Aurelia Butler

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    ‘Dune: Prophecy’: Travis Fimmel on His Character’s Fiery Rise to the Top

    Desmond Hart has been a wild card since he burned a young prince alive with his mind. The actor who plays him talked about what motivates Desmond’s drive for power.This interview contains mild spoilers for Season 1, Episode 4 of “Dune: Prophecy.”His character has used his supernatural powers to murder a child prince in the shadows and massacre an emperor’s enemies in public. But the “Dune: Prophecy” star Travis Fimmel doesn’t know if people hate him for it.“No idea,” said Fimmel, an Australian actor, whose friendly speech in an interview last week was sprinkled liberally with the word “mate.” “I’m on a little ranch, so I haven’t been anywhere, really. People could be hating on me. Wouldn’t be the first time, buddy.”Fimmel has portrayed men of great destiny and dubious morality before entering the Dune-iverse: a grasping young king in the historical epic “Vikings,” a mad messiah in the sci-fi mind-bender “Raised by Wolves.” Here, Fimmel stars as Desmond Hart, an ex-soldier returned from a near-fatal tour of duty on the resource-rich desert planet of Arrakis. Seemingly swallowed alive by one of the planet’s massive sandworms, he emerged supernaturally augmented — and wildly ambitious.Now an imperial adviser with deadly telepathic abilities, Desmond is a wild card in this highly structured fictional universe, which is set some 10,000 years before the events of the original “Dune” book by Frank Herbert and the two “Dune” films by Denis Villeneuve. As Fimmel put it, Desmond likes to mess with people’s heads.“Desmond acts like he knows what’s going on and what’s going to happen,” Fimmel said, “but he is unsure of himself, and he is unsure what the power he has can do to him.”Attila Szvacsek/HBO“I’m not in a position of power,” he said, speaking from Desmond’s point of view. “I’m not rich. I’ve got nothing. I’m from the other side of the tracks. Messing with people’s heads is the only power I can get.”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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    ‘Dune: Prophecy’ Season 1, Episode 4 Recap: Ol’ Blue Eyes

    The sisters have a terrifying vision. Desmond gives a terrifying display of his power and loyalty. Any connection?Season 1, Episode 4: ‘Twice Born’Two blue lights shine in the darkness, like the eyes of an insectoid machine. Guttural sounds, like speech in a language not yet invented, accompany them, but only for a second.Throughout “Dune: Prophecy,” this menacing pairing of sight and sound has recurred in dreams and visions. Are they the eyes of God, judging the Sisterhood, as Sister Emeline argues? Are they the eyes of the tyrannical force that Raquella, the Sisterhood’s first Mother Superior, warned about with her dying breaths? Are they the eyes of whatever entity gives Desmond Hart his “beautiful, terrible” power to burn people alive with his mind? Are all these things one and the same?I suspect we’ll get the answer eventually, but part of me thinks that’s a shame. Right now, the blue lights and the garbled grunts are the most Lynchian thing this franchise has served up since the director David Lynch himself was in charge of it 40 years ago. And as Lynch has demonstrated time and again, sometimes the mystery is its own reward.Not that the Sisterhood would agree. From Emeline on down, all of them — with the alleged exception of Sister Jen — experience simultaneous nightmares one night. They each begin differently, but they end in the same place: in the sands of Arrakis, standing before a sandworm’s maw, ready to fall in and meet that pitiless blue-eyed gaze. Mother Tula’s experiment with automatic drawing to uncover the meaning of the dreams almost ends in disaster when she completely loses control of the trance into which she places the acolytes, leaving them in the clutches of whatever force sent the dream in the first place.In a time of apocalypse, cults of personality spring up like fungus. So it is in the Sisterhood: Emeline revives the teachings of Valya’s rival, Mother Dorotea, whose death, we learn, was labeled a suicide by the Harkonnen sisters and their cronies. (In reality, Valya used the Voice to command Dorotea to kill herself.) In what appears to be a nightmare or a vision — though by the end of the episode, that distinction is slim indeed — Emeline confronts Tula with the truth, vowing to inform the Imperium; then Tula slits her throat. (This is the same fate Emeline met in her own nightmare, though in the dream it was she who wielded the blade against herself.)But the next thing Tula knows, she is sitting placidly by the side of Sister Lila’s stasis chamber once again, where Emeline found and confronted her. There’s no evidence Emeline has been there. But Lila is gone, broken free of her chamber; she emerges from the shadows, her eyes bright blue from overexposure to the psychoactive spice. Are those the eyes everyone is so afraid of?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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    With Syria in Flux, Turkish Forces Attack U.S.-Backed Forces

