Dea died Saturday at her Las Vegas residence, said LaNae Jenkins, the director of clinical services for Valley Hospice, who was one of Dea’s caretakers. A memorial is being planned.

Dea also appeared in several movies in the 1940s and ’50s, including “King of the Congo,” starring Buster Crabbe, in 1952.

Dea moved from California to Las Vegas in 1980. Famed magician David Copperfield befriended her in her later years, according to the Las Vegas Review-Journal.

“Gloria was amazing. She was charming funny and engaging,” Copperfield told the newspaper. “And in Vegas, as a young magician, she started it all. It was an honor to know her.”

Dea was 19 when she performed at El Rancho Vegas on May 14, 1941.

Her show at the Roundup Room is the first recorded appearance by a magician in Las Vegas, the Review-Journal reported Sunday.

“There was no Strip, really, in those days,” Dea told the newspaper last August when she turned 100. “We had the Last Frontier and the El Rancho Vegas. They had just started building the Flamingo.”

Dea performed magic that night and more.

“I also danced. I did the rumba because it was difficult to keep setting up all my magic stuff,” Dea said.

After relocating to California, Dea appeared in several movies including “Mexicana” in 1945 and “Plan 9 From Outer Space” in 1957.

“I was in the Saturday matinees, for the kids,” she said. “‘Plan 9 From Outer Space’ was the worst movie of all time. … I had fun making it though.”

But that marked the end of Dea’s entertainment career. She sold insurance and then new and used cars for a dealership in the San Fernando Valley, becoming a top sales rep.

According to the Review-Journal, Dea was an only child and did not have any immediate family. Her husband Sam Anzalone, a former California car sales executive, died in January 2022.

Dea was scheduled to be inducted into the UNLV College of Fine Arts Hall of Fame on Tuesday night.

Those plans will go forward as planned; Dea will be inducted by Copperfield in a presentation before the full program.

A host of comedic and entertainment royalty gathered at Washington’s Kennedy Center as Sandler was presented with the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor.

Presenters including Drew Barrymore, Conan O’Brien, Chris Rock, Jennifer Aniston, Steve Buscemi, Dana Carvey, and Luis Guzmán gave testimonials to Sandler's creative longevity, while poking occasional fun at his uneven movie output and tendency to cast all his friends in his movies.

Sandler's longtime writing and production partner Tim Herlihy joked that the pair were responsible for “31 motion pictures with a combined Rotten Tomatoes score of 59.”

Buscemi, known largely for dramatic and often violent roles, portrayed a string of comedic characters in Sandler movies.

“He takes his comedy very seriously. I laugh hard at everything I do with him,” he said.

Buscemi also singled out Sandler's musical comedy, including “The Chanukah Song," which became a multiplatinum hit. “His comedy songs alone deserve this reward,” he said.

Judd Apatow, Sandler's roommate during their early days in Los Angeles, recalled a young Sandler's boundless confidence and obvious talent.

“The moment you met him, you knew Adam was going to be a big star,” Apatow said. “And so did Adam.”

To highlight Sandler's seemingly limitless comedic energy, Apatow played an old video he recorded of a young Sandler prank-calling a local deli in his spare time to try out different comedic voices.

At the end of the night, Sandler paid tribute to his parents and siblings for arming him with “that weird irrational confidence thing that I guess I still have”

Sandler, 56, first came to national attention as a cast member on “Saturday Night Live.” After being fired from the cast following a five-year stint, Sandler launched a wildly successful movie career that has spanned more than 30 films, grossing over $3 billion worldwide.

Sandler's top hits include “Happy Gilmore,” “The Wedding Singer” and “You Don't Mess with the Zohan.” Although primarily known for slapstick comedy and overgrown man-child characters, he has excelled in multiple dramatic roles in films such as "Punch Drunk Love" and “Uncut Gems.”

Guzman, who co-starred in “Punch Drunk Love,” admitted he originally thought Sandler was “out of his depth” in a dramatic role scripted by auteur director Paul Thomas Anderson. But he came away impressed and praised Sandler's “total commitment to something that was so far our of his element.”

Other comedians who received the lifetime achievement award include inaugural honoree Richard Pryor in 1998, Whoopi Goldberg, Bob Newhart, Carol Burnett and Dave Chapelle. Bill Cosby, the 2009 recipient, saw his Mark Twain Prize rescinded in 2019 amid multiple allegations of sexual assault.

The comedy institution "SNL" has provided more than its share of the 24 Mark Twain recipients. Sandler is the seventh cast member to receive the prize, joining Bill Murray, Tina Fey, Will Farrell, Billy Crystal, Eddie Murphy, Julia Louise-Dreyfus. Show creator and producer Lorne Michaels won in 2004.

The ceremony will be broadcast nationally on CNN on March 26.

Jason Sudeikis, who plays the title character — an American coaching a soccer team in London — and other members of the cast will meet with the Bidens “to discuss the importance of addressing your mental health to promote overall wellbeing," the White House said. The third season of the Emmy-winning, feel-good Apple TV+ series began streaming last week.

A White House official said the Bidens had seen some of the show and are familiar with its “message of positivity, hope, kindness, and empathy.” Cast members expected to be in attendence include: Hannah Waddingham, Jeremy Swift, Phil Dunster, Brett Goldstein, Brendan Hunt, Toheeb Jimoh, Cristo Fernandez, Kola Bokinni, Billy Harris, and James Lance.

Biden has previously called on lawmakers in both parties to expand resources to fight the “mental health crisis” in the nation as part of his “ unity agenda.” His administration has surged funding to bolster the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline and expand school-based mental health professionals.

The “Shazam!” sequel fell short of its modest expectations ($35 million) as well as the first film in the series ($53.5 million in April 2019), and earned a place on the very low end of modern DC comics movie launches, between “Birds of Prey” ($33 million in February 2020) and “The Suicide Squad” ($26.2 million in August 2021), both of which were R-rated.

Directed by David F. Sandberg, “Shazam! Fury of the Gods” brought back Zachary Levi, Asher Angel, Jack Dylan Grazer, Adam Brody and Djimon Hounsou, and added Helen Mirren, Rachel Zegler and Lucy Liu. Critics, many of whom found the first film charming, were largely underwhelmed by this outing. It currently holds a 53% Rotten Tomatoes critic score.

Audiences were more positive about the sequel, giving it a B+ CinemaScore overall. Younger crowds were even more favorable.

“This movie clearly was lighter than we thought it would be,” said Jeff Goldstein, the head of domestic distribution for Warner Bros. “We know there’s a rolling spring break over the next few weeks when kids are available, which is who it's targeted towards. We’re hopeful that we can get a big multiple.”

“Shazam! Fury of the Gods” cost a reported $125 million to produce, not factoring in marketing and promotion costs. Internationally, it grossed $35 million from 77 overseas markets including China, bringing its total earnings to $65.5 million.

The DC shop at Warner Bros. has been going through a major recalibration for the past several months, with new bosses in James Gunn and Peter Safran forging a path ahead for the DC Universe that will officially kick off with a new “Superman” in 2025. “Shazam! 2” was one of several holdovers of the old regime, which includes “The Flash” coming in June and a new “Aquaman” in December.

“Part of our company’s total overhaul of DC with Peter Safran and James Gunn is to reset it for the future,” Goldstein said. “It's all about the future for us.”

For Paul Dergarabedian, the senior media analyst for Comscore, there's a silver lining in that Warner Bros. and DC have “another No. 1 under their belt.”

“They’re trying to readjust and realign the brand,” Dergarabedian said. “You don’t change the trajectory for a brand as big as DC without it taking some time. This is a work in progress and this is one step in that journey.”

Second place went to “Scream IV” in its second weekend in theaters. The horror pic, distributed by Paramount, fell 61% from its debut and added $17.5 million, bringing its domestic total to $76 million.

In its third weekend, “Creed III” grossed an additional $15.4 million to land in the No. 3 spot. The film, directed by and starring Michael B. Jordan has now earned $127.7 million in North America. “65” and "Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania" rounded out the top five with $5.8 million and $4.1 million, respectively.

Following its Oscar sweep last Sunday, A24 added over 1,000 screens for an encore “ Everything Everywhere All At Once ” run, where it earned an additional $1.2 million. “The Whale,” for which Brendan Fraser won best actor, played on 509 screens and made $145,230.

“What audiences are enjoying right now is a diversity of content,” Dergarabedian said. “Overall, it’s shaping up to be a strong month with ‘ Creed III ’ and ‘ Scream VI ’ getting franchise best debuts. We may see the same with 'John Wick 4'.”

Estimated ticket sales for Friday through Sunday at U.S. and Canadian theaters, according to Comscore, with Wednesday through Sunday in parentheses. Final domestic figures will be released Monday. 1. “Shazam! Fury of the Gods,” $30.5 million. 2. “Scream VI,” $17.5 million. 3. “Creed III,” $15.4 million. 4. “65,” $5.8 million. 5. “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania,” $4.1 million. 6. “Cocaine Bear,” $3.9 million. 7. “Jesus Revolution,” $3.5 million. 8. “Champions,” $3 million. 9. “Avatar: The Way of Water,” $1.9 million. 10. “Puss in Boots: The Last Wish,” $1.5 million.

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Follow AP Film Writer Lindsey Bahr on Twitter: www.twitter.com/ldbahr

Swift kicked off the first concert of the 52-date Eras Tour with a six-song set from her album “Lover” on Friday night at State Farm Stadium in Glendale, Arizona, where the Super Bowl was played a month ago.

“I don’t know how to address the way this is making me feel right now,” Swift, who hasn't toured since 2018, said early in the show.

She ended the concert with a seven-song set from her latest album “Midnights," closing with the song “Karma.”

In between she played clusters of songs from most of her albums — and just one, “Tim McGraw,” from her 2006 self-titled debut. In the end it took 44 songs and just over three hours for her to span her 17-year career.

Having not toured for her previous three albums, this concert series is intended to play catchup by providing the live debut of many of those songs. When Swift announced the tour in November she called it “a journey through the musical eras of my career (past and present!).”

Swift seemed to acknowledgethe Ticketmaster furor that sullied the run-up to the tour when she told the crowd of more than 70,000 that she understands it took “considerable effort” for them to be there.

After another show at the same venue Saturday night, the tour moves on to Allegiant Stadium outside Las Vegas and then AT&T Stadium near Dallas.

It concludes with two Los Angeles-area shows in August.

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This story was first published on March 18, 2023. It was updated on March 19, 2023 to correct the number of dates on the tour. The number is 52, not 27.

The noted saxophonist died in the morning at home in Houston, according to his wife, Griselda Olivares. She said he was diagnosed with cancer last year.

Born Rodolfo Olivares in the Mexican state of Tamaulipas on April 19, 1947, Fito Olivares started playing professionally in his teens. In 1980, he and his brothers formed Olivares y su Grupo La Pura Sabrosura and moved to Houston.

Other tunes he is known for include “Aguita de Melon,” “El Chicle" and “El Colesterol.” In addition to playing the saxophone, he also played accordion, wrote songs and occasionally sang, his wife said.

Griselda Olivares said the family was seeing a lot of support from fans on social media. “They played the music all over the world,” she said.

Among those posting tributes was Ed Gonzalez, the sheriff for Harris County, where Houston is located.

“Rest in peace to a legend we all grew up with Fito Olivares,” Gonzalez tweeted. “Thank you for the music.”

Reddick died “suddenly” Friday morning, his publicist Mia Hansen said in a statement, attributing his death to natural causes. No further details were provided.

Wendell Pierce, Reddick’s co-star on “The Wire” paid tribute on Twitter. “A man of great strength and grace,” he wrote. “As talented a musician as he was an actor. The epitome of class." “John Wick — Chapter Four” director Chad Stahelski and star Keanu Reeves said they were dedicating the upcoming film to Reddick and were “deeply saddened and heartbroken at the loss.”

Reddick was often put in a suit or a crisp uniform during his career, playing tall, taciturn and elegant men of distinction. He was best known for his role as straight-laced Lt. Cedric Daniels on the hit HBO series “The Wire,” where his character was agonizingly trapped in the messy politics of the Baltimore police department.

“The Wire” creator David Simon praised Reddick on Twitter: “Consummate professional, devoted collaborator, lovely and gentle man, loyal friend. Could go on, but no, I can’t go on. This is gutting. And way, way, way too soon.”

“I’m an artist at heart. I feel that I’m very good at what I do. When I went to drama school, I knew I was at least as talented as other students, but because I was a Black man and I wasn’t pretty, I knew I would have to work my butt off to be the best that I would be, and to be noticed,” Reddick told the Los Angeles Times in 2009.

Reddick also starred on the Fox series “Fringe” as a special agent Phillip Broyles, the smartly-dressed Matthew Abaddon on “Lost” and played the multi-skilled Continental Hotel concierge Charon in Lionsgate's “John Wick” movies, including the fourth in the series that releases later this month.

“The world of Wick would not be what it is without Lance Reddick and the unparalleled depth he brought to Charon’s humanity and unflappable charisma. Lance leaves behind an indelible legacy and hugely impressive body of work, but we will remember him as our lovely, joyful friend and Concierge,” Lionsgate said in a statement.

Reddick earned a SAG Award nomination in 2021 as part of the ensemble for Regina King’s film “One Night in Miami.” He played recurring roles on “Intelligence” and “American Horror Story” and was on the show “Bosch” for its seven-year run.

His upcoming projects include 20th Century’s remake of “White Men Can’t Jump” and “Shirley,” Netflix’s biopic of former Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm. He was also slated to appear in the “John Wick” spinoff “Ballerina,” as well as “The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial.”

The Baltimore-born-and-raised Reddick was a Yale University drama school graduate who enjoyed some success after school by landing guest or recurring roles “CSI: Miami” and “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit.” He also appeared in several movies, including “I Dreamed of Africa,” “The Siege” and “Great Expectations.”

It was on season four of “Oz,” playing a doomed undercover officer sent to prison who becomes an addict, that Reddick had a career breakthrough.

“I was never interested in television. I always saw it as a means to an end. Like so many actors, I was only interested in doing theater and film. But ‘Oz’ changed television. It was the beginning of HBO’s reign on quality, edgy, artistic stuff. Stuff that harkens back to great cinema of the ’60s and ’70s,” he told The Associated Press in 2011.

“When the opportunity for ‘Oz’ came up, I jumped. And when I read the pilot for ‘The Wire,’ as a guy that never wanted to be on television, I realized I had to be on this show.”

Reddick attended the prestigious Eastman School of Music, where he studied classical composition, and he played piano. His first album, the jazzy “Contemplations and Remembrances,” came out in 2011.

