NEW YORK (AP) — If there’s been one uniting theme of all the blockbuster fashion exhibits at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, it’s the simple idea that fashion is art.
“Costume Art,” announced Monday as the next big show at the museum’s Costume Institute — launched by the starry Met Gala in 2026 — aims to make that connection more literal than ever, pairing garments with objects from across the museum to show how fashion has long been intertwined with different art forms.
Max Hollein, CEO and director of the Met, said in an interview ahead of Monday’s announcement that he hopes the exhibit will take visitors to the New York museum on a (very fashionable) journey through art history, where they will see connections throughout.
“It’s a show that can really live in fascinating ways at the museum and can pull from all different areas of our collection — paintings, sculpture, drawings,” Hollein said.
“I hope we all agree that fashion is art,” Hollein added. “But actually I think the exhibition … will make it obvious how fashion is actually happening, so to say, all across the museum and in all different mediums already.”
The new show will examine the dressed body, and will be organized thematically by different body types, according to the Costume Institute’s curator in charge, Andrew Bolton. It will include the “Naked Body” and the “Classical Body,” for example, but also less expected themes like the “Pregnant Body” and the “Aging Body.”
“Bustle” by Charles James, right, is displayed at the announcement. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)
“Bustle” by Charles James, right, is displayed at the announcement. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)
A spandex bodysuit by Belgian designer Walter Van Beirendonck from a 2009 collection, right, is displayed during the announcement. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)
A spandex bodysuit by Belgian designer Walter Van Beirendonck from a 2009 collection, right, is displayed during the announcement. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)
The connections that will be drawn between artworks and garments will range, curators said in a statement, “from the formal to the conceptual, the aesthetic to the political, the individual to the universal, the illustrative to the symbolic, and the playful to the profound.”
One example: in the “Naked Body” section, a 1504 print from German artist Albrecht Dürer will be paired with spandex bodysuits by Belgian designer Walter Van Beirendonck from a 2009 collection that revisits the story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden.
On hand for Monday’s announcement was Misty Copeland, who recently retired from American Ballet Theatre after a trailblazing career that saw her become the company’s first Black female principal dancer. In her remarks, she spoke of the interplay between fashion and dance and said the show makes a “powerful case for the body, in all its forms, as a work of art, worthy of being seen, elevated, and celebrated.”
Michael Kors, Anna Wintour and Misty Copeland listen during the announcement. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)
Michael Kors, Anna Wintour and Misty Copeland listen during the announcement. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)
“Of course, both fashion and dance have long held up an ‘ideal’ body, one that has historically meant thin, white, and female. That bias shaped my own experience,” she said. “Early in my career, I was made to feel that my body didn’t fit the mold. My skin was too dark, my muscles too defined. Being a Black woman and a ballerina was presented almost as a contradiction.”
Copeland said she fought to challenge that idea and stood “firmly in the value and beauty of my body, and of the many Black and brown dancers whose bodies have so often been overlooked.” The new exhibit — following the lauded “Superfine: Tailoring Black Style,” which focused on Black menswear — adds to that conversation, Copeland said.
It’s also a show that will have a new home. “Costume Art,” which opens to the public May 10, will inaugurate new gallery space occupying some 12,000 square feet (1,115 square meters), right off the museum’s Great Hall.
Misty Copeland speaks during the announcement. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)
Misty Copeland speaks during the announcement. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)
That means that when the A-listers come up the main steps on May 4 at the Met Gala — perhaps dressed to channel famous objects of art — they will be only feet from the exhibit, making it easier to view the art before sipping and socializing. (Gala details — such as the celebrity hosts and specific dress code — will be shared later.)
Hollein said the museum was mainly concerned with giving fashion a more prominent home — and giving regular visitors a smoother experience. In past years, long lines for fashion exhibits would snake through other galleries and create bottlenecks in inconvenient places.
The new Conde M. Nast galleries — created from what was formerly the museum’s retail store — will house not only all spring Costume Institute exhibits to come, but other shows from different parts of the museum.
Bolton said in a statement that the gallery space “will mark a pivotal moment for the department, one that acknowledges the critical role fashion plays not only within art history but also within contemporary culture.”
“Costume Art” opens to the public May 10, 2026, and runs until Jan. 10, 2027.
___
This story has been updated to correct the date of the 2026 Met Gala. It’s May 4, not May 5.
Shohei Ohtani likes winning Most Valuable Player awards. He loves winning the World Series even more.
The two-way Japanese star did both for a second season in a row for the Los Angeles Dodgers, earning his fourth career MVP on Thursday night while unanimously earning the National League honor. He’s just the second to win four MVPs after Barry Bonds with seven and the only player to win unanimously more than once.
Considering Ohtani is 31, overtaking Bonds doesn’t seem out of the question. Especially if it leads to more Fall Classic opportunities.
“If I’m playing well as an individual that means I’m helping the team win, so in that sense, hopefully I can end up with a couple more MVPs,” Ohtani said through an interpreter. “But at the end of the day, it’s all about winning games.”
In the American League, Aaron Judge became the New York Yankees’ fourth three-time winner, edging Seattle’s Cal Raleigh with 17 first-place votes to 13 for the switch-hitting catcher. The vote was the closest for an MVP since the Los Angeles Angels’ Mike Trout topped Houston’s Alex Bregman by 17-13 in 2019.
Judge, who won the AL award in 2022 and 2024, joined Joe DiMaggio, Yogi Berra and Mickey Mantle as three-time MVPs with the Yankees. The 33-year-old outfielder led the majors with a .331 batting average and 1.144 OPS while hitting 53 homers.
When asked about his place in MLB and Yankees lore, Judge acknowledged he’s in rare company.
“It’s tough for me to wrap my head around,” Judge said. “It’s mind blowing from my side of things, because I play this game to win, I play this game for my teammates, my family, all the fans in New York.”
Later he added: “You’ve got to pinch yourself every single day. It’s truly an incredible honor.”
Ohtani won a MVP for the third straight year, his second in the NL with the Dodgers after two in the AL with the Angels. He became the first to win in each league twice after getting the AL honor in 2021 and 2023. Ohtani signed with the crosstown Dodgers the following offseason and won NL MVP in 2024 during his first season in Chavez Ravine. He’s also won the World Series in both his seasons with the Dodgers.
Philadelphia Phillies slugger Kyle Schwarber finished second in the NL with 23 second-place votes and New York Mets outfielder Juan Soto was third with four.
Ohtani hit .282 and led the NL with a 1.014 OPS. He also had 55 homers, 102 RBIs and 20 stolen bases.
The right-hander returned to pitching in June after missing 1 1/2 seasons on the mound because of an elbow injury. He struck out 62 batters over 47 innings, slowly increasing his workload while preparing for the postseason.
Ohtani continued to shine in October with arguably the greatest single game in MLB history. He hit three homers while striking out 10 over six dominant innings on Oct. 17, leading the Dodgers over Milwaukee to finish an NL Championship Series sweep.
Schwarber, who earned a $50,000 bonus for finishing second, hit an NL-best 56 homers and led the big leagues with 132 RBIs for Philadelphia.
Soto overcame a slow start to the season to have his typically stellar offensive output. The four-time All-Star — who signed a $765 million, 15-year deal last December — had 43 homers, 105 RBIs and an NL-best 38 stolen bases. He received a $150,000 bonus for finishing third in the MVP voting.
Judge is the first AL player to win back-to-back MVPs since Detroit’s Miguel Cabrera it in 2012 and 2013.
Raleigh, nicknamed “Big Dumper,” led the big leagues with 60 homers, the most for a player primarily a catcher. He started 119 games behind the plate and another 38 at designated hitter.
The 28-year-old also had a career-high 125 RBIs, leading the Mariners to one of their best seasons in franchise history. Judge said he got to know Raleigh a little during the All-Star break and the catcher asked for some leadership tips.
“Cal’s a special player,” Judge said. “I could sit here and talk all night about the player he is, but really the kind of leader and person he is really stuck out to me at the All-Star Game.”
Cleveland’s José Ramírez finished third in the AL.
Arizona’s Geraldo Perdomo was fourth in the NL voting, earning him $2.5 million annual salary increases in 2028 and 2029 along with the price of Arizona’s 2030 club option.
The collection of Robert F. Weis and Patricia G. Ross Weis has an estimate in excess of $180 million. Christie’s
The November marquee sales in New York are among the most anticipated events on the global art calendar and the final litmus test of the market’s health after the London and Paris fairs and auctions. Leading the $1.6 billion New York auction week this November is a concentration of high-end, big-name collections, as single-owner sales have become an increasingly important tool for auction houses to secure major consignments and build momentum around a notable name and provenance. “A well-known individual definitely drives interest,” Elizabeth Siegel, vice president and head of private and iconic collections at Christie’s, told Observer.
Over the past decade these types of sales have accounted for 15.6 percent of total value, according to ArtTactic, reaching a peak of 31.3 percent in 2022 with the Paul G. Allen Collection. In the first 10 months of 2025 they continued to outperform with white gloves and records, reaching 18.5 percent of global auction value. In the final week of November in New York alone, single-owner sales are estimated at $706.8 million of total auction value. “A single-owner sale totally elevates prices. It gives them a real boost,” Lisa Dennison, chairman of Sotheby’s Americas, confirmed.
As New York’s fall auctions approach, here is a breakdown of the most anticipated collections set to appear as single-owner sales or within the marquee offerings, along with the top lots that have made headlines in the months leading up to this pivotal week for the art market.
The Leonard A. Lauder Collection at Sotheby’s
Gustav Klimt, Porträt der Elisabeth Lederer (Portrait of Elisabeth Lederer), 1914-16. Estimate in excess of $150 million. Courtesy of Sotheby’s
The $400 million Leonard A. Lauder: Collector sale on November 18 is one of the most anticipated auctions of the season, with Sotheby’s presenting a 24-lot evening sale at its new Breuer Building headquarters. Following Lauder’s passing last June, both Christie’s and Sotheby’s reportedly competed to secure what is considered one of the year’s most important consignments. Sotheby’s ultimately won the mandate, securing 55 masterworks from one of America’s great collectors and philanthropists, longtime Whitney patron Leonard A. Lauder, which will be split between the dedicated evening sale and a day session the following morning.
The undisputed star of the sale is Gustav Klimt’s Porträt der Elisabeth Lederer, estimated in excess of $150 million and poised to surpass the artist’s current auction record of $108.8 million (£85.3 million), also set at Sotheby’s with Dame mit Fächer (Lady with Fan) in London in 2023. Executed between 1914 and 1916, the portrait is among Klimt’s most refined full-length depictions, portraying the young Elisabeth Lederer, daughter of two of his greatest patrons. It epitomizes Vienna’s Golden Age, a moment when youth, beauty, color and ornamental splendor merged into a vision of pure elegance, while also revealing the influence of fin-de-siècle exoticism. The composition’s flattened perspective and sinuous lines echo Japonaiserie and Chinoiserie, visible in the Asian-inspired motifs floating around Lederer’s Poiret-style gown, a nod to Klimt’s fascination with Chinese and Japanese art and textiles. Confiscated by the Zentralstelle für Denkmalschutz in 1939 and restituted to the Lederer heirs in 1946, the painting was later acquired from the family by Serge Sabarsky, an early advocate of German and Austrian modernism in the United States, before entering Lauder’s collection in the mid-1980s.
Other exceptional Klimts in the sale are Blumenwiese (Blooming Meadow) (1908), an exquisite example of the artist’s floral-period landscapes with an estimate in excess of $80 million, and Waldhag bei Unterach am Attersee (Forest Slope in Unterach on the Attersee) (1916), a depiction of an undisturbed lakeside idyll that reveals Klimt’s growing affinity with Van Gogh’s expressive brushwork, estimated in excess of $70 million. The number and high-quality works by artists from the Vienna Secession in the collection can be attributed to Leonard A. Lauder’s connection with his brother Ronald S. Lauder, one of the most notable collectors of the movement and co-founder and president of the Neue Galerie in New York. Both were sons of Estée and Joseph Lauder, founders of The Estée Lauder Companies.
Additional highlights include an emotionally charged, psychologically complex Edvard Munch, Sankthansnatt (Johannisnacht) (Midsummer Night) (1901-03), estimated at $20 million, six bronzes by Henri Matisse expected to realize a combined $30 million and an immaculate graphite grid by Agnes Martin, The Garden, exemplifying her mastery of geometric precision and meditative restraint.
The Collection of Robert F. and Patricia G. Ross Weis at Christie’s
Rothko’s No. 31 (Yellow Stripe), 1958. Estimate on request, in the region of $50 million.
Over more than 50 years, Patricia G. Ross Weis and Robert F. Weis assembled a collection that reflected not only the evolution of 20th-century art between Paris and New York but also the life journey they shared. The 18-lot single-owner Collection of Robert F. and Patricia G. Ross Weis sale on November 17 is expected to generate between $92.35 million and $136.7 million, accounting for more than half of the collection’s total estimated value of $180 million, which includes another 80 works that will be distributed across additional auctions and categories.
The top lot is a vibrant yellow-and-orange Mark Rothko painted in 1958, the same year the artist completed his monumental murals for the Four Seasons restaurant in Manhattan’s Seagram Building. Acquired by the couple from PaceWildenstein in 1995, the work boasts an extensive exhibition history, including its inclusion in the important AbEx show the Beyeler Foundation staged in 1989. Estimated at around $50 million and backed by a third-party guarantee, the canvas stands as one of Rothko’s most powerful expressions of American abstraction, its layered chromatic fields pulsing with contained, tormented energy and sublime atmospheric depth.
Another star lot in the collection is Piet Mondrian’s Composition with Red and Blue (estimate: $20-30 million), signed and dated “PM 39-41.” This rare-to-auction painting belongs to the artist’s transatlantic period, as Mondrian began it in Europe and completed it in New York between 1939 and 1941. Its distinguished exhibition history includes “Mondrian: Nature to Abstraction” at the Tate in 1997. The work exemplifies Mondrian’s rigorous balance of line, color and luminous white ground, an essential yet conceptually intricate dialogue at the heart of his practice.
