WINTER PARK, Florida — Many Jews worldwide will mark Yom Kippur in fasting and prayer at their synagogues this weekend.

But for the faithful in Florida, destructive Hurricane Milton has disrupted plans for observing the Day of Atonement — the holiest day of the year in the Jewish faith — that begins Friday evening and caps off the High Holy Days that began with Rosh Hashana on October 2.

Across the storm-threatened areas, rabbis and their congregants spent part of the Days of Awe — the span between Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur — protecting their homes and synagogues as Milton churned off the coast, spiraling into a Category 5 storm. Many — though not all — evacuated, heeding the voluntary and mandatory orders, and found safekeeping for their synagogues’ Torah scrolls and themselves.

Milton hit Florida’s Gulf Coast on Wednesday as a Category 3 cyclone, with damaging winds, heavy rains and tornadoes. By Thursday, the storm had moved eastward into the Atlantic Ocean.

Why this rabbi decided against evacuating before storm

Rabbi Yitzchok Minkowicz evacuated most of his family ahead of the storm, but chose to ride it out with his son, also a rabbi, at Chabad Lubavitch of Southwest Florida near Fort Myers. The center is hosting people displaced by the storm, including doctors, first responders and elderly who cannot evacuate.

It’s important to be “with the people and for the people,” and provide emotional and spiritual support, he said as the storm approached.

Near midnight Thursday, the Chabad center and the rest of the neighborhood lost power, said Minkowicz, making them among the millions without it. The center was spared from the storm surge, but homes and other buildings in the area were not, he said.

“Our pressing need is for Power so that we can help our community & hold Yom Kippur services,” Minkowicz told The Associated Press via email Thursday. “We’re praying for this to be resolved asap.”

The center planned to host Yom Kippur observances regardless of the storm. He said it was similar two years ago, when the holy day followed the major hurricane, Ian.

“Yom Kippur is a day that you open up your soul to God and you totally connect with God,” Minkowicz said. “When you go through a hurricane, anything materialistic is not important. They’re already in that zone where they’re totally focused on God.”

Congregation Beth Am in the Tampa Bay area also lost power and plans to hold Yom Kippur services online, said Rabbi Jason Rosenberg of the Reform synagogue.

“It’s important to keep perspective. Having a service online is not what anybody wants, but it could’ve been a lot worse,” he said. “This feels like a blessing.”

The storm underscored one of Yom Kippur’s annual reflections.

An implicit question, he said before Milton’s landfall, is “If this was going to be your last year on earth, how would you want to act differently? … When you’ve got a historical storm, a potentially life-threatening and life-altering storm bearing down on you, that message is really present.”

Milton disrupts Yom Kippur and October 7 commemoration

Like most of her congregants, Rabbi Nicole Luna had evacuated after helping secure Temple Beth El in Fort Myers, and entrusting several Torah scrolls to congregants should the threatened surge devastate the synagogue.

While the congregation braved Hurricanes Irma in 2017 and Ian in 2022, Milton’s timing hit especially hard, having already forced the postponement of community-wide commemoration of Hamas attacking Israel on October 7, 2023. The war that followed is ongoing.

“It just feels like too much for our hearts to carry right now,” Luna said from Miami ahead of the storm. “It’s all very heavy.”

After the storm passed through, Luna told her congregation that their synagogue had emerged undamaged, though it lost power.

She announced plans for a service via Zoom on Friday evening, and in-person services Saturday.

“We hope by Saturday more traffic lights will be restored but please only come if you can safely navigate the roads,” she said in her message.

Luna said she was grateful for the “big outpouring of support” she received from fellow rabbis across the East Coast of Florida, who were opening their temples for the holidays to evacuees and have emphasized they can come as they are since few grabbed “holiday-appropriate clothing” in the rush to escape Milton’s fury.

The Chabad of Southwest Broward near Fort Lauderdale is hosting several evacuees from areas most affected by the storm, ranging from a mother with her newborn to an elderly couple, said director Rabbi Pinny Andrusier. They are invited to spend Yom Kippur with the Cooper City-based group, including sharing kosher meals before and after the day of fasting.

