“For my money, Tony Bennett is the best singer in the business.”
Coming from Frank Sinatra himself, in an interview in 1965, there could be no higher compliment.
Sinatra was a huge influence on Bennett, who has died aged 96.
The pair had become firm friends and went on to perform together several times over the years.
Bennett was the younger singer – Sinatra died in May 1998 at the age of 82.
But as they both matured, Sinatra always continued to call Bennett “kid” – even into old age.
Bennett said his idol’s words in that 1965 article changed his career.
Two years earlier, a then 36-year-old Bennett had picked up his first Grammy for his signature song I Left My Heart In San Francisco.
In 2022, almost 60 years later, the pop and jazz singer was awarded his 20th, sharing the honour with his superstar collaborator Lady Gaga – at the tender age of 95.
Image: Bennett performs with Lady Gaga
During a career in entertainment spanning eight decades, Bennett was one of the last of America’s great crooners – one who achieved the rare feat of only seeming to grow in popularity in later life.
With more than 70 albums to his name, he is perhaps the only artist ever to have had new albums charting in the US in the 1950s, ’60s, ’70s, ’80s, ’90s, 2000s, 2010s and 2020s – and in 2014, he broke his own record as the oldest living artist to hit the top of the weekly Billboard 200 album chart.
Performing well into his 90s, even after being diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease in 2016, Bennett was an entertainer beloved by all generations; Gaga was just one of the modern-day artists he collaborated with in later years.
Paul McCartney, John Legend, Christina Aguilera and Michael Buble, as well as Sinatra, all feature on the long list of others, and his 2011 duet with Amy Winehouse, Body And Soul, was the last song she recorded before her death.
“To me, life is a gift, and it’s a blessing to just be alive,” the singer once said.
It was a quote he became known for, the title of one of his memoirs, and one he used again when he went public about his illness in 2021.
“Life is a gift – even with Alzheimer’s,” was the message shared on his social media accounts in February 2021.
Later that year, he performed his final farewell shows.
Grief, war and discovery
Born Anthony Dominick Benedetto on 3 August 1926, in Queens in New York City, to parents John and Anna, the young Tony and his older brother and sister, John and Mary, were raised by their mother following his father’s death when he was aged just 10.
As a child, he loved to sing and paint, and his passions were nurtured at the High School of Industrial Arts in Manhattan.
As he grew older, he developed a love of music listening to artists such as Bing Crosby, Louis Armstrong and James ‘Jimmy’ Durante on the radio.
During his teenage years, Bennett sang while waiting tables, before enlisting in the army during the Second World War.
He served in the Battle of the Bulge – the last major German offensive campaign on the Western Front, launched in 1944 through the forested Ardennes region between Belgium and Luxembourg – and participated in the liberation of a concentration camp, according to his official website’s biography.
During his time in Europe, he performed with military bands and, following his return to America, he went on to have vocal studies at the American Theatre Wing School in New York.
The singer’s first nightclub performance came in 1946, alongside trombonist Tyree Glenn at the Shangri-La in Queens’ Astoria neighbourhood.
Three years later came his big break, when comedian Bob Hope noticed him working with actress and singer Pearl Bailey in Greenwich Village.
At the time, he was performing under the stage name of Joe Bari.
‘We’ll call you Tony Bennett’
Hope liked Bennett’s singing so much that he met him in his dressing room afterwards to ask him to perform with him at the city’s famed Paramount Theatre.
There was just one condition.
“But first he told me he didn’t care for my stage name and asked me what my real name was,” Bennett recalled. “I told him, ‘My name is Anthony Dominick Benedetto’. And he said, ‘We’ll call you Tony Bennett’.
“And that’s how it happened. A new Americanised name – the start of a wonderful career and a glorious adventure.”
Bennett’s first singles came in the 1950s, including chart-toppers Because Of You, Rags To Riches, and a remake of Hank Williams’ Cold, Cold Heart.
Dozens more singles followed and his voice took him around the world, selling millions of records and performing to sold-out venues – as well as to numerous stars and presidents.
He went on to release dozens of albums throughout the ’50s, ’60s and ’70s, but began to struggle with drug use as his style of music fell out of style.
