ST. LOUIS (AP) — Many states have laws designed to keep children away from convicted sexual offenders on Halloween night, such as curfews for those on offender registries and requirements to keep their porch lights off.
But a Missouri law mandating a sign at the offender’s home was a step too far, a judge ruled.
A 2008 law required registered offenders in Missouri to post signs on Oct. 31 that read “No candy or treats at this residence.” U.S. District Judge John Ross ruled this month that the provision violated the First Amendment by forcing “compelled speech,” depriving those on the registry “of their freedom to speak in their own words or to not speak at all.”
The ruling lets stand other provisions of the Missouri law that require people on the registry on Halloween to remain inside their home from 5 p.m. to 10:30 p.m. and to leave their outdoor lights off.
The Missouri sign law is unique among states, but some cities and counties have tried similar laws that were either struck down in court or withdrawn as part of lawsuit settlements.
Ross’ ruling on the Missouri sign law drew a mixed response. Some said extraordinary steps are necessary on a night when children flood the streets and often knock on the doors of strangers. Others said the sign law was unnecessarily cruel — and even counterproductive.
“I feel like it’s a setback and another example of predators’ rights kind of trumping those of their victims,” said Tara Bishop, a 40-year-old mother of four from southwestern Missouri who operates a Facebook page called Child Predators Exposed with more than 10,000 followers.
But an extensive examination of crime data published in 2009 in the Sexual Abuse journal found no increased risk of sexual abuse of children on Halloween. Experts say the vast majority of child sexual abuse crimes involve someone known by the victim or the child’s family, and not strangers.
Janice Bellucci, the lawyer for the Missouri man who challenged the law, said that for those forced to place the sign, the damage is long-lasting.
“It’s not just stigmatizing you that one day, it stigmatizes you for the rest of your life, as long as you live there,” said Bellucci, who is part of the California-based Alliance for Constitutional Sex Offense Laws.
The lawsuit was filed on behalf of Thomas L. Sanderson of Hazelwood, Missouri, a St. Louis suburb. He was convicted of second-degree sodomy in 2006 after a 16-year-old family friend accused him of sexually touching her. Sanderson, who has maintained his innocence, was sentenced to two years in prison and required to register as a sexual offender for 25 years.
The Missouri Halloween law was adopted two years later. It is unclear how many of the state’s approximately 26,000 convicted sexual offenders have been charged for violating the statute, or how stringent enforcement has been. The law doesn’t say where the sign must be placed. People on the registry are responsible for making their own signs.
The lawsuit said Sanderson asked police if he was subject to the law because his conviction happened before its passage. He said he was told he was not, so he continued to host Halloween parties complete with animatronic figures, lights, a bonfire, music and candy, the lawsuit said.
But the lawsuit said that on Halloween night 2022, police arrived at Sanderson’s home. No sign was posted, and he was arrested. He pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor for violating the Halloween statute and received probation. He sued last year.
Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey’s office, in court filings, wrote that the state is duty-bound to protect children who can’t make adequate decisions on their own. Bailey’s office said an appeal is planned.
“I want Missouri to be the safest state in the nation for children. That includes on Halloween,” Bailey, a Republican, said in a statement.
Alison Feigh, director of Jacob Wetterling Resource Center at Zero Abuse Project, which focuses on helping institutions prevent, recognize and respond to child sexual abuse, said most assaults happen after offenders build relationships with victims and their families. Tactics like signs are not helpful in keeping children safe, she said in an email.
“These public signs may give a false sense of security to families while not actually preventing child abuse,” Feigh said.
Other Halloween sign laws also have faced setbacks.
In Georgia, the Butts County Sheriff’s Office was sued in 2019, with people on registries alleging that authorities trespassed onto their properties to post signs that caused humiliation and anxiety. The signs read: “WARNING! NO TRICK-OR-TREATING AT THIS ADDRESS!! A COMMUNITY SAFETY MESSAGE FROM BUTTS COUNTY SHERIFF GARY LONG.”
A federal appeals court panel in 2022 said the signage violated the First Amendment.
In California, Simi Valley required Halloween signs in the yards of registered sexual offenders until reaching a 2013 settlement in a lawsuit filed by the Alliance for Constitutional Sex Offense Laws on behalf of five offenders.
In January, the alliance filed suit after the sheriff’s office in Marion County, Arkansas, created and posted signs and placed them in the yards of those on the registry. The signs read: “Sorry! No Trick or Treat.” The sheriff’s office later agreed to stop posting or requiring the signs.
CHICAGO (AP) — For Luis Martinez, competing in lowriding bike and car competitions is about more than glory and bragging rights. The lowrider clubs in the Chicago area have become like one big family and a source of mutual support.
“It just starts with the metal,” said Martinez, who got his introduction to lowrider culture when his mother took him to a flea market. He had his first bike when he was 12.
“To me, it’s about expressing my art and what I can do with my own hands,” Martinez told The Associated Press as he polished a shiny red bike at his home in Mishawaka, Indiana.
Luis Martinez, a member of the Uso Chicago Car Club, sits on his custom-built lowrider bike in Mishawaka, Ind., Saturday, Sept. 21, 2024. (AP Photo/Erin Hooley)
Luis Martinez, 29, a member of the Uso Chicago Car Club, cleans his custom-built lowrider bike in Mishawaka, Ind., Saturday, Sept. 21, 2024. (AP Photo/Erin Hooley)
A detail on the hub of the lowrider bike custom-built by Luis Martinez, a member of the Uso Chicago Car Club, in Mishawaka, Ind., Saturday, Sept. 21, 2024. (AP Photo/Erin Hooley)
Fluffly dice hang on the lowrider bike custom-built by Luis Martinez, 29, a member of the Uso Chicago Car Club, in Mishawaka, Ind., Saturday, Sept. 21, 2024, (AP Photo/Erin Hooley)
A movement of expression with origins in Mexican American and Chicano communities, lowriding is an aspect of Latino history in the U.S. in which people show their pride, honor family and uplift culture. But misrepresentation of the culture in entertainment and media has often associated the lowriding’s “low and slow” motto with gang culture.
Still, decades since its emergence, and as the Hispanic U.S. population increases, lowriding has experienced a boom, as evidenced by an increase in car shows and conventions nationwide.
A movement of cultural expression with origins in Mexican American and Chicano communities, lowriding is a way for a person to show their pride for family and culture. (AP Video: Melissa Perez Winder)
Lowriding involves the customization of a vehicle — from the tires to the sound system — with vivid designs and colors. Unlike hot rods or muscle cars, which are often modified to have big tires and move at high speeds, the lowrider community modified the cars and bikes to go “low and slow,” said Alberto Pulido, the chair of the Ethnic Studies department at the University of San Diego.
“It was a way to speak to an identity, a presence and it was done with few resources,” said Pulido, who also directed the award-winning documentary, “Lowriding: Everything Comes From the Streets.”
“Our community didn’t have a lot of money,” he said. “They might have had a little bit expendable income to buy a car but then they were kind of on their own to create their vehicles. We call that Chicano ingenuity.”
Lowriding blends Latino and American culture
AP correspondent Ed Donahue reports on the growing popularity of lowriders.
According to Pulido, lowriding originated in the Southwest, although there are disputes about where exactly it first appeared. Pulido said lowriders in Los Angeles would like to make the claim they were the first, while those in San Diego want their undeniable influence in the culture acknowledged.
The culture can be traced to post-World War II, when veterans were coming home with an expendable income. And with the growth of highways and freeways in California, people wanted to modify their vehicles, Pulido said.
Today, conventions attract enthusiasts from all over the U.S. Last month, what was once a small showcase with only 40 lowriders at Lincoln Park in El Paso, Texas, grew to over 300 lowriders from clubs across the U.S.
Hugo Cardenas and Araceli Martinez, wearing Zoot suits of the Mexican American subculture known as Pachucos, dance while attending a lowrider exhibition during the 20th anniversary of Lincoln Park in El Paso, Texas, Sunday, Sept. 22, 2024. (AP Photo/Andrés Leighton)
The decorated interior of a vintage car is pictured during a lowrider exhibition for the 20th anniversary of Lincoln Park in El Paso, Texas, Sunday, Sept. 22, 2024. (AP Photo/Andrés Leighton)
University of San Diego professor Alberto Lopez Pulido smiles while speaking with attendees of a lowrider exhibition during the 20th anniversary of Lincoln Park in El Paso, Texas, Sunday, Sept. 22, 2024. (AP Photo/Andrés Leighton)
Hector Gonzalez, of the Lincoln Park Conservation Committee, said the car clubs help members travel to all the showcases in the nation. In the ’70s and ’80s, lowrider clubs became a representation of the community and offered mutual aid such as ride-sharing and food donations when the local government could not or would not, Gonzalez said.
“It is something that gets passed on from generation to generation,” said Gonzalez, who, like most lowriders, was introduced to the community with a bike at the young age of 13. He has passed on his love for lowriding to his own children, nephews and cousins
“Kids grow up seeing the cars, they pick it up and they carry on the tradition,” Gonzalez said.
Lauren Pacheco, co-founder and co-curator of the Slow and Low Chicago Low Rider Festival, described lowriding as a global, multibillion-dollar phenomenon of self-expression and innovation.
“It’s a marvel of mechanical innovation,” Pacheco said. “It is the beautiful artistry in the creative practice of muralism, storytelling and upholstery.”
Within the last decade, lowrider conventions have grown so much that they’ve made their way to Japan. In Nagoya, Japanese lowriders have modified their cars, created clubs and even come to events at Chicano Park in San Diego.
Daniel Marquez, 8, is reflected in the mirror of his chrome lowrider bike, built by himself and family friends in memory of his late father Alberto, a longtime member of lowrider car clubs, at his home in Frankfort, Ill., Saturday, Sept. 14, 2024. (AP Photo/Erin Hooley)
Daniel Marquez, 8, sits inside his late father Alberto’s 1963 Chevy Impala lowrider car in Frankfort, Ill., Saturday, Sept. 14, 2024. (AP Photo/Erin Hooley)
A photo of Daniel Marquez sitting on his late father’s lap inside their 1963 Chevy Impala lowrider car, is displayed with a custom chrome lowrider bike built by Daniel and family friends, in Frankfort, Ill, Saturday, Sept. 14, 2024. (AP Photo/Erin Hooley)
Lowrider community sheds gang culture stereotype
Appreciation for lowriding has increased in recent years, enthusiasts say. But that was not always the case.
In the beginning, lowriding was associated with harmful stereotypes about Latinos as gangsters, Pulido said. Because the culture involved predominantly Latino participants, lowriding became racialized and that overshadowed the artistic and community service aspects of the movement.
