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    Sophie Turner’s Custody Lawsuit Against Joe Jonas is Dismissed

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    The English actress sued the American musician weeks after they announced their split, saying he had prevented their two children from returning to Britain.A judge in New York on Wednesday dismissed a lawsuit that the English actress Sophie Turner filed last year against her husband, Joe Jonas, in which she requested that their two young children be returned to England from the United States.The lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York was dismissed with both parties’ consent, according to a court filing.Turner, a star on the television show “Game of Thrones,” sued Jonas, an American musician who plays in a boy band with his brothers, in September, weeks after the couple said publicly that they planned to divorce.That summer, the children had traveled to the U.S. with Jonas because he was on tour there and Turner had a busy filming schedule in Britain, according to the lawsuit. The couple agreed that Turner would pick up the children in September and return with them to England, it said.Instead, the lawsuit said, Jonas filed for divorce in September and later refused to give Turner the children’s passports, preventing them from returning to England, their “habitual residence.”A representative for Jonas said at the time that giving Turner the children’s passports would have violated a court order in Florida — where the couple’s divorce proceedings had been initiated — that restricted both parents from relocating the children.In the court filing on Wednesday, known as a consent order, Judge Katherine Polk Failla noted that Turner and Jonas had signed a memorandum of understanding and a “parenting plan” related to their children in October. They also filed a consent order with a court in Britain that was approved on Jan. 11, she wrote.Attorneys and publicists for Turner and Jonas did not immediately respond to requests for comment late Wednesday.The couple’s children, who were born in the United States in 2020 and 2022, have American and British citizenship. They have been identified in court documents by only their initials.Turner and Jonas began dating in 2016, when he was touring in Britain, and married in Las Vegas three years later.After living a “very peripatetic lifestyle” for a few years, Turner’s lawsuit said, they relocated to England in April 2023 and had planned to buy a home there later in the year.But in early September, after a succession of negative news stories about Turner, they said in a joint statement on Instagram that they had “mutually decided to amicably end our marriage.”Seamus Hughes More

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      Jimmy Buffett’s Will Appoints His Wife as Executor of His Estate

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      The document, filed in Florida, did not reveal much about the musician and businessman’s final wishes, but it directed that a majority of his assets be held in a trust.Jimmy Buffett, the singer-songwriter and entrepreneur of an island-themed business empire who died last month at 76, left his wife in charge of his estate, according to a copy of his will, which contains few specifics about the scope of his assets or other beneficiaries.Mr. Buffett, whose blockbuster hit “Margaritaville” rocketed him to fame in 1977 and now serves as branding for his restaurant franchise, hotel chain and more, used the will to funnel a majority of his assets to a revocable trust that he created in 1990. But in keeping with Florida law, the will, filed last month in Palm Beach County, Fla., does not contain a public inventory of his assets nor does it reveal any of the holdings of the James W. Buffett 1990 Trust.His wife of more than 40 years, Jane S. Buffett, has been tasked with carrying out his wishes after being named personal representative, or executor, of the estate. The will appoints his business partner, John L. Cohlan, chief executive of Margaritaville Holdings, to step in if needed.In addition to his fan base of so-called Parrot Heads who became devoted to his carefree ethos and songs populated by pirates and beach bums, Mr. Buffett built a sprawling business over his career that has grown to include about 150 restaurants, casinos and cruises. Forbes reported this year that Mr. Buffett had become a billionaire, noting that he holds shares in the conglomerate Berkshire Hathaway, led by Warren Buffett, who is a friend, but not a relative, of the musician. (“Tell Jimmy to keep me in his will!” the Forbes report quoted Warren Buffett, one of the richest people in the world, as saying.) The magazine reported Jimmy Buffett as owning several homes and planes, as well as a yacht.Mr. Buffett died at his home in Sag Harbor, N.Y., on Long Island, but his estate filed the will in Palm Beach County, where he was long a resident. He signed the will in 2017.It is yet to be seen how Mr. Buffett’s business is affected by his death: whether its success was dependent on its living founder, who was still performing up until this year, or if it can continue at the same level based on his legacy and its own entrenched brand.Mr. Buffett’s will assigns his intellectual property, including the rights to his music, to his trust as well. It suggests that he may have a separate list doling out his belongings, including clothing and furniture, assigning his residential real estate explicitly to his wife. The singer, who died of Merkel cell carcinoma, a rare and aggressive form of skin cancer, is survived by two daughters, a son, two grandsons and two sisters.“Funneling everything to your trust affords you a ton of privacy,” said Sarah Butters, a Florida estate lawyer. “There are a million celebrity wills gone wrong, but this isn’t one of them.”Joe Capozzi contributed reporting. More

