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Dec. 19 (UPI) — Mexican low-cost airlines Volaris and Viva Aerobus announced an agreement to create a new holding company through a merger of equals — a deal aimed at expanding low-fare air travel and strengthening Mexico’s air connectivity with the United States and Latin America.

The transaction will combine the parent companies of Volaris and Viva into a single entity, while each airline will continue to operate independently under its own brand, air operator certificate, leadership structure and route network.

Once the deal closes, shareholders of each company will hold 50% of the new group on a fully diluted basis. Viva shareholders will receive newly issued shares of Volaris’ holding company, while Volaris shareholders will retain their existing shares, according to DF SUD.

The boards of both airlines unanimously approved the transaction. The deal is subject to regulatory and shareholder approvals and is expected to close in 2026. Shares of the holding company will continue to trade on the Mexican Stock Exchange and the New York Stock Exchange.

The new group would become Mexico’s largest low-cost airline platform and a regional player with growing relevance for travelers seeking cheaper options across North America and Latin America.

Volaris shares jumped more than 20% after the announcement, driven by expectations of operational efficiencies and cost reductions.

Volaris is a publicly traded company backed by U.S.-based Indigo Partners, which also controls Frontier Airlines in the United States and JetSmart in Chile.

Viva Aerobus is privately held and controlled by Mexican transportation group IAMSA, led by businessman Roberto Alcantara Rojas, who will serve as chairman of the new holding company

Both airlines operate all-Airbus fleets and focus on a low-cost, point-to-point business model. Their main competitor in Mexico’s domestic market is Aeromexico, the country’s flag carrier.

The agreement comes amid a complex period for Mexican aviation and air relations with the United States. In October, the U.S. Department of Transportation rejected more than a dozen routes proposed by Mexican airlines, citing disputes over slot management at Mexico City’s main airport and the relocation of cargo operations to a more distant terminal.

In November, President Claudia Sheinbaum said Mexican airlines would give up some airport slots to U.S. competitors. U.S. airlines currently account for more than half of international passenger traffic between the two countries, while Mexican carriers represent less than 30%.

Industry analysts say the creation of the new holding could strengthen Mexico’s position in the regional market without, for now, triggering a full operational merger that could face stronger regulatory opposition.

Rams wide receiver Puka Nacua apologized for performing a gesture “antisemitic in nature” during a livestream, stating he originally had no idea it “perpetuated harmful stereotypes against Jewish people.”

“I deeply apologize to anyone who was offended by my actions as I do not stand for any form of racism, bigotry or hate of another group of people,” Nacua wrote in a post on Instagram.

Nacua made the gesture while appearing on a livestream with Adin Ross and N3on. The livestreamers suggested he perform the gesture the next time he celebrated after scoring a touchdown.

“There is no place in this world for Antisemitism as well as other forms of prejudice or hostility towards the Jewish people and people of any religion, ethnicity, or race,” the Rams said in a statement.

The NFL also released a statement: “The NFL strongly condemns all forms of discrimination and derogatory behavior directed towards any group or individual. The continuing rise of antisemitism must be addressed across the world, and the NFL will continue to stand with our partners in this fight. Hatred has no place in our sport or society.”

Nacua’s gesture came on the same livestream in which he also criticized NFL referees, calling them “the worst” and claiming many probably get a thrill making bad calls on national television during games.

A group of entertainment industry workers launched a new coalition that aims to advocate for the rights of creators amid the growing AI industry.

The group, called Creators Coalition on AI, was founded by 18 people, including writer-director Daniel Kwan, actors Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Natasha Lyonne and producer Janet Yang, former president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

Gordon-Levitt said the group is not limited to Hollywood luminaries and is open to all creators and the skilled workers around them, including podcasters, digital content creators and newsletter writers.

“We’re all frankly facing the same threat, not from generative AI as a technology, but from the unethical business practices a lot of the big AI companies are guilty of,” he said in a video posted on X on Tuesday. “The idea is that through public pressure, through collective action, through potentially litigation and eventually legislation, creators actually have a lot of power if we come together.

The coalition’s formation comes at a time when Hollywood has been grappling with the fast growth of artificial intelligence tools. Many artists have raised concerns about tools that have used their likenesses or work without their permission or compensation.

The tech industry has said that it should be able to train its AI models with content available online under the “fair use” doctrine, which allows for the limited reproduction of material without permission from the copyright holder.

Some studios have partnered with AI companies to use the tools in areas including marketing and visual effects. Last week, Walt Disney Co. signed a licensing deal with San Francisco-based ChatGPT maker OpenAI for its popular Disney characters such as Mickey Mouse and Yoda to be used in the startup’s text to video tool Sora.

Kwan told The Hollywood Reporter that when Disney and OpenAI’s deal was announced many people felt “completely blindsided.”

“On one hand, you can say that this is just a licensing deal for the characters and that’s not a big deal, and it won’t completely change the way our industry works,” Kwan told THR. “But for a lot of people, it symbolically shows a willingness to work with companies that have not been able to resolve or reconcile the problems.”

There has also been lawsuits filed against some AI companies. Earlier this year, Disney, Universal and Warner Bros. Discovery sued AI business Midjourney accusing it of copyright infringement.

The Creators Coalition on AI said it plans to convene an AI advisory committee “to establish shared standards, definitions, and best practices as well as ethical and artistic protections for if and when AI is used.” Some of the principles the group lists on its website include the importance of transparency, consent, control and compensation in the use of AI tools, sensitivity to potential job losses, guardrails against misuse and deepfakes and safeguarding humanity in the creative process.

