Lionel Messi of Inter Miami CF celebrates after scoring a goal in the first half during the Leagues Cup 2023 semifinals match between Inter Miami CF and Philadelphia Union at Subaru Park on Aug. 15, 2023 in Chester, Pennsylvania.
Tim Nwachukwu | Getty Images Sport | Getty Images
HONG KONG — Soccer fans in Hong Kong will be able to see the world’s best player Lionel Messi in action next year when David Beckham’s Inter Miami play the Hong Kong team in February.
The highly anticipated match has been scheduled for Feb. 4 at the Hong Kong Stadium.
During their visit, the team will have an open training session — and half of those tickets will be reserved for community outreach. This is the team’s first international tour.
Beckham, the American club’s co-owner and president, sealed the deal to bring the team to Hong Kong when he visited the city last week.
Messi, widely regarded as one of the greatest soccer players of all time, was last in Hong Kong in 2014 when Argentina played against the city’s national team.
The Argentina captain completed the set of major soccer honors after leading his country to clinch the World Cup title last year, which was promptly followed by his U.S. club winning the Leagues Cup in August.
Luxury and lifestyle media company Tatler Asia will host Inter Miami in Hong Kong, after having secured a 3-year contract with the team. There are plans to hold a sporting and lifestyle event that rivals the Formula One Singapore Grand Prix.
Tickets for the friendly match will go on sale from Dec. 15, priced between $880 Hong Kong dollars to HK$4,880 (about $112 to $624). They will be sold exclusively through Hong Kong based e-commerce travel app Klook.
A Redfin sign in front of a home for sale in Atlanta on Nov. 10, 2022.
Elijah Nouvelage | Bloomberg | Getty Images
This year was the least affordable year for homebuying in at least in the past 11 years, according to a Thursday report from real estate company Redfin.
In 2023, someone making the median income in the U.S. — $78,642 — would’ve had to spend more than 40% of their income on monthly housing costs if they bought the median-priced home, which was around $400,000, according to Redfin. That’s the highest share in Redfin’s records dating back to 2012, up nearly 3% from last year.
Monthly costs for homebuyers have increased more than twice as fast as wages, Redfin said. The 30-year fixed mortgage rate hit 8% in October, the first time since 2000, combined with a decrease in house listings on the market.
This past year, a typical homebuyer had to earn an income of at least $109,868 if they wanted to spend a maximum of 30% of their income on monthly housing payments for a median-priced home, Redfin reported. That record high is up 8.5% from last year and $30,000 more than the typical household income.
Austin, Texas, was the only city that became more affordable in 2023, decreasing by around a 1% share, according to Redfin’s analysis. Meanwhile, the most expensive metros included many in California, such as Anaheim, San Francisco and San Jose. People in those areas, Redfin added, were forced to rent in 2023 due to high housing costs.
On the other end of the spectrum, Midwest metros proved to be among the most affordable, with someone in Detroit making the median income only spending about 18% of their earnings on monthly housing costs.
Looking to 2024, Redfin predicts mortgage rates will fall to about 6.6% and prices will drop 1% as new listings find their way onto the market.
“A perfect storm of inflation, high prices, soaring mortgage rates and low housing supply caused 2023 to go down as the least affordable year for housing in recent history,” Redfin Senior Economist Elijah de la Campa said in a statement. “The good news is that affordability is already improving heading into the new year.” Don’t miss these stories from CNBC PRO:
Jerrid Joseph Powell, 33, was charged with four counts of murder, one count of robbery and one count of being a felon in possession of a firearm. He was expected be to arraigned in a downtown courtroom Monday afternoon.
“I want to extend my deepest appreciation to the incredible men and women of law enforcement who worked tirelessly to bring justice to our community and arrest this individual,” Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. George Gascón said in a statement. “The swift actions of law enforcement undoubtedly saved lives this week.”
Prosecutors also filed special circumstances allegations claiming Powell committed multiple murders. If convicted as charged, he faces life in prison without the possibility of parole.
Authorities say Powell, 33, of Los Angeles,began the string of attacks before dawn on Nov. 26. About 3:10 a.m., 37-year-old Jose Bolanos was shot while sleeping on a couch near 110th Street and Vermont Avenue.
Roughly 24 hours later, Powell shot 62-year-old Mark Diggs on San Mateo Street near the Arts District as Diggs pushed a shopping cart and looked for a place to charge his phone, prosecutors said.
Around 2:30 a.m. on Nov. 29, a third victim — identified only as a 52-year-old Latino man — was shot and killed in Lincoln Heights, police said.
Los Angeles Police Chief Michel Moore said Saturday that police had not identified a motive in the slayings, but Powell had not robbed the victims and had “no interaction” with them. He described a video of Diggs’ slaying as “bone-chilling” and said Powell shot the man with no warning or provocation.
Robbery-Homicide Division Capt. Scot Williams said investigators are “looking into every aspect of Powell’s life” to discern a potential motive for the shootings, “but at this point, it is a mystery.”
Powell was arrested Wednesday night in Beverly Hills during a traffic stop after his car was linked to a fatal shooting three days earlier in San Dimas.
Nicholas Simbolon, an employee of the Los Angeles County chief executive’s office, was killed in what police have termed a “follow-home robbery.” Simbolon’s wife found the 42-year-old with a gunshot wound, slumped inside his Tesla in the garage of their home in the 1800 block of Hawkbrook Drive, according to Sheriff Robert Luna, who said the shooter stole a few things during the targeted attack.
Police say Powell fled the scene in a 2024 BMW M440i. The vehicle, which costs upward of $62,000 and which authorities say Powell owns, was spotted in Beverly Hills three days later by officers who initiated a traffic stop and took Powell into custody. He wasn’t linked to the killings of the homeless victims until late Friday or early Saturday.
Court records show Powell has an extensive criminal and legal history in California.
In 2013, a woman filed for a restraining order against him in Los Angeles, though it was quickly dropped. Three years later, another woman in San Bernardino filed for a restraining order, which was dismissed after a few weeks.
In 2017, he was convicted of driving with a suspended or revoked license.
While most of the crimes Powell is accused of committing were low-level offenses, he was charged in 2018 with assault with a deadly weapon after stabbing a man with a knife, according to San Bernardino court records reviewed by The Times.
He pleaded guilty to a lower-level felony in that case and served nearly 400 days in jail, according to court records.
In 2019, he was convicted of trespassing.
Moore said investigators will try to reconstruct Powell’s movements to see if he left “a path of destruction behind him that we have not yet determined.” Luna said that based on his criminal history, “he didn’t just start doing this a week ago.”
Southwest Airlines Boeing 737-700 aircraft is seen landing at dusk time at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport in Arlington, Virginia.
Nicolas Economou | Nurphoto | Getty Images
Southwest Airlines and its pilots’ union are closing in on a new contract that would raise pay for the carrier’s more than 11,000 aviators and end months of contentious negotiations, weeks ahead of the crucial holiday travel season.
The company and the union have agreed on pay, retirement and other items but are working on an implementation schedule, the Southwest Airlines Pilots Association said in a message to its members on Thursday.
If a preliminary agreement is approved by Southwest pilots’ union board in the coming weeks, it would then go to pilots for a ratification vote.
The union and the airline declined to provide specifics of the deal.
Southwest and the union “are working hard to close out the few remaining items,” an airline spokesman told CNBC. “Southwest remains committed to reaching an agreement that rewards our Pilots and places them competitively in the industry.”
Southwest reached a preliminary agreement with its flight attendants’ union earlier this fall that includes 36% pay increases for cabin crew members.
A labor deal with its pilots would end a period of tense negotiations between the company and the union, which recently included laying groundwork for a potential strike, though strikes are extremely rare in the airline industry.
It would also become the latest in a string of big labor deals this year, including agreements between Hollywood writers, actors and studios as well as between automakers and the United Auto Workers union, following strikes.
For Judith Ortiz, whose parents brought her to this country from Durango, Mexico, when she was 2, a mere 24 hours have made the difference between a life of freedom and opportunity and one constrained by limits and obstacles.
Ortiz and her twin sister, Janette, were raised in suburban Dallas, where Judith was her high school’s valedictorian, graduating with a 3.96 GPA.
Both girls had remained in the country illegally as toddlers when their family overstayed a tourist visa. When they turned 18, they became eligible for benefits under Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, the Obama-era program designed to shield from deportation young people brought to this country illegally as children.
Drawing on an unprecedented poll, this series tells the stories of immigrant life in America today, putting their voices in the foreground.
Because the girls have the same birth date, the same address and the same surname, their lawyer suggested Judith mail her application a day after her sister to avoid confusion.
Janette’s paperwork was approved six months later, in June 2021. Shortly after, a federal judge in Texas blocked the government from approving additional DACA petitions. Judith’s application — and her future — have been on hold ever since. She can’t be sure that the mailing date, not some other arbitrary bureaucratic quirk, caused the fateful difference, but in her mind, that one-day delay in sending off the application is what has set their lives on different courses.
“Having DACA would make my life 100 times easier,” said the 21-year-old, who attends classes at Texas A&M alongside her sister. “I was always scared of getting pulled over. There’s things that people don’t really think about sometimes.”
Judith took the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery, hoping to enlist in the military, and scored well enough to enter West Point, only to be rejected because of her immigration status. Because of that status, she can’t legally get a job or a loan because she can’t get a Social Security number.
Her twin, who entered the country on the same day and grew up in the same house, has a job, an apartment and a car loan.
Judith, who is slated to graduate in December, is eligible to be deported back to a country she never knew and can’t remember while her twin sister can legally remain, work and study.
“I grew up in America. I don’t know [Mexican] culture very well. It’s not the same,” she said.
Few who work in immigration law are surprised by the story; the capriciousness of America’s broken immigration system seems to be the rule, not the exception.
“It’s a bit of layer cake,” said Travis Murphy, a former U.S. diplomat who is the founder and CEO of Jetr Global Partners, a Washington-based firm that works to solve visa and immigrant issues for athletes and sports franchises. “Policies have been enacted year over year that don’t necessarily work directly, in a coherent way, with previous policies.”
Janette Ortiz’s DACA paperwork was approved in June 2021.
(Jordan Vonderhaar / For The Times)
“We don’t have consensus in what we want the outcome to be,” he added. “That’s the problem.”
The sometimes arbitrary and frequently confusing nature of American immigration law enforcement constrains the lives of millions of immigrants — those who live in the country legally as well as those here without legal status.
More than 4 in 10 immigrants who participated in a wide-ranging survey conducted earlier this year by the Los Angeles Times and KFF, formerly known as the Kaiser Family Foundation, said they don’t understand how the country’s immigration policies work, nor how those policies affect their families. Yet they have no choice but to rely on those policies to be able to live, work, study and sometimes simply exist in this country.