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      Victor Jara Killing: Ex-Chilean Soldier Arrested in Florida

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      Pedro Barrientos, 74, is accused of killing the popular Chilean singer in 1973. In a civil case, Mr. Barrientos was accused of bragging about shooting Mr. Jara twice in the head.A former Chilean Army officer accused of torturing and killing the Chilean folk singer Victor Jara and others during the bloody aftermath of a 1973 military coup was arrested in Florida, officials announced Tuesday.The former officer, Pedro Pablo Barrientos, 74, who moved to Florida in 1990, is wanted in Chile for the extrajudicial murder of Mr. Jara at a Chilean sports stadium. There, Mr. Jara and other dissidents had been detained after the coup on Sept. 11, 1973, that toppled the country’s president, Salvador Allende, and thrust Gen. Augusto Pinochet into power.Federal immigration officials and local law enforcement officers arrested Mr. Barrientos on Oct. 5 during a traffic stop in Deltona, Fla., about 30 miles southwest of Daytona Beach, according to a news release published on Tuesday by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.Mr. Barrientos is in ICE custody, officials said.“Barrientos will now have to answer the charges he’s faced with in Chile for his involvement in torture and extrajudicial killing of Chilean citizens,” John Condon, a special agent with ICE’s Homeland Security Investigations division in Tampa, said in the news release.Mr. Jara, who has been described as the “Bob Dylan of South America,” was a popular singer who hailed from the Chilean countryside and sang tales of poverty and injustice.He had supported the Allende government and was a member of Chile’s Communist Party when he was arrested at the State Technical University alongside hundreds of students and faculty members.Three days after his arrest, Mr. Jara’s bullet-riddled body was found outside a cemetery alongside those of four other victims. Before he was killed, soldiers smashed his fingers with their rifle butts and mockingly told him that he would never play guitar again.Mr. Barrientos’s arrest comes more than seven years after a federal jury in a civil case found him liable for Mr. Jara’s death and awarded $28 million in damages to the singer’s family, which had brought the case under a federal law that allows the victims of overseas human rights violations to seek redress.A former Chilean soldier testified in court that Mr. Barrientos had bragged about having shot Mr. Jara twice in the head.“He used to show his pistol and say, ‘I killed Víctor Jara with this,’” the soldier, José Navarrete, testified.A federal court revoked Mr. Barrientos’s U.S. citizenship in July based on a sealed complaint brought by the Department of Justice’s immigration litigation office.“The court found that Mr. Barrientos willfully concealed material facts related to his military service in his immigration applications,” the ICE news release said.It was unclear whether extradition proceedings for Mr. Barrientos were underway. The federal authorities could not immediately be reached for comment on Tuesday night, and it was unclear if Mr. Barrientos had retained a lawyer.Mr. Barrientos was the latest former Chilean official to be arrested in Mr. Jara’s killing. In 2018, eight retired military officers were each sentenced to more than 15 years in prison by a Chilean judge over Mr. Jara’s death. More

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      Prue Leith’s 2,200-Mile Road Trip From California to Florida

