Television director and producer Tom Cherones, best known for his work on the first five seasons of the Emmy-winning series “Seinfeld,” has died. He was 86.
He directed some of the most iconic episodes of “Seinfeld,” including “The Chinese Restaurant,” “The Parking Garage” and “The Contest.” The first episode he directed was the show’s second-ever episode, “The Stake Out.” The director ultimately helmed over 80 episodes of the show.
“I think they liked the way I ran the set,” Cherones said of why he was chosen to direct so many “Seinfeld” episodes in an interview with the Television Academy Foundation. “I shot the show a little different … I just shot it in a way that I thought made it look better than the average show.”
Cherones left the show at the behest of its star Jerry Seinfeld.
“Jerry asked me to [leave], he was tired of the same thing I guess,” he told the Television Academy Foundation. “We changed writers almost every season and finally he just wanted somebody else, another presence to try to keep it fresh. He always said from the beginning that when this thing isn’t working anymore we’re going to stop.”
Cherones received six Emmy nominations for his work on “Seinfeld,” winning his sole Emmy for his production work in 1993.
“Seinfeld” star Jason Alexander mourned Cherones death in an Instagram post on Friday.
“Tom directed nearly half the ‘Seinfeld’ episodes. He created the visual style and tone and how to capture the magical interplay of our cast,” Alexander wrote.
“His generosity also enabled me to become a member of the Directors Guild and he was a wonderful mentor. He was a good guy and a wonderful director and teacher. Generations of our fans have and will continue to enjoy his work. Thanks for everything, Tom. Rest well. My love to your family and friends.”
After leaving “Seinfeld,” Cherones would go on to direct 23 episodes of the second season of the Ellen DeGeneres sitcom “Ellen.” He also directed several episodes of the ‘90s NBC sitcoms “Caroline in the City” and “NewsRadio” and stand-alone episodes of “Sabrina the Teenage Witch,” “Boston Common” and “Desperate Housewives.”
Cherones was born Sept. 11, 1939, in Tuscaloosa, Ala., and graduated with a degree in journalism from the University of New Mexico in 1961. After a four-year stint in the U.S. Navy, he earned a master’s degree from the University of Alabama in 1967.
He worked at a PBS affiliate station in Pittsburgh, including aiding in the production of “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood.” Cherones moved to L.A. in 1975 and found production work on such series as “General Hospital” and “Welcome Back, Kotter,” and with several of the major Hollywood production studios.
Later in life, Cherones returned to the University of Alabama to teach production classes from 2002 to 2014.
Cherones is survived by his wife Carol E. Richards, his daughter Susan Cherones Lee, son Scott Cherones and two grandchildren, Jessa and Thomas Cherones.
A protest sign opposing a shift toward engineering programs is displayed outside Dongduk Women’s University in Seoul. Photo by Asia Today
Jan. 9 (Asia Today) — A student survey found that most Dongduk Women’s University students oppose proposed revisions to school regulations that would remove references to “women” and the institution’s “founding spirit,” as the university prepares to deliberate broader restructuring plans, the student council said Thursday.
The Dongduk Women’s University Student Council held a news conference at the university’s Wolgok campus on Thursday and released results of a survey conducted ahead of a scheduled university council meeting.
The student council said the survey was conducted after the university council submitted a proposal to revise school regulations. The proposal would shorten a section titled “Founding Spirit and Educational Ideology” in the general provisions to simply “Educational Ideology,” and delete the word “women” from a phrase describing the school’s goal of nurturing “women professionals with intellect and virtue,” according to the student council.
The survey was conducted from Saturday through Wednesday, with 615 currently enrolled students and students on leave participating, the council said.
It said 87.5% of respondents opposed removing the phrases “women” and “founding spirit” from the general provisions. It also said 70.1% opposed an academic restructuring plan proposed by the university administration.
Students argued the changes would undermine the university’s identity and founding principles, the student council said. It also criticized the structure of the university council, saying a proposal could pass even if all student representatives oppose it, and urged the administration to halt deliberations it said are moving forward without sufficient student input.
The student council said the proposed revisions would erase the historical and social meaning of establishing a women’s university and said Dongduk’s founding spirit reflected the need for women’s education and the cultivation of women’s talent.
The council called on the university to stop deliberations on the regulations revision and development plan, guarantee student participation throughout the process and create what it described as a substantive forum for discussion.
“We will take action to the end so student voices are substantively reflected” at the university council meeting scheduled for Sunday, the student council said.
The university council is scheduled to deliberate agenda items including a transition to engineering-related programs, the university development plan and revisions to university regulations, the report said.