The 1979 thriller-drama “Boulevard Nights” also helped to perpetuate the lowriders as gangsters trope. The film’s main character, Raymond Avila, played by Richard Yñiguez tried to avoid getting lured into the violent street gangs of East Los Angeles. Lowriding vehicles and the lowrider “cholo” aesthetic was featured throughout the film.
While the perception of lowriding has since gotten better, Pulido said he has been to lowriding car shows where police immediately show up.
Martinez, the Indiana lowrider, said lowriding misconceptions grew in the Chicago area because the community members were tattooed in ways often associated with gang affiliation. Pacheco said the Chicago festival works to dispel those misconceptions.
“We really try not to create a space that glamorizes or romanticizes gang culture,” she said. “It’s really a celebration of creativity and innovation and family.”
A Day of the Dead altar is placed next to a lowrider car on display at the Slow & Low Chicago Lowrider Festival at Navy Pier in Chicago, Saturday, Oct. 12, 2024. (AP Photo/Erin Hooley)
Santos Gonzalez sits between a 1939 and a 1949 Chevy vintage cars during a lowrider exhibition for the 20th anniversary of Lincoln Park in El Paso, Texas, Sunday, Sept. 22, 2024. (AP Photo/Andrés Leighton)
The decorated interior of a Monte Carlo vintage car is pictured during a lowrider exhibition for the 20th anniversary of Lincoln Park in El Paso, Texas, Sunday, Sept. 22, 2024. (AP Photo/Andrés Leighton)
Lowriding culture becomes a booming industry
Gonzalez, the Texas lowriding showcase organizer, said the culture’s focus on wheels, hydraulic systems and accessories, has helped lowriding become a booming industry.
In El Paso, people have opened small businesses orientated to the lowriding community. In the last couple of years, at least 25 new businesses opened, including body shops, upholstery shops and apparel shops, Gonzalez said.
“It has become a mainstream business,” he said. “Back in the 70s and 80s, it was more of a local thing. Everybody helping each other do things on their own. Now there’s just all kinds of opportunities to purchase things and have things done to your vehicle.”
Originally from Dallas, Texas, Martinez said he would buy the parts he needed from a man in his neighborhood, who would buy in bulk from Lowrider magazine. He said the unfortunate thing about lowriding becoming so big is parts are now mass produced from China instead of being Mexican made.
Lowriding carries family legacy
But lowriding is not just about the often pricey task of modifying cars, Pulido said. It is about building a community that is always there for each other, throughout generations, he said.
“We have grandparents that are lowriders and then their kids and their grandkids are in tune already,” Pulido said.
Wearing Zoot suits of the Mexican American subculture known as Pachucos, Paula, Jacob, center, and Junior Hernandez pose for a photo while attending a lowrider exhibition during the 20th anniversary of Lincoln Park in El Paso, Texas, Sunday, Sept. 22, 2024. (AP Photo/Andrés Leighton)
American and Mexican flags decorate a vintage car during a lowrider exhibition for the 20th anniversary of Lincoln Park in El Paso, Texas, Sunday, Sept. 22, 2024. (AP Photo/Andrés Leighton)
It’s a legacy that Sonia Gomez wants for her 8-year-old son, Daniel Marquez. His late father, Alberto Marquez, had been a member of a Chicago area lowrider club. Too young to drive the car left to him by his father, Daniel has a lowriding bike that is more of a memorial to his dad.
“The bike is what he’s doing to build it up,” Gomez said.
The family will do an ofrenda, a display often associated with Mexican Dia de los Muertos celebrations, when local lowriding festivals are held. As part of the ofrenda, Daniel takes an image he has with his father on a lowriding bike and places it next to his actual bike, which he named “Wishing on a Star.”
“We would either go on a (lowriding) cruise with my uncle, or we would go to actual car shows,” Daniel recently recalled, while sitting at the driver’s seat of his dad’s lowriding car parked in the driveway of their home in Frankfort, Illinois.
“My mom would be there,” he said pointing to the passenger seat. “And I’d be back there all squished.”
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LOS ANGELES (AP) — California tenants who held Section 8 housing vouchers were refused rental contracts by more than 200 landlords, including major real estate firms, according to an undercover investigation that found widespread discrimination in the state.
The investigative nonprofit Housing Rights Initiative announced Tuesday that it has filed complaints with the California Civil Rights Department, alleging landlords violated a state law against denying leases to renters who pay with vouchers. It seeks penalties against 203 companies and individuals.
The nonprofit is also pushing for more state funding to adequately enforce the law, which Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom signed in 2019.
“This historic filing serves as an opportunity for the Governor and his housing enforcement agency to enforce the very bill he signed into law and hold violators accountable,” the Housing Rights Initiative said in a statement.
Newsom’s office referred comment on the filing to the state Civil Rights Department. Rishi Khalsa, a department spokesperson, said the agency is “deeply committed to using the tools at its disposal to combat discrimination in housing.” The department has reached more than 200 settlements related to similar discrimination in recent years, Khalsa said.
“We always welcome additional support to strengthen enforcement of civil rights and we continue to work with a range of partners in those efforts,” he said in an email Tuesday.
The goal of the Section 8 program, named for a component of the federal Housing Act, is to keep rental properties affordable and prevent homelessness, which has reached crisis levels in California. Under the program, which has a long waiting list, tenants typically pay about 30% of their income on rent, with the voucher covering the rest.
Over the course of a year, undercover investigators posing as prospective tenants reached out via text messages to landlords, property managers and real estate agents to determine compliance with California’s fair housing laws. The investigation found voucher holders were explicitly discriminated against 44% of the time in San Francisco. Voucher denials took place in 53% of cases in Oakland, 58% in San Jose, and 70% in Los Angeles.
In one text message exchange, an agent with EXP Realty, a national brokerage firm, tells an investigator posing as a prospective tenant that utilities are included in the monthly rate for a rental unit. When informed that the tenant has a Section 8 voucher, the agent responds, “I don’t work with that program,” according to the investigation.
In another exchange, a broker with Sotheby’s International Realty replies to an investigator posing as a hopeful renter, “Oh sorry, owner not accepting Section 8.”
Representatives for EXP and Sotheby’s didn’t immediately respond Tuesday to emails seeking comment on the claims.
Kate Liggett, program director of Housing Rights Initiative, estimates the filing represents just a fraction of discrimination against Section 8 tenants in California.
“By exposing this widespread and harmful practice, we call on the State to provide agencies like the California Civil Rights Department with the resources they need to eradicate voucher discrimination once and for all,” Liggett said in a statement.
Major League Baseball announced Tuesday it will produce and distribute local broadcasts for the Cleveland Guardians, Milwaukee Brewers and Minnesota Twins next year. All three teams had contracts with Diamond Sports Group that expired at the end of the regular season.
The Texas Rangers, whose deal also expired last month, also announced they will no longer be partnering with Diamond. They are assessing their options for next season.
The addition of the Guardians, Brewers and Twins means MLB will be handling the production and distribution of at least six teams going into 2025.
MLB took over broadcasts of the San Diego Padres and Arizona Diamondbacks during the 2023 season and the Colorado Rockies this year.
Rick Schlesinger, the president of business operations for the Brewers, said he expects more teams could be partnering with MLB by the opening of next season.
“This has been a long process. It’s a very deliberative process,” he said. “We’ve done this through a lot of work, a lot of analysis. I think this is going to be a huge game changer for us, for our content.”
By taking over the broadcasts, MLB expects to increase the market reach of its teams by at least 2 million households in each market. The Diamondbacks went from being available in 930,000 households on a regional sports network to 5.6 million homes through a combination of being on local cable systems, satellite and direct-to-consumer streaming.
“With the media landscape continuing to evolve, Major League Baseball is committed to serving our fans by ensuring they can see their favorite clubs, removing blackouts where we can, and ultimately growing the reach of our games,” Noah Garden, MLB deputy commissioner for business and media, said in a statement.
The Twins took a public relations hit in Minnesota for cutting their 2024 player payroll coming off a division title and their first postseason series win in 22 years, in light of the reduced rights fee coming from Diamond. They will lose the rights fee altogether with this MLB-produced model, but team president Dave St. Peter said this announcement would not have an effect on player spending for the upcoming season.
“We’ve spent a tremendous amount of time with Major League Baseball trying to better understand this marketplace, trying to better understand what a model like this will ultimately provide to the team. We also have studied closely what’s happened in San Diego, in Arizona and in Colorado. We’ve gotten comfortable in those economics. They are where they are,” St. Peter said.
“We do expect that there will be a reduction in local revenue coming to the Twins in 2025. I think that’s a fact. That said, over the long haul we have tremendous confidence in our content and believe, while maybe we’ll take a dip for ’25, that over time the viewership and those economics related to that viewership will increase.”
Cleveland games were available on approximately 1.45 million households on its regional sports network. That reach is expected to increase 235% to 4.86 million households. Minnesota’s will go up 307% from 1.08 million homes to 4.4 million.
Schlesinger said the Brewers had 800,000 households that could receive games this past season, but he also expects to see significant growth with the new model.
“From a fan perspective, it’s great because you’re going to have total access and no blackouts,” he said. “There’s a lot of staffing, a lot of infrastructure, a lot of decisions have to be made, a lot of people to be hired, a lot of sponsors to contact. This is the right time to do this. It’s a good jumping point, platform to make sure when the calendar turns to 2025, we’re already fully immersed in this and that we know when the first game starts, that we’re ready to go and the product’s going to be outstanding.”
MLB could be taking over more teams as Diamond Sports Group continues to go through bankruptcy proceedings. The nation’s largest owner of regional sports networks could be down to doing only Atlanta Braves games in 2025.
The operator of the Bally Sports regional networks presented its reorganization plan in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Houston last week. As part of the reorganization, Diamond plans to void the contracts of the Detroit Tigers and Tampa Bay Rays and to attempt to rework the deals of the five franchises that are partial owners of their regional sports networks — the Cincinnati Reds, Kansas City Royals, Los Angeles Angels, Miami Marlins and St. Louis Cardinals.
St. Peter said he expects more teams to sign onto the model in the future.
“Starting to build that direct-to-consumer foundation, which clearly is the future of the way our games will be distributed — it’s time to get on with that and we’re excited about that,” St. Peters said. “Our ownership understands the consequences of that, but I think over time there’s way more upside than short-term downside.”
A final hearing on Diamond’s reorganization plan is scheduled for Nov. 14. Diamond also has the rights to 13 NBA and eight NHL teams.
Diamond Sports Group and Sinclair Broadcast Group bought the regional sports networks from The Walt Disney Co. for nearly $10 billion in 2019. Disney was required by the Department of Justice to sell the networks for its acquisition of 21st Century Fox’s film and television assets to be approved.
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AP sports writers Dave Campbell in Minneapolis and Steve Megargee in Milwaukee contributed to this story.