“This is not a full rejection of AI,” the group said on its website. “The technology is here. This is a commitment to responsible, human-centered innovation.”

“This is not a dividing line between the tech industry and the entertainment industry, nor a line between labor and corporations,” the group said . “Instead, we are drawing a line between those who want to do this fast, and those who want to do this right.”

The idea for the coalition was sparked by Kwan, who produced a documentary about AI, which comes out next year, Gordon-Levitt said in his video. He said work on the group began in the middle of this year. Already the collective has many signatories, including actors Natalie Portman, Greta Lee, Kirsten Dunst and Orlando Bloom.

Exiled punk band says its members are proud to be branded ‘extremists’ and hits back at Putin as an ‘aging sociopath’.

A Moscow district court has designated Russian punk protest band Pussy Riot as an extremist organisation, according to the state TASS news agency.

The exiled group’s lawyer, Leonid Solovyov, told TASS that Monday’s court ruling was made in response to claims brought by the Russian Prosecutor General’s Office and that the band plans to appeal. According to TASS, the case was heard in a closed session at the request of the Prosecutor General’s Office.

The court said that it had upheld prosecution submissions “to recognise the punk band Pussy Riot as an extremist organisation and ban its activities on the territory of the Russian Federation”, the AFP news agency reports.

An official Pussy Riot social media account shared a statement, responding defiantly to the ruling, saying the band’s members, who have lived in exile for years, were “freer than those who try to silence us”.

“We can say what I think about putin — that he is an aging sociopath spreading his venom around the world like cancer,” the statement said.

“In today’s Russia, telling the truth is extremism. So be it – we’re proud extremists, then.”

The group’s designation will make it easier for the authorities to go after the band’s supporters in Russia or people who have worked with them in the past.

“This court order is designed to erase the very existence of Pussy Riot from the minds of Russians,” the band said. “Owning a balaclava, having our song on your computer, or liking one of our posts could lead to prison time.”

According to TASS, earlier reports said that the Prosecutor General’s Office had brought the case over Pussy Riot’s previous actions, including at Christ the Saviour Cathedral in February 2012, and the World Cup Final in Moscow in 2018.

Today Russian court designated Pussy Riot as an extremist organization.

And yet, we’re freer than those who try to silence us. We can say what I think about putin — that he is an aging sociopath spreading his venom around the world like cancer. In today’s Russia, telling the… pic.twitter.com/ymz3BbApTo

— 𝖕𝖚𝖘𝖘𝖞 𝖗𝖎𝖔𝖙💦 (@pussyrrriot) December 15, 2025

The band’s members have already served sentences for the 2012 protest at the cathedral in Moscow, where they played what they called a punk prayer, “Mother of God, Cast Putin Out!”

Nadezhda Tolokonnikova and Maria Alyokhina, who were jailed for two years on hooliganism charges over the cathedral protest, were released as part of a 2013 amnesty, which extended to some 26,000 people facing prosecution from Russian authorities, including 30 Greenpeace crew members.

In September, a Russian court handed jail terms to five people linked with Pussy Riot – Maria Alyokhina, Taso Pletner, Olga Borisova, Diana Burkot and Alina Petrova – after finding them guilty of spreading “false information” about the Russian military, news outlet Mediazona reported. All have said the charges against them are politically motivated.

Mediazona was founded by Alyokhina alongside fellow band member Tolokonnikova.

The news outlet says that it is continuing to maintain a verified list of Russian military deaths in Moscow’s war on Ukraine.

“We have confirmed 153,000 names, each supported by evidence, context, and documentation,” Mediazona said on Monday.

“Stereophonic,” David Adjmi’s heralded drama that won five Tony Awards including best play, is ready for its Los Angeles close-up.

The first national tour production, which opened Wednesday at the Hollywood Pantages Theatre, seems right at home in the music capital of the world. The play about a 1970s rock band on the brink of superstardom takes place in recording studios in Sausalito and L.A., where the Laurel Canyon vibe is never out of sight.

The visual crispness of this L.A. premiere goes a long way toward dispelling doubts that the Pantages is the wrong venue for this ensemble drama. If there’s a problem, it isn’t the cavernousness of the theater. The production, gleaming with period details on a set by David Zinn that gives us clear views into both the sound and control rooms, comfortably inhabits the performance space, at least from the perspective of a decent orchestra seat.

The play, which includes original music from Will Butler, the Grammy-winning artist formerly of Arcade Fire, has a sound every bit as robust as one of the blockbuster musicals that regularly passes through the Pantages. The songs, crushed by the actors at top volume, are Butler’s indie rock re-creation of cuts for a part-British, part-American band that bears such a striking resemblance to Fleetwood Mac that a lawsuit brought by a former sound engineer and producer of the group was eventually settled.

Adjmi, like Shakespeare, takes his inspiration where he finds it. And like the Bard, he makes his sources his own, alchemizing the material for novel ends.

The touring production of “Stereophonic” makes clear just how integral the original cast was to the success of the play.

(Julieta Cervantes)

Unfolding in 1976 and 1977, “Stereophonic” offers a fly-on-the-wall perspective of a band at a crossroads. While recording a new album top-heavy with expectations, the group falls prey to romantic conflicts and self-destructive spirals, to toxic jealousies and seething insecurities. The prospect of fame magnifies pathologies that have been intensifying over time.