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      The “Great British Baking Show” judge steps out of the tent to sample the flavors of America. Is her 2,200-mile drive a showstopper or a technical challenge?​​Last fall, my husband and I set our hearts on renting an R.V. for a road trip from Los Angeles to Florida. We imagined picnicking on mountaintops in New Mexico, sleeping under the stars in Texas and barbecuing prawns (the R.V. would come with a grill, of course) on a Mississippi levee. In the end, our 2,200-mile American journey ended up being memorable, but for none of those reasons.“We can’t accept anyone over 70 with a British driver’s license,” insisted the woman on the phone. I’m 83, but in my head I’m a sprightly 60, and my husband, John, is 76. Nobody had warned us about this potential obstacle. If they had the same age cutoff for Americans, I thought, the R.V. business would collapse.We called another company. Their rep said he’d never heard of any age restriction. “No problem,” he said. “We’ve got the perfect R.V. for you.” Except it was 45 feet long. The thought of parking something the size of a London bus was too much, even for my gung-ho husband.Common sense prevailed, and we rented a Ford Explorer.New MexicoSalsa and sticker shockWe were overdue for a break. Aside from my usual job eating cake as a judge on “The Great British Baking Show,” I’d been doing trial runs of my one-woman stage show in Britain and the United States, and it had been exhausting.So, before we set off on our great adventure, we rented a mobility scooter for two and hit the boardwalk at Venice Beach, in Los Angeles. But our crawl through the deafeningly loud music, junk food and stands selling shorts emblazoned with vulgar words and messages like “Beat Me” did little to re-energize our spirits.On the day we left California, torrents of rain were falling. By the time we crossed into Arizona, the sun had exploded over the hills in a glorious display of opera lighting.We made it as far as Sante Fe, N.M., where our hotel, the Vanessie, a charming collection of wooden buildings around a courtyard was, like everywhere, suffering from a lack of staff. The single employee handed us a laminated notice: “Our restaurant, room service and bar are currently closed. A $30 service charge will be added to your bill.”Happily, Vara Vinoteca, across the street, was open. We ate tiny padrón peppers stuffed with cream cheese and cumin, tuna ceviche and pineapple salsa, and a small bowl of warm, slightly curried mussels in the shell, all served with a flight of four glasses of different California cabernet sauvignons.I’d have been happy to have all our meals in that simple little room. But Santa Fe brims with good restaurants, quirky architecture, art museums and shops stuffed with desirable things, so we set off to explore. John fell in love with a hatter’s shop, where he bought two authentic Stetsons. He also spent eye-watering amounts of money on two baseball caps for his grandsons. Is there a difference between a $41 and a $5 baseball cap? Apparently.John was equally dumbfounded at my lusting after an irresistible $150 necklace made from cut-up plastic water bottles and sprayed with red, black and gold paint. Vibrant, bouncy, light as a feather — it was a work of art. But apparently it was a piece that, at least for us, money couldn’t buy: The shop’s credit card system required a U.S. ZIP code, and cash was not accepted. We gave up.Prices constantly amazed us. The exchange rate has made the U.S. shockingly expensive for Brits, and taxes and tip on top of that? I’m already vaguely offended to be expected to tip when buying a coffee at a counter. And now with the touch screens suggesting tips of 15 percent and up, a latte feels like a major purchase. Only petrol seemed cheap, at half the U.K. price.Luis MazónTexasWhere astronauts dare to dine“Boring, flat, brown, goes on forever”: Everyone said we’d hate Texas. But we loved it. Maybe because I grew up in the wide-open spaces of South Africa, the little towns with not much more than a windmill and a church touched my heart.We stopped for lunch at Dirk’s, a Lubbock diner packed with locals eating chicken tenders, sticky ribs and burgers, all flooded with gloopy barbecue sauce and followed by doughnuts or pancakes in a lake of syrup.The waiter seemed puzzled when I asked, “Do you have any green vegetables?” Then he smiled and said, “Oh, yes, we have green beans.” They turned out to be canned beans in a cloying juice.We were also puzzled by the way American waiters routinely congratulate you on your menu choice, rewarding you with “Good choice,” “Excellent” or even “Awesome.” You want fries with that? “Awesome!”By the time we got to San Antonio, we were ready for a drink. A waterside cafe among the raised flower beds, paved walks and roving mariachi bands of the River Walk delivered first-class margaritas (freezing, salt on only one edge of the glass, not too sweet) and still-warm tortilla chips. Watching the young waiter make guacamole at a riverside table was a joy: knife razor-sharp, chile fresh, avocado and tomato perfectly ripe. And his judgment was fine — a smidge of chopped raw red onion, a decent squeeze of lime, and a generous grind of pepper and salt, all