Roughly 1 in 4 immigrants said they worry that they or a family member could be deported. The number is highest among the undocumented, but the fear is shared by one-third of legal permanent residents and 1 in 8 naturalized citizens. Many immigrants who have legal status have family members who do not.
Some 10.5 million people — precise estimates vary — lived in the U.S. without authorization in 2021. Roughly 1.8 million live in uncertainty, recipients of temporary protected status, student visas, DACA and other protocols that either have limited length or can be revoked, with little notice, at any time. Tens of thousands more are apprehended at the southern border each month trying to join them.
Judith Ortiz, left, was her high school’s valedictorian, graduating with a 3.96 GPA.
(Jordan Vonderhaar / For The Times)
Meantime, the pathway to legally immigrate to the U.S. has become so constrained that for many, it doesn’t truly exist.
The Cato Institute, in a June report titled, “Why Legal Immigration Is Nearly Impossible,” estimated that fewer than 1% of the people who apply to move permanently to this country are now able to do so.
“The government’s restrictive criteria render the legal paths available only in the most extreme cases,” wrote David J. Bier, Cato’s associate director for immigration studies. “Legal immigration is less like waiting in line and more like winning the lottery: It happens, but it is so rare that it is irrational to expect it in any individual case.”
The U.S. caps the number of permanent employment-based immigrants at 140,000 annually, with no more than 7% allowed from any one country. As a result, people in countries with large numbers of applicants could wait a lifetime. The wait for an employment-based green card for residents of India is 134 years, according to Cato’s estimate, based on government data. A U.S. citizen who wants legal permission for their married adult child to immigrate to the U.S. from Mexico would have to wait 160 years at the current rate of approval.
Those who do enter the U.S. legally aren’t exempt from the law’s complexities.
Six years ago, Agustina Vergara packed up her life and moved from Argentina to Southern California to finish a master’s program at USC.
With her employer’s help, she applied to exchange her student visa for one reserved for workers in fields requiring special knowledge. That’s when things went off the rails.
As she waited, Vergara’s father was diagnosed with cancer. She couldn’t go back to Argentina without abandoning her visa application, which would have meant starting the process over again with less chance of success. When he died, she couldn’t attend the funeral.
Weeks later, her lawyer gave her more bad news: She wasn’t going to get the visa anyway. The government offered no explanation why. Vergara was crushed.
“My thinking was perhaps a little too optimistic,” she said. “There is no way that a hardworking person that really loves America and wants to build a life here and contribute to make America the amazing country that it is, there is no way that they won’t have me.”
Like Judith Ortiz, Vergara, 35, had filed every form, paid every fee, followed every rule. She was, by all accounts, an outstanding student and a model citizen. Her background check came back as clean as hospital linen.
“There’s a point where it is so convoluted, so complicated, so nonsensical,” she said. “It cannot be an accident. It is, in a way, kind of designed to make it really difficult,” said Vergara, now an associate fellow at the Ayn Rand Institute, a libertarian organization based in Santa Ana. “Is this an immigration system or an anti-immigration system?”
Most immigrants, 84%, say they feel the U.S. immigration system has treated them and their families fairly, the Los Angeles Times/KFF poll found. But that number is notably lower among immigrants from Mexico, Central America and India, who face some of the longest wait times. It is also lower among the undocumented.
And even those who feel the process was fair can often find it an ordeal.
Vergara was eventually allowed to stay in this country after moving up her long-planned wedding and marrying her fiance, a U.S. citizen, at the Laguna Hills courthouse. Millions of others, however, have had to put their lives on hold.
Elvina Kovaleva and her husband were welcomed into this country, but it could be years before they know if they’ll be able to stay. A respondent to The Times/KFF poll, Kovaleva agreed to a follow-up interview by email.
Kovaleva, 28, and her husband, Yaroslav, both Russian citizens, left well-paying jobs in Moscow last year after Yaroslav was mobilized to fight in Ukraine, a war the couple strongly oppose.
“We don’t want to take part in an awful war against a brotherly nation,” said Kovaleva, who was pregnant at the time they left. They had just a day to pack and make travel arrangements, but she and her husband didn’t have to discuss where they would go. “The country of freedom and human rights,” she said.
They don’t regret the choice.
“We have already received great help from the United States,” said Kovaleva. “Everywhere we meet people who are ready to help with anything. USA is really a country of migrants.”
The couple, who settled in Brooklyn, have permission to live and work here legally as their asylum petition is reviewed. Yaroslav, who was an engineer in Russia, has a driver’s license and is working as a heating, ventilation and air-conditioning technician while Elvina, who gave birth to a daughter this spring, is a stay-at-home mom.
But the Kovalevas are reluctant to make any long-term plans until their case is heard by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.
Should they buy a house? Expand their family? Start a business? How can they when their future is so uncertain. They would like to petition to bring their elderly parents to the U.S. because they believe they’re not safe in Russia, but they can’t do that until their immigration paperwork is approved. Nor can they exit the U.S. without abandoning their asylum request.
They have no idea when they will have answers.
The U.S. had 1.6 million pending asylum applications as of the start of this year, according to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University, which compiles and analyzes immigration data.
“We’re still waiting,” Kovaleva said. “We are told some people have been waiting eight to 10 years.”
In the meantime, she keeps her fingers crossed.
“The U.S. is a land of freedom, opportunity and choice,” she wrote. “And we do hope that this will never change.”
It’s certainly been a land of opportunity for Julio Calderon. But as for freedom and choice, well, not so much.
In 2005, Calderon fled the poverty and gang violence of Honduras for the U.S., entering illegally 30 days after his 16th birthday. That made him a month too old to apply for DACA when the program was introduced in 2012.
He also entered a few years too late to qualify for Temporary Protected Status (TPS), a government designation that gave Hondurans in the U.S. employment authorization and guarded them from deportation after Hurricane Mitch devastated their country in 1998. TPS status has been extended multiple times since it was first established and now covers around 76,000 Hondurans.
“It’s like an invisible wall that keeps me away from building wealth,” Calderon, who has an economics degree from Florida International University, said of his undocumented status. “It’s difficult to learn when you’re hungry.”
Even as he fears being deported to Honduras, a country he hardly knows, Calderon said he’s not letting his immigration status hold him back.
“I want people to see the opportunities that you have even if you’re undocumented because I don’t think we’re talking about that. We focus too much on the limitations,” he said.
“So I am undocumented, but I graduated high school and college,” he continued. “I got scholarships. Now, whenever I go to a place, I know that [my] immigration status might have taken me to a different path. And sometimes I have to be the one creating those paths for those who are coming after me.
“I am qualified. I am qualified to do a lot of things. But just because I don’t have immigration status, I’m limited. At the end of the day, I am losing, but also this country is losing because I can give so much.
“Like myself, there are many out there ready to give back. Politics is what keeps us away from a solution.”
Even among immigrants, however, little consensus exists about what that solution might be. About 8 in 10 immigrants say that allowing people like Judith Ortiz, who were brought to the U.S. illegally as children, to apply for citizenship would be a good idea.
Much like the native-born population, however, they’re more divided on other proposals. Asked about allowing people without documentation to apply for government-provided health insurance, 59% of immigrants called that a good idea and 37% said it would be a bad idea. Immigrants who are undocumented heavily supported that idea, but naturalized citizens split evenly, The Times/KFF poll found.
Immigrants divided closely on what they think of enforcement of U.S. immigration policies, with about 1 in 5 calling it too tough and another 1 in 5 saying it’s not tough enough. The rest said either that enforcement is about right (27%) or that they weren’t sure (35%).
Because of the capriciousness of the American immigration system, one of the Ortiz twins stays and works in the U.S. legally and the other remains without legal status.
(Jordan Vonderhaar / For The Times)
Calderon’s lack of documents costs him more than just economic opportunities. In Florida, where he lives, Gov. Ron DeSantis has required hospitals to ask patients about their citizenship or immigration status and has expanded penalties for employers who hire undocumented workers. Undocumented residents are blocked from applying for IDs or a driver’s license, and it is illegal for undocumented people to use driver’s licenses legally issued in other states.
“Mobility, it’s a big one,” Calderon said of the limits his immigration status has placed on his life. “Not being able to travel outside of the U.S., to have a driver’s license, I rely upon [other] transportation.”
About 4 in 10 poll respondents said they had avoided things like talking to the police, applying for a job or traveling out of fear of drawing attention to their status or the status of someone in their family.
Even among those in the U.S. legally, significant numbers say the same.
“It’s difficult,” said Santos González, 48, a construction worker from El Salvador who has lived nearly half his life in the U.S.
“I’ve been here more than 20 years, working every day. But in Washington they can’t come to an agreement to give us some kind of permanent status,” he said, speaking in Spanish.
González is covered by TPS, which the U.S. granted to Salvadorans after the Central American country was hit by a series of earthquakes in 2001. As with Hondurans, TPS for Salvadorans has been extended multiple times since, most recently for an additional 20 months beginning in July.
Under TPS, González has been able to work, buy a house in San Bernardino, build a family and pay taxes.
The Trump administration tried to end TPS for El Salvador, Nicaragua, Honduras and several other countries, but courts blocked that. As Congress continues to kick the idea of a more stable solution down the road, González and hundreds of thousands of others covered by temporary status are left in limbo, fearing the next president could move to end the program again.
“Then we’d basically be done,” González said.
“TPS has a lot of benefits,” he said. “But they’re benefits that can be taken away. It’s complicated because I don’t know what’s going to happen.”
“Just having to navigate that whole thing has been very nerve-racking,” said his 23-year-old son, Oscar González, a DACA recipient with a college degree and a job in the pharmaceutical industry. His two younger sisters, both born in the U.S., are American citizens.
“I don’t really know how it’s going to play out, so it’s just, I guess, figuring it out in the moment. You don’t have that security. Everything’s always like a gamble, really.”
Charles Munger helped build one of the greatest fortunes in U.S. history, but he often explained his success in terms that sounded deceptively uncomplicated.
“Take a simple idea and take it seriously.”
“Load up on the very few insights you have instead of pretending to know everything about everything at all times.”
And above all, he stressed the need for patience and a long-term investment view — an approach that has vanished from much of Wall Street in recent decades.
In his trademark curmudgeonly style, Munger advised investors to take stakes in a relative handful of great companies and then “just sit on your ass.”
Munger, the longtime investment partner of billionaire Warren E. Buffett, died Tuesday at a California hospital, according to Berkshire Hathaway, where he was vice chairman.
“Berkshire Hathaway could not have been built to its present status without Charlie’s inspiration, wisdom and participation,” Buffett said in a press release.
