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    Long Island Therapist Charged With Distributing Child Sex Abuse Imagery

    Renee Hoberman, a licensed social worker on Long Island, used messaging platforms to share graphic videos of infants being abused, prosecutors said.A child therapist on Long Island has been charged with distributing sexual abuse imagery of children as young as infants on social media, according to a federal complaint.The therapist, identified as Renee Hoberman, 36, of Plainview, N.Y., appeared in court in Central Islip on Wednesday before Magistrate Judge Arlene R. Lindsay, according to the U.S. attorney’s office for the Eastern District of New York. The judge ordered that Ms. Hoberman be held without bail at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, the U.S. attorney’s office said.Federal prosecutors said that over several months this year, Ms. Hoberman, a licensed social worker who also goes by Rina, used messaging apps to upload sexually abusive images of minors, including videos of a man raping infants a year old or younger.As recently as Oct. 16, the complaint said, she uploaded the images to several “chats” on the messaging app Kik, claiming to be a man with several young children. She described punishing the children with sexual assaults, the complaint said, and shared two videos depicting the abuse of children whom she said belonged to the man she claimed to be. She also invited another person in the chat to visit and “spank the children,” the complaint said.Ms. Hoberman has not been charged with producing child sexual abuse imagery, and the complaint does not indicate that she was involved in the abuse.Ms. Hoberman’s public defender, Evan Sugar, did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Her brother and father, reached by phone on Wednesday evening, both declined to comment.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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    He Dreamed of Escaping Gaza. The World Watched Him Burned Alive.

    He was the son his mother boasted about: He memorized the entire Quran as a boy, and rose to the top of his university class. He wanted to become a doctor. But most of all, Shaaban al-Dalou dreamed of escape.Since Israel launched its devastating retaliation for the Hamas-led attack just over a year ago, Mr. al-Dalou wrote impassioned pleas on social media, posted videos from his family’s small plastic tent and even launched a GoFundMe page calling out to the world for help getting out of the Gaza Strip.Instead, the world watched him burn to death.Mr. al-Dalou, 19, was identified by his family as the young man helplessly waving his arms, engulfed in flames, in a video that has become a symbol of the horrors of war for Gazans, trapped inside their blockaded enclave as the international community looks on.A still image from a video of Mr. al-Dalou amid burning debris.Hani Abu Rezeq, via ReutersOn Oct. 14, Israel said it conducted a “precision strike” on a Hamas command center operating near Al Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir al Balah, a coastal city in central Gaza. Dozens of families like the Dalous, forced to flee their homes, had set up tents in a parking lot inside the hospital compound. They had hoped that international laws forbidding most attacks on medical facilities would ensure their safety.The Israeli military said that the fire that erupted afterward was probably caused by “secondary explosions,” without specifying what that meant. It added that “the incident is under review.”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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    Tim Walz Rally Is Livestreamed on Twitch in Pitch to Young Voters

    Vice President Kamala Harris’s campaign bridged the real world with World of Warcraft on Wednesday, livestreaming Gov. Tim Walz’s rally in Arizona via Twitch, while a Twitch streamer played the role-playing game and provided commentary about his rally.The Republican Party has made inroads with young men, and this stream was an attempt by the Harris campaign to court voters to the Democratic ticket. This was the first time the Harris campaign has livestreamed gameplay from its Twitch account, which was created in August, and roughly 5,000 viewers were tuned in. Wired first reported news of the livestream.Both Ms. Harris’s campaign and that of former President Donald J. Trump have sought out nontraditional media platforms to reach voters who may not engage with mainstream outlets.Preheat, a Twitch streamer and World of Warcraft player with about 50,000 followers, hosted the stream from the Harris campaign’s account and encouraged the viewers to vote for her.The screen was split, with Mr. Walz’s rally in Tucson on the left and gameplay on the right.The stream mimicked a tactic used to gin up visual interest in short-form video content, such as putting gameplay from Subway Surfers, a mobile game, side by side with something else. The Harris campaign has used this trick, posting a TikTok in which Subway Surfers gameplay was placed next to a clip of Mr. Trump discussing the overturn of Roe v. Wade.Preheat occasionally butted in with commentary on the game or the election.“Project 2025? Not good, very weird,” Preheat said about the conservative playbook Democrats often criticize as he attacked a boss in World of Warcraft. Later, he spoke over Mr. Walz’s speech, wondering about his character: “Wait, am I dying?”Mr. Trump, for his part, held a livestreamed interview with Adin Ross, an online streamer popular with conservative young men, at Mar-a-Lago in August. The interview attracted more than 500,000 viewers. During the event on Kick, a streaming platform, Mr. Ross — who had been banned from Twitch for “hateful conduct” — gave Mr. Trump a Rolex watch and a Tesla Cybertruck emblazoned with a decal of Mr. Trump raising his fist after the attempt on his life in July.Politicians on livestreaming platforms are a relatively new phenomenon. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, a Democrat, has her own Twitch account, and in 2020 she streamed gameplay of “Among Us” to an audience of hundreds of thousands of people while encouraging viewers to vote.During the 2020 presidential campaign, both Joseph R. Biden Jr. and Mr. Trump used Twitch accounts to livestream campaign events. Twitch banned Mr. Trump’s account after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, but reinstated it this year. More

