Pulitzer Prize-Winning Foreign Correspondent Dies at 81

Two-time Pulitzer Prize–winning New York Times correspondent John F. Burns, one of the paper’s most celebrated foreign reporters, has died at 81. Burns died Thursday of pneumonia at a care facility in Cambridge, according to The New York Times. Born in Nottingham in 1944, Burns began his journalism career in 1971 at The Globe and Mail in Toronto, covering Beijing, China. He joined The New York Times in 1975 and spent the next four decades reporting from some of the world’s most dangerous conflict zones, including Bosnia, Afghanistan, and Iraq. He was once described at the Times as the “consummate Foreign Desk fireman,” for his reputation for quickly getting to breaking news across the world. Over the course of his career, he also served in bureaus across South Africa, the Soviet Union, India, Pakistan, and London. During his tenure at the Times, he earned two Pulitzer Prize awards—first in 1993 for coverage of the Bosnian conflict and again in 1997 for reporting from Taliban-controlled Afghanistan. He retired from the Times in 2015 with a career spanning 10 bureaus; his final assignment was covering the reburial of King Richard III. Burns is survived by his children, Jamie and Emily Scott-Long, from his first marriage, as well as a stepson and two sisters, Caroline and Bridget.

Prosecutors in Georgia dropped homicide charges against a teenager accused of fatally running over his teacher with his truck when a high school prank turned tragic. Jayden Wallace, 18, and a group of other students came to the Gainesville home of teacher and coach Jason Hughes, 40, to cover his property with toilet paper as part of an annual upperclassmen prank. Wallace struck Hughes with his truck after Hughes slipped and fell on the wet ground outside. Wallace, who viewed Hughes as a mentor, initially faced charges of vehicular homicide and reckless driving. The state then dropped the counts—a move supported by Hughes’ widow, Laura, who wanted to prevent “a separate tragedy... ruining the lives of these students.” Wallace’s attorney added that the charges were not appropriate because Wallace was not driving improperly at the time of Hughes’ death. “In the end, there was no crime—only an extremely sad and devastating accident,” defense attorney Graham McKinnon said. Though he is avoiding a potentially lengthy prison sentence, McKinnon said that “Jayden is still grieving deeply.” But that the teen “is determined to move forward eventually to live a life that would make Jason Hughes proud.” As for Hughes, his widow said he was “excited” to catch students playing pranks. His funeral is scheduled for March 14.

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Awards season’s biggest night is here: the Academy Awards will once again take place live from the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles. The ceremony will be broadcast live on ABC and streamed through ABC.com and Hulu (for Hulu subscribers, including those on the base plan), bringing together Hollywood’s biggest stars to celebrate the best films of the past year.

If you’re planning to tune in live, the broadcast begins at 7:00 p.m. EDT/ 4 p.m. PDT, with pre-show and red carpet coverage starting at 3:00 p.m. EDT/ 12 p.m. PDT. Cable subscribers can watch the ceremony live by logging into their account at ABC.com, but if you’ve cut the cord, you still have plenty of options for streaming the Oscars in real time. Several live TV streaming platforms carry ABC in their channel lineups, allowing viewers to watch the ceremony without a traditional cable subscription, including DirecTV and Sling TV.

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We like DirecTV because it is currently offering its MyNews Genre Pack for $34.99 per month (normally $39.99) for the first two months, which includes live access to ABC so you can stream the 2026 Oscars (valid only for new subscribers. Meanwhile, Sling TV’s Blue plan starts at $55/month. Just make sure ABC is available in your area before subscribing, since the network is only offered in select markets on Sling TV.

Whether you’re tuning in for the red carpet fashion, viral acceptance speeches, or to see which film takes home the coveted Best Picture trophy, there are plenty of ways to watch the Oscars live—with or without cable.