Though born in Omaha, like Buffett, Munger lived in Los Angeles most of his life. And for the most part, he shunned the media spotlight that Buffett often relished.
Munger sometimes was described as Buffett’s “sidekick,” but that grossly understated his influence on Buffett, who is six years his junior.
Buffett said he never made a major investing decision without consulting Munger as the two presided over the explosive growth of their company, Berkshire Hathaway, into an American business icon.
Berkshire, with over $1 trillion in assets, owns such well-known brands as insurance company Geico, the BNSF railroad, See’s Candies, Fruit of the Loom and Dairy Queen.
After meeting Munger at a dinner party in Omaha in 1959, Buffett — then an ambitious but novice investor — said he quickly realized that there was “only one partner who fit my bill of particulars in every way: Charlie.”
Buffett’s wife, the late Susie Buffett, once wrote of the two men that “both thought the other was the smartest guy they ever met.”
In the last decade Munger’s name has become better known, at least among serious investors, as he shared the spotlight with Buffett at Berkshire’s annual shareholder meeting. The two became a nightclub act of sorts, peppering sage investment advice with one-liners that kept the crowd of thousands enraptured.
One of Munger’s most famous zingers encapsulated his frequently acerbic wit: “I’m right, and you’re smart, and sooner or later you’ll see I’m right.”
Charles Thomas Munger was born on Jan. 1, 1924, in Omaha to Al and Florence Munger. His father was a lawyer, and his grandfather had been a federal judge.
As described by Michael Broggie in the 2005 book “Poor Charlie’s Almanack: The Wit and Wisdom of Charles T. Munger,” Munger’s family fared comparatively well during the Great Depression.
Still, young Charlie was expected to work. One of his first jobs was clerking — for $2 per 12-hour shift — at Buffett & Son, an upscale Omaha grocery run by Warren Buffett’s grandfather. But Munger never met the younger Buffett during their youth.
A voracious reader whose hero was Benjamin Franklin, Munger showed an aptitude for business early on when he began to raise hamsters to trade with other kids.
“Even at an early age, Charlie showed sagacious negotiating ability, and usually gained a bigger specimen or one with unusual coloring,” Broggie wrote.
After high school, Munger enrolled at the University of Michigan as a math major, but he left in 1943 to join the war effort. He enlisted in the Army Air Forces and was trained in meteorology at Caltech in Pasadena.
Though he lacked a bachelor’s degree, Munger in 1946 decided to apply to Harvard Law School. He was accepted after a family friend intervened.
Munger excelled at Harvard, graduating magna cum laude. His first law job was at Wright & Garrett in Los Angeles.
But in his personal life, Munger struggled. At age 21 he had married Nancy Huggins, a family friend. They divorced in 1953, when Munger was 29.
Shortly afterward the oldest of their three children, Teddy, was diagnosed with leukemia. He died at age 9.
In 1956 Munger married Nancy Barry Borthwick, a Stanford University economics graduate. They had met through Munger’s friend Roy Tolles. Borthwick had two sons from her first marriage. She and Munger had four more children together.
The size of the family was key to Munger’s fateful decision to shift career tracks from law to investing.
“Nancy and I supported eight children,” Munger said in 1996. “And I didn’t realize that the law was going to get as prosperous as it suddenly got.”
He put it another way to Janet Lowe, who wrote the biography “Damn Right! Behind the Scenes with Berkshire Hathaway Billionaire Charlie Munger” in 2000.
“Like Warren, I had a considerable passion to get rich,” Munger told Lowe. “Not because I wanted Ferraris — I wanted the independence. I desperately wanted it.”
In 1962 Munger co-founded the L.A. law firm Munger Tolles & Hills (today known as Munger Tolles & Olson). But by then his investing pursuits were already taking up much of his time.
Though he began trading investment ideas with Buffett in 1959, from 1962 to 1975 Munger was mostly focused on building his own stock investment fund, Wheeler, Munger & Co., according to biographer Broggie.
Munger racked up strong returns in the fund, but, like most investors, he was hit hard in the deep bear market of 1973-74, amid the first Arab oil embargo.
After the market rebounded in 1975, Munger decided to stop directly managing money for others. Instead, he joined with Buffett in investing via the “holding company” concept: The two would buy businesses and make stock investments through a publicly traded company. They would control the firm by virtue of their large stake in it, but other investors could buy the company’s shares if they wanted to join in as essentially silent partners.
Their primary vehicle was Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway. Munger became vice chairman of the firm in 1978.
Munger also ran a smaller holding company, Pasadena-based Wesco Financial, which was majority-owned by Berkshire. It was merged into Berkshire in 2011. Separately, Munger headed Daily Journal Corp., an L.A.-based publisher of legal newspapers, including the L.A. Daily Journal.
But Berkshire’s success is what made Munger’s name synonymous with brilliant investing.
Buffett credited Munger with refining the former’s basic “value” approach to investing. Buffett was a devotee of Ben Graham, the father of the value school, which preached the discipline of buying shares only in companies that met rigid financial criteria.
Munger, however, convinced Buffett that a long-term investor could prosper by focusing on the very best companies — even if they didn’t meet all of Graham’s value requirements.
Munger’s approach was crystallized in his most famous investing maxim: “A great business at a fair price is superior to a fair business at a great price.”
Munger “expanded my horizons,” Buffett has said.
That, in turn, led to Berkshire’s purchases of huge stakes over the years in such blue-chip companies as Coca-Cola, American Express, IBM and Wells Fargo, in addition to the dozens of companies Berkshire owns outright.
Munger, who owned a small fraction of of Berkshire stock, was listed on the Forbes roster with a net worth of $1.7 billion.
Later in life, Munger at times became almost apologetic for his financial success. In a 1998 speech he bemoaned the allure of Wall Street for talented young people, “as distinguished from work providing much more value to others.”
“Early Charlie Munger is a horrible career model for the young, because not enough was delivered to civilization for what was wrested from capitalism,” he said.
He was an outspoken critic of excessive executive pay. He and Buffett drew annual salaries of $100,000 at Berkshire, a pittance compared with what most top Fortune 500 executives are paid.
Still, his Berkshire stock wealth enabled Munger to make some large charitable gifts in his life.
He was a longtime benefactor and board chairman of Good Samaritan Hospital in Los Angeles. He also funded a science center at Harvard-Westlake School in L.A. and a research center at the Huntington Library.
In higher education, Munger said he wanted to foster more dialogue and mixing of ideas on campus. In 2004 he gave $43.5 million for a graduate residence adjacent to Stanford Law School. In April 2013 Munger donated $110 million in stock for a graduate residence at the University of Michigan.
Though a self-described conservative Republican (in contrast to Buffett, a Democrat), on some issues Munger defied the conservative stereotype. He was a longtime supporter of Planned Parenthood, for example, and fought in the 1960s to legalize abortion.
“I’m more conservative, but I’m not a typical Colonel Blimp,” Munger said in 1996, referring to the jingoistic, reactionary British cartoon character.
Billionaire Charlie Munger, the investing sage who made a fortune even before he became Warren Buffett’s right-hand man at Berkshire Hathaway, has died at age 99.
Munger died Tuesday, according to a press release from Berkshire Hathaway. The conglomerate said it was advised by members of Munger’s family that he peacefully died this morning at a California hospital. He would have turned 100 on New Year’s Day.
“Berkshire Hathaway could not have been built to its present status without Charlie’s inspiration, wisdom and participation,” Buffett said in a statement.
In addition to being Berkshire vice chairman, Munger was a real estate attorney, chairman and publisher of the Daily Journal Corp., a member of the Costco board, a philanthropist and an architect.
In early 2023, his fortune was estimated at $2.3 billion — a jaw-dropping amount for many people but vastly smaller than Buffett’s unfathomable fortune, which is estimated at more than $100 billion.
During Berkshire’s 2021 annual shareholder meeting, the then-97-year-old Munger apparently inadvertently revealed a well-guarded secret: that Vice Chairman Greg Abel “will keep the culture” after the Buffett era.
Munger, who wore thick glasses, had lost his left eye after complications from cataract surgery in 1980.
Munger was chairman and CEO of Wesco Financial from 1984 to 2011, when Buffett‘s Berkshire purchased the remaining shares of the Pasadena, California-based insurance and investment company it did not own.
Buffett credited Munger with broadening his investment strategy from favoring troubled companies at low prices in hopes of getting a profit to focusing on higher-quality but underpriced companies.
An early example of the shift was illustrated in 1972 by Munger’s ability to persuade Buffett to sign off on Berkshire’s purchase of See’s Candies for $25 million even though the California candy maker had annual pretax earnings of only about $4 million. It has since produced more than $2 billion in sales for Berkshire.
“He weaned me away from the idea of buying very so-so companies at very cheap prices, knowing that there was some small profit in it, and looking for some really wonderful businesses that we could buy in fair prices,” Buffett told CNBC in May 2016.
Or as Munger put it at the 1998 Berkshire shareholder meeting: “It’s not that much fun to buy a business where you really hope this sucker liquidates before it goes broke.”
Munger was often the straight man to Buffett’s jovial commentaries. “I have nothing to add,” he would say after one of Buffett’s loquacious responses to questions at Berkshire annual meetings in Omaha, Nebraska. But like his friend and colleague, Munger was a font of wisdom in investing, and in life. And like one of his heroes, Benjamin Franklin, Munger’s insight didn’t lack humor.
“I have a friend who says the first rule of fishing is to fish where the fish are. The second rule of fishing is to never forget the first rule. We’ve gotten good at fishing where the fish are,” the then-93-year-old Munger told the thousands of people at Berkshire’s 2017 meeting.
He believed in what he called the “lollapalooza effect,” in which a confluence of factors merged to drive investment psychology.
Charles Thomas Munger was born in Omaha on Jan. 1, 1924. His father, Alfred, was a lawyer, and his mother, Florence “Toody,”was from an affluent family. Like Warren, Munger worked at Buffett’s grandfather’s grocery store as a youth, but the two future joined-at-the-hip partners didn’t meet until years later.
At 17, Munger left Omaha for the University of Michigan. Two years later, in 1943, he enlisted in the Army Air Corps, according to Janet Lowe’s 2003 biography “Damn Right!”
The military sent him to the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena to study meteorology. In California, he fell in love with his sister’s roommate at Scripps College, Nancy Huggins, and married her in 1945. Although he never completed his undergraduate degree, Munger graduated magna cum laude from Harvard Law School in 1948, and the couple moved back to California, where he practiced real estate law. He founded the law firm Munger, Tolles & Olson in 1962 and focused on managing investments at the hedge fund Wheeler, Munger & Co., which he also founded that year.
