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  • ‘Halloween Ends’ wins box office but renews streaming debate

    ‘Halloween Ends’ wins box office but renews streaming debate

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    No matter how you look at the numbers, “Halloween Ends” had a good opening weekend.

    Touted as the final showdown between Laurie Strode and Michael Myers, the slasher pic earned $41.3 million in ticket sales from 3,901 theaters in North America, according to studio estimates Sunday. It’s the first film to open higher than $40 million since “Nope” debuted in July and it surpassed its production budget, which has been reported to be between $20 and $30 million. Including international showings, it boasts a global total of $58.4 million.

    “We are extraordinarily excited that Blumhouse once again delivered an incredible film and another No. 1 opening,” said Jim Orr, Universal’s head of domestic distribution. “Jamie Lee Curtis had audiences across North America engaged and terrified.”

    The film also renewed an evergreen debate about day-and-date movie releases and some in Hollywood are wondering whether it could have been even bigger if it hadn’t debuted simultaneously on Peacock, NBC Universal’s streaming service.

    Going into the weekend, some analysts had pegged “Halloween Ends” for an opening in the $50 to $55 million range. “Halloween Kills,” the previous installment in the David Gordon Green-directed “Halloween” trilogy,” opened day-and-date last year and still grossed $49 million on opening weekend.

    Green’s first “Halloween,” by contrast, debuted to $76.2 million in 2018. But that was pre-pandemic, theatrical release only and the highly anticipated revival of a beloved franchise with good reviews. His subsequent “Halloween” films were more divisive among critics and fans, however. “Kills” had a 39% Rotten Tomatoes score while “Ends” has a 40% and still opened over $40 million.

    “The day-and-date model was put to the test again, but I think this is a mandate in favor of the movie theater,” said Paul Dergarabedian, the senior media analyst for Comscore. “Audiences had the option to watch it at home but they chose to go to the theater.”

    Many studios experimented with day-and-date releases during the second year of the pandemic to varying results, but 2022 has seen most returning to traditional theatrical-first releases — especially for their most valuable brands and franchises.

    Still, it triggered a self-proclaimed “rant” from filmmaker Christopher Landon, who tweeted this weekend that he felt his horror film “Freaky” was hurt by its simultaneous release in theaters and streaming in November 2020.

    “Stop doing this. Please. It doesn’t work. Studios: stop gambling with filmmakers and their movies to try and prop up your fledgling streaming services,” Landon wrote on Twitter. “I begged the studio not to do this…We got hosed.”

    Though there was likely some financial impact on “Halloween Ends,” it’s hard to glean exactly how much money was left on the table with the release. Peacock is notably smaller than many of its streaming competitors, with 13 million paid subscribers reported at the end of July. Studios also rarely release specific streaming data.

    “Smile,” meanwhile, has continued to defy horror-movie odds with another strong weekend. Paramount’s original thriller added $12.4 million, bringing its domestic total to $71.2 million after three weeks.

    Dergarabedian noted that it’s rare two have two R-rated horror movies at the top of the box office charts.

    “The appeal of being scared in a movie theater is time honored,” Dergarabedian said. “Throughout the pandemic, horror movies have grossed over $1 billion, and that’s just domestically.”

    Third place for the weekend went to Sony’s “Lyle, Lyle, Crocodile,” down 35% from its debut with $7.4 million, while “The Woman King” landed in fourth place with $3.7 million in its fifth weekend, bringing its domestic total to $59.7 million. “Amsterdam” rounded out the top five in weekend two with $2.9 million.

    In limited release, United Artists Releasing’s Mamie Till-Mobley film “TILL” got off to a strong start with $240,940 from only 16 locations. Director Chinonye Chukwu’s fact-based account of Emmett Till’s mother’s quest for justice will be expanding in the coming weeks.

    “Hats off to producers Barbara Broccoli, Keith Beauchamp, and Whoopi Goldberg who fought to get this movie made for decades,” said Erik Lomis, UAR’s President of Distribution. “This weekend, the film attracted an incredibly diverse, multi-generational audience, playing both ‘smarthouse’ and commercial venues. We’re off to a great start.”

    Focus Features’ “Tár,” another buzzy awards contender, also expanded into 36 theaters this weekend — earning another $360,000 — and will continue opening in more markets over the next two weeks.

    Estimated ticket sales for Friday through Sunday at U.S. and Canadian theaters, according to Comscore. Final domestic figures will be released Monday.

    1. “Halloween Ends,” $41.3 million.

    2. “Smile,” $12.4 million.

    3. “Lyle, Lyle, Crocodile,” $7.4 million.

    4. “The Woman King,” $3.7 million.

    5. “Amsterdam,” $2.9 million.

    6. “Don’t Worry Darling,” $2.2 million.

    7. “Barbarian,” $1.4 million.

    8. “Bros,” $920,000.

    9. “Terrifier 2,” $850,000.

    10. “Top Gun: Maverick,” $685,000.

    —-

    Follow AP Film Writer Lindsey Bahr on Twitter: www.twitter.com/ldbahr.

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  • Ukraine envoy hopeful about fate of Musk’s satellite network

    Ukraine envoy hopeful about fate of Musk’s satellite network

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    WASHINGTON (AP) — A Ukrainian diplomat expressed optimism Sunday about securing the money needed for the continued operation of a satellite network funded by billionaire Elon Musk that has provided key battlefield and humanitarian contacts in the war with Russia.

    “It’s there, it’s working,” said the envoy, Oksana Markarova. “It will need to be working for a longer time.”

    She did not indicate whether Musk had agreed to continue funding his rocket company SpaceX’s Starlink internet service in Ukraine but said the country’s collaboration with the company has been excellent.

    “We got the Starlinks in Ukraine very quickly, in some areas for humanitarian support, it’s the only connection that we have,” Markarova told CBS’ “Face the Nation.” “And it’s very important to continue having it and I’m positive that we will find a solution there.”

    On Friday, senior U.S. officials confirmed that Musk had asked the Defense Department to take over funding for the service Starlink provides in Ukraine. Starlink, which provides broadband internet service using more than 2,200 low-orbiting satellites, has provided crucial battlefield communications for Ukrainian military forces since early in the nation’s defense against Russia’s February invasion.

    Musk suggested in a tweet Saturday that SpaceX may continue funding Starlink after all, though his tone and wording also raised the possibility that the Tesla CEO was just being sarcastic. It is not clear whether SpaceX has actually established future plans for service in Ukraine.

    “The hell with it … even though Starlink is still losing money & other companies are getting billions of taxpayer $, we’ll just keep funding Ukraine govt for free,“ Musk tweeted Saturday.

    Musk also recently has sparred with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy after the billionaire suggested that Ukraine cede the strategically important Crimea region to Russia and make other concessions as part of a peace deal, drawing a rebuke from Zelenskyy.

    Musk tweeted on Friday that it was costing SpaceX $20 million a month to support Ukraine’s communications needs.

    Markarova said Ukraine has “disagreed with Elon Musk on some of his views about Crimea, and we were happy to discuss it with him.” She added that Ukraine is proud “to be one of the fastest growing Starlink countries globally.”

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  • Officials: Musk seeks US funds for Ukraine satellite network

    Officials: Musk seeks US funds for Ukraine satellite network

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    WASHINGTON (AP) — The Defense Department has gotten a request from SpaceX and Tesla CEO Elon Musk to take over funding for his satellite network that has provided crucial battlefield communications for Ukrainian military forces since almost the beginning of its war with Russia, U.S. officials said Friday.

    The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive matter not yet made public, said the issue has been discussed in meetings and senior leaders are weighing the matter. There have been no decisions.

    In a statement later Friday, Pentagon spokeswoman Sabrina Singh said, “We can confirm the Department received correspondence from SpaceX about the funding of Starlink, their satellite communications product in Ukraine. We remain in communication with SpaceX about this and other topics.”

    During a Pentagon briefing, she declined to provide any details about the communication or say to whom the correspondence was sent and when the communications with Musk began.

    Musk began sending Starlink satellite dishes to Ukraine just days after Russia invaded in February. On Feb. 28, Ukrainian Vice Prime Minister Mykhailo Fedorov tweeted a photo of the first Starlink kits arriving on the back of a truck.

    “You are most welcome,” Musk tweeted back.

    Musk’s generosity was hailed by Ukrainians and seen as a game changer in war tactics — the Russians could try to cut Ukrainian ground communications but it could not control space.

    The Starlink system of more than 2,200 low-orbiting satellites has provided broadband internet to more than 150,000 Ukrainian ground stations. Early Friday, Musk tweeted that it was costing SpaceX $20 million a month to support Ukraine’s communications needs.

    In addition to the terminals, he tweeted that the company has to create, launch, maintain and replenish satellites and ground stations.

    CNN was the first to report the Musk request.

    The Starlink satellite internet’s vital role in Ukraine’s defense cannot be overstated. It has, for example, assisted front-line reconnaissance drone operators in targeting artillery strikes on key Russian assets. A senior military official on Friday made it clear that the U.S. believes the system has proven exceptionally effective on the battlefield. The official spoke on condition of anonymity to provide U.S. assessment of the Ukrainian battlefield.

    In a tweet on Friday, Ukrainian presidential adviser Mikhail Podolyak said Ukraine will find a solution to keep Starlink working.

    “Let’s be honest. Like it or not, @elonmusk helped us survive the most critical moments of war. Business has the right to its own strategies,” he tweeted. “We expect that the company will provide stable connection till the end of negotiations.”

    In response to multiple questions during the briefing, Singh said the Pentagon was working with the Ukrainian Defense Ministry. “We know that there is this demand, and (satellite communications) capability … is needed and we want to be able to ensure that there are stable communications for the Ukrainian forces and for Ukraine.”

    The request from the world’s richest man to have the Pentagon take over the hundreds of millions of dollars he says the system is costing comes on the heels of a Twitter war between Musk and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. And in tweets overnight Musk referred to the friction, suggesting it may affect his decision to end his company’s largesse in funding the systems.

    In a Twitter exchange last week, Musk argued that to reach peace Russia should be allowed to keep the Crimean Peninsula, which it seized in 2014. He also said Ukraine should adopt a neutral status, dropping a bid to join NATO.