“We were spared, thank God,” Andrusier said of the storm. “We’ve been able to open up our doors” for those in the hurricane zone.

Synagogue skips holding Yom Kippur services

Hundreds of Jewish families on Longboat Key, a barrier island off Sarasota Bay, won’t be able to observe Yom Kippur in their synagogue for the very first time in their 45-year history, said Shepard Englander, CEO of The Jewish Federation of Sarasota-Manatee.

Access to the island, specifically the John Ringling Causeway, was closed ahead of the storm. The congregation decided it wasn’t worth risking Milton’s might for Day of Atonement services. They had celebrated Rosh Hashana in their building despite a number of nearby homes being damaged by Hurricane Helene, which made landfall last month.

Englander said he and his family evacuated from their home on a riverbank outside Sarasota and were hunkered down at a friend’s home inland. From there, he was trying to make sure community members from Longboat Key and other temples that won’t have services can say their prayers and break their daylong Yom Kippur fast at a newly constructed conference center in Sarasota with food items like blintzes, bagels, cream cheese and smoked salmon.

Ahead of the storm, people were scattered in the region at emergency shelters or staying with family or friends, Englander said.

“It’s in difficult times that you really understand the power of community,” he said. “And this is a caring, tight-knit, generous Jewish community.”
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Taipei, Taiwan — Organizers of Taiwan’s premier film festival report a huge increase this year in entries from China, despite a ban imposed by Beijing six years ago on participation in the festival by Chinese filmmakers and actors.

As many as 100 Chinese entries had been submitted for Golden Horse Awards in recent years, in defiance of the ban and without apparent consequences. But this year organizers say the number of movies and documentaries submitted from China shot up to 276.

More than a dozen of the Chinese films are potential finalists, some in multiple categories. The winners will be announced on November 23.

Industry analysts and directors say many of the Chinese filmmakers may have turned to the Golden Horse Awards to earn exposure for their movies, fearing they would be banned at home. Others point to the festival’s reputation for hosting a diversity of films.

According to a list of finalists released on October 2, Chinese director Lou Ye’s pseudo-documentary, An Unfinished Film, and Geng Jun’s black-and-white gay film Bel Ami were shortlisted for multiple awards.

Wonder Weng, executive director of the Taiwan Film Critics Society in Taipei, said both movies are likely to be banned in China.

He said that Lou, a regular participant in the Golden Horse Awards, has never bowed to the Chinese system and that his An Unfinished Film deviates from Beijing’s favored narratives about the COVID-19 pandemic. Geng’s Bel Ami, Weng added, challenges the values of the Chinese Communist Party amid a heavy-handed crackdown on the LGBTQ community.

Among this year’s entrants is Zheng Yu, a 27-year-old independent director from Inner Mongolia who specializes in expressing thoughts and emotions through images and who has been involved in film and television production for eight years.

His entry, Her Dream in the Living Room is a short film that records how life for his family was changed by an elder’s chronic disease. Although he was not shortlisted in the end, he told VOA that he still dreams of standing on the stage of the Golden Horse Awards one day.

Zheng said there are three golden awards in the Chinese film industry: the Taiwan Golden Horse, the Hong Kong Golden Statue and the China Golden Rooster Awards.

Among the three, “The Golden Horse Awards are more welcoming to varieties of films, and it is also more supportive of young directors, so this is why I wanted to apply for the Golden Horse Awards,” he said.

In addition to the film entries from China, this year’s festival includes 277 entries from Taiwan, 72 from Hong Kong, 17 from Macau, 21 from Malaysia, 17 from Singapore and 67 from other countries.

Ng Kwok Kwan, an associate professor at the Academy of Film at Hong Kong Baptist University, said the Golden Horse Awards are the oldest Chinese film awards on either side of the Taiwan Strait.

Although entries from China, Hong Kong and Macao have been discouraged by politics, the Golden Horse Awards are still seen as major awards in the Chinese film industry, and being nominated for a festival award will greatly enhance a film’s visibility, he said.

Ng added that the festival has become the best channel for Chinese-speaking audiences to access excellent works, and it is also the ideal outlet for some non-mainstream Hong Kong and Chinese filmmakers.

