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Willie Garson, the actor best known for his role as Carrie Bradshaws best male friend, Stanford Blatch, in Sex and the City, has died. He was 57.

His death was confirmed on Tuesday by his son, Nathen Garson, in a post on Instagram. The cause was not immediately disclosed.

In addition to his popular role in the HBO series Sex and the City, Mr. Garson was also known for his role as the con man Mozzie in the TV show White Collar.

Mr. Garson is credited with appearing in 30 movies, including the 2008 film Sex and the City and its 2010 sequel Sex and the City 2.

Mr. Garson was born William Paszamant on Feb. 20, 1964, in New Jersey to Muriel Paszamant and Donald M. Paszamant. At 13, he started training at the Actors Institute in New York, and he graduated in 1985 from Wesleyan University, where he majored in psychology and theater, according to the university.

After graduating from Wesleyan, Mr. Garson landed guest roles on several television shows, including Family Ties and Cheers.

In addition to the Sex and the City movies, Mr. Garson worked with the Farrelly brothers in some of their films, including Kingpin (1996), Theres Something About Mary (1998) and Fever Pitch (2005).

He also played Lee Harvey Oswald three times, in the film Ruby (1992) and on the TV shows Quantum Leap and MADtv.

Mr. Garson also served on the advisory board for You Gotta Believe, an organization that helps find permanent families for young people. Mr. Garson became a parent in 2010 when he adopted his son, Nathen, who was 7 at the time.

As a narcissist actor, and I was the definition, I immediately became responsible for taking care of someone else, Mr. Garson said in an interview shared on Medium last year. It is a really special feeling to say that. It is such an important job and makes you grow in so many different ways.

Complete information on survivors was not immediately available.

As the news of Mr. Garsons death spread on Tuesday night, actors and performers shared their memories and praise on social media.

The comic actor Mario Cantone, who played Mr. Garsons partner in Sex and the City, said on Twitter that he was devastated and just overwhelmed with sadness.

Taken away from all of us way soon, he said. You were a gift from the gods.

Cynthia Nixon, who played Miranda Hobbes in Sex and the City, said on Twitter that Mr. Garson was endlessly funny on-screen and in real life.

We all loved him and adored working with him, she said. He was a source of light, friendship and show business lore. He was a consummate professional always.

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Willie Garson, Who Played Standford Blatch on Sex and the City, Dies at 57 - The New York Times

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New Delhi: Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan landed in hot water last week for erroneously calling the Haqqani network, a terrorist organisation on the United Nations sanctions list, a tribe in Afghanistan.

The Americans didnt understand what the Haqqani network was. Haqqani is a tribe. Its a Pashtun tribe, living in Afghanistan. Forty years ago, when the Afghan jihad took place, we had five million Afghan refugees in Pakistan, among them were a few of the Haqqanis, Khan said in a CNN interview.

Social media users were quick to point out that there is no Pashtun tribe in Afghanistan by the name of Haqqani. The Haqqani Network, which is affiliated with the Afghan Taliban and responsible for several attacks including a 2017 bombing in Kabul, was founded by late warlord Jalaluddin Haqqani who belonged to the Zadran tribe.

Jalaluddins son Sirajuddin now serves as interior minister in the new Taliban regime in Afghanistan.

The Taliban, which means students in Pashto, have primarily drawn their power from the dominant Pashtuns in Afghanistan. They first seized Kabul in 1996 from President Burhanuddin Rabbani, an ethnic Tajik whom they was saw as anti-Pashtun and corrupt.

Also read:SAARC foreign ministers meet cancelled after Pakistan insists on Talibans participation

Pashtuns, also known as Pushtans, Paktuns or Pathans, are the predominant ethnic group in Afghanistan who comprise 40-50 per cent of the population. Smaller ethnic groups in the country among the 14 recognised include Tajiks, Uzbeks, and Hazaras.

There are also a large number of Pashtuns in Pakistans Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, which shares a border with Afghanistan. They were separated from those in Afghanistan by the Durand Line, which divided the region between British India and Afghanistan in the late 19th century.

The Pashtun Tahafuz Movement (PTM), a growing civil rights group that began in Pakistan in 2014, has long criticised the Imran Khan government and military establishment for alleged human rights violations against the community.

Pashtuns are mostly Sunni Muslims. However, there are Shia Pashtuns in eastern Afghanistan, according to a 2002 intelligence report by the US Marine Corps Intelligence Activity (MCIA).