turned together gently rather than crudely mashed. I found myself eating very slowly, just to hold on to that flavor as long as possible.We had the worst meal of our whole trip not far away in the Texas Hill Country tourist town of Fredericksburg, which prides itself on its German heritage. We’d spent a happy morning touring the shops, museums and galleries of the town’s north end, and enjoyed a lunch of fried chicken sandwiches and banana walnut pancakes.So we had high hopes for the south side. But sadly its historic houses were full of tourist junk like plastic stein mugs and Barbie dolls squeezed into lederhosen. We retreated to a restaurant whose menu boasted of authentic German dishes. We were served pork chops ruined by oversweet gravy, tasteless sauerkraut, sweet and vinegary red cabbage, and potato mash obviously made with powdered mix that had not been brought to a boil. We abandoned our plates and went back to our motel to microwave emergency rations of Campbell’s tomato soup.The next day, on our way to Houston, we passed a roadside church whose huge hoarding exhorted us to “Give Up Lust — Take Up Jesus.” I thought that sign might be my most abiding memory, until I’d spent a few hours at the Space Center Houston. I never guessed I’d be so riveted by topics like the geology of the moon and how NASA astronauts train underwater.But the cafeteria! It is astonishing, the best I’ve ever seen anywhere in a public building: brioche or sourdough sandwiches, homemade soups, hot roasts and grills, fresh tortillas, a salad bar to tempt the most die-hard carnivore, and no junk food in sight. It was a long way from the usual NASA fare of freeze-dried food in pouches and tubes.Luis MazónLouisianaHow to nurse a hangoverLouisiana is famous for gumbos and étouffées, so I was expecting gastronomy as we crossed the state line and drove toward Louisiana State University’s Rural Life Museum, a Cajun heritage village in Baton Rouge. I guess I was overly optimistic. The jambalaya and blackened fish in the cafe were tasteless and dried out. I’ve had better Cajun food in London.Plantation Alley, along the Great Mississippi Road, with its half a dozen “Gone With the Wind”-style estates, now open to the public, swept me away. The most beautiful of them was Oak Alley, with its avenue of 250-year-old Southern live oaks, their branches creating a vast green tunnel. But I couldn’t understand how the magnificent trees were obviously much older than the house. It turns out that these oaks are native to the area, and had once grown all over the estate. When the house was built in 1836, enslaved workers were made to dig up 28 of the huge 60- to 70-year-old trees, with root systems equal to the size of their canopies, and replant them in an avenue down to the Mississippi levee.The Great Mississippi Road eventually leads to New Orleans and the famous French Quarter, with its balconies of elaborate wrought iron — a daytime picture of Victorian good taste. We, ignorant Brits, had no idea that at night on Bourbon Street, that “good taste” became the flavor of daiquiris, pizza and hot dogs against a backdrop of bands belting out rock ’n’ roll, small children beating dustbins, grown-ups playing jazz, and the raucous din of drunken tourists until 3 a.m.But I liked the party atmosphere, and I’m mighty partial to a daiquiri, so we set off on a pub crawl. I now know that the secret to a good mango daiquiri is fresh mango, and not bottled mango syrup. And the next morning, after one too many mango delights and little sleep, I learned that shrimp and grits, with a good grating of cheese, is the perfect hangover cure.FloridaTurkey, sweet potatoes and slice of modern EdenOur road trip ended, as it had started, at a beach. Only this one was a mercifully far cry from the Venice boardwalk.We had rented a house for the week in the small Florida Panhandle community of Seacrest Beach, on the Emerald Coast along Highway 30A. This eight-mile strip — a kind of manufactured, perfectly designed modern Eden — consists of 16 neighborhoods on white-sand beaches between Pensacola and Panama City. Developments with names like Rosemary Beach, Seagrove Beach, Alys Beach, Grayton Beach and WaterColor share the perfect sands and the desired 30A address.Everyone rides around on bikes, and perfectly tanned mothers gossip over kombucha and wheatgrass at sidewalk cafes. Even the children look straight out of an upmarket catalog.Friends of friends, on holiday, invited us to their Thanksgiving dinner — turkey with all the trimmings, sweet potatoes, pecan pie and ice cream. In thanking them, I said something about the pleasure of such generosity, family closeness and their children’s politeness. Our host laughed. It’s because we’re from the South, she said.I’m glad we failed to rent my dream Winnebago back in Los Angeles. If we’d succeeded, we’d never have experienced a traditional American family Thanksgiving. We’d have been in a trailer park, eating takeout. Thank you, Lady Luck.Follow New York Times Travel on Instagram and sign up for our weekly Travel Dispatch newsletter to get expert tips on traveling smarter and inspiration for your next vacation. Dreaming up a future getaway or just armchair traveling? Check out our 52 Places to Go in 2023. More