He said Hong Kong-made films received a total of 18 nominations at last year’s Golden Horse Awards and finally won four awards: Best New Director, Best New Actor, Best Feature Short Film and Best Animated Short Film.

“In recent years, some of the Hong Kong films nominated have been very good. They belong to a relatively niche and non-mainstream, and [the festival] has a special [interest] in the themes of non-mainstream, social issues, and experimental films, and I think it really has a certain contribution [to Hong Kong films],” he said.

Seventy-two Hong Kong films participated in this year’s Golden Horse Awards. From Now On, which explores the situation of older lesbians, was shortlisted for the Best Feature Film, Best Director and Best Actress awards.

Among the five shortlisted films for Best Short Film, three are Hong Kong films, including Colour Ideology Sampling.mov, Something About Us and Letters from the Imprisoned: Chow Hang Tung.
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The vibrant world of yellow-skinned giants, surreal landscapes and a massive mechanical zoetrope have taken over the Hirshhorn Museum in the largest U.S. showcase of work by Brazilian twin brothers OSGEMEOS. It’s the most comprehensive display of the siblings’ art ever presented in the United States. Maxim Adams has the story. Camera: Sergii Dogotar.
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While online dating apps are as popular as ever, some singles prefer meeting in person. Karina Bafradzhian has a look at some services that offer face-to-face meetups for people who are looking for friends as often as dates. Camera: Sergii Dogotar
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BEIJING — Coco Gauff rallied Saturday from a set down for the third consecutive match as she beat Paula Badosa 4-6, 6-4, 6-2 to advance to the final of the China Open.

The sixth-ranked Gauff will play Karolina Muchova of the Czech Republic in Sunday’s final as the 20-year-old American bids for her second WTA-1000 level title.

Muchova defeated Olympic gold medalist Zheng Qinwen 6-3, 6-4 in the other semifinal.

Gauff, who has a 7-1 record in tour finals, has made a habit of slow starts in Beijing this week and the script played out again as the No. 19-ranked Badosa took a tight opening set in 59 minutes, saving 10 of 11 break points.

The Spaniard then built a 3-1 lead in the second set before the 2023 U.S. Open champion shifted the momentum by saving four break points and then breaking back to level at 4-4.

Gauff then held for 5-4 and broke Badosa again to force a deciding set.

“I felt like I was playing the right way the whole time, just a couple of unforced errors, she was playing well too,” Gauff said in her on-court interview. “I was trying to stay focused. Mentally, I just tried to reset. I got down a couple of times, and I tried to bounce back.”

With all the momentum, Gauff then broke Badosa three more times — for the loss of one of her own — as she clinched the match in 2 hours, 20 minutes.

Gauff had also lost the first set to Naomi Osaka in the fourth round before winning by walkover as the four-time major winner retired with a back injury at one set-all.

“I’ve had tough opponents the whole tournament,” Gauff said.

In the quarterfinals, Gauff trailed the No. 115-ranked Yuliia Starodubtseva before rallying to win in three.

Shanghai masters

Carlos Alcaraz and top-ranked Jannik Sinner showed no signs of fatigue from their China Open final earlier this week to advance with comfortable straight-set victories in their opening matches.

The second-ranked Alcaraz, who beat the Italian in Beijing on Wednesday for his fourth title of the year, recorded his 10th consecutive win with a 6-2, 6-2 result against 19-year-old Shang Juncheng of China.

The 21-year-old Spaniard won the first nine points of the match and four of seven break points as he rushed into a third-round meeting with another Chinese player, Wu Yibing.

“I’m not used to playing against players younger than me,” Alcaraz said. “He has been playing good tennis lately, lifting his first ATP (title in Chengdu), so I’m pretty sure he’s going to climb the rankings. I’m just happy to be able to win these kinds of matches.”

Sinner, who is dealing with an ongoing doping case, had a comfortable 6-1, 6-4 outing against Taro Daniel of Japan for his 250th career win.

The Italian, who won the U.S Open last month for his second major of the year, fired 12 aces and 38 winners.

