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      Sean Combs’s Lawyer Calls Home Raids an ‘Unprecedented Ambush’

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      A day after two of the entertainment executive’s homes were raided by federal agents from Homeland Security Investigations, his lawyer said his client is innocent.A lawyer for Sean Combs, the hip-hop mogul whose homes were raided by federal agents on Monday, called the searches “a gross overuse of military-level force” and criticized them as “nothing more than a witch hunt based on meritless accusations made in civil lawsuits.”“There is no excuse for the excessive show of force and hostility exhibited by authorities or the way his children and employees were treated,” the lawyer, Aaron Dyer, said in a statement on Tuesday. “Mr. Combs was never detained but spoke to and cooperated with authorities. Despite media speculation, neither Mr. Combs nor any of his family members have been arrested nor has their ability to travel been restricted in any way.”On Monday, armed agents from Homeland Security Investigations searched two of Mr. Combs’s homes in Los Angeles and Miami Beach, Fla. The authorities did not say whether Mr. Combs was a target or what criminal charges they were investigating. Video taken by a local television station in Los Angeles, Fox 11, showed armed officers entering a home in the exclusive Holmby Hills area of the city.“This unprecedented ambush — paired with an advanced, coordinated media presence — leads to a premature rush to judgment of Mr. Combs,” Mr. Dyer said. “There has been no finding of criminal or civil liability with any of these allegations. Mr. Combs is innocent and will continue to fight every single day to clear his name.”On the same day as those searches, federal agents also stopped Mr. Combs at an airport in the Miami area as he was preparing to leave with family members for the Bahamas, and took a number of electronic devices from Mr. Combs, according to a person with knowledge of the matter. Mr. Combs was not arrested, and remained in the United States, according to that person.The raid was a striking development for Mr. Combs, who has been one of the highest-profile figures in the music industry for decades, credited with transforming hip-hop and R&B in the 1990s into a global business. He worked with stars like Mary J. Blige and the Notorious B.I.G., and as recently as last fall was being showered with industry accolades.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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      Homes Tied to Sean Combs Raided by Homeland Security in L.A. and Miami

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      In response to questions about Mr. Combs’s residences, Homeland Security Investigations said the searches were part of “an ongoing investigation.”Federal agents raided homes in Los Angeles and Miami on Monday that are connected to the hip-hop mogul Sean Combs, a person with knowledge of the case said.Homeland Security Investigations carried out the raids but did not provide details about the case, including whether Mr. Combs was a target or which criminal charges were being investigated. Mr. Combs, who is also known as Puff Daddy or Diddy, has been accused of sexual assault and sex trafficking in multiple civil lawsuits over the last several months.A spokesperson for Mr. Combs did not respond to a request for comment.The criminal inquiry was being conducted by federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York and federal agents with Homeland Security, a law-enforcement official said. Nicholas Biase, a spokesman for the Southern District, declined to comment.In a statement, Homeland Security said that agents from New York had “executed law enforcement actions as part of an ongoing investigation, with assistance from HSI Los Angeles, HSI Miami and our local law enforcement partners.”Video from Fox 11 (KTTV), a local television station in Los Angeles, showed armed officers entering a home in the Holmby Hills area of the city, which a law-enforcement official said was connected to Mr. Combs. Public records in California also indicate that the home is owned by a company led by Mr. Combs.The raids were a stunning development in the career of Mr. Combs, 54, a producer, label executive and occasional rapper who has been one of the most influential and widely recognized figures in the music business over the last 30 years.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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      in Movies

      Julie Robinson Belafonte, Dancer, Actress and Activist, Dies at 95

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      With the singer Harry Belafonte, she was one half of a celebrated (and sometimes denounced) interracial power couple who pressed the cause of civil rights in the 1960s.Julie Robinson Belafonte, a dancer, actress and, with the singer Harry Belafonte, one half of an interracial power couple who used their high profiles to aid the civil rights movement and the cause of integration in the United States, died on March 9 in Los Angeles. She was 95.Her death, at an assisted living facility in the Studio City neighborhood, was announced by her family. She had resided there for the last year and a half after living for decades in Manhattan.Ms. Belafonte, who was white and the second wife of Mr. Belafonte, the Black Caribbean-American entertainer and activist, had an eclectic career in the arts. At various times she was a dancer, a choreographer, a dance teacher, an actress and a documentary film producer.Ms. Belafonte with Harry Belafonte, whom she married in 1957 shortly after he and his first wife divorced. They had been introduced by Marlon Brando. via Getty ImagesMs. Belafonte traveled the nation and the world with her husband and their children during Mr. Belafonte’s sellout concert tours in the late 1950s and ’60s, presenting an image of a close interracial family that was otherwise rarely seen on television or in newspapers and magazines.She was at Mr. Belafonte’s side when they planned and hosted fund-raisers for civil rights groups, including the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference and the more militant Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee.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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      Ed Begley Jr. and Daughter Hayden Took the LA Metro to the Oscars