Kerolin scored her first goal since returning from an ACL injury, helping the North Carolina Courage beat the Chicago Red Stars 3-1 on Sunday night.
It was just the second game back for Kerolin, who was named MVP of the 2023 National Women’s Soccer League season.
In the 15th minute at SeatGeek Stadium in Bridgeview, Illinois, the Courage (11-9-2) jumped into the lead when Ashley Sanchez crossed to Brianna Pinto, who forced an own goal while battling for the ball. Pinto was injured on the play and had to sub out a few minutes later.
Just before halftime, Tyler Lussi passed back to Denise O’Sullivan at the top of the 18-yard box, and O’Sullivan fired a shot into the upper right corner with her first touch to double North Carolina’s lead.
Kerolin got on Olivia Wingate’s cutback pass to make it 3-0 in the 65th.
Ludmilla responded for Chicago (9-11-2) a few minutes later, scoring from a tight angle.
The Courage finish the weekend in fifth place while the Red Stars hold onto sixth.
U.S. women’s national team coach Emma Hayes attended the match.
BAY 1, REIGN 0
Asisat Oshoala scored a penalty kick, and Bay FC held on for a 1-0 road win against the Seattle Reign at Lumen Field.
In the 27th minute, Oshoala sent her penalty into the lower left corner after the Reign were whistled for a foul in the box.
The win moved Bay (9-12-1) into eighth place, the final playoff position, with four games remaining. The expansion team is tied with Portland for seventh place with 28 points.
After going unbeaten in seven straight games, the Reign (5-12-5) have now lost three straight.
EL SEGUNDO, Calif. (AP) — Detroit Pistons owner Tom Gores has agreed to purchase a 27% stake in the Los Angeles Chargers, two people with knowledge of the deal told The Associated Press on Friday.
The people spoke on condition of anonymity because the purchase has not been announced by the team. It is expected to be approved by NFL owners at their league meetings in Atlanta next month.
Sports Business Journal first reported Gores’ purchase.
Gores is buying the 24% share held by Dea Spanos Berberian, which includes 9% that is in a family trust that has a 36% stake in the team. He is also purchasing 1% each from shares owned by Dean Spanos, Alexis Spanos Ruhl and Michael Spanos for estate planning purposes.
The transaction ends a bitter three-year fight between Spanos Berberian and her siblings. Spanos Berberian filed a lawsuit against Chargers controlling owner Dean Spanos in 2021 that alleged breach of fiduciary duty by the Spanos Trust and tried to force a sale.
She filed another lawsuit in 2022 accusing her brother of “misogynistic” behavior, “self-dealing” and repeated “breaches of fiduciary duty.”
As part of the sale, Spanos Berberian has agreed to resolve her disputes with the family and the franchise.
Dean Spanos and Berberian were left as co-trustees of the trust following the deaths of Alex and Faye Spanos in 2018. According to 2021 financial statements that were part of court documents, the trust’s stake in the Chargers makes up 83% of its holdings.
The 60-year-old Gores has a net worth of $11.8 billion, according to Bloomberg. In 1995, he founded Platinum Equity, which has its headquarters in Beverly Hills.
Gores’ purchase comes after NFL owners on Sept. 1 approved allowing private equity funds to buy stakes in teams. However, this is a purchase by Gores and not affiliated with Platinum Equity.
The Chargers’ franchise valuation average is $5.38 billion using this season’s figures from Forbes, Sportico and CNBC.
Despite having more than a one-quarter stake, Gores will not have a role in the Chargers’ daily business or a path to a controlling stake. The Spanos family owns 69% of the Chargers with 4% controlled by legacy owners from the franchise’s early days in San Diego.
Alex Spanos bought the San Diego Chargers in 1984 and Dean Spanos took over managing the franchise in 1994.
The Chargers moved to Los Angeles in 2017 after years of trying to get a new stadium in San Diego. The franchise carries nearly 14% debt, mostly due to the franchise relocation agreement with the league.
BOSTON (AP) — A Massachusetts woman accused of operating a high-end brothel network with wealthy and prominent clients in that state and the Washington, D.C., suburbs pleaded guilty in federal court Friday.
Han Lee and two others were indicted earlier this year on one count of conspiracy to persuade, entice, and coerce one or more individuals to travel in interstate or foreign commerce to engage in prostitution and one count of money laundering, according to prosecutors.
James Lee of Torrance, California, and Junmyung Lee of Dedham, Massachusetts, also were indicted.
Han Lee initially had entered a not guilty plea before changing her plea. She remained in custody and faces up to 25 years in prison for the two felonies.
Han Lee, 42, entered court dressed in an orange shirt and orange pants, her black hair tied in the back. She also relied on the help of a Korean translator. Lee said she was not a U.S. citizen and had gone as far as high school in her education.
She was told that by pleading guilty she could be deported from the country.
Scott Lauer, a lawyer for Han Lee, said she would remain in custody after the hearing but declined to comment further. A lawyer for James Lee declined to comment. A lawyer representing Junmyung Lee said his next court appearance has been rescheduled.
Authorities said the commercial sex ring in Massachusetts and northern Virginia catered to politicians, company executives, military officers, lawyers, professors and other well-connected clients.
Prosecutors have not publicly named any of the buyers and they have not been charged. Acting Massachusetts U.S. Attorney Josh Levy has said prosecutors are committed to holding accountable both those who ran the scheme and those who fueled the demand.
Some of the buyers have appealed to the highest court in Massachusetts in a bid to have their names remain private.
At one point through a translator, Han Lee said that she didn’t control the women, but agreed that she had persuaded them to engage in interstate travel to take part in prostitution.
The women who worked in the brothels were not identified or criminally charged and were considered victims, prosecutors said.
Prosecutors said their evidence included witness testimony from women who worked at the brothels, sex buyers who made appointments or received services, physical surveillance and electronic evidence.
Han Lee maintained the operation from 2020 to November 2023. The money made at the brothels was sometimes kept in the freezer to be picked up, prosecutors said. They said she also helped train Junmyung Lee to help vet sex buyers.
The brothel operation used websites that falsely claimed to advertise nude models for professional photography, prosecutors allege. The operators rented high-end apartments to use as brothels in Watertown and Cambridge, Massachusetts, and Tysons and Fairfax, Virginia, prosecutors said. Brothels were maintained at four locations in Massachusetts and two in Virginia.
Han Lee recruited women and maintained the websites and brothels, according to authorities, who said she paid Junmyung Lee, who was one of her employees, between $6,000 and $8,000 in cash per month in exchange for his work booking appointments for the buyers and bringing women to the brothels.
The operators raked in hundreds of thousands of dollars through the network, where men paid from approximately $350 to upwards of $600 per hour depending on the services, according to prosecutors.
Officials say Han Lee concealed more than $1 million in proceeds from the ring by converting the cash into money orders, among other things, to make it look legitimate.
According to court documents, the defendants established house rules for the women during their stays in a given city to protect and maintain the secrecy of the business and ensure the women did not draw attention to the prostitution work inside apartment buildings.
Authorities seized cash, ledgers detailing the activities of the brothels and phones believed to be used to communicate with the sex customers from their apartments, according to court papers.
Each website described a verification process that interested sex buyers undertook to be eligible for appointment bookings, including requiring clients to complete a form providing their full names, email addresses, phone numbers, employers and references if they had one, authorities said.
The defendants also kept local brothel phone numbers to communicate with customers; sent them a “menu” of available options at the brothel, including the women and sexual services available and the hourly rate; and texted customers directions to the brothel’s location, investigators said.
She is next due in court for sentencing on Dec. 20.
SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — Parents in California who profit from social media posts featuring their children will be required to set aside some earnings for their minor influencers under a pair of measures signed Thursday by Gov. Gavin Newsom.
California led the nation nearly 80 years ago in setting ground rules to protect child performers from financial abuse, but those regulations needed updating, Newsom said. The existing law covers children working in movies and TV but doesn’t extend to minors making their names on platforms such as TikTok and Instagram.
Family-style vlogs, where influencers share details of their daily lives with countless strangers on the internet, have become a popular and lucrative way to earn money for many.
Besides coordinated dances and funny toddler comments, family vlogs nowadays may share intimate details of their children’s lives — grades, potty training, illnesses, misbehaviors, first periods — for strangers to view. Brand deals featuring the internet’s darlings can reap tens of thousands of dollars per video, but there have been minimal regulations for the “sharenthood” industry, which experts say can cause serious harm to children.
“A lot has changed since Hollywood’s early days, but here in California, our laser focus on protecting kids from exploitation remains the same,” he said in a statement. “In old Hollywood, child actors were exploited. In 2024, it’s now child influencers. Today, that modern exploitation ends through two new laws to protect young influencers on TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, and other social media platforms.”
The California laws protecting child social media influencers follow the first-in-the-nation legislation in Illinois that took effect this July. The California measures apply to all children under 18, while the Illinois law covers those under 16.
The California measures, which received overwhelming bipartisan support, require parents and guardians who monetize their children’s online presence to establish a trust for the starlets. Parents will have to keep records of how many minutes the children appear in their online content and how much money they earn from those posts, among other things.
The laws entitle child influencers to a percentage of earnings based on how often they appear on video blogs or online content that generates at least 10 cents per view. The children could sue their parents for failing to do so.
Children employed as content creators on platforms such as YouTube will also have at least 15% of their earnings deposited in a trust for when they turn 18. An existing state law has provided such protection to child actors since 1939 after a silent film-era child actor Jackie Coogan sued his parents for squandering his earnings.
The new laws will take effect next year.
The laws have the support from The Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, or, SAG-AFTRA, and singer Demi Lovato, a former child star who has spoken publicly about child performers abuse.
“In order to build a better future for the next generation of child stars, we need to put protections in place for minors working in the digital space,” Lovato said in a statement. “I’m grateful to Governor Newsom for taking action with this update to the Coogan Law that will ensure children featured on social media are granted agency when they come of age and are properly compensated for the use of their name and likeness.”
The new laws protecting child influencers are part of ongoing efforts by Newsom to address the mental health impacts of social media on children. Newsom earlier this month also signed a bill to curb student phone access at schools and ban social media platforms from knowingly providing addictive feeds to children without parental consent.
SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — School districts in California will have to create rules restricting student smartphone use under a new law Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom signed Monday.
The legislation makes California the latest state to try to curb student phone access in an effort to minimize distractions in the classroom and address the mental health impacts of social media on children. Florida, Louisiana, Indiana and several other states have passed laws aimed at restricting student phone use at school.
“This new law will help students focus on academics, social development, and the world in front of them, not their screens, when they’re in school,” Newsom said in a statement.
But some critics of phone restriction policies say the burden should not fall on teachers to enforce them. Others worry the rules will make it harder for students to seek help if there is an emergency or argue that decisions on phone bans should be left up to individual districts or schools.
