mescudi. Mr. Combs, furious, told her he was going to hurt both of them, and that Mescudi’s car would be “blown up.”Later, the three had a meeting to “discuss the relationship that we were no longer in.” According to Ms. Ventura, Mr. Mescudi said, “‘What about my vehicle?’ And Sean said, ‘What vehicle?’” Ms. Ventura recounted. “And that was the end of the meeting.”Mr. Combs was also violent with other people, Ms. Ventura said. She testified that she witnessed him assaulting employees and assistants, punching one man in the head and dragging another, a woman — known at trial as Mia, or Victim-4 — out of bed once during a vacation.During the afternoon testimony, she repeatedly mentioned wanting to hide the abuse from her mother. After a fight led to her recuperating at a hotel, Ms. Ventura said, her mother sent her a blind item from a gossip publication that Ms. Ventura testified had reported the incident accurately. Her mother asked if it was her, and she denied that it was.A couple of years later, in late 2011, she wrote an email to her mother saying that Mr. Combs had threatened to release two sexually explicit tapes of her around Christmas, and that he would arrange to have someone “hurt” her and Mr. Mescudi, while Mr. Combs was out of the country.According to her testimony, Ms. Ventura was visiting her mother’s house in Connecticut at Christmas and showed her the bruises on her backside and thigh that were the result of Mr. Combs’s abuse. She said she lied and told her mother that it had been the first time he physically hurt her.She wasn’t ready to tell her mother about the freak-offs yet.“You can’t justify it to anyone,” she said. “Especially not your mom.”Near the end of her testimony, Ms. Ventura described a sort of farewell dinner in 2018 for her and Mr. Combs, seeking closure at the end of their relationship. She said that after a pleasant night, he raped her in her home. “I just remember crying and saying no, but it was very fast,” she said.After suing Mr. Combs in 2023, Ms. Ventura reached a $20 million settlement in one day, but that did not prevent her from becoming the central witness in the criminal case against him.As the last hour of her testimony reached a tearful climax at its conclusion on Wednesday, Ms. Ventura addressed why she was choosing to testify. “What’s right is right and what’s wrong is wrong,” Ms. Ventura said on the stand. “I’m here to do the right thing.”When Ms. Ventura finished her direct testimony, Mr. Combs turned to his family members in the spectators’s gallery. He mouthed to them, “I’m OK.”Olivia Bensimon More

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    Casandra Ventura ends an emotional day of testimony with dramatic revelations.