    The Turkish military fired on U.S.-backed Kurdish forces in northern Syria this weekend, a war monitoring group and a spokesman for the Kurdish group said on Sunday, illuminating the tangle of competing interests and alliances in Syria in the wake of the government’s collapse.Fighting erupted on Saturday in Manbij, a Kurdish-controlled city near Syria’s border with Turkey, between rebel groups, one backed by the United States and the other by Turkey. At least 22 members of the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces were killed in and around Manbij, and 40 others were wounded, according to the Kurdish group.The clashes preceded a call on Sunday between Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III and his Turkish counterpart, Defense Minister Yasar Guler.The other fighters, the Syrian National Army, were supported in their assault of Manbij by Turkish air power, including warplanes, according to a spokesmen for the Syrian Democratic Forces. And a Turkish “kamikaze drone” exploded at a Kurdish military base on Saturday, according to the monitoring group, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.Turkey and the United States are allies, sworn to protect each other as members of the NATO alliance. Though both countries celebrated Sunday’s ouster of the Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, their interests diverge over support for the Kurds in northern Syria, far from Damascus, the capital.In their call on Sunday, Mr. Austin and Mr. Guler agreed that coordination was necessary “to prevent further escalation of an already volatile situation, as well as to avoid any risk to U.S. forces and partners,” according a readout of the conversation released by the Pentagon. The United States also acknowledged Turkey’s “legitimate security concerns.”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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    Jay-Z, Accused in Suit of Raping Minor with Sean Combs, Calls It Blackmail

    The entertainer said the suit, which accuses him of assaulting an unnamed 13-year-old girl in 2000, was an effort to gain settlement money by putting forward “idiotic” claims.Jay-Z was accused of raping a 13-year-old girl with Sean Combs in a lawsuit filed Sunday by an unnamed plaintiff. He vehemently denied the allegation and accused the lawyer who brought the suit of trying to blackmail him with false claims.The allegations against the billionaire rapper and hip-hop mogul came as part of the flurry of litigation against Mr. Combs, who is facing federal sex trafficking and racketeering charges and at least 30 lawsuits accusing him of sexual misconduct. One of those lawsuits, filed in October, accused Mr. Combs and an anonymous celebrity of raping the teen at an after-party following the MTV Video Music Awards in New York in 2000.On Sunday, the plaintiff amended the lawsuit to name Jay-Z as the other celebrity, asserting in court papers that he and Mr. Combs took turns raping her after she arrived at the party and drank part of a drink that made her feel “woozy and lightheaded.” Jay-Z called the claims “idiotic” and said that he came from a world where “we protect children.” Mr. Combs has denied all allegations of sexual assault and misconduct and has pleaded not guilty to the criminal charges.The lawsuit was filed by Tony Buzbee, a personal injury lawyer in Houston, who has filed at least 20 sex assault lawsuits against Mr. Combs and used a phone hotline, Instagram and a news conference to find clients.In an extensive response, Jay-Z, 55, said he had received a demand letter from Mr. Buzbee appearing to seek a settlement but that the letter had the opposite effect: “It made me want to expose you for the fraud you are in a VERY public fashion. So no, I will not give you ONE RED PENNY!!,” the statement read.The statement went on to say: “My heart and support goes out to true victims in the world, who have to watch how their life story is dressed in costume for profitability by this ambulance chaser in a cheap suit. You have made a terrible error in judgment thinking that all ‘celebrities’ are the same. I’m not from your world. I’m a young man who made it out of the project of Brooklyn. We don’t play these types of games.”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 Picks Former Ambassador to Mexico for Deputy Secretary of State

