albany, new york — A performer who appeared naked in a show by world-renowned performance artist Marina Abramovic at New York City’s Museum of Modern Art is suing the museum, saying it failed to take action after he was sexually assaulted multiple times by attendees during the performances nearly 14 years ago. 

The suit was filed in Manhattan on Monday under the New York Adult Survivors Act, a special state law that created a yearslong suspension of the usual time limit for accusers to sue. Although the law expired last year, the suit says the parties agreed to extend the window closing. 

John Bonafede alleges in the suit he was sexually assaulted by five public onlookers who attended a show he was hired by the museum to perform in as part of Abramovic’s retrospective “The Artist Is Present.” 

Email messages sent to the museum this week were not returned. Abramovic is not named as a defendant and did not immediately return a request for comment. 

The work, titled “Imponderabilia,” saw Bonafede and another performer standing face-to-face with each other in a doorway about 18 inches (45.7 centimeters) apart, fully nude, silent, and still. The exhibition, which ran from March 14, 2010, through May 31, 2010, was curated by the museum in a way that encouraged visitors to pass in between the performers as they went from one gallery to the next, the suit alleges. 

Mostly older men involved, says suit

The people who assaulted Bonafede were mostly older men, the suit says. One of the perpetrators was a corporate member of the museum, who was ultimately kicked out and revoked of his membership, according to the suit. 

During the final weeks of the exhibition, another attendee non-consensually groped Bonafede’s private areas three times before they were finally stopped by security, the suit said. 

Bonafede reported four of the individuals to the museum staff and security immediately, according to the suit, while the fifth was witnessed personally by the museum security staff. 

Female performer also assaulted, suit says

At one point, Bonafede also witnessed a public attendee sexually assault his female co-performer by kissing her on the mouth without her consent, the suit said. 

Prior to the exhibition, the performers had voiced their concerns about nude performers being subject to harassment in a letter to the museum during contract negotiations, the suit said. 

Once it began, several news outlets including The New York Times reported on the inappropriate behavior by visitors, and the sexual assaults on “Imponderabilia” were discussed within New York City’s art and performance communities, the suit says. 

Despite the museum having knowledge of the issue, it failed to take action to protect the performers and prevent further sexual assaults, such as telling visitors ahead of time that touching was not allowed, the lawsuit said. 

About a month into the exhibition, the museum created a handbook outlining protocols for the performers to alert museum staff if they felt unsafe or were inappropriately touched. 

Bonafede agreed to continue the performance after he was assaulted because of the “tough it out” culture of the exhibition, the suit says, but suffered for years from emotional distress, and his mental health, body image and career were damaged as a result. 

The Associated Press generally does not name people who say they have been sexually assaulted unless they come forward publicly. Bonafede gave consent through his lawyer, Jordan Fletcher. 

Fletcher declined to comment further on the suit, but said they will be seeking a jury trial and compensatory damages. 
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MEXICO CITY — Mexico’s government has acknowledged that at least two well-known Mayan ruin sites are unreachable by visitors because of a toxic mix of cartel violence and land disputes.

But two tourist guides in the southern state of Chiapas, near the border with Guatemala, say two other sites that the government claims are still open to visitors can only be reached by passing though drug gang checkpoints.

The explosion of drug cartel violence in Chiapas since last year has left the Yaxchilán ruin site completely cut off, the government conceded Friday.

The tour guides, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they must still work in the area, said that gunmen and checkpoints are often seen on the road to another site, Bonampak, famous for its murals.

They say that to get to yet another archaeological site, Lagartero, travelers are forced to hand over identification and cellphones at cartel checkpoints.

Meanwhile, officials concede that visitors also can’t go to the imposing, towering pyramids at Tonina, because a landowner has shut off across his land while seeking payment from the government for granting the right of way.

The cartel-related dangers are the most problematic. The two cartels warring over the area’s lucrative drug and migrant smuggling routes set up the checkpoints to detect any movement by their rivals.