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      ‘Take Care of Maya’ Review: A Chronicle of a Family’s Pain

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      In this Netflix documentary about a young girl who was held in a hospital and barred from seeing her family, we hear their side of the story.In 2016 in St. Petersburg, Florida, Maya Kowalski was rushed to the pediatric emergency room for extreme pain. The 10-year-old would be held in the hospital for three months under a state-issued shelter order and barred from seeing her parents, whom doctors suspected of medical child abuse.The story of the Kowalskis, which was reported in The Cut last year, is at the core of “Take Care of Maya” (on Netflix), a chronicle of the events and their aftermath. At the hospital, Maya was evaluated by a child-welfare agency pediatrician who specialized in detecting child abuse and who initially diagnosed Munchausen Syndrome by proxy. The documentary unfolds mostly from the Kowalskis’ viewpoint, relying on court testimony, Maya’s father’s recollections and video, audio and written records from Maya’s mother.To watch this film is to submit to a punishing experience. This is only partly because of its content, for, while Maya’s case involves a thorny jumble of issues — a rare pain syndrome, a controversial regimen, a dubious child welfare system — the director, Henry Roosevelt, approaches the material with an eye toward sensationalism. Every minute is charged with tension, and one senses that scenes were shaped with the intent to scandalize rather than enlighten.What’s sacrificed in this approach is rigor, the drive to exhaustively analyze the circumstances that led to the Kowalski family’s troubles. For instance, the film mentions but declines to explore the relationship between Florida’s hospitals and the privatized child welfare companies that serve them. “Take Care of Maya” is grueling, but it is also oddly deficient, wanting for the precision and perspective essential to deriving insight from profound trauma.Take Care of MayaNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 43 minutes. Watch on Netflix. More

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      Ricou Browning, Who Made the Black Lagoon Scary, Dies at 93