    Christopher Landau is a longtime lawyer and the son of a veteran U.S. diplomat who served as ambassador to three nations in Latin America.President-elect Donald J. Trump announced on Sunday that he had picked Christopher Landau, a lawyer and former ambassador to Mexico, to be the deputy secretary of state.If confirmed by the Senate, Mr. Landau would work with the secretary of state to carry out Mr. Trump’s foreign policy, which has several core components: stemming illegal immigration, imposing tariffs to try to jump-start American manufacturing, keeping the United States out of wars and getting allies to pay for a greater share of military defense arrangements.Mr. Trump has said he will talk with autocrats to try to reach deals, including Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, Xi Jinping of China and Kim Jong-un of North Korea.Mr. Trump has picked Senator Marco Rubio of Florida to be secretary of state. Mr. Rubio is awaiting Senate confirmation, as is Mr. Landau.Mr. Trump made the announcement about Mr. Landau in a social media post on Sunday night, saying Mr. Landau would work with Mr. Rubio “to promote our Nation’s security and prosperity through an America First Foreign Policy.”Because of his background in dealing with Mexico, Mr. Landau could be tasked with handling migration and tariffs, which would involve coordinating with other U.S. agencies. Mr. Trump has promised to deport large numbers of undocumented immigrants. In the announcement, Mr. Trump said Mr. Landau had helped reduce illegal immigration when he was ambassador.Mr. Landau served as Mr. Trump’s ambassador to Mexico from 2019 to 2021, when he left after Mr. Trump lost his re-election bid to President Biden. Mr. Landau works in the Washington office of the law firm Ellis George and had a three-decade career as a lawyer before becoming ambassador. A graduate of Harvard Law School, Mr. Landau worked as a clerk for the Supreme Court justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas.Mr. Landau had ties to the State Department before he was appointed ambassador by Mr. Trump. He was born in Madrid, to a father who was a U.S. diplomat. His father, George Landau, later became ambassador to Paraguay, Chile and Venezuela. In his adult life, the younger Mr. Landau became a director of the Diplomacy Center Foundation, a nonprofit group that supports a museum about American diplomacy inside the State Department.Like Mr. Landau, Mr. Rubio, Mr. Trump’s pick for secretary of state, has a keen interest in Latin America. He is the son of Cuban immigrants, and, as a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, he played an influential role on Venezuela policy in the first Trump administration.Mr. Landau was confirmed by the Senate to be ambassador to Mexico, and he is expected to have little problem being confirmed again for the new position. More

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    Stunned Iranian Officials Try to Distance Their Country From Assad

    Iranians watched in astonishment over the weekend as the reign of their nation’s longtime political and military ally, Bashar al-Assad, came to a crashing end. By Sunday, the reckoning had arrived as officials and pundits recognized that Iran was taken by surprise, and they hurried to distance Iran from a tyrant the country had supported in maintaining power.Iranian leaders and military commanders said in public statements that it was up to Syrians to decide what kind of government should replace Mr. al-Assad, who resigned and fled Syria on Sunday after rebel forces stormed the country’s capital.“It is the Syrian people who must decide on the future of their country and its political and governmental system,” said President Masoud Pezeshkian of Iran in a meeting with his cabinet on Sunday, according to state media outlets. He added that Syrians must be free to do so without violence and foreign meddling.It was yet another remarkable turnabout for Iran after withdrawing its military forces on Friday when the collapse of Mr. al-Assad’s government became inevitable.State television channels candidly discussed Iran’s policies, with officials and pundits admitting that Iran had misjudged the regional dynamics and officials had overlooked Mr. al-Assad’s unpopularity among Syrians, which also reflected Iran’s lack of support there.Hatef Salehi, an analyst who supports Iran’s government, said in a live town hall discussion on the audio chat app Clubhouse that “the most important lesson of Syria for the Islamic Republic is that no government can last without the support of the people.”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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    The Call

    On This Week’s Episode:Listening in on one call to a very unusual hotline, and everything that followed.This is a rerun of an episode that first aired in September 2023.Aymann Ismail/SlateNew York Times Audio is home to the “This American Life” archive. Download the app — available to Times news subscribers on iOS — and sign up for our weekly newsletter. More

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    Notre-Dame Holds First Public Mass in Years: ‘Fire Has Not Conquered Stone’

    Sunday was the first opportunity for worshipers to return to the cathedral, beloved by the faithful and secular alike, since the 2019 fire that devastated it.Many Parisians can tell you exactly what they were doing when they heard that Notre-Dame was burning five years ago.Many of them instinctively rushed toward the building, and lined the Seine River to watch in horror as flames devoured the ancient lead roof, sending the 19th-century wooden spire tumbling down, punching holes through the vaults and burning the pews below.Some dropped to their knees and prayed, but the cathedral is not just a sanctuary for the faithful. Nor — its millions of visitors a year notwithstanding — is it just a tourist attraction. Notre-Dame, as the crowds of stricken Parisians testified to on that April 2019 day, is the heart of their city, part of the essential fabric of its identity, and a part of them.Notre-Dame is, however, first and foremost a church, and on Sunday evening, worshipers returned there as its first regular Mass was celebrated below the soaring stone arches — the old ones indistinguishable from the new.Seats for the Mass were in great demand.Dmitry Kostyukov for The New York Times“Five years after its destruction, here it stands again, ready to welcome the prayers of the faithful, to welcome the heart, the cry of the heart of all those who come here from all over the world,” Msgr.Olivier Ribadeau Dumas, rector of the cathedral, declared in his opening remarks. “Fire has not conquered stone, despair has not conquered life.”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