More stories

  • in

    Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Next Project: A ‘Warriors’ Album With Eisa Davis

    The recording, inspired by Walter Hill’s 1979 film about a gang making a perilous trek through New York City, will be available on Oct. 18.In the nine years since “Hamilton” opened on Broadway, Lin-Manuel Miranda has acted (in the film “Mary Poppins Returns” and the HBO series “His Dark Materials,” among others), composed (songs for “Encanto” and “Moana,” for example) and even tried his hand at movie directing (“Tick, Tick … Boom!”).Now he’s returning to his roots, sort of. Miranda, who rose to fame as a musical theater savant, has been working with the playwright Eisa Davis on a concept album inspired by a cult 1979 action film, “The Warriors.” And on Thursday, Miranda and Davis announced that Atlantic Records will release the album on Oct. 18.The album’s executive producer is the rapper Nas; the producer is Mike Elizondo. The album will have 26 songs; the names of the singers have not yet been announced.The album has been in the works for three years. It is unclear if it will lead to a stage production, but “Hamilton” was initially conceived as a concept album, and there is a history of concept albums evolving into stage productions, from “Jesus Christ Superstar” to “Hadestown.”“The Warriors,” based on a 1965 novel that in turn was based on an ancient Greek work, tells the story of a street gang facing a variety of challenges as it retreats from the Bronx to its home base on Coney Island. The novel, also called “The Warriors,” was written by Sol Yurick, and the ancient Greek text, “Anabasis,” by Xenophon; the film was directed by Walter Hill.Miranda, 44, is one of the few musical theater composers to become a celebrity based on his stage work. But “Hamilton,” about the nation’s first Treasury secretary, was a rare accomplishment, winning the Pulitzer Prize as well as 11 Tony Awards, including for best musical and Miranda’s book and score.His other best-known musical is “In the Heights,” for which he wrote the score and Quiara Alegría Hudes wrote the book. Since “Hamilton,” he contributed lyrics to the short-lived musical “New York, New York,” but has not written a new stage production.Davis, 53, is a longtime friend of Miranda and has worked as an actress, a playwright, a singer and a screenwriter. She performed on Broadway in “Passing Strange,” and has numerous credits as a performer Off Broadway and on television and film. Among her plays is “Bulrusher.” More

  • in

    Bennington to Revive Dance Program of Philadelphia Arts School

    Bennington College raised nearly $1.3 million to absorb the dance program of the University of the Arts, which shuttered suddenly in June.Two months after the University of the Arts in Philadelphia closed, the school’s dance program will be revived at Bennington College in Vermont, which will absorb the dance school, three staff members and nearly 50 students, the college announced on Thursday.“What they are doing is the future of dance,” said Laura Walker, the president of Bennington College, who helped raise nearly $1.3 million from philanthropists to make it happen. The money included a donation of $1 million from Barbara and Sebastian Scripps, who run a nonprofit focused on arts education.“It’s a tough time, and we hope this will be a model for others,” Walker said.Nearly 1,150 students and 700 employees were left adrift after the University of the Arts president, Kerry Walk, abruptly closed the school in June, citing financial woes, and then resigned. Soon after, Pennsylvania officials opened an inquiry into the unexpected collapse. Some faculty and students have joined class-action lawsuits accusing the school of fraud and breach of contract; a union representing workers also filed an unfair labor practices complaint against the university in July.Several universities have offered spots to incoming freshmen who had committed to the University of the Arts. Temple University in Philadelphia has also welcomed returning fine arts and drama students, some of whom were near graduation.But the agreement with Bennington College goes further: All incoming and returning students were invited to attend. Donna Faye Burchfield, the former dean of the University of the Arts School of Dance, will oversee the bachelor and masters of fine arts programs, with about 50 students. The program will also include a number of visiting dance artists who previously taught in Philadelphia.“On a Friday evening, we learned about the school closing,” Burchfield said. “On Saturday morning, I started making calls.”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