“I felt quite comfortable today,” said the 23-year-old Sinner, who next plays Tomas Martin Etcheverry of Argentina. “I feel in good shape also physically, which is very important for me. Of course I will try to improve for tomorrow’s performance, but today I was serving really, really well, especially in important moments, and was moving well.”

No. 65-ranked Jakub Mensik of the Czech Republic broke sixth-ranked Andrey Rublev seven times on his way to an upset 6-7 (7), 6-4, 6-3 victory.

Yosuke Watanuki also had a surprise win, beating Number 35-ranked Brendan Nakashima 7-6 (4), 6-3. The Japanese qualifier plays either seventh-ranked Taylor Fritz of the U.S. or French qualifier Terence Atmane next.

Also, 24th-ranked Alexei Popyrin of Australia beat Miomir Kecmanovic of Serbia 6-3, 6-2.

Later Saturday, third-ranked Alexander Zverev began his campaign against Italian qualifier Mattia Bellucci, while fourth-ranked Novak Djokovic faced Alex Michelsen of the United States. 
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LIMA, Peru — Peru on Thursday celebrated two decades since the creation of a genetically modified breed of guinea pig, a rodent whose meat has formed a part of the diet of people in the Andean nation for thousands of years.

The genetically modified breed of guinea pig — known as cuy locally — is called “Peru.” It was created in 2004 at the National Institute of Agrarian Innovation, Juan Solórzano, a research zootechnician, said in the middle of one of the institute’s farms where thousands of guinea pigs are raised for study.

What characterizes the Peru breed is that grows faster, reaching a weight of 1 kilogram in 56 days, rather than the 160 days that was needed before, Solórzano said.

“It is a precocious breed,” said Solórzano.

Guinea pigs are native to the Andes Mountains and are raised in Peru, Bolivia, Ecuador and Colombia, areas where the Inca Empire spread almost 500 years ago.

There are more than 25 million guinea pigs in Peru, according to official figures. The rodent is so popular in the South American country that authorities have decreed the second Friday of October as National Guinea Pig Day to encourage its consumption.

Internal migration from Peru’s Andes in the 20th century brought the custom of eating guinea pigs to the country’s Pacific coast.

“It is eaten at sporting events or religious festivals. Guinea pig is a festive dish,” Solórzano said. It is also used in ritual healing practices by being rubbed over the body of a sick person.

Marina Isabel Briceño, an employee at an air conditioning supply company, said she has eaten guinea pigs since she was a child, calling them a delicacy served at “special events.”

Born in the Cajamarca region, Briceño said that at baptisms the parents often give the godfather and godmother a tray with more than a dozen guinea pigs that have been fried and are “crispy and ready to eat.”

“I know it is a rodent, a distant relative of rats, but those animals eat garbage, whereas guinea pigs eat something else, tender corn leaves which is why they are tasty,” she said.
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LOS ANGELES — American actor John Amos, who starred as the family patriarch on the hit 1970’s sitcom Good Times and earned an Emmy nomination for his role in the seminal 1977 miniseries Roots, has died. He was 84. 

Amos’ publicist, Belinda Foster, confirmed the news of his death Tuesday. No other details were immediately available. 

He played James Evans Sr. on Good Times, which featured one of television’s first Black two-parent families. Produced by Norman Lear and co-created by actor Mike Evans, who co-starred on All in the Family and The Jeffersons, it ran from 1974-79 on CBS. 

“That show was the closest depiction in reality to life as an African American family living in those circumstances as it could be,” Amos told Time magazine in 2021. 

His character, along with wife Florida, played by Esther Rolle, originated on another Lear show, Maude. James Evans often worked two manual labor jobs to support his family that included three children, with Jimmie Walker becoming a breakout star as oldest son J.J. 

Such was the show’s impact that Alicia Keys, Rick Ross, the Wu-Tang Clan are among the musicians who name-checked Amos or his character in their lyrics. 

Amos and Rolle were eager to portray a positive image of a Black family, struggling against the odds in a public housing project in Chicago. But they grew frustrated at seeing Walker’s character being made foolish and his role expanded. 

“The fact is that Esther’s criticism, and also that of John and others — some of it very pointed and personal — seriously damaged my appeal in the Black community,” Walker wrote in his 2012 memoir Dyn-O-Mite! Good Times, Bad Times, Our Times. 