Other anticipated works include an early Fauvist landscape by Georges Braque, Henri Matisse’s lyrical Figure et bouquet (Tête ocre) from his Nice period (estimate: $15-25 million), and Pablo Picasso’s La Lecture (Marie-Thérèse), a portrait of his muse estimated in the region of $40 million. Another exemplary work, one that justifies the sale title “A Tale Between Two Cities,” is the bold gestural abyssal composition Pierre Soulages painted in Peinture 161 x 200 cm, 14 novembre 1958, offered at $5-7 million, which resonates with the essential black marks on a white ground in Franz Kline’s Placidia from 1961 (estimate: $10-15 million).
Robert F. Weis made his fortune as chairman of Weis Markets Inc., a family-run food company founded in 1912 in rural Pennsylvania, where the couple lived. A lifelong learner and avid reader, he developed a deep appreciation for art. Patricia Weis, born in New York City, shared his passion for art, architecture and design, an interest first sparked by an uncle in the fashion industry. She began collecting after meeting Lucie Rie and Hans Coper on a trip to London. Together, the pair became prominent philanthropists supporting educational, cultural, civic and medical institutions: Patricia served on the boards of Bard College and Franklin & Marshall College, while Robert was a Sterling Fellow at Yale University and sat on its Committee on Buildings and Grounds. They also championed Jewish causes and supported the Lown Cardiovascular Research Foundation, the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation and the Metropolitan Opera.
The Cindy and Jay Pritzker Collection at Sotheby’s
A $40 million Vincent van Gogh, Romans Parisiens (Les Livres jaunes), leads this Sotheby’s sale. Photo: Michael Tropea | Courtesy of Sotheby’s
The other major consignment Sotheby’s has secured for November is the Cindy and Jay Pritzker Collection, which is expected to generate a total in excess of $120 million. Known for founding the Pritzker Architecture Prize in 1979—often called the “Nobel of architecture”—the Chicago-based couple extended their devotion to creative excellence beyond the built environment, assembling a collection that reflects the breadth and rigor of their cultural philanthropy.
Headlining the November 20 Cindy and Jay Pritzker Collection sale, which immediately precedes Sotheby’s Modern Evening Auction at 7:30 p.m., is Vincent van Gogh’s Romans Parisiens (Les Livres jaunes) (1887), a radiant still life from the artist’s Paris period in which a stack of yellow-bound books becomes a portrait of his voracious intellect. Estimated at $40 million, the painting was acquired by the Pritzkers in 1994 through Richard L. Feigen & Co. and boasts an extensive literature and exhibition history spanning major institutions across Europe and the United States, including the show “Van Gogh à Paris” at the Musée d’Orsay (1988), “Vincent van Gogh Paintings” at the Rijksmuseum Vincent van Gogh, Amsterdam (1990), and “Vincent van Gogh and the Modern Movement, 1890-1914” at Museum Folkwang, Essen, and the Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam (1990-91). The work last appeared publicly in “Van Gogh and Gauguin: The Studio of the South” at the Art Institute of Chicago (2001-02), “The Real Van Gogh: The Artist and His Letters” at the Royal Academy of Arts, London (2010), and “Van Gogh’s Bedrooms” at the Art Institute of Chicago (2016). The preparatory painting for this canvas is held in the Van Gogh Museum’s permanent collection.
Comparing the present work to Piles of French Novels in the Van Gogh Museum, scholars have described it as particularly revealing of the artist’s stylistic transition. If the earlier study, flatter in tone and more monochromatic, reflects his fascination with Japanese prints through its block-like composition and restrained palette, the painting in the Pritzker Collection reintroduces depth and vitality through rhythmic dashes and loose strokes of the Neo-Impressionist style Van Gogh adopted in his final Paris months.
Among the other highlights of the sale are Henri Matisse’s sensuous triptych Léda et le cygne (1944-46), estimated at $7-10 million, and Paul Gauguin’s La Maison de Pen du, gardeuse de vache (1889), painted during his Pont-Aven period and carrying a $6-8 million estimate. Additional highlights include Max Beckmann’s Der Wels (Catfish) ($5-7 million), Ernst Ludwig Kirchner’s Hallesches Tor, Berlin (1913, $3-5 million), a large-scale outdoor sculpture by Joan Miró ($4-6 million), and a lyrical Camille Pissarro landscape from his second Pontoise period ($1.2-1.8 million).
The breadth of the Pritzker holdings will extend beyond the November sale, with further lots offered next month in Sotheby’s Books and Manuscripts, Sculpture and Works of Art, Chinese Works of Art, and Design auctions. Together, the ensemble is expected to bring tens of millions of dollars across multiple sales.
The Elaine Wynn Collection at Christie’s
Richard Diebenkorn, Ocean Park #40 (1971). Estimate: $15-25 million. Christie’s
Christie’s also secured the remarkable collection of Elaine Wynn, the late philanthropist and “Queen of Las Vegas,” who passed away this April. Celebrated for her discerning eye and the remarkable assemblage she built both alongside and independently of her former husband, casino magnate Steve Wynn, her estate is estimated at over $75 million. Nine of the top works will be featured in the 20th Century Evening Sale on November 17, two in the 21st Century Evening Sale on November 19, with the remainder to follow in the Post-War and Contemporary Art Day Sale.
The highlights from her collection span centuries and movements yet share the same standard of excellence that defined Wynn’s collecting ethos. On the Modern side, the top lot is Richard Diebenkorn’s transcendent Ocean Park #40, which will be offered in the 20th Century Evening Sale with an estimate of $15-25 million. The work returns to the rostrum just as Gagosian announces its representation of the Diebenkorn estate and inaugurates a dedicated exhibition at its Upper East Side gallery. Wynn acquired the painting at Sotheby’s in 2021, when it achieved a then-record $27.3 million. Diebenkorn’s auction record now stands at $46.4 million, set by his 1965 Recollections of a Visit to Leningrad at Christie’s New York in November 2023, placing the current estimate well within range yet poised to surpass it amid renewed market attention following Gagosian’s endorsement. Before its last sale, Ocean Park #40 was featured in the traveling museum exhibition dedicated to the series at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth and the Orange County Museum of Art (2011-2012), as well as Acquavella Galleries’ 2018 show pairing Diebenkorn’s California scenes with those of Wayne Thiebaud.
Other top lots include J.M.W. Turner’s poetic Ehrenbreitstein (estimate: $12-18 million) and a refined Parisian scene by Georges Seurat. On the postwar side, headline works are Lucian Freud’s late self-portrait (estimate: $15-25 million) and Joan Mitchell’s sunflower-hued explosion of color and gesture (estimate: $12-18 million).
Also presented as part of Christie’s 44-lot 21st Century Evening Sale on November 19, the Edlis|Neeson Collection is described by the auction house as a rare example of a carefully curated ensemble of postwar icons that together trace the evolution of modern and contemporary art. Austrian-born American collector and philanthropist Stefan Edlis and his life partner Gael Neeson began assembling their collection in the 1970s, gradually filling their landmark apartment on Chicago’s Magnificent Mile with works that James Rondeau, president and director of the Art Institute of Chicago, once called “one of the most important collections of modern and contemporary art in existence.” In 2015, the couple donated 44 works to the Art Institute, a gift the museum described as transformative. Born in Vienna in 1925, Stefan Edlis fled Nazi-occupied Austria for the U.S. in 1941 and later founded Apollo Plastics Corporation. In 1974, he met Gael Neeson, and together they began a lifelong pursuit of art collecting, mentored by Chicago collector Gerald Elliot. Their first major acquisition, Piet Mondrian’s Large Composition with Red, Blue, and Yellow (1977), marked the beginning of a collection that evolved toward Pop, Conceptual and contemporary art, featuring icons like Andy Warhol, Robert Rauschenberg, Cindy Sherman and Richard Prince, as well as a later generation similarly engaged with Pop and mass culture, including Damien Hirst, Jeff Koons, Takashi Murakami and Ugo Rondinone.
One of the top lots is Ed Ruscha’s How Do You Do?, coming to auction amid strong market momentum for the artist following MoMA’s major retrospective last year. Part of Ruscha’s coveted mountain series, this laconic phrase floats diagonally rather than horizontally, suspended over a meticulously rendered alpine landscape, each ridge and summit bathed in deep blue light. Acquired directly from Gagosian in 2004 and shown that same year in the Aspen Art Museum’s Ed Ruscha: Mountain Paintings, the work makes its auction debut with an estimate of $5-7 million, secured by a third-party guarantee.
Another highlight is Andy Warhol’s The Last Supper (Yellow) (1986), acquired from Gagosian in 2002 and now estimated at $6-8 million, also backed by a guarantee from Christie’s. The auction house describes it as the culmination of Warhol’s career, a meditation on the dualities of mass media and mortality. Created just a month before his death and first exhibited in Milan’s Palazzo delle Stelline, directly across from Leonardo da Vinci’s Last Supper, the series was Warhol’s way of “making Leonardo exciting again.” The work reflects his lifelong fascination with the iconography of images, their power, repetition and eventual loss of aura through mass reproduction. As more than 3,000 visitors attended the Milan show, The Last Supper came to embody Warhol’s own final self-reflection, a farewell from the artist who became as famous and as mythic as the masters he reinterpreted.
Also featured in the sale are Warhol’s Skull (estimate: $800,000-1.2 million), which will open the Evening Sale, and his Oxidation Painting (Diptych) (1978), acquired from Skarstedt Gallery in 2017 (estimate: $900,000-1.2 million, guaranteed). Other highlights include a Diego Giacometti bronze table (estimate: $3-5 million), Richard Prince’s Double Nurse (estimate: $3-5 million), and Jeff Koons’s Gazing Ball (Courbet Sleep) (estimate: $600,000-800,000), acquired from Gagosian in 2015. The sale also includes works by Cindy Sherman, George Condo, Claes Oldenburg and Tom Wesselmann, alongside two Giacometti library tables.
Perhaps the most provocative work from the collection, although not for sale, is Maurizio Cattelan’s Him (2001), which will be viewable by request during the November pre-sale exhibition, a haunting reminder of the collection’s daring and thought-provoking spirit.
The Max N. Berry Collections at Christie’s
Alberto Giacometti, Buste d’homme (Diego), conceived in 1959/cast in 1960-1961. Bronze with brown patina, height: 15.3/4 in. (40 cm.), estimate $5-8 million. Courtesy of Christie’s
Debuting in the 20th Century Evening Sale this November, the collection of connoisseur Max Berry brings to auction one of the season’s most wide-ranging and valuable encyclopedic consignments. Spanning more than 30 categories, the collection, which is expected to generate tens of millions of dollars across several years of sales, reflects Berry’s lifetime of passionate and discerning collecting, driven more by curiosity than by market fashion.
Among the top lots hitting the rostrum during the November marquee evening sale is Calder’s Acrobats (1929), a seminal wire sculpture estimated at $5-7 million. Composed of two delicately balanced figures mounted on a wooden base, the piece dates to the artist’s pivotal Paris years when he began transforming his toy-maker’s ingenuity into formal sculptural language. Acrobats is directly linked to Calder’s famed Cirque Calder (1926-31), the hand-built miniature circus that anticipated his lifelong fascination with movement and performance. Its appearance at auction coincides with the Whitney Museum’s centennial tribute “High Wire: Calder’s Circus at 100.”
Also included in the sale is Berry’s Alexander Calder Untitled (1938), a rare yellow hanging mobile estimated at $1.5-2 million. Evoking the artist’s childlike sense of wonder, the sculpture’s continuous motion, no matter how still the air, epitomizes Calder’s mastery of balance, rhythm and levity. Completing the lineup of modern masters from the collection are Giacometti’s Buste d’homme (Diego), a bronze portrait of the artist’s brother, cast and signed 2/6 with an estimate of $5-8 million, and his still life Nature morte (1938), estimated at $1.5-2 million, a testament to the artist’s existential and essential synthesis of form and psychological depth.
Additional works from Berry’s collection, including Judaica, American art and Chinese art, will be offered in stages through 2027, underscoring both the scope and scholarly depth of a lifetime spent collecting with intellect, passion and humanity. As Berry told Observer in a recent interview, his ultimate wish is that the works are enjoyed, whether by private collectors or in institutions. “It will be wonderful if a museum acquires some of them and makes them public, where they can sit alongside other objects of a similar nature to tell the story of their artistry and their times.”
The Schlumberger Collection at Sotheby’s
Claude Monet, Vue de Rouen depuis la côte Sainte-Catherine, 1892. Sotheby’s
Similarly eclectic is the Schlumberger Collection, which Sotheby’s secured for this season. It debuted in Paris during their Surrealism and Its Legacy auction, with additional lots now scheduled to appear in New York during the Modern Evening Auction on November 20 and Modern Day Auction on November 21. Further works will be in the Important Design, Fine Jewelry and Fine Books & Manuscripts sales held between November and December 2025. This singular ensemble, bridging centuries of art and design and reflecting the legacy of one of Europe’s great industrial and cultural dynasties, was founded by brothers Conrad and Marcel Schlumberger, whose pioneering work in geophysics revolutionized the energy industry. The family also became renowned for its refined patronage of the arts. That legacy continued through Marcel’s daughter, Anne Schlumberger, whose discerning eye was shaped by her lifelong engagement with Surrealism, architecture and design.
Among the works coming from the collection is Claude Monet’s Vue de Rouen, a luminous and atmospheric canvas painted at the dawn of his famed cathedral series and set to be one of the top lots in Sotheby’s Modern Evening Auction. Fresh to the block with an estimate of $3,000,000-4,000,000, this iconic Monet embodies a pure luminous atmosphere as the artist focuses on the transitory phenomenology of light and color, reaching a level of abstraction close to raw sensorial perception before any codification or formalization. The other highlight of the collection is François-Xavier Lalanne’s Hippopotame Bar (1976), a pièce unique and the first and only example the artist created in copper, serving as the prototype for his later bronze editions.
Property from the Kawamura Memorial DIC Museum of Art at Christie’s
Claude Monet, Nymphéas. Oil on canvas, 36 1/4 x 29 in. (92 x 73.6 cm.). Christie’s
For more than three decades, the works resided in Kawamura’s purpose-built museum near Tokyo, where they brought international visitors face-to-face with the great masters of modern art. Following its closure in March 2025, the institution announced plans to divest around 280 works through auctions and private sales, aiming to raise at least ¥10 billion (approximately $68 million).