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    Daniel Penny’s Lawyers Will Ask to Throw Out Chokehold Charge in N.Y.C. Subway Death Case

    Mr. Penny’s subway-car struggle with a homeless man, Jordan Neely, ended in death. On Thursday, his lawyers will also ask a judge to exclude video of Mr. Penny discussing the encounter.Minutes after a subway rider named Daniel Penny choked Jordan Neely in a train car in May 2023, Mr. Penny stood inside the Broadway-Lafayette Street station in Manhattan telling officers, “I just put him out.”Mr. Penny was recorded on body-worn camera explaining to officers that Mr. Neely, a homeless man, had entered an F train and thrown his possessions on the ground, and that he was “was very aggressive, going crazy.”“He’s like: ‘I’m ready to go to prison for life. I’m ready to die, I’m ready to die,’” Mr. Penny told an officer, according to court filings from prosecutors. “And I was standing behind him. I think I might have just put him in a choke, put him down. We just went to the ground. He was trying to roll up. I had him pretty good. I was in the Marine Corps.”Last year, Mr. Penny, who is from Long Island, was charged with second-degree manslaughter and criminally negligent homicide by the Manhattan district attorney’s office, and jury selection for his trial is scheduled to begin on Oct. 21. In a hearing on Thursday, lawyers for Mr. Penny asked a judge to suppress the comments he made to officers at the subway station and later at a precinct house, and to dismiss the indictment against him.When the video of the encounter spread online last year, it reverberated through the nation. The chokehold was captured in a four-minute video that showed Mr. Penny with his arms around Mr. Neely’s neck and his legs wrapped around his body. Mr. Neely struggled against Mr. Penny’s restraint as two other men stepped in to hold him down.Mr. Penny cooperated with officers who came to the scene and arrested him after Mr. Neely died, even going back to the Fifth Precinct to speak with them, his lawyers said in court filings. However, his statements followed what they argued was an illegal arrest.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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    Stream Maggie Smith’s Greatest Performances

    In “Downton Abbey,” “A Room With a View” and dozens of other films and television series, she delighted audiences with her portrayal of sharp, tart-tongued and often wryly funny Englishwomen.Maggie Smith, who was 89 when she died on Friday, made her professional stage debut on Broadway in the 1950s, when she was still in her early 20s. In the decades that followed, she worked steadily in movies and television, while regularly returning to the theater.Smith won her first Oscar for the title role in “The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie” (1969), a charismatic and manipulative teacher who has a profound and, at times, destructive effect on the lives of the teenage girls in her charge. She went on to win another Oscar, a Tony and four Emmys, and became known in her later years for playing a particular type of Englishwoman: sturdy, smart, sharp-tongued and rooted sometimes stubbornly in the traditions of the past.Audiences in the 21st century came to love Smith in two recurring roles: as the heroic Professor Minerva McGonagall in the “Harry Potter” movies and as the coolly disapproving Dowager Countess Violet Crawley in the period TV drama “Downton Abbey.” But her career was long and eclectic, with a mix of serious and comic characters, in both supporting and leading roles. Here are 10 of Smith’s best performances that are available to stream:1972‘Travels With My Aunt’Rent or buy it on Amazon Prime, Apple TV, Google Play, Vudu or YouTube.Though she was only in her late 30s at the time, Smith took an early step toward her most familiar screen persona — the dynamic and unforgettable older relative — in this adaptation of Graham Greene’s offbeat adventure novel. Filling in for Katharine Hepburn (who differed with the studio and with her old friend, the director George Cukor, on how best to tell her character’s story), Smith ended up nabbing her third Oscar nomination, playing the eccentric globe-trotter Augusta Bertram, who enlists a stuffy, middle-aged Londoner in one of her illicit moneymaking schemes while hiding her true connection to him. Smith builds an outsize yet complex character via flashbacks that show how she learned to eschew conventional mores and to enjoy life on her own terms.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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    Former N.Y.C. Covid Czar Partied While Preaching Social Distancing

