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    New Season of ‘The White Lotus’ Brings a Tourism Boom in Thailand

    Crowds of visitors descended on Maui and Sicily after the HBO show’s first two seasons. Is the tropical resort island of Koh Samui ready for Season 3?When the third season of the hit HBO series “The White Lotus” debuts on Sunday, viewers will be transported to the tropical island of Koh Samui, Thailand. And if previous seasons are any indication, many of them will soon be booking vacations there, too.The show, which takes place at a different fictional White Lotus luxury resort each season, centers on a group of wealthy tourists, their interpersonal dramas and the inevitable tension with staff and locals, all against a backdrop of paradise skewed.Members of the “White Lotus” cast this season include Lalisa Manobal, right, who performs as Lisa with the K-pop group Blackpink.Fabio Lovino/HBO, via Associated PressThe travel industry has been anticipating the new season almost as much as fans have. Partly thanks to the so-called “White Lotus” effect, Koh Samui and Thailand have already emerged as top destinations. Koh Samui was one of the New York Times 52 Places to Go in 2025, and Thailand was Travel+Leisure’s 2025 destination of the year.With a wave of tourists set to wash ashore, the roughly 68,000 residents of Koh Samui are about to get a lot more familiar with the “White Lotus” effect.On the pristine white sand of Chaweng Beach one recent evening, Tey, 46, a local carpenter who declined to give his last name, said he didn’t really know much about the series. But then came a flash of recognition.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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    Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs’s Empire: Winnowed, but Still Weighty

    The music mogul’s business portfolio has shrunk, in part because of multiple sex abuse allegations, but his wealth remains a critical factor as his criminal case unfolds.In arguing to keep Sean Combs in jail until his trial on federal racketeering and sex trafficking charges, prosecutors have portrayed him as a lavishly wealthy, well-connected music mogul who would be well positioned to flee. In court papers, prosecutors cited media reporting that estimated his wealth at close to a billion dollars.But as Mr. Combs’s reputation has unraveled amid a wave of high-profile lawsuits and criminal charges, so has his business portfolio. Once a major brand ambassador and chairman of a media platform, he has been forced to withdraw from those roles. In June, several months before Mr. Combs was indicted, Forbes estimated his net worth at $400 million, down from $740 million in 2019.Mr. Combs’s fortune has been at the forefront of his public persona since the 1990s, when the success of his hip-hop and R&B label, Bad Boy Entertainment, meant he was known as much for his high-flying, champagne-popping lifestyle as the music he produced.One year ago, Mr. Combs, who is known as Diddy, was at the helm of an ever-growing portfolio: He was a record label founder, a liquor promoter, a cable TV and digital media chairman, a philanthropist and a fashion executive with a label called Sean John.Mr. Combs has gained prominence as a record label executive, a liquor promoter and the founder of a cable TV and digital media platform.From left: Theo Wargo/WireImage, via Getty Images; Stan Honda/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images; Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images for Revolt TV“He was a larger-than-life marketer,” said Dessie Brown Jr., an entertainment consultant who long viewed Mr. Combs as a model for building a career. “He always talked about being like a ringleader in a circus.”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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    Peter Morgan Turns His Pen From ‘The Crown’ to the Kremlin

    His new play “Patriots,” now on Broadway, follows Putin’s rise to power and the Russian oligarchs who mistakenly thought he’d be their puppet.Going from Princess Diana, a lovely icon who generated waves of sympathy, to Vladimir Putin, an icy villain who generates waves of disdain, might be difficult for some writers.Not Peter Morgan.After pulling back the curtain on the British royal family for six seasons of “The Crown,” Morgan was keen to move on. He had an idea for a play about the oligarchs who, in the 1990s, helped propel an obscure Putin to power and then had to watch as their Frankenstein changed the course of Russian history in a disastrous way.The resulting drama, “Patriots,” which opens on Broadway on April 22, offered Morgan a different way to approach recent history, and a new challenge: switching from the royals, who are household names but not ultimately very powerful, to oligarchs, who are super powerful but not generally household names.Morgan enjoys writing about the vilified, giving them a fighting chance. In “Patriots,” he creates a jigsaw of four Russian men, their fates intertwining in the post-Soviet era, who represent a Byzantine spectrum of moral values.“It’s just a delicious combination of characters,” Morgan, 60, told me, in an interview at the Ethel Barrymore Theater in Times Square. “There’s a sort of violence, whereas in ‘The Crown,’ there’s this politeness and there’s repression, and it’s very female. There’s something very male, very violent about this play. It felt like a natural thing to do, having spent so much time in the one world to go into another world just to relax a little.”Will Keen, left, as Vladimir Putin and Michael Stuhlbarg as Boris Berezovsky in “Patriots,” at the Ethel Barrymore Theater in Manhattan.Sara Krulwich/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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    Stephen Adams, Who Made Yale Music School Tuition-Free, Dies at 86