He had a recurring role as Jeffrey Tetazoo, director of the Central Intelligence Agency, on the CBS series “Intelligence.” On “American Horror Story: Coven,” he portrayed Papa Legba, the go-between between humanity and the spirit world.

Reddick is survived by his wife, Stephanie Reddick, and children, Yvonne Nicole Reddick and Christopher Reddick.

His death was first reported by celebrity website TMZ.com.

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Mark Kennedy is at http://twitter.com/KennedyTwits

Reddick's body was found Friday morning at 9:30 a.m. in his home in Studio City, California. TMZ quotes law enforcement as saying Reddick appeared to have died of natural causes.

Reddick played the manager of The Continental hotel in the "John Wick" series opposite Keanu Reeves.

He had also starred as Baltimore Police officer Cedrick Daniels on HBO's "The Wire."

Reddick had also starred in "Godzilla vs Kong," "Bosch," "Oz," "Lost," the horror movie "The Guest," and Netflix's short-lived "Resident Evil" series.

He will also be seen as the Greek god Zeus in the upcoming Disney+ show "Percy Jackson and the Olympians."

He is survived by his wife Stephanie Reddick and children Yvonne Nicole Reddick and Christopher Reddick.

The Emmy-nominated actor hopes viewers will next take to him in the dark comedy series AMC's “ Lucky Hank,” debuting Sunday, as Hank Devereaux, a college English professor who is department chair at an underfunded college, going through an identity crisis. He wrote a novel that no one read, yet his father's retirement from the academic literary world was covered by the New York Times.

“Guys always want to be greater than their dad if they do the same thing or are similar, or they want to be the opposite of their dad and usually they can’t achieve either thing perfectly," said Odenkirk recently over Zoom.

Odenkirk was drawn to the fact that Hank, with his discontentment and intelligence, is also quite witty. Some may not realize or forget that Odenkirk has a background in comedy. He was a writer on “Saturday Night Live” and worked with some of its most notable breakouts including Adam Sandler, Chris Farley and Chris Rock.

“Saul Goodman was funny, but Saul wasn’t aware of how he was funny. Usually he was funny to you, the audience, but he wasn’t trying, but he was utterly serious about what he was doing," explained Odenkirk. "This guy is making jokes. He’s saying things that he knows are funny and meant to be funny. That’s really fun to play. That self-awareness, I love it and it’s one of the reasons I wanted to play this part.”

“Lucky Hank” is based on the novel “Straight Man” by Richard Russo. Co-creators and co-showrunners Paul Lieberstein of “The Office” and Aaron Zellman say the series takes a lot of liberties from the book.

“I’ve done a lot of adaptations,” said Zellman. "You realize an entire chapter of the book may be a moment in a scene. It's just a different animal and you have to invent a lot more stuff.”

“Lucky Hank” also comes at a time where Odenkirk is still processing a 2021 massive heart attack on the set of “Better Call Saul." His heart stopped for 18 minutes and Odenkirk came out of it feeling a mixture of energy and exhaustion, with no real memory of what happened.

"Two weeks later he was like, ‘All right, guys, when do we go out and pitch this thing?’ said Zellman.

"It's also a sense of, like, ‘You might be making a terrible decision,’ laughed Lieberstein.

Odernkik says the heart attack “was as serious as you get before they put you in the ground” and it left him with similar questions about his own life that Hank has.

“I’m in it right now. I’m in it right now thinking about, ‘I’m 60. What do I want to do with the rest of my life? How do I want to live?' That’s different from the last 10 years, which, you know, was about Saul Goodman and a lot of getting work done."

He stars opposite Mireille Enos as his wife, Lily, who tends to balance out Hank's cynicism but is also facing her own questions of self-identity and purpose. Enos is best-known for playing dark, serious roles like in “The Killing.”

“We had a lunch together in New York when she was considering playing this part," recalled Odenkirk. "At the end I said, ‘You have a great smile. How come I’ve never seen it?’ She goes, ‘They never ask me to do light material.’ She’s always on the run, being chased...,it’s always such intense drama, which she’s amazing in, but she’s got a lightness and a spirit to her that I don’t think she’s had an opportunity to show. It's really on display here as Lily.”

Gordon died Monday at the California Medical Facility in Vacaville, the state Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation confirmed Thursday. It's believed he died of natural causes, but the official cause will be determined by the Solano County coroner. Gordon, who was diagnosed with schizophrenia, had been in prison for four decades.

From the mid-1960s to the mid-1970s, few drummers were more in demand than Gordon, a Los Angeles native and protege of the all-time versatile session man, Hal Blaine. Gordon had been drumming since his teens and — early in his career — was part of Phil Spector's celebrated studio ensemble, “The Wrecking Crew," which featured Blaine.

“When I didn’t have the time, I recommended Jim,” Blaine told Rolling Stone in 1985. “He was one hell of a drummer. I thought he was one of the real comers.”

Gordon eventually played on the Beach Boys' landmark, experimental “Pet Sounds” and the Byrds' “The Notorious Byrd Brothers," Harrison's post-Beatles triple album “All Things Must Pass” and Steely Dan's jazz-rock “Pretzel Logic.” He worked with a wide range of top acts, from Joan Baez and Jackson Browne to Merle Haggard and Tom Petty. One of his notable credits was a drum break on the Incredible Bongo Band’s “Apache” that has been frequently sampled by rap music artists, among them Jay-Z, Busta Rhymes and Kool Moe Dee.

Gordon also toured with with Clapton, bassist Carl Radle and keyboardist Bobby Whitlock: the core of what, in 1970, became Derek and the Dominos, one of rock's greatest one-shot groups.

Their only studio album, the double record “Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs,” has often been called the creative peak of Clapton's career. He was tormented at the time by his unrequited love for Harrison's wife, Pattie Boyd, and channeled his despair into such anguished blues and hard rock jams as “Why Does Love Have To Be So Sad?", “Bell Bottom Blues” and the seven-minute title track.

The first half of “Layla” was a high-volume showcase for Clapton and guest guitarist Duane Allman, the second half a mournful piano coda of disputed origins. Gordon was officially credited as co-writer for “Layla,” but Whitlock later claimed Gordon took the piano melody from his then-girlfriend, singer Rita Coolidge. In her 2016 memoir “Delta Lady,” Coolidge wrote that the song was called “Time” when she and Gordon wrote it. They later played it for Clapton, who — Coolidge alleged — used it for “Layla.”

“I was infuriated,” Coolidge wrote. “What they’d clearly done was take the song Jim and I had written, jettisoned the lyrics, and tacked it on to the end of Eric’s song. It was almost the same arrangement.”

By the early 1970s, Gordon was already becoming a danger to others. Coolidge wrote in her memoir that the couple was touring with Joe Cocker when Gordon attacked her one night in a hotel hallway. Gordon hit her in the eye, she wrote, “so hard that I was lifted off the floor and slammed against the wall on the other side of the hallway.” She was briefly knocked unconscious.

With two weeks left on the tour, Coolidge performed with a black eye. She didn’t file battery charges against Gordon but did sign a restraining order, and their relationship ended.

In June 1983, Gordon attacked his 71-year-old mother, Osa Gordon, with a hammer and fatally stabbed her with a butcher knife. He claimed that a voice told him to do it.

It wasn't until after his arrest for second-degree murder that Gordon was diagnosed with schizophrenia. Gordon was sentenced to 16 years to life in prison with the possibility of parole. However, he was denied parole several times after not attending any of the hearings and remained in prison until his death.

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AP National Writer Hillel Italie contributed reporting from New York.

Harry is suing Mail on Sunday publisher Associated Newspapers Ltd. over an article alleging he tried to hush up his separate legal challenge over the British government's refusal to let him pay for police security.

During a hearing at the High Court in London, Harry’s lead attorney asked Judge Matthew Nickin either to strike out the publisher’s defense or to deliver a summary judgment, which would be a ruling in the prince’s favor without going to trial.

Lawyer Justin Rushbrooke said the facts did not support the publisher’s “substantive pleaded defense” that the article expressed an “honest opinion.”

He said the article was “fundamentally inaccurate.”

Harry was not in court for the hearing. The prince, also known as the Duke of Sussex, and his wife, Meghan, lost their publicly funded U.K. police protection when they stepped down as senior working royals and moved to North America in 2020.

Harry’s lawyers have said the prince is reluctant to bring the couple’s children — Prince Archie, who is almost 4, and Princess Lilibet, nearly 2 — to his homeland because it is not safe.

The 38-year-old prince wants to pay personally for police security when he comes to Britain, but the government said that wasn't possible. Last year, a judge gave Harry permission to sue the government. That case has yet to come to trial.

Harry sued Associated Newspapers over a February 2022 Mail on Sunday article headlined “Exclusive: How Prince Harry tried to keep his legal fight with the government over police bodyguards a secret… then – just minutes after the story broke – his PR machine tried to put a positive spin on the dispute.”

Harry claims that the newspaper libeled him when it suggested that the prince lied in his initial public statements about the suit against the government.

In July, Nicklin ruled that the article was defamatory, allowing the case to proceed. The judge has not yet considered issues such as whether the story was accurate or in the public interest.

The publisher’s lawyer, Andrew Caldecott, said the argument by Harry's attorneys amounted to "straitjacketing the newspaper’s right to comment.”

He said it was vital the media speak truth to power, and “speaking opinion to power is every bit (as), if not more, important,” as long as the opinion is based on facts.

At the end of the daylong hearing, the judge said he would rule at a later date.

Harry, the younger son of King Charles III, and the former actress Meghan Markle married at Windsor Castle in 2018 but stepped down as working royals in 2020, citing what they described as the unbearable intrusions and racist attitudes of the British media.

Harry’s fury at the U.K. press runs through his memoir “Spare, ” published in January. He blames an overly aggressive press for the 1997 death of his mother, Princess Diana, and also accuses the media of hounding Meghan.

The couple has not hesitated to use the British courts to hit back at what they see as media mistreatment. In December 2021, Meghan won an invasion-of-privacy case against Associated Newspapers over the Mail on Sunday’s publication of a letter she wrote to her estranged father.

Harry is also among celebrities suing Associated Newspapers over alleged phone hacking, and he has launched a separate hacking suit against the publisher of another tabloid, the Mirror. ___

Follow the AP’s coverage of Prince Harry at https://apnews.com/hub/prince-harry

“Long Live Coolio” will be the first posthumous album release from the “Gangsta’s Paradise” star and the first single, “TAG 'You It,’” dropped Friday featuring Too $hort and DJ Wino.

The raunchy single's video — that begins with Coolio and Too $hort in a boxing ring as various women gyrate — marks the last piece of visual content Coolio appeared in before his death from cardiac arrest on Sept. 28, 2022, at age 59.

Coolio won a Grammy for best solo rap performance for “Gangsta’s Paradise,” the 1995 hit from the soundtrack of the Michelle Pfeiffer film “Dangerous Minds” that sampled Stevie Wonder’s 1976 song “Pastime Paradise” and was played constantly on MTV.

The rapper would never again have a song nearly as big as “Gangsta’s Paradise,” but had subsequent hits with “Fantastic Voyage” in 1994, “1, 2, 3, 4 (Sumpin’ New)” in 1996 and 1997’s “C U When U Get There.”

His career album sales totaled 4.8 million, with 978 million on-demand streams of his songs, according to Luminate. He would be nominated for six Grammys overall.

He starred in a reality show about parenting called “Coolio’s Rules,” provided a voice for an episode of the animated show “Gravity Falls” and performed the theme music for the Nickelodeon sitcom “Kenan & Kel.”

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Mark Kennedy is at http://twitter.com/KennedyTwits

Memorial marches are planned in every major city on Saturday for the musician who died after an epileptic seizure at the age of 38.

The nationwide demonstrations follow Azagaia’s funeral procession on Wednesday, in which thousands marched through the streets of Maputo, the capital, chanting protest slogans such as “resistance” and “power to the people.”

Riot police used tear gas to disperse the crowd as it tried to carry Azagaia’s coffin past Ponta Vermelha, the official residence of the president.

Such mass demonstrations critical of President Filipe Nyusi's government are rare in Mozambique.

“Azagaia was a hero of the people. More of a hero than the president, that is why we are taking him to the president’s house,” said Walter, a demonstrator who refused to give his last name for his safety. Speaking before the procession was dispersed, he said: “Nothing like this (march) has ever happened before.”

Azagaia, whose real name was Edson da Luz, was known for openly condemning government corruption in his music and garnered a large following, particularly among young people.

Commemorative marches are planned on Saturday in all of Mozambique’s 11 provinces, with tens of thousands expected to attend. However, police have refused to authorize a demonstration in the northern province of Cabo Delgado where the government has been fighting an Islamic extremist insurgency since 2017.

Authorities have told organizers in Cabo Delgado's cities of Montepuez and Pemba that marches may be allowed on another day when public emotions have calmed down.

Mozambique has sometimes seen protests over the prices of fuel and bread but such mass demonstrations celebrating opposition activists are unusual.

The day after Azagaia died, a vigil was held in Maputo where hundreds came to hear tributes, many of which explicitly criticised the ruling party Frelimo.

”(Azagaia) never sided with any political party because he was the voice of the people,” Tirso Sitoe, an organiser of the vigil, told The Associated Press. “He showed us that things have not changed since independence (in 1975). The only thing that has changed is the colour of (the rulers’) skin.”

Azagaia achieved a passionate following, and notoriety, with songs such as “Povo no Poder” ("Power to the People") which was released in 2008 during protests over rising fuel prices. The rapper accused politicians of stealing from ordinary people to fund their lives of luxury. It has since become an anthem of opposition to the government. Other songs commented on issues such as police brutality and drug trafficking.

In recognition of his popularity, Mozambican officials paid tribute to Azagaia.

“Mozambican music and culture are in mourning,” Mozambique’s minister of culture, Eldevina Materula, said.

Nonetheless, while he was alive Azagaia was often treated with hostility by the government. His songs were generally censored on state media and the Attorney General’s Office accused him of inciting violence following the release of “Povo no Poder.”

The 12-member group is part of a new wave of local singers being embraced by Hong Kongers at a time when the city has been beset by the COVID-19 pandemic and political challenges over the past three years. Their music has birthed a new generation of fans who have found hope and comfort in the songs at an uncertain time.

Its new single “Rumours" is somewhat “sexy” and “sensual” and accompanied by wavy dance moves, a stark contrast to the group's previous powerful dance songs and funky music, its members said in an interview with The Associated Press on Sunday. Unlike their earlier Cantonese hits that conveyed an image of "a bunch of kids” and their energetic side, the new track shows they have become men, member Ian Chan said.

“We are not trying to particularly target any markets, but then we kinda wanna show the possibility of what a boy band from Hong Kong can bring to everyone,” Chan said. “Hopefully, we can bring ourselves and bring Cantopop to more places.”