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      He helped bring “Flipper” to the movies and TV but was best known for his plunge in a monster suit in “Creature From the Black Lagoon.”Ricou Browning, who played the title character, or at least the underwater version of it, in one of the most enduring creature features of the 1950s, “Creature From the Black Lagoon,” died on Feb. 27 at his home in Southwest Ranches, Fla., northwest of Miami. He was 93.His daughter Renee Le Feuvre confirmed the death.Mr. Browning was 23 when Newt Perry, a promoter of various Florida attractions for whom he had worked as a teenager, asked him to show some Hollywood visitors around Wakulla Springs, a picturesque spot near Tallahassee. The entourage — which, as Mr. Browning told the story later, included Jack Arnold, the film’s director, and the cameraman Scotty Welbourne — was scouting locations for a planned movie about an underwater monster.“Scotty had his underwater camera,” Mr. Browning recalled in an interview recorded in “The Creature Chronicles: Exploring the Black Lagoon Trilogy,” a 2014 book by Tom Weaver (with David Schecter and Steve Kronenberg), “and he asked me if I would get in the water with him and swim in front of the camera so they could get some perspective.”Mr. Arnold not only liked the location; he also liked Mr. Browning. He called him days later and asked if he would want to play the creature for the underwater scenes to be shot in Florida. (An actor named Ben Chapman portrayed the monster in the scenes on land, which were filmed in California.)“We’ve tested a lot of people for this part,” Mr. Browning recalled Mr. Arnold telling him, “but I’d like to have you play the creature — I like your swimming.”Mr. Browning in a scene from “Creature From the Black Lagoon,” the first of three movies in which he played the title character. “I’d like to have you play the creature,” he recalled the film’s director telling him — “I like your swimming.”Silver Screen Collection/Getty ImagesIn August 1953 he was brought to California to be fitted for the suit that would turn him into the Gill Man, and six months later “Creature From the Black Lagoon” was released. It was the latest in a tradition of monster movies from Universal Studios that included “The Mummy” (1932) and “The Wolf Man” (1941), and it took its place in monster movie lore.In the film, which was released in 3-D, scientists working in the Amazon discover a creature in a lagoon that takes a shine to a female member of the party, Kay (played by Julie Adams). About 28 minutes into the film, Kay decides to go for a swim in the lagoon, and the creature, still undiscovered by the research party, swims beneath her like an underwater stalker, a scene both creepy and oddly poignant.“This scene turned it from a regular old monster movie to a ‘Beauty and the Beast’ thing,” Mr. Weaver said by email, “a big reason for the movie’s ongoing popularity.”Some critics weren’t impressed by the movie.“The proceedings above and under water were filmed in 3-D to impart an illusion of depth when viewed through polarized glasses,” A.H. Weiler wrote in The New York Times. “This adventure has no depth.”Yet the movie did decently at the box office and became a sort of cultural reference point. Mr. Browning, who had the ability to hold his breath underwater for minutes at a time, played the swimming version of the creature in two sequels, “Revenge of the Creature” (1955) and “The Creature Walks Among Us” (1956).He went on to share a story-writing credit on the 1963 film “Flipper,” about a boy who becomes friends with a dolphin, and then, the next year, was a creator of the television series of the same name and directed and helped write a number of its episodes during its three seasons. He also did some of the underwater stunt work.In an introductory essay in Mr. Weaver’s book, Ms. Adams, whose “Black Lagoon” character was played by Ginger Stanley in the underwater scenes, recalled waiting eagerly in California to see the “dailies” — footage from the day’s shooting — coming out of Florida.“The dailies were long, silent takes of him and Ginger Stanley deep in the crystal clear water of Wakulla Springs,” she wrote. “They’d swim for a while, get some air from an air hose, and then go back and resume their action. It was so exciting to see the Gill Man brought to life by Ricou’s unique swimming style, and I was captivated.”Ms. Stanley, Mr. Browning’s underwater partner in that eerie scene that helped define the film, died in January in Orlando, Fla., at 91.Ricou Ren Browning was born on Feb. 16, 1930, in Fort Pierce, Fla. His father, Clement, worked construction in the Navy, and his mother, Inez (Ricou) Browning, was a bookkeeper.He first saw Wakulla Springs as a teenager and earned some money by swimming deep in the water for the benefit of tourists in glass-bottomed boats, who would watch him plunge to depths of 80 feet and leave tips.“Some of us kids would earn 30, 40 dollars a day,” he told Mr. Weaver for his book, “and that was big, big money.”In the 1940s he also got his first taste of the movie business, appearing in several short films made in the area by Grantland Rice, who was better known as a sportswriter. In one, according to Mr. Weaver’s book, Mr. Browning is among the teenagers packed into a Model T Ford that drives into the waters of Wakulla Springs.After serving in the Air Force from 1947 to 1950, Mr. Browning returned to Florida. He was the underwater double for Forrest Tucker in “Crosswinds” (1951), an adventure story about an effort to recover gold from a sunken plane, which was filmed in Florida. He was performing in Mr. Perry’s underwater shows at Weeki Wachee, another Florida attraction, and studying physical education at Florida State University when he was recruited for “Creature From the Black Lagoon.”In his book, Mr. Weaver recounts the hit-or-miss process of coming up with the right creature costume, and the difficulties Mr. Browning had to deal with once the right look was found. One problem was that the costume was made of foam rubber, which floats.“I wore a chest plate that was thin lead,” Mr. Browning told him, as well as thigh and ankle weights.Another problem, Mr. Weaver said, was that Mr. Chapman, the actor playing the on-land version of the creature, was quite tall; in Florida, Mr. Browning had scenes with Ms. Stanley and several other stand-ins.“Ricou was average height,” Mr. Weaver said, “so short people were hired to play the hero-heroine-bad guy so that Ricou would look comparatively king-sized.”Mr. Browning’s later film work included directing the comedy “Salty” (1973), about a sea lion, and the crime drama “Mr. No Legs” (1978), about a mob enforcer who is a double amputee, as well as doing stunt work in several movies, including serving as Jerry Lewis’s underwater double in the 1959 comedy “Don’t Give Up the Ship.”Mr. Browning’s first marriage, to Margaret Kelly in 1951, ended in divorce. His second wife, Fran Ravelo, whom he married in 1977, died in 2020. In addition to his daughter Renee, he is survived by three other children from his first marriage, his sons, Kelly and Ricou Jr., and his daughter Kim Browning; 10 grandchildren; and 11 great-grandchildren.Mr. Weaver noted that all of the other actors who portrayed monsters in the classic Universal films died some time ago.“Ricou,” he said, “had the distinction of being the last man standing.” More

