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Wes Anderson works his quirky magic once more with ‘Asteroid City’

Published Tue, 24 Dec 2024 00:59:42 GMT

From the endlessly fertile and curious mind that has given us “The Grand Budapest Hotel,” “Fantastic Mr. Fox” and “The Royal Tenenbaums” comes “Asteroid City,” and while this latest curio may not scale the heights of this artist’s greatest hits, it’s more fun than almost anything out there.Set in 1955 for reasons known only to writer-director Wes Anderson, and shot in the squarish academy ratio more common to those times, ”Asteroid City” begins with a host-narrator (Bryan Cranston) who reminds us that what we are about to see is entirely “imaginary” and “apocryphal.” He also introduces us to the hardworking writer Conrad Earp (Edward Norton), the creator of the world we about to inhabit. Soon, we behold a sign reading “Asteroid City.” It sits in the middle of a space suggesting the Arizona-Utah-straddling Monument Valley location director John Ford used for many of his Westerns. Its most important feature is a giant crater left by an incorrectly labeled and proudly displ...

‘Maximum Truth’ gives politics the mockumentary treatment

Published Tue, 24 Dec 2024 00:59:42 GMT

Frequent character actor Ike Barinholtz (“Suicide Squad,” “The Lego Movie 2”)) is both the lead actor and co-writer of “Maximum Truth,” a “mockumentary” (yes, I know, been there, done that) in which a couple of unseen filmmakers follow a self-deluded Los Angeles hustler named Rick Klingman (Barinholtz) around after he establishes a company called, yes, “Maximum Truth.” Rick is hired to dig up dirt on a Los Angeles candidate for Congress named Antonio Kelly-Zhang (Max Minghella) on behalf of a possibly (all right, probably) demented and cackling Beverly Hills dowager named Mary Jo Nackerson (the fine character actor Beth Grant). Ms. Nackerson acquired her vast fortune from her late husband Wilbur, a fracking magnate, who liked to hunt big game.Yes, “Maximum Truth” has a definite “Chinatown” vibe with Rick Klingman as an even more high-strung and aggressive truth-seeker and dirt-digger than Jack Nicholson’s J.J. Gittes. Rick’s right-hand-man is Simon Tarnum (Dylan O’...

Dear Abby: Toxic in-laws take it up a notch after hubby dies

Published Tue, 24 Dec 2024 00:59:42 GMT

Dear Abby: I was never close to my late husband’s family. He had two half-siblings from his mother and seven from his father. (He was the only mutual child between them.)  At his funeral, his sister on his mother’s side wore what appeared to be a white wedding dress and had her three daughters dressed like flower girls. She had threatened me often with violence and stalked me at my job. I got a protective order, but it took three filings to get it because her father has friends in the court system. The order is for one year, but we’ll see what happens when it expires.Everyone in his family has demanded a portion of his ashes. I refuse to divide them because he wanted to be buried with me, and I want to abide by his wishes. The other side of his family contacts me only if it benefits them.For almost a year, I took care of my father-in-law, who has dementia, without any of the seven remaining children helping. I have since cut ties with all of them. They are toxic, a...

Twitter faces ‘stress test’ of Europe’s tough new Big Tech rules

Published Tue, 24 Dec 2024 00:59:42 GMT

A top European Union official is in Silicon Valley to check whether Twitter is ready to comply with the bloc’s tough new digital rulebook, a set of sweeping new standards that the world’s biggest online platforms all must obey in just two months.European Commissioner Thierry Breton, who oversees digital policy, is the EU’s point person working to get tech companies in line for the Digital Services Act, which will force companies to crack down on hate speech, disinformation and other harmful material on their sites. It takes effect Aug. 25 for the biggest platforms. The law, along with new regulations in the pipeline for data and artificial intelligence, has made Brussels a trailblazer in the growing global movement to clamp down on Big Tech.Breton tweeted about his meeting Thursday at Twitter headquarters to carry out a voluntary “stress test” to prepare for the new rules. “The company is taking this exercise very seriously,” he said, adding he had “constructive di...

Chinese human rights lawyer chased out of 13 homes in 2 months as pressure rises on legal advocates

Published Tue, 24 Dec 2024 00:59:42 GMT

TAIPEI, Taiwan (AP) — A disbarred Chinese human rights lawyer has been forced to move 13 times in two months as part of a pattern of harassment against him and three other prominent rights advocates in Beijing that is further squeezing the country’s battered civil rights community.Wang Quanzhang said he is now living in a borrowed apartment in the suburbs where the power is frequently cut off, while another lawyer left Beijing entirely in hopes of ending the harassment. His colleague Bao Longjun said he is still in the apartment he owns, but has been barred from leaving it multiple times by unidentified groups of men who loiter outside his door. Bao said a fourth lawyer was detained along with his wife.All four are prominent members of a group known as the 709 lawyers, after the date — July 9, 2015 — when a crackdown on independent legal advocacy began in which hundreds were arrested. Such advocates are a rare source of help for people facing political charges, or trying to ac...