After three seasons of critical acclaim and high ratings, Amos was fired. He had become critical of the show’s white writing staff creating storylines that he felt were inauthentic to the Black characters. 

“There were several examples where I said, ‘No, you don’t do these things. It’s anathema to Black society. I’ll be the expert on that, if you don’t mind,'” he told Time magazine. “And it got confrontational and heated enough that ultimately my being killed off the show was the best solution for everybody concerned, myself included.” 

Amos’ character was killed in a car accident. Walker lamented the situation. “If the decision had been up to me, I would have preferred that John stay and the show remain more of an ensemble,” he wrote in his memoir. “Nobody wanted me up front all the time, including me.” 

Amos and Lear later reconciled and they shared a hug at a Good Times live TV reunion special in 2019. 

Amos quickly bounced back, landing the role of an adult Kunta Kinte, the centerpiece of Roots, based on Alex Haley’s novel set during and after the era of slavery in the U.S. The miniseries was a critical and ratings blockbuster, and Amos earned one of its 37 Emmy nominations. 

“I knew that it was a life-changing role for me, as an actor and just from a humanistic standpoint,” he told Time magazine. “It was the culmination of all of the misconceptions and stereotypical roles that I had lived and seen being offered to me. It was like a reward for having suffered those indignities.” 

Early years

Born John Allen Amos Jr. on Dec. 27, 1939, in Newark, New Jersey, he was the son of an auto mechanic. He graduated from Colorado State University with a sociology degree and played on the school’s football team. 

Before pursuing acting, he moved to New York and was a social worker at the Vera Institute of Justice, working with defendants at the Brooklyn House of Detention. 

He had a brief professional football career, playing in various minor leagues. He signed a free-agent contract in 1967 with the Kansas City Chiefs, but coach Hank Stram encouraged Amos to pursue his interest in writing instead. He had jobs as an advertising and comedy writer before moving in front of the camera. 

Amos’ first major TV role was as Gordy Howard, the weatherman on The Mary Tyler Moore Show from 1970-73. As the show’s only Black character, he played straight man to bombastic anchor Ted Baxter. 

Among Amos’ film credits were Let’s Do It Again with Bill Cosby and Sidney Poitier, Coming to America with Eddie Murphy and its 2021 sequel, Die Hard 2, Madea’s Witness Protection and Uncut Gems with Adam Sandler. He was in Ice Cube and Dr. Dre’s 1994 video “Natural Born Killaz.” 

He was a frequent guest star on The West Wing, and his other TV appearances included Hunter, The District, Men in Trees, All About the Andersons, Two and a Half Men, and The Ranch. 

In 2020, Amos was inducted into the New Jersey Hall of Fame. He served in the New Jersey National Guard.
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NEW YORK — Pete Rose, baseball’s career hits leader and fallen idol who undermined his historic achievements and Hall of Fame dreams by gambling on the game he loved and once embodied, has died. He was 83.

Stephanie Wheatley, a spokesperson for Clark County in Nevada, confirmed on behalf of the medical examiner that Rose died Monday. Wheatley said the cause and manner of death had not yet been determined.

For fans who came of age in the 1960s and ’70s, no player was more exciting than the Cincinnati Reds’ No. 14, “Charlie Hustle,” the brash superstar with the shaggy hair, puggish nose and muscular forearms. At the dawn of artificial surfaces, divisional play and free agency, Rose was old school, a conscious throwback to baseball’s early days. Millions could never forget him crouched and scowling at the plate, running full speed to first even after drawing a walk, or sprinting for the next base and diving headfirst into the bag.

A 17-time All-Star, the switch-hitting Rose played on three World Series winners. He was the National League MVP in 1973 and World Series MVP two years later. He holds the major league record for games played (3,562) and plate appearances (15,890) and the NL record for the longest hitting streak (44). He was the leadoff man for one of baseball’s most formidable lineups with the Reds’ championship teams of 1975 and 1976, with teammates that included Hall of Famers Johnny Bench, Tony Perez and Joe Morgan.

