Aurelia Butler

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    ‘Sesame Street’ Signs New Streaming Deals With Netflix and PBS

    The deal is a much-needed shot in the arm for Sesame Workshop, the nonprofit that produces “Sesame Street” and has been struggling financially.After many difficult months, “Sesame Street” has a moment to celebrate.“Sesame Street,” the 56-year-old institution of children’s television, has signed a new distribution deal with Netflix, as well as a separate deal with PBS, the show announced on Monday.That means new episodes of “Sesame Street” will now be available to the more than 300 million subscribers of Netflix, giving it significantly more reach than in the past. New episodes will also be available on PBS the day they are released on Netflix, the first time in roughly a decade that the public broadcaster will have access to brand-new “Sesame Street” content. The new agreements will go into effect later this year.The deal is a much-needed shot in the arm for Sesame Workshop, the nonprofit that produces “Sesame Street” and has been in the throes of a financial crisis. Sesame Workshop laid off about 20 percent of its staff this year after several grants dried up, and, more significantly, it confronted a significant loss in revenue with the expiration of its current distribution deal, a lucrative contract with HBO.Since 2015, HBO has paid Sesame Workshop $30 million to $35 million a year for new episodes of “Sesame Street,” The New York Times reported. But Warner Bros. Discovery, HBO’s parent company, is letting that deal expire as it turns away from children’s content and faces financial challenges of its own.It was not immediately clear how much Netflix paid to distribute the show. But Sesame Workshop executives have warned employees for months that any new distribution agreements would bring in significantly less revenue than the old HBO deal.In a note to staff, Sherrie Westin, the chief executive of Sesame Workshop, said that it was “certainly worth celebrating” that the show will be available in many more households going forward.But, she added, “we will also have to find additional new ways to sustain our work, as the economics of these agreements are vastly different than those of the past, given the drastic market and media landscape shifts in recent years.” More

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    CBS News President to Depart Amid Network’s Tensions With Trump

    Wendy McMahon, the president of CBS News and Stations, had allied herself with Bill Owens, the “60 Minutes” executive producer who recently resigned.CBS News faced another shock wave on Monday after its president, Wendy McMahon, abruptly said that she would exit her post, the latest development in an ongoing showdown between the news division and President Trump.Ms. McMahon, whose full title was president of CBS News and Stations, said in a memo that “it’s become clear the company and I do not agree on the path forward.”Tensions between Ms. McMahon and CBS’s parent company, Paramount, have simmered for months, a period that Ms. McMahon described in her memo as “challenging.”Paramount is in talks to settle a $20 billion lawsuit brought by Mr. Trump that accused “60 Minutes” of deceptively editing an interview last year with his Democratic opponent, Kamala Harris. Many legal experts have called the suit baseless, but Paramount’s controlling shareholder, Shari Redstone, has said she favors settling the case. She is seeking the Trump administration’s approval for a multibillion-dollar sale of her company to a Hollywood studio, Skydance.The situation prompted the executive producer of “60 Minutes,” Bill Owens, to resign last month, saying he no longer enjoyed his usual journalistic independence. At the time, Ms. McMahon took pains to signal her support for Mr. Owens, saying that “standing behind” the producer “was an easy decision for me.”Her embrace of Mr. Owens and “60 Minutes” put Ms. McMahon at odds with Paramount executives who were anxious about the show’s reporting about the Trump administration. Within CBS News, some journalists expected Ms. McMahon to be gone within months. But the timing of her announcement, less than 24 hours after Sunday’s season finale of “60 Minutes,” still raised eyebrows.Ms. McMahon’s tenure atop CBS News, which she took over in August 2023, has been rocky at times.An overhaul of “CBS Evening News,” introduced earlier this year, has failed to connect with viewers, and ratings for the flagship newscast have fallen sharply. Besides the tussle with Mr. Trump, the news division also faced internal criticism from Ms. Redstone over a “60 Minutes” segment in January about the war between Israel and Hamas.And Ms. Redstone openly criticized Ms. McMahon’s handling of an October incident involving the “CBS Mornings” anchor Tony Dokoupil, who in an interview had challenged the author Ta-Nehisi Coates’s views about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.CBS News executives rebuked Mr. Dokoupil on a newsroom-wide call, saying his interview fell short of editorial standards. Ms. Redstone said that move was “a mistake” and that Mr. Dokoupil “did a great job with that interview.” More

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    Tariff Uncertainty Threatens to Drag Down Europe’s Economic Growth