Diana (Claire DeJean) is the Stevie Nicks of the band. Beautiful, achingly vulnerable and awash in lyrical talent, she is entangled in a relationship with Peter (Denver Milord), the Lindsey Buckingham of the group, who strives for musical perfection no matter the cost.

Their connection is as professionally enriching as it is personally destructive. Diana’s ambition is matched by her self-doubt. She’s susceptible to a Svengali yet doesn’t want anyone to tell her how to write her songs.

Peter, angrily competitive, can’t help resenting the natural ease of Diana’s talent, even as it’s her song from their first album that has put the band back in the spotlight. His genius is ferociously exacting while hers seems to spring naturally from her soul.

Artistically they depend on each other, but the tension between them is unsustainable. And as the play makes clear, there’s no way to keep their personal lives out of the studio.

DeJean and Milord are the most captivating performers in the ensemble. The other actors are solid but this touring production makes clear just how integral the original cast was to the success of the play.

Daniel Aukin’s production, which had its New York premiere at Playwrights Horizons in 2023 before moving to Broadway the following year, hasn’t lost its confident flow. The storytelling is lucidly laid out. But the tantalizing peculiarities of the characters have been whittled down.

The British band members suffer the worst of it. Emilie Kouatchou’s Holly moves the character away from the obvious Christine McVie reference, but her role has become vaguer and less central. Cornelius McMoyler’s Simon, the drummer and weary manager, fills the bill in every respect but gravitas, which must be in place if the character’s ultimate confrontation with Peter is to have the necessary payoff.

No one could compete with Will Brill, who won a Tony for his strung-out portrayal of Reg, a deranged innocent whose addictions and dysfunctions create farcical havoc for the band. Christopher Mowod can’t quite endow this “sad man in a blanket,” as Simon dubs his bundled-up bandmate, with the same level of fey madness that Brill was able to entertainingly supply.

These casting differences wouldn’t be worth noting if it weren’t for their impact on a play that distinguishes itself by its observational detail. Everything is just a little more obvious, including the two American sound guys bearing the brunt of the artistic temperaments running riot in the studio.

Jack Barrett’s Grover, the sound engineer who lied about his background to get the job, sands off some of the character’s rough edges in a more straightforwardly appealing version of the character than Eli Gelb’s bracing portrayal in New York. Steven Lee Johnson’s Charlie, the dorky assistant sound engineer, is an amiable weirdo, though I missed the way Andrew R. Butler played him almost like a space alien in New York.

The play has been edited, but it’s still a bit of an endurance test. Art isn’t easy for the characters or for us. But the effort isn’t in vain.

Adjmi’s overlapping dialogue and gaping silences, orchestrated in a neo-Chekhovian style, renders the invisible artistic process visible. By the end of the play, the tumultuous human drama behind creative brilliance emerges in poignant, transcendent glory.

Los Angeles City Councilman John Lee repeatedly violated the city’s gift laws in 2016 and 2017, accepting freebies during a lavish trip to Las Vegas and at multiple restaurants in L.A., a judge said in a filing released Friday.

In a 59-page proposed decision, Administrative Law Judge Ji-Lan Zang concluded that Lee committed two counts of violating a law governing the size of gifts a city official can receive and three counts of violating a law requiring that such gifts be publicly disclosed.

Zang recommended a $43,730 penalty for Lee, who represents the northwest San Fernando Valley and was chief of staff to then-City Councilmember Mitchell Englander at the time of the alleged violations. However, the judge did not agree with allegations by city ethics investigators that Lee misused his position or helped Englander misuse his position.

In 2020, federal prosecutors accused Englander of accepting $15,000 in cash from businessman Andy Wang, lying to FBI agents and obstructing their investigation into the 2017 Vegas trip. Englander ultimately pleaded guilty to a single count of providing false information to the FBI and was sentenced to 14 months in prison.

The five-member Los Angeles City Ethics Commission is scheduled to make a determination on Wednesday, deciding both the number of violations Lee committed and any financial penalties to impose on him.

The commission has the power to accept or reject Zang’s recommendations. Ethics investigators have recommended that the commission take a more punitive approach by fining Lee about $138,000 and holding him responsible for all 10 counts.

The Lee case revolves around gifts — mostly food and alcohol but also hotel stays, transportation and $1,000 in gambling chips — provided by three men who have sought to do business with City Hall: Wang, who peddled Italian cabinets, “smart home” technology and facial recognition software; architect and developer Chris Pak; and lobbyist Michael Bai.

The judge issued her report six months after a multi-day hearing on the allegations against Lee, who replaced Englander on the council in 2019.

During those proceedings, Lee denied that he improperly accepted gifts, saying he made a good faith effort to pay his own way and, in some cases, declined to eat during meals. For example, he testified that he did not remember eating during his meetings at Yxta and Water Grill, both of which are in downtown L.A.

Zang, in her report, called those denials “not credible,” describing his testimony as “evasive and self contradictory.” She said Lee’s testimony also was in conflict with information he gave the FBI during its investigation into Englander, as well as testimony from other witnesses.

“It strains credulity to believe that [Lee] would join Englander, Bai, and Wang for lunch at Yxta and dinner at Water Grill without eating any food during the meals,” she wrote.

Ethics investigators have accused Lee of receiving an assortment of gifts during the 2017 Vegas trip with Englander and several others. Lee and a group of friends stayed at the Aria hotel and spent an evening at the Hakkasan Nightclub, according to the city’s allegations.

