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      Liam Payne’s Cause of Death, the 911 Call and More: What We Know

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      A hotel desk manager called 911 with concerns about Payne, the former One Direction singer, shortly before he fell from a third-floor balcony. The results of toxicology reports are pending.Liam Payne, a former singer in the popular British boy band One Direction, died on Wednesday after falling from a third-floor balcony at a hotel in Buenos Aires.Payne’s family released a statement on Thursday asking for privacy. “We are heartbroken,” the family said. “Liam will forever live in our hearts and we’ll remember him for his kind, funny and brave soul.”Here is what we know about the circumstances of his death, which led to an outpouring of grief from fans, and the ensuing investigation.A 911 call was made moments before his death.The Buenos Aires police released a recording of a 911 call that was placed minutes before Payne’s death from the CasaSur Palermo Hotel, where he was staying.A man who identified himself as the hotel desk manager said on the call that a guest who appeared to have excessively consumed drugs and alcohol was “breaking everything in the room.” The manager requested urgent assistance because the room had a balcony and hotel employees were “afraid he could do something that puts his life at risk.”A spokesman for the Buenos Aires police said on Thursday that the guest was Payne, 31.The local prosecutor’s office, which is investigating the death, said in a statement that it appeared Payne was alone when he died. It said investigators found broken objects and furniture in his hotel room, as well as what appeared to be narcotics and alcohol. The results of toxicology tests will most likely not be made public for several weeks.An autopsy said Payne died of ‘multiple trauma.’In an autopsy performed a few hours after Payne’s death, forensic experts determined that he died from falling out of a window and that there were no signs of anyone else being involved. It is not clear whether Payne intentionally jumped or accidentally fell from the third floor.The autopsy report was submitted to the prosecutor’s office, which said it indicated that Payne died of “multiple trauma” and “internal and external bleeding” in the skull, chest and abdomen and limbs.The prosecutor’s office indicated that, because of the position in which the body was discovered and the 25 injuries he sustained, officials presume that Payne did not try to protect himself from the fall and may have fallen into a state of unconsciousness.No defensive wounds were found on the body.The prosecutor’s office said that it was investigating the death as a matter of protocol because of the circumstances, but that no defensive injuries were found on Payne’s body.Five people were interviewed at the prosecutor’s office, the authorities said, including two women who had been with Payne earlier Wednesday but had left the hotel before his death. They also interviewed three hotel workers. More

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      Prosecutors Say Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs Can’t ‘Pay His Way Out of Detention’

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      In a new filing, the government said the music mogul, who has proposed a sizable bail package as part of his bid to be released, should remain incarcerated.Federal prosecutors opposed Sean Combs’s bid for release from jail on Wednesday, asserting that the music mogul should not be allowed to use his wealth to set up a proposed bail release package that would include hiring a private security detail to guard him.Mr. Combs, who is being held in a Brooklyn jail ahead of his trial on racketeering and sex trafficking charges in May, has appealed a court’s decision to deny him bail, which was based in part on a finding that he posed a danger of witness tampering.His lawyers proposed an elaborate system — effectively a private version of house arrest — in which Mr. Combs would be monitored by security staffers at all hours, would have no access to phones or the internet and could only be visited by an approved list of guests. They suggested a bond set at $50 million.In their response to Mr. Combs’s appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, the prosecutors pushed back on Mr. Combs’s argument for release.“The District Court rightly rejected Combs’s effort to pay his way out of detention,” the prosecution wrote, “when the record established that no set of conditions could ensure the safety of the community.”The government has accused Mr. Combs, 54, of running a “criminal enterprise” that wielded the mogul’s power in the entertainment industry to commit crimes, including coercing women to engage in sexual activity with male prostitutes in drug-fueled encounters known as freak-offs. Lawyers for Mr. Combs, who has pleaded not guilty, have denied the charges, asserting that any sexual activity involved consenting adults.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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      Liam Payne Tributes Pour in From Charlie Puth, the Backstreet Boys and Other Musicians