Though no tourist has been harmed so far, and the government claims the sites are safe, many guides no longer take tour groups there.

“It’s as if you told me to go to the Gaza Strip, right?” said one of the guides.

“They demand your identification, to see if you’re a local resident,” he said, describing an almost permanent gang checkpoint on the road to Lagartero, a Mayan pyramid complex that is surrounded by pristine, turquoise jungle lagoons.

“They take your cellphone and demand your sign-in code, and then they look through your conversations to see if you belong to some other gang,” he said. “At any given time, a rival group could show up and start a gunbattle.”

The government seems unconcerned, and there is even anger that anyone would suggest there is a problem, in line with President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s policy of playing down gang violence — even as the cartels take over more territory in Mexico.

“Bonampak and Lagartero are open to the public,” the National Institute of Anthropology and History said in a statement Friday.

“It is false, biased and irresponsible to say that these archaeological sites are in danger from drug traffickers,” added the agency, known as the INAH, which claimed it “retains control of the sites.”

Both guides stressed that the best-known Mayan ruin site in Chiapas, the imposing temple complex at Palenque, is open and perfectly safe for visitors. But starting around December, tourists have canceled about 5% of trips booked to the area, and there are fears that could grow.

Things that some tourists once enjoyed — like the more adventurous trip to ruins buried deep in the jungle, like Yaxchilán, on the banks of the Usumacinta river and reachable only by boat — are either no longer possible, or so risky that several guides have publicly announced they won’t take tourists there.

Residents of the town of Frontera Comalapa, where the boats once picked up tourists to take them to Yaxchilan, closed the road in October because of constant incursions by gunmen. 

Even the INAH admits there is no access to Yaxchilan, noting that “the institute itself has recommended at certain points that tourists not go to the archaeological site, because they could have an unsuccessful visit.” But it said that the problems there are “of a social nature” and are beyond its control.

Cartel battles started to get really bad in Chiapas in 2023, which coincides with the uptick in the number of migrants — now about a half-million annually — moving through the Darien Gap jungle from South America, through Central America and Mexico to the U.S. border.

Because many of the new wave of migrants are from Cuba, Asia and Africa, they can pay more than Central Americans, making the smuggling routes through Chiapas more valuable. The problem now seems to be beyond anyone’s control.

The National Guard — the quasi-military force that López Obrador has made the centerpiece of law enforcement in Mexico — has been pelted with stones and sticks by local residents in several towns in that region of Chiapas in recent weeks.

The other tour guide said that was because the two warring drug cartels, Sinaloa and Jalisco, often recruit or force local people to act as foot soldiers and prevent National Guard troopers from entering their towns.

In Chiapas, residents are often members of Indigenous groups like the Choles or Lacandones, both descendants of the ancient Maya. The potential damage of using them as foot soldiers in cartel fights is grim, given that some groups have either very few remaining members or are already locked in land disputes.

The guide said the ruin sites have the added disadvantage of being in jungle areas where the cartels have carved out at least four clandestine landing strips to fly drugs in from South America.

But the damages are mounting for the Indigenous residents who have come to depend on tourism.

“There are communities that sell handicrafts, that provide places to stay, boat trips, craftspeople. It affects the economy a lot,” said the first guide. “You have to remember that this is an agricultural state that has no industry, no factories, so tourism has become an economic lever, one of the few sources of work.”
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MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA — Aryna Sabalenka continued to be an irrepressible force at the Australian Open as she powered to a 6-3, 6-2 victory over Chinese 12th seed Zheng Qinwen on Saturday to successfully defend her title and add a second Grand Slam trophy to her cabinet. 

The Belarusian second seed has barely put a foot wrong as she became the first woman to retain the Melbourne Park crown since compatriot Victoria Azarenka in 2013. 

“It’s been an amazing couple of weeks, and I couldn’t imagine myself lifting this trophy one more time,” Sabalenka said. 

“I want to congratulate you, Qinwen, on an incredible couple of weeks here in Australia. I know it’s really tough to lose in the final, but you’re such an incredible player,” she said. “You’re such a young girl, and you’re going to make many more finals and you’re going to get it.” 