Mirror's global debut is not only a test of whether they can find an audience beyond Hong Kong, a market with 7 million people. The overseas reception may also indicate whether Hong Kong singers, who dominated Asian showbiz decades ago, can regain ground in the region.

Cantopop, sung in the mother tongue of most of Hong Kong's population, has made a strong comeback with new idols and diverse genres after falling behind Mandopop and K-pop for years. Local fans find the new stars more relatable, unlike their predecessors who are often seen as pre-packaged and in some cases too beholden to mainland China. Cantopop's rise reflects a wider hunger to express the city's cultural identity.

Mirror's members broke into the industry after joining a local broadcaster's reality talent contest in 2018 and stealing the show. The artists — Frankie Chan, Alton Wong, Lokman Yeung, Stanley Yau, Anson Kong, Jer Lau, Anson Lo, Jeremy Lee, Edan Lui, Keung To, Tiger Yau and Chan — range in age from their 20s to early 30s. Some are good at singing, several are known for their dancing skills, a few have devoted themselves to acting and others have hosted TV shows.

Their hard work and determination have helped them to attract a loyal following, especially students, middle-aged women and young families.

In 2021, Keung declared: “I believe Hong Kong singers can definitely become Asia’s top again.” That year, their fandom became a Hong Kong cultural phenomenon.

Fans poured into shopping malls to support their events, with some making and buying advertisements to celebrate their idols' birthdays. Partners of fans flooded Facebook with “self-pity” stories, including having the walls of their homes plastered with posters of the singers. Talk of the group offered many Hong Kongers an escape from downbeat news about COVID-19, political challenges and social changes facing the city.

“We always have a social responsibility to bring positive thinking and some good vibes ... to people who like us,” Chan said.

But a harrowing incident last July dealt a heavy blow to their rise.

A giant video screen fell from the ceiling during a concert and struck two backup dancers, leaving one of them, Mo Li, severely injured. The band subsequently stopped their public appearances for two months. Hong Kong authorities have charged workers from the concert's principal contractor alleged to be responsible for the accident. Last month, Li's father said his son had taken his first steps with the help of an exoskeleton device.

“We will never say that we already got through it,” said Lui, adding it was a “huge lesson.” It taught them to cherish every moment, Stanley Yau said.

While Mirror works to shake off that tragedy, it has also been battered by criticism of lackluster performances, with some critics accusing the members of chasing money from advertisements rather than focusing on their singing and dancing.

Lo said the group is trying to slow down its schedule to strike a better balance and the members now gather at least once or twice a month for activities such as meetings or dance lessons — a significant change as they seldom met each other outside work in the past, he said.

The release of “Rumours,” whose lyrics are about chasing a girl and how rumors arise, has marked an important milestone for the group, especially since the members are all native Cantonese singers.

English pronunciation was a major challenge, Lui said, and they were all coached one-on-one during the recording sessions.

Lo said the group will monitor audiences' reactions closely but that they will no doubt continue producing music in Cantonese even as some members might produce solo songs in Mandarin. The group also has plans to launch a worldwide tour possibly next year, he said.

Lui said their ambition of reviving Cantopop as Asia's No. 1 music might sound “like daydreaming.”

“But I think we should have that goal inside our hearts and we should try to do our best to pursue this dream," he said.

The display at the Anima Mundi Ethnological Museum featured a scientific presentation of the restoration process as well as the research that preceded it, with consultations with Rwanda’s own ethnographic museum, a UCLA graduate student and Belgium’s Royal Museum for Central Africa. It came as ethnographic museums in Europe and North America are grappling with demands from Indigenous groups and former colonies to return artifacts dating from colonial times.

The Rev. Nicola Mappelli, curator of the Anima Mundi museum, declined to comment on calls for restitution of the Vatican’s own ethnographic holdings, saying these were questions for the museum leadership. Speaking to The Associated Press during a visit to the new exhibit, he noted that the Vatican last year returned three mummies to Peru and a human head to Ecuador in 2017.

The museum director, Barbara Jatta, didn’t refer to the issue in her remarks at the opening, emphasizing however what she said was the Anima Mundi’s commitment to transparency and “dialogue with different cultures.”

She said the unveiling of the Rwandan panels was a moment to celebrate the reopening of the African and American section of the museum as well as the 50th anniversary of the transfer of the entire collection into the Vatican Museums itself.

The issue of the Vatican’s ethnographic collection came into the spotlight last year, when Indigenous groups from Canada came to the Vatican to receive an apology from Pope Francis for Canada’s church-run residential school system.

Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission has said the policy of forcibly removing Indigenous children from their families in a bid to assimilate them into Christian, Canadian society amounted to “cultural genocide.” The First Nations, Metis and Inuit delegations visited the Anima Mundi and were shown several Indigenous items in the collection, and representatives later said they wanted them back, or at the very least to have access to them so Indigenous researchers could study them.

The Vatican has long insisted that the basis of its ethnographic collection stemmed from “gifts” to Pope Pius XI, who in 1925 staged a huge exhibit in the Vatican gardens to celebrate the church’s global reach, its missionaries and the lives of the Indigenous peoples they evangelized. Catholic missionaries around the globe sent him artifacts, but some researchers today question whether Indigenous peoples were really able to consent to such “gifts” given the power dynamics of the time.

The informational labels on the new exhibits emphasize the Vatican's view. The Canada label, for example, reads: “There is a long tradition of gifts sent by the Indigenous peoples of Canada to the popes,” noting that a headdress in the exhibit was given to Francis during his 2022 trip to Canada by Chief Wilton Littlechild.

The seven women and five men had asked Circuit Judge Michael Usan if they could have Friday off to take care of personal appointments, and the judge granted the request. Earlier Thursday, jurors had asked to view the defendants’ social media accounts, as well as GPS data or maps to calculate distance between points mentioned in the case. The judge denied those requests, saying the verdict must be based on evidence presented during the trial.

Michael Boatwright, 28 and the accused shooter; Dedrick Williams, 26 and the accused ringleader and getaway driver; and Trayvon Newsome, 24 and the alleged second gunman, are charged with first-degree murder and armed robbery. They face mandatory life sentences if convicted. Prosecutors did not seek the death penalty.

During the monthlong trial, prosecutors tried to link the men to the shooting outside Riva Motorsports in suburban Fort Lauderdale through extensive surveillance video taken inside and outside the store, plus cellphone videos they took of them flashing $100 bills. Prosecutors also had the testimony of a fourth man, Robert Allen, a former friend of the defendants who said he participated in the robbery. He pleaded guilty last year to second-degree murder and awaits sentencing.

Defense attorneys have accused Allen of being a liar trying to avoid a life sentence. They also said prosecutors and detectives did a poor investigation that didn’t look at other possible suspects, including the Canadian rap star Drake — he and XXXTentacion had an online feud.

XXXTentacion, whose real name was Jahseh Onfroy, was a platinum-selling rising star who tackled issues including prejudice and depression in his songs. He also drew criticism over bad behavior and multiple arrests, including charges that he severely beat and abused his girlfriend.

This week she released “Paris: The Memoir,” sharing what it was like for her growing up a Hilton — being sent away to programs for troubled teens but finding mental and physical abuse, a leaked sex tape, the crafting of a party girl image and high-pitched voice and co-starring in a reality show, “The Simple Life,” with Nicole Richie.

In 2020, Hilton released a YouTube documentary “This is Paris,'' addressing her experiences at the schools. “That was the first time that I really became vulnerable and real and shared my story and what I went through,” said Hilton.

Today, Hilton is involved in advocacy work and has welcomed a son with husband Carter Reum.

In an interview with The Associated Press, Hilton talks about speaking out, slowing down and what she thinks of being called a socialite.

Answers may have been edited for brevity and clarity.

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AP: You're one of quite a few women who have taken control of their story in recent years. Was there anyone who inspired you to do the same or to consider doing this?

HILTON: I was at the premiere of Demi Lovato’s documentary a couple of years ago, and I was just so blown away by her honesty and her vulnerability and talking about so many private moments in her life. That really inspired me just to be able to feel free, to be open and to be more honest about what I was going through, because especially in Hollywood, it can be very hard, especially on your mental health. A lot of people go through things, and we all try to project this perfect life, but life isn’t perfect.

AP: If you could map out how this book will be received, what would that look like?

HILTON: For so long I’ve been misunderstood and underestimated, and there’s just so much more to me than what people think. It all really started off with my documentary, ‘This Is Paris.’ That was the first time that I really became vulnerable and real and shared my story and what I went through.

AP: The public knows a lot about your ups and downs, but you shared things in your book like being sexually assaulted and having an abortion. Was that difficult?

HILTON: A lot of the things that I put in the book were very hard to write about, a lot of memories that I tried to not think about for so many years. But I think it was important to include them because it’s part of my story. I just know that there’s a lot of women out there who need to hear that story as well.

AP: Despite your many hats of being an entrepreneur, a DJ, having 30 fragrances and a billion-dollar business — you still get labeled as a socialite. Does that bother you?

HILTON: I don’t really enjoy the term socialite because I feel that there’s just so much more that I do, but I do feel that people are finally now recognizing and seeing me for the businesswoman that I am.

AP: How is your advocacy work against programs that allegedly reform so-called bad kids going?

HILTON: The past two years, we’ve made so much impact, and I’ve already changed laws in eight states and all the way in Ireland. I’m going back to Washington, D.C., in April to introduce a new bill and we already have bipartisan support. So, I am just praying that everybody does the right thing because there are over 150,000 children being sent to these facilities every single year. It’s a multibillion-dollar industry... I’m not going to stop fighting until change is made.

AP: You do write about how it hasn't been easy to communicate with your parents about what happened to you. Have you been able to really discuss this with them?

HILTON: My family and I have never been closer, and they had no idea what was happening behind closed doors in these places. They have deceptive marketing. My parents just thought I was going to a normal boarding school, and all the brochures have these pictures of children smiling with rainbows and riding horses. I completely understand now, especially as an adult, just everything. My parents and I have talked about everything, and it’s been extremely healing for us. My mom has been coming with me to Washington, D.C., and is there to support me.

AP: You're a new mom! (Hilton's son Phoenix Barron Hilton Reum was born via a surrogate.) Are you dialing it back on all your traveling and business responsibilities?

HILTON: I am saying no a lot just because I want to be there for all the moments, so I’m trying to do as much from home as possible, building my podcasting studio there, my recording studio for my music, a photo studio for photoshoots. I try to work from home as much as possible so I can pop in and out of his room because I am just so obsessed with my little baby boy.

AP: You also write in your book about how you have ADHD and your husband researched it when you were dating to understand you better.

HILTON: He’s just so supportive. And he talks to my ADHD doctor and has just really done so much research. He basically knows more about it than I do and is teaching me these things every single day as well. So that’s been really awesome.

AP: Even sharing that you have ADHD will help people feel seen.

HILTON: When people can harness it in the right way, it can actually be a superpower. That’s why I think in my career I’ve always been ahead of my time and taking risks and being an innovator and someone who thinks outside the box. I really attribute that to my ADHD. People should watch the movie ‘ The Disruptors,’ to understand more.

AP: Last question. In your book you share you have five cellphones. One is dedicated to prank phone calls. Do you have those on you today?

HILTON: Yeah. I only have a couple of them here. (Hilton holds up three phones.) I love doing prank phone calls with my mom.

Elliot Resnick, 39, was chief editor of The Jewish Press when he joined the crowd of Donald Trump supporters who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, according to an FBI agent's affidavit.

Videos show Resnick grabbing and holding the arm of a Capitol police sergeant who was spraying a chemical irritant to prevent rioters from entering the building, the affidavit says. Another officer tried to remove Resnick’s hand from the sergeant’s arm, the agent wrote.

The FBI arrested Resnick in New York City on charges including civil disorder and assault of or interference with law enforcement. Clay Kaminsky, an attorney representing Resnick in New York, declined to comment on the charges.

The Jewish Press, based in Brooklyn, bills itself as the largest independent weekly Jewish newspaper in the U.S. A statement on its website says it is “known for its editorial feistiness" and “was politically incorrect long before the phrase was coined.”

Politico reported in April 2021 that video showed Resnick inside the Capitol on Jan. 6. Resnick later wrote an article defending the Capitol riot without acknowledging his presence in the building that day, Politico's report noted.

At the time, The Jewish Press publisher Naomi Mauer told Politico that the newspaper believed Resnick “acted within the law.” A statement from The Jewish Press editorial board confirmed Resnick was in the Capitol on Jan. 6 and had been “covering the rally and the rest of the day’s terrible events" for the newspaper.

The editorial board wrote, “The Jewish Press does not see why Elliot’s personal views on former President Trump should make him any different from the dozens of other journalists covering the events, including many inside the Capitol building during the riots.”

Then-President Trump addressed a crowd of his supporters at the “Stop the Steal” rally on Jan. 6. The mob that stormed the Capitol disrupted a joint session of Congress that was certifying Joe Biden’s electoral victory.

Before the riot, Resnick posted social media messages echoing Trump's baseless claims that Democrats stole the election from him, according to posts cited by the FBI affidavit.

Resnick had been a reporter and editor at The Jewish Press since 2006. He left the newspaper in May 2021, before the FBI says it began investigating him.

The Jewish Press staff didn’t immediately respond to email and telephone messages seeking comment on Resnick’s arrest.

Approximately 1,000 people have been charged with federal crimes related to the Capitol riot. Several riot defendants have claimed that they were acting as journalists when they joined the mob in entering the Capitol, but prosecutors and judges have routinely rejected those claims.

For the past two years, the FBI has been fanning out across the county to arrest Capitol riot suspects. The cases are often based on tips that they received in the first months after the riot.

The FBI agent's account of Resnick's actions on Jan. 6 portray him as an active participant in the riot.

Video showed Resnick repeatedly gesturing for others to come up stairs toward the Capitol after rioters broke through a line of police officers, the agent's affidavit says.

Renick was one of the first rioters to enter the Capitol through the East Rotunda doors, according to the FBI. After entering the building, Resnick joined others in attempting to push open a door that a police officer was trying to keep closed, the FBI said. Another officer who tried to stop Renick was thrown to the ground by a different rioter.

Resnick grabbed and pulled other rioters into the Capitol after he failed to open the door, according to the affidavit. It says he spent roughly 50 minutes inside the Capitol before leaving.

“I always wanted to play a superhero. I grew up reading comics,” the actor recalled in a recent interview. “I wanted to just be in something of that size and scale too, to be on a set that big, to be in outfits that take that long to kind of make and put on."

He described “Shazam! Fury of the Gods,” out Friday, as “just a real full-scale Cecil B. DeMille-sized movie.”

