By Maria Sherman, Music Writer
LOS ANGELES (AP) --Taylor Swift may soon become the most awarded artist in MTV Video Music Awards history.
She leads the 2023 nominations with eight — seven for her "Anti-Hero" music video and a nod in the artist of the year category — followed by SZA, who has six, MTV announced on Tuesday.
Swift currently has 14 VMAs to her name, placing her just behind Madonna, who has 20 awards, and Beyoncé, who has 16.
Beyoncé is also nominated for Artist of the Year.
Doja Cat, Kim Petras, Miley Cyrus, Nicki Minaj, Olivia Rodrigo and Sam Smith are tied at five nominations, and BLACKPINK, Diddy and Shakira each received four.
The 2023 MTV Video Music Awards, scheduled for Sept. 12, will have a record-breaking 35 first-time nominees including Petras, and Metro Boomin' and Rema, who boast three each.
Aespa, Burna Boy, Davido, Eslabon Armado, FIFTY FIFTY, PinkPantheress, Saucy Santana, Stephen Sanchez and Toosii are also nominated for the first time.
The VMAs will be held at the Prudential Center in Newark, New Jersey. Fan voting begins Tuesday across 15 gender-neutral categories at vote.mtv.com, including the new best Afrobeats category, and ends Friday, Sept. 1.
Voting in the best new artist category will remain active throughout the show.
Harvey Weinstein hit with new sex crime charge in New York
Harvey Weinstein pleaded not guilty Wednesday to a new sex crime charge in New York, as he awaits retrial in his landmark #MeToo case.
Details of the new allegations were not immediately available. He was charged with committing a criminal sex act.
The jailed ex-movie mogul has long maintained that any sexual activity was consensual.
Prosecutors revealed last week that Weinstein had been indicted on additional sex crime charges that weren't part of the case that led to his now-overturned 2020 conviction. But the new indictment was sealed until his arraignment.
Prosecutors have said that the grand jury heard evidence of up to three alleged assaults — two in hotels in the Tribeca neighborhood and one at a lower Manhattan residential building. The purported incidents took place from the mid-2000s to 2016, prosecutors said.
But it's not clear whether any of those allegations underlie the new indictment.
While bracing for the new charges, Weinstein also is awaiting retrial after New York state's highest court this spring overturned his 2020 conviction on rape and sexual assault charges involving two women. The high court, called the Court of Appeals, ordered a new trial, which is tentatively scheduled to begin Nov. 12.
The Court of Appeals ruled that the then-trial judge unfairly allowed testimony against him based on allegations that were not part of the case. That judge's term expired in 2022, and he is no longer on the bench.
Prosecutors have said they'll seek to fold the new charges into the retrial, but Weinstein's lawyers say it should be a separate case.
Weinstein, who also was convicted in 2022 in a Los Angeles rape case, remains behind bars while awaiting his New York retrial.
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