Apologies

Subterms

    Latest story

    138 Shares54 Views

    Kai Cenat Resolves Union Square Melee Charges With Apology, Officials Say

    by

    The social media superstar known for marathon streaming sessions was charged with inciting a riot after a video game console giveaway erupted in mayhem last summer.The social media star Kai Cenat will not be prosecuted on charges of inciting a riot in Manhattan after agreeing to post a public apology and paying for the damage caused when thousands of his fans erupted in a chaotic melee in Union Square last summer, officials said on Tuesday.A spokesman for Alvin L. Bragg, the Manhattan district attorney, said prosecutors planned to drop their case against Mr. Cenat and two other men, Denzel Dennis and Muktar Din, in exchange for the apology and $57,000 in restitution.Mr. Cenat paid $55,000 of the restitution total, which went to the Union Square Partnership to cover landscaping and other costs, the district attorney’s office said. Mr. Dennis and Mr. Din paid the balance.Mr. Cenat posted the apology on his Snapchat account on Tuesday, and Mr. Bragg’s spokeswoman, M’Niyah Lynn, said the prosecution would be dropped once the apology had been online for 24 hours. Mr. Dennis and Mr. Din were expected to post the apology as well.Mr. Cenat, noting that he is from New York, wrote in the apology that what began as a promotional event had quickly turned into “an unsafe situation for the people who live and work in the neighborhood, first responders and my followers that attended the event.”“It was never my intent for it to get so out of hand,” he added, “and I have learned a very valuable lesson that social media is a very powerful tool to do good, but it can also cause dangerous, unwanted situations if it is not used properly.”The Union Square episode, which began shortly after 3 p.m. on Aug. 4 and lasted several hours, resulted in 65 arrests (nearly half of them of underage youths); injuries to police officers and some of those in the crowd; and damage to food carts, police vehicles and stores, officials said.The events began when Mr. Cenat, who has millions of followers on Twitch and other social media platforms, summoned his fans to the area, where he said he would give away video game consoles. The gathering lacked a city permit, and the police learned of it from a social media post only hours before the crowd began swelling, officials said at the time.Hordes of young people were soon packing Union Square Park and spilling onto the surrounding streets and sidewalks and blocking cars and pedestrians. The Union Square Greenmarket shut down early, and subway trains began bypassing the Union Square station.Within an hour, the Police Department had initiated a Level 4 mobilization, its highest-level response. Some in the crowd were peaceful, but others were not. One cluster of people stormed a construction site. Building materials, rocks, bottles, basketballs, a computer and fireworks sailed through the crowd.“I believe he saw that day how much influence he really has,” Jeffrey Maddrey, the Police Department’s chief of department, said of Mr. Cenat afterward. More

    More stories

    • 163 Shares189 Views

      in Elections

      Princess Kate and the Royal Family: A Timeline of the Last Few Months

      by

      It’s been a busy few months for King Charles III and his family. There have been surgeries, health announcements, and one family photograph people can’t stop talking about.For months, nearly all eyes have been fixated on the ebbs and flows of the British royal family, with King Charles III and Catherine, the Princess of Wales, in the spotlight because of health matters.But as of late, the extended absence of Catherine, also known as Kate, from the public eye has propelled a tidal wave of rumors over her whereabouts, ultimately leaving the public still searching for answers.Here is a quick timeline of key moments to help you catch up.Dec. 25, 2023Kate makes her last public appearance.Kate’s last official public appearance was on Christmas Day, when she attended a church service at St. Mary Magdalene Church in Sandringham, Norfolk, England.She was photographed wearing head-to-toe royal blue while walking to the church alongside her husband, Prince William, and their three children, Prince George, Princess Charlotte and Prince Louis, as they routinely do each Christmas. The entire family coordinated in blue and green.Catherine arrives with her family to attend the Christmas Day service at St. Mary Magdalene’s church at Sandringham.Chris Radburn/ReutersJan. 17, 2024Kate undergoes surgery.A little more than three weeks later, on Jan. 17, Kensington Palace announced that Kate had been admitted to the London Clinic to have abdominal surgery. Officials gave few details about her health but said the surgery was successful, and that her condition was “not cancerous.” She was expected to remain hospitalized for up to two weeks.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

    • 63 Shares159 Views

      in Elections

      Indian Burglars Return Filmmaker’s Medal

      by

      Thieves in southern India kept the cash, the gold and most of the silver, but returned to the scene of the crime with one item, and an apology note.When the thieves broke into the country home of a renowned film director in southern India, taking gold, silver and cash, they made a clean getaway. But days later, a small plastic bag appeared outside the house’s gates, stitched shut with thin sticks and containing something wrapped in a white handkerchief.Inside was a medal for a prestigious national award that the director, M. Manikandan, had won in 2021 for one of his films.With it was a brief note handwritten in Tamil, a regional language.“Sir, please forgive us,” the note read. “Your hard work belongs to you alone.”The burglary and partial return, with its small-town intrigue and big-hearted absurdity, could have figured in the kind of movies Mr. Manikandan and other filmmakers in India’s south make.While Bollywood gets much attention and recognition outside the country, some of India’s most endearing and creative films come from its diverse regional cinemas, in languages such as Tamil and Malayalam. Mr. Manikandan broke through with a film about two egg-stealing, slum-dwelling brothers with a single goal — to do whatever it took to taste pizza. The film for which he won the purloined medal, “Kadaisi Vivasayi” or “The Last Farmer,” was a commentary on the difficulties of farming in India. But its surreal twists also laid bare the absurdities of the nation’s bureaucracy.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