    Musk also started a Twitter poll asking whether “the will of the people” should decide if seized regions remain part of Ukraine or become part of Russia.

    In a sarcastic response, Zelenskyy posted a Twitter poll of his own asking “which Elon Musk do you like more?”: “One who supports Ukraine” or “One who supports Russia.” Musk replied to Zelenskyy that “I still very much support Ukraine, but am convinced that massive escalation of the war will cause great harm to Ukraine and possibly the world.”

    Andrij Melnyk, the outgoing Ukrainian ambassador to Germany, responded to Musk’s original tweet with an obscenity.

    It’s not clear how much of the cost of deploying Starlink satellite uplinks in Ukraine has been covered by U.S. funding. In April, the U.S. Agency for International Development said it had delivered 5,000 of the terminals. The Pentagon had no response to that question.

    Musk’s commitment to spend $44 billion to purchase Twitter “has to factor into his decision that he can no longer afford to do this for free,” said retired Army Maj. Gen. John Ferrari, a non-resident senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.

    Musk’s request that the Pentagon begin to pick up the tab comes as the Space Force and Pentagon have been looking at how commercial vendors will play a role in national security. Musk’s threat to withdraw highlights the risk of leaning too much on commercial capabilities, Ferrari said.

    “Commercial vendors always get to change their mind, ” Ferrari said, adding that the reliance on Starlink to provide communications for Ukraine also serves as a reminder that the Pentagon has to expand this service beyond SpaceX, he said.

    “The government needs many vendors for key capabilities, of course that often means more money, but it is an insurance policy and insurance costs money,” Ferrari said.

    In March, commander of U.S. Space Command Army Gen. James Dickinson said that having vendors provide needed capabilities, such as Maxar’s satellite imagery of stalled Russian convoys, has become essential, because it frees up limited military satellite assets to focus on other things.

    In his tweets, Musk also raised a question that various vendors and the Pentagon are considering as space becomes a more critical part of wartime operations: If a commercial vendor is assisting the U.S. and is targeted, does the U.S. owe it protection?

    “We’ve also had to defend against cyberattacks & jamming, which are getting harder,” Musk tweeted.

    ____

    Associated Press writer Frank Bajak in Lima, Peru, contributed to this report.

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    This story has been corrected to reflect that Elon Musk is CEO of Tesla, not the founder of the electric vehicle maker.

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  • Musk: SpaceX might keep funding satellite service in Ukraine

    Musk: SpaceX might keep funding satellite service in Ukraine

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    NEW YORK (AP) — Billionaire Elon Musk suggested in a Saturday tweet that his rocket company SpaceX may continue to fund its satellite-based Starlink internet service in Ukraine. But Musk’s tone and wording also raised the possibility that the irascible Tesla CEO was just being sarcastic.

    Musk frequently tweets jokes and insults and sometimes goes on unusual tangents, such as a recent series of tweets suggesting that one of his companies has begun selling its own line of fragrances. It is not clear if SpaceX has actually established future plans for service in Ukraine.

    On Friday, senior U.S. officials confirmed that Musk had officially asked the Defense Department to take over funding for the service Starlink provides in Ukraine. Starlink, which provides broadband internet service using more than 2,200 low-orbiting satellites, has provided crucial battlefield communications for Ukrainian military forces since early in the nation’s defense against Russia’s February invasion.

    “The hell with it … even though Starlink is still losing money & other companies are getting billions of taxpayer $, we’ll just keep funding Ukraine govt for free,“ Musk tweeted Saturday.

    Early Friday, Musk tweeted that it was costing SpaceX $20 million a month to support Ukraine’s communications needs. Tesla didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.

    The senior U.S. officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive matter not yet made public, said the issue of Starlink funding has been discussed in meetings and that senior leaders are weighing the matter. There have been no decisions.

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  • Queen lauds Minnesota church’s century of Norwegian worship

    Queen lauds Minnesota church’s century of Norwegian worship

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    MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — Before attending the packed Sunday morning service, Queen Sonja of Norway praised Mindekirken congregation for having maintained worship in Norwegian for all 100 years that the church has existed in Minneapolis.

    “It’s extraordinary to realize that, one hundred years after, Mindekirken is still fulfilling that purpose” of building community and preserving culture and language, she said to the nearly 500 people in attendance. They had lined up for more than an hour in this modest neighborhood in brisk fall weather in the 40s — single digits in Celsius, just as in Oslo — to participate in the service.

    Queen Sonja received a special greeting from Eline Gro Knatterud, 4, who presented the queen with a bouquet of red roses nearly as big as herself. Queen Sonja got down to eye level with the awestruck girl and told her, in English, that she had an identical red traditional bunad dress at home, before walking into the large stone church.

    The congregation was founded in 1922, at the tail end of a decades-long migration of hundreds of thousands of Norwegians to Minnesota that made the Twin Cities the “unofficial capital” of the Norwegian diaspora, said Amy Boxrud, the director of the Norwegian-American Historical Association.

    Lutheran churches were central to these immigrants’ lives, though some stayed with the Church of Norway and others established different Lutheran synods.

    Den Norske Lutherske Mindekirke – the Norwegian Lutheran Memorial Church – committed to keep celebrating services in Norwegian even as many other European churches were moving to English, because attacks on foreign-language speakers spread across the United States in the World War I era.

    “The group said, ‘We’ll talk American English every day, but we need our hearts’ language when we praise God,” said the Rev. Gunnar Kristiansen, the current pastor to a flock of about 200 families.

    Within a few years, Mindekirken was the only one of five dozen churches in Minnesota still worshipping in Norwegian, he added.

    That made all the difference to Kirsti Grodahl, who was 11 when she emigrated to Minneapolis in 1962 from the fjord-side village of Frei in Norway with her parents and siblings. She started going to church at Mindekirken a week later, sometimes on foot.

    “It was just so comfortable,” she said. She made her first friend there, who had arrived two years earlier, and she raised her two children to speak Norwegian, too.

    Grodahl still regularly attends Sunday services at Mindekirken, and particularly enjoys the coffee hour that follows the two services, one in English and one in Norwegian.

    “Dad baked a lot of bløtkake for this church,” she recalled, referring to the traditional soft cake that her father had perfected as a baker in Norway. “It’s a place you always feel it’s your home.”

    Standing in line Sunday morning with her two daughters and dozens of other congregants before service started, Karen Liv Mjlølhus Cardwell said her father started worshipping here in 1929, when he emigrated to Minnesota.

    “It’s like coming home to family,” Mjlølhus Cardwell said.

    And to have that continuity of culture and worship celebrated today by Queen Sonja and the presiding bishop of the Church of Norway, the Most Rev. Olav Fykse Tveit, brought tears to the eyes of Mindekirken council president Jeannette Henrikssen, whose parents migrated in the late 1960s.

    “It’s very moving that we still hold service in Norwegian,” she said. “It’s a testament to the determination and sheer stubbornness of those Norwegians, and the love and connection they wanted to uphold.”

    ___

    Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.

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  • California city rests easier after serial killings arrest

    California city rests easier after serial killings arrest

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    STOCKTON, Calif. (AP) — Residents of Stockton, California, were able to rest easier following the weekend arrest of a man suspected of killing six men and wounding a woman in a series of shootings over a period of three months in Northern California, the city’s mayor said Sunday.

    Mayor Kevin Lincoln said he shed tears of relief when he was informed that the suspect who police believe had terrorized Stockton since July was taken into custody around 2 a.m. Saturday.

    Wesley Brownlee was dressed in black, wore a mask around his neck, had a handgun and “was out hunting” for another possible victim when he was arrested while driving around the Central Valley city, where five of the shootings took place, Police Chief Stanley McFadden said at a Saturday news conference.

    “The city was able to sleep a little bit better last night,” Lincoln said Sunday morning. “No resident of this city should have to walk around town looking over their shoulder in fear.”

    The mayor credited residents of Stockton who called in hundreds of tips to investigators that eventually led to the arrest of the 43-year-old suspect.

    It wasn’t immediately clear on Sunday whether Brownlee, of Stockton, had an attorney to speak on his behalf. He was expected to be arraigned Tuesday on murder charges.

    “This person caused a lot of hurt, caused a lot of trauma,” Lincoln said. “My prayer, my hope, as mayor is that our community begins the process of healing as a result of the serial killings.”

    Police had been searching for a man clad in black who was caught on video at several of the crime scenes in Stockton, where five men were ambushed and shot to death between July 8 and Sept. 27. Four were walking, and one was in a parked car.

    Police believe the same person was responsible for killing a man 70 miles (113 kilometers) away in Oakland in April 2021 and wounding a homeless woman in Stockton a week later.

    Investigators have said ballistics tests and video evidence linked the crimes. A police photo showed the black-and-gray weapon allegedly carried by the suspect. It appeared to be a semi-automatic handgun containing some nonmetallic materials.

    At Saturday’s news conference, a moment of silence was held for the victims.

    Juan Vasquez Serrano, 39, was killed in Oakland on April 10, 2021, and Natasha LaTour, 46, was shot in Stockton on April 16 of that year but survived. The five men killed in Stockton this year were Paul Yaw, 35, who died July 8; Salvador Debudey Jr., 43, who died Aug. 11; Jonathan Hernandez Rodriguez, 21, who died Aug. 30; Juan Cruz, 52, who died Sept. 21; and Lawrence Lopez Sr., 54, who died Sept. 27.

    Police said Brownlee has a criminal history and is believed to have also lived in several cities near Stockton, but they did not give further details.

    After receiving hundreds of tips, investigators located and watched the place where Brownlee was living.

    “Based on tips coming into the department and Stockton Crime Stoppers, we were able to zero in on a possible suspect,” McFadden said. “Our surveillance team followed this person while he was driving.”

    Investigators watched his patterns and determined that he was out searching for another victim, the chief said.

    “We are sure we stopped another killing,” he said.

    McFadden added that Brownlee was detained after engaging in what appeared to be threatening behavior, including going to parks and dark places, stopping and looking around before driving on.

    Investigators were still processing evidence and trying to identify a motive for the attacks, Officer Joseph Silva, a police spokesperson, said Sunday. Police said some victims were homeless, but not all. None were beaten or robbed, and the woman who survived said her attacker didn’t say anything.