    A billionaire businessman and a late-blooming piano aficionado, he set a record with the anonymous $100 million gift that he and his wife gave the school.Stephen Adams, a billionaire whose anonymous $100 million gift to the Yale School of Music granted a tuition-free education to talented students embarking on careers in a capricious profession, died on March 14 at his home in Roxbury, Conn. He was 86.His death was confirmed by his wife, Denise (Rhea) Adams.Mr. Adams, who graduated from Yale College in 1959, was not a musician himself. But after he turned 55 and was already a prosperous business executive and wine collector, he became an amateur piano player.In 1999, he marked his class’s 40th-anniversary reunion by donating $10 million to the music school — the largest contribution it had ever received. Six years later, he and his wife surpassed that record when they made their $100 million gift, anonymously.They did not publicly reveal their identity as the donors until 2008, when Mr. Adams was asked to confirm their contribution by an interviewer from Wine Spectator magazine. He agreed to do so then, he said, to spur other contributors as his 50th-anniversary class reunion approached.“My wife and I are Christians, and the Bible speaks of giving in secret,” Mr. Adams told The Yale Daily News in 2009.In that same article, Michael Friedmann, a professor of theory and chamber music, said, “Musicians, as opposed to doctors or lawyers, are not in a position to repay educational loans easily, and the profession has a capricious opportunity structure.” He added, “The new financial conditions at the school, however, put musicians in a very different position in relation to their post-Yale careers.”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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    Just How Rich Were the McCallisters in ‘Home Alone’?

    Fans have been debating the McCallister family’s wealth for years. We asked the Federal Reserve for answers.The battle in “Home Alone” between 8-year-old Kevin McCallister (Macaulay Culkin) and two burglars known as the Wet Bandits has unfolded on screens around the world every Christmas since the film premiered in 1990.And each year, for some viewers, the McCallisters’ grand home and lifestyle inspires its own tradition: wondering just how rich this family was.The New York Times turned to economists and people involved with the film to find the answer.The McCallisters are the 1 Percent.The McCallister family home is a real house in Winnetka, Ill., a wealthy suburb of Chicago.Erin Hooley/Chicago Tribune va Getty ImagesEarly in the film, one of the burglars, Harry (Joe Pesci), tells his fellow Wet Bandit, Marv (Daniel Stern), that the McCallister home is their top target in a wealthy neighborhood.“That’s the one, Marv, that’s the silver tuna,” Harry says, before speculating that the house contains a lot of “top-flight goods,” including VCRs, stereos, very fine jewelry and “odd marketable securities.”The home is the best clue as to how much money the McCallisters have.The silver tuna, or its exterior anyway, is a real-world house at 671 Lincoln Avenue in the Chicago suburb of Winnetka, one of the most expensive neighborhoods in the United States, according to Realtor.com. It appears to have enough space for Kevin and his four siblings to each have their own rooms, but also can accommodate an army of visitors.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?  More

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    Netanyahu Trial Gets a Hollywood Mention From a Political Rival