Sabalenka came into the match without dropping a set at the year’s first major. She remained perfect to join Ash Barty, Serena Williams, Maria Sharapova and Lindsay Davenport in the elite club of players to have managed the feat since 2000. 

She unleashed monster groundstrokes to grab the final by the scruff of the neck with an early break, and thousands of Chinese supporters and millions back home watched Zheng fall behind 3-0. 

Sabalenka did not have her nation’s flags in the stands because of a ban over her country’s role in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, but the charismatic 25-year-old has a big Melbourne fan base. She rode the Rod Laver Arena support to take the first set. 

Zheng, who had saved four set points, showed she was slowly growing in confidence in her second meeting with Sabalenka by firing up her own big forehand amid the rallying cry of “Jia You” from her compatriots in the crowd. 

The 21-year-old first-time finalist, bidding to match her idol Li Na — the Melbourne Park champion 10 years ago and first Chinese player to win a major — saw her hopes fade after two more errors on serve left her 4-1 down. 

Sabalenka shrugged off a shaky service game to close out the most one-sided final since Azarenka beat Maria Sharapova 6-3, 6-0 in 2012. 

“It’s my first final and I’m feeling a little bit pity, but that’s how it is,” Zheng said. “I feel very complicated because I could have done better than I did in this match.” 
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NEW YORK — Pornographic deepfake images of Taylor Swift are circulating online, making the singer the most famous victim of a scourge that tech platforms and anti-abuse groups have struggled to fix.

Sexually explicit and abusive fake images of Swift began circulating widely this week on the social media platform X.

Her ardent fanbase of “Swifties” quickly mobilized, launching a counteroffensive on the platform formerly known as Twitter and a #ProtectTaylorSwift hashtag to flood it with more positive images of the pop star. Some said they were reporting accounts that were sharing the deepfakes.

The deepfake-detecting group Reality Defender said it tracked a deluge of nonconsensual pornographic material depicting Swift, particularly on X. Some images also made their way to Meta-owned Facebook and other social media platforms.

“Unfortunately, they spread to millions and millions of users by the time that some of them were taken down,” said Mason Allen, Reality Defender’s head of growth.

The researchers found at least a couple dozen unique AI-generated images. The most widely shared were football-related, showing a painted or bloodied Swift that objectified her and in some cases inflicted violent harm on her deepfake persona.

Researchers have said the number of explicit deepfakes has grown in the past few years, as the technology used to produce such images has become more accessible and easier to use. In 2019, a report released by the AI firm DeepTrace Labs showed these images were overwhelmingly weaponized against women. Most of the victims, it said, were Hollywood actors and South Korean K-pop singers.

Brittany Spanos, a senior writer at Rolling Stone who teaches a course on Swift at New York University, says Swift’s fans are quick to mobilize in support of their artist, especially those who take their fandom very seriously and in situations of wrongdoing.

“This could be a huge deal if she really does pursue it to court,” she said.

Spanos says the deep fake pornography issue aligns with others Swift has had in the past, pointing to her 2017 lawsuit against a radio station DJ who allegedly groped her; jurors awarded Swift $1 in damages, a sum her attorney, Douglas Baldridge, called “a single symbolic dollar, the value of which is immeasurable to all women in this situation” in the midst of the MeToo movement. (The $1 lawsuit became a trend thereafter, like in Gwyneth Paltrow’s 2023 countersuit against a skier.)

When reached for comment on the fake images of Swift, X directed the The Associated Press to a post from its safety account that said the company strictly prohibits the sharing of non-consensual nude images on its platform. The company has also sharply cut back its content-moderation teams since Elon Musk took over the platform in 2022.

“Our teams are actively removing all identified images and taking appropriate actions against the accounts responsible for posting them,” the company wrote in the X post early Friday morning. “We’re closely monitoring the situation to ensure that any further violations are immediately addressed, and the content is removed.”

