The British actor-comedian was convicted of one count of rape and three counts of sexual assault involving four women. He was acquitted of two rape counts and one count of attempted indecent assault. The incidents happened more than 20 years ago. - AP
“Daniel Sikkema was found guilty in May of charges tied to a murder-for-hire plot ... that took place in Rio de Janeiro in January 2024. After a two-week trial in New York, Daniel was convicted of three charges: murder-for-hire, conspiracy to commit murder-for-hire, and conspiracy to commit murder in a foreign country.” - ARTnews
Over his seven-decade career, he was music director or principal conductor of the flagship orchestras in Oslo, Danish and Swedish Radio, Dresden, San Francisco, and Leipzig — then spent his 80s and 90s as a surprisingly energetic and much-beloved guest conductor all over Europe, the US, and East Asia. - NPR
While the Anglosphere has long seen the poet-playwright as a gay icon, that side of his life and work was for decades suppressed within his homeland. Any scholar who dared discuss the subject would be denied access to the family archives (and likely harassed by the Franco regime). That has finally changed. - The Guardian
“The case has been reopened after a lawyer, Stefano Maccioni, filed a petition saying that recently discovered archive footage and other evidence shows that the rent boy who initially took the rap was not alone on the night of the murder.” - ANSA (Italy)
Mr. May, a prolific and inventive author of nearly 30 thrillers, including “The Blackhouse,” which would become a global best seller and would lift the fortunes of his earlier work, died on Sept. 25 at his home in Gassin, a village in southeastern France, near Saint Tropez. He was 74. - The New York Times
"A representative for Mann said in a statement on Sunday that the director’s weapon had 'accidentally discharged while holstered.' The incident, the representative said, resulted in a 'superficial injury.'" - Los Angeles Times
Martin McDonagh: "Plays should be as exciting as the best films, and that meant you should be able to do anything onstage that you can do in a film, which led to a little violence now and then, but always with a moral dimension to it." - The New York Times
Pipo Nguyen-Duy, 64, and his wife, Tran Thi Phong, 54, were found shot to death in their home near the Ohio college. Daniel Jones aka Asia Nguyen-Duy, Pipo’s son, is being held on $3 million bail. - ABC News
“With expressive almond eyes and golden locks, often styled in a beehive, Sommer worked with some of the biggest stars of the time, including Paul Newman in The Prize, Peter Sellers in the Pink Panther film A Shot in the Dark, and James Garner and Dick Van Dyke in The Art of Love.” - AP
Though she was also active onstage, she was better known for screen work and amassed over 120 credits, including on TV series Barney Miller and Suddenly Susan (as Brooke Shields’s grandmother), and films such as One Potato, Two Potato (Best Actress at Cannes) and Breaking Away (Oscar nomination). - Los Angeles Times (MSN)
“(He was) known as much for his name changes – Bishop and Bishop-Kovacevich – as for his emotionally charged playing of Beethoven, his sparkling interpretation of Bartók and his elegant line in Schubert. A Kovacevich recital was invariably a meaty affair, filled with passion, wildness and temptation, somewhat like (his) personal life.” - The Telegraph (UK) (Yahoo!)
She was one of the Metropolitan Opera’s favorite light lyric sopranos in the 1970s and ‘80s, known especially for her Sophie in Der Rosenkavalier, Susanna in Le nozze di Figaro, and Adina in L’elisir d’amore opposite Pavarotti as Nemorino. - OperaWire