The film revolves around a group of foster siblings who juggle being teenagers and adult superheroes. Brody plays the adult version of a geeky and awkward character, but the actor reveals he was a “beach bum” in high school.

“I was kind of a jock, actually,” smiles Brody. “In any way that surfers are jocks.”

During those teenage years, before leaving his hometown in San Diego, California, Brody worked at a Blockbuster video rental store. Add that to his decadeslong long acting career and you could say the 43-year-old is kind of a movie expert.

“I have opinions, but you know, I’m not a Tarantino. I don’t have encyclopedic knowledge of all films,” he’s quick to specify. though.

In the last few years, his movie knowledge has expanded into child-friendly territory. Brody has two children with his wife, actor Leighton Meester.

“As many good ones as you think there are, there’s not enough. So hard to come by,” says Brody about kids’ movies, which he says is “where values and the lessons really come into play and you want to ideally make sure what they’re viewing is nutritious.”

While Brody's filmography does not include any children’s movies at the moment, he says it’s a category he would like to try.

“I’m a fan of all genres. There’s not a genre I wouldn’t do or want to do, but I look for cleverness in the writing and potentially depth, too and a voice, a strong POV — point of view," he says.

He further explains he looks for intelligent scripts that put out something positive into the world and don’t “glorify anything too negative.”

“It doesn’t all have to be a life lesson," he says. "But the smarter the project is, probably the less it does. You know, I think a lot of the bad stuff that Hollywood puts out is unconscious more than conscious and the deeper someone’s thinking about their work, probably the more positive or enlightening it can be.”

Last summer, Brody wrapped filming on a reimagining of the famous 1994 thriller “The River Wild,” originally starring Meryl Streep and David Strathairn as a couple on a rafting trip gone wrong.

“You know, we still got a river involved," he says. "And it’s similarly a hostage situation on the river and a race to get to Canada but that’s sort of where the similarities end. It’s new characters.”

This time around the story is about two siblings, played by Taran Killam and Meester, embarking on a trip with an old friend (Brody), who will soon reveal a dangerous side. The film is due out later this year.

This is not the first time Brody has worked with his wife — Killam, Meester and Brody played three points of a love triangle in the sitcom “Single Parents” just three years ago — but the script made him think twice.

“This one was interesting because we’re antagonists. And so, I’m chasing her for a fair amount of the movie, chasing her and worse," Brody says. "And I was worried initially, and it wasn’t something I was looking to do exactly. We want to work together but we weren’t like dying to play enemies.”

“I had a little concern that, like, ‘What if we take this home with us? What if it feels too bad to look at her in this way?’" he continues. "But your adrenaline’s up on set, and it worked fine.”

He says it was the “most demanding” project he has ever worked on, as an actor and as a parent.

“The hardest part in a way, was because Leighton and I were sort of in every scene, normally we’re not working at the exact same time, so we brought our kids," but he nonetheless characterized it as "a great adventure for the whole family.”

In fact, Brody shares that he wouldn’t be surprised if his children caught the acting bug as well: “It’s a fun job.”

But after more than 130 film credits, the 67-year-old actor has finally found a project whose final form is on par with the experience of creating it.

“When I watch this movie, I say, ‘Okay, I feel like I’m there again,’” he said. “Although there’s lots of stuff that we had invented that gets cut out, it feels like the making of it.”

That assertion is impressive, given how much “Inside,” Vasilis Katsoupis’ fiction directorial debut, asked of its lead and virtually only actor.

“It really required a lot of different states and different approaches, I would say. But it was great fun,” Dafoe recalled.

Set entirely inside a single apartment and with no foils for Dafoe’s character to rely on, “Inside” is completely dependent on his performance, which is so compelling you forget he is the only person on screen for the better part of 100 minutes.

It follows an art thief named Nemo (Dafoe) who gets trapped inside a collector's apartment during a botched heist. Nemo is pushed to his limits, braving extreme temperatures, flooding and limited access to food and water, all within the confines of a luxury Manhattan apartment.

Despite the physical and psychological toll that Nemo suffers throughout the film, Dafoe said he was able to distance himself from his character’s tribulations.

“You’re going to some maybe dramatic places or some difficult places, but you’re also enjoying the interplay with the other people,” he said. “You’ve got the camera, you’ve got the film language behind you, so you’re playing with these things.”

More than just a psychological thriller, “Inside” considers the ways in which art rescues humans in modern society from an isolated existence — a way out from being trapped inside of ourselves. Through his meditations on William Blake’s “The Marriage of Heaven and Hell,” Nemo discerns that liberation can only be attained through creation.

For Dafoe, the philosophical exploration of the human relationship to art was not as apparent in the script, but “really came out in the doing of it,” the actor recalled, reflecting on the ways he found beauty in making art pieces for the film.

“That was so enjoyable. You lose yourself in those things. You don’t necessarily know what they’re for, but they feel so useful and so healthy and so necessary,” he said.

Despite his prolific career, Dafoe said “Inside” allowed the Oscar-nominated actor to flaunt chops he rarely gets to display.

“There are certain things that are purely physical, and you don’t always get to do these scenes with no dialogue,” he said. “Meditative sections that you’re really by yourself and there’s nothing to accomplish.”

And while the specifics of the plot of “Inside,” which wrapped filming in June 2021, may not ostensibly feel universal, almost everyone on this side of the coronavirus pandemic will relate to the film’s scant human interactions, vague conception of time and claustrophobic cinematography.

“Inside” hits theaters March 17.

“Here We Are” — once known as “Square One” — will begin performances this September at The Shed’s Griffin Theater with a book by David Ives, best known for the play “Venus in Fur.” Joe Mantello, who helmed “Wicked” and Sondheim's “Assassins,” will direct.

The show — based on the films “The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie” and “The Exterminating Angel” — was initially workshopped in 2016 with plans for a production at The Public Theater, which did not happen.

The two source films have a connective tissue: In “The Exterminating Angel,” a group of guests arrive for a dinner party and cannot leave, while "The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie” is about guests who constantly arrive for dinner but are never able to eat.

Ticket information and casting will be announced soon.

Sondheim, who died in 2021, influenced several generations of songwriters, particularly with such landmark musicals as “Company,” “Follies” and “Sweeney Todd.”

Six of Sondheim’s musicals won Tony Awards for best score, and he also received a Pulitzer Prize (“Sunday in the Park”), an Academy Award (for the song “Sooner or Later” from the film “Dick Tracy”), five Olivier Awards and the Presidential Medal of Honor. In 2008, he received a Tony Award for lifetime achievement.

His last new musical to be produced was “Road Show,” which reunited Sondheim and writer John Weidman and spent years being worked on. This tale of the Mizner brothers, who embarked on get-rich schemes in the early part of the 20th century, finally made it to the Public Theater in 2008 with poor reviews after going through several different titles, directors and casts.

Several Sondheim musicals have been mounted on Broadway since the master's death, including a Tony-award winning revival of “Company” and a current revival of his “Sweeney Todd,” starring Josh Groban.

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Mark Kennedy is at http://twitter.com/KennedyTwits

The award is named for Dutch philosopher and humanist scholar Desiderius Erasmus, who lived from 1466 to 1536.

The Praemium Erasmianum Foundation said in a statement that Noah, 39, was receiving the prize “for his inspired contribution to the theme ‘In Praise of Folly,’ named after Erasmus’s most famous book, which is filled with humor, social criticism and political satire.”

The foundation added: “With his sharp-minded, mocking yet inclusive political comedy, Noah, in the eyes of the jury, upholds the ‘Erasmian Spirit.’”

Noah, who rose to prominence as a stand-up comic in his native South Africa, announced last year he was leaving Comedy Central's “The Daily Show” after a seven-year run.

The Dutch foundation noted that Noah's time anchoring the satirical late night talk show coincided with the presidency of Donald Trump, the COVID-19 pandemic and the Black Lives Matter movement.

“With his astute reflections on such issues, he garnered a young, diverse and global audience and, in the process, infused a highly polarized media landscape with a breath of fresh air,” the foundation said.

The award, which carries a cash prize of €150,000, is given annually to “a person or institution that has made an exceptional contribution to the humanities, the social sciences or the arts, in Europe and beyond,” according to the foundation.

Previous winners include dissident playwright and former president of the Czech Republic Vaclav Havel, former United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Mary Robinson, the British artist Grayson Perry and online dictionary Wikipedia.

A ceremony to present Noah with the award is scheduled for the fall.

The academy, an honorary society based in Upper Manhattan, announced the awards Thursday.

Ringgold, known for her paintings, sculpture and intricate narrative quilts and her themes of social justice, will receive a Gold Medal for Painting. Vendler, who has been cited for championing the works of Seamus Heaney, Jorie Graham and many others, will be given a Gold Medal for Belles Lettres and Criticism. Unterberg will be presented an award for Distinguished Service to the Arts, in recognition of her founding the organization Anonymous Was a Woman, which since 1996 has provided grants to artists who identify as women.

"In addition to their own remarkable talent as creative artists, these three recipients have dedicated parts of their careers to furthering the work of other artists, be it through criticism and essays that taught a public how to read and understand poetry, art and activism that helped make space for Black women artists, or innovative awards that have recognized hundreds of women artists," the academy's president, Kwame Anthony Appiah, said in a statement.

“This year’s recipients reflect the inevitable dialectic between individual creativity and community in the life of the arts.”

The ceremony is scheduled for May 24 at the academy, which also will formally welcome its new members, among them author Percival Everett, dancer-choreographer Yvonne Rainer and the playwright-actor Anna Deavere Smith.

But the Enterprise captain-turned-admiral stepped into a different place in last week’s episode of the streaming drama “Star Trek: Picard.” Now, he’s someone who — to the shock of some and the delight of others — has uttered a profanity that never would have come from his mouth in the 1990s: “Ten f—-ing grueling hours,” Patrick Stewart's character says at one point during an intense conversation in which he expects everyone will die shortly.

The whole thing was in keeping with the more complex, nuanced aesthetic of this decade’s “Star Trek” installments. And the online conversation that ensued illustrates the journey undertaken when a fictional character voyages from the strictures of network and syndicated television to high-end streaming TV.

“'Star Trek’ was G-rated when it first came out. 'The Next Generation’ was clean-cut and optimistic. What we’re seeing now with ‘Picard’ is a little bit more of the grit,” says Shilpa Davé, a media studies scholar at the University of Virginia and a longtime “Trek” fan.

Over the weekend, “Star Trek” Twitter reflected that tension.

“Totally out of character,” said one post, reflecting many others. Some complained that it cheapened the utopia that Gene Roddenberry envisioned, that humans wouldn’t be swearing like that four centuries from now, that someone as polished as Picard wouldn’t need such language.

“Part of Star Trek’s appeal is the articulate way characters speak. Resorting to gutter language feels like a step backward since Star Trek’s characters are meant to be better than this,” John Orquiola wrote for the website Screen Rant on Sunday.

The backlash to the backlash followed. Christopher Monfette, the Paramount+ show’s co-executive producer, wrote an extensive and persuasive thread about the moment and why he believed it worked.

“It’s easy to hear that elevated British tone escaping the mouth of a gentlemanly Shakespearean actor and assume some elevated intellectualism,” he said, while acknowledging: “Criticism of its use is fair even if it just strikes a personal nerve — or if you’ve equated 'Trek' with more broader, family-friendly storytelling. But regardless, cursing in the show is carefully debated & discussed in the room or on set. We don’t take it lightly.”

The showrunner for “ Star Trek: Picard ” this season, Terry Matalas, said the F-word from Picard wasn’t scripted but was a choice by Stewart in the moment. The result, Matalas said, was “so real.”

“Everything you do as artists, as writers and actors, even as editors, is authenticity. That’s the thing you want to feel,” he told Collider. “I was really torn because hearing that word come from your childhood hero, Captain Picard, it throws you. But wow, is it powerful.”

“Star Trek” has a long history of pushing boundaries, linguistic and otherwise.

“Let’s get the hell out of here,” Capt. James T. Kirk said on network TV in 1967, when that word was edgy. He’d just lost someone dear to him in the most trying of circumstances. Dr. McCoy, the ship’s irascible physician, would often say, “Dammit, Jim.” And in the larger realm, the original series delicately danced with NBC censors over everything from women’s costumes to racial, sexual and war references.

But the crossing of last week's linguistic frontier is an interesting case. It highlights the turbulence generated when a beloved character born during the “family-friendly” TV era evolves against the streaming landscape, where constraints are fewer and opportunities for unflinching authenticity greater.

"This isn't just a rethinking of a fictional world. This is the same actor and the same character in the same setting that we had before. And all these years, he has been speaking and behaving in a certain way," says Robert Thompson, director of the Bleier Center for Television and Popular Culture at Syracuse University.

Sometimes this transition unfolds erratically. Velma, a member of the Gen-X-era Saturday morning cartoon “Scooby Doo,” recently appeared in a more multicultural cartoon reboot on HBO Max that featured a high-school shower scene and overt sexual references. It has been roundly panned. Several years ago, when “Riverdale” premiered, the attempts to push Archie, Jughead, Betty and Veronica from the sunny world of comics into the darker realm of teen drama produced uneven, sometimes jarring results.

“Star Trek” is in a whole different universe, so to speak.

Roddenberry famously framed it as a utopian future where the main characters generally avoided conflict with each other, their society wasn't motivated by greed and humanity was seen as inexorably moving forward. Purists have criticized the recent years of what they call “new Trek” as a darker, more fragmented universe.

Nonsense, say many others: Both allegory and word usage evolve with the times. After all, it was only seven decades ago that Lucille Ball (and her character) was expecting a baby on “I Love Lucy” and the word “pregnant” couldn't be uttered on national television — except, oddly, in French.

And for years before and after that, Hollywood's production code prescribed the ways morality and amorality could be depicted in film, with strict regulation of everything from sexual innuendo to whether criminals were portrayed sympathetically to whether the good guys won. Hence the term “Hollywood ending," which remains with us today in many parts of life.

All of which raises the question: Could it also be the boundaries themselves that help create memorable film and television, rather than merely the breaking of them?

“Star Trek had a certain kind of sincerity — almost like 'the 23rd century will be a family-friendly kind of thing,'” Thompson says. “The question is, what happens when your characters outlive the media industry standards? How do you accommodate the fact that you’re no longer limited without completely betraying the world that you’ve created?”

In this case, Stewart has said he returned to the character because he was persuaded there were new stories to tell. Just as he had aged two decades since his last "Star Trek” appearance, so, too, had Picard — with all the evolution that went along with it.

The kind of evolution, perhaps, that might make a man facing his own end choose a word that still carries a lot of power — even in today's swearing, streaming world. When Jean-Luc Picard says that word, you can be absolutely sure he means it.