Pashtuns speak Pashto, which became the national language of Afghanistan in 1936.

Central to the Pashtun way of life is the Pashtunwali code of honour that stresses personal autonomy. A key facet of this code is blood feuds or retaliatory killings that continue between families and tribes for generations.

Not seeking blood retaliation personally is deemed a sign of moral weakness, even cowardice, not just of the individual who was wronged, but his whole kin group, wrote US-based social anthropologist Thomas Barfield in a2003 research paper titled Afghan Customary Law and Its Relationship to Formal Judicial Institutions.

Blood feuds cannot operate in societies with government control. Therefore, those living in marginal rural lands away from state control see themselves as true Pashtuns, who can uphold the strict standards of Pashtunwali, added Barfield.

Decisions are taken and disputes resolved only through consensus at a tribal council or jirga, and its participating members are usually the older respected men and religious figures of a village like mullahs. Women and children arent allowed, as pointed out by Country of Origin Information Center Landinfo, an independent body that works with the Norwegian immigration authorities.

Hospitality, defence of property, and protection of female relatives are other important principles for Pashtuns.

Also read:Taliban seek UNGA participation, write to UN chief nominating their spokesman as Afghan envoy

As far as origin theories go, some say Pashtuns are descendants of Eastern Iranians while others speculate that they originated from ancient tribes of Israel.

Pashtuns believe they are descendants of a common ancestor, even though there is no consensus on what the name of this ancestor is. Some call him Qays Abdurrashid, others refer to him as Daru Nika or Baba Khaled, the legendary general in Prophet Muhammads army.

German ethnologist Bernt Glatzer, who published several works on nomadism in Afghanistan, explained the family tree under this common ancestor from which several tribes were believed to have emerged.

The common ancestor is said to have had four sons: Sarban, Bitan, Ghurghusht and Karran. Sarban had two sons: Sharjnun and Kharshbun; Bitan three sons, Ismail, Ashbun, Kajin, and one daughter, Bibi Matu; Ghurghusht had three sons, Danay, Babay and Mando; and Karran had two sons, Koday and Kakay.

Important Pashtun rulers have included Ibrahim Lodhi of the Lodi Dynasty, which who ruled Afghanistan and northern India during the Delhi Sultanate period and was eventually defeated by Mughal emperor Babur.

There are countless tribes, sub-tribes and sub-units under the larger umbrella of Pashtuns. The two major tribes include the Durranis and the Ghilzais. The MCIA report offers a look at the subtribes below these two.

Under Durranis come Achakzai, Alizai, Barakzai, Mohammadzai and Popalzai. Under Ghilzais, come Ahmadzai, Kharruti, Hotaki, Wardak, Jaji and Jadran.

Mullah Baradar, deputy prime minister in the Taliban cabinet, and former Afghan president Hamid Karzai belong to the Popalzai tribe.

-zay or -zai is a common suffix in names of larger tribal units and means son of, while -khel refers to smaller subunits, explained Glatzer. He added that tribes that end with -zay are usually found in southern or western parts of Afghanistan. Most eastern tribes, such as the Afridi, Mohmand, Zadran, Shinwari and others, lack this suffix.

(Edited by Amit Upadhyaya)

Also read:Jaishankar discusses Afghanistan situation & Indo-Pacific with global counterparts at UNGA

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Since the coronavirus pandemic began, art fairs have gone through several permutations, from online only to fully in person, along with several varieties of hybrids.

To many in the art world, the format and fate of Art Basel in Basel, Switzerland, the fair scheduled to take place from Friday to Sunday, is especially important, given that it is the mother of all art fairs, in the words of the London-based dealer Pilar Corrias.

There are too many fairs around the world, and not all will survive, Ms. Corrias said. But we need Basel.

The fair first took place in 1970 and now has editions in Miami Beach and Hong Kong.

More than 270 galleries are scheduled to show inside the Messe Basel exhibition hall the first such gathering in Basel since 2019 and, like the Hong Kong fair that took place in May, this one is actually a hybrid, with a concurrent online viewing room.

But the focus is on the return of the real-world event.

The online component is limited to galleries who are physically at the fair, said Marc Spiegler, Art Basels global director. The logic is that we want to extend the fair digitally rather than having two fairs. (Art Basel will also have a purely digital event in November.)

