Topline:
Los Angeles firefighters, aided by multiple water-dropping helicopters, were able to bring the Archer Fire in Granada Hills under control Friday hours after it started about 10:25 a.m.
What we know so far: No homes or structures were damage, and all evacuation orders have been lifted, according to the fire department.
This is a developing story and will be updated. For the most up-to-date information about the fire you can check:
Los Angeles firefighters, aided by multiple water-dropping helicopters, were able to bring the Archer Fire in Granada Hills under control Friday hours after it started about 10:25 a.m.
The fire started in the northern San Fernando Valley community and quickly grew to 31 acres, according the Los Angeles Fire Department, prompting mandatory evacuation orders. But an hour and a half later they were downgraded to warnings as multiple aircraft made water drops.
No homes or structures were damage, and all evacuation orders have been lifted, according to the fire department.
It's unclear how the fire started, but multiple spot fires have been started by airborne embers.
_
If you have to evacuate
If you have more time:
Things to consider
Navigating fire conditions
How to help yourself and others
Understanding how it got this bad
Topline:
The 98th Academy Awards are underway at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood, with Conan O'Brien hosting the ceremony. This year, Sinners received a record 16 nominations, followed by One Battle After Another with 13 nominations. You can catch up on the best looks from the red carpet, read our predictions, or run to the kitchen to make a movie-themed snack.
Read on... for the full list of 2026 Academy Award nominees. We'll mark the winners in bold as they are announced. Follow along with us as the wins come in!
Updated March 15, 2026 at 20:05 PM ET
The 98th Academy Awards are underway at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood, with Conan O'Brien hosting the ceremony. This year, Sinners received a record 16 nominations, followed by One Battle After Another with 13 nominations. You can catch up on the best looks from the red carpet, read our predictions, or run to the kitchen to make a movie-themed snack.
Below is the full list of 2026 Academy Award nominees. We'll mark the winners in bold as they are announced. Follow along with us as the wins come in!
WINNER: One Battle after Another, Cassandra Kulukundis
Hamnet, Nina Gold
Marty Supreme, Jennifer Venditti
The Secret Agent, Gabriel Domingues
Sinners, Francine Maisler
Achievement in makeup and hairstyling
WINNER: Frankenstein, Mike Hill, Jordan Samuel and Cliona Furey
Kokuho, Kyoko Toyokawa, Naomi Hibino and Tadashi Nishimatsu
Sinners, Ken Diaz, Mike Fontaine and Shunika Terry
The Smashing Machine, Kazu Hiro, Glen Griffin and Bjoern Rehbein
The Ugly Stepsister, Thomas Foldberg and Anne Cathrine Sauerberg
Achievement in costume design
WINNER: Frankenstein
Avatar: Fire and Ash
Hamnet
Marty Supreme
Sinners
Best animated short film
WINNER: The Girl Who Cried Pearls
Butterfly
Forevergreen
Retirement Plan
The Three Sisters
Best animated feature film
WINNER: KPop Demon Hunters
Arco
Elio
Little Amélie or the Character of Rain
Zootopia 2
Performance by an actress in a supporting role
WINNER: Amy Madigan, Weapons
Elle Fanning, Sentimental Value
Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas, Sentimental Value
Wunmi Mosaku, Sinners
Teyana Taylor, One Battle After Another
Best picture
Bugonia
F1
Frankenstein
Hamnet
Marty Supreme
One Battle After Another
The Secret Agent
Sentimental Value
Sinners
Train Dreams
Performance by an actor in a leading role
Timothée Chalamet, Marty Supreme