“I’m proud of being an Omaha boy,” Munger said in a 2017 interview with Dean Scott Derue of the Michigan Ross Business School. “I sometimes use the old saying, ‘They got the boy out of Omaha but they never got Omaha out of the boy.’ All those old-fashioned values — family comes first; be in a position so that you can help others when troubles come; prudent, sensible; moral duty to be reasonable [is] more important than anything else — more important than being rich, more important than being important — an absolute moral duty.”
In California, he partnered with Franklin Otis Booth, a member of the founding family of the Los Angeles Times, in real estate. One of their early developments turned out to be a lucrative condo project on Booth’s grandfather’s property in Pasadena. (Booth, who died in 2008, had been introduced to Buffett by Munger in 1963 and became one of Berkshire’s largest investors.)
“I had five real estate projects,” Munger told Derue. “I did both side by side for a few years, and in a very few years, I had $3 million — $4 million.”
Munger closed the hedge fund in 1975. Three years later, he became vice chairman of Berkshire Hathaway.
In 1959, at age 35, Munger returned to Omaha to close his late father’s legal practice. That’s when he was introduced to the then-29-year-old Buffett by one of Buffett’s investor clients. The two hit it off and stayed in contact despite living half a continent away from each other.
“We think so much alike that it’s spooky,” Buffett recalled in an interview with the Omaha World-Herald in 1977. “He’s as smart and as high-grade a guy as I’ve ever run into.”
“We never had an argument in the entire time we’ve known each other, which is almost 60 years now,” Buffett told CNBC’s Becky Quick in 2018. “Charlie has given me the ultimate gift that a person can give to somebody else. He’s made me a better person than I would have otherwise been. … He’s given me a lot of good advice over time. … I’ve lived a better life because of Charlie.”
The melding of the minds focused on value investing, in which stocks are picked because their price appears to be undervalued based on the company’s long-term fundamentals.
“All intelligent investing is value investing — acquiring more than you are paying for,” Munger once said. “You must value the business in order to value the stock.”
Warren Buffett (L), CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, and vice chairman Charlie Munger attend the 2019 annual shareholders meeting in Omaha, Nebraska, May 3, 2019.
Johannes Eisele | AFP | Getty Images
But during the coronavirus outbreak in early 2020, when Berkshire suffered a massive $50 billion loss in the first quarter, Munger and Buffett were more conservative than there were during the Great Recession, when they invested in U.S. airlines and financials like Bank of America and Goldman Sachs hit hard by that downturn.
“Well, I would say basically we’re like the captain of a ship when the worst typhoon that’s ever happened comes,” Munger told The Wall Street Journal in April 2020. “We just want to get through the typhoon, and we’d rather come out of it with a whole lot of liquidity. We’re not playing, ‘Oh goody, goody, everything’s going to hell, let’s plunge 100% of the reserves’ [into buying businesses].”
Munger donated hundreds of millions of dollars to educational institutions, including the University of Michigan, Stanford University and Harvard Law School, often with the stipulation that the school accept his building designs, even though he was not formally trained as an architect.
At Los Angeles’ Harvard-Westlake prep school, where Munger had been a board member for decades, he ensured that the girls bathrooms were larger than the boys room during the construction of the science center in the 1990s.
“Any time you go to a football game or a function there’s a huge line outside the women’s bathroom. Who doesn’t know that they pee in a different way than the men?” Munger told The Wall Street Journal in 2019. “What kind of idiot would make the men’s bathroom and the women’s bathroom the same size? The answer is, a normal architect!”
Munger and his wife had three children, daughters Wendy and Molly, and son Teddy, who died of leukemia at age 9. The Mungers divorced in 1953.
Two years later, he married Nancy Barry, whom he met on a blind date at a chicken dinner restaurant. The couple had four children, Charles Jr., Emilie, Barry and Philip. He also was the stepfather to her two other sons, William Harold Borthwick and David Borthwick. The Mungers, who were married 54 years until her death in 2010, contributed $43.5 million to Stanford University to help build the Munger Graduate Residence, which houses 600 law and graduate students.
Asked by CNBC’s Quick in a February 2019 “Squawk Box” interview about the secret to a long and happy life, Munger said the answer “is easy, because it’s so simple.”
“You don’t have a lot of envy, you don’t have a lot of resentment, you don’t overspend your income, you stay cheerful in spite of your troubles. You deal with reliable people and you do what you’re supposed to do. And all these simple rules work so well to make your life better. And they’re so trite,” he said.
“And staying cheerful … because it’s a wise thing to do. Is that so hard? And can you be cheerful when you’re absolutely mired in deep hatred and resentment? Of course you can’t. So why would you take it on?”
Tom Blyth and Rachel Zegler star as Coriolanus Snow and Lucy Gray Baird in Lionsgate’s “Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes.”
Lionsgate
This year’s Thanksgiving box office was both feast and famine for the theatrical industry.
Lionsgate’s “Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes” had a solid second week run in cinemas, generating an estimated $42 million for the five-day Thanksgiving frame and Apple’s “Napoleon,” an R-rated war epic distributed by Sony, snared around $32.5 million.
Meanwhile, Disney’s latest animated feature “Wish,” which celebrates the company’s 100th anniversary, fell startlingly short of box office expectations, tallying just $31.7 million over its first five days in theaters. Analysts had foreseen an opening of $45 million to $55 million for the five-day period.
“It wouldn’t be a holiday box office season without some occasional upsets and this weekend is delivering on that front,” said Shawn Robbins, chief analyst at BoxOffice.com. “‘Napoleon’ is a solid win for Sony, Apple, theaters and moviegoers all around. Another successful adult-driven film was needed right now after the vacancy left behind by ‘Dune: Part Two’ and the light holiday calendar still ahead.”
Top Thanksgiving box office titles (five-day)
“Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes” (Lionsgate) — $42 million
“Napoleon” (Apple/Sony) — $32.5 million
“Wish” (Disney) — $31.7 million
“Trolls Band Together” (Universal) — $25.3 million
“Thanksgiving” (Sony) — $11.13 million
“The Marvels” (Disney) — $9.2 million
“The Holdovers” (Focus Features/Universal) — $3.75 million
“Saltburn” (Amazon MGM/Warner Bros. Discovery) — $2.72 million
“Next Goal Wins” (Disney) — $2.57 million
“Five Nights at Freddy’s” (Universal) — $2.5 million
Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour concert film (AMC) — $2.33 million
** All figures are estimated by studios
Yet, the underperformance of “Wish” continues to call attention to issues over at Disney’s animation studios, which have struggled to lure audiences back to theaters since the pandemic. For comparison, Universal’s “Trolls Band Together” managed to snag $25.3 million for the five-day period and it was the film’s second week in theaters.
“Disney’s ‘Wish’ is struggling to reach even the most conservative of expectations,” said Robbins. “It is a performance that again highlights the studio’s long road ahead to rebuild brand and audience confidence while making their films stand out as theatrical events again rather than have them be cannibalized by the impact of flailing streaming-focused strategies.”
Overall, the Thanksgiving box office secured around $172 million, an improvement over the previous three years of pandemic-pressured ticket sales. Prior to the coronavirus outbreak, the five-day Thanksgiving spread — consisting of the Wednesday before Thanksgiving through Sunday — had resulted in more than $250 million in ticket sales each year.
Thanksgiving 5-day frame over the last decade
2023 — $172 million (estimated)
2022 — $122.8 million
2021 — $142.7 million
2020 — $21.4 million
2019 — $263.4 million
2018 — $315.6 million (biggest all-time Thanksgiving frame)
2017 — $270.5 million
2016 — $260.8 million
2015 — $258.5 million
2014 — $230.2 million
2013 — $294.2 million
Source: Comscore
“This important period of Thanksgiving moviegoing has been solid though not earth-shattering,” said Paul Dergarabedian, senior media analyst at Comscore. “This week’s performance is encouraging for the industry, though at under $200 million, the total box office has not returned to the heyday years of pre-2020 levels.”
Still, Dergarabedian noted that the Thanksgiving box office offered moviegoers an eclectic selection of films across genres and age demographics, something that has been lacking in recent years.
“Overall, this is a positive step forward for Thanksgiving box office moviegoing traffic as the industry continues to learn how to navigate a rapidly evolving marketplace,” said BoxOffice.com’s Robbins.
Disclosure: Comcast is the parent company of NBCUniversal and CNBC. NBCUniversal distributed “The Holdovers,” “Trolls Band Together” and “Five Nights at Freddy’s.”
Jesse Dominguez had the same aspirations many in Los Angeles do: to be an actor.
And he shared the same struggles too: substance use issues, a serious mental health disorder and homelessness.
On Sunday afternoon, while in what his family said must have been a mental health episode or drug-fueled crisis, Dominguez was shot and killed by a California Highway Patrol officer following a struggle on the 105 Freeway in Watts near the sober living facility where he lived.
CHP officials said that during the altercation, Dominguez “was able to access a Taser” and used it against the officer.
“In fear for his safety, the officer fired his service weapon, striking the pedestrian,” the CHP said in a statement.
His family, however, sees the incident differently.
“I’ve pretty much ‘backed the blue’ in a lot of circumstances,” Akasha Dominguez, the man’s stepmother, said referring to a slogan about supporting police. “There have been issues where [police] used excessive force. But I’ve never been on the other end. Now I have a completely different stance. This is absolutely police brutality.”
His family said that Dominguez did carry a Taser for protection after being threatened by others living at the facility where he was staying.
Akasha Dominguez and other family members were in shock Tuesday after learning that Dominguez had been killed. Graphic video appeared to show the encounter leading up to the shooting, during which Dominguez and a CHP officer wrestle on the pavement of the closed freeway before the officer stands and repeatedly shoots Dominguez.
The end of his life was unfathomable to Dominguez’s family members, who knew the 33-year-old as a troubled man who was a “softie” and wanted more than anything to be an actor, though he never got any roles.
Dominguez struggled with bipolar disorder as well as substance use disorder, according to his father, Jesse Dominguez. He wanted to be an actor or a singer, but bounced around from job to job, mostly waiting tables. While family had tried to help the younger Dominguez, who was homeless, and offered him places to live, he wanted to make it on his own, his father said.
His failure to make it as an actor depressed him, family said.
“We just feel terrible that L.A. just robbed him. The Hollywood scene sucked him in to wanting to be that persona. No matter how hard we tried to get him to do other jobs or seek formal education, that’s what he wanted to do. We weren’t going to crush his dreams,” Dominguez’s father said.
The 55-year-old former Marine told The Times that he could not bring himself to watch the bystander video that appears to show the last moments of his son’s life. But his wife and daughter have.