    Casandra Ventura, the singer and model known as Cassie, said that the relentless sexual demands and routine violence she experienced from Sean Combs over the course of their decade-plus relationship left her emotionally devastated and led her to consider suicide. In dramatic testimony on Wednesday, Ms. Ventura spent a full day of Mr. Combs’s federal trial describing physical violence that she said culminated in a rape after she left him in 2018.Ms. Ventura is widely considered the star witness at the trial, where Mr. Combs is charged with sex trafficking and racketeering conspiracy. He has pleaded not guilty, and his lawyers have vehemently denied that any of his sexual arrangements were not consensual.After maintaining her composure for most of her two days on the stand, where she had remained largely dispassionate, Ms. Ventura finally broke down while discussing why she entered drug rehab and trauma therapy in 2023. “I was spinning out,” she said. “I didn’t want to be alive anymore at that point.”Beginning to cry, Ms. Ventura recalled putting their children to bed one night and telling her husband, “You can do this without me. You don’t need me here anymore.” She tried to walk out of the door into traffic, she said, but he stopped her.It was the emotional peak of a day of testimony that saw Ms. Ventura spend lengthy stretches responding to a prosecutor’s questions about individual instances of physical violence delivered by Mr. Combs. Her testimony on Wednesday afternoon began with her recollection of the first time that he physically abused her in 2007 or 2008. It was early in their relationship, she said, and she had caught him flirting with someone else at dinner. Later, in a car, he hit her on the side of her head, in view of the driver and security guard, sending her flying onto the floor.“I was just shocked,” she said.Answering questions about events that did not always follow a linear timeline, Ms. Ventura appeared weary, even resigned at times, as she cataloged her injuries — bruises on her body, a gash on her eyebrow, a busted lip — which were documented in photos that were shown to the jury as evidence.She testified that there were times she initiated violence against Mr. Combs and fought back against his abuse but, Ms. Ventura said, it did not stop his attacks.During one night out early in their romance in 2009, Ms. Ventura testified, she punched him in the face after he insulted her. His demeanor changed. “I remember his eyes went black,” she said, and he beat her in a car, stomping on her face with his foot. She said she was then sneaked into a hotel to heal in secrecy.When she went with some friends to a party in Los Angeles where Prince was to perform — a “once-in-a-lifetime experience” — she was afraid to tell Mr. Combs, she said. According to her account, he appeared at the event and she rushed out, falling into some bushes in out front, and fled to a hotel. He burst into the room, she said, where they fought, and he beat her. “He was throwing luggage at me, just calling me all kinds of names,” she testified.Ms. Ventura also testified about Mr. Combs’s reaction when he learned — by looking through her phone during a freak-off — that she had begun dating the rapper Kid Cudi, whose real name is Scott Mescudi. Mr. Combs, furious, told her he was going to hurt both of them, and that Mescudi’s car would be “blown up.”Later, the three had a meeting to “discuss the relationship that we were no longer in.” According to Ms. Ventura, Mr. Mescudi said, “‘What about my vehicle?’ And Sean said, ‘What vehicle?’” Ms. Ventura recounted. “And that was the end of the meeting.”Mr. Combs was also violent with other people, Ms. Ventura said. She testified that she witnessed him assaulting employees and assistants, punching one man in the head and dragging another, a woman — known at trial as Mia, or Victim-4 — out of bed once during a vacation.During the afternoon testimony, she repeatedly mentioned wanting to hide the abuse from her mother. After a fight led to her recuperating at a hotel, Ms. Ventura said, her mother sent her a blind item from a gossip publication that Ms. Ventura testified had reported the incident accurately. Her mother asked if it was her, and she denied that it was.A couple of years later, in late 2011, she wrote an email to her mother saying that Mr. Combs had threatened to release two sexually explicit tapes of her around Christmas, and that he would arrange to have someone “hurt” her and Mr. Mescudi, while Mr. Combs was out of the country.According to her testimony, Ms. Ventura was visiting her mother’s house in Connecticut at Christmas and showed her the bruises on her backside and thigh that were the result of Mr. Combs’s abuse. She said she lied and told her mother that it had been the first time he physically hurt her.She wasn’t ready to tell her mother about the freak-offs yet.“You can’t justify it to anyone,” she said. “Especially not your mom.”Near the end of her testimony, Ms. Ventura described a sort of farewell dinner in 2018 for her and Mr. Combs, seeking closure at the end of their relationship. She said that after a pleasant night, he raped her in her home. “I just remember crying and saying no, but it was very fast,” she said.After suing Mr. Combs in 2023, Ms. Ventura reached a $20 million settlement in one day, but that did not prevent her from becoming the central witness in the criminal case against him.As the last hour of her testimony reached a tearful climax at its conclusion on Wednesday, Ms. Ventura addressed why she was choosing to testify. “What’s right is right and what’s wrong is wrong,” Ms. Ventura said on the stand. “I’m here to do the right thing.”When Ms. Ventura finished her direct testimony, Mr. Combs turned to his family members in the spectators’s gallery. He mouthed to them, “I’m OK.”Olivia Bensimon More

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    Cassie Settled Lawsuit Against Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs for $20 Million

    Casandra Ventura testified in federal court about her 2023 lawsuit against Mr. Combs, whom she had accused of years of physical abuse and sexual coercion.In her final moments of direct testimony at the federal trial of Sean Combs on Wednesday, Casandra Ventura revealed the amount of a civil settlement that Mr. Combs and his businesses paid her after she filed a bombshell lawsuit in November 2023.Mr. Combs’s lawyers had previously disclosed that the payment was a “substantial eight-figure settlement.” Ms. Ventura clarified in court that she had received $20 million.The lawsuit, which accused Mr. Combs of years of physical abuse and sexual coercion, was settled one day after it was filed. But it precipitated a deluge of lawsuits and the federal criminal investigation that resulted in the music mogul’s arrest on racketeering conspiracy and sex-trafficking charges.Mr. Combs has vehemently denied that he coerced Ms. Ventura — or anyone — into sex and has pleaded not guilty to all of the charges against him.On the witness stand in Federal District Court in Lower Manhattan, Ms. Ventura testified for hours on Wednesday about injuries she said she received from physical abuse by Mr. Combs, and detailed the drug-dazed sex marathons with male escorts that she said occurred “hundreds” of times throughout their decade-long relationship.The defense first disclosed months ago that before Ms. Ventura filed her lawsuit, a lawyer representing her approached counsel for Mr. Combs and offered to sell the rights to a book she had written that detailed her account of their relationship. The suggested price: $30 million.On the stand, Ms. Ventura confirmed that proposal.“I wanted to be compensated for the time, the pain,” Ms. Ventura testified, as well as for the “many, many years” trying to “fix” her life.Ms. Ventura said she wrote the book during and after she went to rehab in 2023, which she described as involving “trauma therapy” and coming off Valium. She said her mother helped her get the materials organized. She decided to send chapters to Mr. Combs.“I really wanted Sean to read the information,” Ms. Ventura testified. “I wanted him to understand what I had to learn to understand over that period.”Ms. Ventura said she checked with one of his top employees, Kristina Khorram, to check if he read it, but she was told that people did not believe she was the author.Mr. Combs’s lawyers have described Ms. Ventura’s attempt to sell the book rights as “extortion” in court papers. Ms. Ventura decided to ask for $30 million without having done research about book payments, she testified, but she thought that number would get his attention.Olivia Bensimon More