    The police chief thanked various local, state and federal agencies that took part in the investigation, including the FBI, U.S. Marshals and U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration.

    Local investigators had also worked with police in Chicago to determine whether the killings might be linked to two 2018 murders in that city’s Rogers Park neighborhood. Authorities said videos of suspects showed a man in black with a distinctive walk.

    However, Chicago police said Friday that there didn’t appear to be any link.

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  • Radioactive waste found at Missouri elementary school

    Radioactive waste found at Missouri elementary school

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    FLORISSANT, Mo. (AP) — There is significant radioactive contamination at an elementary school in suburban St. Louis where nuclear weapons were produced during World War II, according to a new report by environmental investigation consultants.

    The report by Boston Chemical Data Corp. confirmed fears about contamination at Jana Elementary School in the Hazelwood School District in Florissant raised by a previous Army Corps of Engineers study.

    The new report is based on samples taken in August from the school, according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Boston Chemical did not say who or what requested and funded the report.

    “I was heartbroken,” said Ashley Bernaugh, president of the Jana parent-teacher association who has a son at the school. “It sounds so cliché, but it takes your breath from you.”

    The school sits in the flood plain of Coldwater Creek, which was contaminated by nuclear waste from weapons production during World War II. The waste was dumped at sites near the St. Louis Lambert International Airport, next to the creek that flows to the Missouri River. The Corps has been cleaning up the creek for more than 20 years.

    The Corps’ report also found contamination in the area but at much at lower levels, and it didn’t take any samples within 300 feet of the school. The most recent report included samples taken from Jana’s library, kitchen, classrooms, fields and playgrounds.

    Levels of the radioactive isotope lead-210, polonium, radium and other toxins were “far in excess” of what Boston Chemical had expected. Dust samples taken inside the school were found to be contaminated.

    Inhaling or ingesting these radioactive materials can cause significant injury, the report said.

    “A significant remedial program will be required to bring conditions at the school in line with expectations,” the report said.

    The new report is expected to be a major topic at Tuesday’s Hazelwood school board meeting. The district said in a statement that it will consult with its attorneys and experts to determine the next steps.

    “Safety is absolutely our top priority for our staff and students,” board president Betsy Rachel said Saturday.

    Christen Commuso with the Missouri Coalition for the Environment presented the results of the Corps’ study to the school board in June after obtaining a copy through a Freedom of Information Act request.

    “I wouldn’t want my child in this school,” she said. “The effect of these toxins is cumulative.”

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  • Homes inundated by swollen rivers in Australian floods

    Homes inundated by swollen rivers in Australian floods

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    CANBERRA, Australia (AP) — Homes were flooded in Melbourne and other cities in Australia’s southeast on Friday with rivers forecast to remain dangerously high for days.

    About 70 residents were told to leave the suburb of Maribyrnong in Melbourne’s northwest, along with hundreds in the Victoria state cities of Benalla and Wedderburn, authorities said. Melbourne is Australia’s second-most populous city with 5 million people.

    About 500 homes in Victoria were flooded and another 500 had been isolated by floodwater, Victoria Premier Daniel Andrews said. Those numbers would increase, he said.

    Most of the state was experiencing a “very, very, significant rainfall event and it comes, of course, with the ground completely sodden,” Andrews said.

    “The real challenge now is we’ve got another rain event next week and the Bureau (of Meteorology) forecasting more rain throughout the next six-to-eight week period and it won’t take a lot of additional water for there to be further flood events,” Andrews added. “So this has only just started and it’s going to be with us for a while.”

    Andrews said 4,700 homes were without power, more than the 3,500 that Victoria State Emergency Service had reported earlier on Friday.

    The Bureau of Meteorology said major-to-record flooding was occurring or was forecast to occur on many rivers in Victoria and the island state of Tasmania to the south.

    North of Victoria, moderate-to-major flooding was occurring along several rivers in inland New South Wales state, the bureau said.

    A 63-year-old man was reported missing in floodwater in New South Wales on Tuesday and a person was reported missing in central Victoria on Friday, officials said. No details of the person missing from the Victorian town of Newbridge have been released.

    Police on Tuesday found the body of a 46-year-old man in his submerged car in floodwater near the New South Wales city of Bathurst, west of Sydney, a day after he died.

    The State Emergency Service said it had carried out 108 flood rescues in Victoria in the past 48 hours.

    State Emergency Service commander Josh Gamble said complacency was the main reason for people getting into trouble.

    “That is quite significant and we haven’t had that many flood rescues for quite some time, for some years in fact,” Gamble said.

    “Many of these people are putting their own lives at risk, their own children in some circumstances, but more importantly, other community members and responders and that’s in all parts of the state not just metropolitan areas,” Gamble added.

    Evacuation orders were also in place for the town of Rochester on the Campaspe River, north of Melbourne, and the central Victorian towns of Carisbrook and Seymour on the Goulburn River.

    In New South Wales, 550 people have been isolated or evacuated from the town of Forbes as the Lachlan River flooded, authorities said.

    South of Forbes, parts of the city of Wagga Wagga were evacuated due to the Murrumbidgee River breaking its banks.

    “Fortunately, the Murrumbidgee River peaked on Thursday and we’re starting to see the floodwaters decline in those areas,” New South Wales State Emergency Service official Andrew Edmunds said.

    In Tasmania, north coast residents were moving to higher ground with river levels forecast to rise and the major port of Devonport was closed on Friday due to flooding of the Mersey River.

    The bureau said flood peaks on the Meander and Macquarie rivers in Tasmania were likely to be the highest on record.

    The North Esk and Mersey rivers may peak around the same levels as they did during major floods in 2016, when three people drowned, the bureau said.

    The bureau last month declared that a La Niña weather pattern, which is associated with above-average rainfall in eastern Australia, was underway in the Pacific.

    The bureau forecast that the La Niña event may peak during the current Southern Hemisphere spring and return to neutral conditions early next year.

    La Niña is the cooler flip side of the better-known drying El Niño pattern. La Niña occurs when equatorial trade winds become stronger, changing ocean surface currents and drawing up cooler deep water.

    It is the third La Niña since 2019 became Australia’s hottest and driest year on record.

    That year came to a catastrophic conclusion with wildfires fueled by drought that directly or indirectly killed more than 400 people, destroyed more than 3,000 homes and razed 19 million hectares (47 million acres) of woods, farmland and city fringes.

    Sydney, New South Wales’ capital and Australia’s largest city, last week beat its 1950 record to make 2022 its wettest-ever year.

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  • NOT REAL NEWS: A look at what didn’t happen this week

    NOT REAL NEWS: A look at what didn’t happen this week

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    A roundup of some of the most popular but completely untrue stories and visuals of the week. None of these are legit, even though they were shared widely on social media. The Associated Press checked them out. Here are the facts:

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    Harris comments on addressing climate inequity misrepresented

    CLAIM: Vice President Kamala Harris said that Hurricane Ian relief will be distributed based on race, with communities of color receiving aid first.

    THE FACTS: Speaking at the Democratic National Committee’s Women’s Leadership Forum in Washington last week, Harris discussed distributing resources equitably to help vulnerable groups, such as communities of color, recover from disasters related to climate change. She did not describe the structure that would be used to allocate aid to victims of the recent hurricane. Widespread social media posts mischaracterized Harris’ comments during her conversation with actress Priyanka Chopra Jonas to claim she said communities of color would be prioritized in the distribution of relief for this storm. A Facebook video with a clip of Harris at the event on Sept. 29 alleged: “Kamala Harris tells hurricane victims in Florida they may not get aid because of their skin color?!” The video was viewed more than 211,000 times. The post refers to Harris’ response to a multipart question from Chopra Jonas in which she asked first about Hurricane Ian aid, and then, separately, about long-term efforts related to climate change. “Can you talk a little bit about the relief efforts, obviously, of Hurricane Ian and what the administration has been doing to address the climate crisis in the states?” Chopra Jonas asked, according to a full recording of the event. Chopra Jonas continued: “But — and just a little follow up, because this is important to me: We consider the global implications of emissions, right? The poorest countries are affected the most. They contributed the least and are affected the most. So how should voters in the U.S. feel about the administration’s long-term goals when it comes to being an international influencer on this topic?” Harris mentioned Hurricane Ian in passing, but did not talk about specific relief efforts the federal government would undertake. She instead referenced money allocated to address climate change in the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 and spoke about what she believes needs to be done to address the effects of climate change broadly, including the equitable distribution of resources. Pivoting to address the second part of Chopra Jonas’ question related to addressing disparities, Harris continued: “But also what we need to do to help restore communities and build communities back up in a way that they can be resilient — not to mention, adapt — to these extreme conditions, which are part of the future.” Harris then elaborated: “In particular on the disparities, as you have described rightly, which is that it is our lowest income communities and our communities of color that are most impacted by these extreme conditions and impacted by issues that are not of their own making,” she said, adding: “We have to address this in a way that is about giving resources based on equity, understanding that we fight for equality, but we also need to fight for equity; understanding that not everyone starts out at the same place. And if we want people to be in an equal place, sometimes we have to take into account those disparities and do that work.” Deputy White House Press Secretary Andrew Bates told the AP that claims Harris announced in this response that Ian aid would be race-based are “inaccurate.” He said Harris was discussing long-term goals for addressing climate change, having “explicitly moved on to answering the second question.” FEMA Director of Public Affairs Jaclyn Rothenberg also told the AP that claims the process will be race-based are false, and that Hurricane Ian aid will be given to all those affected by the storm. “The Vice President was talking about a different issue at that time and her comments were focused on long term climate investments,” she wrote in an email.

    — Associated Press writer Melissa Goldin in New York contributed this report.

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    World Cup ‘rules’ graphic created by citizens group, not Qatari officials

    CLAIM: Qatar’s government created an infographic with instructions on how to behave during the 2022 World Cup, including rules that ban alcohol, homosexuality and dating.

