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    Trump’s Military Parade in D.C. Could Cost $45 Million, Officials Say

    The parade is scheduled for June 14, the date of the Army’s 250th anniversary, and is billed as the “Army’s birthday celebration.” President Trump turns 79 that day.A military parade planned for next month could cost up to $45 million and is expected to include up to two dozen M1 Abrams tanks rolling through the streets of Washington, two defense officials said Thursday.The parade, according to the Army’s website, will be held on June 14, which is both the date of the Army’s 250th anniversary and President Trump’s 79th birthday.The officials who spoke about the costs said that the estimate, previously reported by Reuters, did not include the cleanup or repairs from damage to Washington’s roads from the tank traffic. They spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal planningThe Army has said the parade will include 150 vehicles, 50 warplanes and the participation of more than 6,600 soldiers.The thousands of visiting soldiers in Washington for the parade will stay in unused government buildings and sleep on cots, according to the Army. They will be provided three daily meals and a stipend, the Pentagon has said.A Bradley Fighting Vehicle on display for a Fourth of July event in Washington in 2019.Nicholas Kamm/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThe anniversary celebration is expected to include a daylong festival with musical performances and displays of equipment. Mr. Trump also proposed a military parade for Veterans Day in November during his first term, but the notion was derailed by members of his administration over cost concerns.Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has said the parade is intended to honor the sacrifice of American troops who helped secure the country’s independence.“There are a lot of vapid things to celebrate, plenty of reality shows and garbage music and stuff on Netflix,” he said in a speech this month. “How about we hold up our special operations community? How about we recognize the Army and the Marine Corps?”But some Democratic lawmakers have cast the planned parade as wasteful and over-the-top. Representative Steve Cohen, Democrat of Tennessee, introduced a bill last month that would bar spending federal money on a military parade in Washington “primarily intended to celebrate the birthday, personal milestone, or private interest of any individual, including President Donald J. Trump.”Mr. Cohen suggested in a statement that Mr. Trump planned to “waste taxpayer dollars burnishing his insatiable ego.”Protests of the parade are planned in Washington and other American cities.Many countries — including France, China and North Korea — put on regular military parades, but such displays are rare in the United States. More

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    Chris Brown Arrested in Connection With 2023 Assault, British Authorities Say

    The R&B singer is charged with grievous bodily harm.British prosecutors on Thursday arrested and charged Chris Brown, the R&B singer, with grievous bodily harm and are holding him in custody.Brown, 36, was charged over an assault that reportedly took place at a venue in Hanover Square in London, on Feb. 19, 2023, according to the Metropolitan Police. He remains in custody and will appear at Manchester Magistrates’ Court at 10 a.m. on Friday, the police said.A news release from prosecutors gave no further details. Under British law, news outlets are not allowed to publish details of an incident that may prejudice any trial once someone has been charged.“It is extremely important that there should be no reporting, commentary or sharing of information online which could in any way prejudice these proceedings,” the prosecution service said.A lawyer and a talent agency that represents Brown did not immediately respond to emails and calls seeking comment on Thursday night.Brown is known for his impeccable dancing skills, sultry love songs and catchy hooks that have landed him 17 Billboard Top 10 hits. Most of them were released between 2005 and 2015.Hank Sanders More

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    Can C-SPAN Pull Off ‘Crossfire,’ but With Civility?

    “Ceasefire” will be the low-key public affairs channel’s first new weekly show in two decades. The question is whether Republicans and Democrats will show up.As a young producer at CNN in the 1990s, Sam Feist spent countless hours working on “Crossfire,” one of the first cable news shows to pit partisan pundits against one another. At lunch one day, the co-host Michael Kinsley mused about an alternative idea: “Ceasefire,” a program where Republicans and Democrats tried to find areas of agreement.“It sat with me for, gosh, 20-something years,” Mr. Feist recalled.Now Mr. Feist is the chief executive of C-SPAN, the low-key public affairs network beloved by political junkies. And “Ceasefire” is about to become a reality.Envisioned as a respectful conversation between lawmakers from opposite sides of the aisle, “Ceasefire,” which is expected to debut in the fall, will be C-SPAN’s first new weekly program in two decades. “No shouting, no fighting, no acrimony,” Mr. Feist said in an interview. “Just two American political leaders with a willingness to find common ground.”And where, pray tell, does he expect to find those?Mr. Feist, a fixture of the Washington press corps who led CNN’s elections coverage for many years, acknowledged with a laugh that bipartisan relations in the nation’s capital were at a low ebb. That, he explained, is why a show like “Ceasefire” is sorely needed.“I’m not sure this program would work on CNN or Fox News or MSNBC,” said Sam Feist, the chief executive of C-SPAN since September.Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images“The country rarely sees Republicans and Democrats engaged in a productive conversation,” he said. So for the past year, every time he has met with a member of Congress, Mr. Feist has pitched his idea for the show and asked the lawmaker who his or her best friend from the opposing party is.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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    An Afrikaner Farming Family Trades South Africa for Alabama