Leading Christie’s 20th Century Evening Sale from the museum’s collection is Claude Monet’s Nymphéas (1907), one of the artist’s most dazzling depictions of his Giverny waterlily pond, estimated at $40-60 million. Acquired in 1970 from the Estate of Albert J. Dreitzer through Sotheby’s, the painting has been a cornerstone of Kawamura’s galleries ever since, its vertical composition capturing the pond’s luminous surface in an almost abstract symphony of reflection and light.
Other highlights include Pierre-Auguste Renoir’s Jeune femme arrangeant des fleurs (estimate: $8-12 million), Marc Chagall’s Le Rêve de Paris (estimate: $4-6 million) and Henri Matisse’s Femme au chapeau bleu (estimate: $3-5 million), which will also be offered in the 20th Century Evening Sale.
More than 1,000 unionized Starbucks workers went on strike at 65 U.S. stores Thursday to protest a lack of progress in labor negotiations with the company.
The strike was intended to disrupt Starbucks’ Red Cup Day, which is typically one of the company’s busiest days of the year. Since 2018, Starbucks has given out free, reusable cups on that day to customers who buy a holiday drink. Starbucks Workers United, the union organizing baristas, said Thursday morning that the strike had already closed some stores and was expected to force more to close later in the day.
Starbucks Workers United said stores in 45 cities would be impacted, including New York, Philadelphia, Minneapolis, San Diego, St. Louis, Dallas, Columbus, Ohio, and Starbucks’ home city of Seattle. There is no date set for the strike to end, and more stores are prepared to join if Starbucks doesn’t reach a contract agreement with the union, organizers said.
Starbucks emphasized that the vast majority of its U.S. stores would be open and operating as usual Thursday. The coffee giant has 10,000 company-owned stores in the U.S., as well as 7,000 licensed locations in places like grocery stores and airports.
As of noon Thursday on the East Coast, Starbucks said it was on track to meet or exceed its sales expectations for the day at its company-owned stores.
“The day is off to an incredible start,” the company said in a statement.
Around 550 company-owned U.S. Starbucks stores are currently unionized. More have voted to unionize, but Starbucks closed 59 unionized stores in September as part of a larger reorganization campaign.
Here’s what’s behind the strike.
A stalled contract agreement
Striking workers say they’re protesting because Starbucks has yet to reach a contract agreement with the union. Starbucks workers first voted to unionize at a store in Buffalo in 2021. In December 2023, Starbucks vowed to finalize an agreement by the end of 2024. But in August of last year, the company ousted Laxman Narasimhan, the CEO who made that promise. The union said progress has stalled under Brian Niccol, the company’s current chairman and CEO. The two sides haven’t been at the bargaining table since April.
Workers want higher pay, better hours
Workers say they’re seeking better hours and improved staffing in stores, where they say long customer wait times are routine. They also want higher pay, pointing out that executives like Niccol are making millions and the company spent $81 million in June on a conference in Las Vegas for 14,000 store managers and regional leaders.
Dochi Spoltore, a barista from Pittsburgh, said in a union conference call Thursday that it’s hard for workers to be assigned more than 19 hours per week, which leaves them short of the 20 hours they would need to be eligible for Starbucks’ benefits. Spoltore said she makes $16 per hour.
“I want Starbucks to succeed. My livelihood depends on it,” Spoltore said. “We’re proud of our work, but we’re tired of being treated like we’re disposable.”
The union also wants the company to resolve hundreds of unfair labor practice charges filed by workers, who say the company has fired baristas in retaliation for unionizing and has failed to bargain over changes in policy that workers must enforce, like its decision earlier this year to limit restroom use to paying customers.
Starbucks stands by its wages and benefits
Starbucks says it offers the best wage and benefit package in retail, worth an average of $30 per hour. Among the company’s benefits are up to 18 weeks of paid family leave and 100% tuition coverage for a four-year college degree. In a letter to employees last week, Starbucks’ Chief Partner Officer Sara Kelly said the union walked away from the bargaining table in the spring.
Kelly said some of the union’s proposals would significantly alter Starbucks’ operations, such as giving workers the ability to shut down mobile ordering if a store has more than five orders in the queue.
Kelly said Starbucks remained ready to talk and “believes we can move quickly to a reasonable deal.” Kelly also said surveys showed that most employees like working for the company, and its barista turnover rates are half the industry average.
Limited locations with high visibility
Unionized workers have gone on strike at Starbucks before. In 2022 and 2023, workers walked off the job on Red Cup Day. Last year, a five-day strike ahead of Christmas closed 59 U.S. stores. Each time, Starbucks said the disruption to its operations was minimal. Starbucks Workers United said the new strike is open-ended and could spread to many more unionized locations.
The number of non-union Starbucks locations dwarfs the number of unionized ones. But Todd Vachon, a union expert at the Rutgers School of Management and Labor Relations, said any strike could be highly visible and educate the public on baristas’ concerns.
Unlike manufacturers, Vachon said, retail industries depend on the connection between their employees and their customers. That makes shaming a potentially powerful weapon in the union’s arsenal, he said.
Improving sales
Starbucks’ same-store sales, or sales at locations open at least a year, rose 1% in the July-September period. It was the first time in nearly two years that the company had posted an increase. In his first year at the company, Niccol set new hospitality standards, redesigned stores to be cozier and more welcoming, and adjusted staffing levels to better handle peak hours.
Starbucks also is trying to prioritize in-store orders over mobile ones. Last week, the company’s holiday drink rollout in the U.S. was so successful that it almost immediately sold out of its glass Bearista cup. Starbucks said demand for the cup exceeded its expectations, but it wouldn’t say if the Bearista will return before the holidays are over.
Flight reductions at 40 major U.S. airports will remain at 6% instead of rising to 10% by the end of the week because more air traffic controllers are coming to work, officials said Wednesday.
The flight cuts were implemented last week as more air traffic controllers were calling out of work, citing stress and the need to take on second jobs — leaving more control towers and facilities short-staffed. Air traffic controllers missed two paychecks during the impasse.
The Department of Transportation said the flight reduction decision was made on recommendations from the Federal Aviation Administration’s safety team, after a “rapid decline” in controller callouts.
The 6% limit will stay in place while officials assess whether the air traffic system can safely return to normal operations, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said, although he did not provide a timeline Wednesday.
“If the FAA safety team determines the trend lines are moving in the right direction, we’ll put forward a path to resume normal operations,” Duffy said in a statement.
Duffy and FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford said Wednesday that safety remains their top priority and that all decisions will be guided by data.
Stay up to date with the news and the best of AP by following our WhatsApp channel.
Delta struck an optimistic note about how much longer flight reductions would continue, saying in a statement the airline looked forward to bringing its “operation back to full capacity over the next few days.”
Since the restrictions took effect last Friday, more than 10,100 flights have been canceled, according to the flight tracking site FlightAware. The FAA originally planned to ramp up flight cuts from 4% to 10% at the 40 airports.
The FAA said that worrisome safety data showed flight reductions were needed to ease pressure on the aviation system and help manage worsening staffing shortages at its air traffic control facilities as flight disruptions began to pile up.
Duffy has declined to share the specific safety data that prompted the flight cuts. But at a news conference Tuesday at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport, he cited reports of planes getting too close in the air, more runway incursions and pilot concerns about controllers’ responses.
The FAA’s list of 40 airports spans more than two dozen states and includes large hubs such as New York, Atlanta, Los Angeles and Chicago. The order requires all commercial airlines to make cuts at those airports.
Airlines for America, the trade group of U.S. airlines, posted on social media that it was grateful for the funding bill. It said reopening the government would allow U.S. airlines to restore operations ahead of the Thanksgiving holiday which is in about two weeks.
How long it will take for the aviation system to stabilize is unclear. The flight restrictions upended airline operations in just a matter of days. Many planes were rerouted and aren’t where they’re supposed to be. Airlines for America said earlier Wednesday that there would be residual effects for days.
Eric Chaffee, a Case Western Reserve professor who studies risk management, says airlines face complex hurdles, including rebuilding flight schedules that were planned months in advance.
Airline and hotel trade groups had earlier Wednesday urged the House to act quickly to end the shutdown, warning of potential holiday travel chaos.
Flight cuts disrupted other flights and crews, leading to more cancelations than the FAA required at first. The impact was worsened by unexpected controller shortages over the weekend and severe weather.
The CEO of the U.S. Travel Association said essential federal workers like air traffic controllers and Transportation Security Administration workers must be paid if “Congress ever goes down this foolish path again” and there is a shutdown.
“America cannot afford another self-inflicted crisis that threatens the systems millions rely on every day,” Geoff Freeman said in a statement.
_____
Associated Press writer Audrey McAvoy contributed to this report.
Stephen and Yurany Dexter, of Flagstaff, Arizona, said their 4-month-old daughter, Rose, had to be flown by air ambulance to a children’s hospital two hours from home and treated for several weeks this summer.
Michael and Hanna Everett, of Richmond, Kentucky, said their daughter, Piper, also 4 months, was rushed to a hospital Nov. 8 with worsening symptoms of the rare and potentially deadly disease.
The lawsuits, filed in federal courts in two states, allege that the ByHeart formula the babies consumed was defective and that the company was negligent in selling it. They seek financial payment for medical bills, emotional distress and other harm.
Both families said they bought the organic formula to provide what they viewed as a natural, healthier alternative to traditional baby formulas, and that they were shocked and angered by the suffering their children endured.
“I wouldn’t guess that a product designed for a helpless, developing human in the United States could cause something this severe,” said Stephen Dexter, 44.
“She’s so little and you’re just helplessly watching this,” said Hanna Everett, 28. “It was awful.”
Rose Dexter and Piper Everett are among at least 15 infants in a dozen states who have been sickened in the outbreak that began in August, according to federal and state health officials. No deaths have been reported.
Both received the sole treatment available for botulism in children less than a year old: an IV medication called BabyBIG, made from the blood plasma of people immunized against the neurotoxins that cause the illness.
Investigations into more potential botulism cases are pending after ByHeart, the New York-based formula manufacturer, recalled all of its formula nationwide on Tuesday. At least 84 U.S. babies have been treated for infantile botulism since August, including those in the outbreak, California officials said.
The company sells about 200,000 cans of formula per month. It can take up to 30 days for signs of infantile botulism infection to appear, medical experts said.
California officials confirmed that a sample from an open can of ByHeart formula fed to an infant who fell ill contained the type of bacteria that can lead to illness.
The lawsuits filed Wednesday could be the first of many legal actions against ByHeart, said Bill Marler, a Seattle food safety lawyer who represents Dexter.
“This company potentially faces an existential crisis,” he said.
ByHeart officials didn’t respond to questions about the new lawsuits but said they would “address any legal claims in due course.”
“We remain focused on ensuring that families using ByHeart products are aware of the recall and have factual information about steps they should take,” the company said in a statement.
Parents fretted as babies grew sicker
In Rose Dexter’s case, she received ByHeart formula within days of her birth in July after breast milk was insufficient, her father said. Stephen Dexter said he went to Whole Foods to find a “natural option.”
“I’m a little concerned with things that are in food that may cause problems,” he said. “We do our best to buy something that says it’s organic.”
But Rose, who was healthy at birth, didn’t thrive on the formula. She had trouble feeding and was fussy and fretful as she got sicker. On Aug. 31, when she was 8 weeks old, her parents couldn’t wake her.
Rose was flown by air ambulance to Phoenix Children’s Hospital, where she stayed for nearly two weeks.
Hanna Everett said she used ByHeart to supplement breastfeeding starting when Piper was 6 weeks old.
“It’s supposed to be similar to breast milk,” she said.
Last weekend, Piper started showing signs of illness. Everett said she became more worried when a friend told her ByHeart had recalled two lots of its Whole Nutrition Infant Formula. When a family member checked the empty cans, they matched the recalled lots.
“I was like, ’Oh my god, we need to go to the ER,” Everett recalled.
At Kentucky Children’s Hospital, Piper’s condition worsened rapidly. Her pupils stopped dilating correctly and she lost her gag reflex. Her head and arms became limp and floppy.
Doctors immediately ordered doses of the BabyBIG medication, which had to be shipped from California, Everett said. In the meantime, Piper had to have a feeding tube and IV lines inserted.
In both cases, the babies improved after receiving treatment. Rose went home in September and she no longer requires a feeding tube. Piper went home this week.
They appear to be doing well on different formulas, the families said.
The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
WASHINGTON (AP) — For a day, at least, beleaguered Democrats are hopeful again. But just beneath the party’s relief at securing its first big electoral wins since last November’s drubbing lay unresolved questions about its direction heading into next year’s midterm elections.
The Election Day romp of Republicans stretched from deep-blue New York and California to swing states Georgia, Pennsylvania and Virginia. There were signs that key voting groups, including young people, Black voters and Hispanics who shifted toward President Donald Trump’s Republican Party just a year ago, may be shifting back. And Democratic leaders across the political spectrum coalesced behind a simple message focused on Trump’s failure to address rising costs and everyday kitchen table issues.
The dominant performance sparked a new round of debate among the party’s establishment-minded pragmatists and fiery progressives over which approach led to Tuesday’s victories, and which path to take into the high-stakes 2026 midterm elections and beyond. The lessons Democrats learn from the victories will help determine the party’s leading message and messengers next year — when elections will decide the balance of power in Congress for the second half of Trump’s term — and potentially in the 2028 presidential race, which has already entered its earliest stages.
People cheer as Democrat Abigail Spanberger walks out on stage after she was declared the winner of the Virginia governor’s race during an election night watch party Tuesday, Nov. 4, 2025, in Richmond, Va. (AP Photo/Stephanie Scarbrough)
People cheer as Democrat Abigail Spanberger walks out on stage after she was declared the winner of the Virginia governor’s race during an election night watch party Tuesday, Nov. 4, 2025, in Richmond, Va. (AP Photo/Stephanie Scarbrough)
“Of course, there’s a division within the Democratic Party. There’s no secret,” Sen. Bernie Sanders told reporters at a Capitol Hill press conference about the election results.