Following a 10-year absence from the US album charts, he returned with The Art Of Excellence in 1986 and continued releasing music at pace in the 1990s, becoming an unlikely favourite of MTV.
Image: Pic: AP
Legendary duets add to his longevity
In 2001, well into his 70s, the singer was awarded a lifetime achievement award at the Grammys – but there was no sign of him slowing down.
He became known for his collaborations and his first modern-day duets album, Duets: An American Classic, was released in 2006, featuring performances with artists including McCartney, Elton John, Barbra Streisand and Bono.
After more than 50 years in the business, it was one of the bestselling records of his career.
Image: Pic: AP
Duets II came in 2011, featuring artists including Aretha Franklin and John Mayer, as well as Gaga and Winehouse.
Debuting at the top of the Billboard charts, it went on to win two Grammys, and his friendship with Gaga led to the release of their first collaborative album, Cheek To Cheek, in 2014.
Their second, Love For Sale, Bennett’s final album, came in 2021.
As well as his music, Bennett was also known for his painting, and had his work exhibited at galleries around the world.
He was even commissioned by the United Nations, painting one piece for the organisation’s 50th anniversary.
He was also the author of five books, including the New York Times bestseller Life Is A Gift: The Zen Of Bennett, published in 2012, and Just Getting Started, released in 2016.
Image: Pic: AP
Family and charitable legacy
A father of four, Bennett was married three times.
At his wedding to first wife Patricia Beech in 1952, some 2,000 female fans reportedly gathered outside the ceremony – dressed in black in mock mourning. The couple went on to have two sons, Danny and Dae, before they separated.
Bennett went on to marry actress Sandra Grant, with whom he had daughters Joanna and Antonia, and in 2007 married long-term partner Susan Crow, now Susan Benedetto.
In 1999, he founded Exploring the Arts with Susan, to help strengthen the role of the arts in public high school education in the US.
One of the organisation’s first projects was the establishment of the Frank Sinatra School of the Arts, a public high school set up in 2001 in Bennett’s hometown of Astoria, Queens.
The singer’s other charitable endeavours included helping to raise millions of dollars for the Juvenile Diabetes Foundation, which established a research fund in his name, and lending his artwork to the American Cancer Society’s annual holiday greeting cards to raise funds.
Along with his many gongs for his music, Bennett was also honoured with the Martin Luther King Center’s “salute to greatness” award for his efforts in fighting racial discrimination, after joining the activist in the Selma-to-Montgomery civil rights march in 1965.
The singer’s retirement from performing was announced in 2021, with his son Danny, also his manager, saying it was down to doctor’s orders due to the strain of travelling.
Performing a medley tribute to the man she described as “an incredible mentor, and friend, and father figure” at the Grammys in 2022, Gaga appeared emotional as she finished on stage. “I love you, Tony. We miss you.”
Following the singer’s death, the music industry mourns one of the last great performers of his generation.
For Bennett, life was a gift – and for millions of fans over the decades, it was a gift he gave right back.
President Trump’s “America First” agenda has been spelt out in a new White House National Security Strategy that should make stark reading for allies and foes of the United States alike.
The new 33-page document outlines an upending of American foreign policy objectives and priorities which have stood largely unchanged through different administrations stretching back decades.
The document says American strategy went “astray” over many years. It seeks to reframe America’s strategic interests as being far narrower now than at any time in its modern history.
Among the key points, the document says:
• Europe faces “civilizational erasure” and could be “unrecognisable in 20 years or less”
• “Certain NATO members will become majority non-European” within a few decades
•​​​​​​​ America will “shift away” from the “burden” of the Middle East seeing it now as a “source and destination of international investment”
•​​​​​​​ In the Western hemisphere, America should pursue a policy of “enlist and expand… restoring American pre-eminence”
•​​​​​​​ In Africa, American policy focus should be on trade not “providing and spreading liberal ideology”
Image: America will ‘shift away’ from the ‘burden’ of the Middle East. Pic: Reuters
In black-and-white, the text articulates a dramatic strategic shift which has been playing out at lightning speed over the past year.
The document underlines the end of the concept of America as an arbiter of the democratic rules-based order.
“American foreign policy elites convinced themselves that permanent American domination of the entire world was in the best interests of our country. Yet the affairs of other countries are our concern only if their activities directly threaten our interests,” the paper says.