Meanwhile, Meta said in a statement that it strongly condemns “the content that has appeared across different internet services” and has worked to remove it.

“We continue to monitor our platforms for this violating content and will take appropriate action as needed,” the company said.

A representative for Swift didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment Friday.

Allen said the researchers are 90% confident that the images were created by diffusion models, which are a type of generative artificial intelligence model that can produce new and photorealistic images from written prompts. The most widely known are Stable Diffusion, Midjourney and OpenAI’s DALL-E. Allen’s group didn’t try to determine the provenance.

OpenAI said it has safeguards in place to limit the generation of harmful content and “decline requests that ask for a public figure by name, including Taylor Swift.”

Microsoft, which offers an image-generator based partly on DALL-E, said Friday it was in the process of investigating whether its tool was misused. Much like other commercial AI services, it said it doesn’t allow “adult or non-consensual intimate content, and any repeated attempts to produce content that goes against our policies may result in loss of access to the service.”

Asked about the Swift deepfakes on NBC Nightly News, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella told host Lester Holt in an interview airing Tuesday that there’s a lot still to be done in setting AI safeguards and “it behooves us to move fast on this.”

“Absolutely this is alarming and terrible, and so therefore yes, we have to act,” Nadella said.

Midjourney, OpenAI and Stable Diffusion-maker Stability AI didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.

Federal lawmakers who’ve introduced bills to put more restrictions or criminalize deepfake porn indicated the incident shows why the U.S. needs to implement better protections.

“For years, women have been victims of non-consensual deepfakes, so what happened to Taylor Swift is more common than most people realize,” said U.S. Rep. Yvette D. Clarke, a Democrat from New York who’s introduced legislation would require creators to digitally watermark deepfake content.

“Generative-AI is helping create better deepfakes at a fraction of the cost,” Clarke said.

U.S. Rep. Joe Morelle, another New York Democrat pushing a bill that would criminalize sharing deepfake porn online, said what happened to Swift was disturbing and has become more and more pervasive across the internet.

“The images may be fake, but their impacts are very real,” Morelle said in a statement. “Deepfakes are happening every day to women everywhere in our increasingly digital world, and it’s time to put a stop to them.” 
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Washington, DC has turned the National Building Museum into a wonderland of children’s literature. Using children’s books, it’s an immersive journey into architecture, engineering and design. Maxim Adams has the story. Camera and edit: Andrey Degtyarev, Andrey Degtyarev, Anna Rice
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MELBOURNE, Australia — Jannik Sinner has upset Novak Djokovic to reach the Australian Open men’s final, ending the 10-time champion’s career unbeaten streak in semifinals at Melbourne Park.

The 22-year-old Italian broke Djokovic’s serve twice in each of the first two sets but missed a match point in the third set of a 6-1, 6-2, 6-7 (6), 6-3 victory Friday that earned him a place in a Grand Slam final for the first time.

On his second match point, 55 minutes later, he made no mistake and completed his third victory in four matches against Djokovic since losing to the world No. 1 in last year’s Wimbledon semifinals.

“It’s always nice to have this kind of player who you can learn from,” Sinner said in his on-court TV interview. “I lost last year in the semifinals in Wimbledon, and I learned a lot from that. The confidence from the end of last year has for sure kept the belief that I can play the best players in the world.”

The youngest player to reach the men’s final in Australia since Djokovic’s first title in 2008, Sinner will play either third-seeded Daniil Medvedev or No. 6 Alexander Zverev for the championship on Sunday.

Djokovic’s bid for a record-extending 11th Australian and 25th major title overall will have to wait.

He hadn’t lost a match at Melbourne Park since 2018 and was on a 33-match winning streak at the season’s first major. Every previous time he’d won a quarterfinal in Australia, Djokovic had gone on to win the hardcourt title.

The loss to Djokovic at Wimbledon has become a turning point in their rivalry. After losing the first three meetings, Sinner won two of the next three — all in November — in the group stage of the ATP Finals in Turin and in the Davis Cup semifinals.