Sanders and his chief political strategist pointed to the success of New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani, a democratic socialist, as a model for Democrats across the country. But Rep. Suzan Del Bene, who leads the House Democrats’ midterm campaign strategy, avoided saying Mamdani’s name when asked about his success.
Del Bene instead cheered the moderate approach adopted by Democrats Abigail Spanberger and Mikie Sherrill in successful races for governor in Virginia and New Jersey as a more viable track for candidates outside of a Democratic stronghold like New York City.
“New York is bright blue … and the path to the majority in the House is going to be through purple districts,” she told The Associated Press. “The people of Arizona, Iowa and Nebraska aren’t focused on the mayor of New York.”
Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, a likely Democratic presidential prospect who campaigned alongside Democrats in several states leading up to Tuesday’s elections, noted the candidates hit on a common issue that resonated with voters, regardless of location.
“All of these candidates who won in these different states were focused on peoples’ everyday needs,” Shapiro said. “And you saw voters in every one of those states and cities showing up to send a clear message to Donald Trump that they’re rejecting his chaos.”
Intraparty criticism
Amid Democrats’ celebratory phone calls and news conferences, members of the party’s different wings had some sharp critiques for each other.
While Shapiro cheered the party’s success during a Wednesday interview, he also acknowledged concerns about Mamdani in New York.
Shapiro, one of the nation’s most prominent Jewish elected leaders, said he’s not comfortable with some of Mamdani’s comments on Israel. The New York mayor-elect, a Muslim, has described Israel’s response to the Oct. 7 attacks as “genocide” against the Palestinian people and has been slow to condemn rhetoric linked to anti-Semitism.
“I’ve expressed that to him personally. We’ve had good private communications,” Shapiro said of his concerns. “And I hope, as he did last night in his victory speech, that he’ll be a mayor that protects all New Yorkers and tries to bring people together.”
Meanwhile, Sanders’ political strategist, Faiz Shakir, warned Democrats against embracing “cookie cutter campaigns that say nothing and do nothing” — a reference to centrist Democrats Spanberger and Sherrill.
Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, a Democrat who defeated democratic socialist Omar Fateh to win a third term, said at a news conference Wednesday that “we have to love our city more than our ideology.”
“We need to be doing everything possible to push back on authoritarianism and what Donald Trump is doing,” Frey said. “And at the same time, the opposite of Donald Trump extremism is not the opposite extreme.”
Signs welcomes voters on Tuesday, Nov. 4, 2025, in Del Mar, Calif. (AP Photo/Gregory Bull)
Signs welcomes voters on Tuesday, Nov. 4, 2025, in Del Mar, Calif. (AP Photo/Gregory Bull)
Democrats win everywhere
Despite potential cracks in the Democratic coalition, it’s hard to understate the extent of the party’s electoral success.
In Georgia, two Democrats cruised to wins over Republican incumbents in elections to the state Public Service Commission, delivering the largest statewide margins of victory by Democrats in more than 20 years.
In Pennsylvania, Democrats swept not only three state Supreme Court races, but every county seat in presidential swing counties like Bucks and Erie Counties, including sheriffs. Bucks County elected its first Democratic district attorney as Democrats there also won key school board races and county judgeships.
Maine voters defeated a Republican-backed measure that would have mandated showing an ID at the polls. Colorado approved raising taxes on people earning more than $300,000 annually to fund school meal programs and food assistance for low-income state residents. And California voters overwhelmingly backed a charge led by Gov. Gavin Newsom to redraw its congressional map to give Democrats as many as five more House seats in upcoming elections.
Key groups coming back to Democrats
Trump made inroads with Black and Hispanic voters in 2024. But this week, Democrats scored strong performances with non-white voters in New Jersey and Virginia that offered promise.
About 7 in 10 voters in New Jersey were white, according to the AP Voter Poll. And Sherrill won about half that group. But she made up for her relative weakness with whites with a strong showing among Black, Hispanic and Asian voters.
The vast majority — about 9 in 10 — of Black voters supported Sherrill, as did about 8 in 10 Asian voters.
Hispanic voters in New Jersey were more divided, but about two-thirds supported Sherrill; only about 3 in 10 voted for the Republican nominee, Jack Ciattarelli.
The pattern was similar in Virginia, where Spanberger performed well among Black voters, Hispanic voters and Asian voters, even though she didn’t win a majority of white voters.
This combination of photos taken on Tuesday, Nov. 4, 2025, shows Abigail Spanberger in Richmond, Va., left, Zohran Mamdani in New York, center, and Mikie Sherrill in East Brunswick, N.J. (AP Photo/Stephanie Scarbrough, Yuki Iwamura and Matt Rourke)
This combination of photos taken on Tuesday, Nov. 4, 2025, shows Abigail Spanberger in Richmond, Va., left, Zohran Mamdani in New York, center, and Mikie Sherrill in East Brunswick, N.J. (AP Photo/Stephanie Scarbrough, Yuki Iwamura and Matt Rourke)
Democrats will soon face a choice
The debate over the party’s future is already starting to play out in key midterm elections where Democrats have just begun intra-party primary contests.
The choice is stark in Maine’s high-stakes Senate race, where Democrats will pick from a field that features establishment favorite, Gov. Jan Mills, and Sanders-endorsed populist Graham Platner. A similar dynamic could play out in key contests across Massachusetts, New York, Texas and Michigan.
Michigan Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed, who is aligned with the progressive wing of the party, said the people he speaks to are demanding bold action to address their economic concerns.
“Folks are so frustrated by how hard its become to afford a dignified life here in Michigan and across the country,” he said.
“I’m sure the corporate donors don’t want us to push too hard,” El-Sayed continued. “My worry is the very same people who told us we were just fine in 2024 will miss the mandate.”
___
Associated Press reporter Mike Catalini in Newark and Joey Cappelletti in Washington contributed.
Artificial intelligence company Anthropic announced a $50 billion investment in computing infrastructure on Wednesday that will include new data centers in Texas and New York.
Microsoft also on Wednesday announced a new data center under construction in Atlanta, Georgia, describing it as connected to another in Wisconsin to form a “massive supercomputer” running on hundreds of thousands of Nvidia chips to power AI technology.
The latest deals show that the tech industry is moving forward on huge spending to build energy-hungry AI infrastructure, despite lingering financial concerns about a bubble, environmental considerations and the political effects of fast-rising electricity bills in the communities where the massive buildings are constructed.
Anthropic, maker of the chatbot Claude, said it is working with London-based Fluidstack to build the new computing facilities to power its AI systems. It didn’t disclose their exact locations or what source of electricity they will need.
Another company, cryptocurrency mining data center developer TeraWulf, has previously revealed it was working with Fluidstack on Google-backed data center projects in Texas and New York, on the shore of Lake Ontario. TeraWulf declined comment Wednesday.
A report last month from TD Cowen said that the leading cloud computing providers leased a “staggering” amount of U.S. data center capacity in the third fiscal quarter of this year, amounting to more than 7.4 gigawatts of energy, more than all of last year combined.
Oracle was securing the most capacity during that time, much of it supporting AI workloads for Anthropic’s chief rival OpenAI, maker of ChatGPT. Google was second and Fluidstack came in third, ahead of Meta, Amazon, CoreWeave and Microsoft.
Anthropic said its projects will create about 800 permanent jobs and 2,400 construction jobs. It said in a statement that the “scale of this investment is necessary to meet the growing demand for Claude from hundreds of thousands of businesses while keeping our research at the frontier.”
Microsoft has branded its two-story Atlanta data center as Fairwater 2 and said it will be connected across a “high-speed network” with the original Fairwater complex being built south of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The company said the facility’s densely packed Nvidia chips will help power Microsoft’s own AI technology, along with OpenAI’s and other AI developers.
Microsoft was, until earlier this year, OpenAI’s exclusive cloud computing provider before the two companies amended their partnership. OpenAI has since announced more than $1 trillion in infrastructure obligations, much of it tied to its Stargate project with partners Oracle and SoftBank. Microsoft, in turn, spent nearly $35 billion in the July-September quarter on capital expenditures to support its AI and cloud demand, nearly half of that on computer chips.
The tech industry’s big spending on computing infrastructure for AI startups that aren’t yet profitable has fueled concerns about an AI investment bubble.
Investors have closely watched a series of circular deals over recent months between AI developers and the companies building the costly chips and data centers needed to power their AI products. Anthropic said it will continue to “prioritize cost-effective, capital-efficient approaches” to scaling up its business.
OpenAI had to backtrack last week after its chief financial officer, Sarah Friar, made comments at a tech conference suggesting the U.S. government could help in financing chips needed for data centers. The White House’s top AI official, David Sacks, responded on social media platform X that there “will be no federal bailout for AI” and if one of the leading companies fails, “others will take its place,” though he also added he didn’t think “anyone was actually asking for a bailout.”
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman later confirmed in a lengthy statement that “we do not have or want government guarantees” for the company’s data centers and also sought to address concerns about whether it will be able to pay for all the infrastructure it has signed up for.
“We are looking at commitments of about $1.4 trillion over the next 8 years,” Altman wrote. “Obviously this requires continued revenue growth, and each doubling is a lot of work! But we are feeling good about our prospects there.”
A lawsuit has been filed against the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Department of Homeland Security by the brother of Chaofeng Ge, a 32-year-old Chinese immigrant who died at a Central Pennsylvania detention facility.
At the Moshannon Valley Processing Center on Aug. 5, Ge was found dead in a shower stallwith a cloth wrapped around his neck and with his legs and hands tied behind his back, according to the lawsuit.
Yangeng Ge, the detainee’s brother, filed the lawsuit on Wednesday in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, claiming federal officials unlawfully ignored his Freedom of Information Act request seeking answers about his brother’s death.
ICE’s Detainee Death Report for the inmate lists that he was brought to MVPC on July 31 after being convicted of accessing an electronic device issued to another who did not authorize use. It also lists the emergency procedures that officials took after finding Ge unresponsive.
David Rankin, a lawyer with New York-based law firm Beldock Levine & Hoffman, who is representing Ge’s family on the case, refuted this information in an emailed statement. He said he understood Ge was held at the facility for “a number of months.”
“We do not understand the information about how long he was at MVPC to be correct — which makes the whole report highly suspect,” Rankin said via email. “A chronology of what happened after they discovered him does not shed light on why it happened. … Hopefully standing up and demanding transparency will encourage others to do the same. The more we can shed light on what happens at MVPC the better.”
ICE said it “cannot comment on pending litigation.”
The lawsuit claims Ge felt isolated in MVPC because no one in the facility spoke Mandarin and the staff made no effort to communicate with him. Rankin said this allegation was corroborated by interviews with people who left the facility and medical records.
Yangeng Ge filed a FOIA request through his attorneys on Sept. 9 seeking information about his brother’s detention including details about the conditions of the facility, his treatment by personnel and the circumstances of his death, the lawsuit said.
On Sept. 15, Yangeng Ge said he received confirmation from the U.S. Postal Service that ICE received the request, but he said it went “unlawfully ignored” because the agency was required to inform him whether hey would comply within 20 days of receipt.
“The government is so committed to keeping the public in the dark about what is happening at these detention centers that it is willing to violate the law,” Jeremy Ravinsky, associate attorney at Beldock Levine & Hoffman, said in a statement. “This lawsuit calls for much needed transparency into how the government is treating detainees.”
Yangeng Geis seeking injunctive relief and for the agencies to release all records pertaining to his brother’s detention and death.
“I am devastated by the loss of my brother and by the knowledge that he was suffering so greatly in that detention center,” he said in a statement. “He did not deserve to be treated that way. I want justice for my brother, answers as to how this could have happened and accountability for those responsible for his death.”
Arnold Toynbee’s “Cities on the Move” (1970) documents the history of big cities around the world becoming impoverished and insolvent—some never to recover. Many of the patterns he describes apply to New York now.
Real estate contributed roughly $35 billion of the $80 billion in city tax receipts in fiscal 2025, and personal taxes another $18 billion. The financial sector, real estate, construction, tourism and retail trade sectors are the major contributors to these revenues.
Major League Baseball said its authorized gaming operators will cap bets on individual pitches at $200 and exclude them from parlays, a day after two Cleveland Guardians players were indicted and accused of rigging pitches at the behest of gamblers.
MLB said Monday the limits were agreed to by sportsbook operators representing more than 98% of the U.S. betting market. The league said in a statement that pitch-level bets on outcomes of pitch velocity and of balls and strikes “present heightened integrity risks because they focus on one-off events that can be determined by a single player and can be inconsequential to the outcome of the game.”
“The risk on these pitch-level markets will be significantly mitigated by this new action targeted at the incentive to engage in misconduct,” the league said. “The creation of a strict bet limit on this type of bet, and the ban on parlaying them, reduces the payout for these markets and the ability to circumvent the new limit.”
MLB said the agreement included Bally’s, Bet365, BetMGM, Bet99, Betr, Caesars, Circa, DraftKings, 888, FanDuel, Gamewise, Hard Rock Bet, Intralot, Jack Entertainment, Mojo, Northstar Gaming, Oaklawn, Penn, Pointsbet, Potawatomi, Rush Street and Underdog.
Cleveland pitchers Emmanuel Clase and Luis Ortiz were indicted Sunday in U.S. District Court in Brooklyn on charges they took bribes from sports bettors to throw certain types of pitches. They were charged with wire fraud conspiracy, honest services wire fraud conspiracy, conspiracy to influence sporting contests by bribery and money laundering conspiracy. The indictment says they helped two unnamed gamblers in the Dominican Republic win at least $460,000 on bets placed on the speed and outcome of certain pitches, including some that landed in the dirt.
Ortiz’s lawyer, Chris Georgalis, said in a statement that his client was innocent and “has never, and would never, improperly influence a game — not for anyone and not for anything.” A lawyer for Clase, Michael J. Ferrara, said his client “has devoted his life to baseball and doing everything in his power to help his team win. Emmanuel is innocent of all charges and looks forward to clearing his name in court.”
Ortiz appeared Monday in federal court in Boston. U.S. Magistrate Judge Donald L. Cabell granted Ortiz his release on the condition he surrender his passport, restrict his travel to the Northeast U.S. and post a $500,000 bond, $50,000 of it secured. Ortiz was ordered to avoid contact with anyone who could be viewed as a victim, witness or co-defendant.