The family is grappling with the same questions that use-of-force experts say will become the focus of the investigation into the shooting by the officer, who has not been identified.
“I don’t know why the officer thought to engage. If someone is walking on the freeway, something is not right. They’re either in mental health crisis or something else is happening,” Akasha Dominguez said. “He was not trying to hurt anybody. Why did he have to use that type of force? After [the officer] had already discharged his firearm once, why did he stand up and then do it again and again and again?”
The questions Dominguez’s stepmother asked will likely be addressed in the California Department of Justice’s investigation into the deadly shooting.
The DOJ investigates police shootings in which an unarmed civilian is killed.
Law enforcement experts interviewed Monday by The Times were divided.
Travis Norton, a law enforcement officer who runs the California Assn. of Tactical Officers After Action Review, said video is a limited way to understand a police shooting.
“It is hard to diagnose without knowing what the officer saw, experienced and interpreted was happening,” Norton said. “All I see is a very short scuffle. I see the suspect point something that appears to look like some sort of weapon. … From the video, without knowing anything else about it, the use of deadly force appears appropriate.”
But other experts said the use of force raises many questions.
Ed Obayashi, a police shootings expert who investigates the incidents for numerous law enforcement agencies in California, said investigators will immediately ask the officer why he was engaging with the person without a partner or backup in the immediate vicinity.
“Why did you shoot him while he was on the ground?” Obayashi said investigators will ask. “You separated yourself from the individual; why was he still a threat to you?”
Akasha Dominguez said she didn’t understand why the officer engaged without backup and why he resorted to deadly force so quickly — even if her stepson had a Taser.
“I don’t know when using deadly force became the first thing cops do in this situation,” said Michele Dominguez, the man’s sister.
Family members said they were reaching out to civil rights attorneys and waiting for the results of the investigation, which could take months or even years.
For now, Dominguez’s father said he would not watch the video, but acknowledged he is only delaying the inevitable.
“I’m going to have to watch the video. I know at some point I do have to see it. But I’m just so raw right now,” he said. “The last time that I saw him, he was smiling. He was happy. And the last thing that I want to see is to have my last memory of him be him going through what he did in that video.”
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Allen J. Schaben | Los Angeles Times | Getty Images
Like hurricanes, blizzards or wildfires, Taylor Swift is now prompting an airline to waive ticket-change fees.
The popstar said she was postponing a show in Argentina’s capital scheduled for Friday until Sunday because of heavy rain, writing on X, the platform formerly called Twitter: “due to the weather being so truly chaotic it would be unsafe to try and put on this concert.”
The Chile account of LATAM Airlines, the largest carrier in South America, reached out to customers on X: “#AttentionSwifties: we know your planes changed so starting today we are updating our flexibility policy for those with flights from Buenos Aires” for Saturday or Sunday.
The Chie-based carrier said it is waiving both ticket-change fees and differences in fare if travelers can fly anytime until Nov. 17 after Swift’s show at Argentina’s largest stadium was postponed.
Some customers complained to LATAM on social media, however, that they were having trouble finding seats and that the carrier told them about the waiver too late. The airline didn’t immediately comment on whether it is adding additional flights.
Airlines routinely add extra flights for events like high-profile concerts, conferences like CES, or sports.
But a change fee waiver when a concert is canceled or is postponed is very unusual, industry executives told CNBC, and is also a sign of how much her tour drives bookings. While it might be a new era for airline waivers, The Eras Tour has impactedother industries like hotels.
Fourteen people were injured after a bus and a car collided with each other and then crashed into a Long Beach restaurant Thursday afternoon, officials said.
Ten people were taken to nearby hospitals to be treated for injuries, including four who required advanced life support, said Capt. Jack Crabtree of the Long Beach Fire Department.
The crash was reported at about 3:15 p.m. Thursday after a Long Beach public transit bus and a car crashed near South Street and California Avenue and then smashed into the structure, Crabtree said.
Firefighters and paramedics arrived to find 14 people injured. They included two people who were in the vehicle. Firefighters had to extract the two passengers from the vehicle using the Jaws of Life. A dozen passengers from the bus also suffered injuries.
A bus and car crashed into each other and then into a restaurant in Long Beach on Thursday.
(KTLA-TV)
All of the injured appeared to be adults, he said.
The first floor of the building that was struck was a restaurant, but no one inside the building was injured, he said.
The second floor of the building is composed of residences. Two people were displaced as a result of damage to the structure, he said. They are receiving assistance from the Red Cross and Long Beach health officials.
Building and Safety Department officials also responded to the area to assess the structure, Crabtree said.
The man behind the wheel in a horrific wrong-way crash outside an L.A. County Sheriff’s Department training facility, which left one person dead, has been charged with manslaughter, prosecutors said Thursday.
Nicholas Gutierrez, 23, surrendered Thursday and faces charges of vehicular manslaughter and reckless driving that caused injuries in the November 2022 wreck, prosecutors said. Gutierrez plowed into a group of recruits who were on a training run in South Whittier, near the Sheriff’s Department’s STARS Center training academy.
More than two dozen recruits were struck, and five suffered critical injuries. Earlier this year, 27-year-old Alejandro Martinez died of his injuries. He had been hospitalized and on a ventilator for nearly eight months.
“There is nothing we can do to bring back the life of young Alejandro Martinez … he will never be back with his family,” said Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. George Gascón.
Photos of Darrell Cunningham and Jorge Soriano are displayed at the news conference Thursday.
(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)
If convicted of all charges, Gutierrez faces 12 years in state prison. The district attorney announced the charges immediately following another news conference about a vehicle crash that claimed the life of a law enforcement officer. Prosecutors also brought murder charges Thursday against 20-year-old Brian David Oliveri, the driver who slammed into a vehicle in Northridge last week that claimed the life of off-duty LAPD Officer Darrell Cunningham.
At the time of the 2022 crash outside the training facility, then-Sheriff Alex Villanueva claimed that Gutierrez intentionally slammed his car into the recruits, saying his department’s investigation had turned up probable cause to file attempted murder charges.
But Gutierrez’s lawyer, Alexandra Kazarian, said her client simply fell asleep behind the wheel on his way to work. A breathalyzer test conducted at the scene confirmed Gutierrez was not under the influence of alcohol.
Prosecutors said Thursday that they were “exploring a claim of drowsiness,” but would not discuss the exact cause of the crash. Gascón said the evidence did not support allegations that Gutierrez speeded up while careening toward the recruits.
Gutierrez comes from a law-enforcement family, Kazarian previously told The Times. His father is a retired corrections officer and he has relatives who worked in the Los Angeles Police Department, the California Highway Patrol and the Sheriff’s Department.
“He harbors absolutely no animosity toward law enforcement,” Kazarian said.
On the morning of Nov. 16, roughly eight weeks into the 76-member academy’s training regimen, the group was on a four-mile training run, moving in formation. Around 6:30 a.m., a mile into their run, those at the front of the group spotted a Honda CR-V approaching.
The aftermath of the crash in which a group of L.A. County sheriff’s cadets was struck in Whittier in November 2022.
(Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times)
The SUV veered to the wrong side of the road and into the group. The runners at the front were able to get out of the way before the SUV struck others and crashed into a lamppost.
Authorities said several of the recruits suffered broken bones and severe head trauma. Villanueva described the scene as an “airplane wreck.”
Villanueva’s successor, Sheriff Robert Luna, said the crash forever altered Academy Class 464, noting that several of those struck suffered life-altering injuries.
“Some of them dreamed of becoming police officers and deputy sheriffs,”Luna said. “Some of them aren’t going to be able to do that.”
A native Angeleno, Martinez made it his life’s mission to be a dedicated public servant, serving as a member of the Army National Guard before applying to become a deputy sheriff, those who knew him said.
He was sworn in as a full deputy soon after the crash.
“He was a great recruit,” said his former drill instructor, Victor Rodriguez. “He wasn’t one to draw attention to himself, which spoke volumes. He had this maturity, this life experience. He was an example of a recruit for other ones that are new to this type of career, new to this structure.”
William Preciado, a former California Highway Patrol officer whose daughter Lauren Preciado was seriously injured in the crash, said of the charges: “We knew this day was coming. We just didn’t know when.”
“It gives me, I guess, a sense of satisfaction that some kind of justice will be forthcoming for this individual,” he said.
Preciado said his daughter was planning to follow in his footsteps by getting into law enforcement, a career that is now in jeopardy.
“The incident changed many lives. Not only my daughter’s but the other individuals that were trying to pursue their future,” he said. “That’s a lasting impact for the Martinez family who lost their son. My daughter is on a long road to recovery.”
With the injury his daughter sustained, Preciado said, “I don’t really know that she’ll be effective to the point that she can be gainfully employed anywhere, let alone law enforcement.”
“A broken bone will heal, the skin may heal itself as well,” he said. “But how do you fix a crushed dream? How do you do that? That was my daughter’s dream.”
In the Northridge case, Gascón said Oliveri was under the influence of alcohol and driving at speeds above 100 mph when he ran a red light and slammed into Cunningham’s vehicle. The officer and his passenger, Jorge Soriano, died at the scene.
L.A. Police Chief Michel Moore speaks at the news conference as D.A. George Gascón comforts Eddrinna Cunningham.
(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)
Oliveri was charged with two counts of murder, two counts of gross vehicular manslaughter while intoxicated and one count of driving under the influence and causing injury. If convicted of all charges, Oliveri faces life in prison, Gascón said.
An off-duty San Bernardino County sheriff’s deputy who was in the car with Cunningham was seriously injured, according to LAPD Chief Michel Moore. The deputy suffered a broken pelvis and remains hospitalized but is expected to survive, Moore said. Soriano was also planning to join the academy soon.
Cunningham had nearly 5 years on the job and in talking with everyone who knew him, he lit up a room … he lived to be a member of this organization. He lived a life of service,” Moore said. “At a time when we struggle to identify people who are willing to step into this profession, to have lost his life, to have lost Darrell’s life, in such a senseless fashion, is beyond words.”
Backhanded compliments, also known as left-handed compliments, fake compliments, or negging, are a form of communication that combines both praise and insult in a subtle or indirect way. These are remarks that may initially seem like compliments but actually contain subtle criticism or insincerity.
The person giving these compliments is often one of our friends and colleagues. It leaves the recipient feeling unsure about the giver’s true intentions. Research states, “We predict that although backhanded compliments are intended to generate liking and convey status, they fail to elicit either, because people who deliver backhanded compliments are perceived as strategic and overly-concerned with impression management.”
It is common to impulsively reply when veiled insults are uttered to you, but you need to learn some smart comebacks for backhanded compliments. These will help you take a stand without being too mean.
What Are Backhanded Compliments?