“We support those districts that have already acted independently to implement restrictions because, after a review of the needs of their stakeholders, they determined that made the most sense for their communities with regards to safety, school culture and academic achievement,” said Troy Flint, a spokesperson for the California School Boards Association. “We simply oppose the mandate.”
The law requires districts to pass rules by July 1, 2026, to limit or ban students from using smartphones on campus or while students are under the supervision of school staff. Districts will have to update their policies every five years after that.
The move comes after Newsom signed a law in 2019 authorizing school districts to restrict student phone access. In June, he announced plans to take on the issue again after the U.S. surgeon general called on Congress to require warning labels on social media platforms and their effects on young people.
The governor then sent letters to districts last month, urging them to limit student device use on campus. That came on a day that the board for the second-largest school district in the country, Los Angeles Unified, voted to ban student phone use during the school day beginning in January.
Assemblymember Josh Hoover, a Republican representing Folsom, introduced the bill with a bipartisan group of lawmakers who are also parents.
Phones are restricted where Hoover’s children — ages 15, 12 and 10 — attend school. Many of the students don’t always like the policy, which is in part a reflection of how addictive phones can be, he said.
“Anytime you’re talking about interrupting that addiction, it’s certainly going to be hard for students sometimes,” Hoover said. “But I think overall they understand why it’s important, why it helps them focus better on their classes and why it actually helps them have better social interaction with their peers face to face when they’re at school.”
Some parents have raised concerns that school cellphone bans could cut them off from their children if there is an emergency. Those fears were highlighted after a shooting at a Georgia high school left four dead and nine injured this month.
The 2019 law authorizing districts to restrict student phone access makes exceptions for emergencies, and the new law doesn’t change that. Some proponents of school phone restrictions say it’s better to have phones off in an active shooter situation, so that they don’t ring and reveal a student’s location.
Teachers have reported seeing students more engaged since the Santa Barbara Unified School District began fully implementing a ban on student phone use in class during the 2023-24 school year, Assistant Superintendent ShaKenya Edison said.
Nick Melvoin, a Los Angeles Unified board member who introduced the district’s resolution, said passing the policies at the district or state level can help prevent students from feeling like they’re missing out on what’s going on on social media.
Before student cellphone use was banned during the school day at Sutter Middle School in Folsom, students had been seen recording fights, filming TikTok challenges and spending lunchtime looking at online content, Principal Tarik McFall said. The rule has “totally changed the culture” of the school so that students spend more time talking to one another, he said.
“To have them put away, to have them power off and that be a practice, it has been a great thing,” McFall said.
Teachers have become more reliant in recent years on technology as a learning tool for students, particularly since the COVID-19 pandemic, said Mara Harvey, a social studies teacher at Discovery High School in the Natomas Unified School District.
The district, which is in Sacramento, provides students in the first through 12th grades with a Chromebook, where they can access online textbooks and Google Classroom, a platform where teachers share class materials. But if a student forgets their Chromebook at home, their smartphone becomes “the next viable choice for them to access the curriculum,” Harvey said.
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Austin is a corps member for The Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues. Follow Austin on X: @sophieadanna
NEW YORK (AP) — Caroline Ellison, a former top executive in Sam Bankman-Fried ’s fallen FTX cryptocurrency empire, was sentenced to two years in prison on Tuesday after she apologized to everyone hurt by a fraud that stole billions of dollars from investors, lenders and customers.
Ellison, 29, could have faced a much tougher sentence, but both the judge and prosecutors said she deserved credit for talking extensively with federal investigators, pleading guilty and ultimately testifying against Bankman-Fried for three days at his trial last November.
U.S. District Judge Lewis A. Kaplan said Ellison’s cooperation was “very, very substantial” and “remarkable.”
But he said a prison sentence was necessary because she had participated in what might be the “greatest financial fraud ever perpetrated in this country and probably anywhere else” or at least close to it.
Ellison was ordered to report to prison Nov. 7.
FTX was one of the world’s most popular cryptocurrency exchanges, known for its Superbowl TV ad and its extensive lobbying campaign in Washington, before it collapsed in 2022.
U.S. prosecutors accused Bankman-Fried and other top executives of looting customer accounts on the exchange to make risky investments, make millions of dollars of illegal political donations, bribe Chinese officials and buy luxury real estate in the Caribbean.
Ellison was chief executive at Alameda Research, a cryptocurrency hedge fund controlled by Bankman-Fried.
“I’m deeply ashamed with what I’ve done,” she said at the sentencing hearing, fighting through tears to say she was “so so sorry” to everyone she had harmed directly or indirectly.
She did not speak as she left Manhattan federal court, surrounded by lawyers.
In court Tuesday, Assistant U.S. Attorney Danielle Sassoon called for leniency, saying Ellison’s testimony was “devastating and powerful proof” against Bankman-Fried, 32, who was found guilty of fraud and sentenced to 25 years in prison.
Attorney Anjan Sahni asked the judge to spare his client from prison, citing “unusual circumstances,” including her off-and-on romantic relationship with Bankman-Fried and the damage caused when her “whole professional and personal life came to revolve” around him.
Judge Kaplan agreed that Ellison’s willingness to work with prosecutors was extraordinary.
“I’ve seen a lot of cooperators in 30 years here. I’ve never seen one quite like Ms. Ellison,” he said.
But he said that in such a serious case, he could not let cooperation be a get-out-of-jail-free card, even when it was clear that Bankman-Fried had become “your kryptonite.”
Bankman-Fried also testified at the trial, portraying himself to the jury as inexperienced and bumbling but not a criminal. He acknowledged making mistakes, but said he didn’t defraud anyone and wasn’t aware that Alameda Research had amassed billions of dollars in debt.
Sassoon, the prosecutor, described that testimony in court Tuesday as “evasive, even contemptuous.”
As the business began to falter, Ellison divulged the massive fraud to employees who worked for her even before FTX filed for bankruptcy, trial evidence showed.
Ultimately, she also spoke extensively with criminal and civil U.S. investigators.
Sassoon said prosecutors were impressed that Ellison did not “jump into the lifeboat” to escape her crimes but instead spent nearly two years fully cooperating.
Since testifying at Bankman-Fried’s trial, Ellison has engaged in extensive charity work, written a novel and worked with her parents on a math enrichment textbook for advanced high school students, according to her lawyers.
They said she also now has a healthy romantic relationship and has reconnected with high school friends she had lost touch with while she worked for and sometimes dated Bankman-Fried from 2017 until late 2022.
VENICE, Italy (AP) — “ Joker ” is a hard act to follow. Todd Phillips’ dark, Scorsese-inspired character study about the Batman villain made over a billion dollars at the box office, won Joaquin Phoenix his first Oscar, dominated the cultural discourse for months and created a new movie landmark.
It wasn’t for everyone, but it got under people’s skin.
Knowing that it was a fool’s errand to try to do it again, Phillips and Phoenix pivoted, or rather, pirouetted into what would become “ Joker: Folie à Deux.” The dark and fantastical musical journey goes deeper into the mind of Arthur Fleck as he awaits trial for murder and falls in love with a fellow Arkham inmate, Lee, played by Lady Gaga. There is singing, dancing and mayhem.
If Phillips and Phoenix have learned anything over the years, it’s that the scarier something is, the better. So once again they rebelled against expectations and went for broke with something that’s already sharply divided critics.
As with the first, audiences will get to decide for themselves when it opens in theaters on Oct. 4.
“HOW ARE YOU GOING TO GET JOAQUIN PHOENIX TO DO A SEQUEL?”
Any comic book movie that makes a billion dollars is going to have the sequel talk. But with “Joker” it was never a given that it would go anywhere: Joaquin Phoenix doesn’t do sequels. Yet it turned out, Phoenix wasn’t quite done with Arthur Fleck yet either.
During the first, the actor wondered what this character would look like in different situations. He and the on-set photographer mocked up classic movie posters, like “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” and “Yentl” with the Joker in them and showed them to Phillips.
“Sometimes you’re just done with something and other times you have an ongoing interest,” Phoenix said. “There was just more to explore. … I just felt like we weren’t done.”
So Phillips and his co-writer Scott Silver got to work on a new script, one that leaned into the music in Arthur Fleck’s head. Then his dreary Arkham life turns to Technicolor when he meets and falls for Lee, a Joker superfan.
“Joaquin Phoenix is not going to do a line drive. He’s not going to do something that’s fan service,” Phillips said. “He wanted to be as scared as he was with the first movie. So, we tried to make something that is as audacious and out there and hopefully people get it.”
LADY GAGA FINDS LEE’S VOICE, AND LOSES HER OWN
One decision that’s already sparking debate is casting someone with a voice like Lady Gaga’s and not using that instrument to its full power. Phillips, who was a producer on “A Star is Born,” wanted someone who “brought music with them.” But Lee isn’t a singer.
Actor Lady Gaga and director Todd Phillips delight in returning to Venice Film Festival with “Joker: Folie à Deux,” as Gaga reveals why she sings differently in the eagerly anticipated sequel. (Sept. 5)
“Singing is so second nature to me, and making music and performing on stage is so inside of me. Especially this music,” Gaga said. “I worked extensively on untraining myself for this movie and throwing away as much as I could all the time to make sure I was never locking into what I do. I had to really kind of erase it all.”
Phoenix, who wasn’t quite sure what it would be like working with someone who has such a larger-than-life superstar persona, found Gaga to be refreshingly unpretentious and available. And as an actor, he admired her commitment to the character.
“Her power is in singing and singing a particular way,” he said. “For her to sacrifice that through character, to do something that people would call a musical, but to not be performing it in the way that would sound best as a singer but to approach it from the character was a very difficult process. I was really impressed with her willingness to do that.”
In addition to writing a “waltz that falls apart” for the film, Gaga is releasing a companion album, “Harlequin” on Friday with song titles including “Oh, When the Saints,” “World on a String,” “If My Friends Could See Me Now” and “That’s Life.”
Lady Gaga and Joaquin Phoenix at the Venice Film Festival. (Photo by Vianney Le Caer/Invision/AP)
SORRY PUDDIN’, THIS AIN’T MARGOT ROBBIE’S HARLEY QUINN
“We’re never going to outdo what Margot Robbie did,” Phillips said. “You have to do something 180 degrees in the other direction.”
Sure, Lee will still casually light something on fire to get some time alone with Joker, but the tumult is more internal. And Gaga threw herself into making Lee something new: A real person, grounded in a reality that came before her.
“I spent a lot of my time on developing her inner life (which) for me had a lot to do with her storm and what thing was always making her about to explode,” Gaga said. “There’s a particular kind of danger that she carries with her, but it’s inside and it’s kind of explosive.”