Last month, more than 30 people, including Portland Trail Blazers head coach and Basketball Hall of Famer Chauncey Billups and Miami Heat guard Terry Rozier, were arrested in a takedown of two sprawling gambling operations that authorities said rigged poker games backed by Mafia families and leaked inside information about NBA athletes.
Billups’ attorney, Chris Heywood, issued a statement denying the allegations. Rozier’s lawyer, Jim Trusty, said in a statement his client is “not a gambler” and “looks forward to winning this fight.”
NEW YORK (AP) — Cleveland Guardians pitchers Emmanuel Clase and Luis Ortiz were indicted Sunday on charges they took bribes from sports bettors to throw specific pitches that would trigger winnings on in-game prop bets.
Prosecutors identified pitches from Clase and Ortiz that helped two unnamed gamblers from their native Dominican Republic win at least $460,000. This included throwing pitches intentionally outside of the strike zone or within certain velocity ranges. Here’s a closer look at those pitches.
Emmanuel Clase
May 19, 2023
The indictment cites this outing without a photo of the specific pitch, saying the scheme included a bet of about $27,000 that Clase would throw a pitch of greater than 94.95 mph. Clase began with a 98.5 mph cutter to the New York Mets’ Starling Marte that was low and inside in the 10th inning. Marte flied out on the next pitch, but the Mets rallied for a 10-9 win on RBI singles by Francisco Alvarez and Francisco Lindor. Clase took the loss.
June 3, 2023
The indictment cited bets of about $38,000 for a ball or hit by pitch and velocity slower than 94.95 mph. An 89.4 mph slider to Minnesota’s Ryan Jeffers bounced well short of home plate starting the ninth inning and hit catcher Mike Zunino near a shoulder, leading an athletic trainer to check on the catcher. Jeffers struck out four pitches later and Clase got the save in a 4-2 win.
June 7, 2023
The indictment cited bets of about $58,000 for a ball or hit by pitch and velocity slower than 94.95 mph. Clase started the ninth inning with a 91.4 mph slider to Boston’s Jarren Duran that was caught just above the dirt. Duran walked on four pitches and was stranded as Clase got the save in a 5-3 win.
April 12, 2025
The indictment cited bets of about $15,000 for a ball or hit by pitch and velocity slower than 98.95 mph. An 89.4 mph slider to Kansas City’s Bobby Witt Jr. bounced opening the ninth inning. Witt singled three pitches later, starting a two-run, ninth-inning rally in the Guardians’ 6-3 win.
May 11, 2025
The indictment cited bets of about $11,000 for a ball or hit by pitch. A 99.1 mph cutter to Philadelphia’s Max Kepler was in the dirt starting the ninth inning. Kepler grounded out five pitches later and the Phillies went on to win 3-0.
May 13, 2025
The indictment cited bets of about $3,500 for a ball or hit by pitch and velocity slower than 99.45 mph. A 89.1 mph slider to Milwaukee’s Jake Bauers bounced opening the ninth inning. Bauers struck out five pitches later and Clase got the save in a 2-0 win.
May 17, 2025
The indictment cited bets of about $10,000 for a ball or hit by pitch and velocity slower than 97.95 mph. An 87.5 mph slider to Cincinnati’s Santiago Espinal bounced starting the eighth inning. Espinal singled four pitches later. Clase was relieved by Joey Castillo with two outs and two on and got a strikeout in a game the Reds won 4-1.
May 28, 2025
The indictment cites the outing without a photo of the specific pitch, saying the scheme included bets of about $4,000 that a pitch would be a ball or hit batter. Clase started the Los Angeles Dodgers’ Andy Pages with a slider that bounced just behind the plate, but Pages swung and missed. Pages grounded out two pitches later to start the ninth and Clase got the save in a 7-4 win. The indictment says a bettor sent Clase a text with a GIF of a man hanging himself with toilet paper and Clase responded with a GIF of a sad puppy dog face.
Luis Ortiz
June 15, 2025
The indictment cited bets of about $13,000 that a pitch would be a ball. A first-pitch 86.7 mph slider to Seattle’s Randy Arozarena bounced starting the second inning. Arozarena walked on five pitches and scored the game’s first run on Miles Mastrobuoni’s RBI single in a five-run inning of a game the Mariners won 6-0.
June 27, 2025
The indictment cited bets of about $18,000 that a pitch would be a ball. A first-pitch 86.7 mph slider to St. Louis’ Pedro Pagés bounced and went to the backstop opening the third inning. Pagés homered two pitches later for the game’s first run in a three-run inning, and the Cardinals won 5-0.
Jack Schlossberg, the only grandson of late President John F. Kennedy and Jackie Kennedy Onassis, announced Tuesday night that he’s running for U.S. Congress.
The 32-year-old son of Caroline Kennedy and Edwin Schlossberg said he’s running for the New York City seat long held by U.S. Rep. Jerry Nadler, D-NY, who in September announced he will retire.
“I’m running for Congress to represent my home, New York’s 12th congressional district, where I was born and raised, where I took the bus to school every single day from one side of the district to the other,” Schlossberg said in a video announcing his candidacy.
“This is the best part of the greatest city on Earth,” he said.
In an email to supporters, Schlossberg, a Democrat, said that his campaign will officially launch on Wednesday.
Who is Jack Schlossberg?
Schlossberg completed undergraduate studies in history at Yale and received a law degree and master’s of business administration from Harvard. In July 2024, he joined Vogue as a political correspondent for that year’s presidential election.
He indicated his campaign will be about fighting against Trump’s policies.
Schlossberg’s politics fall within the family tradition of allegiance to the Democratic Party. He has developed an eccentric social media personality in which he often rails against President Donald Trump, Republicans in general and his first cousin-once-removed, U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.
Schlossberg has been vocally critical of Kennedy, a longtime anti-vaccine activist.
Last month, he posted on Instagram an image of a Halloween costume for “MAHA Man,” in reference to Kennedy’s Make America Healthy Again message and described it as including such things as measles.
New York’s 12th congressional district composes the geographical heart of Manhattan, including all of Central Park and most of the island north of Greenwhich Village and south of Harlem.
“We have the best hospitals and schools, restaurants and museums,” Schlossberg said in his statement Tuesday. “This is the financial and media capital of the world. This district should have a representative who can harness the creativity, energy and drive of this district and translate that into political power in Washington.”
Nadler, who is serving his 17th term in Congress, announced in September that he will not run for reelection next year, suggesting to The New York Times that a younger Democratic lawmaker in his seat “can maybe do better, can maybe help us more.”
The Associated Press and Josh Cradduck and Dennis Romero | NBC News
NEW YORK (AP) — Sally Kirkland, a one-time model who became a regular on stage, film and TV, best known for sharing the screen with Paul Newman and Robert Redford in “The Sting” and her Oscar-nominated title role in the 1987 movie “Anna,” has died. She was 84.
Her representative, Michael Greene, said Kirkland died Tuesday morning at a hospice in Palm Springs, California.
Friends established a GoFundMe account this fall for her medical care. They said she had fractured four bones in her neck, right wrist and left hip. While recovering, she also developed infections, requiring hospitalization and rehab.
“She was funny, feisty, vulnerable and self deprecating,” actor Jennifer Tilly, who co-starred with Kirkland in “Sallywood,” wrote on X. “She never wanted anyone to say she was gone. ‘Don’t say Sally died, say Sally passed on into the spirits.’ Safe passage beautiful lady.”
Kirkland acted in such films as “The Way We Were” with Barbra Streisand, “Revenge” with Kevin Costner, “Cold Feet” with Keith Carradine and Tom Waits, Ron Howard’s “EDtv,” Oliver Stone’s “JFK,” “Heatwave” with Cicely Tyson, “High Stakes” with Kathy Bates, “Bruce Almighty” with Jim Carrey and the 1991 TV movie “The Haunted,” about a family dealing with paranormal activity. She had a cameo in Mel Brooks’ “Blazing Saddles.”
Michael Douglas, left, and Sally Kirkland appear with their awards for best actor for “Wall Street” and best actress for “Anna,” at the 45th Annual Golden Globe Awards in Beverly Hills, Calif., on Jan. 24, 1988. (AP Photo/Reed Saxon, File)
Michael Douglas, left, and Sally Kirkland appear with their awards for best actor for “Wall Street” and best actress for “Anna,” at the 45th Annual Golden Globe Awards in Beverly Hills, Calif., on Jan. 24, 1988. (AP Photo/Reed Saxon, File)
Her biggest role was in 1987’s “Anna” as a fading Czech movie star remaking her life in the United States and mentoring to a younger actor, Paulina Porizkova. Kirkland won a Golden Globe and earned an Oscar nomination along with Cher in “Moonstruck,” Glenn Close in “Fatal Attraction, Holly Hunter in “Broadcast News” and Meryl Streep in “Ironweed.”
“Kirkland is one of those performers whose talent has been an open secret to her fellow actors but something of a mystery to the general public,” The Los Angeles Times critic wrote in her review. “There should be no confusion about her identity after this blazing comet of a performance.”
Kirkland’s small-screen acting credits include stints on “Criminal Minds,” “Roseanne,” “Head Case” and she was a series regular on the TV shows “Valley of the Dolls” and “Charlie’s Angels.”
Born in New York City, Kirkland’s mother was a fashion editor at Vogue and Life magazine who encouraged her daughter to start modeling at age 5. Kirkland graduated from the American Academy of Dramatic Arts and studied with Philip Burton, Richard Burton’s mentor, and Lee Strasberg, the master of the Method school of acting. An early breakout was appearing in Andy Warhol’s “13 Most Beautiful Women” in 1964. She appeared naked as a kidnapped rape victim in Terrence McNally’s off-Broadway “Sweet Eros.”
Sally Kirkland arrives at the Multicultural Motion Picture Association annual Oscar week luncheon in Beverly Hills, Calif., on Feb. 22, 2008. (AP Photo/Matt Sayles, File)
Sally Kirkland arrives at the Multicultural Motion Picture Association annual Oscar week luncheon in Beverly Hills, Calif., on Feb. 22, 2008. (AP Photo/Matt Sayles, File)
Some of her early roles were Shakespeare, including the lovesick Helena in “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” for New York Shakespeare Festival producer Joseph Papp and Miranda in an off-Broadway production of “The Tempest.”
“I don’t think any actor can really call him or herself an actor unless he or she puts in time with Shakespeare,” she told the Los Angeles Times in 1991. “It shows up, it always shows up in the work, at some point, whether it’s just not being able to have breath control, or not being able to appreciate language as poetry and music, or not having the power that Shakespeare automatically instills you with when you take on one of his characters.”
Kirkland was a member of several New Age groups, taught Insight Transformational Seminars and was a longtime member of the affiliated Church of the Movement of Spiritual Inner Awareness, whose followers believe in soul transcendence.
She reached a career nadir while riding nude on a pig in the 1969 film “Futz,” which a Guardian reviewer dubbed the worst film he had ever seen. “It was about a man who fell in love with a pig, and even by the dismal standards of the era, it was dismal,” he wrote.
Kirkland volunteered for people with AIDS, cancer and heart disease, fed homeless people via the American Red Cross, participated in telethons for hospices and was an advocate for prisoners, especially young people.
The actors union SAG-AFTRA called her “a fearless performer whose artistry and advocacy spanned more than six decades,” adding that as “a true mentor and champion for actors, her generosity and spirit will continue to inspire.”
After five years in the Olympic Tower, this hub for artists merging X.R., A.I. and performance is set to move to Tribeca. Photo by Ed Lefkowicz.
Launched in 2020 by the Onassis Foundation and NEW INC, the incubator of the New Museum, Onassis ONX Studio has evolved into one of New York’s leading hubs for artists working at the intersection of extended reality (X.R.), A.I. and performance. Closely connected to Onassis Stegi in Athens, the two organizations form a dynamic international channel for creative exchange within the broader Onassis Foundation ecosystem. In New York, Onassis ONX provides an accessible acceleration space for ambitious productions, while at Onassis Stegi—founded in 2010—the focus is on education and professional development, nurturing a rapidly expanding arts-and-technology scene. Rooted in Greece’s long tradition of theater and dramaturgy, this has inspired compelling intersections of theater, dance and technology.
To mark its fifth anniversary, Onassis ONX has announced its relocation from its original venue in the Olympic Tower on Fifth Avenue, just above the Onassis Foundation’s U.S. headquarters, to an expanded 6,000-square-foot space in the heart of Tribeca at 390 Broadway, which also houses PPOW and Matthew Brown Gallery. Set to open in January, the new facility will continue to operate as a hybrid residency, research lab and production studio, offering additional space for exhibitions and public programming that extend the reach of the work developed within the organization.
The new studio includes a motion-capture stage twice the size of the previous one, a three-wall seamless projection room designed for museum-scale installations and an expanded sound studio—four times larger than the original—equipped with a high-fidelity system for immersive sonic environments. It also features enhanced computational infrastructure, including a new server array designed to support A.I. and generative media.
Onassis ONX is the Onassis Foundation’s global platform for digital culture, championing artists who push the boundaries of new media through the creation, exhibition and circulation of immersive, technology-driven works. Photo: Mikhail Mishin
“It’s been amazing to see how much interest, focus and support for art and technology has expanded in New York City and around the world,” Jazia Hammoudi, program director of Onassis ONX, told Observer ahead of the announcement. “It’s been a long journey for many of us, but witnessing this evolution now feels incredibly rewarding.”
Created as an arm of Onassis Culture—the cultural branch of Greece’s leading philanthropic organization, which has championed “aid, progress and development” since 1975—ONX quickly became central to the foundation’s mission as a cultural innovator and supporter of contemporary art. From the outset, the foundation has operated from a deeply humanist perspective, Hammoudi explained. “It’s an organization that takes its lead from artists rather than dictating from the top down, continually looking to understand what’s actually happening across the cultural and intellectual landscape. It’s about paying close attention to what artists and audiences are thinking about, interested in and in need of. That same responsiveness to artistic and technological innovation is what inspired the foundation’s expansion in both New York and Athens.”
