Names and faces
■ Kim Kardashian West thanked President Joe Biden for acknowledging the mass killings of more than a million Armenians by the Ottoman Empire as genocide. “After more than a century of fighting for truth and acknowledgment, today the Armenian people received the recognition we have all been hoping and praying for, with President Biden declaring the massacre of 1.5 million Armenians in 1915 a genocide,” she wrote Saturday on Twitter. Biden is the first president to formally recognize the killings as genocide, a term that previous administrations avoided so as to not anger the nation of Turkey, which emerged from the Ottoman Empire. In 2015, Kardashian West — whose late father, Robert Kardashian, was Armenian American — penned a Time essay urging then-President Barack Obama to acknowledge the killings as genocide. “I’m so proud of my heritage, proud of the Armenian communities and grateful to President Biden for granting every Armenian this day and this truth,” she added in her Saturday statement. “Although nothing will ever bring back the Armenians who were murdered, I will continue to honor and remember those we lost every year on this day, but now with the hope that after recognizing the genocide we will never again allow atrocities of the past to be repeated.” Khloe Kardashian also posted a statement to her Instagram in honor of Saturday’s observance of Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day, thanking Biden for “honoring the stories, the pain, suffering and loss of the Armenian people” and including screenshots from Biden’s official White House statement.
■ Elon Musk, the chief executive officer of Tesla and chief engineer of SpaceX, will host “Saturday Night Live” on May 8, NBC announced Saturday. Miley Cyrus, the pop singer and a frequent performer on “Saturday Night Live,” will be the musical guest that night. Musk, 49, made other news in recent days as one of his SpaceX spacecraft launched from Florida carrying four vaccinated astronauts, docking a day later at the International Space Station. The launch, from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, marked the third crewed launch for Musk’s company. Musk has previously appeared on shows including “South Park,” “The Simpsons” and “Rick and Morty” and in films such as “Iron Man 2” and has gained an online following for initiatives like his recent announcement that Tesla would accept the digital currency Bitcoin for payments. Musk has also been criticized for his treatment of his employees, and his companies and projects have come under close scrutiny. Previous “Saturday Night Live” hosts this season have included actors Daniel Kaluuya, Carey Mulligan and Rege-Jean Page, musicians Adele and Nick Jonas, and comedian Bill Burr.