At the hotel restaurant, Blossom, Wang ordered a dinner worth nearly $2,500 for the group, which included Englander, Lee and several others, sending out servings of shark fin soup, Peking duck and Kobe beef, according to the judge’s summary of events.

Lee testified that he arrived at the restaurant in time for a dessert of bird’s nest soup, tasting it and deciding he did not like it, the judge said in her filing.

At Hakkasan later that night, Wang purchased three rounds of bottle service for the group for around $8,000 apiece, while Pak paid for a fourth round at a cost of $8,418.75.

“Each round of bottle service was served with fanfare, as female VIP hostesses brought bottles of alcohol to the table with flashing lights,” the judge wrote.

That night, at least 20 other club patrons went to Wang’s booth and drank alcohol at the table, according to the judge’s filing.

Lee was never charged by federal prosecutors and has said he was unaware of wrongdoing by Englander. In a filing submitted last week, his attorneys said that investigators incorrectly calculated the value of the gifts, including the bottles of alcohol, whose contents were distributed among many people.

Lee gave Wang $300 in cash as reimbursement for his drinks, withdrawing money from an ATM in Las Vegas to cover those expenses, his lawyers said.

In their reply to the city, Lee’s attorneys contend that the statute of limitations has expired on the city ethics counts. They have also pushed back on the recommendation from city ethics investigators that Lee pay a $138,000 penalty.

“Such inflated numbers are not grounded in reason, have no basis in the record, no support in the governing law, and no place in a fair and impartial enforcement system,” they wrote in their filing.

Englander previously agreed to pay $79,830 to settle a similar Ethics Commission case over the gifts he received.

Ethics investigators have accused Lee of committing 10 counts of violating city laws — two counts of accepting gifts in excess of the legal limit, three counts of failing to report those gifts on his public disclosure forms, four counts of misusing his position and one count of aiding and abetting Englander’s misuse of his position.

In 2016, the legal limit on gifts to city officials was $460 per donor. The following year, it was $470.

In Englander’s 2020 federal indictment, Lee was mentioned not by name, but instead referred to as “City Staffer B.” Despite his legal troubles, he won reelection in 2024.

WASHINGTON — Justice Department leadership has directed the FBI to “compile a list of groups or entities engaged in acts that may constitute domestic terrorism” by the start of next year, and to establish a “cash reward system” that incentivizes individuals to report on their fellow Americans, according to a memo reviewed by The Times.

Law enforcement agencies are directed in the memo, dated Dec. 4, to identify “domestic terrorists” who use violence, or the threat of violence, to advance political and social agendas, including “adherence to radical gender ideology, anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, or anti-Christianity.”

Although the memo does not mention protests against President Trump’s immigration crackdown directly, it says that problematic “political and social agendas” could include “opposition to law and immigration enforcement, extreme views in favor of mass migration and open borders.”

The memo, sent by Atty, Gen. Pam Bondi to federal prosecutors and law enforcement agencies, follows on a presidential memorandum signed by Trump in the immediate aftermath of the killing of Charlie Kirk, a prominent conservative figure, that gave civil rights groups pause over the potential targeting of political activists, donors and nonprofits opposed to the president.

The memo also outlines what it says are causes of domestic terrorist activity, including “hostility towards traditional views on family, religion, and morality.”

“Federal law enforcement will prioritize this threat. Where federal crime is encountered, federal agents will act,” the memo states.

Some national security experts said the memo represents a dramatic operational shift, by directing federal prosecutors and agents to approach domestic terrorism in a way that is “ideologically one-sided.” At worst, critics said, the memo provides legal justification for criminalizing free speech.

“I think this causes a chilling impact, because it definitely seems to be directing enforcement toward particular points of view,” Mary McCord, a former acting assistant attorney general for national security, said in an interview.

The memo, for example, primarily focuses on antifa-aligned extremism, but omits other trends that in recent years have been identified as rising domestic threats, such as violent white supremacy. Since Trump resumed office, the FBI has cut its office designated to focus on domestic extremism, withdrawing resources from investigations into white supremacists and right-wing antigovernment groups.

The memo’s push to collect intelligence on antifa through internal lists and public tip lines also raised questions over the scope of the investigative mission, and how wide a net investigators might cast.

“Whether you’re going to a protest, whether you’re considering a piece of legislation, whether you’re considering undertaking a particular business activity, the ambiguity will affect your risk profile,” Thomas Brzozowski, a former counsel for domestic terrorism at the Justice Department, said in an interview.

“It is the unknown that people will fear,” he added.

Protesters in 1980s style aerobic outfits work out during a demonstration dubbed “Sweatin’ Out the Fascists” on Sunday in Portland, Ore.

(Natalie Behring / Getty Images)

Groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union have expressed alarm over the new policy, which could be used by the Justice Department to target civil society groups and Democratic individuals and entities with burdensome investigations.

But the White House argues that Democratic appointees under the Biden administration targeted conservative extremists in similar ways.

Members of Trump’s team have embraced political retribution as a policy course. Ed Martin, the president’s pardon attorney, has openly advocated for Justice Department investigations that would burden who Trump perceives as his enemies, alongside leniency for his friends and allies.

“No MAGA left behind,” Martin wrote on social media in May.

Law enforcement agencies are directed in the memo to “zealously” investigate those involved in what it calls potential domestic terrorist actions, including “doxing” law enforcement. Authorities are also directed to “map the full network of culpable actors” potentially tied to crime.