At its core, ONX is first and foremost an accelerator. Its foundation lies in the production space, tools and technical consultation it provides—but beyond that, it functions as an aesthetic and intellectual incubator. “We offer extensive creative consultation and curatorial support to artists, so they’re not only producing work here but also developing its conceptual and public trajectory,” Hammoudi added. “An artist can come to ONX, build their work and we’ll help them find the right platform for it—whether that’s a festival, an exhibition within our own programs in New York or Athens, or through one of our partner institutions.” Onassis ONX also helps artists secure additional funding, either through internal seed grants and commissions or through its global network of partners.
“Tribeca Immersive” is the Tribeca Festival section co-produced by Onassis ONX. AI Ego | Photographer: Mikhail Mishin
Since its founding, ONX has supported an impressive roster of artists and collectives redefining the intersection of performance and technology, including LaJuné McMillian, Peter Burr, Stephanie Dinkins, Sutu (Stuart Campbell) and Jayson Musson. Projects developed at ONX often blur the boundaries between theater, gaming environments, installation and live performance—echoing the Onassis Foundation’s broader mission to explore the future of culture and human experience through technology.
“Our goal is to provide holistic support for artists working in new media because we recognize that many traditional museums and cultural institutions weren’t designed to meet their needs,” Hammoudi said. “Our work is twofold: to provide artists with the resources and infrastructure they need and to help institutions evolve into what 21st-century creativity actually looks like.”
ONX currently supports about 85 member artists worldwide who have full access to production facilities, seed grants, funding opportunities, internal open calls and ongoing staff consultation. This membership model ensures long-term, sustained support for artists working in new media. “We know that this kind of work takes time—and often requires many different minds and kinds of intelligence to bring to completion,” Hammoudi explained. “As advocates and field builders, we see these ongoing relationships with artists as essential to the growth and vitality of the field itself.”
The new space will also enable the organization to deepen and expand its global partnerships. As part of its mission as a field builder, Onassis ONX collaborates with international partners to develop residencies, exchange programs, fellowships, exhibitions, funding initiatives and distribution channels.
Onassis ONX supports artists and creative teams through capacity-building programs, research and incubation initiatives, acceleration services, seed funding, exhibitions, fellowships and collaborative partnerships The Power Loom | Photographer: Mikhail Mishin
For example, Onassis ONX is a partner on Lincoln Center’s Collider Fellowship, runs a residency exchange with MIT’s Open Documentary Lab and maintains a core partnership with NEW INC, where artists track work within the ONX space. Looking ahead, Hammoudi said the goal is to continue expanding these partnerships to support a growing cohort of artists. “It’s important for us to maintain a deep, ongoing connection with our 85 member artists while also creating ways to offer short-term, project-based support to those who come to us with a specific challenge or need. This expansion allows us to do both.”
Notions of hybrid identity beyond biological, mythological and digital limits
Inaugurating Onassis ONX’s new space will be “TECHNE: Homecoming,” an exhibition uniting six visionary artists whose multimedia installations explore hybrid identity shaped through biological, mythological and digital kinships. “The show reflects our belief that technology can deepen the ways we connect—with one another, with our histories and with the stories we choose to tell about the future,” Hammoudi said.
The artist lineup embodies the kind of interdisciplinary, cross-knowledge collaboration the foundation has long supported, featuring works that range from Andrew Thomas Huang’s two-channel video installation and sculptural environment—rooted in a Buddhist folktale and informed by his collaborations with Björk and FKA Twigs—to Tamiko Thiel’s Atmos Sphaerae, a video installation tracing Earth’s atmospheric evolution from primordial void to Anthropocene through a poetic translation of molecular data into visual form that collapses conventional timescales. Meanwhile, Damara Inglês’s “phygital” installation reimagines the afterlife of Queen Nzinga of Angola through the lens of Cyber-Kimbandism, merging Bantu cosmology, A.I. and 3D design to position technology as both a spiritual conduit for ancestral connection and a tool of anti-colonial resistance.
Miriam Simun, Contact Zone (Level 2), 2024. Courtesy of the artist and Onassis ONX
In a similar spirit, Natalia Manta’s looping animations, digital tombs and hybrid sculptures oscillate between the archaeological and the alien, provoking transhistorical reflections on human time across geographies and collective memory. Sister Sylvester presents Drinking Brecht, an experimental work of automated theater and performance-as-installation that functions as a Marxist-feminist laboratory. Finally, Miriam Simun’s generative three-channel projection Contact Zone Level 2 brings the Swiss Alps into collision with the artist’s own intestines beneath an A.I.’s gaze, continuously reconfiguring to explore the symbiosis between organic and artificial life—a visionary intersection of nature, technology and consciousness beyond human perception. “Technology becomes the mediator for this imagining, allowing a hybrid being—a new chimera—to emerge between nature and self. It’s a wild and deeply thought-provoking work,” Hammoudi said.
In each case, technology enables artists to construct more expansive worlds around their practice, extending the reach of their bodies and presence while dissolving the traditional genre boundaries that once defined art-making. “Those old taxonomies—this artist does that, that one does this—are becoming almost irrelevant,” Hammoudi noted, emphasizing that many of these works use digital tools not as spectacle but as instruments for expanding how we sense, perceive and experience reality—or move beyond its human limits.
An installation view of Sister Sylvester‘s Drinking Brecht (2024). Courtesy of the artist and Onassis ONX.
The exhibition will be part of the annual Under the Radar Festival, which this year includes two Onassis ONX performances—We Have No Need of Other Worlds (We Need Mirrors) by Graham Sack and ¡Harken! by Modesto Flako Jimenez—as well as MAMI, a mainstage production conceived and directed by Mario Banushi and commissioned by Onassis Stegi. Together, these works underscore the foundation’s multifaceted support for artists working at the intersection of performance and new technology—an ever-expanding field as creators increasingly experiment with digital embodiment, exploring performance, the shifting boundaries between analog and digital and what it means for the body to exist in real time and space within contemporary digital culture.
Balancing studio production and public programming
Looking ahead, Onassis ONX will continue to balance its mission of providing a dedicated workspace for artists with a growing commitment to public engagement. Beginning in 2026, ONX will host two in-studio exhibitions each year—one in January and another in the fall—along with quarterly public programs developed in collaboration with organizations such as NEW INC, Pioneer Works, Rhizome and Lincoln Center. The foundation also plans to continue its major annual off-site exhibition each June, following last year’s presentation at Tribeca Immersive. “This model allows us to keep the studio primarily a development space while maintaining a consistent public presence through exhibitions and thought-leadership events announced on our website and newsletter,” Hammoudi said.
The move from Midtown to Tribeca doubles the studio’s square footage and puts Onassis ONX at the center of downtown New York’s dynamic contemporary scene. There Goes Nikki | Photographer: Mikhail Mishin
In Athens, the focus remains educational, with ongoing incubation programs such as ONX Futures and the annual A.I. Summer School each July. The Athens space will also present an ONX showcase in May and contribute to the foundation’s broader cultural calendar, which includes the Borderline Festival in April. The foundation also produces Plásmata, its large-scale digital art biennial in Pedion tou Areos Park. Held every two years, it is one of the few outdoor digital art biennials in the world, combining large-scale installations, performances and music with works by both Greek and international artists, including recent participants such as John Fitzgerald, Jiabao Li, William Kentridge and Johan Bourgeois.
Ultimately, ONX’s mission—across both New York and Athens—is to expand the understanding of art and technology not only as mediums but as frameworks for examining how we live today. As traditional genres continue to dissolve, the foundation remains committed to supporting artists working at these frontiers, where art and life increasingly intersect.
“TECHNE: Homecoming” is presented as part of Under the Radar Festival, which this year includes two Onassis ONX performances and one mainstage production commissioned and produced by Onassis Stegi. Photo by Ed Lefkowicz
WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. airlines canceled more than 2,700 flights on Sunday as Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy warned that air traffic across the nation would “slow to a trickle” if the federal government shutdown lingered into the busy Thanksgiving travel holiday season.
The slowdown at 40 of the nation’s busiest airports began to cause more widespread disruptions in its third day. The FAA last week ordered flight cuts at the nation’s busiest airports as some air traffic controllers, who have gone unpaid for nearly a month, have stopped showing up for work.
In addition, nearly 10,000 flight delays were reported on Sunday alone, according to FlightAware, a website that tracks air travel disruptions. More than 1,000 flights were canceled Friday, and more than 1,500 on Saturday.
The FAA reductions started Friday at 4% and were set to increase to 10% by Nov. 14. They are in effect from 6 a.m. to 10 p.m. local time and will impact all commercial airlines.
Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport in Atlanta stood to have the most cancellations Sunday, followed by Chicago O’Hare International, where wintry weather threatened. In Georgia, weather could also be a factor, with the National Weather Service office in Atlanta warning of widespread freezing conditions through Tuesday.
Traveler Kyra March finally arrived at Hartsfield-Jackson on Sunday after a series of postponements the day before.
Stay up to date with the news and the best of AP by following our WhatsApp channel.
“I was coming from Tampa and that flight got delayed, delayed, delayed. Then it was canceled and then rebooked. And so I had to stay at a hotel and then came back this morning,” she said.
The FAA said staffing shortages at Newark and LaGuardia Airport in New York were leading to average departure delays of about 75 minutes.
Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County Airport in Michigan was mostly empty Sunday morning, with minimal wait times at security checkpoints as delays and cancellations filled the departures and arrivals boards.
Earlier Sunday, Duffy warned that U.S. air traffic could decline significantly if the shutdown persisted. He said additional flight cuts — perhaps up to 20% — might be needed, particularly if controllers receive no pay for a second straight pay period.
“More controllers aren’t coming to work day by day, the further they go without a paycheck,” Duffy told “Fox News Sunday.”
“As I look two weeks out, as we get closer to Thanksgiving travel, I think what’s going to happen is you’re going to have air travel slow to a trickle as everyone wants to travel to see their families,” Duffy said.
With “very few” controllers working, “you’ll have a few flights taking off and landing” and thousands of cancellations, he said.
“You’re going to have massive disruption. I think a lot of angry Americans. I think we have to be honest about where this is going. It doesn’t get better,” Duffy said. “It gets worse until these air traffic controllers are going to be paid.”
The government has been short of air traffic controllers for years, and multiple presidential administrations have tried to convince retirement-age controllers to remain on the job. Duffy said the shutdown has exacerbated the problem, leading some air traffic controllers to speed up their retirements.
“Up to 15 or 20 a day are retiring,” Duffy said on CNN.
Duffy said Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth texted him with an offer to lend military air traffic controllers, but it’s unclear whether the staff is certified to work on civilian systems.
Duffy denied Democratic charges that the flight cancellations are a political tactic, saying they were necessary due to increasing near-misses from an overtaxed system.
“I needed to take action to keep people safe,” Duffy said. “I’m doing what I can in a mess that Democrats have put in my lap.”
Airlines for America, a trade group representing U.S. carriers, said air traffic control staffing-related delays exceeded 3,000 hours on Saturday, the highest of the shutdown, and that staffing problems contributed to 71% of delay time.
From Oct. 1 to Nov. 7, controller shortages have disrupted more than 4 million passengers on U.S. carriers, according to Airlines for America.
DOC NYC, America’s largest festival for documentaries, celebrates its 16th edition beginning Wednesday, with screenings held at venues in New York City through Nov. 20, and continuing online through Nov. 30 on demand.
The festival offers more than 115 feature-length documentaries — many making their world, U.S. or New York City premieres — as well as short films. Films span a wide range of topics: immigration, family histories, dating, gun rights, the arts, cryptocurrency, the environment, fighting for the American Dream, and more. Subjects include Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Trump litigant E. Jean Carroll, actors Oscar Isaac and Alec Baldwin, Julian Assange, and Elon Musk’s Space X. There’s even an inside look at the industry of selling Christmas trees.
The festival also hosts the DOC NYC Pro Conference, examining storytelling, filmmaking techniques, funding, distribution and publicity.
Gala presentations
Wednesday’s opening night film is “Whistle,” which is set in one of the quirkiest of public competitions: the Masters of Musical Whistling festival in Hollywood. The closing night film is “Ask E. Jean,” a portrait of the writer and talk show host E. Jean Carroll, whose lawsuits against Donald Trump led to one of the most highly-charged outcomes of the #MeToo movement.
The centerpiece films are “The Merchants of Joy,” a look at the competition that arises among sellers of Christmas trees on New York street corners; and “Steal This Story, Please!,” about the indefatigable independent journalist Amy Goodman, host of “Democracy Now!”
Other special presentations include Rory Kennedy’s “The Trial of Alec Baldwin,” about the prosecution of the actor over the on-set shooting death of “Rust” cinematographer Halyna Hutchins; “Benita”, a tribute to experimental documentary filmmaker Benita Raphan, who died by suicide during the pandemic lockdown; and “Black Is Beautiful: The Kwame Brathwaite Story,” which honors the photographer, artist and activist.
The social history of the Jewish community in the resorts of New York’s Catskills is remembered in the nostalgic “We Met at Grossinger’s.”
Check out more of the featured offerings below.
Screenings will be held at the IFC Center, SVA Theatre, and Village East by Angelika cinemas in Manhattan. Click on the links to individual films to find out about attending screenings, or to buy tickets to stream online. General ticket and pass information may be found here.
Featured at the 2025 DOC NYC documentary festival (clockwise from top left): “Zelensky”; “The Balloonists”; “Ask E. Jean”; “Love, Joy & Power: Tools For Liberation”; “The Trial of Alec Baldwin”; “Farruquito: A Flamenco Dynasty”; “Reggae Girlz”; and “Shifting Baselines.”
DOC NYC
U.S. competition
Among the festival’s world premieres are “Santacon,” about a raucous annual celebration of St. Nick. In “Sons of Detroit,” filmmaker Jeremy Xido reunites with his past in Motor City, and with the African-American family that “adopted” him and his family years earlier.
“Thoughts & Prayers” reflects on the sadly familiar reaction to school shootings. “The Voyage Out” follows a hunter, a tech entrepreneur and a survival expert on an expedition into the remote wilderness in search of elk.
Filmmaker Khoa Ha excavates the career and legacy of her grandfather, Vietnamese musician Y Vân, in “Y Vãn: The Lost Sounds of Saigon.” Colette Ghunim examines generational trauma deriving from the immigrant experiences of her Mexican mother and Palestinian father in “Traces of Home.” In “Wayumi,” a young man reconnects with his mother, who left him when he was a child in order to return home – to an Amazonian tribe.