“DO YOU JUST WANT A BRUTE?”
Phoenix and Brendan Gleeson, background center, in a scene from “Joker: Folie à Deux.” (Niko Tavernise/Warner Bros. Pictures via AP)
Brendan Gleeson didn’t have much hesitation about joining the ensemble. He’d worked with Phoenix before on “The Village” and was in awe of what he’d done on the first movie.
“He has an absolute relentless integrity and curiosity and drive,” Gleeson said. “He won’t just plough the same furrow for its own sake.”
But he also didn’t want to play the simple version of an Arkham prison guard.
“I said, look, do you just want a brute? Because I’m not sure I just want to do a brute,” Gleeson said. “He wanted something more. We tried to find layers in this guy.”
CREATING MAYHEM
Anyone who has worked with Phoenix knows that he likes to keep things fresh. That may mean something as small as changing the location of a prop or as big as throwing out choreography that you’ve been rehearsing for months at the last minute.
“I think we both love mayhem and not just in movies but on the set,” Phillips said. “It had to feel like anything can happen.”
Gaga, director Todd Phillips, and Joaquin Phoenix at the Venice Film Festival. (Photo by Vianney Le Caer/Invision/AP, File)
With the crew 95% the same as the first, everyone was ready to be flexible. Gaga, too, dove right in, suggesting that they sing live on camera.
“It changed the whole making of the film,” Phillips said. “We were not only singing live, we were singing live differently every take.”
THAT’S ENTERTAINMENT?
Since Arthur killed Robert De Niro’s talk show host Murray Franklin on live television in the first film, he’s become a kind of icon and curiosity thanks in no small part to an oft referenced, but never seen, television movie that was made about him. Now, the trial is going to be televised as well.
“Underneath it all, there’s this idea of corruption and how everything is corrupt in the system, from the prison system to the judicial system to the idea of entertainment, quite frankly,” Phillips said. “This idea that in the States at least, everything is entertainment. A court trial could be entertainment, and a presidential election can be entertainment. So, if that’s true, what is entertainment?”
NO LONGER A COMPLETE WILD CARD
It’s easier to be to the insurgent, not the incumbent, Phillips said. Although a Joker film is never going to fly completely under the radar, the spotlight is undoubtedly more intense this time around.
“You do feel like you have a larger target on your back,” Phillips said.
While much of the film was made on Warner Bros. soundstages in Los Angeles, the production did go back to New York to film again on the Bronx staircase (which now come up on Google Maps as the Joker Stairs) and outside a Manhattan courthouse. The production staged a massive protest scene, with Gaga, almost concurrently with the media frenzy around the Donald Trump hush money trial as if there weren’t enough eyes on them already.
Some are also handwringing about the sequel’s bigger budget and whether it can match the success of the first. But Phillips has learned to take it in stride.
“There’s a different amount of pressure, but that just comes with making movies,” he said. “You can’t please everybody and you just kind of go for it.”
Gleeson has an even sunnier outlook.
“It has kind of arthouse movie integrity on a blockbuster scale. It’s great news for cinema, is the way I look on it,” Gleeson said. “If these event movies can continue to have depth and can be so conflicting like this one, is we needn’t worry about the future of cinema.”
SO, IS IT A MUSICAL?
Phoenix and Lady Gaga in a scene from “Joker: Folie à Deux.” (Niko Tavernise/Warner Bros. Pictures via AP)
One thing Phillips didn’t mean to do was ignite a discourse about what is and isn’t a musical. He’s just trying to manage expectations.
“People go, ‘what do you mean it’s not a musical?’ And it is a musical. It has all the elements of a musical. But I guess what I mean by it is all the musicals I’ve seen leave me happy at the end for the most part, ‘Umbrellas of Cherbourg’ not being one of them. This has so much sadness in it that I just didn’t want to be misleading to people.”
WR Brandon Aiyuk. After missing all of training camp practices during a contract dispute, the second-team All-Pro from last season is off to a shaky start. Aiyuk dropped a potential TD pass in Week 1 and has just six catches for 71 yards in two games. With Deebo Samuel out a couple of weeks with a calf injury, the Niners will need Aiyuk to get back to his old form soon.
Rams player to watch
RB Kyren Williams. Missing their top two receivers in Cooper Kupp (ankle) and Puka Nacua (knee) for an extended period, Los Angeles will likely rely on Williams and the ground game to chew up clock, make things manageable for QB Matthew Stafford, and keep San Francisco’s offense off the field. Williams had 100 yards from scrimmage and two touchdowns on 20 touches in a Week 2 loss to the 49ers last season and didn’t play in a meaningless Week 18 matchup.
Key matchup
Rams offensive line vs. 49ers defensive line. The injury-riddled Rams will have LT Alaric Jackson back in the lineup after he was suspended for the first two games of the season, joining RT Rob Havenstein and RG Kevin Dotson as the starters still standing three weeks into the season. That doesn’t bode well against a San Francisco front which has tended to dominate them in recent years. Nick Bosa got two sacks against the Vikings, and ex-Ram Leonard Floyd gives him a formidable bookend on the other side. After failing to keep Stafford clean in Arizona, the front five will have to be much better this week for the offense to have any traction.
Key injuries
S Talanoa Hufanga is expected to return for the first time since tearing his ACL last November. … The Niners will be without Samuel (calf) and RB Christian McCaffrey (Achilles’ tendinitis). The most recent time they played a game without both of those players was in Week 13 of the 2021 season. … Rams CB Cobie Durant continues to be bothered by a toe injury, though he was able to play through it against the Cardinals. … Dotson should be able to play again despite a lingering foot injury.
Series notes
The Rams had lost nine straight regular-season games to the 49ers before coming up with a 1-point win to wrap up the regular season in January. What probably helps Sean McVay feel better about those struggles against his friend and former colleague Kyle Shanahan is the victory in the game that mattered most, when Los Angeles took the NFC championship from San Francisco on Jan. 30, 2022 en route to a Super Bowl title.
Stats and stuff
The 49ers went 11-1 in division games the past two regular seasons with the only loss coming in Week 18 last season against the Rams when they rested several starters. … Niners QB Brock Purdy is 7-0 in the regular season against NFC West teams and 1-0 in the playoffs. … Purdy leads the NFL with 550 yards passing the first two weeks. … Purdy has a passer rating of at least 100 in 15 of 23 starts in the regular season. The only players to do that are Patrick Mahomes (16) and Kurt Warner (15). … The 49ers have allowed opponents to convert 59.1% on third down, second worst in the NFL. … San Francisco leads the NFL with an average time of possession of 36:44 per game. … Niners RB Jordan Mason is the second undrafted player in the Super Bowl era to rush for at least 100 yards and a TD in each of the first two games of the season. Willie Parker did it in 2005. … Mason’s 247 yards rushing the past two weeks are the most in franchise history for a player in his first two career starts. … Niners LB Fred Warner leads the NFL with three forced fumbles in the first two games. His 14 career forced fumbles are two shy of Patrick Willis’ franchise record. … Stafford was 19 of 27 passing for 216 yards against the Cardinals, marking just the fourth instance in his long career he completed at least 70% of his throws for at least 200 yards without a touchdown. … Los Angeles allowed 231 yards rushing to Arizona, its highest tally since Week 4 of the 2021 season when the Cardinals got 216 yards on the ground. … Rookie OLB Jared Verse had three tackles for loss, giving him four through his first two games. … NT Kobie Turner has at least one sack in six of his past 11 games. … Kupp has the Rams’ only receiving touchdown this season, 34% of their receptions (18 of 53) and 28% of their receiving yards (147 of 533). … Williams has run for a touchdown in each of the past five regular-season games he has played in. No Rams RB has scored in six games in a row since Marshall Faulk in 2000.
Fantasy tip
Rams rookie WR Jordan Whittington has a lot of the attributes that have made Kupp and Nacua so effective in McVay’s offense, making him worth grabbing for fantasy rosters. Depending on the recovery timelines of their two stars, the Texas product Whittington could emerge over the course of the season as a useful fantasy option and one of the bright spots in what is already shaping up to be a rough season for Los Angeles.
LOS ANGELES (AP) — The 76th annual Emmy Awards were handed out Sunday at the Peacock Theater in downtown Los Angeles.
“Shogun” set a single season record for most wins with 18. “Shogun” won best drama series, and Hiroyuki Sanada and Anna Sawai won acting awards for their roles.
“Hacks’’ won the award for best comedy series. ”Baby Reindeer” and “The Bear’’ won four awards apiece.
Early winners included Ebon Moss-Bachrach, Jeremy Allen White and Liza Colón-Zayas, who won awards for their work in the comedy series “The Bear.”
Stars presenting Emmys to their peers included: Billy Crystal, Viola Davis, Selena Gomez, Steve Martin, Maya Rudolph and Martin Sheen.
Several actors and shows, including Rudolph, won last week. Rudolph won her sixth Emmy Award at last weekend’s Creative Arts Emmys for her voice work on “Big Mouth.” Jamie Lee Curtis also picked up a supporting actress Emmy last weekend for her appearance on “The Bear.”
Here’s a list of winners at Sunday’s Emmys:
Drama series
“Shogun”
Comedy series
“Hacks”
Limited, anthology series, movie
“Baby Reindeer”
Actor in a drama series
Hiroyuki Sanada, “Shogun”
Actress in a drama series
Anna Sawai, “Shogun”
Supporting actor in a drama series
Billy Crudup, “The Morning Show”
Supporting actress in a drama series
Elizabeth Debicki, “The Crown”
Actor in a comedy series
Jeremy Allen White, “The Bear”
Actress in a comedy series
Jean Smart, “Hacks”
Supporting actress in a comedy series
Liza Colón-Zayas, “The Bear”
Supporting actor in a comedy series
Ebon Moss-Bachrach, “The Bear”
Actor in a limited, anthology series or movie
Richard Gadd, “Baby Reindeer”
Actress in a limited, anthology series or movie
Jodie Foster, “True Detective: Night Country”
Supporting actress limited, anthology series or movie
Jessica Gunning, “Baby Reindeer”
Supporting actor in a limited, anthology series or movie
Lamorne Morris, “Fargo”
Reality competition program
“The Traitors,” Peacock
Scripted variety series
“Last Week Tonight with John Oliver”
Talk series
“The Daily Show”
Writing for a variety special
Alex Edelman, “Just for Us”
Writing for a comedy series
Lucia Aniello, Paul W. Downs and Jen Statsky, “Hacks”
Huge celebrations across the U.S. are expected to celebrate National Hispanic Heritage Month, an annual tradition that showcases the awe-inspiring diversity and culture of Hispanic people.