    Errol Langton and eight members of his family were among the first group of white South Africans to arrive in the United States this week after President Trump created an expedited path to citizenship.The Afrikaner family of nine looked around the small office space in Birmingham, Ala., feeling jet-lagged as they took in their new surroundings. Errol Langton, the patriarch of the white South African family, had spent much of his time so far with a pen in hand, signing required documents at a refugee coordinating office.His granddaughter played with toy blocks on the floor. His oldest son watched over her. They had just eaten noodles. Later, they would spend time looking for apartments.“Everybody still doesn’t believe that we’re actually standing here,” Mr. Langton, 48, said in an interview, about 40 hours after landing at Birmingham-Shuttlesworth International Airport. His family was among the first group of 59 South Africans who arrived in the United States this week, about three months after President Trump signed an executive order establishing refugee status for Afrikaners, the white ethnic minority that ruled during apartheid.The president essentially halted all refugee admission programs on his first day in office. But he soon created an expedited pathway for Afrikaners, who claim they have been discriminated against and subjected to violence because of their race, or have reason to believe they will be.Now, the Langton family has traded its South African hometown on the beach, Hibberdene, for a southern American city thousands of miles away. But Mr. Langton said he felt much safer already, as did his extended family who had joined him: his wife, son, three daughters, son-in-law and two grandchildren.Mr. Langton has a brother in Birmingham. But he said another factor had also drawn his family to the state.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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    She Vanished for 3 Weeks in the Sierra. Then the Phone Rang: ‘Dad, I’m Alive.’

    A search for Tiffany Slaton, 28, covered roughly 600 square miles of mountainous terrain in California. She was found at a cabin, where she waited out a blizzard.The resort, nestled in the wilds of the Sierra in California, caters to guests looking for an “off-grid getaway.”For several months of the year, it is virtually inaccessible, the roads cut off by snow and ice, just like they were during a blizzard this week.It’s not unusual for bears to invite themselves into the tents at the Vermilion Valley Resort, but one of the cabins was unexpectedly occupied on Wednesday when the resort’s owner, Christopher Gutierrez, went to check on the property.“We see the door open,” Mr. Gutierrez recalled. “And I see some shoes down there. I’m like OK, well, it’s just a hiker who just decided to” take shelter from the blizzard the night before.The person who emerged was Tiffany Slaton, a camper from Georgia who had been missing for more than three weeks and had been the focus of an intense search of roughly 600 square miles of the Sierra.“She pops out,” he said at a news conference on Wednesday announcing that Ms. Slaton had been found. “Didn’t say a word. Just ran up, and all she wanted was a hug.”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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    Trump Budget Cuts Hobble Antismoking Programs

    Students at Wyoming East High School in West Virginia’s coal country had different reasons for joining Raze, a state program meant to raise awareness about the health risks of tobacco and e-cigarettes.Cayden Oliver, 17, grew up around generations of people who smoked and vaped, and he wanted to make his own choice. Nathiah Brown, 18, was struggling to quit e-cigarettes and showed up for moral support. Kimberly Mills, 18, wanted to prove that even though she had been a foster child, she would defy the odds.This high school’s program cost West Virginia less than $3,000 a year and was meant to protect teenagers in the state that has the highest vaping rate in their age group. It fell prey to U.S. government health budget cuts that included hundreds of millions of dollars in tobacco control funds that reached far beyond Washington, D.C.At the high school, students pack into stalls in the school restrooms, sneaking puffs between classes. “It’s bad now,” said Logan Stacy, 18, a member of the Raze group. “Imagine what it will be like in two years.”Experts on tobacco control said the Trump administration’s funding cuts would set back a quarter-century of public health efforts that have driven the smoking rate to a record low and saved lives and billions of dollars in health care spending. Still, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that nearly 29 million people in the United States continue to smoke.The decimation of antismoking work follows a year of lavish campaign donations by tobacco and e-cigarette companies to President Trump and congressional Republicans.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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    How Much Does It Cost to See Beyoncé? It Depends.