Backhanded compliments hurt people’s feelings. A person could think they are commending your abilities or achievements, but in reality, what they’re saying comes off as presumptuous and disrespectful. Or they do want to be rude to you but wrap up the comment in a way that it looks like a praise, ultimately confusing you.
Backhanded compliments take on various forms, such as insults disguised as compliments, passive-aggressive comments, or veiled comparisons
These insulting compliments are often used to hide insecurity in conversations to subtly undermine someone’s confidence, self-esteem, or accomplishments, while maintaining a facade of politeness
They can be used intentionally or unintentionally and are commonly employed in social settings, sometimes as a means of asserting dominance, but are always uttered as sugar-coated words. We live in a so-called polite society after all
These demeaning and fake compliments could be about anything, like your gained or lost weight, age, hair, appearance, life, job, business idea, or what you wear
For example, saying “Your new haircut makes you look much better,” “You look nicer when you have your hair straight” or “This is the ugliest shirt I’ve seen; only you could have made it look decent” are backhanded compliments because they imply an underlying insult or disbelief in the person’s choices or looks
Another example is when someone’s update on Instagram makes us feel inferior and we try to bring them down with backhanded compliments like “I love that you have so much time in the day to put up these wonderful posts on Instagram”
A form of backhanded compliments is ‘negging‘. It is a classic form of emotional manipulation which is defined as low-grade insults meant to undermine the self-confidence of a woman so she might be more vulnerable to your advances”
It doesn’t matter who you are; everyone has experienced backhanded compliments some time in their lives. This is why it is important to learn how to identify them and deal with them.
As receivers, it is crucial that we recognize these disguised slights for what they are and respond with assertiveness. As givers, we must strive to provide genuine compliments that empower and uplift rather than belittling others. These remarks showcase the intricate nuances of human communication and highlight the importance of both self-awareness and empathy.
23 Backhanded Compliment Examples In Everyday Life
We have some backhanded compliments at work listed below, so you can tell off your colleague firmly and professionally. These are subtle signs of passive-aggressive behavior and include backhanded compliment examples from family members that we all can relate to too. If you’re someone whose instincts hit quite late when someone insults you, we have got comebacks for backhanded compliments as well.
On asking how to deal with such people, a Quora user said, “With a smile. Don’t let it bother you. It is a very passive-aggressive thing to do.” Another Quora user said about insults disguised as compliments, “I pretend not to notice the backhanded part and respond as if it was a genuine compliment – perhaps slightly more enthusiastically. That leaves the person with the option of explaining that it wasn’t really a compliment (which makes them look like an a***hole), or pretending it was a genuine compliment (which makes them look like an a***hole).”
We think that it is important to reply when veiled insults start ruling the conversation. It becomes even more charming when you make yourself comfortable and keep your cool while responding to such folks. Let’s have a look at these backhanded compliments listed below and how to respond to them.
1. “You look amazing for someone who doesn’t wear makeup”
This is one of the major backhanded compliment examples for a girl. What is wrong with this ‘compliment’ is that it somehow implies that the person’s natural appearance is not attractive. The deliverer is somehow complimenting and complicating your life in one sentence.
Response: “I appreciate the compliment, but I believe everyone looks beautiful in their own way, with or without makeup”
2. “You’re pretty even without the need for all that makeup”
One of the most common backhanded compliment examples, and is often said to women. The speaker is implying that makeup is redundant or deceitful, and that people only apply it to try and look pretty.
Response: “Makeup is a form of self-expression; I wear it because I enjoy it.”
3. “You’re quite articulate for someone of your background”
This is one of the most passive aggressive backhanded compliments examples. This suggests surprise that a person can speak well despite their ‘background,’ demeaning the person as well as their race, country, class, caste, or religion.
Response: “People from diverse backgrounds are quite articulate and they probably know more than one language. How many do you know fluently?”
4. “You did an excellent job on your presentation; I didn’t expect that from you”
When we talk about backhanded compliment examples at work, this one has got to be the most common one. You must have heard colleagues or bosses use this one. It implies low expectations from the person and underestimates their abilities. This can sometimes be said by a superior who is trying to flirt and establish an office romance.
Response: “Thank you. I’m pretty proud of my presentation. I knew I’d nail it. What were you expecting, though?”
5. “You’re so confident; I wish I could be reckless like you”
The backhanded compliment hints that the person’s confidence is perceived as carelessness or overconfidence.
Response: “Thank you! Confidence comes from self-assurance, calm, and positivity.”
6. “You’re really strong for a girl”
This is another one of the backhanded compliment examples for a girl. It suggests that women are typically weaker, undermining their strength. This results in low self-esteem in a lot of women.
Response: “Strength isn’t gender-specific; men can be physically weaker than women and women can be stronger than men.”
7. “You’re so lucky to have found a partner despite your quirks”
What makes this comment wrong in so many ways is that it suggests that the person’s quirks should have made them undesirable, or that having quirks and uniqueness is somehow bad. And that the person’s partner is bearing quite a burden.
Response: “That’s what happens in relationships. We both accept and love each other’s quirks. Do you have someone like that in your life too?”
People of all genders and ages have to deal with backhanded compliments in their everyday lives.
8. “You’re not like other lawyers; you’re actually fun to be around”
This particular comment on a person’s profession is one of the many backhanded compliment examples at work. It infers the stereotype about lawyers as dull and unfriendly. Comments like these can be seen in all professions, like “You’re so down to earth for an actor” or “You’re not as boring as the other people from IT.”
Response: “Being a lawyer doesn’t define a person’s entire personality. You know that, right?”
9. “With a little house remodeling, your place would look even better”
This comment does not have the best intentions as it implies that your home needs remodeling to be at its best. It’s coming across as nitpicking and this person is being an ungracious guest or a friend.
Response: “I wasn’t looking for feedback. And I think when a house feels like a home, that is enough for a person.”
10. “You’re so well-spoken for someone without a college degree”
By saying something like this, they are clearly underestimating the other person’s intelligence due to their educational background.
Response: “Education doesn’t determine one’s ability to communicate effectively or compassionately. In fact, many people with college degrees say whatever they want to despite how ignorant it makes them sound.”
11. “You’re brave to wear that; I could never pull it off”
This double meaning comment hints that the person’s outfit is too bold or unconventional and that they are being judged for it.
Response: “Thank you! Why am I brave? I didn’t understand. It’s just a piece of clothing.”
12. “You’re a great mom despite being so career-driven”
They are alluding that career-oriented women can’t be great parents, or a woman could only be either of the two.
Response: “I believe being a dedicated mom and professional are both achievable.”
13. “You’re so disciplined with your diet; I’d be miserable eating like that”
This backhanded compliment implies that the person’s healthy eating habits are a source of misery, and that they must secretly hate their lifestyle.
Response: “I enjoy eating nutritiously; it makes me feel great! You should try it.”
14. “You’re such a good athlete. Maybe because you were lucky enough to get an athletic body”
The fact that this statement attributes the person’s athletic accomplishments to luck rather than sheer hard work and talent undercuts the receiver.
Response: “I’ve worked hard to excel at my sport, and I’m proud of my progress.”
15. “You’re so organized; it’s surprising for a boy”
According to this observation, individuals of a certain gender tend to be disorganized. This is especially said to males as they are unreasonably seen as irresponsible or lazy, whilst females are seen as to have the need to always be organized because it’s their job to make sure everything is in its place.
Response: “Organization is a valuable skill for any gender.”
16. “You’re very intelligent for a woman of your descent”
This statement implies that knowledge depends on your gender and race. And that intelligence, womanhood, and certain races have very less compatibility. Women all around the world have to hear comments like these, especially those who aren’t Caucasian, like Brown and Black women.
Response: “This was quite an ignorant remark for someone who’s white. Gender and race don’t dictate one’s capacity to learn and grow.”
17. “You’re a great artist, considering your limited resources”
This ambiguous remark suggests that the artist’s work is only impressive because of limitations and not their talent. The artist may not even perceive their resources to be limited, but this speaker certainly thinks they are.
Response: “Artists create art from the heart, regardless of their resources.”
18. “You’re so patient with your disabled child; I’d lose my mind in your shoes”
In essence, this phrase implies that disabled children are a burden. It’s ableist and adds to the systemic bias against disabled people.
Response: “Parenting has its challenges, but I cherish every moment with my kids. It’s not exactly sensitive to want a specific kind of child.”
19. “You have a great smile despite having unaligned teeth”
This person is unfairly assuming that a smile can only be appealing if you have perfectly aligned teeth. The fact that they even noticed the teeth and then thought it’s okay to point them out as a flaw is ridiculous. Instead, one should always try to make others smile.
Response: “I didn’t understand. The setting of one’s teeth does not have anything to do with a great smile.”
20. “You’re very successful despite your difficult upbringing”
According to this remark, achievement shouldn’t be expected given the person’s upbringing. This remark may be a genuine compliment in another context, but no one should bring up anyone’s childhood traumas when they wish to commend their success.
Response: “My upbringing has shaped me, but it doesn’t define my success.”
21. “You’re such a good listener for someone who talks a lot”
The remark implies that the person’s chatty nature ought to impair their ability to listen, or that being both simultaneously is not possible. Also, the speaker clearly doesn’t appreciate the other’s conversations and thought this is the best way to tell them.
Response: “I believe in balanced communication; talking and listening are both important.”
22. “You’re a talented musician, especially for someone without formal training”
The other person’s musical abilities and hard work are being underestimated in favor of a mostly inaccessible formal education.
Response: “Music is a passion, and I’ve honed my skills through dedication and practice. As many musicians do.”
23. “You’re a great leader for someone who’s usually so introverted”
This statement inaccurately implies that introverted people are often not effective leaders.
Response: “Introverts actually excel in leadership roles by leveraging their unique strengths. Leadership doesn’t belong to certain personality styles.”
In response to backhanded compliments, it’s essential to maintain confidence and assertiveness. You can acknowledge the compliment aspect, if you want to, while addressing the underlying issue or misconception politely. This helps educate the person and encourages more respectful communication.
Key Pointers
Backhanded comments can be hurtful to people because they are actually insults that are disguised as compliments
These unflattering comments are frequently employed in social situations to degrade someone’s accomplishments or self-worth while putting on a front of civility
“You’re really opinionated for a woman” or “You’ve got such strong features despite having brown skin” are a few of the examples of backhanded compliments and one should know why they are harmful
Sometimes, responding when someone insults you like that is requisite, but it’s also really important to not lose your cool while doing so. Calling them out is necessary but you can do it in a subtle manner if you want to
The true nature of compliments is to uplift self-esteem, encourage, and make the other person feel good through your sincerity, but backhanded compliments do the opposite. We have examined the subtleties of these double-edged verbal swords. They are seemingly well-intended yet covertly demeaning. By shedding light on their nature, we can strive for positive and more constructive interactions in our personal and professional lives, fostering healthy relationships.