Also showing is the North American premiere of “Mata Hari,” about the production of David Carradine’s unfinished film based on the life of the legendary spy, in which he cast his own teenage daughter, Calista, and shot over the span of 15 years.
More American stories
In “The A List: 15 Stories From Asian and Pacific Diasporas,” Connie Chung, Sen. Tammy Duckworth, Kumail Nanjiani, Amanda Nguyen, Sandra Oh, and others reflect on identity in America amid rising racism. Resistance to authorities over women’s reproductive rights and autonomy comes from an unexpected source — the Amish and Mennonite communities of upstate New York — in “Arrest the Midwife.”
In “Beyond,” incarcerated men at Sing Sing Correctional Facility in New York engage in the Beyond the Block public speaking symposium, to examine ideas, dreams and hopes. Creede, a small historic mining town in Colorado, becomes a manifestation of liberal and conservative cultural clashes in “Creede U.S.A.”
In “Saving Etting Street,” an innovative program to rehabilitate rowhouses in a depressed Baltimore neighborhood teaches construction skills and provides self-actualization for women to revitalize their community. The grassroots organization Black Votes Matter mobilizes ahead of the 2020 election in “Love, Joy & Power: Tools For Liberation.”
Director Tadashi Nakamura looks back on the life of his father, filmmaker and activist Robert A. Nakamura, and the legacy he left his family, in “Third Act.” In “What We Inherit,” Kacim Steets Azouz, an Algerian-American filmmaker raised in Canada, explores his personal history when he discoveries his ancestors owned enslaved people, and meets the descendants of those held captive.
Will the American team take top prize at the Mondial du Fromage cheesemongering competition in France? “The Big Cheese” captures the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat.
International stories
“Zelensky,” by Yves Jeuland and Lisa Vapné, examines the life of the Ukrainian TV personality who became president and a defender of freedom against Russian aggression.
A Mexican insurance adjuster trying to navigate a corrupt world seeks refuge in the art world, and is disillusioned by what he finds, in “Loss Adjustment.” To support her family, a Georgian mother turns to surrogacy in “9-Month Contract.” An activist seeks to organize poppy farmers in eastern Rajasthan in “I, Poppy.”
Acclaimed conductor Gustavo Dudamel stages a performance of Beethoven’s “Fidelio” featuring a choir of deaf Venezuelan performers, in “El Canto de las Manos.”
Brazilian director João Vieira Torres traces a history of violence against the women in his family in “Aurora.” Chechens form a community-in-exile in nearby Georgia in “Imago.” Globalization and assimilation threaten the traditions of northern Nepal in “The Lama’s Son.”
“Fight the Power”
“Fight the Power” is a sidebar devoted to stories of activism. Among them: “The Age of Water,” in which women in Mexico fight for justice after radioactive materials are found in their water supply. Suporters of the American Indian Movement activist convicted of murder seek his release in “Free Leonard Peltier.”“Misan Harriman: Shoot the People” profiles a photographer of street protests.
Radical female filmmakers question cinematic violence and the art form’s depiction of women in “No Mercy.” In “The Six Billion Dollar Man,” director Eugene Jarecki (“Why We Fight”) chronicles the odyssey of Julian Assange, from the birth of Wikileaks, to Assange’s confinement and release. “True North” examines anti-Black racism in Canada as it documents a 1969 student uprising at Concordia University in Montreal.
“WTO/99” uses archival footage to capture the anti-globalization sentiments in 1999, as myriad interests — from labor groups, environmentalists and human rights organizations to anarchists — were brought together to the Seattle site of a World Trade Organization conference, pitting 40,000 protesters against the National Guard.
Stories of resilience
As climate change affects Louisiana’s rapidly-vanishing Isle de Jean Charles, two teenagers and their uncle face forced government resettlement, in “Lowland Kids.”“Flophouse America” examines the struggles of a young boy’s family reduced by poverty to living in a low-rent motel.
Manizha Bakhtari, Afghanistan’s female ambassador to Austria, confronts a moral dilemma when the Taliban comes to power in “The Last Ambassador.” An Iraqi family returning to Mosul sifts through the ruins of their ancestral home destroyed by ISIS in “The Lions By the River Tigris.” Six Palestinian comedians build a stand-up comedy scene in the midst of occupation and violence in “Palestine Comedy Club.”
Central American mothers search for their disappeared children in “A Place of Absence.” A Zimbabwean immigrant in Botswana confronts generational trauma and historical violence in “Matabeleland.”
Exposés
Films that document investigations into some of the most challenging stories of our time include Ben McKenzie’s “Everyone Is Lying to You for Money,” about the Wild West world of crypto. “The Pink Pill: Sex, Drugs & Who Has Control” examines double standards in the medical world when it comes to pharmaceuticals geared towards female sexual health.
“Nuns vs. the Vatican” details the efforts of survivors of abuse and their advocates to expose what they deem the Catholic Church’s betrayal. Bao Nguyen’s “The Stringer” raises questions about the authorship of one of the most harrowing and consequential images ever taken, of a little girl burned by napalm during the Vietnam War.
“The Secrets We Bury” explores the 1960s disappearance of a Long Island man and its effect on his children. In “I Dreamed His Name,” Columbian filmmaker Ángela Carabalí investigates the disappearance of her father, a farmer and activist, when she was a child.
New York-centric
New York City is the subject of a selection of films celebrating the Big Apple’s history, culture and communities.
The works of the ’70s avant-garde theatrical troupe Theater of the Ridiculous are recaptured in “Museum of the Night.” Latina trailblazing actress, Emmy-winning writer and Bronx native Sonia Manzano (who played Maria on “Sesame Street”) shares her journey in “Street Smart: Lessons From a TV Icon.”
When COVID-19 lockdowns cancelled Lincoln Center’s production of “The Nutcracker,” unemployed New York City Ballet artists put on their own pandemic-friendly show in the Hudson Valley. “The Nutcracker at Wethersfield” documents their innovative solution to lighting a dark time.
The intimate “King Hamlet” follows a year in the life of actor Oscar Isaac, who experiences tectonic shifts in his family life all while preparing for a stage production of Hamlet.” Directed by Isaac’s partner Elvira Lind.
In the 1950s three female artists banded together and bought a house in New York City. “Artists in Residence” reflects on their pursuit of art outside traditional female social bounds. “My Sunnyside” is a portrait of the relationship between a trans man and a trans woman, whose plans for marriage and children flip gender expectations.
The festival will also feature a 20th-anniversary screening of the classic 2005 documentary “Mad Hot Ballroom,” in which New York City fifth-graders competed in ballroom dancing.
Portraits
Avant-garde stage director Dimitris Papaioannou is the focus of “Bull’s Heart.”“Cast of Shadows” looks at the legacy of pioneering documentary filmmaker Robert Flaherty (“Nanook of the North”) and the overlooked contributions of his wife, Frances Flaherty. The dancer Farruquito and his family have raised the art of traditional flamenco in “Farruquito: A Flamenco Dynasty”
In the years when Ghana emerged from under British colonial rule, filmmaker Chris Hesse served as the personal cinematographer of Ghanaian leader Kwame Nkrumah and the country’s first president, Kwame Nkrumah. He explores his archive of the young nation’s history in “The Eyes of Ghana.”
Stories of striving
In the aftermath of China’s one-child policy, dating coaches help men of marriage age eager to find mates despite a shortage of eligible females in “The Dating Game.” In “Paul,” the film’s subject has less difficulty finding dominant mistresses as he channels his mental health struggles into domestic service.
Filmmaker Nadia Louis-Desmarchais, the daughter of a Haitian mother and adopted by a White family in Quebec, explores race and identity in “A Thousand Colors.”
“Always” is a portrait of an aspiring young poet in China, while “The Gas Station Attendant” is filmmaker Karla Murthy’s memorial to her father, an immigrant who pursued the American Dream. “Siren: The Voices of Shelley Beattie” is a portrait of the deaf bodybuilder and her battle against trauma and alienation.
Music
The festival “Sonic Cinema” sidebar features several world premieres. In “A Free Daughter of Free Kyrgyzstan,” a young singer, Zere Asylbek, defies death threats as she promotes her provocative music videos in a traditionally patriarchal society.
“Fugs Film!” looks back at the ’60s New York City underground rock band, while the world of children’s music is celebrated in “Happy and You Know It.”
The Sunset Marquis was, in the 1970s and ’80s, the epicenter for rock ‘n’ roll icons in L.A. Many of them, from Ringo Starr, Cyndi Lauper and Sharon Osbourne to Dave Grohl and Bruce Springsteen, pay tribute in “If These Walls Could Rock.”
Composer and virtuoso clarinetist Kinan Azmeh talks about displacement from his native Syria and the role of art in a world divided by war in “Half Moon.”
The environment
John Lipscomb, a steward of the Hudson River, reflects on a life fighting pollution on the New York waterway in “The Keeper.” Access to nature and right-of-way in the United Kingdom is the fight maintained between activists and landowners in “Our Land.”
Solar geoengineering — a hot topic in the quest to cool a heating planet — is the theme of “Plan C for Civilization,” while “The Garden of Maria” chronicles the spiritual journey of an Indigenous woman who reclaims her ancestral land in Brazil and transforms it into a forest.
Sports
In “Kings of Venice,” paddle tennis players try to defend their Venice Beach turf from an invasion of pickleball players. Jamaica’s soccer team, with their sights set on the 2023 Women’s World Cup, are the underdogs in “Reggae Girlz.”
“The Balloonists” follows the 1999 attempt by Swiss adventurer Bvertrand Piccard and British navigator Brian Jones to become the first to circumnavigate the globe in a hot-air balloon, while in “3,000KM By Bike,” BMX champion Iñaki Mazza traverses a route from Buenos Aires to Tierra del Fuego.
Kaleidoscope
A competition category celebrating “new documentary visions” features “The Foul-Mouthed Granny,” a humorous portrait of filmmaker Seung-pyo Hong’s sharp-tongued mother; “Lost for Words,” about the connection between language and imagination; “Omega Wants to Dance” speculates about an AI system seeking self-expression through art as it studies humanity’s timeless passion for dance; “Shifting Baselines,” about how the Texas town of Boca Chica has been upended by the expansion of Elon Musk’s Space X; and “Unanimal,” about the relationship between humans and animals.
DOC NYC runs from Nov. 12-20 in theaters, and through Nov. 30 online.
NEW YORK (AP) — Cleveland Guardians pitchers Emmanuel Clase and Luis Ortiz have been indicted on charges they took bribes from sports bettors to throw certain types of pitches, including tossing balls in the dirt instead of strikes, to ensure successful bets.
According to the indictment unsealed Sunday in federal court in Brooklyn, the highly paid hurlers took several thousand dollars in payoffs to help two unnamed gamblers from their native Dominican Republic win at least $460,000 on in-game prop bets on the speed and outcome of certain pitches.
Ortiz, 26, was arrested Sunday by the FBI at Boston Logan International Airport. He is expected to appear in federal court in Boston on Monday. Clase, 27, was not in custody, officials said.
Ortiz and Clase “betrayed America’s pastime,” U.S. Attorney Joseph Nocella Jr. said. “Integrity, honesty and fair play are part of the DNA of professional sports. When corruption infiltrates the sport, it brings disgrace not only to the participants but damages the public trust in an institution that is vital and dear to all of us.”
Ortiz’s lawyer, Chris Georgalis, said in a statement that his client was innocent and “has never, and would never, improperly influence a game — not for anyone and not for anything.”
Georgalis said Ortiz’s defense team had previously documented for prosecutors that the payments and money transfers between him and individuals in the Dominican Republic were for lawful activities.
“There is no credible evidence Luis knowingly did anything other than try to win games, with every pitch and in every inning. Luis looks forward to fighting these charges in court,” Georgalis said.
A lawyer for Clase, Michael J. Ferrara, said his client “has devoted his life to baseball and doing everything in his power to help his team win. Emmanuel is innocent of all charges and looks forward to clearing his name in court.”
The Major League Baseball Players Association had no comment.
Unusual betting activity prompted investigation
MLB said it contacted federal law enforcement when it began investigating unusual betting activity and has fully cooperated with authorities. “We are aware of the indictment and today’s arrest, and our investigation is ongoing,” a league statement said.
In a statement, the Guardians said: “We are aware of the recent law enforcement action. We will continue to fully cooperate with both law enforcement and Major League Baseball as their investigations continue.”
Clase and Ortiz are both charged with wire fraud conspiracy, honest services wire fraud conspiracy, money laundering conspiracy and conspiracy to influence sporting contests by bribery. The top charges carry a potential punishment of up to 20 years in prison.
In one example cited in the indictment, Clase allegedly invited a bettor to a game against the Boston Red Sox in April and spoke with him by phone just before taking the mound. Four minutes later, the indictment said, the bettor and his associates won $11,000 on a wager that Clase would toss a certain pitch slower than 97.95 mph (157.63 kph).
In May, the indictment said, Clase agreed to throw a ball at a certain point in a game against the Los Angeles Dodgers, but the batter swung, resulting in a strike, costing the bettors $4,000 in wagers. After the game, which the Guardians won, one of the bettors sent Clase a text message with an image of a man hanging himself with toilet paper, the indictment said. Clase responded with an image of a sad puppy dog face, according to the indictment.
Clase, a three-time All-Star and two-time American League Reliever of the Year, had a $4.5 million salary in 2025, the fourth season of a $20 million, five-year contract. The three-time AL save leader began providing the bettors with information about his pitches in 2023 but didn’t ask for payoffs until this year, prosecutors said.
The indictment cited specific pitches Clase allegedly rigged — all of them first pitches when he entered to start an inning: a 98.5 mph (158.5 kph) cutter low and inside to the New York Mets’ Starling Marte on May 19, 2023; an 89.4 mph (143.8 kph) slider to Minnesota’s Ryan Jeffers that bounced well short of home plate on June 3, 2023; an 89.4 mph (143.8 kph) slider to Kansas City’s Bobby Witt Jr. that bounced on April 12; a 99.1 mph (159.5 kph) cutter in the dirt to Philadelphia’s Max Kepler on May 11; a bounced 89.1 mph (143.4) slider to Milwaukee’s Jake Bauers on May 13; and a bounced 87.5 mph (140.8 kph) slider to Cincinnati’s Santiago Espinal on May 17.