    THE FACTS: The infographic being shared online ahead of the 2022 World Cup, which opens in Qatar next month, was not created or released by the government there, according to the state agency in charge of organizing the event. It was created by a Qatari citizens group and published on social media as part of a campaign called “Reflect Your Respect.” The graphic, shared on social media with claims that it listed official rules on how to behave in the Muslim-majority country during the event, states: “Qatar welcomes you! Reflect your respect to the religion and culture of Qatari people by avoiding these behaviors.” The poster cites eight specific examples, including “drinking alcohol, homosexuality, immodesty, profanity,” and not respecting places of worship. Playing loud music, dating and taking people’s pictures without permission are also noted. Images representing each of those areas are featured on the infographic and are covered by a circle with a slash through it. “Qatar’s rules for people who will attend the World Cup 2022 in the country,” a tweet with the infographic claimed. But the infographic does not reflect official policies from Qatar related to conduct during the World Cup, according to the Supreme Committee for Delivery & Legacy, the state entity organizing the tournament. “The ‘Qatar Welcomes You’ graphic circulating on social media is not from an official source and contains factually incorrect information,” a committee spokesperson wrote in a statement to the AP. “We strongly urge fans and visitors to rely solely on official sources from tournament organisers for travel advice for this year’s FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022.” Qatar is easing its stance on alcohol for the tournament. World Cup organizers have finalized a policy that would allow alcoholic beer to be served to fans inside stadiums and fan zones, the AP has reported. Qatari law calls for a prison sentence of one to three years for adults convicted of consensual gay or lesbian sex. Despite same-sex relationships being criminalized, the AP reported that Qatari officials insist that LGBTQ couples would be welcomed and accepted in Qatar for the World Cup, complying with FIFA rules promoting tolerance and inclusion. Still a senior leader overseeing security for the tournament told the AP earlier this year that rainbow flags may be taken away from fans to protect them from being attacked for promoting gay rights. Planners involved with Reflect Your Respect did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

    ___

    No, COVID shots don’t change human DNA to a ‘triple helix’

    CLAIM: COVID-19 mRNA vaccines alter recipients’ DNA by changing its shape to a “triple helix.”

    THE FACTS: There is no evidence that the COVID-19 vaccines are editing humans’ DNA, experts have told the AP. The false claim, which has been shared repeatedly on social media, has surfaced again, this time in posts that allege the mRNA shots change DNA to a “triple helix.” DNA is made of two linked strands that appear like a twisted ladder, referred to as a double helix. RNA is closely related to DNA, and one type, called messenger RNA or mRNA, sends instructions to the cell for different purposes. The mRNA in the COVID-19 vaccines helps train the body to recognize a protein from the coronavirus to trigger an immune response. In one TikTok video that also appeared on Instagram, a woman claims: “The magic potion, if you actually read the patents, it is adding a triple helix.” Another Instagram video claims that “this new technology they came out with introduces a third strand, through mRNA messaging technology it actually breaks a strand and puts in a third strand, which creates a triple helix.” But the videos distort the science, experts said. The video attempts to back up its assertion by showing language from a Moderna patent application published in 2014 that at one point states: “According to the present invention, the nucleic acids, modified RNA or primary construct may be administered with, or further encode one or more of RNAi agents, siRNAs, shRNAs, miRNAs, miRNA binding sites, antisense RNAs, ribozymes, catalytic DNA, tRNA, RNAs that induce triple helix formation, aptamers or vectors, and the like.” But Dr. Daniel Kuritzkes, chief of infectious diseases at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, told the AP the patent document was discussing RNA presenting as a triple helix, not changing humans’ DNA to a triple helix. “If you actually read the patent, it has nothing to do with forming a triple helix of the RNA therapeutic with the host DNA,” Kuritzkes said. It’s that the RNA molecule could theoretically form a triple helix, he said. For certain therapeutic applications, a triple helical RNA could be useful, he said. The patent was broad and not specific to Moderna’s eventual COVID-19 vaccine. “The messenger RNA from the vaccine does not form a triple helix, and it certainly doesn’t intercalate with the DNA to form a triple helix in any way,” Kuritzkes said. Experts emphasized that the mRNA in COVID-19 vaccines is not transforming humans’ DNA. “There is no mechanism for them to alter anyone’s DNA,” said Emily Bruce, an assistant professor of microbiology and molecular genetics at the University of Vermont. “It’s something that’s temporarily translated into protein and then the body gets rid of it.”

    — Associated Press writer Angelo Fichera in Philadelphia contributed this report.

    ___

    Inflation is worse than it was a year ago, despite online claims

    CLAIM: New data shows that inflation has dropped to half of what it was a year ago, marking a win for President Joe Biden.

    THE FACTS: While inflation has slowed in recent months, the latest government estimates show that prices are still higher in August 2022 than they were in August 2021. As steep consumer price hikes continue to strain Americans’ budgets, a tweet downplaying the severity of recent inflation spread online. “BREAKING: New data has dropped that inflation has dropped to half of what it was a year ago,” read the tweet, which amassed more than 28,000 likes. ”That’s a Biden Win!” The tweet’s claim isn’t supported by data, economists told the AP. While the Consumer Price Index, a measure of change in consumer prices and a common metric of inflation published by the U.S. Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics, was up just 0.1% in August from July, the index is still up 8.3% since August 2021. “There is no hard evidence of either inflation falling sharply on a monthly basis, on a quarterly basis, on a semi-annual basis, on a yearly basis, or announcement of any substantial revision of official statistics,” said Alessandro Rebucci, an associate professor of economics at Johns Hopkins Carey Business School. The Bureau of Labor Statistics did report that consumer prices increased 0.3% in August 2021 from July 2021, which is a higher monthly rate of change compared to the 0.1% monthly increase reported in August 2022. While the monthly change in consumer prices was lower in August 2022 than it was in August 2021, comparing those rates alone doesn’t accurately reflect how prices have changed during that 12-month timeframe, experts say. Lower gas prices slowed U.S. inflation for the second straight month in August, but most other prices kept rising, the AP reported. This jump in “core” prices, which exclude volatile food and energy costs, outpaced expectations and continues to pose a significant burden for U.S. households. “There’s still a fair amount of inflation embedded in the economy,” said Stephan Weiler, a professor of economics at Colorado State University, adding that Americans’ overall purchasing power has been reduced by 8.3%. The August CPI “basically means that things are getting more expensive,” said Yun Pei, an assistant professor of economics at the University at Buffalo. He characterized the idea that inflation has been halved over the last year as “clearly not true.”

    — Associated Press writer Josh Kelety in Phoenix contributed this report.

    ___

    Find AP Fact Checks here: https://apnews.com/APFactCheck

    ___

    Follow @APFactCheck on Twitter: https://twitter.com/APFactCheck

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  • National Guard struggles as troops leave at faster pace

    National Guard struggles as troops leave at faster pace

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    WASHINGTON (AP) — Soldiers are leaving the Army National Guard at a faster rate than they are enlisting, fueling concerns that in the coming years units around the country may not meet military requirements for overseas and other deployments.

    For individual states, which rely on their Guard members for a wide range of missions, it means some are falling short of their troop totals this year, while others may fare better. But the losses comes as many are facing an active hurricane season, fires in the West and continued demand for units overseas, including combat tours in Syria and training missions in Europe for nations worried about threats from Russia.

    According to officials, the number of soldiers retiring or leaving the Guard each month in the past year has exceeded those coming in, for a total annual loss of about 7,500 service members. The problem is a combination of recruiting shortfalls and an increase in the number of soldiers who are opting not to reenlist when their tour is up.

    The losses reflect a broader personnel predicament across the U.S. military, as all the armed services struggled this year to meet recruiting goals. And they underscore the need for sweeping reforms in how the military recruits and retains citizen soldiers and airmen who must juggle their regular full-time jobs with their military duties.

    Maj. Gen. Rich Baldwin, chief of staff of the Army National Guard, said the current staffing challenges are the worst he’s seen in the last 20 years, but so far the impact on Guard readiness is “minimal and manageable.”

    “However, if we don’t solve the recruiting and retention challenges we’re currently facing, we will see readiness issues related to strength begin to emerge within our units within the next year or two,” he said.

    According to Gen. Daniel Hokanson, head of the National Guard Bureau, both the Army and Air Guards failed to meet their goals for the total number of service members in the fiscal year that ended last Friday. The Army Guard’s authorized total is 336,000, and the Air Guard is 108,300.

    Baldwin said the Army Guard started the year with a bit more than its target total, but ends the fiscal year about 2% below the goal. Fueling that decline was a 10% shortfall in the number of current soldiers who opted to reenlist. Hokanson said the Air Guard missed its total goal by nearly 3%.

    The reasons are many. But Guard officials suggest that young people may not be hearing the strong call to service that they did when the U.S. was at war in Iraq and Afghanistan, in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

    Baldwin said that as operations in Iraq and Afghanistan began to decline several years ago, states started to see higher than expected losses in personnel. In exit interviews, he said, troops cited a number of reasons why they weren’t reenlisting. “But, unexpectedly, they found that one reason common to many of their soldiers was based on the perception that the war was over,” said Baldwin, adding that they had joined to serve their country, not make the Army Guard their career.

    The same may be true now, he said. In 2020 and 2021, Guard members were heavily involved in a range of domestic emergencies, from natural disasters and civil unrest to the pandemic, including medical care, COVID-19 testing and vaccines.

    “Today, we have a much lower overseas deployment tempo than we’ve been used to and almost all of the COVID support missions have been ramped down,” Baldwin said. “We join to make a difference by serving others and by being part of something bigger than ourselves. … There may be a perception among both our soldiers and the civilians we are trying to recruit that we are on the backside of all of that and it’s time to take advantage of the hot job market we have right now.”

    While the shortfalls for 2022 may be small percentages, the Guard is facing increasing losses over the next year due to the U.S. military’s requirement that all troops get the COVID-19 vaccine. Currently about 9,000 Guard members are refusing to get the shot, and another 5,000 have sought religious, medical or administrative exemptions.

    So far, no Guard members have been discharged for refusing the vaccine order. The National Guard is awaiting final instructions from the Army on how to proceed. Officials have said it’s not clear when they will get that guidance.