But no milestone approached his 4,256 hits, breaking his hero Ty Cobb’s 4,191 and signifying his excellence no matter the notoriety that followed. It was a total so extraordinary that you could average 200 hits for 20 years and still come up short. Rose’s secret was consistency, and longevity. Over 24 seasons, all but six played entirely with the Reds, Rose had 200 hits or more 10 times, and more than 180 four other times. He batted .303 overall, even while switching from second base to outfield to third to first, and he led the league in hits seven times.

“Every summer, three things are going to happen,” Rose liked to say, “the grass is going to get green, the weather is going to get hot, and Pete Rose is going to get 200 hits and bat .300.”

Rose was Rookie of the Year in 1963, but he started off 0 for 12 with three walks and a hit by pitch before getting his first major league hit, an eighth-inning triple off Pittsburgh’s Bob Friend. It came in Cincinnati on April 13, 1963, the day before Rose’s 22nd birthday. He reached 1,000 in 1968, 2,000 just five years later and 3,000 just five years after that.

He moved into second place, ahead of Hank Aaron, with hit No. 3,772, in 1982. No. 4,000 was off the Phillies’ Jerry Koosman in 1984, exactly 21 years to the day after his first hit. He caught up with Cobb on Sept. 8, 1985, and surpassed him three days later, in Cincinnati, with Rose’s mother and teenage son, Pete Jr., among those in attendance.

Rose was 44 and the team’s player-manager. Batting left-handed against the San Diego Padres’ Eric Show in the first inning, he smacked a 2-1 slider into left field, a clean single. The crowd of 47,000-plus stood and yelled. The game was halted to celebrate. Rose was given the ball and the first base bag, then wept openly on the shoulder of first base coach and former teammate, Tommy Helms.

Baseball Commissioner Peter Ueberroth, watching from New York, declared that Rose had “reserved a prominent spot in Cooperstown.” After the game, a 2-0 win for the Reds in which Rose scored both runs, he received a phone call from President Ronald Reagan.

“Your reputation and legacy are secure,” Reagan told him. “It will be a long time before anyone is standing in the spot where you’re standing now.”

Four years later, he was gone.

On March 20, 1989, Ueberroth (who would soon be succeeded by A. Bartlett Giamatti) announced that his office was conducting a “full inquiry into serious allegations” about Rose. Reports emerged that he had been relying on a network of bookies and friends and others in the gambling world to place bets on baseball games, including some with the Reds. Rose denied any wrongdoing, but the investigation found that the “accumulated testimony of witnesses, together with the documentary evidence and telephone records reveal extensive betting activity by Pete Rose in connection with professional baseball and, in particular, Cincinnati Reds games, during the 1985, 1986, and 1987 baseball seasons.”

Betting on baseball had been a primal sin since 1920, when several members of the Chicago White Sox were expelled for throwing the 1919 World Series — to the Cincinnati Reds. Baseball’s Rule 21, posted in every professional clubhouse, proclaims that “Any player, umpire or club or league official or employee who shall bet any sum whatsoever upon any baseball game in connection with which the bettor has a duty to perform shall be declared permanently ineligible.”

As far back as the 1970s, Bench and others had worried about Rose. By all accounts, he never bet against his own team, but even betting on the Reds left himself open to blackmail and raised questions about whether a given managerial decision was based on his own financial interest.

In August 1989, at a New York press conference, Giamatti spoke some of the saddest words in baseball history: “One of the game’s greatest players has engaged in a variety of acts which have stained the game, and he must now live with the consequences of those acts.” Giamatti announced that Rose had agreed to a lifetime ban from baseball, a decision that in 1991 the Hall of Fame would rule left him ineligible for induction. Rose attempted to downplay the news, insisting that he had never bet on baseball and that he would eventually be reinstated.

Within weeks of his announcement, Giamatti was dead from a heart attack. But the ban remained in place and Rose never made it to the Hall in his lifetime, although he did receive 41 votes in 1992 (when 323 votes were needed), around the time the Hall formally ruled that those banned from the game could never be elected. His status was long debated. Rose’s supporters including Donald Trump, who in 2015, the year before he was elected president, tweeted: “Can’t believe Major League Baseball just rejected @PeteRose_14 for the Hall of Fame. He’s paid the price. So ridiculous — let him in!”