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      Kodak Black Is Arrested on Drug Charges in Florida

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      The authorities said they found dozens of oxycodone tablets and $75,000 in cash while searching the rapper’s car after he was pulled over in Fort Lauderdale on Friday.The rapper Kodak Black was arrested on Friday in South Florida on felony drug charges, the authorities said. It was the latest in a long string of legal woes for Black, 25, who was serving prison time on weapons charges when President Donald J. Trump commuted his sentence on his last day in office last year.At about 4:30 p.m., Florida Highway Patrol troopers saw Black driving a purple Dodge Durango in Fort Lauderdale with tinted windows that appeared darker than allowed under state law.The troopers confirmed that the car’s registration was expired. After pulling Black over, they observed “a strong odor of marijuana” coming from inside the car, the Highway Patrol said in a statement. The troopers searched the car and found a clear bag containing 31 oxycodone tablets and nearly $75,000 in cash, the Highway Patrol said.Black, whose legal name is Bill Kapri, was arrested and taken to the Broward County jail in Fort Lauderdale. He was released on Saturday on a $75,000 bond, the Broward County Sheriff’s Office said.Black was charged with one count of trafficking oxycodone and one count of possession of a controlled substance, according to the Broward County Clerk’s Office. He pleaded not guilty and requested a jury trial, court documents show.Bradford Cohen, Black’s lawyer, said on Twitter that there were “always additional facts and circumstances that give rise to a defense, especially in this case.” Cohen did not immediately respond to a request for comment.Black’s lawyers filed a motion on Sunday to “inspect, weigh and independently test” the tablets that the authorities have identified as oxycodone pills.Black, who is from Pompano Beach, Fla., topped the Billboard album charts in December 2018 with his album “Dying to Live.” But his career suffered as he has faced various drug, weapons, sexual assault and robbery charges over the years. Early Monday morning, he posted his mug shot on Instagram with the caption, “Not Again.”In 2019, Black pleaded guilty to federal weapons charges, admitting that he lied on background check forms while buying firearms earlier that year. Prosecutors said two of the guns were later found at crime scenes.Black had served about half of a 46-month prison term when Trump commuted his sentence in the final hours of his presidency.Shortly after his release, Black put out a song called “Last Day In,” expressing his hopes for the future: “This my first day out the joint, so that’s my last day in.” More

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      Jerry Harris Sentenced to 12 Years for Sex Crimes Involving Minors