    With more losses likely on the horizon, Guard leaders are looking for ways to entice service members to join or reenlist. Hokanson said a critical change would be to provide Guard members with healthcare coverage. Currently, he said, about 60,000 Guardsmen don’t have health insurance. And those who have insurance through their civilian employer have to go through a difficult process to move to the military’s TRICARE program when they are on active-duty status.

    The cost of providing health care coverage to those who don’t have it would be about $719 million a year, he said.

    Other changes that could help, he said, would include expanding educational benefits and giving Guard members a financial bonus when they bring in new recruits. Such bonuses were used during the peak of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, but there were some problems that Hokanson and others said could be avoided now.

    “We need to make adjustments based on the current environment because for the long term, our nation needs a National Guard the size that we are, or maybe even larger to meet all the requirements that we have,” said Hokanson. “It’s up to us to make sure that we fill our formations so that they’re ready when our nation needs us.”

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  • Silent films to live on in movie theater lobby card project

    Silent films to live on in movie theater lobby card project

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    By KATHY McCORMACK

    October 6, 2022 GMT

    CONCORD, N.H. (AP) — “Missing Millions” is a 1922 silent film with a darkly prescient title — like the vast majority from that era, the movie all but vanished in the ensuing century, survived mostly by lobby cards.

    The cards, scarcely bigger than letter paper, promoted the cinematic romances, comedies and adventures of early Hollywood. More than 10,000 of the images once hung in movie theater foyers are now being digitized for preservation and publication, thanks to an agreement between Chicago-based collector Dwight Cleveland and Dartmouth College that all started when he ran into a film professor at an academic conference in New York.

    “Ninety percent of all silent films have been lost because they were made on nitrate film, which is flammable and explodable,” Cleveland told The Associated Press. “What that means is that these lobby cards are the only tangible example that these films even existed.”

    The cards, traditionally 11 by 14 inches (28 by 35 centimeters) and arranged in sets of eight or more, displayed a film’s title, production company, cast and scenes that could convey a sense of the plot. Movie screen trailers didn’t become a common practice until the rise of the movie “studio system” era in the 1920s, said Mark Williams, associate professor of film and media studies at Dartmouth and the project’s director.

    Often displayed on an easel or framed and meant to be seen up close, the lobby cards promoted current films that were playing, as well as coming attractions.

    Today, the cards, many of them more than 100 years old, play an even bigger role, reflecting the stars, styles and storytelling of a bygone era. The legacy of the Paramount Pictures-released “Missing Millions,” for example, rests in an image of actress Alice Brady and her accomplice, who plot to steal the gold of the financier who sent her father to prison. Brady made the transition to talkies, but that film and a number of others she made during the silent era are lost.

    Cleveland, a real estate developer and historic preservationist, became interested in the cards as a high school student in the 1970s. His art teacher had collected some, including one of Lupe Velez and Gary Cooper from the 1929 Western romance, “Wolf Song.”

    “I just fell in love with the color and the deco graphics, and this romantic embrace, and everything about it, which just was incredibly appealing,” he said, “and it just sort of screamed out ‘Take me home!’”

    The early lobby cards were produced using a process that produced black-and-white, sepia, or brown-toned images, with color added to some by hand or stencil, according to a post by Josie Walters-Johnston, reference librarian in the Moving Image Research Center at the Library of Congress.

    By the 1920s, the images became more photograph-like and featured details such as decorative borders and tinting. They endured for decades, with production of lobby cards ending in the late 1970s or early 1980s, Walters-Johnston wrote. But in 2015, the practice was revived when Quentin Tarantino put out a special set for his Western, “The Hateful Eight.”

    Cleveland has been shipping boxes from his collection to Dartmouth’s Media Ecology Project, where a small group of students is charged with gingerly removing each card from its protective sleeve to scan and digitize. The students, assembled by Williams, are also creating metadata.

    Williams said the project — which began in September and is expected to be finished later this fall — will provide insight into how the films were promoted and what kind of design features went into the marketing of a film from a given studio, among other information that would be difficult to find.

    “We’ll be able to restore access to a really fundamental visual culture related to these different performers and studios, and genres,” he said.

    Williams said that the project is invested in both cultivating new scholarship, and an awareness about how endangered media history is.

    “People, they link up to YouTube, and they think that media history is inexhaustible and eternal. And both of those statements are false,” Williams said.

    When the movies now considered lost or surviving incomplete were produced, the art form’s shelf life was short, Williams said. Only over time did people start to appreciate film as a significant art and a force in popular culture worthy of preservation.

    The lobby cards validate the existence of a range of movies — from major studios still in existence and smaller ones that only endured for a handful of years — and memorialize what Williams described as “a great number of stars — many of whom have been forgotten.”

    “There’s so much media that is in danger of disintegrating, just literally turning to dust,” he added, extolling the importance of the endangered “historical, vulnerable, ephemeral, extraordinary material.”

    Cleveland also had donated 3,500 lobby cards of silent-era Westerns — featuring stars such as William S. Hart, Jack Hoxie, and Buck Jones — to the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City. He arranged for their loan to Dartmouth for the project.

    When completed, the lobby card collection will become part of Dartmouth’s Early Cinema Compendium, which will feature 15 collections of rare and valuable archival and scholarly resources. The compendium, which will be published online as part of a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, will also include more than 7,000 frame samples from early and mostly lost U.S. films, plus access to more than 2,500 archival films across the genres of early cinema.

    The ultimate goal, Williams said, is “so that people who are fans or casual fans or true scholars will have access to this material and catapult new interest in it.”

    Cleveland — certainly no casual fan — once owned an archive that had 45,000 movie posters from 56 countries. He wrote a book, “Cinema on Paper: The Graphic Genius of Movie Posters,” in 2019. In addition to the Dartmouth project, his lobby card collection formed the basis for an exhibit in New York focused on the women who were prolific filmmakers, writers and producers during the silent-film era. He’s planning a book on the subject.

    “I’ve loved finding and preserving and cataloguing these historical documents,” Cleveland said.

    With Williams applying computer science, “it just takes it into a whole other realm in the future with metaverse and everything else,” Cleveland said. “I feel like I’ve been sort of stuck in nostalgia, if you will, and now I feel like I’m being propelled into the future with him and that’s a very exciting prospect.”

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  • ‘Scrubs’ producer Eric Weinberg charged with sex assaults

    ‘Scrubs’ producer Eric Weinberg charged with sex assaults

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    LOS ANGELES (AP) — Eric Weinberg, an executive producer and writer for the hit TV show “Scrubs” and many others, has been charged with sexually assaulting five women that he lured to photo shoots and there could be many more victims, Los Angeles County prosecutors announced Wednesday.

    Weinberg, 62, was arrested Tuesday, nearly a week after he was charged with 18 felony counts including rape, oral copulation, forcible sexual penetration, sexual battery by restraint, false imprisonment by use of violence, assault by means of force likely to cause great bodily injury and attempted forcible penetration with a foreign object, according to the district attorney’s office.

    He was released that day on a $5 million bond. His arraignment was scheduled for Oct. 25.

    An email to an agent for Weinberg seeking comment wasn’t immediately returned.

    Weinberg was charged for alleged attacks between 2014 and 2019, but investigators say they believe there may be other victims of assaults dating back to the 1990s, District Attorney George Gascón said at a news conference.

    He urged them to come forward.

    “The defendant relied on his Hollywood credentials to lure young women for photo shoots where he allegedly sexually assaulted them,” Gascón said. “Power and influence can corrupt some to hurt others, that often leads to a lifetime of trauma for those who are victimized.”

    LAPD Detective Ryan Lamar said investigators were looking into information received from a tip line regarding possible other assaults by Weinberg.

    Weinberg was previously investigated several times by police, but the DA’s office didn’t file charges for lack of evidence, Gascón said.

    Weinberg was co-executive producer on nearly 100 episodes of the NBC hospital dramedy “Scrubs” between 2000 and 2006 and also wrote nearly a dozen episodes, according to the IMDB website.

    He also was co-executive producer for “Californication” in 2007 and had producing and writing credits on other shows, including “Anger Management,” “Men at Work,” “Veronica’s Closet” and “Politically Incorrect with Bill Maher.”

    In 2020, documents filed in Weinberg’s divorce and child custody proceedings included allegations by three women that he sexually assaulted them during photo shoots, the Los Angeles Times reported.

    One woman alleged that she met Weinberg at a North Hollywood coffee shop in 2014 when she was 22 and he convinced her to come to a photo shoot at his home where she stripped to her underwear. The woman alleged that while taking photos, Weinberg grabbed her, forced to perform oral sex, choked her and then raped her, according to documents cited by the Times.

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  • Loretta Lynn’s songs resonate anew amid abortion debate

    Loretta Lynn’s songs resonate anew amid abortion debate

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    By KRISTIN M. HALL

    October 6, 2022 GMT

    NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — Loretta Lynn, the Grammy-winning country music icon who died Tuesday at 90, lived through — and sang about — decades of advancements for women’s social movements, achievements now endangered.

    A mother multiple times over by the end of her teens, she gave voice to those who had historically had little control over childbirth and their own sexuality. Some of her songs reflected the lives of many rural women and mothers, lamenting their invisible labor and the repressive and gendered roles that kept them tied to a singular identity.

    For some of those working in reproductive health care today in her home state of Kentucky, Lynn’s music proves all too relevant. Lynn, who sang about birth control after Roe v. Wade became a landmark legal decision protecting abortion rights, died only months after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the 1973 case, creating a massive shift in reproductive rights across the country. In November, Kentucky voters will decide whether to eliminate the right to abortion in the state’s constitution.

    Kate Collins, 34, was not of the generation who heard “The Pill” or “One’s on the Way” when they first played on the radio, but Lynn’s voice provided a soundtrack to her childhood. In addition to growing up in a home where classic country music was part of the lexicon, Collins grew up in a family that talked about abortion and birth control, which led her to start volunteering as an escort at a clinic in Kentucky. But it wasn’t until high school that she began to put together the context of what Lynn was singing about.

    Loretta Lynn, in her own words

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    <p>Loretta Lynn told AP Radio in 2010 that people can relate to her music because it’s about things everyone goes through.
    </p>

    “She talks about being able to wear the clothes she wants,” Collins, who now volunteers as a case manager on the Kentucky Health Justice Network’s abortion resources hotline, said of 1975′s “The Pill.” “Because of my access to birth control, I could go out to bars with my friends and wear miniskirts. And that was not something I ever had to think twice about until the lyric finally hit me.”