Celebrated each year from Sept. 15 to Oct. 15, the month is a chance for many in the U.S. to learn about and celebrate the contributions of Hispanics, the country’s fastest-growing racial or ethnic minority, according to the census. The group includes people whose ancestors come from Spain, Mexico, the Caribbean and Central and South America.
There are more than 65 million people identified as ethnically Hispanic in the U.S., according to the latest census estimates.
Heritage week embraces the sprawling histories of Latinos
Before there was National Hispanic Heritage Month, there was Hispanic Heritage Week, which was created through legislation sponsored by Mexican American U.S. Rep. Edward R. Roybal of Los Angeles and signed into law in 1968 by President Lyndon B. Johnson.
The weeklong commemoration was expanded to a month two decades later, with legislation signed into law by President Ronald Reagan.
“It was clustered around big celebrations for the community,” Alberto Lammers, director of communications at the UCLA Latino Policy and Politics Institute said. “It became a chance for people to know Hispanic cultures, for Latinos to get to know a community better and for the American public to understand a little better the long history of Latinos in the U.S.”
The month is a way for Hispanics to showcase their diversity and culture with the support of the government, said Rachel Gonzalez-Martin, an associate professor of Mexican American and Latino Studies at the University of Texas at Austin.
Sept. 15 was chosen as the starting point to coincide with the anniversary of “El Grito de Dolores,” or the “Cry of Dolores,” which was issued in 1810 from a town in central Mexico that launched that country’s war for independence from Spain.
The Central American nations of Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua and Costa Rica celebrate their independence on Sept. 15, and Mexico marks its national day on Sept. 16, the day after the cry for independence.
Also during National Hispanic Heritage Month, the South American nation of Chile observes its independence day on Sept. 18. Indigenous Peoples’ Day, previously known as Columbus Day, is observed in the U.S. on the second Monday of October.
Over the past decade, the month has grown due to the larger Latino consumer base in the U.S., Gonzalez-Martin said. Gonzalez-Martin said visible support from the federal government, including celebrations at the White House, has also made it easier for Hispanics to celebrate.
“Hispanic Heritage Month was a way in which to be Hispanic and Latino but with official blessing,” Gonzalez-Martin said. “It was a recognition of belonging and that became really powerful.”
The four-week period is about honoring the way Hispanic populations have shaped the U.S. in the past and present, Lammers said.
“It gives us a chance to acknowledge how Latinos have been part of this nation for so many centuries,” Lammers said. “I think that’s what is great about this. It has allowed us to really dig deeper and a chance to tell our stories.”
Not everyone who is Hispanic uses that label
Hispanic was a term coined by the federal government for people descended from Spanish-speaking cultures. But for some, the label has a connotation of political conservatism and emphasizes a connection to Spain. It sometimes gets mistakenly interchanged with “Latino” or “Latinx.”
For some, Latino reflects their ties to Latin America. So some celebrations are referred to as Latinx or Latin Heritage Month.
Latin Americans are not a monolith. There are several identifiers for Latin Americans, depending largely on personal preference. Mexican Americans who grew up during the 1960s Civil Rights era may identify as Chicano. Others may go by their family’s nation of origin such as Colombian American or Salvadoran American.
Each culture has unique differences when it comes to music, food, art and other cultural touchstones.
Celebrations are planned throughout the month
From California to Florida, there will be no shortage of festivities. The celebrations tout traditional Latin foods and entertainment including, mariachi bands, folklórico and salsa lessons. The intent is to showcase the culture of Mexico, Puerto Rico, Venezuela and other Latin countries.
Events highlighting Hispanic culture include a quinceañera fashion show in Dallas on Sept. 14, the New York Latino Film Festival, which runs from Sept. 17-22, and the Viva Tampa Bay Hispanic Heritage Festival on Sept. 28-29.
The Smithsonian in Washington, D.C., is offering a slate of activities elevating Hispanic heritage, including a celebration of the life of Celia Cruz and exhibits of art made in Mexico.
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Associated Press writer Terry Tang contributed to this report.
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Being a venture capitalist carries a lot of prestige in Silicon Valley. Those who choose which startups to fund see themselves as fostering the next big waves of technology.
So when some of the industry’s biggest names endorsed former President Donald Trump and the onetime VC he picked for a running mate, JD Vance, people took notice.
Then hundreds of other VCs — some high profile, others lesser-known — threw their weight behind Vice President Kamala Harris, drawing battle lines over which presidential candidate will be better for tech innovation and the conditions startups need to thrive. For years, many of Silicon Valley’s political discussions took place behind closed doors. Now, those casual debates have gone public — on podcasts, social media and online manifestos.
Venture capitalist and Harris backer Stephen DeBerry says some of his best friends support Trump. Though centered in a part of Northern California known for liberal politics, the investors who help finance the tech industry have long been a more politically divided bunch.
“We ski together. Our families are together. We’re super tight,” said DeBerry, who runs the Bronze Venture Fund. “This is not about not being able to talk to each other. I love these guys — they’re almost all guys. They’re dear friends. We just have a difference of perspective on policy issues.”
It remains to be seen if the more than 700 venture capitalists who’ve voiced support for a movement called “VCs for Kamala” will match the pledges of Trump’s well-heeled supporters such as Elon Musk and Peter Thiel. But the effort marks “the first time I’ve seen a galvanized group of folks from our industry coming together and coalescing around our shared values,” DeBerry said.
“There are a lot of practical reasons for VCs to support Trump,” including policies that could drive corporate profits and stock market values and favor wealthy benefactors, said David Cowan, an investor at Bessemer Venture Partners. But Cowan said he is supporting Harris as a VC with a “long-term investment horizon” because a “Trump world reeling from rampant income inequality, raging wars and global warming is not an attractive environment” for funding healthy businesses.
Several prominent VCs have voiced their support for Trump on Musk’s social platform X. Public records show some of them have donated to a new, pro-Trump super PAC called America PAC, whose donors include powerful tech industry conservatives with ties to SpaceX and Paypal and who run in Musk’s social circle. Also driving support is Trump’s embrace of cryptocurrency and promise to end an enforcement crackdown on the industry.
Although some Biden policies have alienated parts of the investment sector concerned about tax policy, antitrust scrutiny or overregulation, Harris’ bid for the presidency has reenergized interest from VCs who until recently sat on the sidelines. Some of that excitement is due to existing relationships with Silicon Valley that are borne out of Harris’ career in the San Francisco area and her time as California’s attorney general.
“We buy risk, right? And we’re trying to buy the right type of risk,” Leslie Feinzaig, founder of “VCs for Kamala” said in an interview. “It’s really hard for these companies that are trying to build products and scale to do so in an unpredictable institutional environment.”
What to know about the 2024 Election
The schism in tech has left some firms split in their allegiances. Although venture capitalists Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz, founders of the firm that is their namesake, endorsed Trump, one of their firm’s general partners, John O’Farrell, pledged his support for Harris. O’Farrell declined further comment.
Doug Leone, the former managing partner of Sequoia Capital, endorsed Trump in June, expressing concern on X “about the general direction of our country, the state of our broken immigration system, the ballooning deficit, and the foreign policy missteps, among other issues.” But Leone’s longtime business partner at Sequoia, Michael Moritz, wrote in the Financial Times that tech leaders supporting Trump “are making a big mistake.”
Shaun Maguire, a partner at Sequoia, posted on X that he donated $300,000 to Trump’s campaign after supporting Hilary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election. Federal Election Commission records show that Maguire donated $500,000 to America PAC in June; Leone donated $1 million.
“The area where I disagree with Republicans the most is on women’s rights. And I’m sure I’ll disagree with some of Trump’s policies in the future,” Maguire wrote. “But in general I think he was surprisingly prescient.”
Feinzaig, managing director at venture firm Graham & Walker, said that she launched “VCs for Kamala” because she felt frustrated that “the loudest voices” were starting to “sound like they were speaking for the entire industry.”
Much of the VC discourse about elections is in response to a July podcast and manifesto in which Andreessen and Horowitz backed Trump and outlined their vision of a “Little Tech Agenda” that they said contrasted with the policies sought by Big Tech.
They accused the U.S. government of increasing hostility toward startups and the VCs who fund them, citing Biden’s proposed higher taxes on the wealthy and corporations and regulations they said could hobble emerging industries involving blockchain and artificial intelligence.
Vance, a U.S. senator from Ohio who spent time in San Francisco working at Thiel’s investment firm, voiced a similar perspective about “little tech” more than a month before he was chosen as Trump’s running mate.
“The donors who were really involved in Silicon Valley in a pro-Trump way, they’re not big tech, right? They’re little tech. They’re starting innovative companies. They don’t want the government to destroy their ability to innovate,” Vance said in an interview on Fox News in June.
Days earlier, Vance had joined Trump at a San Francisco fundraiser at the home of venture capitalist and former PayPal executive David Sacks, a longtime conservative. Vance said Trump spoke to about 100 attendees that included “some of the leading innovators in AI.”
DeBerry said he doesn’t disagree with everything Andreesen Horowitz founders espouse, particularly their wariness about powerful companies controlling the agencies that regulate them. But he objects to their “little tech” framing, especially coming from a multibillion-dollar investment firm that he says is hardly the voice of the little guy. For DeBerry, whose firm focuses on social impact, the choice is not between big and little tech but “chaos and stability,” with Harris representing stability.
Complicating the allegiances is that a tough approach to breaking up the monopoly power of big corporations no longer falls along partisan lines. Vance has spoken favorably of Lina Khan, who Biden picked to lead the Federal Trade Commission and has taken on several tech giants. Meanwhile, some of the most influential VCs backing Harris — such as LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman; and Sun Microsystems co-founder Vinod Khosla, an early investor in ChatGPT-maker OpenAI — have sharply criticized Khan’s approach.
U.S. Rep. Ro Khanna, a Democrat whose California district encompasses part of Silicon Valley, said Trump supporters are a vocal minority reflecting a “third or less” of the region’s tech community. But while the White House has appealed to tech entrepreneurs with its investments in clean energy, electric vehicles and semiconductors, Khanna said Democrats must do a better job of showing that they understand the appeal of digital assets.
“I do think that the perceived lack of embrace of Bitcoin and the blockchain has hurt the Democratic Party among the young generation and among young entrepreneurs,” Khanna said.
Naseem Sayani, a general partner at Emmeline Ventures, said Andreessen and Horowitz’s support of Trump became a lightning rod for those in tech who do not back the Republican nominee. Sayani signed onto “VCs for Kamala,” she said, because she wanted the types of businesses that she helps fund to know that the investor community is not monolithic.
“We’re not single-profile founders anymore,” she said. “There’s women, there’s people of color, there’s all the intersections. How can they feel comfortable building businesses when the environment they’re in doesn’t actually support their existence in some ways?”
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Kameale Terry saw it coming before almost anyone else did. She realized the expanding network of electric vehicle charging stations across the U.S. would need a workforce to maintain it.