Leonardo DiCaprio, One Battle After Another
Ethan Hawke, Blue Moon
Michael B. Jordan, Sinners
Wagner Moura, The Secret Agent
Performance by an actor in a supporting role
Benicio del Toro, One Battle After Another
Jacob Elordi, Frankenstein
Delroy Lindo, Sinners
Sean Penn, One Battle After Another
Stellan Skarsgård, Sentimental Value
Performance by an actress in a leading role
Jessie Buckley, Hamnet
Rose Byrne, If I Had Legs I'd Kick You
Kate Hudson, Song Sung Blue
Renate Reinsve, Sentimental Value
Emma Stone, Bugonia
Achievement in cinematography
Frankenstein
Marty Supreme
One Battle After Another
Sinners
Train Dreams
Achievement in directing
Chloé Zhao, Hamnet
Josh Safdie, Marty Supreme
Paul Thomas Anderson, One Battle After Another
Joachim Trier, Sentimental Value
Ryan Coogler, Sinners
Best documentary feature film
The Alabama Solution
Come See Me in the Good Light
Cutting Through Rocks
Mr. Nobody Against Putin
The Perfect Neighbor
Best documentary short film
All the Empty Rooms
Armed Only With a Camera: The Life and Death of Brent Renaud
Children No More: Were and Are Gone
The Devil Is Busy
Perfectly a Strangeness
Achievement in film editing
F1
Marty Supreme
One Battle After Another
Sentimental Value
Sinners
Best international feature film
The Secret Agent, Brazil
It Was Just an Accident, France
Sentimental Value, Norway
Sirāt, Spain
The Voice of Hind Rajab, Tunisia
Original score
Bugonia, Jerskin Fendrix
Frankenstein, Alexandre Desplat
Hamnet, Max Richter
One Battle after Another, Jonny Greenwood
Sinners, Ludwig Goransson
Original song
"Dear Me" from Diane Warren: Relentless; music and lyric by Diane Warren
"Golden" from KPop Demon Hunters; music and lyric by EJAE, Mark Sonnenblick, Joong Gyu Kwak, Yu Han Lee, Hee Dong Nam, Jeong Hoon Seon and Teddy Park
"I Lied to You" from Sinners; music and lyric by Raphael Saadiq and Ludwig Goransson
"Sweet Dreams of Joy" from Viva Verdi!; music and lyric by Nicholas Pike
"Train Dreams" from Train Dreams; music by Nick Cave and Bryce Dessner; lyric by Nick Cave
Achievement in production design
Frankenstein
Hamnet
Marty Supreme
One Battle After Another
Sinners
Best live action short film
Butcher's Stain
A Friend of Dorothy
Jane Austen's Period Drama
The Singers
Two People Exchanging Saliva
Achievement in sound
F1
Frankenstein
One Battle After Another
Sinners
Sirāt
Achievement in visual effects
Avatar: Fire and Ash
F1
Jurassic World Rebirth
The Lost Bus
Sinners
Writing (adapted screenplay)
Bugonia, screenplay by Will Tracy
Frankenstein, written for the screen by Guillermo del Toro
Hamnet, screenplay by Chloé Zhao and Maggie O'Farrell
One Battle after Another, written by Paul Thomas Anderson
Train Dreams, screenplay by Clint Bentley & Greg Kwedar
Writing (original screenplay)
Blue Moon, written by Robert Kaplow
It Was Just an Accident, written by Jafar Panahi; script collaborators: Nader Saïvar, Shadmehr Rastin, Mehdi Mahmoudian
Marty Supreme, written by Ronald Bronstein and Josh Safdie
Sentimental Value, written by Eskil Vogt, Joachim Trier
Sinners, written by Ryan Coogler
Copyright 2026 NPR
Its full legal name is the "Academy Award of Merit." The Academy officially adopted its nickname, Oscar, in 1939. But where did it come from?
Bruce Davis got that question all the time — in letters and emails from the curious public — during his two-decade tenure as the Academy's executive director, which ended in 2011.
He dreamed up the knight (possibly modeled on a Mexican actor of the era) standing on a reel of film, holding a crusader's sword to defend the industry from outside criticism. And Los Angeles-based sculptor George Stanley made the statuette a reality, one that stands 13 1/2 inches tall and weighs 8 1/2 pounds.