    “The Pill,” written by Lorene Allen, Don McHan and T.D. Bayless, was recorded prior to the Roe v. Wade decision, but Lynn held onto the song for years before she felt fans were ready to listen.

    “When we released it, the people loved it. I mean the women loved it,” she wrote in her 1976 autobiography, “A Coal Miner’s Daughter.” “But the men who run the radio stations were scared to death. It’s like a challenge to the men’s way of thinking.”

    Men in country music were singing about abortion, premarital sex and divorce in the ’60s and ’70s with little or no blowback, but it was rare that a woman could sing about wanting to enjoy sex with her husband without the consequences of an unplanned pregnancy, as Lynn did.

    “It is, in fact, not about anything other than control of women and their pleasure, or anyone who can get pregnant and their pleasure,” Collins said.

    Lynn was frank about her experiences giving birth so young, being mentally unprepared and not physically ready. She wrote that she couldn’t afford to stay overnight after the birth of her second child, so she went back home to wash diapers and draw water from the well 24 hours after delivery. She experienced miscarriages, nearly dying because she had no money to go to the doctor. And still she kept on getting pregnant, giving birth to six children.

    She wrote that she couldn’t even sign her own consent form to have a caesarean section because she was still a minor and her husband, Oliver Lynn — known as “Dolittle or ”Mooney” — was out on a logging job and unreachable.

    “I love my kids but I wish they had the pill when I first married,” she wrote. “I didn’t get to enjoy the first four kids; I had ’em so fast. I was too busy trying to feed ’em and put clothes on ’em.”

    She said birth control was as a way for women to protect themselves: “The feelin’ good comes easy now/Since I’ve got the pill/It’s gettin’ dark it’s roostin’ time/Tonight’s too good to be real/Oh, but daddy don’t you worry none/’Cause mama’s got the pill,” she sang.

    And she did not mince words about her feelings about abortion.

    “That’s also why I won’t ever say anything against the abortion laws they made easier a few years ago,” she wrote in the 1976 memoir.

    “Personally, I think you should prevent unwanted pregnancy rather than get an abortion. I don’t think I could have an abortion. It would be wrong for me,” she added. “But I’m thinking of all the poor girls who get pregnant when they don’t want to be, and how they should have a choice instead of leaving it up to some politician or doctor who don’t have to raise the baby. I believe they should be able to have an abortion.”

    As Collins sees it, Lynn was explaining — in her own way — the idea of bodily autonomy. Collins also sees a connection between the rollback of abortion rights to the attacks on gender-affirming care for transgender people.

    More than 45 years after Lynn sang about the pill, in Kentucky and in many other states, clinics are barred from providing abortions. While self-managed abortions using prescription medication are safe and very effective, Collins worries about desperation sinking in for those seeking help and the collateral damage of people with dangerous pregnancies or miscarriages.

    “It is really easy to feel like you’re flipping the discography back and now we’re going to go from ‘The Pill’ to ‘One’s on the Way,’” she said.

    ___

    Follow Kristin M. Hall at https://twitter.com/kmhall

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  • French writer Annie Ernaux awarded Nobel Prize in literature

    French writer Annie Ernaux awarded Nobel Prize in literature

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    PARIS (AP) — French author Annie Ernaux won this year’s Nobel Prize in literature Thursday for blending fiction and autobiography in books that fearlessly mine her experiences as a working-class woman to explore life in France since the 1940s.

    In more than 20 books published over five decades, Ernaux has probed deeply personal experiences and feelings – love, sex, abortion, shame – within a society split by gender and class divisions.

    After a half-century of defending feminist ideals, Ernaux said “it doesn’t seem to me that women have become equal in freedom, in power,” and she strongly defended women’s rights to abortion and contraception.

    “I will fight to my last breath so that women can choose to be a mother, or not to be. It’s a fundamental right,” she said at a news conference in Paris. Ernaux’s first book, “Cleaned Out,” was about her own illegal abortion before it was legalized in France.

    The prize-giving Swedish Academy said Ernaux, 82, was recognized for “the courage and clinical acuity” of books rooted in her small-town background in the Normandy region of northwest France.

    Anders Olsson, chairman of the Nobel literature committee, said Ernaux is “not afraid to confront the hard truths.”

    “She writes about things that no one else writes about, for instance her abortion, her jealousy, her experiences as an abandoned lover and so forth. I mean, really hard experiences,” he told The Associated Press after the award announcement in Stockholm. “And she gives words for these experiences that are very simple and striking. They are short books, but they are really moving.”

    French President Emmanuel Macron tweeted: “Annie Ernaux has been writing for 50 years the novel of the collective and intimate memory of our country. Her voice is that of women’s freedom, and the century’s forgotten ones.”

    While Macron praised Ernaux for her Nobel, she has been unsparing with him. A supporter of left-wing causes for social justice, she has poured scorn on Macron’s background in banking and said his first term as president failed to advance the cause of French women.

    Ernaux’s books present uncompromising portraits of life’s most intimate moments, including sexual encounters, illness and the deaths of her parents. Olsson said Ernaux’s work was often “written in plain language, scraped clean.” He said she had used the term “an ethnologist of herself” rather than a writer of fiction.

    Dan Simon, Ernaux’s longtime American publisher at Seven Stories Press, said that in the early years, “she insisted that we not categorize her books at all. She did not allow us to refer to them as fiction and she did not allow us to refer to them as nonfiction.”

    Ultimately, he said, Ernaux has created “a genre of fiction in which nothing is made up.”

    “She’s a great storyteller of her own life,” Simon said.

    Ernaux worked as a teacher before becoming a full-time writer. Her first book was “Les armoires vides” in 1974 (published in English as “Cleaned Out”). Two more autobiographical novels followed – “Ce qu’ils disent ou rien” (“What They Say Goes”) and “La femme gelée” (“The Frozen Woman”) – before she moved to more overtly autobiographical books.

    In the book that made her name, “La place” (“A Man’s Place”), published in 1983 and about her relationship with her father, she wrote: “No lyrical reminiscences, no triumphant displays of irony. This neutral writing style comes to me naturally.”

    “La honte” (“Shame”), published in 1997, explored a childhood trauma, while “L’événement” (“Happening”), from 2000, dealt like “Cleaned Out” with an illegal abortion.

    Her most critically acclaimed book is “Les années” (“The Years”), published in 2008. Described by Olsson as “the first collective autobiography,” it depicted Ernaux herself and wider French society from the end of World War II to the 21st century. Its English translation was a finalist for the International Booker Prize in 2019.

    Ernaux’s “Mémoire de fille” (“A Girl’s Story”), from 2016, follows a young woman’s coming of age in the 1950s, while “Passion Simple” (“Simple Passion”) and “Se perdre” (“Getting Lost”) chart Ernaux’s intense affair with a Russian diplomat.

    Ernaux has described facing scorn from France’s literary establishment because she is a woman from a working-class background.

    “My work is political,” she said at the news conference. She described growing up in a milieu outside the elite, a world of “people above you” and the seeming impossibility of becoming a famous writer.

    The literature prize has long faced criticism that it is too focused on European and North American writers, as well as too male-dominated. Last year’s prize winner, Tanzanian-born, U.K.-based writer Abdulrazak Gurnah, was only the sixth Nobel literature laureate born in Africa.

    More than a dozen French writers have captured the literature prize, though Ernaux is the first French woman to win, and just the 17th woman among the 119 Nobel literature laureates.

    Olsson said the academy was working to diversify its range, drawing on experts in literature from different regions and languages.

    “We try to broaden the concept of literature but it is the quality that counts, ultimately,” he said.

    Ernaux said she wasn’t sure what she would do with the Nobel’s cash award of 10 million Swedish kronor (nearly $900,000).

    “I have a problem with money,” she told reporters. “Money is not a goal for me. … I don’t know how to spend it well.”

    A week of Nobel Prize announcements kicked off Monday with Swedish scientist Svante Paabo receiving the award in medicine for unlocking secrets of Neanderthal DNA that provided key insights into our immune system.

    Frenchman Alain Aspect, American John F. Clauser and Austrian Anton Zeilinger won the physics prize on Tuesday for work showing that tiny particles can retain a connection with each other even when separated, a phenomenon known as quantum entanglement.

    The Nobel Prize in chemistry was awarded Wednesday to Americans Carolyn R. Bertozzi and K. Barry Sharpless, and Danish scientist Morten Meldal for developing a way of “snapping molecules together” that can be used to explore cells, map DNA and design drugs to target cancer and other diseases.

    The 2022 Nobel Peace Prize will be announced on Friday and the economics award on Monday.

    The prizes will be handed out on Dec. 10. The prize money comes from a bequest left by the prize’s creator, Swedish inventor Alfred Nobel, in 1895.

    ___

    Keyton reported from Stockholm and Lawless from London. Masha Macpherson in Clergy, France; John Leicester in Le Pecq, France; Frank Jordans in Berlin; Naomi Koppel in London; Jan M. Olsen in Copenhagen and Angela Charlton in Paris contributed.

    ___

    Follow all AP stories about the Nobel Prizes at https://apnews.com/hub/nobel-prizes

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  • In a first, Netflix’s ‘Glass Onion’ to play in major chains

    In a first, Netflix’s ‘Glass Onion’ to play in major chains

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    NEW YORK (AP) — For the first time, the major U.S. theater chains will play a Netflix release after exhibitors and the streaming service reached a deal for a nationwide sneak-peak run of Rian Johnson’s “Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery.”

    Netflix announced Thursday that AMC, Regal Cinemas and Cinemark will all carry the “Knives Out” sequel for an exclusive one-week run beginning Nov. 23, one month before it begins streaming on Dec. 23.

    Up until now, those chains have largely refused to program Netflix releases. But as theatrical windows have shortened from three months to frequently closer to 45 days, and streaming-only releases have sometimes lacked the buzz generated by moviegoing, Netflix and the chains finally found common ground.