    The European Union scaled back its forecast for growth in 2025 by nearly half a percent, as the jump in tariffs and surrounding chaos bite.Europe’s economy will grow more slowly than expected this year, dragged down by trade uncertainty from President Trump’s tariffs, despite increasingly stable prices on consumer goods and energy, European Union economists said on Monday.In its spring economic forecast, the European Commission, the trade bloc’s administrative arm, said it expected the gross domestic product of the 20 countries using the euro to grow just 0.9 percent in 2025, down from the 1.3 percent that had been forecast last fall. Economic growth across the European Union is expected to increase 1.1 percent in the same period, down from a previous expectation of 1.5 percent, the commission said.Germany, Europe’s largest economy, has been hit particularly hard by the increase in tariffs, with the commission expecting that country’s economy to stagnate as exports decline 1.9 percent in 2025. France also had its projected growth rate cut to 0.6 percent from 0.8 percent, and Italy’s fell to 0.7 percent from 1 percent.“Heightened global uncertainty and trade tensions are weighing on E.U. growth,” Valdis Dombrovskis, the European commissioner responsible for the trade bloc’s economy, told reporters in Brussels.The commission added that any de-escalation of the tensions between Europe and the United States set off by Mr. Trump’s imposition of a 10-percent import tax on European good could lead to stronger growth, as could new free trade agreements with other economic partners.On Monday, Britain and the European Union reached a deal aimed at removing some of the barriers to trade that Brexit had introduced.Growth is expected to return in 2026, the commission said, but it also scaled that projection back to 1.4 percent for the euro area, down from a previously projected 1.6 percent.One bright spot is the continued robustness of the European labor market, Mr. Dombrovskis said, citing 1.7 million jobs added last year and an expected two million to be added in the coming year.Increased spending on armaments and the military could help spur more growth across Europe, the commission said. The 500 billion euros the German government plans to invest in its defense infrastructure were not included in the forecast for this year, but they were expected to contribute a full percentage point to growth by 2028, Mr. Dombrovskis said.Germany has been stuck in stagnation for three years running, dragging down growth across all of the European Union.The economists also warned that the threat of further natural disasters, related to changes in the global climate, were a risk to growth. Europe suffered widespread flooding and extreme heat in 2024, and the continent is bracing for more extreme weather this year. More

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    Up Next at the Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs Trial: Dawn Richard and Former Employees

    After four days with Casandra Ventura, known as Cassie, on the stand, prosecutors will be seeking to corroborate her testimony with additional witnesses.As the second week of Sean Combs’s racketeering conspiracy and sex-trafficking trial begins, the first witness is set to be Dawn Richard, a singer in two music groups backed by Mr. Combs who says she saw him physically abuse his former girlfriend, Casandra Ventura.A performer in the now-defunct groups Danity Kane and Diddy — Dirty Money, Ms. Richard began her testimony on Friday, recalling an incident from 2009 in which she said Mr. Combs attempted to hit Ms. Ventura, known as the singer Cassie, with a skillet, then punched and kicked her.“She went into fetal position — you could see she was literally trying to hide her face or her head,” Ms. Richard testified. She also said that Mr. Combs threatened her and a bandmate to keep silent about the event, saying he told them that “where he comes from, people go missing if they say things like that, if they talk.”Ms. Richard filed a lawsuit against Mr. Combs last year, shortly before he was arrested. She accused him in the suit of threatening her, groping her and flying into “frenzied, unpredictable rages” while he oversaw her career. The girl group Danity Kane was formed during the third iteration of Mr. Combs’s MTV reality show “Making the Band.”After the jury had been dismissed on Friday, a lawyer for Mr. Combs called Ms. Richard’s accusation of abuse from 2009 a “drop-dead lie,” noting that Ms. Ventura had not mentioned it during her four days on the witness stand.Ms. Richard is the first of a series of government witnesses scheduled for this week who are expected to testify about what they saw of Ms. Ventura’s 11-year on-and-off relationship with Mr. Combs.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    What a Prostate Cancer Diagnosis Like Biden’s Means for Patients

    While prognoses for prostate cancer patients were once measured in months, experts say that advances in treatment and diagnosis now improve survival by years.Prostate cancer experts say that former President Joseph R. Biden’s diagnosis is serious. Announced on Sunday by his office, the cancer has spread to his bones. And it is Stage 4, the most deadly of stages for the illness. It cannot be cured.But the good news, prostate cancer specialists said, is that recent advances in diagnosing and treating prostate cancer — based in large part on research sponsored by the National Institutes of Health and the Defense Department — have changed what was once an exceedingly grim picture for men with advanced disease.“Life is measured in years now, not months,” said Dr. Daniel W. Lin, a prostate cancer specialist at the University of Washington.Dr. Judd Moul, a prostate cancer expert at Duke University, said that men whose prostate cancer has spread to their bones, “can live 5, 7, 10 or more years” with current treatments. A man like Mr. Biden, in his 80s, “could hopefully pass away from natural causes and not from prostate cancer,” he said.Mr. Biden’s office said the former president had urinary symptoms, which led him to seek medical attention.But, Dr. Lin said, “I highly doubt his symptoms were due to cancer.”Instead, he said, the most likely scenario is that a doctor did an exam, noticed a nodule on Mr. Biden’s prostate and did a blood test, the prostate-specific antigen test. The PSA test looks for a protein released by cancer cells, and can be followed up by an M.R.I. The blood test and the M.R.I. would have pointed to the cancer.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    2 Dead and 1 Missing After Train Strikes Pedestrians in Ohio

