Author: NY TIMES

The Academy Awards is introducing an Oscar for casting, the ceremony’s governing organization announced Thursday, making it the first new category in more than 20 years.Casting directors have been pushing for the category for decades, arguing that their work is critical to the success of a film, but the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, which puts on the Oscars, has rejected the idea — until now.The new category will be introduced for films released in 2025, meaning that fans won’t see a statuette given out until the ceremony in 2026. The Academy tends to be conservative when it…

Subscribe to Popcast!Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon MusicIn a 30-year career, Usher has been many things — an R&B prodigy, a history-minded technician, a legitimate crossover pop star, an EDM experimenter and lately, a consummate showman with a Las Vegas residency that prompted untold viral videos of a performer extraordinarily at ease with his gifts.And yet Usher, 45, has long felt curiously undervalued, which perhaps explains why it is only now that he has been offered what might be music’s biggest stage: the 2024 Super Bowl halftime show. (He was a guest during the 2011 show.)On this week’s Popcast,…

Senate Democrats, pressing to advance a stand-alone bill to send tens of billions of dollars to Israel and Ukraine after Republicans blocked a compromise that would have paired the aid with stringent border security measures, promised a Thursday vote on the alternative.In a day of whiplash on Capitol Hill, Democrats on Wednesday pivoted to salvage the aid from becoming a casualty of former President Donald J. Trump’s political campaign. But after hours of stalemate, Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and the majority leader, announced that senators needed more time to agree on how to move forward on that…

Riad al-Turk, a veteran Syrian opposition leader known as the “Mandela of Syria” after spending nearly two decades in prison for speaking out against his country’s dictatorial regimes, died on Jan. 1 in Eaubonne, a northern suburb of Paris. He was 93.Mr. Turk’s death, at a hospital, was confirmed by his daughter Khuzama Turk in an interview.Mr. Turk’s life was a dark mirror of his country’s torments, and his improbable survival was testimony to his will to endure. He was imprisoned four times, tortured repeatedly and spent nearly 18 years in solitary confinement, mostly in an underground cell with no…

On Wednesday night, two sturdy bouncers framed an unmarked doorway between a pizzeria and a vape shop on West 57th Street. Those granted entry descended a narrow staircase to the door of Silencio New York, where a new offshoot of the swank Parisian nightclub was hosting its inaugural party.The Silencio on rue Montmartre has attracted a cross-section of Paris’s fashion, art and music scenes since it opened in 2011, with the involvement of the filmmaker David Lynch. (Its name references the eerie theater in Mr. Lynch’s 2001 movie “Mulholland Drive.”)Although its new location near Columbus Circle is not slated to…

The University of California and California State University systems on Wednesday became the latest of a growing list of schools to give applicants extensions on their intent to register, now that colleges won’t get federal financial aid data until at least March.At least 25 schools will no longer require commitments by May 1, since they may not be able to send admitted students financial aid offers until April. A few schools have created new aid forms or processes on the fly to award their own grants and scholarships.What is increasingly resembling a kind of financial-aid free-for-all comes as a result…

The Federal Communications Commission on Thursday outlawed unwanted robocalls generated by artificial intelligence, amid growing concerns over election disinformation and consumer fraud facilitated by the technology.The unanimous decision by the F.C.C. cited a three-decade-old law aimed at curbing junk phone calls, clarifying that A.I.-generated spam calls are also illegal. By doing so, the agency said it expanded the ability of states to prosecute creators of unsolicited spam robocalls.“It seems like something from the far-off future, but it is already here,” the F.C.C. chairwoman, Jessica Rosenworcel, said in a statement. “Bad actors are using A.I.-generated voices in unsolicited robocalls to extort…

It has taken perseverance, extraordinary musical gifts and a little luck for Usher to land where he is right now. At 45, the R&B singer and songwriter Usher Raymond is releasing his new album, “Coming Home,” just two days before he will headline the Super Bowl halftime show. In December 2023, he completed an acclaimed 100-show residency in Las Vegas. His single “Good Good,” released last summer, has racked up tens of millions of plays on Spotify. It’s one of the 20 tracks on “Coming Home,” an album that sums up and expands what Usher does best.Usher returns in familiar…

As Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken sat down with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel this week, American and Arab officials were expressing cautious optimism over the latest proposal from Hamas for a cease-fire in the Gaza Strip.But just hours after speaking to Mr. Blinken, Mr. Netanyahu appeared more intent on delivering a fiery message aimed at his domestic audience. Instead of appearing side by side at a news conference with the secretary of state after they met on Wednesday — as is customary on such trips — the Israeli leader pre-empted him. Meeting on his own with reporters,…

Before he became known as the father of artificial Christmas trees, Si Spiegel was a valiant Army aviator. In the closing days of World War II, he was piloting his B-17 Flying Fortress in an armada of 1,500 Allied bombers that pummeled Berlin. Struck by antiaircraft flak, two of the plane’s four engines lost power as Mr. Spiegel reversed course to return to England.Rather than bail out over Germany and risk being captured as a prisoner of war — especially given that he was Jewish — Mr. Spiegel managed to crash-land in Soviet-occupied Poland. After being stuck there for weeks,…