Sinner was the only player in the final four who didn’t drop a set in the tournament, and he spent almost four fewer hours on court through five rounds than Djokovic, who was taken to four sets three times.

Still, the odds were stacked against fourth-seeded Sinner.

But he played calm, nearly flawless tennis in the first two sets and piled pressure on Djokovic’s serve in a relatively cool 21 degrees Celsius and a light breeze.

He was holding his serve with relative ease against a player contesting a 48th Grand Slam semifinal.

Djokovic rallied, as he always does, to make Sinner win it. But he had few chances and didn’t get a look at a break point in the match — the first time he’s experienced that in a completed Grand Slam match.

The 36-year-old Serbian star missed his first chance to be just the third person in history to win 11 titles at any Grand Slam event — Rafael Nadal has 14 French Open titles and Margaret Court won 11 Australian Open women’s titles. 
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LONDON — An American scientist has sparked a trans-Atlantic tempest in a teapot by offering Britain advice on its favorite hot beverage.

Bryn Mawr College chemistry professor Michelle Francl says one of the keys to a perfect cup of tea is a pinch of salt. The tip is included in Francl’s book Steeped: The Chemistry of Tea, published Wednesday by the Royal Society of Chemistry.

Not since the Boston Tea Party has mixing tea with salt water roiled the Anglo-American relationship so much.

The salt suggestion drew howls of outrage from tea lovers in Britain, where popular stereotype sees Americans as coffee-swilling boors who make tea, if at all, in the microwave.

“Don’t even say the word ‘salt’ to us,” the etiquette guide Debrett’s wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter.

The U.S. Embassy in London intervened in the brewing storm with a social media post reassuring “the good people of the U.K. that the unthinkable notion of adding salt to Britain’s national drink is not official United States policy.”

“Let us unite in our steeped solidarity and show the world that when it comes to tea, we stand as one,” said the tongue-in-cheek post. “The U.S. Embassy will continue to make tea in the proper way — by microwaving it.”

The embassy later clarified that its statement was “a lighthearted play on our shared cultural connections” rather than an official press release.

Steeped, in contrast, is no joke. The product of three years’ research and experimentation, the book explores the more than 100 chemical compounds found in tea and “puts the chemistry to use with advice on how to brew a better cup,” its publisher says.

Francl said adding a small amount of salt — not enough to taste — makes tea seem less bitter because “the sodium ions in salt block the bitter receptors in our mouths.”

She also advocates making tea in a pre-warmed pot, agitating the bag briefly but vigorously and serving it in a short, stout mug to preserve the heat. And she says milk should be added to the cup after the tea, not before — another issue that often divides tea lovers.

Francl has been surprised by the level of reaction to her book in Britain.

“I kind of understood that there would hopefully be a lot of interest,” she told The Associated Press. “I didn’t know we’d wade into a diplomatic conversation with the U.S. Embassy.”

It has made her ponder the ocean-wide coffee-tea divide that separates the U.S. and Britain.

“I wonder if we’re just a more caffeinated society — coffee is higher in caffeine,” she said. “Or maybe we’re just trying to rebel against our parent country.”
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San Francisco — Netflix added 13 million subscribers in the final three months of last year, the company said on Tuesday, despite price hikes at the leading streaming service.

Netflix finished 2023 with slightly more than 260 million subscribers worldwide, with a profit of $938 million in the final quarter versus just $55 million in the same period a year earlier.

“We believe there is plenty of room for growth ahead as streaming expands,” the U.S. company said in an earnings letter.

Netflix shares were up more than 8% to $532.75 in after-market trades that followed the release of the earnings figures.

“Netflix sticks out as the clear front-runner in the streaming wars,” said Insider Intelligence principal analyst Ross Benes.

The streaming pioneer said that despite last year’s strikes by Hollywood actors and writers, the company has a “big, bold” slate of content for release this year.

The company touted coming content including a sequel to the hit Squid Game series out of South Korea and a brand new “3 Body Problem” show based on a bestselling novel by the same name.