    The episode happened in Fremont, Ohio, on Sunday night. The mayor said at least one person was missing and emergency crews were searching the Sandusky River.At least two people were killed and at least one person was missing in Fremont, Ohio, on Sunday night after a train struck multiple pedestrians, according to the authorities.Danny Sanchez, the mayor of Fremont, confirmed the deaths in a brief statement to reporters, according to a video broadcast by WTVG. He said he did not have details about the ages of the victims.The search for the missing person was focused on the Sandusky River, Mr. Sanchez said. Fremont is about 40 miles southeast of Toledo.The mayor said it was not common for people to be crossing where the pedestrians were struck, though additional specific details about the location were not immediately available.Law enforcement authorities did not respond to requests for comment. It was not immediately clear which train line was involved.David Tucker III, 20, was fishing by the Sandusky River when he heard the train approaching the bridge and sounding its horn, he said.As the train neared, it continued to sound its horn, until finally the engineer just held down the horn, Mr. Tucker said.Mr. Tucker then saw what he estimated were four or five people “drop straight into the water,” from the train trestle, he said. The fall was about 20 feet, Mr. Tucker said.He could see only their feet as they floated down the river. Mr. Tucker called 911 at 7:25 p.m., he said.His father, David Tucker Jr., had just returned home from work and also said he had heard the train sound its horn.“I looked out my back window, and I could see people in panic,” he said, adding he also heard the train “slam its brakes.” He immediately called his son because he knew his son was fishing at the river.According to the Tuckers, the victims appeared to be crossing the train trestle to reach the other side. The trestle has a no trespassing sign, they said.Yan Zhuang More

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    ‘The Last of Us’ Season 2, Episode 6: Like Father

    A series of flashbacks traced the evolution of Joel and Ellie’s relationship in Jackson, Wyo., filling in some blanks about her current state of mind.Season 2, Episode 6What is the opposite of a love story? A disenchantment story, perhaps?That may be the best way to describe this week’s haunting and heartbreaking “The Last of Us,” which features a years-spanning flashback. The episode functions a lot like the award-winning episode “Long, Long Time,” from Season 1, except in reverse. We follow Joel and Ellie from their early days living in Jackson, closely bonded; and then, over time, we see how that bond weakened and broke.This episode begins with a prologue, set in 1983 in Austin. We learn that Joel and his younger brother, Tommy, were the sons of a cop (played by the great Tony Dalton of “Better Call Saul”) who was quick to smack them around whenever they stepped out of line. One night — after Tommy was caught buying pot — Joel tried to shoulder the punishment, telling his dad to leave Tommy alone. In a moment of bracing self-awareness, Officer Miller admits that he may be following in the footsteps of his own father, who once beat him so hard he had to be hospitalized.“But I’m doing a little better than my father did,” he says to Joel. “When it’s your turn, I hope you do a little better than me.”Post-prologue, the episode cycles through five vignettes — four set on Ellie’s birthdays, and one on the New Year’s Eve night we saw in the Season 2 premiere.The first vignette catches Joel and Ellie at a somewhat awkward place in their relationship: still recovering from the trauma of Salt Lake City, and in the first few months of living in a normal domestic situation, as a surrogate father and a daughter. Nevertheless, Joel makes what might be his first grand parental gesture (besides saving her life) as he rebuilds a guitar for her for her 15th birthday, using real bone for the saddle and carving a moth design from one of her notebooks into the neck.But these two have not really found a relaxed family groove yet. Joel can’t figure out how hard to play “dad” when Ellie intentionally burns her arm, trying to hide a bite mark. And when he describes how he fixed up the guitar, he becomes adorably awkward, going deep into the weeds on the machinery. (“Used a Dremel. That’s a rotary drill. Or it could be a saw, depending on the tip. Actually it’s a pretty versatile tool.”)We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    In Deadly Ship Crash, Questions About What Went Wrong

    A day after a Mexican sailing vessel slammed its masts into the underside of the Brooklyn Bridge, new details about the deadly crash began to emerge.But as the hobbled, 300-foot long ship, the Cuauhtémoc, remained docked at Pier 36 in Manhattan on Sunday, a clear understanding of what went awry in the accident that killed two crew members remained elusive.“To put it mildly, after being fully briefed on last night’s Brooklyn Bridge accident, one thing is very clear: There are many more questions than answers as to how the accident occurred and whether it could have been prevented,” Senator Chuck Schumer said during a news conference on Sunday.As the National Transportation Safety Board and Mexican officials began a full investigation into the crash, those questions included what the “mechanical issues” were that authorities said caused the Cuauhtémoc to veer wildly off its course and into the bridge, and what role a tugboat seen in videos and photographs of the incident on Saturday night played in the accident.The two victims of the crash were identified on Sunday by Mexican officials. América Yamileth Sánchez Hernández, 20, from the state of Veracruz, was named in a social media post by the state’s governor, Rocío Nahle, who sent condolences to her family.“Veracruz is with you,” Ms. Nahle wrote.The second victim was Adal Jair Maldonado Marcos, 23, according to Raúl Rangel González, the mayor of San Mateo del Mar, a coastal town in Oaxaca state where Mr. Maldonado Marcos was from.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More