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      Ed Begley Jr. has made a tradition of taking public transportation to the Academy Awards. And, like many commuters, he wears sensible shoes.Ed Begley Jr. could be described as Hollywood royalty: The actor is a son of another actor, Ed Begley, who won a best supporting actor Oscar in 1963.But the younger Mr. Begley, a longtime member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the organization behind the Oscars, commuted to this year’s ceremony like a plebeian by taking the Los Angeles Metro. His trip was filmed by his daughter Hayden Begley, who later shared the video on TikTok, where it has since received more than six million views.The video opens with Ms. Begley, 24, asking her mother, Rachelle Carson, Mr. Begley’s wife and Oscars guest, how she is getting to the ceremony. “I’m driving,” Ms. Carson says, before asking, “And you’re what?” Off camera Ms. Begley replies, “Taking the subway.” Ms. Carson, who is wearing a black lacy gown, mutters, “Oh God, whatever,” as she waves her arms in exasperation.Ms. Begley, who in a voice-over explains that she isn’t attending the ceremony with her father, then films his journey to the event on a 240 bus and the B line subway.

      @haydenbegley #oscarsathome #oscars #oscars2024 ##publictransport##bus##train@@LA Metro##metro ♬ Chopin Nocturne No. 2 Piano Mono – moshimo sound design As Mr. Begley, 74, who has spent much of his career promoting environmentalism, talks to the camera about his fondness for public transit while riding the bus, he shows off two pins on the lapel of his dark suit jacket. One pin was shaped like an Oscar statuette and came from the Academy, where he served on the board of governors for 15 years. He said that the other pin, which had a capital M, was his “Metro pin for being a rider since 1962.”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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      James Conlon to Step Down as Music Director of Los Angeles Opera

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      James Conlon, who has conducted more performances with the company than anyone else, will step down from his post in 2026.The year 2026 will mark James Conlon’s 20th anniversary as music director of the Los Angeles Opera. That seemed to him like it would be the right time to step down.“I’ve had 20 years — that’s a good round number,” Conlon, 73, said in a telephone interview. “I want to stop when I’m at my full capacity and I want to be able to go on loving the company the way I do.”His final season, the 2025-26 season, will coincide with the company’s 40th anniversary, and Conlon said that he “wanted to be there to celebrate that with them.”“It will mean I will have been there for half of its history,” said Conlon, who has led more than 460 performances of 68 different operas there, more than any other conductor.Conlon will be named the opera’s conductor laureate, which the company said would be in recognition “of his distinguished tenure and contribution to Los Angeles Opera and the community at large, and in acknowledgment of the mutual intention for Conlon to return to the company as a guest conductor.”Christopher Koelsch, the opera’s president and chief executive, praised Conlon’s musical leadership and said that there was “something elegant about the timing” of his departure, coinciding as it does with both anniversaries. He added that the transition “presents an opportunity for us as an organization for a different perspective and generational change.”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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      in Movies

      Inside the 2024 Vanity Fair Oscars Party

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      “This is made of success — not everyone can have it,” the actress and comedian Tiffany Haddish said Sunday night, as she held the train on her dress and danced her way through the crowd inside the Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts in Beverly Hills.At around 11 p.m., hundreds of people were smiling and nodding and bobbing and weaving their way across a red carpet that snaked its way from Santa Monica Boulevard through the main room of a customized event space where Vanity Fair’s annual post-Oscars party was taking place.Barry Keoghan, the star of “Saltburn,” stood near the center bar. Lauren Sanchez, the fiancée of the Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, was in front of him, shimmying away to Chic’s “I Want Your Love,” in her reddish, partially see-through chiffon dress.Never mind that people had been tripping on her train all evening long.“I don’t mind,” she said. “It just bounces right back up.”Ice Spice and Tracee Ellis Ross; Paul Giamatti and Brendan Fraser; Eva Longoria and Kim Kardashian; Serena Williams.Nina Westervelt for The New York TimesThe Vanity Fair party started in 1994 at Morton’s, a celebrity hangout on the corner of Robertson and Melrose. The first few years, only the most famous and connected people in Hollywood were invited.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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      Some Oscar Attendees Delayed by Protesters Calling for Gaza Cease-Fire