    • 113 Shares199 Views

      in Elections

      Gov. Kathy Hochul Apologizes For Israel-Hamas Analogy to Canada

      by

      In remarks made at a Jewish philanthropy event, Gov. Kathy Hochul said that if Canada attacked the United States as Hamas did Israel, “there would be no Canada the next day.”Gov. Kathy Hochul apologized on Friday night for remarks she made at a Jewish philanthropy event in New York City that implied that Israel would be justified in destroying Gaza because of the Oct. 7 Hamas attack.In a speech on Thursday at the event, for the United Jewish Appeal-Federation of New York, Ms. Hochul began by calling out Hamas for being a terrorist organization that “must be stopped,” saying that Israel could not continue to live with “that threat, that specter over them.” She then attempted to make an analogy to the United States, relating the war to her hometown, Buffalo.“If Canada someday ever attacked Buffalo, I’m sorry, my friends, there would be no Canada the next day,” Ms. Hochul said in a video of the speech posted on social media. “That is a natural reaction. You have a right to defend yourself and to make sure that it never happens again. And that is Israel’s right.”In a statement provided to The New York Times on Friday night, after the speech began circulating on social media, Ms. Hochul said that she regretted her “inappropriate analogy.” She apologized for her “poor choice of words.”“While I have been clear in my support of Israel’s right to self-defense, I have also repeatedly said and continue to believe that Palestinian civilian casualties should be avoided and that more humanitarian aid must go to the people of Gaza,” she said.In a post on X, Assemblyman Zohran Kwame Mamdani said: “Governor Hochul justifying genocide, while laughing. Disgusting.”The backlash to the governor’s comments represented new territory for Ms. Hochul, who has rarely courted controversy during her time in office, in stark contrast to her predecessor, Andrew M. Cuomo.Ms. Hochul had been addressing the annual U.J.A. lawyers division event at the Pierre Hotel. The event was geared toward supporting the foundation’s “critical work in response to mounting needs on the ground in Israel and ongoing needs in New York and around the world,” according to its website.The foundation posted about Ms. Hochul’s remarks later Thursday night on X, thanking her “for always standing with the Jewish community and against antisemitism and hate in New York.”The governor’s speech comes as the war in Gaza is escalating. Israel ramped up its military operations this week along the Gaza-Egypt border, where the vast majority of Gazans have fled during the war. International leaders have warned that the operation could end in catastrophe, with President Emmanuel Macron of France saying that the situation could become an “unprecedented humanitarian disaster.” More

    • 88 Shares179 Views

      in Elections

      Yale Apologizes for Its Connections to Slavery

      by

      The university also issued a historical study and announced steps to address this legacy, including new support for public education in New Haven, Conn.Yale University on Friday issued a formal apology for its early leaders’ involvement with slavery, accompanied by the release of a detailed history of the university’s connections to slavery and a list of what it said were initial steps to make some amends.The announcement came more than three years after Yale announced a major investigation into the university’s connections to slavery, the slave trade and abolition, amid intense national conversations about racial justice set off by the murder of George Floyd. And it frames what the school’s leaders say will be a continuing commitment to repair.“We recognize our university’s historical role in and associations with slavery, as well as the labor, the experiences and the contributions of enslaved people to our university’s history, and we apologize for the ways that Yale’s leaders, over the course of our early history, participated in slavery,” the university’s president, Peter Salovey, and the senior board trustee, Josh Bekenstein, said in a message to the university community.“Acknowledging and apologizing for this history are only part of the path forward,” they continued. The university is also creating new programs to fund the training of public schoolteachers for its home city, New Haven, Conn., whose population is predominantly Black. And Yale will expand previously announced research partnerships with historically Black colleges and universities across the country, with a “significant new investment” to be announced in coming weeks.Unlike Harvard, which in 2022 committed $100 million to a “Legacy of Slavery Fund,” Yale did not announce an amount for all its initiatives.David W. Blight, the Yale historian who led the historical research, said in an interview that the purpose of the effort was not “to cast ugly stones at anybody,” but to present the university’s history honestly and unflinchingly.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