Caption:A protest sign opposing a shift toward engineering programs is displayed outside Dongduk Women’s University in Seoul. /Asia Today reporter Kim Tae-hoon
Sometimes a reverse is the ideal play. That appears to be the call made by quarterback Demond Williams Jr., who after huddling with family and advisers, announced on Instagram Thursday night that he will remain at Washington in 2026.
His decision to honor an estimated $4.5 million name, image and likeness contract he signed a week ago marks an about-face from the shocking announcement he made Tuesday that he would enter the transfer portal.
“After thoughtful reflection with my family, I am excited to announce that I will continue my football journey at the University of Washington,” he wrote. “I am fully committed and focused on contributing to what we are building.”
His decision to transfer was met with widespread derision from Huskies fans and officials, who made it known the university would enforce Williams’ contract even if it meant taking him to court. The Big Ten backed Washington’s stance.
Williams’ agent, Doug Hendrickson of Wasserman Football, dropped him as a client Thursday, citing “philosophical differences.” Williams hired lawyer Darren Heitner, who apparently determined that his client should return to Washington.
“The past 48 hours have underscored just how complex and challenging the current college athletics environment has become,” Washington athletic director Pat Chun said in a statement. “What has transpired has been difficult for all parties involved and is emblematic of many of the current issues in college sports.
“It is critical in this post-House, revenue-sharing environment that contracts with student-athletes are not only enforced but respected by everyone within the college sports ecosystem.”
Washington, which refused to place Williams in the transfer portal, was prepared to demand that the quarterback pay a large buyout of his NIL contract had he transferred.
Now, though, it seems all is well. Washington coach Jedd Fisch said in a statement that he and Williams “will work together to begin the process of repairing relationships and regaining the trust of the Husky community.
“Demond and I have engaged in very honest and heartfelt conversations about his present and future. We both agree that the University of Washington is the best place for him to continue his academic, athletic, and social development.”
Washington officials suspected that another school contacted Williams after he had signed his Huskies deal, and submitted evidence of tampering to the Big Ten. Tony Petitti, the conference commissioner, happened to be in Seattle on Tuesday for a Celebration of Life service for Washington goalkeeper Mia Hamant, who died on Nov. 6 from a rare form of kidney cancer.
Many Huskies football players and coaches also were in attendance when Williams posted his official announcement about entering the transfer portal on Instagram. In his Instagram post Thursday night, Williams apologized about the poor timing of his initial announcement.
“I never intended to call attention away from such an important moment,” he wrote.
Williams, who will be a junior, is expected to be one of the top handful of college quarterbacks next season. In his first season as a full-time starter, he threw for 3,065 yards and 25 touchdowns and earned honorable mention All-Big Ten honors.
Israeli forces raided Birzeit University in the occupied West Bank, firing live ammunition to disperse students during a protest and film screening. At least three students were injured as troops entered the campus and classrooms.
An allegedly intoxicated driver who hit and killed high school tennis star Braun Levi in Manhattan Beach was charged with murder Tuesday, authorities said.
Jenia Resha Belt, 33, of Los Angeles also faces charges of gross vehicular manslaughter while intoxicated and driving with a suspended license, said Pamela Johnson, a spokesperson for the L.A. County district attorney’s office.
Around 12:46 a.m. on May 4, Belt struck Braun, who was walking near Sepulveda Boulevard and 2nd Street, authorities said.
Belt, who was arrested at the scene, had a blood alcohol level nearly twice the legal limit and was driving on a suspended license from a prior DUI arrest, according to court records. Four passengers inside the car fled the area after the collision.
Belt was released in June and then apprehended again months later.
Braun’s parents, who lost their home in the Palisades fire and relocated to the South Bay, filed a $200-million wrongful death lawsuit against Belt in November.
Their son was a standout at Loyola High School and had been slated to play tennis at the University of Virginia. The Levis started the Live Like Braun Foundation in his memory.
Belt is in custody on $2 million bail and is scheduled to be arraigned Wednesday, Johnson said.
Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. Nathan Hochman and Jennifer Levi, Braun’s mother, plan to discuss the charges at a news conference Monday.
Times staff writer Clara Harter contributed to this report.
The University of Oklahoma has fired an instructor who was accused by a student of religious discrimination over a failing grade on a psychology paper in which she cited the Bible and argued that promoting a “belief in multiple genders” was “demonic.”
The university said in a statement posted Monday on X that its investigation found the graduate teaching assistant had been “arbitrary” in giving 20-year-old junior Samantha Fulnecky zero points on the assignment. The university declined to comment beyond its statement, which said the instructor had been removed from teaching.