“Choice and control are the price of entry in modern entertainment, and that is streaming,” Netflix said in the letter. “It’s what consumers want, and we believe it’s the best way for our industry to stay relevant and growing.”

The earnings news came the same day that Netflix sealed a long-term broadcast deal with the WWE professional wrestling juggernaut, as it pushes further into sporting events.

Beginning in the United States in 2025, Netflix will become the exclusive new home of “Raw,” the WWE’s flagship program that has been broadcasting on television since 1993.

The agreement will also see WWE shows and live events streamed across the globe as their rights become available.

With an initial 10-year term for $5 billion, the deal has an option for Netflix to extend the deal for an additional 10 years or opt out after the first five years.

“We expect our industry to remain highly competitive,” Netflix said, citing heavy investment by rivals including Amazon, Apple and YouTube. “It’s why continuing to improve our entertainment offering is so important.”

Netflix late last year increased the price of its basic plan in the United States to $11.99 monthly and its premium plan to $22.99, with similar price increases seen in Britain and France.

After a period of rocky earnings, earlier in 2022, the Silicon Valley giant expanded its crackdown on users sharing passwords with people beyond their immediate family.

In a separate bid for revenue, Netflix launched an ad-subsidized offering around the same time as the crackdown.

The ad-supported tier is priced at $7 monthly and is growing fast but has yet to become a main driver of overall revenue, according to Netflix.

As the ad-tiers gain momentum, the company said on Tuesday that it would retire the lowest cost ad-free plan, starting with Canada and the UK in the second quarter of this year.

The company said earlier this month it has 23 million subscribers using the ad-supported tier, which accounts for 40% of new sign-ups.

Netflix Co-Chief Executive Greg Peters said during an earnings call that the company is continuing to expand its lineup of more than 80 mobile games that subscribers can play, having recently added the blockbuster “Grand Theft Auto.”

“We’re stoked by the performance of GTA,” said Peters, noting that the Netflix mobile game exceeded even the company’s high hopes for it.
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Park City, Utah — An audience member was ejected from a Sundance festival event Tuesday in a spat over artificial intelligence, triggering a walkout that illustrates the divisions the technology has rapidly wrought in the film industry.

AI — a key driver of the recent and devastating Hollywood strikes — has been debated extensively at this year’s indie movie festival in Utah.

Filmmakers have experimented with using the technology as a creative tool, while also cautioning about its potential to erase jobs and stifle human expression and connection.

At a Tuesday screening of “Being (The Digital Griot),” in which audience members were encouraged to approach the screen and discuss issues like racism and the patriarchy with an AI bot, an audience member appeared to shout profanity about AI.

“I’m not here to be cursed out and I’m not going to have my AI child be cursed out either,” responded the film’s creator, artist Rashaad Newsome, refusing to participate in a post-screening Q&A until action was taken.

Festival staff forced the woman who had apparently yelled to leave the auditorium, prompting jeers.

Roughly a quarter of the auditorium walked out in solidarity, with some complaining that debate was being shut down and others insisting the lady expelled had not been the actual culprit.

Sundance organizers told AFP they were “looking into” the incident and “reviewing all available material to determine what happened so that corrective actions can be taken.”

But the incident highlighted long-brewing and sharply escalating tensions triggered by the issue of AI in the film world — something that this year’s Sundance lineup was specifically programmed to address.

‘Scary’

In addition to “Being,” the Sundance indie festival has hosted “Eternal You” and “Love Machina,” two documentaries about loved ones using AI to communicate after death.

Another film, “Eno,” explored musician Brian Eno’s career and creative process, using a “generative engine” to mesh together near-infinite different versions of a film from hundreds of possible scenes.

AI was also addressed on the fiction side by films like “Love Me,” starring Kristen Stewart, which imagined a romance between an AI-powered buoy and a satellite in a post-human world.

“Love Machina” director Peter Sillen told AFP that AI could soon mean that making a film will be a similar process to writing a novel.