The realization came as she found herself back in South Central Los Angeles — where she grew up — taking care of her mom, who was on her third recurrence of cancer. It was 2016 and she had left a job in banking to come home. Now she needed some work flexibility to address her mom’s needs.
Terry ended up taking a job with EV Connect, a company that made software for electric vehicle charging stations, in a position called “driver support.” When EV drivers found something wasn’t working at a station, they called in and she would talk them through the issue or send out a technician. It made her realize the need.
“When I saw that the charging experience wasn’t a great experience, I wanted to figure out how could I be helpful in ensuring that it is a great experience,” Terry said.
Kameale Terry, the co-founder and CEO of ChargerHelp!, stands for a photo in Los Angeles, Monday, Nov. 20, 2023. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)
So, in 2020 she co-founded the company ChargerHelp! with the aim of training a nationwide workforce of technicians to repair charging stations and reduce the amount of time they are down.
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EDITOR’S NOTE: This is part of an occasional series of personal stories from the energy transition — the change away from a fossil-fuel based world that largely causes climate change.
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The calls Terry fielded from frustrated drivers weren’t the only thing that prompted the decision to found ChargerHelp! She now understood the big picture when it came to charging infrastructure, and she rose through several roles to become a director at EV Connect, heading up programs in Australia and Canada, as well as the U.S.
During the early pandemic lockdowns, it struck her that there were hardly any cars on the roads and suddenly see the Hollywood sign from her home. Usually it was hidden by thick smog. “It really just hit me … if folks drove electric or chose more sustainable transportation, this could be an everyday thing,” she said.
ChargerHelp! technician Pat Gomez checks for power before resetting an electric vehicle charger at La Kretz Innovation Campus in Los Angeles on Thursday, Jan. 25, 2024. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes)
Terry also had firsthand experience with air pollution, having grown up in South Central Los Angeles.
“I am in a community that’s near like three freeways,” she said. It wasn’t until the work at EV Connect that she made the link between that and air pollution and health effects. “That’s really where I started to dive in, to understand how the air, you know, in the community was really like killing folks.”
The cancer ended up taking her mom, and Terry believes pollution played a role. A growing number of studies indicate that air pollution can be related to breast cancer.
These experiences, plus the desire to provide job opportunities for communities like hers, forged her entrepreneurial idea.
Now 35, Terry is an expert in the new field of EV charger maintenance. She’s found that her best technicians often come from careers in oil and gas, or in sales. One of her most highly-requested techs is a former furniture salesperson.
“It is the coolest thing seeing a group of folks that may not have fully known about this space prior to, but are so bought in to the idea of pushing forward massive EV adoption. That to me brings me so much joy,” Terry said.
The case for creating the company has only strengthened since it was launched.
One study found that nearly a quarter of the fast-charge EV stations in the San Francisco were broken. Data analytics company J.D. Power found that 21% of EV drivers in the U.S. have rolled up to a public charger that wasn’t working. Not all studies have found the issue to be that grave. Last fall, the federal government found far fewer chargers down, about 4.1%
This is how ChargerHelp! works: When an EV charging port has a mechanical or electronics problem, the manager of the gas station or business where it’s located submits a request via the company app, and a technician remotely provides quick assistance for things that can be fixed on the spot. For problems that require help in person, the company sends out a technician.
ChargerHelp! Field Service Manager Clyde Ellis poses for a picture at a charging station at La Kretz Innovation Campus in Los Angeles on Thursday, March 14, 2024. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes)
Clyde Ellis is a field service manager with the company in Los Angeles. He’s seen all sorts of damage to EV chargers —- a site where a car plowed into one, copper cables cut out by thieves and infestations of squirrels, frogs, ants, and other insects.
“There was once a honeycomb with honey dripping out of the side of the station,” he recalled.
Ellis came to the electric vehicle business from the oil and gas industry, where his work ranged from permitting to putting out fires sparked by welders working on pipelines. It was a stable job but eventually he chose to leave.
“I realized that I was in an industry that wasn’t beneficial to our environment,” Ellis said, remembering the air pollution generated at his former plant. “I had to take a step back and really look at what was going on around me … and I just thought, how could I make a change? How could I be a part of something bigger?”
Now he is.
“That is the pride and joy of my day every day and definitely at the end of the week,” he said.
ChargerHelp! Field Service Manager Clyde Ellis, right, talks to James Thomas, a customer charing at a charging station at the La Kretz Innovation Campus in Los Angeles on Thursday, March 14, 2024. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes)
Scientists say cars and other machines and activities that pollute, like power plants, must ramp down their exhaust sharply to preserve a livable climate. Yet instead of declining, global emissions continue to rise. Electric vehicles have no exhaust or tailpipe.
The Biden-Harris administration has a goal for 50% of all new cars and trucks in the U.S. to be electric by 2030. Some states like Washington aim to transition even faster, requiring all new vehicles be electric or non-polluting by 2030.
Terry said that in order for that to happen, people need to be able to trust EV charging infrastructure. The current mistrust, due to broken chargers, is a problem that can be solved, she said.
ChargerHelp! currently operates in 17 states.
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O’Malley reported from Philadelphia, Fauria and Garcia from Los Angeles.
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The Associated Press’ climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.
LOS ANGELES (AP) — “Shogun” had historic wins in an epic 18-Emmy first season, “Hacks” scored an upset for best comedy on what was still a four-trophy night for “The Bear,” and “Baby Reindeer” had a holiday at an Emmy Awards that had some surprising swerves.
“Shogun,” the FX series about power struggles in feudal Japan, won best drama series, Hiroyuki Sanada won best actor in a drama, and Anna Sawai won best actress. Sanada was the first Japanese actor to win an Emmy. Sawai became the second just moments later.
”‘Shogun’ taught me when we work together, we can make miracles,” Sanada said in his acceptance speech from the stage of the Peacock Theater in Los Angeles.
Justin Marks, center, and Hiroyuki Sanada, center right, and the team from “Shogun” accepts the award for outstanding drama series during the 76th Primetime Emmy Awards on Sunday, Sept. 15, 2024, at the Peacock Theater in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Chris Pizzello)
Anna Sawai accepts the award for outstanding lead actress in a drama series for “Shogun” during the 76th Primetime Emmy Awards on Sunday, Sept. 15, 2024, at the Peacock Theater in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Chris Pizzello)
The team of “Hacks” pick up their official Emmy statuette for outstanding comedy series at the 76th Emmy Awards Trophy Table on Sunday, Sept. 15, 2024 at the Peacock Theater in Los Angeles. (Photo by Mark Von Holden/Invision for the Television Academy/AP Content Services)
Jen Statsky, center from left, Paul W. Downs, and Lucia Aniello, and the team from “Hacks” accept the award for outstanding comedy series during the 76th Primetime Emmy Awards on Sunday, Sept. 15, 2024, at the Peacock Theater in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Chris Pizzello)
“Hacks” was the surprise winner of its first best comedy series award, topping “The Bear,” which most had expected to take it after big wins earlier in the evening.
Jean Smart won her third best actress in a comedy award for the third season of Max’s “Hacks,” in which her stand-up comic character Deborah Vance tries to make it in late-night TV. Smart has six Emmys overall.
Despite losing out on the night’s biggest comedy prize after winning it for its first season at January’s strike-delayed ceremony, FX’s “The Bear” star Jeremy Allen White won best actor in a comedy for the second straight year, and Ebon Moss-Bachrach repeated as best supporting actor.
And Liza Colón-Zayas was the surprise best supporting actor winner over competition that included Meryl Streep, becoming the first Latina to win in the category.
“To all the Latinas who are looking at me,” she said, her eyes welling with tears. “keep believing, and vote.”
Netflix’s darkly quirky “Baby Reindeer” won best limited series. Creator and star Richard Gadd won for his lead acting and his writing and Jessica Gunning, who plays his tormentor, won best supporting actress.
Accepting the series award, Gadd urged the makers of television to take chances.
“The only constant across any success in television is good storytelling,” he said. “Good storytelling that speaks to our times. So take risks, push boundaries. Explore the uncomfortable. Dare to fail in order to achieve.”
“Baby Reindeer” is based on a one man-stage show in which Gadd describes being sexually abused along with other emotional struggles.
Accepting that award, he said, “no matter how bad it gets, it always gets better.”
Richard Gadd poses in the press room with the award for outstanding writing for a limited or anthology series or movie for “Baby Reindeer” during the 76th Primetime Emmy Awards on Sunday, Sept. 15, 2024, at the Peacock Theater in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)
Jodie Foster accepts the award for outstanding lead actress in a limited or Anthology series or movie for “True Detective: Night Country” during the 76th Primetime Emmy Awards on Sunday, Sept. 15, 2024, at the Peacock Theater in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Chris Pizzello)
The Associated Press does not typically name people who say they have been sexually abused unless they come forward publicly as Gadd has.
Jodie Foster won her first Emmy to go with her two Oscars when she took best actress in a limited series for “True Detective: Night Country.”
Foster played a salty police chief investigating a mass killing in the round-the-clock dark of an Alaskan winter on the HBO show. While her castmate Kali Reis missed out on becoming the first Indigenous actor to win an Emmy in the supporting category, Foster praised her, and the show’s collaboration with Indigenous contributors.
“The Inupiaq and Inuit people of northern Alaska who told us their stories, and they allowed us to listen,” Foster said. “That was just a blessing. It was love, love, love, and when you feel that, something amazing happens.”
Greg Berlanti, a producer and writer on shows including “Dawson’s Creek” and “Everwood,” received the Television Academy’s Governors Award for his career-long contributions to improving LGBTQ visibility on television. He talked about a childhood when there was little such visibility.
“There wasn’t a lot of gay characters on television back then, and I was a closeted gay kid,” Berlanti said. “It’s hard to describe how lonely that was at the time,”
The long decline of traditional broadcast TV at the Emmys continued, with zero wins between the four broadcast networks.
Hosts Eugene Levy, left, and Dan Levy speak during the 76th Primetime Emmy Awards on Sunday, Sept. 15, 2024, at the Peacock Theater in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Chris Pizzello)
Hosts Eugene Levy, left, and Dan Levy speak during the 76th Primetime Emmy Awards on Sunday, Sept. 15, 2024, at the Peacock Theater in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Chris Pizzello)
In the monologue that opened the ABC telecast, Dan Levy, who hosted with his father and “Schitt’s Creek” co-star Eugene Levy, called the Emmys “broadcast TV’s biggest night for honoring movie stars on streaming services.”
Though other than Foster, movie stars didn’t fare too well. Her fellow Oscar winners Streep and Robert Downey Jr. had been among the favorites, but came up empty.