    • 138 Shares199 Views

      in Elections

      In Reversal, Guinness Gives a Frenchman’s Matchstick Eiffel Tower the Record

      by

      Weeks after disqualifying a 24-foot tower made of matchsticks, Guinness World Records apologized and said it had been too “heavy handed.”Richard Plaud toiled over eight years to construct a nearly 24-foot model of the Eiffel Tower. Each of the 706,900 matchsticks he glued together brought the Frenchman one step closer toward his dream: Achieving a world record for building the tallest matchstick sculpture.But in late January, weeks after he finished the replica, Guinness World Record officials delivered devastating news: His Eiffel Tower was disqualified for being built with the wrong type of matchsticks.“It hurt me,” he told TFI Info, a French television network, in an interview aired this week. He also expressed his discontent on Facebook. “GREAT DISAPPOINTMENT,” he wrote in a post last week. “Tell me that the 706,900 sticks glued together one by one are not matches!!??”By Thursday, however, after days of headlines about Mr. Plaud’s disappointment over his disqualification, Guinness reversed its decision, saying that it had made a mistake. Mr. Plaud had earned the title, Guinness clarified in a statement, even though he had used matchsticks without ignitable ends.Mr. Plaud with his model. Richard Plaud/Via ReutersMark McKinley, the director of records at Guinness, said on Friday that the organization regretted any distress it had caused Mr. Plaud during what should have been a time of celebration.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

    • 138 Shares169 Views

      in Elections

      News Outlet Blames Photoshop for Making Australian Lawmaker’s Photo More Revealing

      by

      9News apologized for the edited photo of the member of state Parliament, Georgie Purcell, which it said was a result of “automation by Photoshop.”A lawmaker in the Australian state of Victoria sat down to watch the nightly news on Monday, expecting to see herself featured as a prominent opponent of duck hunting.But the member of Victoria’s Parliament, Georgie Purcell, noticed that in one photo used on 9News, the tattoos on her midriff were missing.“I saw the image come up on the screen and I thought, ‘That’s really odd,’ because my stomach is heavily tattooed,” Ms. Purcell said on Wednesday.She compared the image with the original photo, which was taken last year by a local newspaper and realized that not only had her tattoos been removed, but that her dress had been turned into a crop top and skirt. “They’ve given me chiseled abs and a boob job,” she said. “I felt really, really uncomfortable about it.”After Ms. Purcell pointed out the modifications on the social media site X, female lawmakers and journalists labeled the editing as sexist and objectifying.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?  More

    • 113 Shares119 Views

      in Elections

      Lauren Boebert Apologizes for Vaping in a Denver Theater

      by

      The Colorado congresswoman previously denied vaping during the performance, but could be seen doing so on surveillance video.Representative Lauren Boebert of Colorado was kicked out of a performance of the musical “Beetlejuice” in Denver after causing a disturbance.Kenny Holston/The New York TimesRepresentative Lauren Boebert, a hard-right Republican rabble-rouser from Colorado, apologized on Friday night for her behavior at a recent performance of the family-friendly musical “Beetlejuice” in Denver, after surveillance video revealed her vaping and behaving disruptively in the theater.Ms. Boebert, 36, previously denied reports that she had been vaping. A pregnant woman seated behind her asked her to stop before she was ejected for “causing a disturbance” at the show, according to The Denver Post.“The past few days have been difficult and humbling, and I’m truly sorry for the unwanted attention my Sunday evening in Denver has brought to the community,” Ms. Boebert said in a statement Friday night. “While none of my actions or words as a private citizen that night were intended to be malicious or meant to cause harm, the reality is they did and I regret that.”Ms. Boebert, who can be seen on the video touching and carrying on with her date while sitting in the middle of a crowded theater, blamed what she called her “public and difficult divorce” for her behavior and said, “I simply fell short of my values on Sunday.”Ms. Boebert, a mother of four boys who likes to show off pictures of her new grandchild to colleagues in Congress, said she “genuinely did not recall vaping that evening” when she told her campaign to issue a statement denying she had done so. She said she would have to work hard to earn back trust from voters in her district.It may be a heavy lift for Ms. Boebert, who won re-election in 2022 by just 546 votes.If her too-close-for-comfort re-election campaign was a message that Colorado voters didn’t like her brand of disruptive politics, she hasn’t appeared to have received it. Since January, she has often acted in ways many Republicans view as detrimental to keeping control of the House in 2024 and to her keeping her seat.In June, Ms. Boebert tried to force a vote on articles of impeachment against President Biden, claiming his immigration policies constituted high crimes and misdemeanors. Some of her colleagues called the move “crazy,” and it was eventually shunted off to committees for further study.Ms. Boebert distinguished herself during the fraught speaker’s race in January as one of the most committed holdouts against Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, milking the moment for maximum Fox News exposure. In the House, she has cultivated an abrasive public persona, sometimes heckling her Democratic colleagues in the halls of the Capitol and largely ignoring reporters’ questions, except to loudly proclaim at times, “I love President Trump!”The behavior has also earned a cult following on the right. Ms. Boebert, who often wears five-inch Lucite heels and skintight dresses, has a national base of fans who enjoy her disruptive antics and extreme rhetoric.On the House floor, Ms. Boebert has railed against drag performances for children and claimed the left was “grooming” children by exposing them to “obscene content.” More