Domestic terrorism is not an official designation in U.S. law. But the directive cites over two dozen existing laws that could substantiate charges against domestic extremists and their supporters, such as conspiracy to injure an officer, seditious conspiracy and mail and wire fraud.

Only in a footnote of the memo does the Justice Department acknowledge that the U.S. government cannot “investigate, collect, or maintain information on U.S. persons solely for the purpose of monitoring activities protected by the First Amendment.”

“No investigation may be opened based solely on activities protected by the First Amendment or the lawful exercise of rights secured by the Constitution or laws of the United States,” the footnote says.

Some tension could arise when citizens report what they believe to be suspected domestic terrorism to the FBI.

The memo directs the FBI online tip line to allow “witnesses and citizen journalists” to report videos, recordings and photos of what they believe to be suspected acts of domestic violence, and establish a “cash reward system” for information that leads to an arrest.

“People will inform because they want to get paid,” Brzozowski said. He added that some information could end up being unreliable and likely be related to other Americans exercising their constitutional rights.

State and local law enforcement agencies that adhere to the Justice Department directive will be prioritized for federal grant funding.

A man dressed as a bee participates in the No Kings Day of Peaceful Action in downtown Los Angeles on Oct. 18.

(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)

One of the directives in the memo would require the FBI to disseminate an “intelligence bulletin on Antifa and Antifa-aligned anarchist violent extremist groups” early next year.

“The bulletin should describe the relevant organizations structures, funding sources, and tactics so that law enforcement partners can effectively investigate and policy makers can effectively understand the nature and gravity of the threat posed by these extremist groups,” the memo states.

The mission will cross several agencies, with the FBI working alongside joint terrorism task forces nationwide, as well as the Counterterrorism Division and the National Threat Operations Center, among others, to provide updates to Justice Department leadership every 30 days.

Raul Malo, who as frontman of the Mavericks brought a Latin rhythmic flair and a sweeping sense of romance to country music, died on Monday. He was 60.

His death was announced by the band in an Instagram post that didn’t specify the cause or say where Malo died. Last year, the singer told fans that he had been diagnosed with cancer; in September, Malo wrote on Facebook that he had developed leptomeningeal disease — a condition in which cancer metastasizes to the membranes around the brain and spinal cord — and was calling off the group’s upcoming concerts.

This past weekend, bandmates Paul Deakin, Eddie Perez and Jerry Dale McFadden performed with a cast of friends and admirers at Nashville’s Ryman Auditorium to mark the Mavericks’ 35th anniversary. Among the acts who paid tribute were Steve Earle, Rodney Crowell, Patty Griffin and Marty Stuart.

Their sound built around Malo’s muscular baritone, the Mavericks broke out in the 1990s with an expansive style of country music that pulled from big-band pop, ’50s-era rock and the Cuban music Malo heard growing up in Miami as the son of Cuban immigrants. As a singer, Malo was frequently compared to Roy Orbison; in 2001, he told The Times about his love for Tony Bennett.

The Mavericks released their self-titled debut album in 1990 and were quickly signed by MCA Nashville, which put out “From Hell to Paradise” in 1992. (The album’s title track was Malo’s description of his parents’ journey to America.) The band’s next LP, 1994’s “What a Crying Shame,” went platinum and spun off a series of hit country singles including the title track, “O What a Thrill” and “There Goes My Heart.” The next year the band recorded a cover of Rodgers & Hart’s “Blue Moon” for the soundtrack of Ron Howard’s Oscar-winning movie “Apollo 13.”

In 1996, the Mavericks won a Grammy Award for “Here Comes the Rain,” a chiming roots-rock number from their album “Music for All Occasions,” which featured appearances by Trisha Yearwood and the accordionist Flaco Jiménez. The Mavericks were twice named vocal group of the year at the Country Music Assn. Awards, in 1995 and 1996.

For 1998’s “Trampoline,” the band leaned into torch-song balladry and classic R&B but struggled to connect on country radio. The album “threw a lot of people for a loop,” Malo told The Times. “That’s OK. I liked it.” He followed the album with a solo debut, 2001’s “Today,” that further explored his Cuban heritage.

Malo was born in Miami in 1965. He co-founded the Mavericks in 1989 with Robert Reynolds, who had fronted an earlier band in which Malo played bass.

The group broke up after 2003’s “The Mavericks,” then reunited a decade later. The band’s most recent studio album, “Moon & Stars,” came out last year.

In addition to the Mavericks and his solo work, Malo also played with Los Super Seven, a sprawling roots-music supergroup whose other members included Jiménez, Freddy Fender and members of Los Lobos.

Among Malo’s survivors are his mother, Norma; his wife, Betty, and their sons, Dino, Victor and Max; and his sister Carol.

Council on American-Islamic Relations has responded to the designation, calling it an ‘unconstitutional’ and ‘defamatory’ proclamation.

Florida’s governor has designated the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) a “foreign terrorist organisation”.

Ron DeSantis posted his executive order to list the United States-based Muslim civil rights and advocacy group on social media on Monday.

The move follows a similar declaration by the Republican governor of Texas last month. CAIR has rejected the labelling by both states and mounted legal challenges.

In a separate post, DeSantis asserted that the Florida Legislature is “crafting legislation to stop the creep of Sharia law, and I hope that they codify these protections for Floridians against CAIR and the Muslim Brotherhood in their legislation”.

The designation, which triggers heightened oversight by state law enforcement agencies and establishes financial and operational restrictions, was also declared against the Muslim Brotherhood.