Understanding backhanded compliments is not just an exercise in dissecting language; it’s a journey into the intricacies of human psychology and communication. Through wisdom and empathy, let’s foster a culture of genuine appreciation, where words become instruments of support rather than weapons of criticism.
NEW YORK, NEW YORK – OCTOBER 31: Rebecca Damon joins SAG-AFTRA members on strike during Halloween on October 31, 2023 in New York City. The strike, which began on July 14, entered its 100th day on October 21st as the actors’ union and Hollywood studios and streamers failed to reach an agreement. (Photo by John Nacion/Getty Images)
John Nacion | Getty Images Entertainment | Getty Images
SAG-AFTRA actors aren’t totally on board with Hollywood studios’ latest labor agreement pitch.
The Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists said there were still “several essential items” that they couldn’t agree with during their negotiations with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, including artificial intelligence guidelines.
Studios put forth this “last, best and final offer” over the weekend, with top executives making clear that they would not make further concessions. SAG-AFTRA spent time Sunday and Monday evaluating the deal.
It is unclear if the AMPTP will return to the table to continue bargaining or if talks will officially shutdown.
Representatives from the AMPTP did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment.
Hollywood actors initiated a work stoppage in mid-July as initial negotiations broke down with studios including Disney, Paramount, Universal, Netflix and Warner Bros. Discovery. They resumed talks for a short period of time in early October, but those broke down for several weeks.
Later in the month, talks resumed again, but so far, SAG-AFTRA and the AMPTP have been unable to reach a deal.
Television and film performers were looking to improve wages, working conditions, and health and pension benefits, as well as establish guardrails for the use of AI in future television and film productions. Additionally, the union sought more transparency from streaming services about viewership so that residual payments can be made equitable to linear TV.
The 116 day strike has disrupted marketing campaigns and prevented production from commencing on a significant portion of Hollywood’s film and television projects.
Disclosure: Comcast is the parent company of NBCUniversal and CNBC. NBCUniversal is a member of the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers.
For some people, retirement is a long-awaited chance to sleep late, relax and celebrate the joys of life without pressure or deadlines.
For others, it’s an opportunity to finally get to work.
California is about to be hit by an aging population wave, and Steve Lopez is riding it. His column focuses on the blessings and burdens of advancing age — and how some folks are challenging the stigma associated with older adults.
Within a span of a few days, I heard about two retirees who had long dreamed of becoming authors, but their jobs kept getting in the way. Then they pulled the cord, hit the keyboard and never looked back.
I was on the phone one day with former L.A. Times columnist and editor Bill Boyarsky, and when I asked about his wife, Nancy, he gloated. Her seventh novel had just been published, he said, and she was already working on her eighth.
Then I heard from L.A. County Superior Court Judge Kelvin Filer, who was talking up his brother, Duane. “He actually wrote a book documenting his first year of retirement,” the judge said. Before he excused himself with “I have to get back to my murder trial,” he added that his brother has since written several other books.
I hear fairly often from people who use retirement to chase dreams. Some set out to learn an instrument or a new language or two. Others turn volunteering into second careers. But I probably hear from more aspiring writers than any other group of people setting out to reinvent themselves.
In her writing room, Nancy Boyarsky is surrounded by her own paintings.
Boyarsky toils in a back room drenched in natural light, her cat Roxy at her side. She was a reader as a child and a fan of Jane Austen. At UC Berkeley, she took a creative writing class, “but the teacher didn’t think much of my short stories.” She recalls “a condescending smile” and a stabbing suggestion that the writing life was not for her.
And yet she went on to make a living at a typewriter, banging out articles for various publications including the L.A. Times magazine, and she was an editor for a magazine called “L.A. Lawyer. She co-authored a book called “Backroom Politics” with Bill and spent the last 18 years of her career as ARCO’s director of communications for political affairs.
While still at ARCO, Boyarsky took some writing courses at UCLA and began working on a novel called “The Swap.” The protagonist is a Los Angeles housewife who discovers on a trip to England that her husband is a cheat and that her life is in danger, a realization that transforms the “browbeaten housewife” into an enterprising private detective.
A small publishing house called Light Messages reached out to Nancy Boyarsky, saying it wanted to re-publish “The Swap” and asking the writer if she could turn her heroine into a serial sleuth.
(Al Seib / For The Times)
But when Boyarsky retired in 1998, she discovered, as so many writers have, that getting a book published is a tough racket, with your odds of success roughly similar to your chance of winning the Powerball lottery.
“I got an agent, and he sent it out to publishers, and they rejected it,” Boyarsky said.
A freelance editor suggested a major rewrite. Boyarsky did not agree, and she kept pursuing agents and publishers without success before putting the dream in a drawer and taking up painting. Her house is filled with her work, including impressive portraits and botanical art.
But Boyarsky hadn’t entirely given up. In 2013, she took advantage of a growing trend and self-published on Amazon.
“Mary Higgins Clark meets London … ’The Swap’ contributes to the women-driven mystery field with panache,” one magazine critic raved.
“I was thrilled,” Boyarsky said, and the news got better.
A small North Carolina publishing house called Light Messages reached out to say it wanted to re-publish “The Swap,” and Boyarsky was asked if she could turn her heroine into a serial sleuth. Seven Nicole Graves mysteries are now in print, and Boyarsky is hammering out the eighth while Bill, also a prolific author, works in another room on his next book.
Light Messages edits, designs, distributes and markets the Nicole Graves books on a small budget, with Boyarsky getting a percentage of sales. (“The Swap” has more than 2,000 customer reviews and a four-star rating on Amazon.) Boyarsky said she made several thousand dollars on that one, less on the others, and she wouldn’t advise book-writing for anyone looking to get rich.
But clearly, that Berkeley professor was clueless, and Boyarsky keeps writing — for love, if not for money.
Duane Lance Filer, 71, sits in the room he calls the “fffunk Lab,” where he has written nine novels. Images of Miles Davis, Jimi Hendrix and Sly and the Family Stone inspire him.
(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)
Duane Lance Filer had a bit of a different start. Rather than being told the writing game wasn’t for him, he got nothing but encouragement from his Black history teacher at Compton High School.
“Mr. Taylor,” Filer said. “Alvin Taylor. He said, ‘Pursue your dreams.’”
With that, and inspiration from the civil rights activism of his parents — Maxcy and Blondell Filer— Filer majored in political science at Cal Lutheran and wrote short stories there, joining the Watts Writers Workshop after college. Like a majority of aspiring writers, Filer had a day job, and for the last 29 years of his working life he was in the consumer affairs division of the California Public Utilities Commission, handling customer complaints.
After retiring in 2013, Duane Lance Filer spent a year writing abreezy book called “The Baby Boomers First-Hand, First-Year Guide to Retirement.”
(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)
Toward the end of that career he wrote his first book, a semi-autobiographical novel about an aspiring young Black writer growing up in a changing Compton, a witness to white flight during the civil rights movement. Then, after retiring in 2013, he spent a year writing abreezy book called “The Baby Boomers First-Hand, First-Year Guide to Retirement.”
Filer didn’t miss the train rides to and from work. There was lots of vacuuming and cleaning to be done, and he often shopped and prepared dinner for his wife, who was still working. There were some ups and some downs, but no regrets about retiring. On Day 365, Filer entered his writing den — he calls it the fffunklab; the three Fs stand for “Filer Family Fun”—to pen the final words of his guide while listening to Etta James sing “At Last.”
The fffunk lab, by the way, is where I visited Filer. He’s carved out the space in a corner of the garage, with images of Miles Davis, Jimi Hendrix and Sly and the Family Stone surrounding him. He wore faded, patched jeans and a George Clinton Funkadelic T-shirt, calling himself an unreformed hippie. In a family of lawyers and educators — son Lance is an attorney, daughter Arinn is an assistant principal, wife Janice is a professor and retired principal — Filer is all about music (he plays bass guitar), art (he paints), and words.
A portrait of Duke Ellington rests behind a Stratocaster guitar in Duane Lance Filer’s writing den.
(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)
The fffunk lab is a supremely cluttered cave of sports and family memorabilia, along with the tributes to his favorite musicians. The desktop computer, on which the funkmaster has now written nine books, sits in one corner. He’s penned several children’s books and a novella called “The Legend of Diddley Squatt,” loosely inspired by the life of the late comedian Richard Pryor, who grew up in a brothel. Filer is now working on a sequel, his 10th book, and a screenplay about his father’s life.
The only fly in the punch bowl is that despite his dogged efforts, Filer has no agent and no traditional publisher. He has self-published, paying different companies to print and distribute his books, hoping to recover the investment through sales.
“I usually send out between 50 and 100 query letters with each book,” Filer said.
The lack of response has not deterred him one iota. He sat in on some writing classes at nearby Cal State Dominguez Hills several years ago and keeps the dream alive, noting that his father took the state bar exam over and over again — literally dozens of times — before finally passing.
Perseverance, he tells himself. Perseverance.
After retiring from the California Public Utilities Commission in 2013, Duane Filer decided to start writing books. He is currently finishing his 10th.
(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)
He takes his morning walk while listening to his favorite music, reaching deep for inspiration. Then he enters the fffunklab, subjecting himself to the joys and cruelties of creative endeavor.
“I love to write, and here’s the thing: None of my books make any money, or, I haven’t made a lot of money,” Filer said. “But I don’t care. At some point, my little grandson can say, ‘Oh, you never gave up.’ I will never stop writing. … I think this next book is going to be my best one.”
AMC clarified Friday that the Nov. 5 date was the cutoff for the first run of tickets available for the film when presales began.
The extra time in theaters can only benefit the film and the box office. Already Swift’s Eras Tour has shattered records and helped the theater industry weather a light release calendar.
Heading into the weekend, The Eras Tour film has collected $150 million in domestic receipts and more than $200 million globally. That global haul represents more than 18% of the $1.092 billion total global box office earned since the film was released Oct. 13, according to data from Comscore.
“It’s been a remarkable, one-of-a-kind, record-breaking and influential run for The Eras Tour, not to mention a huge win for Taylor Swift and theater owners,” said Shawn Robbins, chief analyst at BoxOffice.com.
Expectations are that Swift will add another $10 million domestically this weekend and the film could be No. 1 at the box office once again.
So far, The Eras Tour film is the highest-grossing domestic and global concert film release of all time but lags just behind the “Michael Jackson’s This Is It” concert documentary’s global haul of $262.5 million.