Read on ... to learn about three competing theories, none of which may be true, and a fourth theory that just might hold the answer.
Sunday is the 98th Academy Awards, where many of Hollywood's top talents will walk the red carpet before settling in for a night of triumphs, heartbreaks and abruptly cut-off acceptance speeches.
Most of us just refer to the ceremony as "the Oscars," the longstanding nickname of the gold-plated statuettes that winners in each category take home.
Cedric Gibbons, the art director of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, is credited with designing the iconic statue ahead of the first annual awards banquet of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (aka "the Academy") in 1929.
He dreamed up the knight (possibly modeled on a Mexican actor of the era) standing on a reel of film, holding a crusader's sword to defend the industry from outside criticism. And Los Angeles-based sculptor George Stanley made the statuette a reality, one that stands 13 1/2 inches tall and weighs 8 1/2 pounds.
Its full legal name is the "Academy Award of Merit." The Academy officially adopted its nickname, Oscar, in 1939.
But where did it come from?
Bruce Davis got that question all the time — in letters and emails from the curious public — during his two-decade tenure as the Academy's executive director, which ended in 2011.
"And what astonished me was that when I would ask around the building, everybody would say, 'Well, we don't exactly know,'" he told NPR. "And so I didn't do anything about it myself until I was retiring."
Davis decided to use his newfound free time to compile a history of the institution, ultimately publishing The Academy and the Award in 2022. One of the questions it explores is the origin of the Oscar nickname.
"As it turned out, that was not an easy thing to find out," Davis said. "It took a lot of running around and doing some actual research, and I did finally come up with something that I'm reasonably confident is the right answer."
There are three enduring — and competing — myths about where the name came from. Davis debunked them all and proposed a fourth.
"Oscar" made its first mainstream newspaper appearance as shorthand for an Academy Award in March 1934, when entertainment journalist Sidney Skolsky used it in his Hollywood gossip column.
Davis recounts the apocryphal legend this way: Skolsky was running up against deadline on his awards-night rough draft when he was stopped by the word "statuette."
"He thought it sounded awfully snobby and he didn't know how to spell it," he said. "And he asked a couple of people around in the hall, and I guess no one was helping him spell statuette."
Skolsky later said he thought back to a vaudeville routine where the master of ceremonies would tease an orchestra member by asking, "Oscar, will you have a cigar?" And he claimed he decided to poke fun at the ceremony's pretentiousness by referring to the statuettes as Oscars instead.
Davis sees a few holes in this story, namely that the term appeared in at least one industry publication months before Skolsky's column. But it's not a total loss for Skolsky, who is separately credited with coining or at least popularizing the term "beefcake."
The most famous version of events involves none other than legendary actress Bette Davis. She had long claimed, including in her 1962 biography, that she coined the Oscar's nickname while accepting her first Academy Award some three decades earlier.
"Her story was that she was holding [it] in her hands and just kind of waiting for the ceremonies to move along, and she started looking at the hindquarters of the statuette and she said … the hindquarters of the statuette were the very image of her husband," Davis explained.
But Davis' husband at the time, musician Harmon Oscar Nelson Jr., was primarily known by another nickname, "Ham." And mentions of "Oscar" appeared in print years before Davis won her first one, in 1936. Davis eventually retracted the claim in her 1974 book, telling her biographer: "A sillier controversy never existed."
"I don't feel my fame and fortune came from naming Oscar 'Oscar,'" she said, according to USA Today. "I relinquish once and for all any claim."
Perhaps a more likely source is Margaret Herrick, the Academy's mid-20th century librarian-turned-executive director.
She apparently referred to the statue as such in the 1930s "because it looked like her Uncle Oscar," said Monica Sandler, a film and media historian at Ball State University.
Sandler says Herrick is the most logical choice, given her proximity to the Academy.