DeSantis’s order asserted that CAIR was “founded by persons connected to the Muslim Brotherhood”, which, without offering evidence, the governor asserted was attempting to establish “a world-wide Islamic caliphate” and has direct links to Hamas.

The order instructs Florida agencies to prevent the two groups and those who have provided them with material support from receiving contracts, employment and funds from a state executive or cabinet agency.

Neither CAIR nor the Muslim Brotherhood is designated as a foreign terrorist organisation by the US government.

However, President Donald Trump has ordered the start of a process to label the branches of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, Lebanon and Jordan as “terrorist” organisations, citing their alleged support for Hamas.

CAIR’s Florida chapter told The Associated Press news agency that it plans to sue DeSantis in response to what it called an “unconstitutional” and “defamatory” proclamation.

The group accused the Florida governor of serving foreign interests and lashing out at CAIR due to its civil rights work.

“From the moment Ron DeSantis took office as Florida governor, he has prioritised serving the Israeli government over serving the people of Florida,” CAIR and its Florida chapter said in a statement.

“He hosted his very first official cabinet meeting in Israel. He diverted millions in Florida taxpayer dollars to the Israeli government’s bonds. He threatened to shut down every Florida college’s Students for Justice in Palestine chapter, only to back off when CAIR sued him in federal court.”

Founded in 1994, CAIR has 25 chapters around the country. Last month, it asked a federal judge to strike down the designation declared against it by Texas Governor Greg Abbott.

In a lawsuit, CAIR said Abbott’s move was “not only contrary to the United States Constitution, but finds no support in any Texas law”.

On Monday, it said DeSantis and Abbott are both “Israel First politicians” and asserted that their designations are intended to silence American Muslims critical of US support for Israeli war crimes.

The Muslim Brotherhood was established in Egypt nearly a century ago and has branches around the world. Its leaders say they seek to set up Islamic rule through elections and other non-violent means.

Characters stepping out of their plays to address an audience is hardly a new phenomenon. Playwrights have been breaking the fourth wall ever since that invisible barrier separating the actors from the audience was raised.

Sophocles, of course, didn’t need Oedipus to chat directly with the audience. He had a chorus to provide running commentary. Shakespeare, whose theatrical sensibility was informed as much by Renaissance and Classical poetry as by those pageant wagons boisterously bringing miracle plays directly into the lives of townsfolk, had no compunction about a character slipping out of the frame to help audience members arrange their imagination. He even enlists Rosalind in ”As You Like It” and Prospero in “The Tempest” to bid their audiences farewell.

The fourth wall, encoded in the architecture of the proscenium stage, fosters the illusion that audiences are eavesdropping on a cordoned off reality. As the modern theater embraced realism, plays were carefully designed not to wrench their auditors from their waking dream. Maintaining a semblance of truth, as Samuel Taylor Coleridge pointed out in the context of poetry, was necessary to procure “that willing suspension of disbelief for the moment, which constitutes poetic faith.”

“Willing” is a key word. Art invites complicity, and in the theater, audiences are in on the game. As Samuel Johnson sagely points out in his “Preface to Shakespeare,” “The truth is, that the spectators are always in their senses, and know from the first act to the last, that the stage is only a stage, and that the players are only players.”

How could it be otherwise? As Johnson reminds us, “If we thought murders and treasons real, they would please no more.”

In the Neoclassical era, playwrights were exhorted to observe the unities (of time and place, in particular) to facilitate an audience’s belief. But modern playwrights, particularly those who see their roles as storytellers, have resisted such superficial strictures.

The memory play, perfected by Tennessee Williams in “The Glass Menagerie,” asks the protagonist to serve also as narrator, setting the scene, reflecting on the action and fast-forwarding the story at will. Irish dramatist Brian Friel, a born raconteur, was a master of this use of direct address, writing monologues for his main characters that not only launched his tale but engulfed his audience in the right lyrical mood.

These writers create an environment in which characters can enter or exit the main storyline as if from a magic door. Audiences are cognizant of this portal, but they are encouraged to forget its existence when the drama ramps up, thereby allowing them to have their cake and eat it too.

A friend of mine hates when a character goes rogue and starts chatting up the audience. “Why are you talking to me?” she mumbles in faux outrage. “I paid to watch you talk to each other.”

Perhaps she considers it a dramatic cheat, as though the writer were copping out of the hard work of dramatization. But I have the opposite reaction. I find that playwrights are often at their liveliest when writing in a presentational mood. What they sacrifice in illusionist power, they gain in freedom.

In “Love! Valour! Compassion!,” Terrence McNally, a master of direct address, intensifies the emotional climax of his play by having his characters step forward and explain how and when they will die. This poignant comedy, about a group of gay male friends spending summer holidays together during the height of the AIDS epidemic, gathered the audience in a communal huddle of collective grief while urging survivors — everyone in attendance — to keep the faith.

In times of emergency, it’s natural to want to draw the public’s attention to the shared moment. The theater affords a space — one of the few left in our digitalized world — for this kind of reflective gathering.

Breaking the fourth wall is a tried-and-true method of calling an audience to attention. But a new breed of dramatist, writing in an age of overlapping calamities — environmental, political, economic, technological and moral — is retooling an old playwriting device to do more than inject urgency and immediacy in the theatrical experience.

Characters are not just stepping out of the dramatic frame — they are blurring the line between art and life. Performers are dropping their masks, or at the very least shuffling them, to force us to think harder about what we’re all doing in the theater as the world around us burns.