Given the circumstances, Mr. Spiegler was especially proud of the robust number of galleries 33 countries are represented especially in the Parcours sector, which takes place around the city of Basel, and in Unlimited, the section for large-scale projects.

Both require an extraordinary effort on the part of galleries, he said. The fact that we have 62 projects for Unlimited is especially impressive.

For organizers, exhibitors and collectors who want to attend the fair, there are pandemic-related precautions. In addition, the halls capacity has been reduced and masks are required.

The upshot: Were running a safe event, Mr. Spiegler said.

He noted that the precautions may encourage a more local crowd.

We assume the fair will have a more European flavor, Mr. Spiegler said. I think the audience may be younger this year, too.

For an event that once derived at least part of its appeal from its social scene, the tone may change as well.

Were expecting a pretty focused crowd, Mr. Spiegler said. People who come to an art fair under these conditions are really there for the art.

He added, Its more about seeing art than being seen.

The American philanthropist Pamela Joyner, known for her collection of works by Black artists and those of the African diaspora, said she planned to attend the fair to talk to collectors and galleries who I dont talk to all the time.

There are some things, she said, you cant get online.

Ms. Joyner, currently based in Nevada near Lake Tahoe, travels frequently and serves on many corporate and cultural boards, including that of the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

I have a particular fondness for Art Basel, she said. I think of it as part of my collecting tool kit.

Among other benefits, it helps her stay ahead of the curve. Several years ago, Ms. Joyner said, she bought a work by the painter Jordan Casteel before she was in the limelight. (Ms. Casteel had a survey at the New Museum in New York last year.)

It was figurative painting, said Ms. Joyner, a frequent buyer of abstract works. And I dont buy a lot of those.

Ms. Corrias, who has two gallery spaces in London and plans to expand to Shanghai next year, will be showing, among other works, a sculpture from Philippe Parrenos Fraught Times series; it resembles a Christmas tree left out past its prime.

Its intricate and delicate, and it took him more than two years to make, Ms. Corrias said, making it one work that needs to be seen in person. Hence her participation in the fair.

Its made of stainless steel but it looks real, she said. You cannot see that in a photograph. You have to stand in front of it.

Jeanne Greenberg Rohatyn, the founder of the gallery Salon 94 in New York, agreed, saying: Putting art in front of people is key. People are starved to look at art and stretch their eyes.

Ms. Rohatyn will be showing art by Lisa Brice, Lyle Ashton Harris and Huma Bhabha, among others. Her booth will include photographs by Kwame Brathwaite, including Untitled (Model who embraced natural hairstyles at AJASS photo shoot) (circa 1970).

Mr. Brathwaite helped popularize the phrase Black is beautiful.

He has a very precise eye, Ms. Rohatyn said, adding that it would be fresh material for the Basel audience. Europeans havent seen a lot of this work.

Ms. Rohatyn recently announced that in January she would merge her business with that of three other top dealers, creating a hybrid gallery and art advisory called LGDR. Salon 94 will close out its fair slate at Shanghais West Bund fair in November and at Art Basel Miami Beach in December.

A less dramatic and disruptive collaboration is planned for the Basel fair by Sperone Westwater and David Nolan Gallery, both of New York. They are splitting a booth and creating provocative pairings from their respective exhibitions, under the title Dialogues.

David Nolan and I were having lunch, and we said, What are we going to do, how can we make this interesting? said Angela Westwater, one of Sperone Westwaters founders. So were playing a game and challenging each other.

Some of the pairings are linked by aesthetic and medium, as with Susan Rothenbergs Red (2008) and Georg Baselitzs Cebe (1993), two oils on canvas that employ the color red.

Others, like a combination of a Bruce Nauman video and a collage by Barry Le Va, are connected thematically in that both look at the psychological effects of architectural spaces.

We hope its as mesmerizing and challenging for others as it is for us, said Ms. Westwater, who has been attending Art Basel since the 1970s.

In addition to veterans like Ms. Westwater, there are 24 galleries at Basel for the first time this year, including Isla Flotante of Buenos Aires, founded in 2011.

It concentrates on younger and midcareer artists, said one of its two directors, Leopol Mones Cazon.

The gallery has shown at Art Basel Miami Beach. Now we want to deepen our ties to Europe, Mr. Cazon said, a process that began in early 2020 but was canceled by the pandemic.