    The deal stops short of a full theatrical release window for “Glass Onion,” which premiered last month at the Toronto International Film Festival and stars Daniel Craig as detective Benoit Blanc. A wide release typically plays in more than 3,000 theaters in North America, but Johnson’s film will play in about 600 domestic theaters in addition to an international rollout.

    “Given the excitement surrounding the premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival, we hope fans will enjoy this special theatrical event in celebration of the film’s global debut on Netflix in December,” said Scott Stuber, head of global film at Netflix.

    For months, negotiations between exhibitors and Netflix had centered around “Glass Onion” because of its box-office pedigree: “Knives Out” was one of the biggest original hits of 2019, grossing more than $311 million worldwide in ticket sales for Lionsgate. After a bidding war, Netflix acquired two sequels for $450 million. Johnson, too, had voiced interest in it playing widely theatrically.

    “This movie, above everything else, is designed to be a good time with a big crowd of folks in a theater,” the director said in an earlier interview with The Associated Press.

    On Thursday, Johnson celebrated, saying in a statement that he was “over the moon that Netflix has worked with AMC, Regal and Cinemark to get Glass Onion in theaters for this one of a kind sneak preview.”

    Adam Aron, chairman and chief executive of AMC, said the first-ever agreement “sufficiently respects the sanctity of our current theatrical window policy.” Aron said he hoped it will lead to more cooperation between Netflix and AMC, the largest theater chain.

    “As we have often said, we believe that both theatrical exhibitors and streamers can continue to co-exist successfully,” said Aron in a statement. “Beyond that, though, it has been our desire that we find a way to crack the code and synergistically work together. By doing so, theaters will make more money by having more titles to show, and thanks to the larger cultural resonance those movies can gain from a theatrical release, they will wind up playing to a wider audience when they also are viewed on streaming platforms.”

    “Glass Onion” revolves around tech billionaire Miles Bron (Edward Norton), who invites a small group of friends to his private island for a murder mystery party. The cast includes Janelle Monáe, Dave Bautista, Madelyn Cline, Kathryn Hahn, Kate Hudson, Jessica Henwick and Leslie Odom Jr.

    ___

    Follow AP Film Writer Jake Coyle on Twitter: http://twitter.com/jakecoyleAP

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  • Former Uber security chief guilty of data breach coverup

    Former Uber security chief guilty of data breach coverup

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    SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — The former chief security officer for Uber was convicted Wednesday of trying to cover up a 2016 data breach in which hackers accessed tens of millions of customer records from the ride-hailing service.

    A federal jury in San Francisco convicted Joseph Sullivan of obstructing justice and concealing knowledge that a federal felony had been committed, federal prosecutors said.

    Sullivan remains free on bond pending sentencing and could face a total of eight years in prison on the two charges when he is sentenced, prosecutors said.

    “Technology companies in the Northern District of California collect and store vast amounts of data from users,” U.S. Attorney Stephanie M. Hinds said in a statement. “We will not tolerate concealment of important information from the public by corporate executives more interested in protecting their reputation and that of their employers than in protecting users.”

    It was believed to be the first criminal prosecution of a company executive over a data breach.

    A lawyer for Sullivan, David Angeli, took issue with the verdict.

    “Mr. Sullivan’s sole focus — in this incident and throughout his distinguished career — has been ensuring the safety of people’s personal data on the internet,” Angeli told the New York Times.

    An email to Uber seeking comment on the conviction wasn’t immediately returned.

    Sullivan was hired as Uber’s chief security officer in 2015. In November 2016, Sullivan was emailed by hackers, and employees quickly confirmed that they had stolen records on about 57 million users and also 600,000 driver’s license numbers, prosecutors said.

    After learning of the breach, Sullivan began a scheme to hide it from the public and the Federal Trade Commission, which had been investigating a smaller 2014 hack, authorities said.

    According to the U.S. attorney’s office, Sullivan told subordinates that “the story outside of the security group was to be that ‘this investigation does not exist,’” and arranged to pay the hackers $100,000 in bitcoin in exchange for them signing non-disclosure agreements promising not to reveal the hack. He also never mentioned the breach to Uber lawyers who were involved with the FTC’s inquiry, prosecutors said.

    “Sullivan orchestrated these acts despite knowing that the hackers were hacking and extorting other companies as well as Uber,” the U.S. attorney’s office said.

    Uber’s new management began investigating the breach in the fall of 2017. Despite Sullivan lying to the new chief executive officer and others, the truth was uncovered and the breach was made public, prosecutors said.

    Sullivan was fired along with Craig Clark, an Uber lawyer he had told about the breach. Clark was given immunity by prosecutors and testified against Sullivan.

    No other Uber executives were charged in the case.

    The hackers pleaded guilty in 2019 to computer fraud conspiracy charges and are awaiting sentencing.

    Sullivan was convicted of of obstruction of proceedings of the Federal Trade Commission and misprision of felony, meaning concealing knowledge of a felony from authorities.

    Meanwhile, some experts have questioned how much cybersecurity has improved at Uber since the breach.

    The company announced last month that all its services were operational following what security professionals called a major data breach, claiming there was no evidence the hacker got access to sensitive user data.

    The lone hacker apparently gained access posing as a colleague, tricking an Uber employee into surrendering their credentials. Screenshots the hacker shared with security researchers indicate they obtained full access to the cloud-based systems where Uber stores sensitive customer and financial data.

    It is not known how much data the hacker stole or how long they were inside Uber’s network. There was no indication they destroyed data.

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  • Silent films to live on in movie theater lobby card project

    Silent films to live on in movie theater lobby card project

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    By KATHY McCORMACK

    October 6, 2022 GMT

    CONCORD, N.H. (AP) — “Missing Millions” is a 1922 silent film with a darkly prescient title — like the vast majority from that era, the movie all but vanished in the ensuing century, survived mostly by lobby cards.

    The cards, scarcely bigger than letter paper, promoted the cinematic romances, comedies and adventures of early Hollywood. More than 10,000 of the images once hung in movie theater foyers are now being digitized for preservation and publication, thanks to an agreement between Chicago-based collector Dwight Cleveland and Dartmouth College that all started when he ran into a film professor at an academic conference in New York.

    “Ninety percent of all silent films have been lost because they were made on nitrate film, which is flammable and explodable,” Cleveland told The Associated Press. “What that means is that these lobby cards are the only tangible example that these films even existed.”

    The cards, traditionally 11 by 14 inches (28 by 35 centimeters) and arranged in sets of eight or more, displayed a film’s title, production company, cast and scenes that could convey a sense of the plot. Movie screen trailers didn’t become a common practice until the rise of the movie “studio system” era in the 1920s, said Mark Williams, associate professor of film and media studies at Dartmouth and the project’s director.

    Often displayed on an easel or framed and meant to be seen up close, the lobby cards promoted current films that were playing, as well as coming attractions.

    Today, the cards, many of them more than 100 years old, play an even bigger role, reflecting the stars, styles and storytelling of a bygone era. The legacy of the Paramount Pictures-released “Missing Millions,” for example, rests in an image of actress Alice Brady and her accomplice, who plot to steal the gold of the financier who sent her father to prison. Brady made the transition to talkies, but that film and a number of others she made during the silent era are lost.

    Cleveland, a real estate developer and historic preservationist, became interested in the cards as a high school student in the 1970s. His art teacher had collected some, including one of Lupe Velez and Gary Cooper from the 1929 Western romance, “Wolf Song.”

    “I just fell in love with the color and the deco graphics, and this romantic embrace, and everything about it, which just was incredibly appealing,” he said, “and it just sort of screamed out ‘Take me home!’”

    The early lobby cards were produced using a process that produced black-and-white, sepia, or brown-toned images, with color added to some by hand or stencil, according to a post by Josie Walters-Johnston, reference librarian in the Moving Image Research Center at the Library of Congress.

    By the 1920s, the images became more photograph-like and featured details such as decorative borders and tinting. They endured for decades, with production of lobby cards ending in the late 1970s or early 1980s, Walters-Johnston wrote. But in 2015, the practice was revived when Quentin Tarantino put out a special set for his Western, “The Hateful Eight.”

    Cleveland has been shipping boxes from his collection to Dartmouth’s Media Ecology Project, where a small group of students is charged with gingerly removing each card from its protective sleeve to scan and digitize. The students, assembled by Williams, are also creating metadata.

    Williams said the project — which began in September and is expected to be finished later this fall — will provide insight into how the films were promoted and what kind of design features went into the marketing of a film from a given studio, among other information that would be difficult to find.

    “We’ll be able to restore access to a really fundamental visual culture related to these different performers and studios, and genres,” he said.

    Williams said that the project is invested in both cultivating new scholarship, and an awareness about how endangered media history is.

    “People, they link up to YouTube, and they think that media history is inexhaustible and eternal. And both of those statements are false,” Williams said.

    When the movies now considered lost or surviving incomplete were produced, the art form’s shelf life was short, Williams said. Only over time did people start to appreciate film as a significant art and a force in popular culture worthy of preservation.

    The lobby cards validate the existence of a range of movies — from major studios still in existence and smaller ones that only endured for a handful of years — and memorialize what Williams described as “a great number of stars — many of whom have been forgotten.”

    “There’s so much media that is in danger of disintegrating, just literally turning to dust,” he added, extolling the importance of the endangered “historical, vulnerable, ephemeral, extraordinary material.”

    Cleveland also had donated 3,500 lobby cards of silent-era Westerns — featuring stars such as William S. Hart, Jack Hoxie, and Buck Jones — to the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City. He arranged for their loan to Dartmouth for the project.

    When completed, the lobby card collection will become part of Dartmouth’s Early Cinema Compendium, which will feature 15 collections of rare and valuable archival and scholarly resources. The compendium, which will be published online as part of a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, will also include more than 7,000 frame samples from early and mostly lost U.S. films, plus access to more than 2,500 archival films across the genres of early cinema.

    The ultimate goal, Williams said, is “so that people who are fans or casual fans or true scholars will have access to this material and catapult new interest in it.”