Kristolyn Lloyd, from left, Irene Sofia Lucio, Betsy Aidem and Audrey Corsa in the Broadway production of “Liberation” by Bess Wohl, directed by Whitney White.

(Little Fang)

Bess Wohl’s “Liberation,” one of the best plays of the year, is having its Broadway premiere this season at the James Earl Jones Theatre under the direction of Whitney White (who matches her fine ensemble job with “Jaja’s African Hair Braiding”). The play, an imaginative account of a group of women banding together in a gymnasium during the early days of the women’s rights movement, begins with a performer checking in on us.

“Hi. Is everyone — is everyone good? Comfortable? Snacks unwrapped? Hello. Hi. Welcome.”

Lizzie, the author’s surrogate (luminously played by Susannah Flood), greets us with the skittish confidence that will turn out to be one of the character’s most charming qualities. She apologizes that theatergoers have had to lock their phones in Yondr pouches. (Cameras are off-limits in a production that has some nudity.) But she immediately confronts the question on everybody’s mind: How long is the play?

Honestly, it’s not even your fault, it’s like, this is the modern condition — not to sound grandiose, ‘this is the modern condition,’ but honestly — it’s like, you decide to come, you get dressed up — Well all right, you didn’t get dressed up — but you put on clothes, thank you for that. You put on clothes. You make your way through whatever you went through — the subway, the traffic, the hellscape that is Times Square — you finally get here, and then you hope that the entire experience will be as short as humanly possible.

Theatergoers seem thrilled that after all the effort they made to be there, they’re not being ignored as usual. But Wohl isn’t pandering to them. She’s connecting to them in the present before ushering them into the past.

Her project, as Lizzie explains in her introduction, is memory — memories belonging to her mother (who recently died) and to her mother’s friends, who set out to change the world. Blazing a trail for women’s equality, they help transform society, even if incompletely. A momentous accomplishment, but then why Lizzie asks, “Why does it feel somehow like it’s all slipping away? And how do we get it back?”

The play rewinds to the 1970s, to a local rec center in Ohio, where a few pioneering women with little in common, beyond the everyday sexism that has hemmed in their lives, form a consciousness-raising group. Lizzie’s mother, also named Lizzie (and also played by Flood) is the ringleader, but a tentative one — as apologetically undeterred as her daughter.

Wohl is writing a personal history that is not her own. She sets up her play to make clear that this theatrical re-creation is her attempt to understand what happened in those meetings of unlikely revolutionaries. She provides space for the women to object to her version of events and to challenge her interpretation of motives.

In one scene, in which Lizzie is about to meet the man who will become her husband, Lizzie the daughter and de facto author interrupts the play to enlist another actor (Kayla Davion, superb) to play her mother. Young Lizzie is understandably squeamish to enact a love scene with the man who will turn out to be her father.

The playfulness of Wohl’s style, while at times informal to the point of desultory, treats the past as an autonomous reality. The playwright can only engage her mother’s history from her position in the present. She can imagine, she can theorize, she can try to do justice. But she isn’t permitted to subjugate her characters to advance her own agenda, no matter how well-intentioned. The personal is political, as the feminist rallying cry has it, and Wohl has taken pains never to lose sight of this insight when imagining the complexities of the lives of others.

John McCrea, left, and Mihir Kumar in “Prince Faggot.”

(Marc J. Franklin)

“Prince Faggot,” by Jordan Tannahill, is built on the reaction to an effete photo of Prince George of Cambridge at the age of 4 that went viral. The play, originally produced by Playwrights Horizons and Soho Rep, is at off-Broadway’s Studio Seaview through Dec. 13. It imagines a queer life for William and Kate’s pride and joy as this young royal defiantly and decadently comes of age.

It’s a daring premise, full of presumption and not really defensible from the standpoint of a real-life boy who doesn’t deserve to be made the object of a sexual fantasia. But Tannahill doesn’t evade these tricky moral questions.

Performer 1 (Keshav Moodliar on the night I attended), who plays both the playwright’s surrogate and George’s future lover, debates the issues with the company. One by one, the queer and trans cast members share fictionalized personal stories, harking back to childhood moments before any declaration of identity was possible.

A thought experiment is under way in this seductively febrile production directed by Shayok Misha Chowdhury (whose play “Public Obscenities” was a 2024 Pulitzer Prize finalist). How might the lives of the characters (and by extension all our lives) be different if heterosexuality weren’t the default assumption?

Intellectual license granted, the company is allowed to run riot in a performance work that maintains a Brechtian distance between actor and role. A playwright’s note in the script clarifies that “with the exception of Performer 4’s final monologue” (which was “inspired by a rehearsal hall interview with actress N’yomi Allure Stewart”), the rest of the play, “including the direct address monologues, is fictional, written by the playwright, and any resemblance to real events is purely coincidental.”

The audience can’t help but be conscious of the daredevil performers impersonating these royal celebrities, intimate friends and overzealous handlers, exposing their bodies, if not their own biographies, in a work that realizes in performance Picasso’s assertion of art being “the lie that enables us to realize the truth.”

Gail Bean and Biko Eisen-Martin in “Table 17.”

(Jeff Lorch)

“Table 17,” Doug Lyons’ meta-theatrical rom-com, which ended its run at the Geffen Playhouse on Sunday, has its character routinely check in with the audience as Jada (Gail Bean) and Dallas (Biko Eisen-Martin) review what led to their breakup. The location for this amorous autopsy is a fashionable restaurant in which the host/pinch-hit server (gamely incarnated by Michael Rishawn) functions as the show’s bitchy chorus.