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      Hours after news broke that Payne had fallen from a hotel balcony in Buenos Aires, his fans and collaborators shared their shock and grief.The pop world on Thursday was struggling to come to terms with the passing of Liam Payne, 31, who rose to fame as a member of the British boy band One Direction. Payne died on Wednesday after falling from the balcony of a hotel in Argentina.Fans gathered outside the hotel in Buenos Aires where Payne had been staying to mourn his death, including by singing One Direction hits, while on social media many posted tributes and memories.Some of pop music’s biggest stars did the same. Charlie Puth, the pop singer and songwriter, posted on Instagram, that he was “in shock” at the news. Payne was “one of the first major artists I got to work with. I cannot believe he is gone,” Puth added.Payne in Dubai in 2023.Jeff Spicer/Getty Images for Atlantis The Royal“Words cannot express the emotions we are collectively feeling right now,” the Backstreet Boys wrote on X, adding “our hearts go out to Liam’s family, friends and Directioners around the world.”“Life is short and fragile,” the German DJ Zedd, who released the song “Get Low” with Payne in 2017, wrote on social media. “RIP Liam … I can’t believe this is real …”The reaction was especially strong in Britain, where Payne built his career. Among those to express condolences on social media were his childhood school and West Bromwich Albion, the soccer team Payne supported.Payne first auditioned on the British talent show “The X Factor” as a solo artist in 2008, but found success when he returned in 2010, even though the group placed third in the show. Simon Cowell, the music executive and television personality, created One Direction by bringing Payne together with Harry Styles, Niall Horan, Zayn Malik and Louis Tomlinson. In 2011, One Direction’s debut single, “What Makes You Beautiful,” hit No. 4 on Billboard’s Hot 100 chart. The band released five albums and became one of the defining boy bands of the early 2010s. In 2015, One Direction announced it would take a break from performing together, and the group officially split up a year later.As of Thursday morning, none of Payne’s former bandmates had issued public reactions to the news of his death, and their representatives did not immediately respond to requests for comment. A representative for Cowell also did not immediately respond to a request for comment.But on Instagram, Styles’s mother, Anne Twist, posted a picture of a broken heart emoji, with the caption “Just a boy …” More

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      The Greats: Florence Welch, Lorna Simpson, Jonathan Anderson and Theaster Gates

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      O winged Lady,Like a birdYou scavenge the land.Like a charging stormYou charge,Like a roaring stormYou roar,You thunder in thunder,Snort in rampaging winds.Your feet are continually restless.Carrying your harp of sighs,You breathe out the music of mourning. — from “Hymn to Inanna” by Enheduanna,translated from the Sumerian by Jane Hirshfield PROPHETESS ONE RISKS ANGERING the gods […] More

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      The Exquisite Fragility of Mark Andre’s Music

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      Andre’s family history is one of precarity and mutability. His works, vulnerable and intricate, aren’t so different.In 2007, Pierre Boulez was conducting a performance of Mark Andre’s “…auf…II” in Amsterdam when a phone rang. The interruption broke the spell of the score’s opening, in which stabbing harmonies activate a mysterious echo. Boulez stopped the orchestra, went backstage for a few minutes, then started the music again.Boulez’s response speaks to the exquisite fragility of the music by Andre, 60, who has earned a reputation as one of Europe’s most original composers. His pieces are like spider webs: Close attention reveals their intricate beauty, while a careless gesture can destroy their effect.His newest composition, a work for piano and electronics titled “…selig ist…,” will be premiered by Pierre-Laurent Aimard at the Donaueschingen Festival in Germany on Oct. 19. (The concert will also be livestreamed.) The piece lasts about 50 minutes and is ferociously difficult. It’s also full of sounds that can easily be obscured by a ringtone.Five or six years ago, Aimard, a contemporary music virtuoso, began pursuing a collaboration with Andre; this new work is their first world premiere together.“After having listened a lot to his music I thought, ‘This is the person I would like to dedicate some of my forces and time to,’” Aimard said in a phone interview. “Because it seemed to me that the profoundness of his creation, his deep spirituality, the extremely subtle acoustical world which he works with, and the high discipline in his handwork were what I was looking for at this moment.”The fragility of Andre’s music can be traced to his family’s background in Alsace, a region that changed hands between France and Germany many times.Robert Rieger for The New York TimesWe 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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      Randy Newman Is at His Best When America Is at Its Worst