Through her attorney, the instructor, Mel Curth, denied Tuesday that she had “engaged in any arbitrary behavior regarding the student’s work.” The attorney, Brittany Stewart, said in a statement emailed to the Associated Press that Curth is “considering all of her legal remedies.”
Conservative groups, commentators and others quickly made Fulnecky’s failing grade an online cause, highlighting her argument that she’d been punished for expressing conservative Christian views. Her case became a flashpoint in the ongoing debate over academic freedom on college campuses as President Trump pushes to end diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, and restrict how campuses discuss race, gender and sexuality.
Fulnecky appealed her grade on the assignment, which was worth 3% of the final grade in the class, and the university said the assignment would not count. It also placed Curth on leave, and Oklahoma’s conservative Republican governor, Kevin Stitt, declared the situation “deeply concerning.”
“The University of Oklahoma believes strongly in both its faculty’s rights to teach with academic freedom and integrity and its students’ right to receive an education that is free from a lecturer’s impermissible evaluative standards,” the university’s statement said. “We are committed to teaching students how to think, not what to think.”
A law approved this year by Oklahoma’s Republican-dominated Legislature and signed by Stitt prohibits state universities from using public funds to finance DEI programs or positions or mandating DEI training. However, the law says it does not apply to scholarly research or “the academic freedom of any individual faculty member.”
Home telephone listings for Fulnecky in the Springfield, Mo., area had been disconnected, and her mother — an attorney, podcaster and radio host — did not immediately respond Tuesday to a Facebook message seeking comment about the university’s action.
Fulnecky’s failing grade came in an assignment for a psychology class on lifespan development. Curth directed students to write a 650-word response to an academic study that examined whether conformity with gender norms was associated with popularity or bullying among middle school students.
Fulnecky wrote that she was frustrated by the premise of the assignment because she does not believe that there are more than two genders based on her understanding of the Bible, according to a copy of her essay provided to The Oklahoman.
“Society pushing the lie that there are multiple genders and everyone should be whatever they want to be is demonic and severely harms American youth,” she wrote, adding that it would lead society “farther from God’s original plan for humans.”
In feedback obtained by the newspaper, Curth said the paper did “not answer the questions for the assignment,” contradicted itself, relied on “personal ideology” over evidence and “is at times offensive.”
“Please note that I am not deducting points because you have certain beliefs,” Curth wrote.
Former Nebraska U.S. Sen. Ben Sasse, a conservative who rebuked political tribalism and stood out as a longtime critic of President Trump, announced Tuesday he was diagnosed with advanced pancreatic cancer.
Sasse, 53, made the announcement on social media, saying he learned of the disease last week and is “now marching to the beat of a faster drummer.”
“This is a tough note to write, but since a bunch of you have started to suspect something, I’ll cut to the chase,” Sasse wrote. “Last week I was diagnosed with metastasized, stage-four pancreatic cancer, and am gonna die.”
Sasse was first elected to the Senate in 2014. He comfortably won reelection in 2020 after fending off a pro-Trump primary challenger. Sasse drew the ire of GOP activists for his vocal criticism of Trump’s character and policies, including questioning his moral values and saying he cozied up to adversarial foreign leaders.
Sasse was one of seven Republican senators to vote to convict the former president of “ incitement of insurrection ” after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. After threats of a public censure back home, he extended his critique to party loyalists who blindly worship one man and rejected him for his refusal to bend the knee.
He resigned from the Senate in 2023 to serve as the 13th president of the University of Florida after a contentious approval process. He left that post the following year after his wife was diagnosed with epilepsy.
Sasse, who has degrees from Harvard, St. John’s College and Yale, worked as an assistant secretary of Health and Human Services under President George W. Bush. He served as president of Midland University, a small Christian university in eastern Nebraska, before he ran for the Senate.
Sasse and his wife have three children.
“I’m not going down without a fight. One sub-part of God’s grace is found in the jawdropping advances science has made the past few years in immunotherapy and more,” Sasse wrote. “Death and dying aren’t the same — the process of dying is still something to be lived.”
The administration of President Donald Trump has announced it will halt the visa lottery programme that allowed the suspect in the Brown University shooting to enter the United States.
The lottery awards approximately 50,000 immigrant visas each year, according to the US government.
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But Trump has long opposed the Diversity Immigrant Visa Programme, sometimes known as the DV Programme. On Friday, his Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem revealed that he had directed her to end the lottery immediately.
She also identified the suspect as Portuguese national Claudio Manuel Neves Valente, who received his green card — a certificate for permanent residency — through the lottery in 2017.