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Ted Anthony, director of new storytelling and newsroom innovation for The Associated Press, has been writing about American culture since 1990. Follow him on Twitter at http://twitter.com/anthonyted

The Emmy-winning Apple TV+ series, about an American coaching a soccer team in London, has long been described as a three-season series — but executive producer, writer and star Jason Sudeikis is noncommittal about what comes next.

“I’m still in it," he said in a recent interview.

“We’re still editing the last few episodes, so it’s really something that I haven’t had the time to sit with, despite the fact that there’s a lot of wonder and curiosity ... from the press or fans — and certainly it seems like people in show business are equally as interested,” he laughed. "That answer will arrive probably when there’s enough space for the question to really land."

Brendan Hunt, who plays assistant coach Beard, (whose first name “has not been revealed," said the actor. "We don’t know that he doesn’t have one, but he certainly appears to have no use for it.”) is also an executive producer and writer on the show.

“We always saw it as this three-movement suite or a three-piece story," Hunt says, but admits the show's success has added more questions than answers to that original plan. “So the door is still open for — after this suite is finished — that maybe we’ll pick up with something else in this world.”

When asked, if there's a character from the series whom Hunt would like to see explored further, Hunt deadpans, “Phoebe (Roy Kent's young niece) as she battles London’s drug-riddled crime underworld.”

Brett Goldstein, who plays Roy Kent, the Richmond player-turned-coach with a gruff exterior and a heart of gold, is a definite breakout. He played Hercules in the end credits of “Thor: Love and Thunder,” and is a creator and executive producer on “ Shrinking,” also on Apple TV+. He credits “Ted Lasso” for giving him creative opportunities of which he had only dreamed.

“I’d worked for years and years and years and 12 people had seen all of it, you know, and then doing a show that loads of people watch is different. It really is different," Goldstein says. "Without being cheesy, I learned an awful lot from working on ‘Ted Lasso,’ and I will take those lessons with me into anything else I do,” he said.

Toheeb Jimoh had only been acting professionally for two years when he got cast as player Sam Obisanya.

“I’m at a stage where, because of this show I’m able to stand on my own two feet as an artist now. I’ve kind of absorbed the Lasso way in the same way that all of the players have,” Jimoh says. "Ted says, ‘It’s not about the wins or losses, it’s about making these players the best versions of themselves on and off the pitch.’ I really feel that’s the same lesson that ‘Ted Lasso’ has given us young actors on the show. It’s about making us to the best versions of ourselves on and off the screen, you know?”

Hannah Waddingham, who plays AFC Richmond owner Rebecca Welton, was already an accomplished stage performer prior to “Ted Lasso,” and already has other exciting jobs lined up including a role in “Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part Two.” But she still wonders if she'll ever be able to duplicate the “Ted Lasso” experience.

“I don’t know about you guys here, but Brits are natural worriers. It makes me worried that I may not ever have that again because it is such a beautiful kind of symbiosis with all of us," she says.

For now, Sudeikis seems more willing to address what the show has meant to him than what lies in store.

“I see it through the eyes of my kids when we go somewhere and the way people come up to to myself and .. any of us, just how loving people are," he says, joking that he doubts the the cast of “Succession” gets quite the same reception. "I’m sure they’re excited to see them because they’re all wickedly talented, but it’s a different vibe on that show and a different family, if you will. So, being surrounded by that type of kindness and have it reflected back to you — especially in front of kids or family — has been really, really moving.”

Ma will receive $20,000 for “Bliss Montage,” her first book since her acclaimed debut novel “Severance.”

“Ma melds humor and the surreal beautifully, resulting in a project that is at once absurd and insightful," prize judges said in a statement Wednesday night. "This is an expansive, bold, and delightful book.”

The two other finalists, Andrea Barrett for “Natural History” and Morgan Talty for “Night of the Living Rez,” each will get $5,000.

The Story Prize was established in 2004, and is underwritten by the Chisholm Foundation. Previous winners include Edwidge Danticat, George Saunders and Lauren Groff.

Mary Caldwell told The Associated Press that he died in her arms at their home in Great Meadows, New Jersey, on Tuesday, after a long illness. He was 71.

The smooth soul jam “What You Won't Do for Love” went to No. 9 on the Billboard Hot 100 and No. 6 on what was then called the Hot Selling Soul Singles chart. It became a long-term standard and career-defining hit for Caldwell, who also wrote the song.

The song was covered by artists, including Boyz II Men and Michael Bolton, and was sampled by Tupac Shakur on his posthumously released song “Do For Love.”

Other Caldwell songs were sampled by hip-hop artists including The Notorious B.I.G., Common, Lil Nas X and Chance the Rapper.

Stories abound, many of them shared on social media after his death, of listeners being surprised to learn that Caldwell was white and not Black.

Caldwell appeared only in silhouette on the self-titled debut solo album on which “What You Won't Do for Love” appears.

“Caldwell was the closing chapter in a generation in which record execs wanted to hide faces on album covers so perhaps maybe their artist could have a chance,” Questlove said on Instagram.

“Thank you for your voice and gift #BobbyCaldwell,” Questlove wrote.

Chance the Rapper shared a screenshot on Instagram of a direct message exchange he had with Caldwell last year when he asked to use his music.

“I'll be honored if you sample my song,” Caldwell wrote.

“You are such an inspiration to me and many others,” Chance told him. He said in the post that he had never been thanked for sampling a song before and has “not felt broken like this at a stranger's passing in so long.”

Born in New York and raised in Miami, Caldwell was the son of singers who hosted a musical variety TV show called “Suppertime.” A multi-instrumentalist, he began performing professionally at 17, and got his break playing guitar in Little Richard's band in the early 1970s. In the mid '70s, Caldwell played in various bar bands in Los Angeles before landing a solo record deal.

Caldwell would never have a hit that came close in prominence to “What You Won't Do for Love,” but he released several respected albums, including 1980s “Cat in The Hat” — on which he appeared prominently on the cover wearing a fedora — and 1982's “Carry On,” on which he was his own producer and played all the instruments.

His song “Open Your Eyes” from “Cat in The Hat” was covered by John Legend and sampled by Common on his Grammy-nominated 2000 single “The Light.”

In the 1990s, Caldwell shifted to recording and performing American standards, including songs made popular by Frank Sinatra and Nat King Cole, he loved in his youth.

In addition to Mary, his wife of 19 years, Caldwell is survived by daughters Lauren and Tessa and stepdaughter Katie.

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Follow AP Entertainment Writer Andrew Dalton on Twitter: https://twitter.com/andyjamesdalton

The satellite radio company announced Wednesday that it has signed Hart and his entertainment company, Hartbeat, to a multi-year deal. As part of the deal, the superstar actor-comedian will continue to curate content involving comedy and culture on his Laugh Out Loud Radio channel.

“At the end of the day, this is a great partnership,” Hart said in a recent interview with The Associated Press. “When you put yourself in a position to create partnerships that will last and can grow, those are the big wins. You’re looking at a relationship that has evolved, that is growing and going in the right direction. I think this is one where the hard work has been put into the growth of the station and the platform is just paying off.”

Hart will host his podcast “Gold Minds with Kevin Hart,” a rebranded show that will premiere its new season Wednesday on SiriusXM. Some comedians will still occasionally appear on his show, but he’ll feature more conversations with notable figures including Emmy winner Jason Bateman, “Black Panther” director Ryan Coogler, actor-rapper Method Man, filmmaker Neil Burger along with broadcast journalists Anderson Cooper and Stephen A. Smith.

In the “Gold Minds” premiere, Hart will speak with Coogler about his career journey, working with Michael B. Jordan and receiving guidance from Denzel Washington, Forrest Whitaker, Sylvester Stallone and Christopher Nolan.

Hart said he felt compelled to rebrand “Gold Minds” because he wanted to expand beyond comedy to a “larger pool of individuals with interesting stories.”

“I’m going further to entrepreneurs, big businessmen, TV personalities, amazing actors, actresses, directors. It’s expanding,” he said. “There’s a volume of people out there that should be talked to, and there’s not a volume of people that can truly access them properly and execute after getting to them. I think I’m one of the few that have this opportunity and I’m taking advantage of it. I want people to enjoy these authentic conversations.”

Hartbeat will produce the slate of new programs including “Love Thang with Punkie Johnson” and “One Song with Diallo and Luxxury,” hosted by HBO Max’s “South Side” co-creator Diallo Riddle and music producer Blake “Luxxury” Robin. His channel will exclusively release the late comedian Bernie Mac’s first-ever solo standup special.

Comedian Nathaniel “Earthquake” Stroman will return to Hart’s channel for the fifth season of his show “Quake’s House.”

Hart along with The Plastic Cup Boyz — including Joey Wells, Will “Spank” Horton, Harry Ratchford, Wayne Brown and Na’im Lynn — will continue to host “Straight From The Hart.”

“Kevin has become a cornerstone of SiriusXM’s comedy programming, and we’re absolutely thrilled to deepen our relationship with Kevin and the whole Hartbeat team,” said Scott Greenstein, SiriusXM’s president and chief content officer. “As they’ve proven time and again, they have their finger on the pulse of the new, exciting, diverse voices in comedy, and our audience has clearly responded.”

When Hart signed his first deal with SiriusXM in 2018, he envisioned at least a decade-long relationship where can have a “significant stance” and create his own “version of identity.”

“When I look at what Howard Stern has been able to do over the years throughout his career and how he developed into an amazing entity, I say to myself ‘How do I do the same? How do I follow suit?’” Hart said.

“In doing it, you got to make sure that you’re willing to put in the time. This isn’t a two-year plan, a three-year plan. This is a 10 year overall commitment knowing what it will take to get to the place where you want to go. This is well planned out. I’m trying my best to execute it.”

The seven women and five men asked Circuit Judge Michael Usan a technical question about viewing videos of the men flashing fistfuls of $100 bills hours after the June 18, 2018, shooting and robbery that netted $50,000 and whether they could open an envelope and look at a collection of fingerprints. They could. They have deliberated more than 20 hours since getting the case March 8. Deliberations will resume Thursday.

Michael Boatwright, 28 and the accused shooter; Dedrick Williams, 26 and the accused ringleader and getaway driver; and Trayvon Newsome, 24 and the alleged second gunman, are charged with first-degree murder and armed robbery. They face mandatory life sentences if convicted. Prosecutors did not seek the death penalty.

During the monthlong trial, prosecutors tried to link the men to the shooting outside Riva Motorsports in suburban Fort Lauderdale through extensive surveillance video taken inside and outside the store, plus the cellphone videos they took of them flashing $100 bills.

Prosecutors also had the testimony of a fourth man, Robert Allen, a former friend of the defendants who said he participated in the robbery. He pleaded guilty last year to second-degree murder. He has not been sentenced pending the conclusion of this trial. He could get anywhere between time served, meaning he could soon be released, and life, depending partly on how prosecutors perceive his assistance.

Twice this week, the jury asked to review text messages from Boatwright, the accused shooter, from the day of the shooting. A printout from prosecutors shows that from the time he woke up about 10:30 a.m. until 3 p.m., about an hour before the shooting, he sent 17 to various people, including one about getting a car. Prosecutors say the SUV used in the shooting was rented from a woman through a phone app. He then stopped texting for about two hours.

About an hour after the shooting, he sent a text saying, “Tell my brother I got the money for the new phone.” Minutes after that, he sent someone a screenshot of a news story saying XXXTentacion had been shot.

Defense attorneys accused Allen of being a liar trying to avoid a life sentence. They also said prosecutors and detectives did a poor investigation that didn’t look at other possible suspects, including the Canadian rap star Drake — he and XXXTentacion had an online feud.

XXXTentacion, whose real name was Jahseh Onfroy, had just left Riva Motorsports with a friend when his BMW was blocked by an SUV that swerved in front.

Surveillance video showed two masked gunmen emerged and confronted the 20-year-old artist at the driver’s window, and one shot him repeatedly. They then grabbed a Louis Vuitton bag containing cash XXXTentacion had just withdrawn from the bank, got back into the SUV and sped away. The friend was not harmed.

Allen testified that the men set out that day to commit robberies and went to the motorcycle shop to buy Williams a mask. There they spotted the rapper and decided to make him their target. Allen and Williams went inside the shop to confirm it was him. They then went back to the SUV, waited for XXXTentacion to emerge and ambushed him, according to testimony.

The rapper, who pronounced his name “Ex ex ex ten-ta-see-YAWN,” was a platinum-selling rising star who tackled issues including prejudice and depression in his songs. He also drew criticism over bad behavior and multiple arrests, including charges that he severely beat and abused his girlfriend.

“Superman: Legacy,” which Gunn also wrote, is also set for a July 11, 2025, he and his co-chair and fellow CEO of DC Studios Peter Safran announced Wednesday.

The film, Gunn said, deals with the superhero's journey to make sense of both his aristocratic Kryptonian heritage and his small town, midwestern upbringing as Clark Kent.

The legacy of Superman has been somewhat fraught recently. In October, Henry Cavill announced that he would be returning to the role starting with a cameo in “Black Adam." Two months later, though, Cavill was back on social media with the news that he was out.

“This news isn’t the easiest, but that’s life,” Cavill wrote. “The changing of the guard is something that happens. I respect that. James and Peter have a universe to build.”

Gunn and Safran were announced as the new DC leaders just a few days after “Black Adam” opened in October, replacing Walter Hamada, who had headed DC Films for four years. And Cavill as Superman was one of the casualties of the new guard.

“It has been a long road to this point,” Gunn wrote on Twitter Wednesday. “I was offered Superman years ago - I initially said no because I didn’t have a way in that felt unique and fun and emotional that gave Superman the dignity he deserved. ... Then a bit less than a year ago I saw a way in.”

Gunn also said the release date is the same as his late father's birthday.

“He was my best friend,” Gunn wrote. “He didn’t understand me as a kid, but he supported my love of comics and my love of film and I wouldn’t be making this movie now without him.”

Gunn has for several years been the rare director to bounce between both DC and Marvel films. He first came to DC after directing Marvel’s well-regarded “Guardians of the Galaxy” films. When the Walt Disney Co. temporarily dropped Gunn over old tweets that joked about rape and pedophilia, he jumped to DC and made the supervillain film “The Suicide Squad,” a kind of blockbuster do-over that followed David Ayer’s much-maligned “Suicide Squad.”

He and the veteran producer Safran came aboard with several upcoming DC films already on their way to theaters, including “Shazam! Fury of the Gods” (March 17), “The Flash” (out June 16) and “Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom” (Dec. 25). And he still has “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3" coming on May 5.