  • in

    Arrest Warrant Issued for ‘Power Rangers’ Actor Hector David Rivera

    Mr. Rivera, whose stage name is Hector David Jr., was charged with battery in Idaho after a video showed him pushing an older man who used a walker, the police said.An arrest warrant was issued on Wednesday for an actor who appeared for years as the Green Ranger in “Power Rangers” films and television shows, after a video showed him pushing a man in his 60s who used a walker, the police in Idaho said.The actor, Hector David Rivera, 35, was charged with misdemeanor battery in Idaho after video surfaced on Friday showing him in a dispute with the older man, said Carmen Boeger, a spokeswoman for the Nampa Police Department. Nampa is a city west of Boise with over 100,000 people.The video, captured on Friday on a bystander’s dashboard camera, begins with a dispute over a parking spot between a man wearing a New England Patriots jersey and another who is using a walker. It ends with the first man shoving the other one to the ground before climbing into a black truck. He later drove away, the department said.The 14-second video has no audio and does not show the full interaction. But the truck appears to be parked in a space for people with disabilities, and Ms. Boeger said that the dispute began over a parking spot.Video released by the Nampa Police Department in Nampa, Idaho, showed Hector David Rivera, an actor in the “Power Rangers” franchise, pushing an older man to the ground in a parking lot.Nampa Police DepartmentThe Nampa police identified Mr. Rivera by posting the video on the department’s social media pages and asking the public for assistance, Ms. Boeger said. An arrest warrant was issued on Wednesday, and the victim’s name was not released.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

  • in

    Trump Remarks on Harris Evoke a Haunting and Unsettling History

    White America has long sought to define racial categories — and who can belong to them.The audience of Black journalists was prepared for a combative exchange well before Donald J. Trump took the stage on Wednesday for an interview at their annual gathering in Chicago.Yet when Mr. Trump, just minutes in, began questioning Vice President Kamala Harris’s racial identity, there was an instant ripple of reaction — a low rumble that grew into a roar of disapproval.“I didn’t know she was Black until a number of years ago when she happened to turn Black and now she wants to be known as Black. So I don’t know, is she Indian or is she Black?” Mr. Trump said of Ms. Harris, whose mother was Indian American and whose father is Black.The moment was shocking, but for those who have followed Mr. Trump’s divisive language, it was hardly surprising. The former president has a history of using race to pit groups of Americans against one another, amplifying a strain of racial politics that has risen as a generation of Black politicians has ascended.The audacity of Mr. Trump — a white man — questioning how much a Black woman truly belongs to Black America was particularly incendiary.And it evoked an ugly history in this country, in which white America has often declared the racial categories that define citizens, and sought to determine who gets to call themselves what.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

  • in

    Thunderstorms in Omaha Leave Thousands Without Power

    Two tornadoes were also reported near the city, which was battered by winds of up to 80 m.p.h. on Wednesday. Other parts of the Midwest were under severe thunderstorm warnings.Destructive thunderstorms lashed Omaha, Neb., on Wednesday evening, leaving more than 200,000 customers without power, shutting down the city’s airport and felling trees. Two tornadoes were reported on the city’s outskirts, the National Weather Service said.The storms swept across south-central Nebraska on Wednesday evening, bringing wind gusts of 65 to 80 miles per hour, according to the Weather Service, before moving east into Iowa, where tree damage was also reported in the Des Moines area. By about 9:20 p.m., the storms had weakened, the Weather Service said. Other parts of the Midwest, including in Kansas and South Dakota, were also under severe thunderstorm warnings.One tornado was reported in Pottawattamie County, Iowa, just east of Omaha, and another in Cass County, Neb., to the city’s southeast.Weather Damage Around OmahaReports by trained spotters of tornadoes or high winds and damage believed to be caused by them. More