    Yair Lapid, a former colleague and now nemesis of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, testified that he had been asked to help a wealthy film producer with a tax break.The leader of Israel’s political opposition, Yair Lapid, testified on Monday in the long-running corruption trial of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, recounting how Mr. Netanyahu had lobbied him nearly a decade ago to back tax breaks favoring an influential Israeli film producer.The claim is a small part of a yearslong prosecution in which Mr. Netanyahu is accused of granting political favors to several businessmen and media moguls in exchange for expensive gifts and positive news coverage, charges that he denies.The appearance of Mr. Lapid — once a colleague of Mr. Netanyahu’s and now his nemesis — enlivened a slow-moving courtroom process that has largely receded into the background of Israeli public life since it began with great fanfare more than three years ago.Mr. Lapid served as prime minister for several months last year, before losing power to Mr. Netanyahu, Israel’s longest-serving leader, in December.Mr. Lapid briefly gave evidence about two short conversations with Mr. Netanyahu in 2013 and 2014, when he served as Mr. Netanyahu’s finance minister in a coalition government. Mr. Lapid said that Mr. Netanyahu twice had raised the possibility of extending tax exemptions for Israeli citizens who had returned to the country after living abroad, a mechanism that Mr. Lapid opposed.The extension would have benefited Arnon Milchan, a producer of scores of major Hollywood films including “Fight Club” and “Pretty Woman.” Prosecutors say Mr. Milchan gave Mr. Netanyahu’s family expensive gifts, including cigars and Champagne, in exchange for political favors.According to Mr. Lapid, Mr. Netanyahu twice described the tax exemption as “a good law.” But Mr. Netanyahu did not pursue the matter beyond those two exchanges, Mr. Lapid said. The prime minister gave the impression that he simply wanted to go through the motions of asking about it so that he could tell Mr. Milchan that he had tried, Mr. Lapid added.“The whole issue was marginal in real time,” Mr. Lapid said, according to Kan, the Israeli public broadcaster. “It’s hard to remember all the details.”Mr. Netanyahu has been accused of granting political favors to businessmen and media moguls in exchange for expensive gifts and positive news coverage, charges that he denies.Pool photo by Menahem KahanaThe trial began in 2020 and will most likely not hinge on Mr. Lapid’s evidence: It is expected to last several more years and features several more accusations. Among other claims, prosecutors accuse Mr. Netanyahu of promising to pursue legislation that would create unfavorable business conditions for a newspaper owned by Sheldon Adelson, a billionaire supporter of Mr. Netanyahu and President Donald J. Trump, in exchange for positive coverage from one of the newspaper’s competitors.Many Israelis have tuned out of the day-to-day proceedings, with a large proportion having already made up their minds about Mr. Netanyahu. His supporters view the trial as a trumped-up effort to delegitimize an elected prime minister, while his critics say it should disqualify him from office.But regardless of its outcome, the trial has already caused unusual political instability. It has divided Israeli society almost equally between Mr. Netanyahu’s supporters and critics, making it difficult for either Mr. Netanyahu or opponents like Mr. Lapid to win a stable majority in Parliament. That has caused several successive governments to collapse prematurely, leading to five elections in less than four years.The trial is also at the center of an ongoing dispute about the future of the Israeli judiciary.Mr. Netanyahu’s coalition seeks to overhaul the court system, giving the government greater control over the selection of Supreme Court judges and diminishing the court’s power over Parliament. Mr. Netanyahu says the overhaul is necessary to reduce the influence of unelected judges over elected lawmakers, but his critics fear that the plan will ultimately allow him to end his trial. Mr. Netanyahu denies any such intention.Mr. Lapid’s appearance highlighted the nuances beneath the surface of Israeli politics: Though he now seeks Mr. Netanyahu’s political downfall, Mr. Lapid was once his political ally — and socialized with and briefly worked for Mr. Milchan. Under cross-examination, Mr. Lapid recounted how he interviewed Mr. Milchan in the 1990s, during his previous career as a journalist, and even joined Mr. Milchan’s production company for several months.“We remained friends after that,” Mr. Lapid said, according to Kan. “When he would come to Israel, we would meet for dinners. He is a charming man and I liked him.”But that friendship did not extend to helping Mr. Milchan with his tax, Mr. Lapid said.Gabby Sobelman More

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    ‘Last Night in New York’ Review: A Social Chronicler Explains Himself

    A slew of well-off New Yorkers, many of them not very nice, sing the praises of their “Boswell,” David Patrick Columbia, in a new documentary.David Patrick Columbia writes a near-daily online column called “New York Social Diary,” which chronicles the galas, dinners and benefits frequented by high-income patrician folk. His is a world in which people still answer to “Muffie.” Directed by Matthew Miele, who often quizzes his subject in a tone of almost goofy awe, “Last Night in New York” invites Columbia to explain his life and work.Columbia, who appears to be in his 70s and looks like William Hurt preparing to play Samuel Beckett, speaks of his working class background and a family history that includes abuse and murder. He can be mildly moving, as when recalling his friendship with Debbie Reynolds. But with Columbia at its center — he insists he’s not overly impressed by the people who constitute his primary subject — the movie can’t help but function as an apologia for the ruling class. Early in the picture Columbia relates the high-society background of the music producer John Hammond (he was part Vanderbilt and raised in an Upper East Side mansion), perhaps hoping to make the point that rich people can be genuinely useful.
    One doesn’t expect to have one’s stomach churned by such a documentary, but then — wham! — Taki Theodoracopulos, the writer and sometime publisher whose work has been known to steer into race-baiting (to put it mildly), turns up. Like several of the other interviewees in the picture, his insights are affecting, but not in a good way. “He’s the only man who appreciates John O’Hara,” Theodoracopulos says of Columbia. This is, well, objectively not true.Musing on previous society chroniclers, Blair Sobel, a colleague of Columbia’s, says, “Dominick Dunne and Truman [Capote] were bitchy.” She continues, “David is a handsome man. Those guys were trolls.” Barbara Tober, a board chair of the New York Museum of Art and Design, chimes in, without a hint of irony or humor, “If you are in ‘New York Social Diary,’ you exist. If you’re not, you don’t.”Last Night in New YorkNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 38 minutes. Rent or buy on most major platforms. More