Herrick joined her then-husband, executive director Donald Gledhill, at the Academy in the early 1930s as an unpaid volunteer, and became its official librarian in 1936. Herrick took over as interim executive director when he left for the Army in 1943.
She was formally appointed to the role two years later and led the Academy until her retirement in 1971.
"There are very few women with the type of power and control she had over an institution at that time in the industry," Sandler said.
Herrick is credited with building up the Academy's library into one of the world's primary film research centers, as well as negotiating the award show's first television contract — and a major step toward financial independence — in 1953.
Davis says she often took credit, in conversations and media interviews, for jokingly naming the Oscar after her uncle. But he's skeptical of Herrick's claim.
"We're not sure that she was really the first person to use that because she had difficulties over the ensuing years in identifying this Uncle Oscar," he explained.
Davis does, however, think that the most likely originator was someone else on the early staff of the Academy: Eleanore Lilleberg, a secretary and office assistant who apparently oversaw the pre-ceremony handling of the statuettes.
He said her name surfaced every now and then, but he didn't have "much hard proof" until after his retirement, when he got wind of the Einar Lilleberg Museum. It's a small community center in California's Green Valley honoring Eleanore's brother, Einar Lilleberg, an artist and craftsman. He booked a visit and immediately happened upon a box of Einar's writings.
"And I thought: 'This is it. Now, this is going to tell the story about the Oscar,'" Davis says. "And he almost did."
He said Einar's correspondence was light on detail, but unmistakably credited the naming to his sister, describing it as: "Yes, she got in the habit of doing that, and the rest of the staff thought it was amusing not to call them the 'Academy Award of Merit,' but just 'Oscar' … and it really did catch on."
So which Oscar did Lilleberg have in mind? Her brother's explanation, which Davis endorses, is that she was thinking back to a Norwegian veteran they had known as children in Chicago, who "was kind of a character in town and famous for standing straight and tall."
Davis wasn't able to track down that particular Oscar. But he says no one has challenged his theory in the years since his book was published, "so I'm sticking with it."
While Davis takes some personal satisfaction in the outcome of his quest, he accepts that the mystery of the Oscar nickname may never be solved conclusively.
"If I had come up empty, I wouldn't be arguing that we need to change the name," he said. "But it's interesting that it became such a tradition. There were no film awards that had a personal name before Oscar gained his, and then … within the next couple of years … everybody started looking for a personal name."
Sandler, the media historian, says that because the Academy Awards were "really the first major pop culture award," many others used it as a template.
The prizes in other countries' most-prestigious award ceremonies have similarly personified names: France's César Awards, Mexico's Ariel Awards, Italy's David's. Plus, there are the Emmy and Tony awards, both products of the mid-20th century.
Davis says he's just satisfied that people are still interested in the Oscars, regardless of who they're named after.
"You feel closer to an award if you're on a first-name basis with it, I guess," he added.
The Inglewood City Council voted 4-0 on Tuesday to move forward with plans to split $8.5 million in state grant money among Market Street businesses for renovation projects.
The background: Market Street’s shopping area, which runs south from Florence Avenue, has visibly lagged behind other corners of Inglewood during the city’s decade-long building blitz. The revitalization of Market Street “has always been a priority,” said Bernard McCrumby, the city’s development services director. He said city officials want the street to become a cultural hub that represents the best parts of Inglewood.
Why now: City leaders are timing their beautification efforts to coincide with a hopeful boost in foot traffic from the planned Inglewood Transit Connector. The city is currently moving to take over the shopping mall on Market Street and Florence Avenue for the transit station.
Read on ... for more about the future of Market Street.
After years of faded storefronts, Inglewood’s Market Street is getting a facelift.
The Inglewood City Council voted 4-0 on Tuesday to move forward with plans to split $8.5 million in state grant money among Market Street businesses for renovation projects.