    In a hidden-camera video posted by a conservative podcaster, Dr. Jay K. Varma boasts about flouting the public health guidelines he insisted others follow.The official in charge of New York City’s pandemic response participated in sex parties and attended a dance party underneath a Wall Street bank during the height of the pandemic, even as he was instructing New Yorkers to stay home and away from others to stop the spread of Covid-19. He acknowledged his transgressions on Thursday after being caught on hidden camera boasting about his exploits.The video of the official, Dr. Jay K. Varma, who was City Hall’s senior public health adviser under Mayor Bill de Blasio from April 2020 to May 2021, was posted on Thursday by the conservative podcaster Steven Crowder.The video appears to have been compiled from several recordings, in which Dr. Varma is seen at a number of restaurants and cafes, chatting with a woman who remains off camera. At various points, he describes a sex party he and his wife held in a hotel and a dance party he attended in a space under a bank on Wall Street, joined by more than 200 people.In a statement, Dr. Varma did not dispute the recordings’ authenticity but said they had been “spliced, diced and taken out of context.” He said he attended three gatherings between August 2020 and June 2021.At the time, public health officials in New York, like those in cities and countries around the world, were frantically seeking to contain the virus and Covid’s rising death toll by encouraging people to wear masks and avoid large gatherings. New York City schools were abruptly closed beginning in March 2020. Indoor dining in restaurants was forbidden. Masking indoors in public places was mandatory.“I take responsibility for not using the best judgment at the time,” Dr. Varma said in his statement.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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    “Shogun” Emmy Win Lifts FX Past Bigger Rivals

    The network has been a darling among critics for years. But it hit a new high on Sunday, with “Shogun” winning best drama and “The Bear” picking up several awards as well.When the “Shogun” writer and producer Justin Marks stormed the Emmys stage after his show won best drama on Sunday night, his first order of business was to pay tribute to the people who helped bring him there: the executive team at FX.How, he wondered aloud, did the network approve a show that was extremely expensive, and would be mostly subtitled in Japanese?“I have no idea why you did that, but thank you for your faith in this incredible team,” he said.For roughly two decades, that team at FX has been a darling to television critics with series like “American Horror Story,” “The Americans,” “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia” and “Atlanta.” But the network, with less money at its disposal than rivals such as Netflix and HBO, had never won television’s most prestigious prize, best drama, until Sunday.And that’s not all it won.“Shogun,” an adaptation from a 1975 best-selling book centered on 17th century feudal Japan on the brink of civil war, had a dominant night at the Emmys. It set a record for most Emmys won by a show in a single year, winning 18 in all. It was also the first time a foreign language show (roughly 70 percent of the show was in Japanese) had taken the best drama award that is normally the domain of shows that take place in the United States, the United Kingdom or Westeros.Hiroyuki Sanada in a scene from “Shogun.”Katie Yu/FX, via Associated PressAnother FX show, “The Bear,” won several major Emmys on Sunday night, including three acting awards. But in an upset, Max’s “Hacks” defeated “The Bear” in best comedy series.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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    Melania Trump reaparece en una serie de videos enigmáticos

    En uno de ellos, publicado en línea el martes, la ex primera dama reflexiona con tono conspiranoico sobre el atentado contra la vida de su marido. Los videos pretenden promocionar unas nuevas memorias.[Estamos en WhatsApp. Empieza a seguirnos ahora]¿Qué está pasando con Melania?Esta pregunta constante se plantea ahora que la ex primera dama, quien ha permanecido casi totalmente oculta mientras su marido hacía campaña para la Casa Blanca, ha empezado a resurgir.Melania Trump publicará sus memorias el 8 de octubre. Llevan por título Melania. Ha estado publicando breves videos de sí misma hablando a la cámara, que su marido, el expresidente Donald Trump, ha estado publicando en sus propias redes sociales.Fiel al estilo de esfinge de Melania Trump, sus videos son algo enigmáticos.En uno de ellos, publicado el martes, aparece ante un sombrío telón de fondo, vestida de negro, para reflexionar sobre el atentado contra su marido. “El silencio que rodea el hecho se siente pesado”, dice mientras suena de fondo una melodía angustiosa que parece sacada de una película de Alan Pakula. “No puedo evitar preguntarme por qué las fuerzas del orden no detuvieron al tirador antes del discurso. Definitivamente hay algo más en esta historia, y tenemos que descubrir la verdad”.¿Se descubrirá la “verdad” en melaniatrump.com, el sitio al que ella enlaza? Hay que hacer un pedido anticipado para averiguarlo (250 dólares por la edición de coleccionista, que incluye un “coleccionable digital”).En otro video, publicado el domingo, Melania Trump narra mientras un texto blanco se arrastra sobre un fondo negro: “Cada vez es más evidente que existen importantes desafíos a la libertad de expresión, como demuestran los esfuerzos por silenciar a mi marido”.Los misteriosos videos sobre fuerzas misteriosas son lo más que el público ha oído de la misteriosa ex primera dama en mucho tiempo. No estuvo al lado de Trump en su reciente juicio en Manhattan (tal vez porque giraba en torno al dinero pagado a una estrella del porno). Apareció en dos actos de recaudación de fondos este año, en Mar-a-Lago y en la Torre Trump, ambos con republicanos homosexuales —hubo algunas fotos en The Daily Mail—, pero ha habido poco más allá de eso.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