Every US administration publishes at least one National Security Strategy during a presidential term.
The focus of this one is starkly different from that published by President Biden in 2022.
It’s also notably different from the document which President Trump published during his first term. His 2017 paper cast the world as a contest between “repressive regimes” and “free societies”.
Image: Trump doesn’t want the US to be the arbiter of the democratic rules-based order. Pic: Reuters
This new one places the necessity to do trade above the imposition of values.
“We seek good relations and peaceful commercial relations with the nations of the world without imposing on them democratic or other social change that differs widely from their traditions and histories.”
Mass migration and Europe
The new document is highly critical of mass migration.
It warns that uncontrolled migration is destroying the concept of nation states which could impact America’s strategic alliances and the countries it counts as reliable allies.
The paper is particularly critical of Europe, of the European Union as a concept and of individual European nations.
“Should present trends continue, the continent will be unrecognizable in 20 years or less,” the paper says.
It continues: “As such, it is far from obvious whether certain European countries will have economies and militaries strong enough to remain reliable allies.
“Many of these nations are currently doubling down on their present path. We want Europe to remain European, to regain its civilizational self-confidence, and to abandon its failed focus on regulatory suffocation.”
Image: Trump will seek to support ‘patriotic European parties’. Pic: AP
The document’s language around the politics of governing parties across Europe is particularly stark.
Regarding Ukraine, the document says: “The Trump Administration finds itself at odds with European officials who hold unrealistic expectations for the war perched in unstable minority governments, many of which trample on basic principles of democracy to suppress opposition.
“A large European majority wants peace, yet that desire is not translated into policy, in large measure because of those government’s subversion of democratic processes.”
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The document outlines how his administration will seek to support “patriotic European parties”.
This is entirely in line with President Trump’s rhetoric but still represents a major departure from the longstanding principle of not interfering in the politics of allies.
It says: “American diplomacy should continue to stand up for genuine democracy, freedom of expression, and unapologetic celebrations of European nations’ individual character and history.
“America encourages its political allies in Europe to promote this revival of spirit, and the growing influence of patriotic European parties indeed gives cause for great optimism.”
Image: Trump has at times had a fiery relationship with Ukraine’s President Zelenskyy. Pic: Reuters
Ukraine and Russia
On European-Russia relations, the document raises the prospect of war but curiously does not presume that such a conflict would involve America.
“Managing European relations with Russia will require significant US diplomatic engagement, both to reestablish conditions of strategic stability across the Eurasian landmass, and to mitigate the risk of conflict between Russia and European states.”
By contrast, President Biden’s National Security Strategy, published in 2022, underlined repeatedly the “iron-clad” commitment the United States had to Europe’s security.
Chinese risk and opportunity
The document presents Asia and the Indo-Pacific region as a source of opportunity for strategic and economic cooperation.
Image: Maintaining US military strength over China is also outlined. Pic: Reuters
“President Trump is building alliances and strengthening partnerships in the Indo-Pacific that will be the bedrock of security and prosperity long into the future…”
And specifically on China, the paper presents a goal of “economic vitality” achieved through a balanced economic relationship between the two countries combined with an “ongoing focus on deterrence to prevent war”.
Deterrence would be achieved, it outlines, by maintaining preeminent military strength over China.
It says: “This combined approach can become a virtuous cycle as strong American deterrence opens up space for more disciplined economic action, while more disciplined economic action leads to greater American resources to sustain deterrence in the long term.”
Hemispheres of influence
In line with President Trump’s focus on spheres of influence, particular focus is given to the western hemisphere.
There are clear references to the impact of drugs from south and central America into the US and more subtle references to control of the arctic.
“The United States will reassert and enforce the Monroe Doctrine to restore American pre-eminence in the Western Hemisphere, and to protect our homeland and our access to key geographies throughout the region,” the paper says.
It continues: “We will deny non-Hemispheric competitors the ability to position forces or other threatening capabilities, or to own or control strategically vital assets, in our hemisphere.”
US President Donald Trump has been awarded FIFA’s new peace prize at the draw for next year’s World Cup.
FIFA President Gianni Infantino presented Mr Trump with a large golden trophy – formed of hands holding the earth – and a gold medal, which he wore around his neck.
