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Variety Awards Circuit section is the home for all awards news and related content throughout the year, featuring the following: the official predictions for the upcoming Oscars, Emmys, Grammys and Tony Awards ceremonies, curated by Variety chief awards editor Clayton Davis. The prediction pages reflect the current standings in the race and do not reflect personal preferences for any individual […]

The Oklahoma Pardon and Parole Board voted 3-2 on Wednesday to recommend the governor spare the life of a man scheduled to be executed next week for the 2002 stabbing death of a man during a botched robbery. Republican Gov. Kevin Stitt must now consider whether to commute the death sentence of Tremane Wood, 46, to life in prison. Stitt has granted clemency only once during his nearly seven years in office, to death row inmate Julius Jones in 2021. He has rejected clemency recommendations in four other cases. A total of 16 men have been executed during Stitt’s time in office. Stitt’s spokesperson Abegail Cave said the governor plans to meet with Wood’s attorneys, the attorney general’s office and the victim’s family before making a decision on whether to grant clemency. “He does not take the process lightly,” Cave said. Wood is scheduled to receive a lethal injection next week for his role in the killing of Ronnie Wipf, a 19-year-old migrant farmworker from Montana, during an attempted robbery at a north Oklahoma City hotel early on New Year’s Day in 2002. Wood’s attorneys don’t deny that he participated in the robbery but maintain that his brother, Zjaiton Wood, was the one who actually stabbed Wipf. Zjaiton Wood, who received a no-parole life sentence for Wipf’s death and died in prison in 2019, admitted to several people that he killed Wipf, said Tremane Wood’s attorney, Amanda Bass Castro Alves. Castro Alves said Tremane Wood had an ineffective trial attorney who was drinking heavily at the time and who did little work on the case. She also said trial prosecutors concealed from jurors benefits that witnesses received in exchange for their testimony. “Tremane’s death sentence is the product of a fundamentally broken system,” Castro Alves said. Prosecutors painted Wood as a dangerous criminal who has continued to participate in gang activity and commit crimes while in prison, including buying and selling drugs, using contraband cellphones and ordering attacks on other inmates. “Even within the confines of maximum security prison, Tremane Wood has continued to manipulate, exploit and harm others,” Attorney General Gentner Drummond said. Wood, who testified to the panel via video link from the Oklahoma State Penitentiary in McAlester, accepted responsibility for his prison misconduct and his participation on the robbery, but denied being the one who killed Wipf. “I’m not a monster. I’m not a killer. I never was and I never have been,” Wood said. “Not a day goes by in my life that I do not think about Ronnie and how much his mom and dad are suffering because they don’t have their son any more.” ___ This story was first published on Nov. 5, 2025. It was updated on Nov. 11, 2025 to correct the date of the killing. The slaying happened Jan. 1, 2002, and not Dec. 31, 2001. Source

FLORHAM PARK, N.J. (AP) — Aaron Glenn took an unconventionally defiant approach Tuesday to providing updates on the New York Jets’ injured players. And then he got into it with reporters. The coach opened his news conference — when he normally would run through the players being treated for injuries — by telling those in the press room they should instead ask an ESPN reporter whose story Monday said, according to a source, star wide receiver Garrett Wilson will miss three or four weeks with a sprained right knee. “I’m going to, um, pass on talking about injuries since Rich — oh, he’s not here — has all the answers,” Glenn said while pointing to the seat at which beat reporter Rich Cimini usually sits. Cimini, who declined comment, was participating in a Pro Football Hall of Fame selection meeting Tuesday. “So, you guys can get all the injuries from Rich,” Glenn added. Glenn then went into a breakdown of the Patriots, who the Jets will face in New England on Thursday night. The Jets didn’t practice Monday or Tuesday, but instead held walkthroughs. Wilson, injured last Sunday in New York’s 27-20 win over Cleveland, was estimated by the team as a non-participant for both days if regular practices had been held. Wilson missed the first two games of his NFL career with an injury to the same knee before returning last Sunday. He had no catches in a game for the first time when was hurt in the third quarter after coming down hard on the knee while going for a deep pass down the sideline. Glenn said Monday morning that Wilson would have an MRI and the knee would be evaluated by doctors, and the Jets would know more about his chances of playing after that. ESPN reported later that afternoon that Wilson would be sidelined about a month. At the end of his 8-minute session with the media, a reporter circled back on Wilson and asked Glenn if the wide receiver could be a candidate for the injured reserve list. The coach again insisted everyone should: “Ask Rich.” An Associated Press reporter responded to Glenn by saying the media wanted to hear what the coach had to say about Wilson’s injury. “You guys have been hearing it from me,” Glenn said before leaving the podium. “But now since we’re just reporting stuff that I haven’t said, then maybe you should ask him.” The exchange came a day after Glenn insisted during a video call that reporters not ask him any questions about the Jets’ quarterback situation. He has refused to disclose who New York’s starter will be for the last few games. “You know I’m not going to tell you,” Glenn said while wrapping up his opening statement Monday. “I don’t want to waste my time when it comes to that, when it comes to who’s starting.” Other injuries Defensive tackle Harrison Phillips was seen in the locker room with a walking boot on his right foot. He was listed as a non-participant at practice for the second day in a row and his availability for the game is uncertain. Rookie cornerback Azareye’h Thomas (concussion) were also listed as having not participated, but was already ruled out for the game by Glenn. Defensive end Will McDonald, who had four sacks and nine pressures Sunday, was limited with a quadriceps injury after being listed as a non-participant Monday. ___ AP NFL: https://apnews.com/hub/nfl Source