    Some fans who paid top dollar for the star’s Cowboy Carter Tour are feeling miffed as prices drop. Other procrastinators are reaping the benefits.Tanaka Paschal, 43, was thrilled to be taking her son to Beyoncé’s final Southern California show on her Cowboy Carter Tour this month. They had missed the Renaissance World Tour two summers ago; tickets had sold out so fast, some fans ventured overseas to catch a gig.“I thought I was not going to be able to see her, so I jumped on it,” she said.Paschal bought a pair of floor seats for about $900 total, but like many others, she soon had a bit of buyers’ remorse. In the weeks that followed, she saw the price for similar seats drop by hundreds of dollars, then increase, then drop again.“It’s frustrating,” she said. “The next time, I’m going to wait until the day of.”When tickets for big summer tours by acts like Lady Gaga, the Weeknd and Kendrick Lamar and SZA go on sale, the prevailing wisdom is you have to move fast during one of the presales offered by artists and credit card companies or you’ll be shut out.Most, if not all, tickets are usually snatched up immediately, with prime seats popping up on resale platforms like StubHub or Ticketmaster’s own secondary market at inflated prices. (Fans hoping to see Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour famously didn’t even get a shot at the general on-sale: All the tickets were long gone.)Kendrick Lamar is also on a stadium tour this year, supporting his recent album, “GNX” and a big year.Graham Dickie/The New York TimesBut things have been different for Beyoncé’s tour this time supporting her Grammy album of the year-winning “Cowboy Carter”; tickets moved during the presales, but a glance at the seat maps on Ticketmaster’s pages later revealed not only a lot of pink dots indicating resale tickets, but plenty of blue dots representing available seats that had gone unpurchased, too. And those prices were notably changing.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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    BAM Announces a Female-Led Next Wave and Fall Season

    The arts institution, which has shrunk its programming in recent years, unveiled its fall lineup.The Brooklyn Academy of Music will welcome its 42nd Next Wave festival this fall, with most works created by female artists, the performing arts center announced on Thursday.“We led with women,” said Amy Cassello, who became BAM’s artistic director last year after serving in the role as interim. “It just felt like a good time to center women creatives.”The announcement comes at a time of financial fragility and leadership flux for the academy. BAM’s staff has declined by more than a third in recent years, and its nearly $52 million operating budget is smaller than it was 10 years ago.But there is momentum, and audiences are growing.Next Wave will have 11 events, as it did last year, up from eight in 2023. That year, the festival scaled back to nearly half of the 2022 offerings amid staff layoffs.“I feel confident that we have the number of shows that make a coherent statement,” Cassello said, adding, “I wish there were more money to subsidize and support and invest in artistic work.”The festival opens with the choreographer Nora Chipaumire’s “Dambudzo” (Oct. 8-9), a blend of painting, sculpture, sound and performance, transforming the nearby performing arts space Roulette into a Zimbabwean house bar.The lineup also includes the French director Caroline Guiela Nguyen’s “LACRIMA” (Oct. 22, 24-26), a choral theater performance that, in a dark look at the fashion industry, traces the many hands across the world it takes to create a wedding dress for a British princess; Eiko Otake and Wen Hui’s “What Is War” (Oct. 21-25), a fusion of movement and video testimony about war and its aftermath on collective memory and the body; and the choreographer Leslie Cuyjet’s “For All Your Life” (Dec. 3-7), a solo performance interrogating the life insurance industry’s ties to slavery.Next season will also feature a revival of Richard Move’s dance-theater work “Martha@BAM — The 1963 Interview” (Oct. 28 -Nov. 1), in which Move recreates a 1963 interview between Martha Graham (Move) and the critic Walter Terry (the playwright Lisa Kron) at the 92nd Street Y.BAM will also present a screening of “The Mahabharata” (Sept. 18), a film adaptation of Peter Brook’s nine-hour theatrical presentation of the Sanskrit epic that BAM staged in 1987 atthe theater now known as the Harvey Theater at BAM Strong. The Harvey will be the site of the screening of Brook’s (much shorter) 1989 film, newly restored by his son, Simon Brook.The season concludes with a revival of the raucous post-rock opera “What to Wear” (Jan. 15-17) by the avant-garde theater maker Richard Foreman, who died in January at 87. The hallucinatory work, with a score by Michael Gordon, will be conducted by Alan Pierson and directed by Paul Lazar and Annie-B Parson, and run as part of Prototype, the experimental New York opera festival.“BAM has always been artist-centered and adventurous and risk-taking,” Cassello said, “and I think that’s absolutely necessary. Always has been.” More