The escalating U.S. conflict with Iran is now spilling over into the world of Formula 1. Two highly anticipated Middle East races—the Bahrain Grand Prix and the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix—have been canceled amid growing regional instability, according to Sky News. The races had been scheduled for April 12 in Bahrain and April 19 in Saudi Arabia. But recent Iranian drone and missile attacks across the region—including strikes near Manama, where many F1 team personnel would have been staying—prompted officials to pull the plug on the events. Security concerns appear to have made the decision inevitable as the broader conflict shows no signs of cooling. During a briefing on Sunday, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, 45, warned that recent U.S. strikes were “just the beginning,” suggesting the fighting could stretch on. The abrupt cancellation came just days before a March 20 freight deadline for transporting equipment to Bahrain for the race weekend. With the two races scrapped, the 2026 F1 calendar shrinks from 24 to 22 events. The shakeup also leaves a five-week gap in the schedule before the next stop on the circuit, the Miami Grand Prix on May 3.

British actress Jane Lapotaire has died, aged 81, according to the Guardian. Her cause of death has not been announced. She is survived by her screenwriter son Rowan Joffe, 53, who she shared with ex-husband, movie director Roland Joffe. The actress got her TV break in the BBC series Marie Curie in 1977, before playing the title role in Pam Gems’ Edith Piaf musical Piaf in London’s West End in 1978, winning an Olivier Award. Two years later, Piaf moved to Broadway, where Lapotaire won a Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play, beating out Elizabeth Taylor. It was her only appearance on Broadway. In recent years, Lapotaire played Princess Irina Kuragin in the fifth season of Downton Abbey and Princess Alice of Battenberg, the mother of Prince Philip, in season three of royal drama The Crown. Her death was announced on Thursday by The Royal Shakespeare Company on Thursday, where she was an Honorary Associate Artist. “A truly brilliant actress, Jane joined the RSC in 1974 to play Viola in Twelfth Night,” the company said in a tribute. “A few years later, she took the title role in Piaf, winning Olivier and Tony Best Actress awards." In 2000, Lapotaire suffered a massive cerebral hemorrhage while preparing to teach a course on Shakespeare in Paris. She wrote about her harrowing recovery, which involved a month in the ICU, in the 2004 memoir Time Out of Mind. Last month, Lapotaire was made a CBE (Commander of the Order of the British Empire) for services to drama.

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Justice hurts sometimes. So do extremely spicy tacos. One German man has felt the sting of both after a federal judge dismissed his lawsuit against a Mexican restaurant in Times Square which he said failed to warn him of the spice level of its food. Faycal Manz stopped by Los Tacos No. 1 in October 2024, buying three tacos and a Diet Coke. After heaping a “hefty portion” of salsa on his dish, Manz was so overwhelmed by its heat that he suffered both physical and emotional distress. Food in Germany just doesn’t have the same kick, he said. His remedy to the trauma? Seek a $100,000 in federal court. That quest came to an end this week, as Judge Dale Ho excortiated his legal argument, ruling that Manz had failed to show that the restaurant had a duty to warn him of the spice levels of the salsa he added to the tacos. In a further shock to the tourist’s case, court documents reveal that a doctor had previously warned Manz to stay away from spicy foods. In addition, he never spoke to the fine folks at Los Tacos No. 1 about his emotional and physical turmoil. Case closed.

We’re starting to see a few miserly mea culpas emerging from the loose-knit collection of podcast influencers who went to bat for Trump in 2024: Joe Rogan is shaking his head in disbelief at the events unfolding in the Strait of Hormuz. Andrew Schulz is feeling “misled.” These guys—and many others like them—allowed themselves to be seduced by the lies for the clicks. Now they feel played. What frustrates me most about these podcasters is all of them seem to possess genuine curiosity about the world. But they’ve chosen to place their faith in the least credible people, because those people feed them a story they want to believe. And now that they’re seeing what they’ve wrought, they want our grace? Well, I’m inclined to give it to them. But it’ll require something beyond a rueful monologue about how “things got weird.” Admit that you were wrong not just about Trump, but about the epistemology that got you there. Admit that entertaining every crackpot theory doesn’t make you an iconoclast—it makes you a sucker. And do something radical for the podcast age: start telling their audiences the truth, even when it’s boring, even when it’s complicated, and even when it doesn’t get nearly as many clicks as the lie.