“You’re going to be able to have somebody who’s sitting in their room create a masterpiece of filmmaking, probably,” he said. 

The idea was “hard and scary” but “interesting,” Sillen said, concluding: “I think you have to be open to it.”

“Eternal You” director Hans Block pointed out that AI is already widely used in movies — indeed, the Adobe software he used to edit the film is “full of AI” and “helped us as a tool a lot.”

“It’s so much more easy to make a film nowadays,” he said.

But Block said that while AI can help as a tool, it is important to debate what harm could be caused if the technology is not regulated.

“That’s why we are so happy to present the film right now, because it’s a perfect time to open the debate about these discussions,” he said. 

‘Human touch’

The danger that AI could replace screenwriters, actors and other professions was a key sticking point in last year’s Hollywood strikes, with unions holding out for guarantees from studios that they would not be replaced.

The encroachment of AI has sparked resolutely negative reactions from many filmmakers at Sundance.

Anirban Dutta, co-director of “Nocturnes,” an experiential documentary about scientists studying moths in the eastern Himalayas, said his movie is “a response to what’s happening to this world where all our human instincts are being mechanized.”

“Our film is a love letter to invite people to come back to what we are losing… human touch,” he said.

The woman who was thrown out of the “Being” screening, who has not been identified, was making a similar point before chaos erupted.

“As interesting as this (film) is… all of the knowledge it has comes from people,” she said.
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NEW YORK — Charles Osgood, a five-time Emmy Award-winning journalist who anchored “CBS Sunday Morning” for more than two decades, hosted the long-running radio program “The Osgood File” and was referred to as CBS News’ poet-in-residence, has died. He was 91. 

CBS reported that Osgood died Tuesday at his home in Saddle River, New Jersey, and that the cause was dementia, according to his family. 

Osgood was an erudite, warm broadcaster with a flair for music who could write essays and light verse as well as report hard news. He worked in radio and television with equal facility and signed off by telling listeners: “I’ll see you on the radio.” 

“To say there’s no one like Charles Osgood is an understatement,” Rand Morrison, executive producer of “Sunday Morning,” said in a statement. “He embodied the heart and soul of ‘Sunday Morning.’ … At the piano, Charlie put our lives to music. Truly, he was one of a kind — in every sense.” 

“CBS News Sunday Morning” will honor Osgood with a special broadcast on Sunday. 

Osgood took over “Sunday Morning” after the beloved Charles Kuralt retired in 1994. Osgood seemingly had an impossible act to follow, but with his folksy erudition and his slightly bookish, bow-tied style, he immediately clicked with viewers, who continued to embrace the program as an unhurried TV magazine. 

Osgood, who graduated from Fordham University in 1954, started as a classical music disk jockey in Washington, served in the Army and returned to help start WHCT in Hartford, Connecticut. In 1963, he got an on-air position at ABC Radio in New York. 

In 1967, he took a job as reporter on the CBS-owned New York news radio station NewsRadio 88. Then, one fateful weekend, he was summoned to fill in at the anchor desk for the TV network’s Saturday newscast. In 1971, he joined the CBS network and launched what would be known as “The Osgood File.” 

In 1990, he was inducted into the radio division of the National Association of Broadcaster’s Hall of Fame. In 2008, he was awarded the National Association of Broadcasters Distinguished Service Award. He won four Emmy Awards and earned a fifth lifetime achievement honor in 2017. 

Jane Pauley succeeded Osgood as host of “Sunday Morning,” becoming only the third host of the program. 

When he retired in 2016 after 45 years of journalism, Osgood did so in a very Osgood fashion. 

“For years now, people — even friends and family — have been asking me why I continue doing this, considering my age,” the then-83-year-old Osgood said in brief concluding remarks. “It’s just that it’s been such a joy doing it! It’s been a great run, but after nearly 50 years at CBS … the time has come.” 

And then he sang a few wistful bars from a favorite folk song: “So long, it’s been good to know you. I’ve got to be drifting along.” 
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