  • in

    Ex-Green Beret Goudreau, Who Planned Failed Venezuela Coup, Is Arrested

    Jordan Goudreau, 48, had taken credit for a failed coup attempt against Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela. He faces federal charges of illegal arms smuggling.A former U.S. Green Beret who orchestrated a disastrous failed coup attempt against the authoritarian president Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela in 2020 was arrested Tuesday in New York on federal arms smuggling charges.The federal authorities accused Jordan G. Goudreau, 48, and a co-conspirator, Yacsy Alexandra Alvarez, of exporting military-style rifles, night vision devices, lasers, silencers and other military equipment without a license to Colombia beginning in November 2019 for use in carrying out “activities in Venezuela,” the Justice Department said in a news release on Wednesday.The charges appear to refer to the botched cross-border raid carried out in May 2020 by dozens of armed, self-declared freedom fighters, including former Venezuelan soldiers and former American Special Forces operators, who aimed to topple Mr. Maduro.Mr. Goudreau, of Melbourne, Fla., who did not participate in the raid, publicly took credit for the failed incursion known as Operation Gideon, which he said he had planned with disaffected Venezuelan officials. The audacious rebellion left observers around the world wondering why a decorated former U.S. Special Forces soldier who had served several tours in Iraq and Afghanistan was leading a foreign insurrection.A group of only about 60 men had planned to land on Venezuelan soil near the capital, Caracas, from speedboats and ultimately capture Mr. Maduro. But they were repelled by the Venezuelan security forces. Six men were killed and 13 others were detained, including two former Green Berets who were said to have been recruited by Mr. Goudreau, according to The Associated Press. The Americans were sentenced to 20 years in prison by the Venezuelan authorities in August 2020 but were released in a prisoner exchange deal with the United States late last year.Mr. Goudreau and Ms. Alvarez, a Venezuelan national who lives in Tampa, Fla., face charges of conspiracy to violate export laws, smuggling goods from the United States and violating federal firearm export control acts, prosecutors said.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

  • in

    Iran’s Options for Retaliation Risk Escalating Middle East Crisis

    The killing of Hamas’s political leader in Tehran was a humiliating security failure for the Iranian government.Most new Iranian presidents have months to settle into the decades-old cadence of gradual nuclear escalation, attacks against adversaries and, episodically, secret talks with the West to relieve sanctions.President Masoud Pezeshkian had 10 hours.That was the elapsed time between his swearing-in and the explosion inside an Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps guesthouse, at 2 a.m. in Tehran, that killed Ismail Haniyeh, the longtime political leader of Hamas. Mr. Haniyeh had not only attended the swearing-in, but had also been embraced by the new president and met that day with the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, making the assassination a particularly brazen act.Now Mr. Pezeshkian — along with Ayatollah Khamenei and top military generals — will be immersed in critical choices that may determine whether war breaks out between two of the Mideast’s most potent militaries. He spent his first day in office in national security meetings. The final decision on how to retaliate rests with Mr. Khamenei and on Wednesday he where ordered Iranian forces to strike Israel directly for what appeared to be its role in killing Mr. Haniyeh.But how that retaliation unfolds makes a difference. If Iran launches direct missile attacks, as it attempted for the first time in 45 years in April, the cycle of strike and counterstrike could easily escalate. If Hezbollah, its closest ally in the region, steps up attacks on Israel’s north or the Houthis expand their attacks in the Red Sea, the war could expand to Lebanon, or involve the need for American naval forces to keep the sea lanes open.Mourners for Ismail Haniyeh, Hamas’s longtime political leader, in Tehran on Wednesday.Arash Khamooshi for The New York TimesBehind all of those options is perhaps the riskiest choice of all: whether Iran decides to take the final step toward building an actual nuclear weapon. For decades it has walked right up to the line, producing nuclear fuel and in recent years enriching it to near bomb-grade levels. But American intelligence assessments say the country has always stopped short of an actual weapon, a decision Iranian leaders have publicly been reconsidering in recent months.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