The gallery is showing a mixed media installation by the Bolivian artist Andrs Pereira Paz called Ego Fvlcio Collvmnas Eivs [I Fortify Your Columns] (2020).

The work incorporating bird sounds, lights and thin metal sculptures, some in the shape of stars addresses both environmental degradation and colonization. It was inspired by the 2019 appearance of a guajoj bird in La Paz, Bolivia, fleeing the fires destroying its Amazon habitat, and gained much attention in the media because it is traditionally thought to be a bad omen.

The bodies of outer space are in a sad mood, looking at this destruction, Mr. Cazon said. Its an apocalyptic scenario. But at the same time, its poetic.

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Art Basel Reasserts Its Importance at Home - The New York Times

On Tuesday, CNN anchor Don Lemon opened his show Don Lemon Tonight with, "If youre not going to get vaccinated, you dont want to social distance, you dont want to wear a mask, then maybe you dont want to go to the hospital when you get sick. I know that sounds harsh but youre taking up space for people who are doing things the right way.

He went on to suggest restricting medical treatment for those who do not wear a mask. Anyone with even a sliver of compassion would never suggest denying health care to a significant percentage of the population and yet people like Lemon see no issue legal or ethical with such radical views. Worse, he is applauded.

As you might be aware, Don Lemon is gay. I find it ironic that his comments about the unvaccinated grossly conflict with his public statements regarding medical treatment of homosexual men during the HIV/AIDS crisis.

Back then, he expressed opposition to medical discrimination for those with HIV. He's not alone in his targeting of the unvaccinated as several news outlets expressed similar opinions. A Toronto paper going so far as to say "Let Them Die" in its headlines.

Sadly, I see a population willing to look the other way as millions of its fellow citizens are targeted as second-class citizens, as cries go up to prohibit them from restaurants, planes, jobs and now health care.

We must speak up for the rights of our neighbors vaccinated or unvaccinated and push back against a government and media which are clearly out of control. Because one day they will come for us and there will be no one left to speak in our defense.

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Donna Dodge: Government and media out of control with vaccinate mandates - Conway Daily Sun

When Twitter decided briefly last fall to block users from posting links to an article about Joseph R. Biden Jr.s son Hunter, it prompted a conservative outcry that Big Tech was improperly aiding Mr. Bidens presidential campaign.

So terrible, President Donald J. Trump said of the move to limit the visibility of a New York Post article. Senator Josh Hawley, Republican of Missouri, said Twitter and Facebook were censoring core political speech. The Republican National Committee filed a formal complaint with the Federal Election Commission accusing Twitter of using its corporate resources to benefit the Biden campaign.

Now the commission, which oversees election laws, has dismissed those allegations, according to a document obtained by The New York Times, ruling in Twitters favor in a decision that is likely to set a precedent for future cases involving social media sites and federal campaigns.

The election commission determined that Twitters actions regarding the Hunter Biden article had been undertaken for a valid commercial reason, not a political purpose, and were thus allowable.

And in a second case involving a social media platform, the commission used the same reasoning to side with Snapchat and reject a complaint from the Trump campaign. The campaign had argued that the company provided an improper gift to Mr. Biden by rejecting Mr. Trump from its Discover platform in the summer of 2020, according to another commission document.

The election commissions twin rulings, which were made last month behind closed doors and are set to become public soon, protect the flexibility of social media and tech giants like Twitter, Facebook, Google and Snapchat to control what is shared on their platforms regarding federal elections.

Republicans have increasingly been at odds with the nations biggest technology and social media companies, accusing them of giving Democrats an undue advantage on their platforms. Mr. Trump, who was ousted from Twitter and Facebook early this year, has been among the loudest critics of the two companies and even announced a lawsuit against them and Google.

The suppression of the article about Hunter Biden at the height of the presidential race last year was a particular flashpoint for Republicans and Big Tech. But there were other episodes, including Snapchats decision to stop featuring Mr. Trump on one of its platforms.

The Federal Election Commission said in both cases that the companies had acted in their own commercial interests, according to the factual and legal analysis provided to the parties involved. The commission also said that Twitter had followed existing policies related to hacked materials.

The rulings appear to provide social media companies additional protections for making decisions on moderating content related to elections as long as such choices are in service of a companys commercial interests. Federal election law is decades old and is broadly outdated, so decisions by the election commission serve as influential guideposts.