For more mic checks and stand-up commentary from Michael Ian Black, click through to Substack.

A black Fender Stratocaster played by Pink Floyd’s David Gilmour has smashed the record for the most expensive guitar sold at auction. The Strat, which Gilmour used to record Pink Floyd’s iconic albums such as Dark Side Of The Moon, Wish You Were Here, and The Wall, sold for $14.55 million during a frantic 21-minute bidding war at Christie’s in New York, reported The New York Times. The eye-watering sale price is more than double the previous record of $6 million for a guitar, the Martin D-18E acoustic-electric guitar that the Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain played during the “MTV Unplugged” performance in 1993. The guitar Cobain used in the music video for Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit” also sold for $6.9 million at Thursday’s auction, a record price for one of Cobain’s guitars. Gilmour’s black Fender Stratocaster, which he also frequently performed live with, was sold as part of a collection from billionaire Jim Irsay, the former owner of the Indianapolis Colts, who died last May at age 65. Irsay previously bought the black guitar in 2019 at Christie’s for just over $5 million.

HUNTR/X isn’t done protecting the world from demons just yet. A KPop Demon Hunters sequel is officially in the works after directors Maggie Kang and Chris Appelhans inked a multi-year writing and directing pact with Netflix. The first movie was Netflix’s most popular movie of all time, with more than 325 million views. No date for the sequel has been set. The Hollywood Reporter said that previous speculation of a 2029 release appeared unlikely, given how long it takes to produce an animated film. The movie is a favorite to win best animated feature and best original song—for the hit Golden—at the Oscars. “I feel immense pride as a Korean filmmaker that the audience wants more from this Korean story and our Korean characters. There’s so much more to this world we have built and I’m excited to show you. This is only the beginning,” Kang said in a statement, with Applehans adding that the film’s characters “are like family to us.” Bela Bajaria, Netflix’s chief content officer, said the directors “ignited a global fandom that crossed languages, generations, and genres.”

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Social media star and Sports Illustrated swimsuit model Livvy Dunne is starting off her acting career as a recurring character on Fox’s Baywatch reboot. The network announced on Thursday that Dunne, 23, will play Grace, “a highly enthusiastic junior lifeguard.” The former Louisiana State University gymnast announced last April that she had retired from the sport and had begun taking acting lessons. Among the main cast of the classic ‘90s series reboot are Stephen Amell, Jessica Belkin, Shay Mitchell, Brooks Nader, Thaddeus LaGrone, Hassie Harrison, Noah Beck, and David Chokachi. Amell stars as Hobie Buchannon, the son of David Hasselhoff’s character Mitch Buchannon from the original series, as he captains the Baywatch lifeguards alongside his daughter, Charlie Vale, played by Belkin. Dunne became the highest-earning female college athlete during her time at LSU with an NIL valuation of $4.1 million, and has over 15 million followers combined across her social media profiles. Last year, she graced a cover of the 2025 Sports Illustrated Swimsuit issue alongside actress Salma Hayek, Olympic gymnast Jordan Chiles, and model Lauren Chan.

Ricky Gervais’ partner of 44 years, Jane Fallon, revealed via Instagram that she’s been diagnosed with breast cancer. “About a month ago I was diagnosed with breast cancer - very early stage thankfully & the prognosis is excellent,” she writes in the caption. The opening image of the post is a selfie of Fallon with the words “Bit of news …” at the top and, below, “No one panic” in parentheses. The post also features photos of a stuffed bear in a doctor costume and her cat, Pickle, in a nurse’s outfit. Doctors initially detected cancer cells while conducting a routine mammogram in December 2025. “I had no symptoms but the brilliant radiographer spotted something iffy & sent me for further tests & eventually a biopsy,” she said. After that came another series of biopsies and an MRI. It’s been a difficult process for the author, adding, “My surgery is scheduled for the week after next and I just want to get it over with now.” Fallon, 65, is best known as an author, writing the bestselling books Getting Rid of Matthew and Faking Friends, among others. Fallon and Gervais, 64, have been a duo since 1982.