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    One More Project for David Geffen: Building His Legacy

    In Los Angeles, you can wander through Judy Baca murals at the cavernous Geffen Contemporary at MOCA, view “Beetlejuice” at the sphere-like David Geffen Theater at the Academy Museum, watch “The Inheritance” at the Geffen Playhouse, and follow the progress of the new David Geffen Galleries, a striking work of architecture that will span Wilshire Boulevard, at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.New York now has not one but two David Geffen Halls: an academic building at Columbia Business School and the remake of the Lincoln Center home of the New York Philharmonic, which reopened this month after a $550 million renovation that he jump-started with a $100 million gift.At 79, Geffen, the entertainment magnate, has planted himself into the pantheon of leading American philanthropists. He has handed out $1.2 billion over the past 25 years to museums, theaters, concert halls, universities and medical centers, according to the Geffen Foundation, and pledged to “give every nickel away” of a fortune estimated to be $7.7 billion. As a result, Geffen has become avidly sought by culture and education leaders looking to finance a wave of new construction that is enlivening cities as the nation emerges from the coronavirus pandemic.“When you need a gift of this scale, there aren’t many people who are doing what David is doing, which is investing big-time in the cultural infrastructure of major cities — New York, Los Angeles,” said Michael Govan, the head of LACMA, who spent a year convincing Geffen to give $150 million toward the galleries there that will bear his name.Geffen’s gifts are often contingent upon naming rights. When Avery Fisher Hall was renamed for him in 2015, 61 signs and maps around Lincoln Center were changed. Brian Harkin for The New York TimesGeffen is hardly some modern-day version of Andrew Carnegie, who made his fortune from steel and financed one of the great waves of philanthropy in the nation’s history. He is an openly gay entertainment mogul whose life, romances, yacht, mansions, art acquisitions, business deals, celebrity adventures and political engagement with, in particular, the Clintons and Barack Obama make him as engrossing a character as anyone in Hollywood.It’s hard to imagine, for instance, Carnegie dating Cher or Marlo Thomas when he was young, which Geffen did; comforting Yoko Ono at the hospital the night that John Lennon was assassinated, which Geffen did; watching Joni Mitchell in his apartment when she wrote “Woodstock,” which Geffen did; or working with Janis Joplin, the Doors and Peter, Paul and Mary, which Geffen did.The Reopening of David Geffen HallThe New York Philharmonic’s notoriously jinxed auditorium at Lincoln Center has undergone a $550 million renovation.Reborn, Again: The renovation of the star-crossed hall aims to break its acoustic curse — and add a dash of glamour.Who Is David Geffen?: The entertainment magnate, who jump-started the renovation, has become avidly sought by culture and education leaders looking to finance a wave of new construction.San Juan Hill: Etienne Charles’s composition for the reopening of the hall honors the Afro-diasporic musical heritage of the neighborhood razed to build Lincoln Center.Expert Assessment: Right after the reopening our critic wrote that the renovation had a mightily improved sound. In the weeks that followed his feelings became more complicated.His skill at spotting up-and-coming musical talent (Jackson Browne; Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young; Guns N’ Roses), producing hit movies (“Risky Business” and “Beetlejuice”) and backing Broadway shows (“Dreamgirls” and “Cats”), and his work building record labels and movie studios has made him one of the wealthiest people in America. He has homes in New York, Los Angeles and East Hampton for when he is not entertaining boldfaced friends (think Tom Hanks and Oprah Winfrey) on his yacht, the Rising Sun. He once startled a dinner of journalists in Washington by disclosing that he had not flown on a commercial airplane since the late 1970s; that night he took a private jet back to Beverly Hills.Geffen is hardly shy about his philanthropy, as can be seen by the growing list of institutions bearing his name, including the David Geffen School of Medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles, and the David Geffen School of Drama at Yale, which his gift made tuition-free. (“I don’t agree that the best giving is anonymous,” Geffen once told Fortune. “We should be examples to our friends and communities. I should be an example to young, gay kids.”) But he is, in his own way, low key about it — he declined an invitation to speak at the gala celebrating the opening of Geffen Hall this past week, and seemed reluctant to stand when he was acknowledged from the stage.The lobby of the revamped hall.Todd Heisler/The New York TimesAnd he is not like other wealthy donors, who can range from hands-on to micromanaging when it comes to projects bearing their names. “They want to check the carpet designs,” said Deborah Borda, the head of the New York Philharmonic. By contrast, the gala was the first time Geffen saw the redone hall bearing his name; he never joined the hard-hat construction tours that Lincoln Center gave to dignitaries over these past two years.