“This heinous individual should never have been allowed in our country,” Noem wrote in her social media statement.
“At President Trump’s direction, I am immediately directing USCIS [US Citizenship and Immigration Services] to pause the DV1 program to ensure no more Americans are harmed by this disastrous program.”
Campaign to end visa lottery
Friday’s announcement is not the first time Trump has sought to wind down the diversity visa lottery.
Trump has long sought to narrow the country’s pathways to legal immigration, and he has used crime as a pretext for doing so.
Noem herself pointed out that, in 2017, Trump “fought” to shut down the diversity visa lottery in the wake of an attack in New York City that saw a truck ram into a crowd of people, killing eight.
Speaking at a graduation ceremony for the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in December 2017, Trump — then in his first term as president — called on Congress to “end the visa lottery system”.
“They have a lottery. You pick people. Do you think the country is giving us their best people? No,” Trump said.
“What kind of a system is that? They come in by lottery. They give us their worst people.”
The Diversity Immigrant Visa Programme was established in 1990 to ensure applicants from underrepresented countries had access to the US immigration system.
Immigration rights advocates have long argued that pathways to permanent residency are narrow for those who do not already have a spouse, relatives or some other kind of sponsor in the country.
The visa lottery helps to answer that need, by creating an alternative route to residency.
The lottery system selects visa recipients randomly, but critics argue it remains a long-shot avenue to gain US residency, and even successful applicants must still pass a rigorous screening process after the lottery.
While the Diversity Immigrant Visa Programme used to accept 55,000 applicants each year, in 2000 that number was lowered to its current level, according to the American Immigration Council.
Surveillance images released by police show Claudio Neves Valente, the suspect in the mass shooting at Brown University [Providence Police Dept via AP Photo]
A suspect identified
Friday’s decision to immediately suspend the lottery comes as new details emerge about Neves Valente, a physics scholar found dead in a storage unit in New Hampshire after a nationwide manhunt.
The search began on December 13, when gunfire erupted on the campus of Brown University, a prestigious Ivy League school in Providence, Rhode Island.
The school’s fall semester was at its conclusion, and the exam period had begun. Students in the Barus and Holley physics laboratory were taking their end-of-course exams when a suspect, clad in black, entered the building and opened fire, killing two students and injuring nine others.
The physics lab was close to the edge of campus, and the suspect was able to escape on foot undetected.
The manhunt included several false starts, as authorities said they quickly detained a person of interest, only to release the individual without charges.
Then, on November 15, law enforcement officials announced that a plasma physics scholar named Nuno Loureiro had been found dead at his home, after suffering multiple gunshot wounds.
Loureiro was also a Portuguese immigrant, and he served as a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), a highly regarded science institution.
It was not immediately clear that the two shooting incidents were related, and authorities faced pressure to bring the Brown University shooter to justice, as the manhunt dragged on.
But on Thursday night, officials announced they had discovered Neves Valente dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound, and that they believed him to be responsible for both attacks.
Neves Valente had previously studied in a PhD programme at Brown, though he did not complete his degree, and he had been Loureiro’s classmate in Portugal.
Visa revocations
The administration of President Trump has a track record of revoking visas and terminating immigration programmes after high-profile attacks.
On November 26, for example, two National Guard members from West Virginia were shot while on patrol in Washington, DC, as part of Trump’s crime crackdown in the capital.
The suspect in that case was identified as Rahmanullah Lakanwal, an Afghan national who had previously worked with allied forces during the US-led war in Afghanistan.
One of the National Guard soldiers, 20-year-old Sarah Beckstrom, ultimately died from her wounds.
Trump responded to the incident by announcing he was halting all visa applications and asylum requests from Afghan nationals, despite outcry from human rights and veterans groups.
The Republican leader also said he would pursue a “permanent pause” on entry for immigrants from “all third-world countries”.
In the aftermath of the shooting, the Trump White House tightened entry for 19 countries it had identified in June as “high risk” and expanded the list of restrictions to include 20 more countries.
Trump has also taken targeted actions to strip individuals of their immigration status following shootings.
After the assassination of conservative commentator Charlie Kirk in September, the Trump administration announced it was yanking visas from six foreign nationals who posted disrespectful comments or memes online about the attack. They hailed from countries ranging from Argentina to Brazil, Germany to Paraguay.
Free-speech advocates said the decision was a clear violation of the First Amendment of the US Constitution, which protects the freedom of expression.
But the Trump administration has repeatedly threatened to boot foreign nationals that do not align with its policy priorities.