Prosecutors said Ortiz, who had a $782,600 salary this year, got in on the scheme in June and is accused of rigging pitches in games against the Seattle Mariners and the St. Louis Cardinals.
Ortiz was cited for bouncing a first-pitch 86.7 mph (139.5 kph) slider to Seattle’s Randy Arozarena starting the second inning on June 15 and bouncing a first-pitch 86.7 mph (139.5 kph) slider to St. Louis’ Pedro Pagés that went to the backstop opening the third inning on June 27.
Dozens of pro athletes have been charged in gambling sweeps
The charges are the latest bombshell developments in a federal crackdown on betting in professional sports.
Last month, more than 30 people, including prominent basketball figures such as Portland Trail Blazers head coach and Basketball Hall of Famer Chauncey Billups and Miami Heat guard Terry Rozier, were arrested in a gambling sweep that rocked the NBA.
Sports betting scandals have long been a concern, but a May 2018 U.S. Supreme Court ruling led to a wave of gambling incidents involving athletes and officials. The ruling struck down a federal ban on sports betting in most states and opened the doors for online sportsbooks to take a prominent space in the sports ecosystem.
Major League Baseball suspended five players in June 2024, including a lifetime ban for San Diego infielder Tucupita Marcano for allegedly placing 387 baseball bets with a legal sportsbook totaling more than $150,000.
___
This story was first published on Nov. 9. It was updated on Nov. 11 to correct that, according to an indictment, a bettor sent Clase an image of a man hanging himself with toilet paper. Clase didn’t send that image to the bettor.
___
Associated Press reporters Eric Tucker in Washington and Ron Blum in New York contributed to this report.
James D. Watson, whose co-discovery of the twisted-ladder structure of DNA in 1953 helped light the long fuse on a revolution in medicine, crimefighting, genealogy and ethics, has died. He was 97.
The breakthrough — made when the brash, Chicago-born Watson was just 24 — turned him into a hallowed figure in the world of science for decades. But near the end of his life, he faced condemnation and professional censure for offensive remarks, including saying Black people are less intelligent than white people.
Watson shared a 1962 Nobel Prize with Francis Crick and Maurice Wilkins for discovering that deoxyribonucleic acid, or DNA, is a double helix, consisting of two strands that coil around each other to create what resembles a long, gently twisting ladder.
That realization was a breakthrough. It instantly suggested how hereditary information is stored and how cells duplicate their DNA when they divide. The duplication begins with the two strands of DNA pulling apart like a zipper.
Even among non-scientists, the double helix would become an instantly recognized symbol of science, showing up in such places as the work of Salvador Dali and a British postage stamp.
The discovery helped open the door to more recent developments such as tinkering with the genetic makeup of living things, treating disease by inserting genes into patients, identifying human remains and criminal suspects from DNA samples, and tracing family trees and ancient human ancestors. But it has also raised a host of ethical questions, such as whether we should be altering the body’s blueprint for cosmetic reasons or in a way that is transmitted to a person’s offspring.
“Francis Crick and I made the discovery of the century, that was pretty clear,” Watson once said. He later wrote: “There was no way we could have foreseen the explosive impact of the double helix on science and society.”
Watson never made another lab finding that big. But in the decades that followed, he wrote influential textbooks and a best-selling memoir and helped guide the project to map the human genome. He picked out bright young scientists and helped them. And he used his prestige and contacts to influence science policy.
Watson died in hospice care after a brief illness, his son said Friday. His former research lab confirmed he passed away a day earlier.
“He never stopped fighting for people who were suffering from disease,” Duncan Watson said of his father.
Watson’s initial motivation for supporting the gene project was personal: His son Rufus had been hospitalized with a possible diagnosis of schizophrenia, and Watson figured that knowing the complete makeup of DNA would be crucial for understanding that disease — maybe in time to help his son.
He gained unwelcome attention in 2007, when the Sunday Times Magazine of London quoted him as saying he was “inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa” because “all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours — where all the testing says not really.” He said that while he hopes everyone is equal, “people who have to deal with Black employees find this is not true.”
He apologized, but after an international furor he was suspended from his job as chancellor of the prestigious Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York. He retired a week later. He had served in various leadership jobs there for nearly 40 years.
In a television documentary that aired in early 2019, Watson was asked if his views had changed. “No, not at all,” he said. In response, the Cold Spring Harbor lab revoked several honorary titles it had given Watson, saying his statements were “reprehensible” and “unsupported by science.”
Watson’s combination of scientific achievement and controversial remarks created a complicated legacy.
He has shown “a regrettable tendency toward inflammatory and offensive remarks, especially late in his career,” Dr. Francis Collins, then-director of the National Institutes of Health, said in 2019. “His outbursts, particularly when they reflected on race, were both profoundly misguided and deeply hurtful. I only wish that Jim’s views on society and humanity could have matched his brilliant scientific insights.”
Long before that, Watson scorned political correctness.
“A goodly number of scientists are not only narrow-minded and dull, but also just stupid,” he wrote in “The Double Helix,” his bestselling 1968 book about the DNA discovery.
For success in science, he wrote: “You have to avoid dumb people. … Never do anything that bores you. … If you can’t stand to be with your real peers (including scientific competitors) get out of science. … To make a huge success, a scientist has to be prepared to get into deep trouble.”
It was in the fall of 1951 that the tall, skinny Watson — already the holder of a Ph.D. at 23 — arrived at Britain’s Cambridge University, where he met Crick. As a Watson biographer later said, “It was intellectual love at first sight.”
Crick himself wrote that the partnership thrived in part because the two men shared “a certain youthful arrogance, a ruthlessness, and an impatience with sloppy thinking.”
Together they sought to tackle the structure of DNA, aided by X-ray research by colleague Rosalind Franklin and her graduate student Raymond Gosling. Watson was later criticized for a disparaging portrayal of Franklin in “The Double Helix,” and today she is considered a prominent example of a female scientist whose contributions were overlooked. (She died in 1958.)
Watson and Crick built Tinker Toy-like models to work out the molecule’s structure. One Saturday morning in 1953, after fiddling with bits of cardboard he had carefully cut to represent fragments of the DNA molecule, Watson suddenly realized how these pieces could form the “rungs” of a double helix ladder.
His first reaction: “It’s so beautiful.”
Figuring out the double helix “goes down as one of the three most important discoveries in the history of biology,” alongside Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution through natural selection and Gregor Mendel’s fundamental laws of genetics, said Cold Spring Harbor lab’s president, Bruce Stillman.
Following the discovery, Watson spent two years at the California Institute of Technology, then joined the faculty at Harvard in 1955. Before leaving Harvard in 1976, he essentially created the university’s program for molecular biology, scientist Mark Ptashne recalled in a 1999 interview.
Watson became director of the Cold Spring Harbor lab in 1968, its president in 1994 and its chancellor 10 years later. He made the lab on Long Island an educational center for scientists and non-scientists, focused research on cancer, instilled a sense of excitement and raised huge amounts of money.
He transformed the lab into a “vibrant, incredibly important center,” Ptashne said. It was “one of the miracles of Jim: a more disheveled, less smooth, less typically ingratiating person you could hardly imagine.”
From 1988 to 1992, Watson directed the federal effort to identify the detailed makeup of human DNA. He created the project’s huge investment in ethics research by simply announcing it at a news conference. He later said it was “probably the wisest thing I’ve done over the past decade.”
Watson was on hand at the White House in 2000 for the announcement that the federal project had completed an important goal: a “working draft” of the human genome, basically a road map to an estimated 90 percent of human genes.
Researchers presented Watson with the detailed description of his own genome in 2007. It was one of the first genomes of an individual to be deciphered.
Watson knew that genetic research could produce findings that make some people uncomfortable. In 2007, he wrote that when scientists identify genetic variants that predispose people to crime or significantly affect intelligence, the findings should be publicized rather than squelched out of political correctness.
James Dewey Watson was born in Chicago on April 6, 1928, into “a family that believed in books, birds and the Democratic Party,” as he put it. From his birdwatcher father he inherited an interest in ornithology and a distaste for explanations that didn’t rely on reason or science.
Watson was a precocious child who loved to read, studying books like “The World Telegraph Almanac of Facts.” He entered the University of Chicago on a scholarship at 15, graduated at 19 and earned his doctorate in zoology at Indiana University three years later.
He got interested in genetics at age 17 when he read a book that said genes were the essence of life.
“I thought, ‘Well, if the gene is the essence of life, I want to know more about it,’” he later recalled. “And that was fateful because, otherwise, I would have spent my life studying birds and no one would have heard of me.”
At the time, it wasn’t clear that genes were made of DNA, at least for any life form other than bacteria. But Watson went to Europe to study the biochemistry of nucleic acids like DNA. At a conference in Italy, Watson saw an X-ray image that indicated DNA could form crystals.
“Suddenly I was excited about chemistry,” Watson wrote in “The Double Helix.” If genes could crystallize, “they must have a regular structure that could be solved in a straightforward fashion.”
“A potential key to the secret of life was impossible to push out of my mind,” he recalled.
In the decades after his discovery, Watson’s fame persisted. Apple Computer used his picture in an ad campaign. At conferences, graduate students who weren’t even born when he worked at Cambridge nudged each other and whispered, “There’s Watson. There’s Watson.” They got him to autograph napkins or copies of “The Double Helix.”
A reporter asked him 2018 if any building at the Cold Spring Harbor lab was named after him. No, Watson replied, “I don’t need a building named after me. I have the double helix.”
His 2007 remarks on race were not the first time Watson struck a nerve with his comments. In a speech in 2000, he suggested that sex drive is related to skin color. And earlier he told a newspaper that if a gene governing sexuality were found and could be detected in the womb, a woman who didn’t want to have a gay child should be allowed to have an abortion.
More than a half-century after winning the Nobel, Watson put the gold medal up for auction in 2014. The winning bid, $4.7 million, set a record for a Nobel. The medal was eventually returned to Watson.
Both of Watson’s Nobel co-winners, Crick and Wilkins, died in 2004.
___
Ritter is a retired AP science writer. AP science writers Christina Larson in Washington and Adithi Ramakrishnan in New York contributed to this report.
___
The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
WASHINGTON — Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York is facing mounting pressure to step aside as leader of the Senate Democratic caucus after eight members voted against his wishes Sunday, joining Republicans in a bid to end the longest government shutdown in history.
The vote was just the latest development in a troubling week for the 74-year-old Schumer, who, after eight years as the top Senate Democrat, has faced growing calls from within the party to make way for a new generation of leadership.
Elections last week revealed the emergence of a growing progressive movement in Schumer’s hometown, where the longtime senator declined to endorse Zohran Mamdani in his successful bid for New York City mayor.
National progressive organizations on Monday urged him to step down and have encouraged a popular congresswoman in the state, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, to run for his Senate seat in 2029. Polls show Schumer faces the lowest approval numbers of any national leader in Washington.
His leadership troubles come on the heels of Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco), the first female speaker of the House, announcing her retirement, a decision that generated praise across the political aisle last week reflecting on her shrewd ability to control a sprawling House Democratic caucus during high-stakes votes.
“Schumer is no longer effective and should be replaced,” Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Fremont) wrote on X after the Sunday night vote. “If you can’t lead the fight to stop healthcare premiums from skyrocketing for Americans, what will you fight for?”
Hakeem Jeffries of New York, the top Democrat in the House, told reporters Monday that he strongly disapproved of the emerging deal in the Senate, where seven Democrats and one independent who caucuses with the party voted to proceed with government funding.
For seven weeks, House and Senate Democrats said they would not vote for legislation to reopen the government unless they were able to secure an extension of health insurance subsidies. But the deal reached in the Senate indicated how some Democrats gave in on that bottom-line negotiation.
Schumer reiterated his disapproval of the spending deal in a speech from the floor Monday. He criticized the compromise as a “Republican bill” even though members of his party helped broker the deal.
“Republicans now own this healthcare crisis,” Schumer said. “They knew it was coming. We wanted to fix it and they said no, and now it is on them.”
As Schumer delivered his speech, Jeffries spoke to reporters at a news conference on the other side of the Capitol.
Asked whether he thought Schumer remained an effective leader and should remain in his position, Jeffries replied, “yes and yes.”
When pressed to elaborate, Jeffries said “the overwhelming majority of Senate Democrats led by Chuck Schumer waged a valiant fight,” and turned his disapproval to the Democrats who voted with Republicans on the bill.
“I am not going to explain what a handful of Senate Democrats have decided to do,” Jeffries said. “That’s their explanation to offer to the American people.”
Now that the effort turns to the House, Jeffries said Democrats in the chamber will try to block a deal that does not address healthcare costs.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom offered harsh criticism of Senate Democrats on Monday, who he said had “rolled over.”
After speaking at the Milken Institute’s Global Investors’ Symposium in São Paulo, Newsom told The Times that the move blunted the momentum his party was experiencing following a string of victories last week.
“You don’t start something unless you’re going to finish,” said Newsom, who next heads to the climate summit known as COP30 in Belém, Brazil. “Why the hell did we do this in the first place? We could have gotten this deal in 20 minutes. … Honestly, I don’t know what’s going on with my party.”
Zach Wahls, a Democratic candidate for Senate in Iowa, said Schumer had “failed to lead this party in one of its most critical moments,” calling for him to step down. And Rep. Seth Moulton, a Democrat from Massachusetts, wrote that an effective leader would have been able to keep party members in line.
“Tonight is another example of why we need new leadership,” Moulton wrote on X.
The eight members who voted to reopen the government — 15% of the Senate Democratic caucus — voted directly against Schumer, who voted against the measure.
Wahls speculated that the moderate members who voted with Republicans were privately given Schumer’s blessing to do so.
“The fact that he voted against this deal, while he clearly gave it his blessing in private, is a perfect illustration of why people no longer trust the Democratic Party,” Wahls said, “and as long as he stays in a leadership role, it is going to be impossible for anybody — whether it’s in Iowa or any other swing state — to win a majority.”
Times staff writers Wilner and Ceballos reported from Washington, and Gutierrez contributed from São Paulo.