Market Street’s shopping area, which runs south from Florence Avenue, has visibly lagged behind other corners of Inglewood during the city’s decade-long building blitz.
“It’s a ghost town for the most part,” said Jeffrey Psalms, owner of the Cuban Leaf Cigar Lounge.
The revitalization of Market Street “has always been a priority,” said Bernard McCrumby, the city’s development services director. He said city officials want the street to become a cultural hub that represents the best parts of Inglewood.
City leaders are timing their beautification efforts to coincide with a hopeful boost in foot traffic from the planned Inglewood Transit Connector. The city is currently moving to take over the shopping mall on Market Street and Florence Avenue for the transit station.
A large part of the city’s planning are the business renovation grants — up to $250,000 cash grants that McCrumby said business owners can use for internal or external improvements. McCrumby said the grants are conditional on building owners keeping rents stable for five years.
The city has been working on the project since early 2025. McCrumby said the first group of awardees were notified this week, with another group coming soon. PCR Business Finance, a development advisory firm, is being paid by the city to run the program.
Not every business on Market Street will get a grant. The city had more than 80 applicants ask for more than $17 million in grants last summer — well over what the city has available — and won’t be opening up for new applications, McCrumby said.
Owen Smith, one of the co-owners of The Miracle Theater, said the theater won a $250,000 grant that it will use to repair the theater’s marquee and refresh the outside paint. Smith said the theater is hoping the grants and permits will come through before the FIFA World Cup.
“It’s a boost,” he said. “We’ll see what it turns into.”
Psalms, the cigar lounge owner, said he wasn’t able to apply for a grant because he couldn’t track down the owner of his building to sign off on an application. To him, he said, the program was a bust.
Inglewood is aiming to have all of its Market Street beautification efforts done in advance of the Olympics, McCrumby said.
Psalms recalled a different level of energy on the street when he was a child visiting the former Fox Theatre, the Big 5 and the Inglewood Marketplace swap meet. He believes there’s still a lot of potential.
“The intention to be better is there. I don’t think we’ve been forgotten about,” Psalms said.
Where development in other parts of the city has spiked in recent years, Market Street has lagged. Sip & Sonder, a Black-owned coffee shop that held down a flagship spot on Market Street for seven years, closed in December.
Psalms estimated half of the storefronts around his lounge are vacant. His own business remains stable, he said, thanks to a stream of out-of-town visitors.
McCrumby said the street is starting to “go in a different direction” from its heyday. More bars and restaurants line the street than before, he said, and city residents should expect more service businesses as residential development continues in Inglewood’s downtown core.
The city is also in the middle of planning for streetscape improvements that could include new lighting and landscaping. Last week, the city hosted meetings with business owners and community members to get feedback on designs.
Topline:
For decades, people applying for Medicaid were told their personal information — including their names, addresses and immigration status — would not be used for immigration enforcement. But a December court ruling changed that. And that change has sent ripples of fear through families and communities.
Why it matters: Twenty-two states have sued to stop federal health agencies from sharing Medicaid data with the Department of Homeland Security, including Arizona, Michigan and New Jersey. At the moment, following the December ruling in federal court in San Francisco, Medicaid can share names, addresses and other identifying information for people who are in the country unlawfully with immigration officials. In the remaining 28 states including Texas, Kentucky and Utah, there are no limits on what Medicaid data can be shared with Immigration and Customs Enforcement and other entities.
Read on ... for more about how the recent Medicaid changes will impact immigrant communities.
For decades, people applying for Medicaid were told their personal information — including their names, addresses and immigration status — would not be used for immigration enforcement.
But a December court ruling changed that. And that change has sent ripples of fear through families and communities.
"My daughter's life depends on Medicaid," says P., who asked that NPR identify her by her first initial only.
P. and her family have legal immigration status, but she fears that the health insurance keeping her medically fragile daughter alive could also put her family at risk of being detained or deported by immigration authorities.