“Aliens who take advantage of America’s hospitality while celebrating the assassination of our citizens will be removed,” the US State Department wrote in response.
The suspect in the Kirk shooting is a 22-year-old US citizen named Tyler James Robinson from Utah.
Studies have repeatedly shown that US-born citizens are more likely to commit violent crimes than immigrants.
WASHINGTON — President Trump suspended the green card lottery program on Thursday that allowed the suspect in the Brown University and MIT shootings to come to the United States.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said in a post on the social platform X that, at Trump’s direction, she is ordering the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services to pause the program.
“This heinous individual should never have been allowed in our country,” she said of the suspect, Portuguese national Claudio Neves Valente.
Neves Valente, 48, is suspected in the shootings at Brown University that killed two students and wounded nine others, and the killing of an MIT professor. He was found dead Thursday evening from a self-inflicted gunshot wound, officials said.
Neves Valente had studied at Brown on a student visa beginning in 2000, according to an affidavit from a Providence police detective. In 2017, he was issued a diversity immigrant visa and months later obtained legal permanent residence status, according to the affidavit. It was not immediately clear where he was between taking a leave of absence from the school in 2001 and getting the visa in 2017.
The diversity visa program makes up to 50,000 green cards available each year by lottery to people from countries that are little represented in the U.S., many of them in Africa. The lottery was created by Congress, and the move is almost certain to invite legal challenges.
Nearly 20 million people applied for the 2025 visa lottery, with more than 131,000 selected when including spouses with the winners. After winning, they must undergo vetting to win admission to the United States. Portuguese citizens won only 38 slots.
Lottery winners are invited to apply for a green card. They are interviewed at consulates and subject to the same requirements and vetting as other green-card applicants.
Trump has long opposed the diversity visa lottery. Noem’s announcement is the latest example of using tragedy to advance immigration policy goals. After an Afghan man was identified as the gunman in a fatal attack on National Guard members in November, Trump’s administration imposed sweeping rules against immigration from Afghanistan and other counties.
While pursuing mass deportation, Trump has sought to limit or eliminate avenues to legal immigration. He has not been deterred if they are enshrined in law, like the diversity visa lottery, or the Constitution, as with a right to citizenship for anyone born on U.S. soil. The Supreme Court recently agreed to hear his challenge to birthright citizenship.
Dec. 15 (UPI) — An individual detained by police as a person of interest in the Brown University shooting will be released, authorities said late Sunday as the investigation into the crime continues.
The person of interest was taken into police custody early Sunday following a tip that led police to a Hampton Inn in the Rhode Island town of Coventry.
The announcement of the person’s imminent release was made before midnight Sunday in a social media statement from Providence Police.
“We know that this is likely to cause fresh anxiety for our community, and we want to reiterate what we said earlier, which remains true, which is ever since the initial call a day and a half ago, we have not received any credible or specific threats to the Providence community,” Providence Mayor Brett Smiley said during a late Sunday press conference about the individual’s release.
“And so the status of safety in our community remains unchanged and we believe that you remain safe in our community.”
Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Neronha explained that evidence initially pointed toward the individual taken into police custody, but as the investigation has continued, the evidence “now points in a different direction.”
“So, what that means is that this person of interest needs to be — and should be — released,” he said.
Police are continuing to investigate and develop leads as they hunt for a suspect, he said, as he asked the public to be patient as investigators comb through the facts.
“There is too much at stake for the victims of this horrific crime and their families to take chances with respect to this investigation,” he said.
Providence Police Chief Oscar Perez added that neither the individual’s apprehension nor their release was the result of an error, noting that such developments are part of the investigative process.
“Investigations will tell us whether something is valid or not, whether something needs to be ruled out. It’s not a mistake. It’s just how investigations work,” he said. “And our responsibility is to make sure that we conduct the proper investigations.”
Two people were killed and eight were injured in a late Saturday afternoon shooting at the Brown University campus as students were taking exams in the Barus and Holley Engineering Building.
Police had initially taken another person into custody, but later released them after determining they were not a suspect.
Authorities have released a short, 10-second clip from surveillance video showing a person of interest in the shooting.
During the Sunday press conference, Perez said the individual seen in the clip is not the person who was detained and is being released.
“I would describe that person as a person of interest,” Neronha added.
“There are a lot of unknowns in this case, and that’s one unknown … that what we’re working towards,” he said.
Brown University said in a late Sunday statement that Providence police have kept officials informed of their search efforts.
“We know that this update may prompt numerous questions,” the university said in a statement. “We continue to make every effort to ensure the safety and security of the campus. We are also advising every member of the Brown community to be vigilant in their own activities on campus.”