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    Nora Aunor, Singer-Actress Called ‘the Superstar’ in Philippines, Dies at 71

    And her fans were called Noranians for their devotion to a performer who had enthralled her country — onscreen and on the concert stage — since she was a teenager.Nora Aunor, a powerful Filipina actress and singer who for nearly 60 years captivated audiences — her devoted fans were called Noranians — earning the nickname “the Superstar,” died on April 16 in the city of Pasig, near Manila. She was 71.Her death, in a hospital, was announced by her family. The cause was acute respiratory failure after an angioplasty, according to news media reports.“Over the decades, she built a career that shaped the very soul of our culture,” her son Ian de Leon said at a news conference.Ms. Aunor was known widely for her petite stature, expressive eyes, which could convey a breadth of emotions, and a somewhat darker skin than was commonplace in Filipino show business when she was starting out.Movie stars in the country then were “usually mixed race, with prominent Spanish or Caucasian and American looks, some of whom were children of American G.I.s,” said José B. Capino, the author of “Martial Law Melodrama” (2020), about the visionary Filipino director Lino Brocka.Ms. Aunor’s movie career began in the 1960s with teeny-bopper films and romcoms but graduated to serious fare like “Bona,” a 1980 drama directed by Mr. Brocka in which she portrayed the title character, a middle-class teenager obsessed with a handsome, narcissistic bit player in movies.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Joe Louis Walker, Free-Ranging Blues Explorer, Is Dead at 75

    A product of the San Francisco rock crucible of the 1960s, he fashioned his own brand of the blues, blending gospel, soul, rock and other genres.Joe Louis Walker, a blues master and musical omnivore whose snarling guitar work, gritty vocals and introspective songwriting earned him the praise of Herbie Hancock, Mick Jagger and many others over a six-decade career, died on April 30 in Poughkeepsie, N.Y. He was 75.His wife, Robin Poritzky-Walker, said his death, in a hospital, was from a cardiac-related illness.Mr. Walker recorded more than 30 albums for a variety of labels, starting with “Cold Is the Night” in 1986. He toured extensively and was a staple of blues festivals around the world. He won the Blues Music Award (formerly the W.C. Handy Award) multiple times and was nominated for a Grammy Award for his 2015 album, “Everybody Wants a Piece.” He was inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame in 2013.Mr. Walker was nominated for a Grammy Award for his 2015 album, “Everybody Wants a Piece.”ProvogueAlong the way he traded riffs with blues powerhouses like B.B. King, Buddy Guy and Otis Rush.The keyboard innovator Herbie Hancock deemed him “a singular force” with a “remarkable gift for instantly electrifying a room.” Mick Jagger called him “a magnificent guitar player and singer.” The jazz pianist and composer Chick Corea playfully anointed him “the Chick Corea of blues.”Critics, too, felt Mr. Walker’s power. “His voice is weather-beaten but ready for more; his guitar solos are fast, wiry and incisive,” Jon Pareles wrote in a 1989 review in The New York Times, “often starting out with impetuous squiggles before moaning with bluesy despair.”Mr. Walker in performance in 1995. One reviewer called him “a fluttering blues guitarist” whose “lines seem blown by the wind.”Simon Ritter/Redferns, via Getty ImagesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Morris, Alligator of ‘Happy Gilmore’ Fame, Dies at 80 (or More)