“Superman: Legacy” will be the first film in the new iteration of the connected DC Universe, followed by Matt Reeves’ “The Batman Part II,” which is set for an Oct. 2025 launch. That film, like Todd Phillips' “Joker” sequel coming in 2024, will lie outside of the DCU.

Carlo Vecce, an Italian literature professor at the University of Naples L’Orientale, has revealed his theory in a new novel, “Il Sorriso di Caterina,” or “Caterina’s Smile.” He based his claim on a document discovered in the State Archives in Florence that granted freedom to a girl named Caterina.

Leonardo's father notarized the record six months after the birth of the Renaissance genius, who went on to paint masterpieces including the “Mona Lisa.”

Vecce said he originally was intent on proving that Leonardo's mother was not an enslaved person from the East, one long-held theory. “But when the evidence goes in the other direction, one must pay attention,’’ he said.

He said he chose to put his research in a novel and not in a scholarly text because he felt an urgency to share his theory with a wider public. “I could joke that no one reads a book with footnotes and a bibliography,’’ the author added.

Martin Kemp, an Oxford University art history professor emeritus, co-wrote a 2017 book that identified Leonardo's mother as Caterina di Meo Lippi, a 15-year-old orphan. He said he continued to favor the theory that the girl who gave birth to the masterpiece painter and inventor was a “rural mother.”

“There have been a number of claims that Leonardo’s mother was a slave,’’ Kemp said in a statement provided to The Associated Press. “This fits the need to find something exceptional and exotic in Leonardo’s background, and a link to slavery fits with current obsessions.”

The art historian suggested the document may not be conclusive.

It was Leonardo's grandfather who said his mother’s name was Caterina, according to Kemp. Caterina was a common name given to slaves when they were forced to convert to Christianity, and the husband of the woman who freed the girl in Vecce’s document traded two slaves with that name in one year, Kemp said.

Kemp both praised Vecce’s work as a scholar and expressed surprise that the Italian professor published his findings as a fictionalized account.

T-Mobile announced the purchase on Wednesday, which also includes Ka-ena Corp, its parent company.

Reynolds acquired a minority stake in the upstart cellular company in 2019 and served as its spokesperson in a series of commercials. As part of the new deal, Reynolds will stay on in his "creative role on behalf of Mint."

“I never dreamt I’d own a wireless company and I certainly never dreamt I’d sell it to T-Mobile,” Reynolds wrote on Twitter Wednesday. “Life is strange and I’m incredibly proud and grateful.”

“Mint Mobile is the best deal in wireless, and today’s news only enhances our ability to deliver for our customers,” Reynolds added in a statement about the acquisition. “We are so happy T-Mobile beat out an aggressive last-minute bid from my mom, Tammy Reynolds, as we believe the excellence of their 5G network will provide a better strategic fit than my mom’s slightly-above-average mahjong skills.”

Mint Mobile was created in 2016 with the goal of delivering "affordable, premium wireless" service, according to CNN.

On Wednesday, T-Mobile Mobile CEO Mike Sievert said the company's $15 per month pricing plan would stay in place.

“Over the long-term, we’ll also benefit from applying the marketing formula Mint has become famous for across more parts of T-Mobile.” he wrote.

The arrest comes just months after his father and stepmother, Julie Chrisley, were both sentenced to several years in prison for charges including bank fraud and tax evasion.

Kyle Chrisley was charged Tuesday with aggravated assault in Smyrna, news outlets reported, citing Rutherford County Sheriff’s Office spokesperson Lisa Marchesoni. Chrisley was booked in the Rutherford County jail and later released on $3,000 bond, Marchesoni said.

The tight-knit, boisterous Chrisley family gained fame with the reality show, which was first recorded in the Atlanta area and later in Nashville. Smyrna is about 15 miles (24 kilometers) south of Nashville.

Federal prosecutors said the couple engaged in an extensive bank fraud scheme and then hid their wealth from tax authorities while flaunting their lavish lifestyle.

Todd Chrisley was sentenced to 12 years in prison, while Julie Chrisley got seven years behind bars, according to the U.S. attorney’s office in Atlanta.

The Hall of Fame on Wednesday announced 12 finalists that are being considered for induction in May. The games for consideration include Age of Empires, Angry Birds, Barbie Fashion Designer, Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, Computer Space, FIFA International Soccer, GoldenEye 007, The Last of Us, NBA 2K, Quake, Wii Sports and Wizardry.

A panel of experts and the public will vote on the winners.

“It’s always difficult to narrow the World Video Game Hall of Fame nominations down to just 12 finalists because there are so many games that have had an enormous influence on popular culture or the video game industry itself," said Jon-Paul C. Dyson, director of the The Strong's International Center for the History of Electronic Games in Rochester, where the hall is based.

“This year’s finalists are some heavy-hitters,” he said.

The Hall of Fame recognizes arcade, console, computer, handheld, and mobile games whose popularity has been far-reaching and influenced other games or society at large.

Finalist FIFA International Soccer is the most popular sports game franchise of all time, according to the hall, and is a worldwide best-seller with updates every year from publisher Electronic Arts. And then there's Rovio’s Angry Birds, with 2 billion downloads, which is nominated for turning millions of smartphone users into gamers.

The 1996 Barbie Fashion Designer game broke with the pattern of the industry marketing to male players; Wii Sports became a hit among older adults; and Nutting Associate’s coin-operated Computer Space from 1971 proved video games could exist outside of computer labs as the first commercial video game, according to the hall.

The post-apocalyptic The Last of Us, released by Naughty Dog and Sony Interactive Entertainment in 2013, is now a hit TV show for HBO.

Anyone can nominate a game for the hall. Thousands of nominations came in for consideration for this year's class, The Strong museum said.

Fan voting is underway online through March 22 as part of what's called the "Player’s Choice” ballot. The three games that receive the most public votes will form one ballot that will be counted alongside ballots submitted by members of an international committee of experts.

The winners will be inducted in a virtual ceremony on May 4.

Baldwin’s legal team in February sought to disqualify special prosecutor and Republican state Rep. Andrea Reeb based on constitutional provisions that safeguard the separation of powers between distinct branches of government.

Reeb said in a statement Tuesday that she “will not allow questions about my serving as a legislator and prosecutor to cloud the real issue at hand.”

“It has become clear that the best way I can ensure justice is served in this case is to step down so that the prosecution can focus on the evidence and the facts,” Reeb said.

District Attorney Mary Carmack-Altwies filed a notification in state district court and declined further comment.

Baldwin and weapons supervisor Hannah Gutierrez-Reed have pleaded not guilty to charges of involuntary manslaughter in the shooting death of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins. The charges carry a maximum penalty of 18 months in prison and fines.

Hutchins died shortly after being wounded Oct. 21, 2021, during rehearsals for the Western film “Rust” at a ranch on the outskirts of Santa Fe. Baldwin was pointing a pistol at Hutchins when the gun went off, killing her and wounding the director, Joel Souza.

A preliminary hearing is scheduled in May to decide whether the evidence is sufficient to proceed to a trial.

Prosecutors say assistant director David Halls, who oversaw safety on set, has signed an agreement to plead guilty in the negligent use of a deadly weapon.

In her role as legislator, Reeb has sponsored several criminal justice initiatives, including enhanced punishments for firearms violations.

The Republican from Clovis steered clear of voting on public spending to prosecute Baldwin and Gutierrez-Reed.

She was excused from a House floor vote in February on a proposed state budget that includes $360,000 for special prosecution expenses in the fatal film-set shooting.

Truth is, it was probably several miracles that enabled Hall to sit in a cafe at Fox's New York headquarters recently to discuss the book he'd written about his ordeal.

There was the Ukrainian special forces officer driving by after the bombing who saw Hall's wave and put him in a car, the lucky train ride from Kyiv to Poland, the 30 — and counting — surgeries he's endured as he heals from the March 14, 2022, incident.

No story compares with the voice he heard when the second of three bombs left him torn apart and blacked out. He swears it was his daughter, Honor, then at home in London with her mother and sisters Iris and Hero.

The voice was insistent: “Daddy, you've got to get out of the car.” Hall obeyed, just before the third bomb hit, setting him afire.

“I've spoken to some people who have had near-death experiences and they often see their family,” Hall told The Associated Press. "I think when you take everything else away, what is the main thing that means the most to us, the place we want to be? It's back home with your family.

“Was it a miracle?” he asked. “I believe so. I was saved that day. It's the title of my book. I was in the middle seat of a small car — it's the death seat — somehow I came out of it, and I'm still alive. Whether it was my daughter or whether it was an angel, I don't have an answer for that.”

Hall's two colleagues on the reporting trip, photographer Pierre Zakrzewski and Ukrainian “fixer” Oleksandra “Sasha” Kuvshynova, were both killed.

Even after escaping and being taken to a Kyiv hospital, Hall's survival was by no means assured. He was gravely injured. He lost his right leg below the knee, much of his left foot, the sight in his left eye, his left thumb was blown off, his skull was dented and he was burned over much of his body.

He was fortunate to get a ride on a diplomats' train out of Kyiv to Poland, where he was evacuated to the American military treatment facility in Landstuhl, Germany.

Hall's book captures this great escape, much of it reconstructed through his later reporting. He noted how his father, rescued in war-torn Manila in 1945 and who died at age 89 less than a month before Ben's deployment to Ukraine, both had their lives saved by the U.S. military.

He doesn't mince words about what he went through — his screams heard corridors away in a hospital when dressings from his burns were taken off, and the horrific dreams that led him to reduce pain medication.

Yet he said he's blessed to have an optimistic nature and determination.

“I like the positivity and optimism he's got, which is great,” said Bob Woodruff, the ABC News anchor who suffered a traumatic brain injury when a bomb exploded near where he was reporting in Iraq in 2006.

After a period of feeling lucky to be alive, many people who suffer such injuries sink into a dangerous period of frustration and depression, Woodruff said. If Hall has gone through that, he seems to have pulled through, he said.

“It takes a long time to adjust and say goodbye to some things you did and say hello to new ones,” Woodruff said.

He also says the role of an injured person's loved ones deserves more credit; his wife, Lee, has spoken to Hall's wife, Alicia.

From the description of some of his wartime reporting experiences in Afghanistan, Somalia and Syria, many before he joined Fox News in 2015, Hall was lucky to make it physically unscathed before Ukraine. With thoughts of his family, he had largely settled into a safer job covering the State Department before volunteering for duty in Ukraine.

While impossible to resist an “I told you so” or two, Hall's wife knew how important the story was and how important it was for him to cover it, he said.

Has he second-guessed his own decision to go?

“Not once,” he said.

While important to understand the danger, "once you've made that decision to go, you've got to be able, if you want to do the job well, to turn that off,” he said. “Because fear will stop you from doing that job.”

In his book, Hall recounts a conversation he had with a former soldier about coming to terms with the pain that he's going to face every day.

“I don't like telling people about the pain because I don't want to upset anyone else,” Hall said in the interview. “It's for me to deal with, not for someone else to deal with. What are they going to do? Feel bad about me? Who does that help? No one. So I'll deal with it myself.”

Hall said he hoped his book can show others that they have reservoirs of strength to deal with adversity. His story also will be told in a two-hour Fox News Channel documentary on Sunday at 9 p.m. Eastern.

Mindful of his new reality, Hall will have to decide what is next. For Bob and Lee Woodruff, it was starting a foundation that has raised $125 million for injured soldiers. Woodruff continues to report; he spoke in an interview this week from north of the Arctic Circle in Canada.

“I've spent my whole career talking about war and horror and the depths of it,” Hall said. “I think I'd like to tell some more positive and optimistic stories now.”

The 12-song collection is called “King of a Land” and comes out in June on George Harrison-founded Dark Horse Records. The album cover illustration shows a boy playing guitar on top of the Earth, as a cat stretches and a train puffs along a track.

The first single is the cheerful, family friendly “Take the World Apart,” with the lyrics “I'll take the world apart/to find a place for a peaceful heart.”

“The source of musical inspiration for this song came from the 50s. The smoochy harmonies and chords have an enchanting effect on the ear. Life was simpler then: lonely hearts yearning for love," he said in a statement to The Associated Press.

The album reunites Stevens with producer Paul Samwell-Smith, who produced three Stevens albums between 1970-72 — “Tea for the Tillerman,” “Teaser and the Firecat” and “Catch Bull at Four.”

Rock & Roll Hall of Fame member Stevens, who also goes by Yusuf, the name he took when he converted to Islam, has been a respected writer since releasing his debut in 1967. He’s had a string of Top 40 hits, from “Peace Train” and “Wild World” to “Morning Has Broken.” He was just named to Glastonbury’s coveted Legends slot this summer.

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Mark Kennedy is at http://twitter.com/KennedyTwits

Diamond owns 19 networks under the Bally Sports banner. Those networks have the rights to 42 professional teams — 14 baseball, 16 NBA and 12 NHL.

The company said in a release Tuesday night that it expects to continue to operate during the bankruptcy process and that coverage of games should not be affected.

Diamond Sports also said it is negotiating a restructuring agreement with debt holders that will eliminate most of its debt. Under an agreement with creditors, it would become a separate company from Sinclair Broadcast Group.

“DSG will continue broadcasting games and connecting fans across the country with the sports and teams they love," Diamond Sports CEO David Preschlack said in a statement. "We look forward to working constructively with our team and league partners and all DSG stakeholders throughout this process and beyond.”

Diamond said in a financial filing last fall it had debt of $8.67 billion. The bankruptcy filing was made in the Southern District of Texas.

Sinclair Broadcast Group bought the regional sports networks from The Walt Disney Co. for nearly $10 billion in 2019. Disney was required by the Department of Justice to sell the networks for its acquisition of 21st Century Fox’s film and television assets to be approved.

Diamond has nearly $1 billion in rights payments, mostly to baseball teams, due in the first quarter this year. The company is current on payments to hockey and basketball teams, but it might withhold payments from some baseball teams where it is trying to renegotiate a better deal.

Major League Baseball has set up a local media department in case it has to take over broadcasts for teams. Games would air locally via MLB Network or streamed on MLB.TV in case that happened.

“Diamond Sports Group’s bankruptcy declaration today is an unfortunate development that we have been expecting. Despite Diamond’s economic situation, there is every expectation that they will continue televising all games they are committed to during the bankruptcy process," MLB said in a statement late Tuesday night. "Over the long term, we will reimagine our distribution model to address the changing media climate and ultimately reach an even larger number of fans.”

Diamond Sports isn't the only company experiencing financial woes with its regional sports networks. Warner Bros. Discovery, which has an ownership stake in three of the AT&T SportsNet networks, has given the Colorado Rockies, Houston Astros and Pittsburgh Pirates until March 31 to reclaim their broadcast rights. WBD Sports is ending its investment in the networks.