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      Some Oscar attendees were delayed arriving at the Dolby Theater on Sunday when demonstrators calling for a cease-fire in Gaza filled lanes of traffic a few blocks south of the theater, according to the Los Angeles police.There were at least three protests about the Israel-Hamas war, said Capt. Kelly Muniz, a head of the Los Angeles Police Department’s media relations division. She said there were between 500 and 700 protesters at the largest demonstration, near the Cinerama Dome, a closed movie theater about a mile away from the Dolby Theater.At that protest, Laura Delhauer, an independent filmmaker who held a cardboard sign that read “Free Palestine,” said she hoped to put pressure on the U.S. government to end the conflict.“I’m heartbroken to know that our hard-earned tax dollars are going to pay for the murder of innocent civilians,” she said.Delhauer and other protesters marched down Sunset Boulevard as car horns honked, a helicopter hovered overhead and Los Angeles police officers in riot gear watched nearby.Captain Muniz said the Police Department had arrested one person for battery of a police officer in relation to the protests, which may have been connected to one another.By 4:30 p.m. local time, Captain Muniz said that the size of the protests had diminished but that some demonstrators were still seeking to “get into the gated areas” near the Oscars. After protesters tried to breach a chain-link fence near the entrance to the Dolby Theater, police officers secured it with zip ties.The largest protest was organized by groups including Film Workers for Palestine and SAG-AFTRA Members for Ceasefire.“With people from across the globe watching the Academy Awards, this is a Hail Mary opportunity,” said Anthony Bryson, one of the organizers. He added: “What’s happening in Gaza needs to have attention drawn to it. We wanted to bring as much resistance and visibility as possible.”Shortly after the protest began, a man dressed in a dark blue suit stood across the street holding both a United States flag and an Israeli flag. After a brief verbal altercation, protesters grabbed the Israeli flag and threw it into the street. The man walked away, surrounded by volunteer safety officers who had been brought in by protest organizers. More

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      in Movies

      How to Watch the Oscars: Date, Time and Streaming

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      An earlier airtime and an unusual presenter approach are among the changes at this year’s ceremony.Watching the Oscars doesn’t usually require an instruction manual.But this year, to make sure you catch the goodness of Ryan Gosling performing “I’m Just Ken” — in what we can only hope will be a faux fur coat — there are two crucial steps you must take.One: Be in your preferred watching position — popcorn popped, possibly in a “Dune” bucket, Snuggie on — an hour earlier on Sunday. In a break from the traditional 8 p.m. Eastern, 5 p.m. Pacific start, this year’s ceremony is scheduled to kick off at 7 p.m., an effort by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to stick to prime-time hours.And two: When we say 7 p.m., we mean what-was-until-2-a.m.-on-Sunday 6 p.m., because — that’s right — daylight saving time is here once again. Don’t forget to set your clocks — if you still have clocks — forward an hour.You may have heard that “Oppenheimer,” with a pack-leading 13 nominations, is a lock to win best picture. This is accurate. But even if we’re certain how the night will end, the getting there is the fun part. Here’s everything you need to know.What time does the show start and where can I watch?In a perk for those who like going to bed early, this year’s show begins at 7 p.m. Eastern, 4 p.m. Pacific, at the Dolby Theater in Los Angeles. Sunday is also the start of daylight saving time, so remember to set your clocks an hour forward before you go to bed on Saturday night.On TV, ABC is the official broadcaster. Online, you can watch the show live on the ABC app, which is free to download, or at abc.com, though you’ll need to sign in using the credentials from your cable provider. There are also a number of live TV streaming services that offer access to ABC, including Hulu + Live TV, YouTube TV, AT&T TV and FuboTV, which all require subscriptions.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