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Quincy Jones, pop mastermind and 'Thriller' producer, dies At 91
Quincy Jones pictured in Beverly Hills in 2017.
Chris Delmas/AFP via Getty Images
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Chris Delmas/AFP via Getty Images
Quincy Jones pictured in Beverly Hills in 2017.
Chris Delmas/AFP via Getty Images
Quincy Jones, whose decorated music career ran from the early 1950s through the best-known works of Michael Jackson and beyond, died Sunday. He was 91.
His death was confirmed by his publicist in a statement to NPR that did not mention the cause of death. The statement said that Jones died peacefully at his home in Bel Air, California, surrounded by his family.
“Tonight, with full but broken hearts, we must share the news of our father and brother Quincy Jones’ passing,” the family said in the statement provided by Jones’ publicist, Arnold Robinson. “And although this is an incredible loss for our family, we celebrate the great life that he lived and know there will never be another like him.”
In the 1980s, Jones helped oversee some of music’s biggest and most widely loved moments: He produced or co-produced three of Michael Jackson’s best-selling albums, including 1982’s record-setting Thriller, and was heavily involved in crafting USA for Africa’s 1985 charity single “We Are the World.” But his career extended for decades in each direction. Jones long held the record for most Grammy nominations with 80, before Jay-Z and Beyoncé surpassed the total earlier this decade, and his 28 wins rank him third behind Beyoncé (32) and conductor Georg Solti (31).
Born Quincy Delight Jones in 1933, Jones got his start in jazz — at 19, he played trumpet in Lionel Hampton’s band — and soon performed on stages with some of the world’s best-known stars: Ray Charles, Frank Sinatra, Elvis Presley.
In the 1960s, Jones became a decorated film composer — he collected three of his seven career Academy Award nominations in 1968 and ’69 — as well as a high-profile music-industry executive, arranger and producer. On albums like The Great Wide World of Quincy Jones and Quincy Jones Plays Hip Hits, he was the headliner, but he also worked behind the scenes, producing (among many others) a string of bestselling hits for Lesley Gore.
In the ’70s, Jones remained in the spotlight as a performer and executive, expanding his reach with high-profile projects such as the soundtrack to The Wiz. But the 1980s found his name attached to a remarkable string of successes, from “We Are the World” and Thriller to his first foray into film production: 1985’s The Color Purple, which made movie stars of Oprah Winfrey and Whoopi Goldberg. Jones’ star-packed Back on the Block, released in 1989, won the Grammy for album of the year in 1991.
Jones’ successes extended well beyond music and film. Shortly after launching Quincy Jones Entertainment in 1990, he was presiding over long-running TV hits such as The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air and MADtv. His 2001 book Q: The Autobiography of Quincy Jones detailed his many intersections with music’s biggest moments and stars, as well as his mental-health battles and rocky upbringing in Chicago. Jones’ philanthropic works extended well beyond USA for Africa and benefited causes such as music preservation, arts education and aid for underprivileged youth.
Jones’ tumultuous personal life included three marriages and seven children, including actresses Kidada and Rashida Jones — his daughters with actress Peggy Lipton — and Kenya Kinski-Jones, a fashion model whose mother is German actress and model Nastassja Kinski.
NPR’s Ayana Archie contributed reporting.
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Video: F.A.A. Ignored Safety Concerns Prior to Collision Over Potomac, N.T.S.B. Says
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F.A.A. Ignored Safety Concerns Prior to Collision Over Potomac, N.T.S.B. Says
The National Transportation Safety Board said that a “multitude of errors” led to the collision between a military helicopter and a commercial jet, killing 67 people last January.
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“I imagine there will be some difficult moments today for all of us as we try to provide answers to how a multitude of errors led to this tragedy.” “We have an entire tower who took it upon themselves to try to raise concerns over and over and over and over again, only to get squashed by management and everybody above them within F.A.A. Were they set up for failure?” “They were not adequately prepared to do the jobs they were assigned to do.”
By Meg Felling
January 27, 2026
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Families of killed men file first U.S. federal lawsuit over drug boat strikes
President Trump speaks as U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth looks on during a meeting of his Cabinet at the White House in December 2025.
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Relatives of two Trinidadian men killed in an airstrike last October are suing the U.S. government for wrongful death and for carrying out extrajudicial killings.
The case, filed in Massachusetts, is the first lawsuit over the strikes to land in a U.S. federal court since the Trump administration launched a campaign to target vessels off the coast of Venezuela. The American government has carried out three dozen such strikes since September, killing more than 100 people.

Among them are Chad Joseph, 26, and Rishi Samaroo, 41, who relatives say died in what President Trump described as “a lethal kinetic strike” on Oct. 14, 2025. The president posted a short video that day on social media that shows a missile targeting a ship, which erupts in flame.
“This is killing for sport, it’s killing for theater and it’s utterly lawless,” said Baher Azmy, legal director of the Center for Constitutional Rights. “We need a court of law to rein in this administration and provide some accountability to the families.”
The White House and Pentagon justify the strikes as part of a broader push to stop the flow of illegal drugs into the U.S. The Pentagon declined to comment on the lawsuit, saying it doesn’t comment on ongoing litigation.
But the new lawsuit described Joseph and Samaroo as fishermen doing farm work in Venezuela, with no ties to the drug trade. Court papers said they were headed home to family members when the strike occurred and now are presumed dead.
Neither man “presented a concrete, specific, and imminent threat of death or serious physical injury to the United States or anyone at all, and means other than lethal force could have reasonably been employed to neutralize any lesser threat,” according to the lawsuit.
Lenore Burnley, the mother of Chad Joseph, and Sallycar Korasingh, the sister of Rishi Samaroo, are the plaintiffs in the case.
Their court papers allege violations of the Death on the High Seas Act, a 1920 law that makes the U.S. government liable if its agents engage in negligence that results in wrongful death more than 3 miles off American shores. A second claim alleges violations of the Alien Tort Statute, which allows foreign citizens to sue over human rights violations such as deaths that occurred outside an armed conflict, with no judicial process.

The American Civil Liberties Union, the Center for Constitutional Rights, and Jonathan Hafetz at Seton Hall University School of Law are representing the plaintiffs.
“In seeking justice for the senseless killing of their loved ones, our clients are bravely demanding accountability for their devastating losses and standing up against the administration’s assault on the rule of law,” said Brett Max Kaufman, senior counsel at the ACLU.
U.S. lawmakers have raised questions about the legal basis for the strikes for months but the administration has persisted.
—NPR’s Quil Lawrence contributed to this report.
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Video: New Video Analysis Reveals Flawed and Fatal Decisions in Shooting of Pretti
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By Devon Lum, Haley Willis, Alexander Cardia, Dmitriy Khavin and Ainara Tiefenthäler
January 26, 2026
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