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AP sports: https://apnews.com/hub/sports and https://twitter.com/AP_Sports

“When I don’t move on, that’s always a sign to me there’s something powerful and moving,” Winfrey told The Associated Press in a recent telephone interview.

On Tuesday, she announced that she had chosen Ann Napolitano’s “Hello Beautiful,” a modern-day homage to “Little Women” from the author of the bestselling “Dear Edward.” The novel was published Tuesday by Dial Press, a Penguin Random House imprint, and Winfrey believes its themes of family, resilience and perspective give “Hello Beautiful” a “universal appeal" that makes it a proper milestone.

A Winfrey pick no longer ensures blockbuster sales, but it retains a special status within the industry; for authors, a call from Winfrey still feels like being told they've won an Oscar. Winfrey told AP that she is in “awe” of the club and its history, “the very notion” that someone might go and buy a copy of “Anna Karenina” or a little known book simply because she suggested it.

“She is the queen,” says Jenna Bush Hager, who hosts the popular “Read With Jenna” club on NBC’s “Today” show. “I remember being a high school senior, in AP English, and reading (David Guterson’s) ‘Snow Falling on Cedars’ because I had walked into the local bookstore and seen that Oprah had recommended it.”

Kristen McLean, an analyst for NPD Books, which tracks industry sales, says that Winfrey is especially effective these days when promoting a known author such as Barbara Kingsolver and her novel “Demon Copperhead," a bestseller since Winfrey picked it last fall that has far outsold her two previous works of fiction.

Since 1996, Winfrey’s book choices have set her on a journey of extraordinary influence and success, frequent reinvention and the occasional controversy. It has endured through changes for both Winfrey and the publishing industry, through the rise of the internet and the end of Winfrey’s syndicated talk show, through immersions in the classics and unexpected lessons in the reliability of memoirs and the lack of diversity of book publishing.

Thanks to Winfrey, contemporary authors such as Jacquelyn Mitchard and Jane Hamilton found audiences they never imagined, while picks published decades or even centuries earlier, from “Anna Karenina” to “As I Lay Dying,” placed high on bestseller lists. Winfrey didn't invent the mass market book club, but she demonstrated that spontaneous passion can inspire people in ways that elude the most sophisticated marketing campaigns.

Her most troubled choices — James Frey’s fabricated memoir “A Million Little Pieces,” Jeanine Cummins’ “American Dirt,” a novel criticized for stereotypical depictions of Mexicans — made so much news in part because of the spotlight of a Winfrey endorsement.

The club began as the extension of conversations between herself and her producer at the time, Alice McGee. They would talk about the books they liked until McGee finally suggested, in 1996, that Winfrey share the experience with her viewers. The first pick, Mitchard’s “The Deep End of the Ocean,” has sold more than 2 million copies. Other books also became major bestsellers, whether by established authors like Joyce Carol Oates (“We Were the Mulvaneys”) and Toni Morrison (“The Bluest Eye”) or then-emerging writers like Janet Fitch and Tawni O’Dell.

The club was so successful that some suspected a catch. Winfrey remembers Quincy Jones asking her: “How much money are they paying you for that book club, baby?” The process was so informal that Winfrey at first didn’t even bother going through intermediaries.

“I would just call Wally Lamb,” she says of the author of “She’s Come Undone,” her fourth pick. “In the early stages, I would finish the book and then find the author. When you’d go to the back of the book, it gives you the bio of the author and it would tell you what city the author lives. And, this is when we had phone books, in every instance I was able to get the author’s phone number because the author was listed.”

Winfrey’s system is now only slightly more structured. Leigh Newman, books director of the online/print publication Oprah Daily, will call the publisher first and arrange a “surprise call” with the author and Oprah. Winfrey's staff will research the author’s background to make sure nothing problematic turns up — whether criminal charges or allegations of plagiarism. The vetting began, Winfrey says, after “A Million Little Pieces” turned out to have substantial falsehoods, leading to an extraordinary public scolding by Winfrey when she brought Frey back on her show to explain himself. (They have since reconciled).

“I took it so personally,” she says. “I probably should haven’t taken it so personally but I felt like he had let me down and I let the audience down. ... I was the one saying, ‘Can you believe this is a true story?’ and shouting that from the rooftops. I felt foolish for doing that, embarrassed for doing that.”

Winfrey's book choices are still in-house and intimate — mostly just determined by herself and Newman — although Winfrey says she made a rare exception for “Hello Beautiful,” recommended to her by the co-chairman of Creative Artists Agency, Richard Lovett. Otherwise, Newman will seek out books she thinks Winfrey might respond to — fiction or nonfiction, as long as the story is “compelling,” Newman explains. Winfrey will also come upon books on her own.

The club follows no real formula. For the first few years, Winfrey averaged a selection nearly every month, a pace she came to find exhausting. She paused the club for much of 2002-2003, focused on older works in 2004-2005, and in other years only selected one or two titles. After her talk show ended in 2011, she launched Oprah’s Book Club 2.0 the following year, with the emphasis on digital media.

She is currently aiming for a new book every eight weeks, with author interviews and interactive reader discussions showcased on OprahDaily.com. Winfrey has no plans to stop, and no specific goals for selections. In the aftermath of “American Dirt,” selected early in 2020, she had vowed to open herself up “to more Latinx books.” But she has not since picked any for her club and is not committing herself for the future.

“I’d never choose a book because the author is Hispanic, or Black, or Indian. I’m not going to be put in that box,” she says. “The book has to live on many different levels to me. It doesn’t mean there are not fantastic books by authors of every race and creed. It means I haven’t seen one yet (for the club). But we’re mindful of it and I’ve come close a couple of times.”

Winfrey’s choices are influenced at times by a relatively recent trend — competition.

Over the past few years, Hager and Reese Witherspoon have demonstrated that they too, can win the trust of large numbers of readers, whether Witherspoon’s early promotion of Delia Owens’ blockbuster “Where the Crawdads Sing” or Hager championing such debut works as Katy Hays' novel “The Cloisters.” The exuberance of young people on TikTok helped make Colleen Hoover the country’s most popular fiction writer.

Winfrey is respectful: If she hears a book she might choose is also being pursued by Witherspoon or Hager, she will step back and pick another. But she also claims her place. Yes, Witherspoon, Hager and the BookTok kids are all great, but no one should forget who came first.

“We started this conversation," she says. "And I’m very, very proud of that.”

Deputy District Attorney Paul Thompson announced the decision to Superior Court Judge Lisa B. Lench at a hearing in downtown Los Angeles. The judge granted a defense motion to dismiss the charges and said Weinstein would be returned to New York, where he was convicted in a similar case.

Weinstein attorney Jacqueline Sparagna said he maintains his innocence of the charges.

In December, the Los Angeles jury convicted Weinstein, 70, of the rape and sexual assault of Italian model and actor Evgeniya Chernyshova, and he was sentenced to 16 years in prison. That’s in addition to the 23-year sentence he is already serving in New York.

Jurors could not reach unanimous verdicts on a rape count and a sexual assault count involving Jennifer Siebel Newsom — a documentary filmmaker and the wife of California Gov. Gavin Newsom — and a sexual battery count involving model Lauren Young.

Young testified at Weinstein's New York trial as a supporting witness, but was not part of the charges there as she was in California. She said at Tuesday's hearing that she was “very disappointed” prosecutors would not be moving forward with a retrial.

“For 10 years I have done everything possible to seek justice for what the defendant did to me,” Young said, reading from prepared remarks with her attorney Gloria Allred standing behind her. “I have not achieved the justice that I had hoped to obtain.”

Ten of the 12 jurors agreed to convict Weinstein of the sexual battery charge involving Young.

Thompson said the difficulty of having hesitant witnesses corroborate Young's story was a factor. He commended Young for testifying “credibly and courageously,” and said “we never wavered in our confidence in her.”

“It is a difficult decision,” Thompson said. “We certainly did want to see justice for all the victims.”

He added that Weinstein would likely only face an additional year in prison if convicted on the sexual battery count, and that additional stretch was not worth another trial.

The Associated Press does not typically name people who say they have been sexually abused unless they identify themselves publicly or consent through their attorneys, as the women named here have.

Siebel Newsom's attorney Elizabeth Fegan said in a statement after the hearing that they respect the prosecution's decision not to retry the charges related to her.

“The First Partner’s primary intention in coming forward was to ensure that Weinstein spends the rest of his life in prison," Fegan said. She added that had "the court not handed down a fitting sentence, my client would have been ready to support the prosecutors if they opted to retry Weinstein, even considering the enormous emotional toll it would inflict on her.”

Deputy District Attorney Marlene Martinez read a statement from Siebel Newsom at the hearing.

“The defense reopened and exacerbated my trauma,” the statement said. “He tried to ruin my life and the lives of so many other women. He deserves to spend the rest of his life in prison.”

Sparagna said at the hearing that the encounter with Siebel Newsom was consensual, as his attorneys argued during the trial. Weinstein insisted at his sentencing that he had never even met Chernyshova. His lawyers also deny he was ever with Young in the hotel room where she said the assault happened.

After the hearing, Allred identified another client who Weinstein was charged with raping and sexually assaulting but declined to take part in the trial at the last moment, leading to the counts involving her being dismissed.

The woman, Australian actor and model Kate Jaggard, said in a statement that she was willing to undergo cross-examination at the trial but could not appear to testify because of circumstance beyond her control.

She said she was “deeply disappointed” Lench would not allow her and other women Weinstein was not convicted of assaulting to give victim impact statements at his sentencing. But she said “the conviction was a win for all sexual assault victims.”

Allred is appealing the judge's decision to the California Supreme Court in hopes that such impact statements will be allowed at similar sentencings.

Weinstein’s New York conviction is under appeal and his attorneys plan to appeal his California conviction.

His spokesperson Juda Engelmayer said that with a retrial no longer looming, Weinstein “can focus on the counts he was convicted on,” and “proof that corroborates Harvey’s claims that it never happened, and he didn’t know or meet this person.”

Weinstein himself said in a statement that he is reading books on legendary defense attorney Clarence Darrow, “so that I may understand more for my own legal defense, as I continue the monumental challenge of ultimately proving my innocence.”

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Follow AP Entertainment Writer Andrew Dalton on Twitter: https://twitter.com/andyjamesdalton

Tickets for the Country Bay Music Festival went on sale Tuesday. The event is scheduled for Nov. 11-12 at the historic Miami Marine Stadium, just southeast of downtown on Virginia Key in Biscayne Bay.

“With an incredible lineup of the top country music artists and a picturesque waterfront venue that has a long history of iconic country music shows, including Jimmy Buffet and Kenny Rogers among others, we are confident that Country Bay Music Festival will be a must-attend event for years to come," event organizer Tony Albelo said in a statement.

Headliners scheduled for the Country Bay Music Festival are Thomas Rhett, Sam Hunt, Chris Young, Lee Brice and Lainey Wilson. Other performers include Randy Houser, Chris Lane, LOCASH, Elle King, Restless Road, Blanco Brown, Josh Ross, Hailey Whitters, David J., Kat & Alex and Neon Union.

Besides hosting one of the largest country music events ever to hit Miami, the festival will include a country-themed bar, games, food, line dancing, a mechanical bull and a giant Ferris wheel. The festival will also give fans the opportunity to attend the event by boat or yacht with an anchorage access pass.

Virginia Key, the location of the Miami Marine Stadium, is a small barrier island in Biscayne Bay and connected to the Miami mainland by a single causeway. The limited access created transportation problems for the Ultra Music Festival when the electronic music event temporarily moved from Bayfront Park in downtown Miami to the Miami Marine Stadium in 2019.

The causeway that connects Virginia Key to the mainland also provides access to the island community of Key Biscayne, where officials at the time expressed concerns about safety, noise, traffic and the environment.

The jury has deliberated for about 20 hours since getting the case March 8. The panel of 12 will return to court Wednesday.

Jurors asked Tuesday to get a copy of text messages Michael Boatwright, the accused shooter, sent and received on June 18, 2018, the day the rapper was killed during a robbery that netted $50,000. They had seen a computer projection of those messages and those of Dedrick Williams, the accused ringleader, on Monday after asking to review them.

The only other significant question they have asked was to see a transcript of Williams' statement to detectives after his arrest. The lead detective testified about that statement, but no transcript was entered as evidence. They were told to rely on their memory of what he said.

Twenty-eight-year-old Boatwright along with Williams, 26, and accused second gunman Trayvon Newsome, 24, are all charged with first-degree murder and armed robbery. They all face mandatory life sentences if convicted. Prosecutors did not seek the death penalty. While the three are being tried together, jurors have to vote separately on each. It is possible they could convict one or two and acquit or hang on the rest.

A fourth man, 26-year-old Robert Allen, pleaded guilty last year to second-degree murder and testified against his former friends.

XXXTentacion, whose real name was Jahseh Onfroy, had just left Riva Motorsports in suburban Fort Lauderdale with a friend when his BMW was blocked by an SUV that swerved in front.

Surveillance video showed that two masked gunmen emerged and confronted the 20-year-old rapper at the driver’s window, and one shot him repeatedly. They then grabbed a Louis Vuitton bag containing $50,000 that XXXTentacion had just withdrawn from the bank, got back into the SUV and sped away. The friend was not harmed.

Allen testified that the men set out that day to commit robberies and went to the motorcycle shop to buy Williams a mask. There they spotted the rapper and decided to make him their target. Allen and Williams went inside the shop to confirm it was him.

They then went back to the SUV they had rented, waited for XXXTentacion to emerge and ambushed him, according to testimony. Prosecutors say surveillance video from the dealership and cellphone data ties the men to the scene. They also showed jurors videos the men allegedly posted on social media that night of themselves flashing fistfuls of $100 bills.

The men’s attorneys said Allen is lying and that their DNA was not found on the artist. Attorneys for some of the men said that while the money-flashing videos were “stupid,” they don’t prove their clients were actually involved in the shooting and robbery.

The rapper, who pronounced his name “Ex ex ex ten-ta-see-YAWN,” was a platinum-selling rising star who tackled issues including prejudice and depression in his songs. He also drew criticism over bad behavior and multiple arrests, including charges that he severely beat and abused his girlfriend.

According to Macmillan, the books will comprise a “variety of formats, age categories and genres.” Bardugo is best known for her Grishaverse fantasy novels, which include “Shadow and Bone,” the basis for a Netflix series of the same name that begins its second season this week. She also has written the adult fantasy novel “Ninth House” and its recently released sequel “Hell Bent.”

“Macmillan took a chance on me over a decade ago and they’ve been my home ever since. When no one in YA was interested in epic fantasy, they welcomed ‘Shadow and Bone,’" Bardugo said in a statement Tuesday. “When everyone wanted books about kings and queens, they rolled the dice on my team of six outcasts (in her novel ‘Six of Crows’) trying to pull off an impossible heist.”