“Robert Downey Jr. I have a poster of you in my house!” said Lamorne Morris, who beat Downey for best supporting actor in a limited series, said from the stage as he accepted his first Emmy.
The evening managed to meet many expectations but included several swerves like the win for “Hacks.”
“We were really shocked,” “Hacks co-creator Jen Statsky, who also won for writing, said after the show. ”We were truly, really surprised.”
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Ebon Moss-Bachrach accepts the award for outstanding supporting actor in a comedy series for “The Bear” during the 76th Primetime Emmy Awards on Sunday, Sept. 15, 2024, at the Peacock Theater in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Chris Pizzello)
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Steve Martin, from left, Martin Short, and Selena Gomez present the award for outstanding supporting actor in a comedy series during the 76th Primetime Emmy Awards on Sunday, Sept. 15, 2024, at the Peacock Theater in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Chris Pizzello)
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Liza Colon-Zayas accepts the award for outstanding supporting actress in a comedy series for “The Bear” during the 76th Primetime Emmy Awards on Sunday, Sept. 15, 2024, at the Peacock Theater in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Chris Pizzello)
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James Johnson, from left, Princess Daazhraii Johnson, and Cathy Tagnak Rexford arrive at the 76th Primetime Emmy Awards on Sunday, Sept. 15, 2024, at the Peacock Theater in Los Angeles. (Photo by Richard Shotwell/Invision/AP)
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Skye P. Marshall, left, and Kathy Bates arrive at the 76th Primetime Emmy Awards on Sunday, Sept. 15, 2024, at the Peacock Theater in Los Angeles. (Photo by Richard Shotwell/Invision/AP)
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Ebon Moss-Bachrach accepts the award for outstanding supporting actor in a comedy series for “The Bear” during the 76th Primetime Emmy Awards on Sunday, Sept. 15, 2024, at the Peacock Theater in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Chris Pizzello)
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Ebon Moss-Bachrach accepts the award for outstanding supporting actor in a comedy series for “The Bear” during the 76th Primetime Emmy Awards on Sunday, Sept. 15, 2024, at the Peacock Theater in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Chris Pizzello)
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Steve Martin, from left, Martin Short, and Selena Gomez present the award for outstanding supporting actor in a comedy series during the 76th Primetime Emmy Awards on Sunday, Sept. 15, 2024, at the Peacock Theater in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Chris Pizzello)
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Steve Martin, from left, Martin Short, and Selena Gomez present the award for outstanding supporting actor in a comedy series during the 76th Primetime Emmy Awards on Sunday, Sept. 15, 2024, at the Peacock Theater in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Chris Pizzello)
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Liza Colon-Zayas accepts the award for outstanding supporting actress in a comedy series for “The Bear” during the 76th Primetime Emmy Awards on Sunday, Sept. 15, 2024, at the Peacock Theater in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Chris Pizzello)
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Liza Colon-Zayas accepts the award for outstanding supporting actress in a comedy series for “The Bear” during the 76th Primetime Emmy Awards on Sunday, Sept. 15, 2024, at the Peacock Theater in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Chris Pizzello)
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James Johnson, from left, Princess Daazhraii Johnson, and Cathy Tagnak Rexford arrive at the 76th Primetime Emmy Awards on Sunday, Sept. 15, 2024, at the Peacock Theater in Los Angeles. (Photo by Richard Shotwell/Invision/AP)
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James Johnson, from left, Princess Daazhraii Johnson, and Cathy Tagnak Rexford arrive at the 76th Primetime Emmy Awards on Sunday, Sept. 15, 2024, at the Peacock Theater in Los Angeles. (Photo by Richard Shotwell/Invision/AP)
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Skye P. Marshall, left, and Kathy Bates arrive at the 76th Primetime Emmy Awards on Sunday, Sept. 15, 2024, at the Peacock Theater in Los Angeles. (Photo by Richard Shotwell/Invision/AP)
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Skye P. Marshall, left, and Kathy Bates arrive at the 76th Primetime Emmy Awards on Sunday, Sept. 15, 2024, at the Peacock Theater in Los Angeles. (Photo by Richard Shotwell/Invision/AP)
And “Shogun” got off to a quiet start, missing on early awards and not getting its first trophy until past the halfway point.
Still, it shattered the record for Emmys for one season previously held by the 2008 limited series “John Adams” in 2008. And its acting wins would have been hard to imagine before the series became an acclaimed phenomenon.
Sanada is a 63-year-old longtime screen star whose name is little known outside Japan, even if his face is through Hollywood films like “The Last Samurai” and “John Wick Chapter 4.” Sawai, 32, who was born in New Zealand and moved to Japan as a child, is significantly less known in the U.S. She wept when she accepted best actress.
“When you saw me cry on stage, it was probably the 12th time I cried today,” Sawai said backstage. “It was just mixed emotions, wanting everyone to win all that. I may cry again now.”
“The Bear” would finish second with 11 overall Emmys, including guest acting wins at the Creative Arts ceremony for Jamie Lee Curtis and Jon Bernthal.
The Levys in their opening monologue mocked the show being in the comedy category.
“In honor of ‘The Bear’ we will be making no jokes,” Eugene Levy said, to laughs.
Elizabeth Debicki took best supporting actress in a drama for playing Princess Diana at the end of her life in the sixth and final season of “The Crown.”
“Playing this part, based on this unparalleled, incredible human being, has been my great privilege,” Debicki said in her acceptance. “It’s been a gift.”
Several awards were presented by themed teams from TV history, including sitcom dads George Lopez, Damon Wayans and Jesse Tyler Ferguson and TV moms Meredith Baxter, Connie Britton, and Susan Kelechi Watson.
Defender Malia Berkely had three assists as the North Carolina Courage earned a 4-1 road win against the San Diego Wave on Sunday evening in the National Women’s Soccer League.
The Courage (10-8-1) came away with their second road win this season and played spoliers on a special evening, as 26,516 fans filled the stands at Snapdragon Stadium to witness Alex Morgan’s last professional soccer game.
Morgan announced earlier this week that Sunday’s game would be her last, as she is retiring and pregnant with her second child. The longtime U.S. women’s national team forward retires with two World Cup titles, one Olympic gold medal and a bronze medal. She also won the NWSL Shield with San Diego in 2023 and helped fight for equal pay and to bring light to abuse in the NWSL.
All three opening goals came off corner kicks.
In the 4th minute, North Carolina’s Haley Hopkins headed in Berkely’s corner kick.
Morgan had one final chance to add to her goal tally with a penalty kick, but Courage goalkeeper Casey Murphy saved the attempt. Shortly after, Wave teammate Kennedy Wesley got her head on a corner kick to tie the score.
In the 13th minute, in honor of her jersey number, Morgan subbed out of the match for a final time to a thunderous applause.
Felicitas Rauch rose up to head in another corner from Berkley in the 21st minute, while Bianca St-Georges scored off Berkley’s pass just before halftime.
Wave goalkeeper Kailen Sheridan received a red card in the 61st minute for denying a goal-scoring opportunity.
Meredith Speck finished Olivia Wingate’s cross to give the Courage an insurance goal in the 94th minute.
The Wave (3-9-7) are winless in 12 straight games.
GOTHAM 2, DASH 1
Esther González scored in the 93rd minute to give Gotham a 2-1 home win over the Houston Dash.
The forward got the ball with her back to the goal, turned and fired into the left corner to seal the win at Red Bull Arena.
Lynn Williams, in her first match back from the Paris Olympics, assisted the goal.
Yazmeen Ryan opened the scoring for Gotham (11-4-4) in the 10th minute, dribbling into the box and shooting into the left corner.
Diana Ordóñez headed in Avery Patterson’s cross to bring the match level in the 17th minute.
Houston (3-11-5) have lost five straight games and finished the weekend in last place.
PRIDE 1, RED STARS 0
Marta’s first-half goal gave the Orlando Pride a 1-0 win on the road against the Chicago Red Stars.
Orlando (14-0-5) is now undefeated in a league record 20 straight games, dating back to last year.
In the 37th minute, Marta whipped a left-footed shot into the far post to put Orlando ahead.
Chicago (7-10-2) was held to just three shots and has lost three straight games.
DEL MAR, Calif. (AP) — Gaming won the $300,000 Del Mar Futurity by 1 3/4 lengths on Sunday, giving Hall of Fame trainer Bob Baffert his 18th career victory in the Grade 1 race for 2-year-olds.
Ridden by Flavien Prat, Gaming ran seven furlongs in 1:23.02 and paid $9.80 to win. The colt earned a credit toward entry fees for the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile at the same seaside track north of San Diego in November.
“He relaxed well; he was a bit on his toes before the race so I kept him quiet,” Prat said. “Very straightforward, and leveled out nice. Bob just told me not to rush him and I thought I was in a good spot on my way around the corner.”
Gaming improved to 2-0 in his young career, with earnings of $225,000.
McKinzie Street was second and Citizen Bull, also trained by Baffert, finished third. The trainer’s third entry, Getaway Car, was fourth in the field of seven.
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Brionna Jones scored 21 points and grabbed nine rebounds, DiJonai Carrington added 19 points and Alyssa Thomas recorded her third triple-double of the season Sunday night to help the Connecticut Sun beat the Los Angeles Sparks 79-67.
Thomas finished with 12 points, 11 assists and 10 rebounds and has a WNBA-leading three triple-doubles this season and her 11 career in the regular season are the most in league history.
DeWanna Bonner scored 14 points and Marina Mabrey added 10 for Connecticut (25-10), which had lost back-to-back games for the second time this season.
Mabrey hit a 3-pointer with 6:26 to play that gave Connecticut its first lead since 22-20 early in the second quarter and Carrington followed with an alley-oop layup to cap a 10-3 spurt that made it 69-66 about 30 seconds later and the Sun led the rest of the way.
Neither team scored until Rickea Jackson made 1 of 2 free throws to make it a two-point game with 3:36 remaining but the Sparks went scoreless from there, shooting 0 for 5 from the field and committing seven turnovers over the final 6 1/2 minutes.
Los Angeles (7-28), which has lost four in a row and 11 of its last 12, became the first WNBA team eliminated from playoff contention after a 92-78 loss to the Chicago Sky on Friday night.
Jackson led the Sparks with 23 points on 9-of-18 shooting. Odyssey Sims and Dearica Hamby added 10 points apiece.
Connecticut has won 13 consecutive games against the Sparks, dating to an 80-76 home loss on Aug. 28, 2020.
The Sun scored their first 14 points in the paint before Mabrey hit a 3-pointer to make it 17-11 before Jackson capped a 7-0 spurt to give the Sparks a 20-19 lead early in the second quarter.
Jackson scored 11 points and Hamby added 10 in the first half before Kia Nurse hit a 3-pointer at the buzzer to give Los Angeles a 45-39 lead at the intermission.