Evangelical leader hopes conference is ‘testosterone booster shot’ for anti-abortion 2024 candidates

Published Tue, 24 Dec 2024 00:59:42 GMT

WASHINGTON (AP) — A year after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, some of the Republican Party’s most powerful evangelical Christian voices are gathering to celebrate a ruling that sent shockwaves through American politics and stripped away a constitutional protection that stood for almost a half century.At the Faith & Freedom Coalition’s annual conference in Washington, GOP presidential candidates will be urged to keep pushing for stronger abortion restrictions, even as Democrats insist the issue will buoy them ahead of the 2024 election.Former President Donald Trump, whose three nominees to the high court allowed for the reversal of nationwide abortion rights, will give the keynote address Saturday night, the anniversary of the court’s Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision. Many of his Republican rivals are set to speak Friday, including Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, former Vice President Mike Pence, Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina, and f...

They fled the war in Nigeria’s northeast. Then bulldozers levelled their homes at a camp in Abuja

Published Tue, 24 Dec 2024 00:59:42 GMT

ABUJA, Nigeria (AP) — On a breezy morning at the height of the dry season six months ago, Rifkatu Andruwus and her children were chatting in front of their house in a displacement camp in the heart of Nigeria’s capital. Suddenly, security forces stormed into the camp, followed closely by bulldozers.The family of seven had just about half an hour to pack their belongings and leave before their shanty house and about 200 others were reduced to rubble.“They sent people to come and tell us to pack,” said 66-year-old Andruwus. “Then they started demolishing.”The Durumi camp for the displaced in Abuja, Nigeria’s capital, had been home for Andruwus since her family fled the fighting 10 years ago between Nigerian security forces and Islamic extremists in the country’s northeast. She arrived here after narrowly escaping death herself, but one of her sons and a grandson were killed in an attack by the extremists in the town of Gwoza in the northeastern Borno state. Islamic extremist reb...

NASA opposes lithium mining at tabletop flat Nevada desert site used to calibrate satellites

Published Tue, 24 Dec 2024 00:59:42 GMT

RENO, Nev. (AP) — Environmentalists, ranchers and others have fought for years against lithium mining ventures in Nevada. Yet opposition to mining one particular desert tract for the silvery white metal used in electric car batteries is coming from unusual quarters: space.An ancient Nevada lakebed beckons as a vast source of the coveted metal needed to produce cleaner electric energy and fight global warming. But NASA says the same site — flat as a tabletop and undisturbed like none other in the Western Hemisphere — is indispensable for calibrating the razor-sharp measurements of hundreds of satellites orbiting overhead.At the space agency’s request, the U.S. Bureau of Land Management has agreed to withdraw 36 square miles (92 square kilometers) of the eastern Nevada terrain from its inventory of federal lands open to potential mineral exploration and mining. NASA says the long, flat piece of land above the untapped lithium deposit in Nevada’s Railroad Valley has been us...

A suspected Russian diplomat is occupying his country’s vetoed embassy site in Australia

Published Tue, 24 Dec 2024 00:59:42 GMT

CANBERRA, Australia (AP) — A suspected lone Russian diplomat is apparently squatting on the site of Moscow’s proposed embassy after the Australian government vetoed the plan on security grounds. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese dismissed the Russian act of defiance, saying a “bloke standing in the cold on a bit of grass in Canberra is not a threat to our national security.”Parliament passed emergency legislation last week blocking on security grounds Russia’s lease on the largely empty block because the new embassy would have been too close to Parliament House.A man has been living on the site in a portable building since Sunday when passersby first saw Australian Federal Police outside the fenced block in Canberra’s Yarralumla diplomatic precinct.The Russian Embassy refused to comment on a report in The Australian newspaper that the man seen smoking cigarettes outside his accommodation was a Russian diplomat.The embassy also declined to explain why the man was on the sit...

Maine bill proposing one of country’s least restrictive abortion laws narrowly clears House vote

Published Tue, 24 Dec 2024 00:59:42 GMT

AUGUSTA, Maine — A proposal to expand access to abortions narrowly passed Thursday night in the Maine House, clearing the first hurdle after lawmakers kicked off an emotional floor debate.The 74-72 vote was closer than expected after at least one Democratic co-sponsor had a change of heart, joining lawmakers opposed to the proposal that would give the state one of the least restrictive abortion laws in the country. The bill moves next to the Maine Senate for consideration.The bill introduced by Democratic Gov. Janet Mills with the backing of legislative leaders would allow abortions any time before birth if deemed necessary by a medical provider. Current state law bans abortions after a fetus becomes viable outside the womb, at roughly 24 weeks, unless a mother’s life is at risk.House Republican Leader Billy Bob Faulkingham expressed frustration after the vote.“The stench in this building is overwhelming,” the Republican from Winter Harbor said.Passage is considered a foregone concl...