“And when I wanted to go someplace far darker, they backed me in welcoming readers to Ninth House,” she added. "Publishing is a tough business and it’s no small thing to be able to write the stories I’m most passionate about.”

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This story has been corrected to show the deal was for a dozen books, not more than a dozen.

The “Mean Girls” star announced her pregnancy in an Instagram post on Tuesday, sharing an image of a baby onesie with “Coming soon...” written on it. The post was captioned “We are blessed and excited!”

Lohan married financier Bader Shammas in 2022, People magazine reported.

A message sent to Lohan’s representative was not immediately returned.

The 36-year-old actor, who was once a tabloid mainstay, has lived overseas for several years and kept a lower public profile.

She recently returned to acting, starring in Netflix's “Falling for Christmas” last year, and stars in the streaming service's upcoming romantic comedy “Irish Wish.”

Kurkov, 61, who has written widely for Western publications on Russia’s invasion of his country, is nominated for “Jimi Hendrix Live in Lviv,” a darkly comic portrait of life in the western Ukraine city.

Condé, often mentioned as a possible Nobel Literature Prize candidate, is nominated for “The Gospel According to the New World.” The writer, who is 89 and has lost her sight, dictated the novel to her husband and translator, Richard Philcox.

The International Booker Prize is awarded every year to a translated work of fiction published in the U.K. or Ireland. It is run alongside the Booker Prize for English-language fiction.

The longlist of books from 12 countries and 11 languages also includes “Whale” by Korean author Cheon Myeong-kwan, “Ninth Building” by China’s Zou Jingzhi, “Standing Heavy” by Ivorian writer GauZ' and “Pyre” by Indian author Perumal Murugan.

French novelist Leila Slimani, who is chairing the judging panel, said the books celebrated “literary ambition, panache, originality" and the talent of literary translators.

Six finalists will be announced on April 18 and the winner will be revealed on May 23 at a ceremony in London.

The prize was set up to boost the profile of fiction in other languages — which accounts for only a small share of books published in Britain — and to salute the often unacknowledged work of literary translators. The 50,000 pound ($61,000) purse is split between the winning author and their translator.

Last year’s winners were Indian writer Geetanjali Shree and American translator Daisy Rockwell for “Tomb of Sand.” ___

A previous version of the story incorrectly gave Maryse Condé's age as 86. She's 89.

That was one thought behind “Songs of Surrender,”coming out this week. The four men of U2, now either 61 or 62 years old, revisit material written in some cases when they were little more than kids out of Dublin.

Particularly in those days, U2 songs were written primarily with concerts in mind. The Edge told The Associated Press in an interview that U2 wanted to catch the attention of people seeing the band for the first time, perhaps in a festival or as an opening act.

“There's a sort of gladiatorial aspect to live performances when you're in that situation,” he said. “The material has got to be pretty bold and even strident at times. With this reimagining, we thought it would be fun to see intimacy as a new approach, that intimacy would be the new punk rock, as it were.”

The Edge was the driving force behind “Songs of Surrender,” using pandemic down time to record much of the music at home.

Given that his electric guitar and Bono's voice are the musical signature of U2, there's a certain irony in the absence of that guitar being the most immediately noticeable feature of the new versions. He sticks primarily to keyboards, acoustic guitar and dulcimer.

The process began without a roadmap or commitment to see it through if it wasn't working.

“As we got into it and got into a groove, we really started to enjoy what was happening,” he said. “There was a lot of freedom in the process, it was joyful and fun to take these songs and sort of reimagine them and I think that comes across. It doesn't sound like there was a lot of hard work involved because it wasn't.”

Much of the intimacy comes through Bono's voice. There's no need to shout, so he sometimes uses lower registers or slips into falsetto.

Lyrics are often rewritten, sometimes extensively in even a recent song like “The Miracle of Joey Ramone.” Some changes are more subtle but still noticeable: replacing the line “one man betrayed with a kiss” with “one boy never will be kissed” takes Jesus out of “Pride (In the Name of Love).”

At the same time, “Sunday Bloody Sunday” is rearranged to end with a question: “where is the victory Jesus won?”

Cellos replace the driving guitar of “Vertigo.” Keyboards give “Where the Streets Have No Name” an ambient sound. "Two Hearts Beat as One," the original a high-octane rock dance song, now has a slinkier, sexy vibe and is one of four songs where The Edge takes lead vocal.

The band is fairly democratic in taking songs from throughout its catalog, although 1981's “October” album and 2009's “No Line on the Horizon” are not represented. “New Year's Day,” “Angel of Harlem” and “Even Better Than the Real Thing” are among the songs left alone.

“We’re one of the only acts that has this body of work where a project like this would be possible, with the distance of time and experience where it would be interesting to revisit early songs,” The Edge said.

Throughout music history, bands have occasionally re-recorded material for contractual reasons. Taylor Swift is the most famous example, putting out new versions of her older songs in order to control their use. Squeeze's “Spot the Difference” makes sport of how they tried to make new recordings indistinguishable from the originals.

Live recordings and archive-cleaning projects like Bob Dylan's “bootleg” series gives fans the chance to hear familiar songs differently.

Many older artists don't see the point of making new music, since there's little opportunity to be heard and fans are partial to the familiar stuff, anyway, said Anthony DeCurtis, Rolling Stone contributing editor.

“Revisiting your body of work in a creative way is a means of sustaining interest in your career,” DeCurtis said. “Older fans might not be interested in another collection of your hits, but reworking them in a meaningful way could prove enticing. Younger fans don't have the same investment in your classics, so these new versions offer a route into your catalog.”

The Edge encourages fans to give the new versions a try, suggesting they may even grow to prefer some of them.

“I don't think there's a competition between these and the original versions,” he said. "It's more of an additive thing than a substitution. If you like the new arrangements, great. If you prefer the originals, keep listening.

“It's no problem either way,” he said. “They're both valid.”

The Edge said he's working on new music for U2, “and we've got some great stuff in the pipeline.”

The quartet that met in drummer Larry Mullen Jr.'s kitchen when they answered an ad placed on a high school bulletin board is a remarkable story in longevity. A passage toward the end of Bono's book “Surrender,” where he talked about looking around onstage at the end of their most recent tour in 2019 and wondering if it was the end, raised natural questions about how long U2 would continue.

“There are many reasons why U2 has stayed together for so long, but one of the main reasons is that it works so well for us as individuals,” The Edge said. “I think we all shine the brightest as part of this collective. I certainly would not like to hang up the guitar.”

This year will provide a test for a band that can count on one hand the number of times it has performed without all four members. U2 has committed to a run of shows in Las Vegas without Mullen, who is recuperating from surgery.

Would U2 continue if one of the original quartet decides it's time to hang it up?

“I wouldn't rule out the possibility that we could go forward with different members,” The Edge said. “But also, equally, I could imagine us deciding not to. It would be a big challenge. But I think at the time we would know what felt right.”

The show was taken off the air more than a year ago after a sexual misconduct scandal hit the TV ratings juggernaut in one of the most serious #MeToo reckonings to hit the Dutch entertainment world.

The show was first aired in the Netherlands before local versions were spun off around the world.

Prosecutors said that a 41-year-old man will be prosecuted for sexual offenses with three women in 2014 and 2018 in the Netherlands and another country. One of the cases is linked to The Voice of Holland. A fourth case, also linked to the show, was dropped.

A 51-year-old man also will be prosecuted for a sexual offense that allegedly happened in February 2018 “in or around the recording studios where The Voice of Holland was recorded,” prosecutors said in a statement.

They did not elaborate on the nature of the charges against the two men.

The statement did not identify either man, in line with Dutch privacy rules. Dutch media, including the RTL network that aired the show, identified the 41-year-old as the rapper and Voice coach Ali Bouali, and the 51-year-old as the show's pianist and band leader, Jeroen Rietbergen.

Bouali's lawyer, Bart Swier, said last year that the rapper denied any wrongdoing.

Rietbergen quit the show and said in a statement last year that he had "contact of a sexual nature with some women involved in the program and exchanged sexually tinted WhatsApp messages.”

Rietbergen went on to say that after initially considering the sexual encounters “as reciprocal and equal,” he later came to understand that the women “may have experienced this very differently."

He added: "This insight has made me realize that my behavior has been completely wrong.”

It was not yet clear when the two would face trial. Under the Dutch legal system, their defense lawyers can ask prosecutors to pursue further investigations before trial.

Viewership for “The Last of Us” has consistently grown throughout the season. The series has not only won over gamers with high expectations but also critics and people who aren't familiar with the game.

The series premiere drew 4.7 million viewers in the U.S., based on Nielsen and HBO data, making for HBO’s second-largest debut, behind “House of the Dragon.” Outside of the U.S., “The Last of Us” is now the most-watched show in the history of HBO Max in both Europe and Latin America, HBO said.

As viewers watch episodes on the streaming platforms days after the episodes air, the numbers for the series will continue to increase. The series is now averaging 30.4 million viewers across its first six episodes, with the first episode approaching 40 million viewers in the U.S., HBO said.

HBO did concede to the ratings behemoth that is the Super Bowl, dropping the fifth episode of “The Last of Us” on HBO Max and HBO On Demand early last month on the Friday before the big game on Feb. 12. But the ratings for episode five were still strong, with 11.6 million viewers from Friday through Sunday.

The series finale ended with Joel making some difficult and controversial decisions that left viewers wondering what was next for protagonists Ellie (Bella Ramsey) and Joel (Pedro Pascal). While not much has been officially announced about the second season, fans of the video game know about “The Last of Us Part II” and are eagerly anticipating how the game will be adapted for season two.

Yeoh’s family and two Cabinet ministers were among the supporters roaring with joy at Yeoh's win during a special Academy Awards viewing party in Malaysia on Monday morning. Her trophy for her performance as a laundromat owner was one of seven Oscars for “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” including best picture.

Janet Yeoh, 84, praised the actor as intelligent and hardworking and a filial daughter.

“I so love my daughter and she has made Malaysia proud,” Yeoh told a news conference after the viewing at a cinema in Kuala Lumpur. "Malaysia Boleh (Malaysia Can)!”

Janet Yeoh said she was immensely proud of “my little princess,” who wanted to be a ballerina before entering the movie world. Yeoh said she pushed her daughter out of her cocoon despite protests from her late husband, a lawyer whom she described as “old-fashioned.”

In her acceptance speech, Yeoh dedicated her award to her mother and said “all the moms in the world” were the real superheroes.

Shortly after, Yeoh made a video call to her mom, holding up her trophy in triumph.

“It was such a jaw-dropping moment. I was speechless, I cried,” said Vicki Yeoh, Michelle Yeoh's niece, who was at the special viewing. “The nominees are really strong, but we had no doubt. We keep telling her that you will win … you will stand on the stage with the golden man.”

Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said Malaysia's government joined the nation to congratulate Yeoh for creating history.

“Coupled with this achievement, Michelle’s illustrious and exemplary career in this field will certainly continue to be a source of great inspiration and motivation to our homegrown actors and actresses and provide even greater impetus to the growth of our local industry,” Anwar said in a statement. “Way to go, Michelle!”

Sports Minister Hannah Yeoh, who was at the viewing, immediately posted on social media: “Most inspiring quote for all of us aunties - ‘Ladies, don’t let anybody ever tell you that you are past your prime’ - Michelle Yeoh.”

Lawmakers Sim Tze Sin and Wee Ka Siong thanked Michelle Yeoh for “breaking glass ceilings" for Asian and Malaysian women. They praised her for being an icon for resilience and perseverance.

Michelle Yeoh, 60, learned ballet before turning to acting. Her first major Hollywood role was playing a Chinese spy in the Bond film “Tomorrow Never Dies” in 1997 alongside Pierce Brosnan.

She gained renown for her role in the 2000 martial arts masterpiece “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon," a best-picture nominee that won the Oscar for best foreign language film.

Yeoh had more recent success in the 2018 movie “Crazy Rich Asians” and Marvel's “Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings" in 2021.

“We are incredibly proud. We hope she goes to break more records and win more awards,” her nephew Kelvin Yeoh said.

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See more AP Academy Awards coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/academy-awards

The 95th Academy Awards, which aired Sunday night on ABC, was viewed by an estimated 18.7 million, according to preliminary Fast National Live+Same Day numbers released Monday by ABC. That's up 12% from last year's show, but still low compared to most years.

The evening’s main counterprogramming, the season finale of “The Last of Us” pulled in 8.2 million viewers across HBO and HBO Max. The show began at 9 p.m. EDT, an hour after the Oscars started.

A frequent criticism of the Oscars is that the show celebrates films that don’t have wide appeal. This year was markedly different, however, with two billion-dollar blockbuster sequels in the mix: “Top: Gun Maverick” and “Avatar: The Way of Water” were both nominated for best picture. Angela Bassett was nominated for a Marvel movie, a first. Even the winning film, A24’s “Everything Everywhere All At Once,” made over $100 million at the global box office and played in theaters for months.

For many years, the Oscars were often the second most-watched television program of the year behind the Super Bowl. Until 2018, the Oscar telecast had never slipped below 30 million viewers, according to Nielsen records. The high-water mark was the 55 million people who watched “Titanic” clean up in 1998.

From the 43.7 million who watched in 2014, viewership declined steadily to 26.5 million in 2018, then went back up to 29.6 million in 2019, and 23.6 million in 2020. The bottom fell out with the pandemic-diminished show in 2021, seen by 9.85 million. It rebounded last year to 16.6 million, which was the second lowest-rated show ever.

Jimmy Kimmel, who presided over the ceremony in 2017 and 2018, returned to host the show, parachuting on to the Dolby Theatre stage. The show also featured performances from pop stars like Rihanna and Lady Gaga.

Broadcast television viewership has gone down across the board in the streaming era, and awards shows have illustrated that. The show boasted 27.4 million total social interactions across Instagram, Twitter, Facebook and YouTube and was the No. 1 worldwide trending topic on Twitter for its duration.

By Monday afternoon, Ke Huy Quan’s acceptance speech had over 1.3 million views on YouTube, and Brendan Fraser’s was up to 2.6 million.

The ABC broadcast also had 1.8 million views of the American Sign Language live stream.

“What we wanted to do was go out and execute a show that people would really like and a show people would talk about,” Oscars producer Glenn Weiss told The Hollywood Reporter in the hours after the show. “We think we did accomplish that. I sure hope that (Monday) delivers good news in the ratings front, but either way, I think it was a successful evening.”

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For more coverage of this year’s Academy Awards, visit: https://apnews.com/hub/academy-awards