    Cleveland — certainly no casual fan — once owned an archive that had 45,000 movie posters from 56 countries. He wrote a book, “Cinema on Paper: The Graphic Genius of Movie Posters,” in 2019. In addition to the Dartmouth project, his lobby card collection formed the basis for an exhibit in New York focused on the women who were prolific filmmakers, writers and producers during the silent-film era. He’s planning a book on the subject.

    “I’ve loved finding and preserving and cataloguing these historical documents,” Cleveland said.

    With Williams applying computer science, “it just takes it into a whole other realm in the future with metaverse and everything else,” Cleveland said. “I feel like I’ve been sort of stuck in nostalgia, if you will, and now I feel like I’m being propelled into the future with him and that’s a very exciting prospect.”

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  • Sheriff: Killing of kidnapped California family ‘pure evil’

    Sheriff: Killing of kidnapped California family ‘pure evil’

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    SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — The suspect in the kidnapping and killings of an 8-month-old baby, her parents and an uncle had worked for the family’s trucking business and had a longstanding feud with them that culminated in an act of “pure evil,” a sheriff said Thursday.

    The bodies of Aroohi Dheri; her mother Jasleen Kaur, 27; father Jasdeep Singh, 36; and uncle Amandeep Singh, 39, were found by a farm worker late Wednesday in an almond orchard in a remote area in the San Joaquin Valley, California’s agricultural heartland.

    Investigators were preparing a case against the suspect — a convicted felon who tried to kill himself a day after the kidnappings — and sought a person of interest believed to be his accomplice. Relatives and fellow members of the Punjabi Sikh community, meanwhile, were shocked by the killings.

    “Right now, I’ve got hundreds of people in a community that are grieving the loss of two families, and this is worldwide. These families are across different continents,” Merced County Sheriff Vern Warnke told The Associated Press. “We’ve got to show them that we can give them justice.”

    The suspect, 48-year-old Jesus Salgado, was released from the hospital and booked into the county jail Thursday night on suspicion of kidnapping and murder, the Sheriff’s Office said. It wasn’t clear if he had a lawyer who could speak on his behalf.

    Earlier, Warnke called for prosecutors to seek the death penalty. The sheriff called it one of the worst crimes he has seen over his 43 years in law enforcement and pleaded for Salgado’s accomplice to turn himself in.

    “There’s some things you’ll take to the grave. This to me was pure evil,” he said in an interview Thursday.

    The city of Merced, where the family’s trucking business was located, will hold evening vigils in their memory Thursday through Sunday. The victims’ bodies were found near the town of Dos Palos, about 30 miles (50 kilometers) south of Merced.

    Warnke on Thursday would not discuss the condition of the adults’ remains in the orchard but said it was unclear how the baby died. Warnke said the child had no visible trauma and an autopsy will be conducted.

    Salgado was previously convicted of first-degree robbery with the use of a firearm in Merced County, attempted false imprisonment and an attempt to prevent or dissuade a victim or witness. Sentenced to 11 years in state prison in that case, he was released in 2015 and discharged from parole three years later, according to the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. He also has a conviction for possession of a controlled substance, the department said.

    Relatives of Salgado contacted authorities and told them he had admitted to them his involvement in the kidnapping, Warnke told KFSN-TV on Tuesday. Salgado tried to take his own life before police arrived at a home in Atwater — where an ATM card belonging to one of the victims was used after the kidnapping — about 9 miles (14 kilometers) north of Merced. Efforts to reach Salgado’s family were unsuccessful Thursday.

    The victims were Punjabi Sikhs, a community in central California that has a significant presence in the trucking business with many of them driving trucks, owning trucking companies or other businesses associated with trucking.

    Public records show the family owns Unison Trucking Inc. and relatives said they had opened an office in the last few weeks in a parking lot the Singh brothers also operated. The feud with Salgado dated back a year, the sheriff said, and “got pretty nasty” in text messages or emails. Other details about Salgado’s employment and the nature of the dispute were not immediately available.

    Warnke said he believes the family was killed within an hour of the Monday morning kidnapping, when they were taken at gunpoint from their business.

    Surveillance video showed the suspect — later identified as Salgado — leading the Singh brothers, who had their hands zip-tied behind their backs, into the back seat of Amandeep Singh’s pickup truck. He drove the brothers away and returned several minutes later.

    The suspect then went back to the trailer that served as the business office and led Jasleen Kaur, who was carrying her baby in her arms, out and into the truck before the suspect drove them away shortly before 9:30 a.m.

    Hours later, firefighters on Monday found Amandeep Singh’s truck on fire in the town of Winton, 10 miles (16 kilometers) north of Merced. Police officers went to Amandeep Singh’s home, where a family member tried to reach him and the couple. When they were not able to reach their family members, they called the sheriff’s to report them missing.

    They were likely already dead.

    ___

    Dazio reported from Los Angeles. Associated Press writer Robert Jablon in Los Angeles and News Researcher Jennifer Farrar in New York contributed to this report.

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  • Suspect in fatal shooting at hotel near Detroit surrenders

    Suspect in fatal shooting at hotel near Detroit surrenders

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    DEARBORN, Mich. (AP) — A man accused of fatally shooting a hotel clerk in suburban Detroit during a dispute over money then barricading himself inside a room has surrendered to police, authorities said.

    The gunman’s surrender at the Hampton Inn in Dearborn occurred shortly before 9 p.m. EDT Thursday, or nearly seven hours after the standoff began. Businesses in the surrounding popular dining and shopping area had been evacuated or locked down.

    The man was “armed with a rifle, many times threatened officers, and it was quite tenuous,” Dearborn police Chief Issa Shahin told reporters. “But fortunately, we were able to resolve that peacefully.”

    The shooting stemmed from a dispute over money with staff, Shahin said. The man who was shot, identified as a 55-year-old from Riverview, was taken to a hospital and died, Shahin said.

    He was “just trying to do his job,” Shahin said.

    Shahin said the suspect, who was not identified by police Thursday, had a history of mental illness and substance abuse.

    Shots were reported shortly after 1 p.m. in the busy district in Dearborn, a city of over 100,000 people just west and southwest of Detroit. The suspect was contained in the hotel, police Cpl. Dan Bartok told reporters.

    Police evacuated the hotel and surrounding businesses. Traffic into the downtown was blocked, Michigan State Police Lt. Mike Shaw said.

    Earlier, state police tweeted that the “situation is active and dangerous” and that shots still “were being fired by the suspect.”

    Officers in tactical gear could be seen, as well as emergency vehicles.

    Some businesses near the hotel, including Dearborn Federal Savings Bank and Better Health Market, locked down with customers inside.

    “There are police everywhere,” said Cheryl Seguin, a security officer at the bank. “Police from multiple jurisdictions and federal, county, state agencies. Multiple police cars and other types of units — EMS, just about everything.”

    Patrick Collins, manager of the Better Health Market, described seeing police, automatic weapons and ambulances. Three customers were inside the market.

    “There’s a lot going on,” he said.

    ___

    Savage reported from Chicago. Williams reported from West Bloomfield, Michigan.

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  • Uvalde schools fire ex-Texas trooper who was at shooting

    Uvalde schools fire ex-Texas trooper who was at shooting

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    AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — New outrage ripped through Uvalde on Thursday over revelations that a school police officer hired after the Robb Elementary massacre was not only on campus during the May attack as a Texas state trooper but under investigation over her actions while a gunman killed 19 students and two teachers.

    The hiring of Officer Crimson Elizondo was first reported by CNN on Wednesday night. Less than 24 hours later, the Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District fired Elizondo on Thursday in the face of swift and mounting backlash from families of the fourth-grade victims and Texas lawmakers.

    But the abrupt firing did little to diffuse anger in Uvalde. Families demanded answers over why the school district’s small police force in the first place hired one of the nearly 400 law enforcement officers who rushed to the scene of the May 24 attack but waited more than an hour to confront a gunman with a AR-15-style rifle.

    Adding to some parents’ disbelief was the fact that Elizondo, according to records released to the school district in July by the Texas Department of Public Safety, is among at least seven troopers who were at the scene and put under internal investigation over their actions during one of the deadliest classroom shootings in U.S. history.

    “They knowingly hired her,” tweeted Brett Cross, whose 10-year-old son Uziyah Garcia was killed in the attack.

    The documents show that after the Uvalde school district contacted DPS in July while conducting a background screening of Elizondo, the agency sent back a letter noting that she was under internal investigation over allegations that her actions were “inconsistent with training and Department requirements.”

    In a statement Thursday announcing the firing, Uvalde school officials did not address their decision to originally hire Elizondo.

    “We sincerely apologize to the victim’s families and the greater Uvalde community for the pain that this revelation has caused,” the statement said.

    Elizondo gave notice of her resignation as a Texas state trooper Aug. 17 and her last day with the department of public safety was Aug. 29, said Travis Considine, a DPS spokesperson.

    In police body camera footage, CNN reported, Elizondo is heard telling other officers at the scene of Robb Elementary: “If my son had been in there, I would not have been outside. I promise you that.”

    Elizondo’s profile was on the Uvalde school district’s website Thursday morning but had been removed by the afternoon.

    Hours before the firing, families had gathered outside the school district’s administrative office to protest the hiring.

    “We are disgusted and angry at Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District’s (UCISD) decision to hire Officer Crimson Elizondo. Her hiring puts into question the credibility and thoroughness of UCISD’s HR and vetting practices,” a statement from some of the victims’ families said. “And it confirms what we have been saying all along: UCISD has not and is not in the business of ensuring the safety of our children at school.”

    In July, a damning report cited “egregiously poor decision making” by law enforcement officers who waited more than an hour before confronting the 18-year-old gunman. The campus police chief, Pete Arredondo, was fired in August.

    State Sen. Roland Gutierrez, whose district includes Uvalde, said Elizondo’s hiring “slapped this community in the face.”

    “A DPS trooper was on scene within two minutes of the shooter and failed to follow training, protocol, and the duty they were sworn to,” he said. “People’s children died because DPS officials failed to do their job.”

    A district spokesperson did not immediately return messages Thursday.

    ___

    Bleiberg reported from Dallas. Associated Press writer Jill Zeman Bleed in Little Rock, Arkansas, contributed to this report.

    ___

    For more AP coverage of the Uvalde school shooting: https://apnews.com/hub/uvalde-school-shooting

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