The certificate, which Mr Infantino handed over at Washington DC’s Kennedy Center on Friday, recognises the US president for his actions to “promote peace and unity around the world”.
World football’s governing body, which announced the annual award last month, said it would be given to “individuals who have taken exceptional and extraordinary actions for peace”.
Mr Trump said it was “truly one of the greatest honours of my life”.
He said: “We saved millions and millions of lives. The Congo is an example – over 10 million people killed. It was heading for another 10 million very quickly.”
Image: US President Donald Trump. Pics: Reuters
He also pointed to India and Pakistan, saying, “so many wars that we were able to end, in some cases a little before they started”.
Ahead of the draw, Mr Trump told reporters he did not care about the prize, but noted that he had “settled eight wars” in nearly 11 months in office.
The United States, along with Canada and Mexico, will host the tournament in 2026.
Mr Infantino, who has built up a strong relationship with the US president, backed him for the Nobel Peace Prize earlier this year.
“This is what we want from a leader – a leader that cares about the people,” Mr Infantino said of Mr Trump.
The FIFA leader said to Mr Trump, “this is your prize, this is your peace prize”.
Image: US President Donald Trump and FIFA President Gianni Infantino. Pic: Reuters
Mr Trump thanked his family, including his wife, first lady Melania Trump, and praised the leaders of the other two host nations – Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney and Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum – in his brief remarks.
Mr Infantino has often spoken about football as a unifier for the world, but the prize is a departure from the federation’s traditional focus on sport.
FIFA has described the prize as one that rewards “individuals who have taken exceptional and extraordinary actions for peace, and by doing so have united people across the world”.
The award comes during a week where Mr Trump’s administration has been under scrutiny for lethal strikes on alleged drug boats in the Caribbean and as Mr Trump hardens his rhetoric against immigrants.
The Nobel Peace Prize this year was eventually awarded to Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado, who said shortly after receiving the prize that she was dedicating it in part to Mr Trump for “his decisive support of our cause”.
Netflix has agreed a $72bn (£54bn) deal to secure Warner Bros Discovery’s film and TV studios and supercharge its library through rights to top franchises including Harry Potter and Game Of Thrones.
It had been reported that the US streaming giant was in exclusive talks over the deal following a bidding war for the assets.
Paramount Skydance and Comcast, the ultimate owner of Sky News, were the rival suitors for the bulk of WBD that also includes HBO, the HBO Max streaming platform and DC Studios.
While Netflix has agreed a $27.75 per share price with WBD, which equates to the $72bn purchase figure, the deal gives the assets a total value of $82.7bn.
It will see WBD come under Netflix ownership once its remaining Discovery Global division, mostly legacy cable networks including CNN and the TNT sports channels, is separated.
However, the agreement is set to attract scrutiny from competition regulators, particularly in the United States and Europe.
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Both WBD and Netflix do not see the prospect of the deal being completed until late 2026 or 2027.
The main stumbling block is likely to be the fact that Netflix, which has hits including Stranger Things and Squid Game, is already the world’s biggest streaming service.
Image: Stranger Things is one of Netflix’s biggest hits. Pic: Netflix
Further drama could come in the form of a complaint by Paramount, which had previously made a bid for the whole company.
CNBC reported this week that Paramount had claimed the auction process was biased in favour of Netflix.
Entertainment news provider Variety has also reported that major studios fear an institutional crisis for Hollywood unless the move is blocked.
Ted Sarandos, the co-chief executive of Netflix, said: “By combining Warner Bros’ incredible library of shows and movies – from timeless classics like Casablanca and Citizen Kane to modern favourites like Harry Potter and Friends – with our culture-defining titles like Stranger Things, KPop Demon Hunters and Squid Game, we’ll be able to do that even better.
“Together, we can give audiences more of what they love and help define the next century of storytelling.”
Netflix shares were trading down more than 3% in pre-market deals but recovered much of that loss when Wall Street opened. Those for WBD were up by more than 2%.
David O’Hara, managing director at the advisory firm MKI Global Partners, said of the proposed deal: “The 12-18 month timeline signals a long antitrust review, but despite the overlap between Netflix and HBO Max, there is a path to approval through possible HBO divestment.
“Netflix would not accept a $5.8bn break fee if it didn’t see at least a small chance of the deal closing.”