“David said, ‘I want to leave this in your hands: I don’t need any input on the selection of the architect and driving the design,’” said Katherine G. Farley, the chair of the board of Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, recounting her conversation with Geffen when she asked him for money to rebuild what was then called Avery Fisher Hall. “He kept repeating, ‘Make sure you do something great.’”Geffen, who declined a request for an interview, looks for transformative cultural projects that are struggling for credibility and financing, according to friends and associates. His contributions cover just a portion of the total cost — $100 million toward the $550 million Geffen Hall at Lincoln Center; $150 million toward the $750 million Geffen Galleries at LACMA — and are designed to goad other donors, while establishing Geffen as the primary patron.“He’s making big bets,” said Marie-Josée Kravis, the chairwoman of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, to which he donated $100 million toward a three-floor David Geffen Wing in 2016. “They’re transformative. It’s not incremental.”His gifts are usually contingent on naming rights. Lincoln Center agreed to a $15 million payment to the Fisher family to relinquish its naming rights so the center could promise Geffen that his name would remain on the hall in perpetuity. Although some argued that the naming rights should have commanded a higher price, Farley said, “Without his gift, there is no question that would not have happened.”By contrast, when David H. Koch, the oil-and-gas billionaire, gave $100 million in 2008 to renovate what had been called the New York State Theater at Lincoln Center, it came with the provision that the theater could be renamed for a new donor after 50 years.Arianna Huffington, the founder of The Huffington Post and a longtime friend of Geffen’s, said that “the arts have basically dominated his life,” and that they are what motivated his philanthropy.“I personally have very little patience for people who question why anybody gives — as long as they give,” she said.Geffen took a hands-off approach to the renovation, and never stopped by for a hard-hat tour when it was a construction site.Todd Heisler/The New York TimesGeffen has become more reclusive in recent years, first visiting the Geffen Theater at the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures in Los Angeles this month — a year after its red-carpet opening. He temporarily shut down his Instagram account at the start of the pandemic after he came under fire for posting a photo of his yacht floating in safe seclusion. “Isolated in the Grenadines avoiding the virus,” he wrote. “I’m hoping everybody is staying safe.”Geffen is a college dropout who grew up in Brooklyn, where he attended New Utrecht High School. After creating Asylum Records — where he signed Joni Mitchell and Bob Dylan — in 1971, he sold it two years later to Warner Communications for $7 million. He founded Geffen Records in 1980; he would sell that a decade later to MCA for $550 million in stock, which increased in value significantly when Matsushita then bought MCA. He co-founded, with Steven Spielberg and Jeffrey Katzenberg, DreamWorks SKG in 1994, and left the company in 2008.Geffen can be combative in his business dealings, and he lamented the “shameful” lack of support by New York donors in 2017 when Lincoln Center and the Philharmonic went back to the drawing board with plans to rebuild the hall, in part because it was growing too costly. Just after the move to rethink the New York project was announced, LACMA announced Geffen’s $150 million gift — timing that appeared to send a message, though officials said the gift had long been in the works.Associates said that Geffen’s background in business and culture, and particularly music, drives his philanthropic choices.“He comes from the music business,” said David Bohnett, another philanthropist based in New York and Los Angeles. “You grow up around music, you grow up around entertainment, it just seems logical that you are going to put your name on theaters and music halls and museums.”Some say it helps explain his hands-off approach to the projects he supports. “He’s made a career out of respecting artists and understanding what artists need,” said Henry Timms, the president of Lincoln Center. “And I think that’s the same context for this — he’s not assuming he can do this job better than the architects.”Geffen is intimately involved in deciding what projects to support. “He is a very engaged philanthropist and is involved in every funding decision made at the foundation,” said Dallas Dishman, the executive director of the Geffen Foundation, to which Geffen is the sole contributor.As he approaches his 80th birthday, and with over $7 billion left, Geffen is contemplating his mortality and his legacy, his friends say. Yet on Wednesday night in New York, when he finally rose from his chair at the gala marking the opening of the latest building bearing his name, he seemed taken aback by the intensity of the applause. He just smiled slightly and sat down, without saying a word.“He doesn’t reveal himself very much,” said Kravis, of the Museum of Modern Art. “He just gives. I respect his search for privacy and I’ve never pushed him on it.” More