For decades Medicaid promised eligible immigrants they wouldn't share information with immigration authorities. It was even explicitly written on government websites. Those commitments are no longer on the Medicaid website.
The promise was meant to assure eligible immigrants "to feel comfortable that they can access their care without fear of putting their immigration status into jeopardy," says Cindy Mann, who oversaw Medicaid during the Obama administration and now works at the legal and consulting firm Manatt Health.
Mann calls the change, which the Trump administration began quietly last year, a "180-degree reversal of longstanding policy."
P.'s 11-year-old daughter has Rett Syndrome, a rare neurological condition that makes it hard for her to eat, breathe, walk and talk.
"She receives in-home support," P. says, along with frequent visits to cardiologists, pulmonologists and other specialists. "She also receives [physical therapy], [occupational therapy], speech, aquatic therapy on a weekly basis."
All this care would cost tens of thousands of dollars without Medicaid — the joint state and federal health insurance program for more than 70 million people with low-incomes or disabilities.
P. says she and her husband are allowed to work in the U.S. legally and have private health insurance through their jobs. They have two children who qualify for Medicaid coverage because of disabilities.
"It brings us an amount of anxiety every day," P. says. She's had friends detained by immigration authorities and she worries about her family's safety. This is the case even though everyone in P.'s family has legal status, including two of their children who are citizens.
Twenty-two states have sued to stop federal health agencies from sharing Medicaid data with the Department of Homeland Security, including Arizona, Michigan and New Jersey. At the moment, following the December ruling in federal court in San Francisco, Medicaid can share names, addresses and other identifying information for people who are in the country unlawfully with immigration officials. In the remaining 28 states including Texas, Kentucky and Utah, there are no limits on what Medicaid data can be shared with Immigration and Customs Enforcement and other entities.
Some other recent federal actions are raising new alarms.
One former state Medicaid director told NPR they received what they described as a highly unusual request from the federal government in summer 2025 — a list of mostly Latino-looking last names, with instructions to check only immigration status.
The director, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss federal communications, said that's not how these reviews typically work. Usually, states are asked to review all criteria — income, disability and immigration status — to determine eligibility for the program, not single out one factor.
The director says they were floored. After reviewing the cases, they found everyone on the list remained eligible to continue with Medicaid.
Last August, the federal agency that oversees Medicaid, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), started a new initiative to review immigration status of Medicaid enrollees. The agency said in a press release it would start sending monthly enrollment reports with names of people it needed states to verify.
The Department of Homeland Security did not respond to NPR's questions about whether the data has been used for immigration enforcement. In the Federal Register and in a memo issued in October 2025, ICE says that it is rescinding a 2013 policy that said CMS and HHS data would not be used for immigration enforcement. The Associated Press first reported on the Trump administration's change in July 2025.
At Venice Family Clinic in Los Angeles, staff say patients are increasingly asking whether it's safe to remain on Medicaid.
Pattie Lopez manages the clinic's health insurance department. She says one patient became so worried about the policy change that she dropped her coverage — only to return after struggling without it.
"She found it incredibly hard to go without health coverage," Lopez says. "Now she's here taking a risk because she needs her medication."
Venice Family Clinic is qualified to receive special federal funding to take care of vulnerable communities, and 80% of its 45,000 patients rely on Medicaid. If people drop coverage but still need care, the clinic could face financial strain. It has already frozen hiring and is looking for other ways to cut costs.
Andrew Cohen, an attorney with Health Law Advocates in Massachusetts, said that for people already enrolled in Medicaid or other programs, the federal government likely has their information already.
"So remaining on coverage may be no additional risk," he said. "But there are instances where it may not be safe for everybody."
Some immigrants may be weighing whether to sign up or continue coverage. For P., though, walking away from Medicaid isn't possible.
"We don't have any other option," she says about dropping coverage for her severely disabled daughter. "We will have to risk that."
Without the coverage, she says, it's her daughter's life that would be at risk.