Box office records (Taylor’s version)
Highest opening weekend for a concert film: Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour — $92.8 million
Widest domestic release for a concert film: Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour — 3,855 locations
Highest-grossing concert film domestically: Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour — $150 million, and counting
Highest-grossing concert film worldwide: Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour — $203.8 million, and counting
Highest-grossing concert film documentary worldwide: “Michael Jackson’s This Is It” — $262.5 million
Source: Comscore
Swift’s concert film release came at an opportune time. Labor strikes in Hollywood led several films to depart the theatrical calendar, including the much-anticipated “Dune: Part Two” from Warner Bros. Discovery and Legendary Entertainment.
“One movie can make all the difference,” said Paul Dergarabedian, senior media analyst at Comscore. “This incredible box office performance is made all the more impressive given the film’s truncated release pattern that had it essentially playing on big screens four days a week.”
Swift’s unique release, coupled with her decision to distribute the film through theater chain AMC instead of a traditional Hollywood studio, has also led to increased speculation about where the concert film will land on streaming.
Taylor Swift’s previous movies
Taylor Swift: Journey to Fearless (2010): aired on The Hub, which has since been rebranded as Discovery Family, and then made available on DVD
Taylor Swift: Speak Now World Tour Live (2011): made available on DVD
The 1989 World Tour Live (2015): released through Apple Music
Taylor Swift: Reputation Stadium Tour (2018): streaming on Netflix
Taylor Swift: City of Lover Concert (2020): ABC TV Special
Miss Americana (2020):streaming on Netflix
Folklore: The Long Pond Studio Sessions (2020): streaming on Disney+
Currently, it appears that Swift is waiting for the SAG-AFTRA strike to wrap up before negotiating with streamers for the rights to her concert film. The film is much coveted in the industry and a big bidding battle is expected.
Swift has previously worked with Apple Music, Netflix and Disney to release filmed versions of her concerts and documentary projects.
Correction: An earlier version of this story incorrectly said it would be the Eras Tour movie’s last weekend at the box office. The headline and story have been corrected.
Jim Caviezel stars in Angel Studio’s “Sound of Freedom.”
Angel Studios
Amazon Prime Video has secured the rights to one of the hottest box office releases of 2023 — Angel Studios’ “Sound of Freedom.”
The Jim Caviezel-led thriller snared more than $180 million at the domestic box office during its run, outpacing big studio films such as “The Flash,” on a budget of just $14.5 million. It also made nearly $250 million worldwide.
The film will stream on Prime Video in the U.S. starting Dec. 26. Neither company commented on the financial details of the streaming deal.
“Sound of Freedom,” which tells the story of a real-life government agent who quit his job to rescue a young girl from sex traffickers in Colombia, captured audience attention, luring back moviegoers week after week after its $14.2 million opening over the July 4 holiday weekend.
Part of “Sound of Freedom’s” box-office success was due to a campaign from filmmakers to urge moviegoers to buy tickets that can be claimed online for future screenings by those who may not be able to afford them. Angel Studios calls the model “pay it forward” and sold nearly 30 million of these tickets during the film’s release, according to the studio’s website.
And that’s not the only unique thing the studio did for the film. Angel Studios actually used its crowdfunding model to raise $5 million in order to distribute the film after 20th Century Fox, which previously held the rights to it, was bought by the Walt Disney Co. and shelved its release. “Sound of Freedom” wrapped filming in 2018.
The anti-sex trafficking thriller has struck a chord with older audiences, many of whom have not been back to theaters since before the Covid pandemic. It has also become popular in conservative political circles. Former President Donald Trump hosted a private screening of the film at his Bedminster, New Jersey, golf club over the summer.
Angel Studios, which has become known for its faith-based content, has a wide variety of projects on the docket going forward. The studio is set to release a sci-fi thriller called “The Shift” in December and biographical drama “Cabrini” in March.
Cats usually avoid water like it’s going out of fashion, ready to give you a warning hiss if even a drop splashes on their coats. One cat, however, has developed an obsession with water, or rather watching it.
In a video posted to Reddit with over 32,500 views, a black cat can be seen removing a book that was covering the toilet flusher, flushing the toilet, and then jumping down to put his paws on the seat to get a closer look at the swirling water.
“She likes watching the swirly toilet water, not even hiding the flusher can stop her,” reads the caption.
Despite a known dislike of water, many cat owners report that their felines have a strange obsession with their bathroom.
“To some cats, the toilet is the equivalent of a mouth-watering, bottomless drinking fountain,” write PetHelpful, “It beckons to their incomparable ability to repurpose just about anything (drapes as trapezes, fuzz as food, and antique sofas as scratching posts). It also hones their superb aptitude for balancing on extremely smooth surfaces and contorting themselves into advanced-level yoga poses.”
The swirling water might trigger a cat’s instinct to focus on movement, “either for enjoyment or for hunting,” says PetHelpful, “They may also notice reflections in the water and, other than admiring their dazzling image in them, may perceive them as something to play with.”
It could also be a wild, instinctive obsession.
“In the wild, cats were hardwired to interpret running water as safer than stagnant or still water,” they add, “The streaming, swirling sound of toilet water may sound like a river or creek to your cat and trigger her primal side.”
Another reason cats may love coming into the bathroom with you is because when you’re in there alone, it’s a closed door the contents of which your cat is obsessed with exploring.
A stock image of a cat sitting on top of a toilet. A cat who loves watching the water flush away has gone viral on Reddit. AMphotography/Getty Images
Similarly, once they’ve followed you in there, you’re trapped and temporarily staying in one place, so it’s the perfect time to bug you for attention.
“The cat seems to know you are ‘trapped’ in there for at least a few minutes and that it’ll be easy to get your attention,” reports The Spruce Pets, “It also may be that your cat can tell you are not distracted by the television, a book, work, or some other activity. You are there doing nothing too serious, able to return the love and attention they give you.”
“One of my cats is like this, but she hasn’t figured out the flushing handle yet. She will always follow me into the bathroom just to see the toilet flush,” commented one user. “Wouldn’t that qualify as tool use? That sounds like a really smart cat!” said another.
Newsweek has reached out to Jordens21 via Reddit for comment.
Do you have funny and adorable videos or pictures of your pet you want to share? Send them to life@newsweek.com with some details about your best friend and they could appear in our Pet of the Week lineup.
Uncommon Knowledge
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
A quick-and-easy test is to look for two items, said Sonu Shivdasani, founder of Soneva and Six Senses hotel brands.
First, sustainable hotels should not have branded water of any sort, he told CNBC Travel.
“When you have incredible filtered water, and where the tap water is pretty pure in most countries in the world … there’s no need to have any sort of branded water,” he said.
Not only does this reduce single-use bottles, but it’s healthier too, he said.
“There are quite a lot of brands of water that can be quite toxic, because they’re in areas where there’s sort of chemical pollution,” he said. Plus “plastic bottles are a carcinogen. You can imagine … that plastic bottle … sitting in a store for two or three months, getting hot and roasting.”
A better, cheaper option for hotels is to purify tap water and add electrolyte minerals, such as sodium, potassium and chloride, he said.
Next, check for toiletries in plastic bottles, which Shivdasani called “silly.”
“One should really buy in bulk containers, and then you refill in ceramic bottles,” he said.
But that’s really the bare minimum, said Shivdasani, who sold Six Senses in 2012.
He now focuses on Soneva’s three hotels: two in the Maldives and one in Thailand, plus another — Soneva Secret — set to open on a remote atoll in the northern Maldives in 2024.
The resorts serve guests produce grown on-site, rely partly on solar energy and recycle 93% of generated waste, said Shivdasani, who was awarded the 50 Best Hotels inaugural “Icon Award” for responsible luxury tourism in September.
Shivdasani rejects the idea that operating sustainably is costlier.
“Ecology is economy,” he told CNBC Travel.
By relying more on solar power than diesel fuel, he said, Soneva resorts will save money in the long run.
“Our bankers are very supportive of us doing it,” he said. “The payback on this investment is about four and a half years.”
By making charcoal using fallen branches, Shivdasani estimates his company saves $20,000-$30,000 per year. Plus, on-site gardens deliver about $10,000 a month of vegetables — at market prices — into each resort, he added.
But Shivdasani doesn’t dispute that sustainability — at this level — is harder.
“It’s certainly not easier. But it’s more interesting,” he said. “It is more difficult, but it’s certainly much, much more fulfilling.”
As the tourism industry adopts more sustainable practices, one question remains: Who pays for it?
“Governments can create the context, but businesses need to make the change,” Shivdasani told CNBC Travel. “We can do that by making small changes to the way we do business that does not affect our profitability, but which can have a huge impact on people well beyond our shores.”
Soneva Fushi, a resort in the Maldives where Shivdasani said he and his wife, Eva, live about half of the year.
Source: Soneva
Shivdasani said he decided to institute a guest environmental levy after the company measured its “scope 3” emissions.
“I didn’t know what scope 3 CO2 emissions were,” he said. “Scopes 1 and 2 are like the light bulbs, the air-conditioning … scope three is externalities outside the property [like] guests flying in, supplies coming in.”
Companies often fall short of reporting scope 3 emissions, said Kelvin Law, an associate professor of accounting at Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University who researches corporate sustainability and financial fraud.
“Missing one out of three reporting scopes may not seem like a big deal — but it is,” he wrote for CNA, since they account for the lion’s share of most companies’ emissions. “Leaving out scope three emissions reporting is akin to solving a jigsaw puzzle without the largest piece — the picture is never complete.”
Shivdasani said that after Soneva determined that 85% of its carbon emissions were “scope 3” emissions, the company introduced the 2% carbon levy. That was in 2008.
“That’s why we said we had to do something about it,” he said.
The levy has generated about $12 million for The Soneva Foundation, a British charity founded in 2010.
The revenue has been used to restore forests in Thailand, fund a 1.5 megawatt windmill in India (“giving the local community subsidized energy”) and to buy stoves in Myanmar and Darfur, Sudan.
“The cookstoves has been a fantastic investment,” he said adding that they not only reduce CO2 emissions but also decrease firewood expenses and the risk of lung disease. The latter causes an estimated 3.2 million deaths per year, including some 230,000 children under the age of five, according to the World Health Organization.
Moreover, the stoves have created a carbon surplus, he said.
“We now have two million surplus carbon credits, which is worth about $20 million,” he said.
The credits — which currently sell for $10-$15 each on the open market — are certified and then purchased by companies, such as Marks & Spencer, which use the credit to meet their own carbon reduction goals, he said.
The Soneva Foundation is reinvesting that money, using it to plant 1 million trees in Nepal and Mozambique each, among other projects, he added.
“It’s a small change, but it’s had this fantastically growing impact,” he said.