Lyons has the characters directly engage the audience in a production directed by Zhailon Levingston that incorporated the energy of British pantomime. Theatergoers were encouraged to express their feelings in a comedy that pays homage, as the playwright notes in his script, to such popular Black films as “Love & Basketball,” “Poetic Justice” and “Love Jones.”

The direct address monologues, Lyons stresses, should have “a stand-up comedy feel to them. In these moments the audience is no longer a spectator, but an active participant in the story.”

“Table 17” is more modest in its ambition than either “Liberation” or “Prince Faggot.” It mostly wants to divert. But there was something bracing about the circuitry it created with an audience. Theater wasn’t being imposed onto a paying public. It was instead a shared endeavor, mutually manufactured in yet another instance of a play letting down its guard to reach new levels of aliveness.

A prominent Sudanese doctor’s group has accused the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) of raping at least 19 women as they fled the city of el-Fasher in Darfur.

The Sudan Doctors Network said in a statement on Sunday that it documented the rapes among women who had fled to the town of al-Dabba in the neighbouring Northern State.

Two of the women were pregnant, the group said.

“The Sudan Doctors Network strongly condemns the gang rape being perpetrated by the RSF against women escaping the horrors of El-Fasher, affirming that it constitutes a direct targeting of women in a blatant violation of all international laws that criminalise the use of women’s bodies as a weapon of oppression,” the group wrote on X.

Sudan Doctors Network: We have documented 19 cases of rape committed by the Rapid Support Forces, including two pregnant women, at Al-Afad Camp in Al-Dabba

The Sudan Doctors Network team at Al-Afad Camp in Al-Dabba has documented the rape of 19 women while they were fleeing from… pic.twitter.com/u5qWp4bdSD

— Sudan Doctors Network – شبكة أطباء السودان (@SDN154) December 7, 2025

Sudan has been engulfed in civil war since April 2023, when fighting erupted between the Sudanese army and the paramilitary RSF. The conflict has killed tens of thousands of people and displaced more than 12 million, according to the United Nations. It has also left some 30 million in need of humanitarian aid.

The RSF took the city of el-Fasher, the capital of the state of North Darfur, in October after an 18-month campaign of siege and starvation. The city was the Sudanese army’s last stronghold in the region.

Survivors who fled the city in the subsequent days recounted mass killings, rape, pillaging and other atrocities, prompting an international outcry.

Amnesty International has accused the RSF of “war crimes”, while the UN Human Rights Council has ordered an investigation into the abuses in el-Fasher. Officials who visited Darfur and spoke to survivors described the region as an “absolute horror show” and a “crime scene”.

Widespread sexual assault

Mohammed Elsheikh, a spokesperson for the Sudan Doctors Network, told Al Jazeera on Sunday that he was “100 percent sure” that sexual violence committed by RSF fighters is far more widespread than reported.

“Because most of the communities look at it as a stigma, most of the raped women tend not to disclose this information,” he said.

Elsheikh said the network had also documented 23 cases of rape among women who fled el-Fasher for the nearby town of Tawila.

“Unfortunately, the age of these raped victims varies from 15 years to 23 years old,” he said.

In its statement, the Sudan Doctors Network urged the international community to take urgent action to protect Sudanese women and girls.

It also called for “serious pressure on RSF leaders to immediately stop these assaults, respect international humanitarian law, and secure safe corridors for women and children”.

The latest accusations came amid a growing outcry over another RSF attack on a pre-school in the state of South Kordofan that local officials said killed at least 116 people. Some 46 of the victims were children, according to the officials.

On Sunday, Justice Minister Abdullah Dirife said Khartoum was willing to pursue political talks aimed at ending the conflict, but insisted that any settlement must “ensure there is no presence for ‘terrorist’ militias in both the political and military arenas”.

Speaking to Al Jazeera on the sidelines of the Doha Forum, he said the rebels “need to agree to give their weapons in specific areas and leave all these cities, and the police should take over”.

Dirife also called for putting a stop to the “transfer of weapons and the infiltration of mercenaries into Sudan” and claimed that fighters and arms were entering from regions including South America, Chad and the UAE.

The RSF currently holds all five states of Darfur, while the Sudanese army retains control of most of the remaining 13 states, including Khartoum.

Dirife also accused the RSF of repeatedly breaking past commitments to adhere to regional and global mediation initiatives.

“The last initiative we signed was the Jeddah Declaration. However, this militia didn’t commit to what we agreed on,” he said in Doha.

The Jeddah Declaration – brokered by the United States and Saudi Arabia in May 2023 – was meant to protect civilians and lay the groundwork for humanitarian access. Several ceasefires followed, but both sides were accused of violating them, prompting the mediators to suspend talks.

The UN has meanwhile formally declared famine in el-Fasher and Kaduguli in South Kordofan and warned of the risk of a hunger crisis in 20 additional areas across the Greater Darfur and Greater Kordofan regions.

The World Food Programme’s Deputy Executive Director Carl Skau told Al Jazeera on Sunday that the agency was providing aid to five million people, including two million in areas that are difficult to reach, but warned that assistance has fallen far short of needs.

“World attention needs to be on Sudan now, and diplomatic efforts need to be stepped up in order to prevent the same disaster we saw in el-Fasher,” he said.