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      His movie songs are filled with memorable melodies; his own albums with unsavory characters. One of the most astute cultural observers is the subject of a new book.Around the summer of 1966, a song on the radio recorded by the Italian American pop crooner Julius La Rosa caught Bob Dylan’s ear: a forlorn, impressionistic ballad called “I Think It’s Going to Rain Today,” penned by a 22-year-old publishing company staff writer from Los Angeles named Randy Newman.“Randy’s song was so mysterious,” Dylan recalled. “I never heard a song like that before; it was so cynical.” Newman’s own rendition later stood out to him for “the sadness in Randy’s voice. Sadness and cynicism, it’s a strange combination but Randy always manages to pull it off.”Dylan’s testimonial is one of many in “A Few Words in Defense of Our Country: The Biography of Randy Newman,” by the former Los Angeles Times pop critic Robert Hilburn (out Oct. 22).“It’s an honor to have Dylan say something nice about me,” Newman said during a recent phone interview. Though he’s received plenty of accolades — including six Grammys, three Emmys and two Oscars, as well as induction into the Rock & Roll and Songwriters Hall of Fame — Newman, now 80, admitted, “what I really wanted was to have the respect from fellow workers in the field. That Bob or Paul Simon, Jackson Browne, Don Henley, Linda Ronstadt, that those people liked what I did mattered to me — maybe an inordinate amount.”While Newman has never enjoyed the broad commercial success of his peers, his work has on occasion clicked with the culture. His somewhat controversial 1977 satire “Short People” was a bona fide hit that gave him his only gold album, “Little Criminals”; “I Love L.A.,” a wry celebration of his hometown from 1983, became an unlikely anthem for the city’s sports teams; the earnest “You’ve Got a Friend in Me,” from Pixar’s 1995 movie “Toy Story,” soundtracked millions of childhoods.In truth, far more people have heard the 20-plus film scores Newman has composed since the early ’80s than any of his singer-songwriter records. “It’s sort of a funny hand to be dealt,” he said.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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      Liam Payne, 31, Former One Direction Singer, Dies in Fall in Argentina

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      Payne, who was one of the group’s standout singers, fell from the third floor of a hotel in Buenos Aires, emergency services officials said.Liam Payne, who rose to fame as a singer and songwriter for the British group One Direction, one of the best-selling boy bands of all time, died after falling from the third floor of a hotel in Buenos Aires on Wednesday. He was 31.His death was confirmed by Alberto Crescenti, the director of emergency services in Buenos Aires. The circumstances of the fall were unclear.One Direction burst onto the scene in 2011 when the group’s debut single, “What Makes You Beautiful,” hit No. 4 on Billboard’s Hot 100. Five of its other songs reached the chart’s Top 10, including “Story of My Life,” “Drag Me Down” and “Live While We’re Young.”The group, which had 29 total hits on Billboard’s Hot 100, would go on to release five albums and become one of the definitive boy bands of the 2010s, largely by eschewing the sleek precision and polish of an earlier generation of pop vocal groups.One Direction announced in 2015 that it was taking a break from performing as an ensemble, and each of the artists has since invested most of their time in their solo careers. “It’s just a break 🙂 we’re not going anywhere !!,” Louis Tomlinson, one of the band’s members, posted on Twitter at the time. 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