The problems with the nation’s air traffic control system have been spotlighted during the government shutdown, with controllers working without pay for almost a month and a half and hundreds calling in sick, resulting in thousands of flight delays or cancellations. However, one program that is training new controllers has managed to continue operating after the Federal Aviation Administration found some additional funding. New controllers are trained at the FAA academy in Oklahoma City, and Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University professor Mike McCormick said it has managed to keep operating and graduating students during the government shutdown. “One thing that’s different with this shutdown, that we have not seen in previous government shutdowns, is the FAA has been able to find sufficient funding to keep the air traffic control academy opened during a shutdown, so they’ve been able to train new controllers to enter the pipeline of the air traffic control workforce,” McCormick said. “In fact, one of my graduates from the program just completed the academy training last week, and she is now on her way to Boston air traffic control center to work. So that makes a difference, because previously, government shutdowns definitely impacted on the control of workforce and the staffing numbers,” he added. However, the funding is due to run out Nov. 15. To speed up the hiring of new controllers, the FAA now has agreements with nine universities, including Embry-Riddle at Joint Base Andrews, to help train the next generation of men and women in control towers and other facilities. But the money for that university program, plus the spending for billions of dollars on planned hardware and software improvements, was not available during the shutdown. “The area where it may be impacted the most is going to be the programs and projects where you bring in new infrastructure and you update technology. During the government shutdown, those programs stop, and that means it’s a delay, but it also costs additional dollars to start those programs back up,” McCormick said. McCormick said an estimated 3,000 new controllers are needed because Department of Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said as many as 20 controllers are retiring every day, compared with four a day before the shutdown. “What’s happening in the air traffic control system is very similar to what happened during the pandemic, and that is when you have stressors in the workplace that gets so difficult, those controllers who have the opportunity and the ability will retire or resign. That leads to greater than normal attrition levels. So, we’re going to have to make up for that attrition in the continued hiring program of the controller workforce,” he said. Controllers must retire from service once they reach age 55, and it’s a long process to get them fully certified. “It takes one to three years for a controller to certify once they get to the air traffic control facility, so we’re not going to see immediate changes to certified controllers,” he said. ”What we’ll see is that one to three years down the road, then we can bridge that gap with a 3,000 shortage across the United States.” “With the current hiring program and with the support of institutions, like Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, we’ll be able to feed many more controllers than what we’ve seen previously into the controller workforce,” he added. McCormick said in the history of American aviation and air traffic control history, the events of the past month and a half will go down as some of the most significant ever. “I would say this is one of the four key events in air traffic control — the first being the air traffic controller strike in 1981 and then we had the pandemic. And we also had Sept. 11, 2001, and now we have this record-setting government shutdown,” he said. Source

Sales veteran Pia Patatian has used this year’s American Film Market to launch production and sales banner Noora Films. Alongside unveiling her new company, Patatian has come onboard to handle international rights on alternative period drama “Madfabulous” from BAFTA Cymru winner Celyn Jones (“The Almond and the Seahorse”). Jones directs from the debut feature script […]