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      Mr. Harris, who shot to reality-TV fame in the Netflix documentary series “Cheer,” had pleaded guilty to federal charges related to soliciting child sexual abuse imagery and illegal sexual conduct with a minor.A judge in Chicago sentenced Jerry Harris, the Navarro College cheerleader who became a breakout star of the Netflix documentary series “Cheer,” to 12 years in prison on Wednesday on guilty pleas to two of seven federal charges related to sex crimes involving minors in February.Mr. Harris, 22, had reached a plea deal in February in which prosecutors agreed that after sentencing on the two counts — the charges that he persuaded a 17-year-old to send him sexually explicit photos for money and traveled to Florida “for the purpose of engaging in illicit sexual conduct” with a 15-year-old — they would ask that the remaining charges be dropped. He had initially pleaded not guilty to all seven charges in December 2020.Mr. Harris’s plea agreement noted that sentencing guidelines “may recommend 50 years in prison” for the offenses, though Judge Manish S. Shah had noted that he might decide differently. Judge Shah also ordered Mr. Harris to serve eight years of court-supervised release following his prison term.A lawyer for Mr. Harris, Todd Pugh, did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Wednesday.In a memo filed before the hearing, prosecutors had asked Judge Shah to sentence Mr. Harris to 15 years in prison, arguing that Mr. Harris took advantage of “his status as a competitive cheerleader, his social media persona, and eventually his celebrity and money, to persuade and entice his young victims to engage in sexually explicit conduct for him or with him.”Mr. Harris’s lawyers had requested a six-year prison term, to be followed by eight years of supervised release, arguing that Mr. Harris had himself been sexually abused as a child in the world of competitive cheerleading and therefore had a “skewed version of what he understood to be appropriate relationships.”The sentencing caps a case that began nearly two years ago in September 2020, when Mr. Harris was arrested and charged with production of child pornography, months after the release of “Cheer,” which follows a national champion cheerleading team from a small-town Texas community college.Around the same time, he was sued by teenage twin brothers who said he had sent sexually explicit messages to them, requested nude photos and solicited sex from them. (Mr. Harris befriended the boys when they were 13 and he was 19, USA Today reported.)In a voluntary interview with the authorities in 2020, Mr. Harris acknowledged that he had exchanged sexually explicit photos on Snapchat with at least 10 to 15 people he knew were minors and had sex with a 15-year-old at a cheerleading competition in 2019, according to a criminal complaint.After federal agents interviewed other minors who said they had had relationships with Mr. Harris, they filed additional felony charges against him. The charges that Mr. Harris did not plead guilty to as part of the agreement include four counts of sexual exploitation of children and one count of enticement. The seven charges involve five minor boys.Mr. Harris has been held at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Chicago since his arrest. More

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      Disney Says It Hopes Florida Anti-LGBTQ Law Is ‘Struck Down’

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      Moments after Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida signed an anti-L.G.B.T.Q. bill into law on Monday, Disney released a statement condemning it and saying that its “goal as a company is for this law to be repealed by the legislature or struck down by the courts.” Disney employs roughly 80,000 people in the Orlando area.Labeled by opponents as “Don’t Say Gay,” the law restricts classroom instruction on sexual orientation and gender identity. It also gives parents an option to sue a school district if they think the policy has been violated.This month, Disney was criticized by many of its employees for refusing to take a public stand against the legislation, leading to a series of moves from the company’s chief executive, Bob Chapek. Mr. Chapek broke the company’s silence and stated Disney’s opposition; apologized repeatedly; paused political giving in Florida pending a review; and created a task force to develop an action plan for Disney to be a more positive force for the L.G.B.T.Q. community, including through its content for families. He is going on a listening tour at Disney workplaces, both domestically and overseas, this week.On March 9, Mr. Chapek told shareholders at Disney’s annual meeting that he had called Mr. DeSantis to “express our disappointment and concern” about the bill. “The governor heard our concerns, and agreed to meet with me and L.G.B.T.Q.+ members of our senior team in Florida as a way to address them,” he said.Mr. DeSantis responded with defiance, promptly deriding the company as “Woke Disney” in a fund-raising email to supporters. On Monday, as he signed the bill, Mr. DeSantis said: “I don’t care what Hollywood says. I don’t care what big corporations say. Here I stand. I’m not backing down.”The hosts of the Academy Awards on Sunday made fun of the legislation during their opening stand-up routine.In its statement on Monday, Disney added that it was committed to the national and state organizations working to overturn the law. “We are dedicated to standing up for the rights and safety of L.G.B.T.Q.+ members of the Disney family,” the company said, “as well as the L.G.B.T.Q.+ community in Florida and across the country.” More