Campaign finance law does not account for the post-broadcast world and puts few restrictions on the behavior of social media firms, said Ciara Torres-Spelliscy, a law professor at Stetson University. There is a real mismatch between our federal campaign finance laws and how campaigns are run.

Still, the Republican National Committees complaint stretched the boundaries of campaign finance law, she added. The choice to delete or suppress certain content on the platform is ultimately going to be viewed through the lens of the First Amendment, Ms. Torres-Spelliscy said. I dont think that type of content moderation by the big platforms is going to raise a campaign finance issue.

Some Republicans are seeking to take a broader cudgel to the big internet companies, aiming to repeal a provision of communications law that shields them from liability for what users post.

In the case of the Hunter Biden article, Twitter reversed course within a day of its decision to block distribution of the piece, and its chief executive, Jack Dorsey, has called the initial move a mistake.

The Federal Election Commissions official vote on the case the commission is split equally between three Democratic-aligned commissioners and three Republicans is not yet public, nor are any additional statements written by commissioners. Such statements often accompany the closure of cases and can provide further insight into the commissions reasoning.

In addition to rejecting the R.N.C. complaint, the commission dismissed other allegations that Twitter had violated election laws by shadow banning Republican users (or appearing to limit the visibility of their posts without providing an explanation); suppressing other anti-Biden content; and labeling Mr. Trumps tweets with warnings about their accuracy. The commission rejected those accusations, writing that they were vague, speculative and unsupported by the available information.

Twitter and Snapchat declined to comment.

Emma Vaughn, an R.N.C. spokeswoman, said the committee was weighing its options for appealing this disappointing decision from the F.E.C. Liz Harrington, a spokeswoman for Mr. Trump, said on Tuesday that Big Tech is corrupt and accused it of interfering in the 2020 election to protect Mr. Biden.

Twitter would go on to permanently bar Mr. Trump from its platform entirely in January, citing the risk of further incitement of violence after the attack on the Capitol by his supporters as Congress voted to certify the 2020 election.

Out of office, Mr. Trump has sued Facebook, Twitter and Google, arguing that a provision of the Communications Decency Act known as Section 230, which limits internet companies liability for what is posted on their networks, is unconstitutional.

Legal experts have given little credence to Mr. Trumps suit, the news of which the former president immediately used as a fund-raising tactic.

Section 230 has been a regular target of lawmakers who want to crack down on Silicon Valley companies. While in office, Mr. Trump signed an executive order intended to chip away at the protections offered by Section 230, and Democratic and Republican lawmakers have proposed repealing or modifying the provision.

But technology companies and free speech advocates have vocally defended it, arguing that Section 230 has been crucial for the growth of the internet. If the measure were repealed, it would stifle free speech and bury social media companies in legal bills, the companies have said.

Twitter initially said that it had prevented linking to the Hunter Biden article because of its existing policies against distributing hacked materials and private information. The article, which focused on the Bidens Ukrainian ties, involved correspondence that The Post suggested had been found on Hunter Bidens laptop.

But Mr. Dorsey, Twitters chief executive, acknowledged in October that blocking links with zero context as to why had been unacceptable.

Soon after, Twitter said that it was changing its policy on hacked materials and would allow similar content to be posted, including a label to provide context about the source of the information.

Republicans said the damage was done and set a poor precedent.

This censorship manifestly will influence the presidential election, Senator Hawley wrote in a letter to the F.E.C. last year after Twitter blocked the article and Facebook said it was reducing its distribution of the piece.

The commission documents reveal one reason that Twitter had been especially suspicious of the Hunter Biden article. The companys head of site integrity, according to the commission, said Twitter had received official warnings throughout 2020 from federal law enforcement that malign state actors might hack and release materials associated with political campaigns and that Hunter Biden might be a target of one such operation.

The election commission said it found no information that Twitter coordinated its decisions with the Biden campaign. In a sworn declaration, Twitters head of U.S. public policy said she was unaware of any contacts with the Biden team before the company made its decisions, according to the commission document.

Adav Noti, a senior director at the Campaign Legal Center, said that he supported the rulings but that he had concerns about the election commissions use of what he called the commercial rationale, because it was overbroad.

It encompasses almost everything for-profit corporations do, Mr. Noti said.

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Under G.O.P. Pressure, Tech Giants Are Empowered by Election Agency - The New York Times