    The 640-pound, 11-foot gator memorably played a golf-ball-stealing, hand-chomping terror in the 1996 Adam Sandler film.Morris, an alligator who appeared in numerous films and television shows, most notably in the movie “Happy Gilmore,” died on Monday in Mosca, Colo. He was at least 80.The cause was old age, according to the Colorado Gator Farm, which announced his death.“His exact age was unknown, but he was nine feet long in 1975, and by his growth rate and tooth loss, we can estimate his age at over 80 years,” the farm said.“He started acting strange about a week ago; he wasn’t lunging at us and he wasn’t taking food,” Jay Young, the farm’s operator, said in a video accompanying the announcement. Tearfully stroking the gator’s head, he said, “I know it’s strange to people that we get so attached.”Morris was 10 feet 11 inches long and weighed 640 pounds at the time of his death.He was discovered in Los Angeles, but not at Schwab’s Pharmacy like so many actors of yore. Rather, he was found in a backyard, where he was being kept as an illegal pet. His acting career began in 1975 and ended in 2006, when he retired to the farm.His most memorable onscreen role came in the rollicking 1996 comedy “Happy Gilmore,” with Adam Sandler in the title role as a failed hockey player who becomes an unlikely sensation on the professional golf circuit.Morris’s big scene comes when he grabs a golf ball, leading Happy to confront him with an iron. Happy notices that the gator has one eye, recognizing it as the same one that had bitten off the hand of his mentor, Chubbs, played by Carl Weathers. (“Damned alligator just popped up, cut me down in my prime,” Chubbs says in one of the film’s many beloved quotes.)We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    ‘Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning’ Review: Tom Cruise Defies All

    For the eighth installment of this stunt-spectacular franchise, the star returns to fight off A.I. planetary domination, the bends, gravity and maybe mortality itself.For nearly three decades, Tom Cruise has been running, soaring, slugging and white-knuckling it through the “Mission: Impossible” series. It’s been fun, on and off, but it’s no wonder he looks so beaten up on the poster for the latest edition, “The Final Reckoning.” Cruise — who turns 63 this year — long seemed impervious to ordinary time, with a boyishness that lasted well into middle age. His early stardom had already granted him a kind of immortality. Yet as the lines on his face discreetly deepened, and he kept pushing himself to lunatic extremes in this series, it seemed as if he were challenging physical death itself.Cruise is at it again in “The Final Reckoning” — the enjoyably unhinged follow-up to “Dead Reckoning Part One” (2023) — plunging into deep waters, hanging off an airborne plane and insistently defying the odds as well as his own mortality. It’s unclear why the title changed between the two parts. It might have been a marketing decision; dead is a bummer, of course, and the word implied that Cruise’s Ethan Hunt, an American operative extraordinaire, was heading toward the sort of bleak sign-off that capped Daniel Craig’s run as James Bond. Whatever the case, the change suits Cruise’s Ethan, whose abilities have grown so progressively super since the series began in 1996 they seem quasi-mystical.“Dead Reckoning” ended with Ethan and his team trying to stop an artificial intelligence called the Entity that’s set on destroying Earth. (Why? Why not?) The A.I.’s plan is the ultimate power grab, although it also seems like overkill, given that humanity is already hurtling toward self-destruction. But the Entity’s exceedingly possible mission keeps everyone busy, including Ethan’s right-hand whizzes, Luther (Ving Rhames) and Benji (Simon Pegg), along with his love interest, Grace (Hayley Atwell), and the giddily anarchic one-woman wrecking machine Paris (Pom Klementieff). Mostly, though, the Entity’s annihilating designs mean that Ethan has to step up his game from superhero to global redeemer.So, once more, Ethan et. al. go unto the breach as they try to stop the Entity, which has thrown the world into chaos, inspired a doomsday cult and is trying to seize the world’s nukes — the usual. One of the dividends of the better big-studio productions is that they tend to be crowded with talented performers who can keep a straight face when delivering nonsense and sometimes bring feeling to the proceedings. So, as the clock runs down, characters enter and exit, including Angela Bassett’s tight-jawed American president and an army of appealing supporting players: Tramell Tillman, Janet McTeer, Shea Whigham, Holt McCallany, Nick Offerman and Hannah Waddingham.This is the fourth “Mission: Impossible” movie directed by Christopher McQuarrie, who keeps the machinery well-oiled and smoothly running, even when cutting among multiple lines of action. (He shares screenwriting credit with Erik Jendresen.) Shrewdly, he often uses a similar approach when the pace slows and characters convene to explain what’s going on and why (mainly to us), cutting from one person to another, as each delivers a helpful sentence or two. This conversational turn-taking livens up all the information-heavy explanations and helps feed the forward momentum. None of it makes any sense, of course, no matter how sincerely the actors say their lines, yet everything flows.Logic isn’t the reason movies like this exist or why we go to them, and one of the sustaining pleasures of the “Mission: Impossible” series has been its commitment to its own outrageousness. Cruise’s stunts have always been among the most outlandish and most memorable attractions in the series, which was spun off from the 1960s television show of the same title. He stepped into the role by escaping a wall of water and descending spiderlike into a luminously white, high-security vault, hanging by an unnervingly thin rope. The entire thing popped with cool stunts, striking locations, exotic doings and the sheer spectacle of Cruise’s intense physical performance.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More