Meanwhile, his story changed. In a November 1989 memoir, written with “The Boys of Summer” author Roger Kahn, Rose again claimed innocence, only to reverse himself in 2004. He desperately wanted to come back, and effectively destroyed his chances. He would continue to spend time at casinos, insisting he was there for promotion, not gambling. He believed he had “messed up” and that his father would have been ashamed, but he still bet on baseball, albeit legally.

“I don’t think betting is morally wrong. I don’t even think betting on baseball is morally wrong,” he wrote in “Play Hungry,” a memoir released in 2019. “There are legal ways, and there are illegal ways, and betting on baseball the way I did was against the rules of baseball.”
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Los Angeles — Kris Kristofferson, a Rhodes scholar with a deft writing style and rough charisma who became a country music superstar and A-list Hollywood actor, has died.

Kristofferson died at his home in Maui, Hawaii on Saturday, family spokesperson Ebie McFarland said in an email. He was 88.

McFarland said Kristofferson died peacefully, surrounded by his family. No cause was given. He was 88.

Starting in the late 1960s, the Brownsville, Texas native wrote such classics standards as “Sunday Mornin’ Comin’ Down,” “Help Me Make It Through the Night,” “For the Good Times” and “Me and Bobby McGee.” Kristofferson was a singer himself, but many of his songs were best known as performed by others, whether Ray Price crooning “For the Good Times” or Janis Joplin belting out “Me and Bobby McGee.”

Kristofferson, who could recite William Blake from memory, wove intricate folk music lyrics about loneliness and tender romance into popular country music. With his long hair and bell-bottomed slacks and counterculture songs influenced by Bob Dylan, he represented a new breed of country songwriters along with such peers as Willie Nelson, John Prine and Tom T. Hall.

“There’s no better songwriter alive than Kris Kristofferson,” Nelson said during a November 2009 award ceremony for Kristofferson held by BMI. “Everything he writes is a standard and we’re all just going to have to live with that.”

As an actor, he played the leading man opposite Barbara Streisand and Ellen Burstyn, but also had a fondness for shoot-out Westerns and cowboy dramas.

He was a Golden Gloves boxer and football player in college, received a master’s degree in English from Merton College at the University of Oxford in England and turned down an appointment to teach at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, New York, to pursue songwriting in Nashville. Hoping to break into the industry, he worked as a part-time janitor at Columbia Records’ Music Row studio in 1966 when Dylan recorded tracks for the seminal “Blonde on Blonde” double album.

At times, the legend of Kristofferson was larger than real life. Johnny Cash liked to tell a mostly exaggerated story of how Kristofferson, a former U.S. Army pilot, landed a helicopter on Cash’s lawn to give him a tape of “Sunday Mornin’ Comin’ Down” with a beer in one hand. Over the years in interviews, Kristofferson said with all respect to Cash, while he did land a helicopter at Cash’s house, the ‘man in black’ wasn’t even home at the time, the demo tape was a song that no one ever actually cut, and he certainly couldn’t fly a helicopter holding a beer.

In a 2006 interview with The Associated Press, he said he might not have had a career without Cash.

“Shaking his hand when I was still in the Army backstage at the Grand Ole Opry was the moment I’d decided I’d come back,” Kristofferson said. “It was electric. He kind of took me under his wing before he cut any of my songs. He cut my first record that was record of the year. He put me on stage the first time.”

One of his most recorded songs, “Me and Bobby McGee,” was written based on a recommendation from Monument Records founder Fred Foster. Foster had a song title in his head called “Me and Bobby McKee,” named after a female secretary in his building. Kristofferson said in an interview in the magazine, Performing Songwriter, that he was inspired to write the lyrics about a man and woman on the road together after watching the Frederico Fellini film, “La Strada.”

Joplin, who had a close relationship with Kristofferson, changed the lyrics to make Bobby McGee a man and cut her version just days before she died in 1970 from a drug overdose. The recording became a posthumous No. 1 hit for Joplin.

Hits that Kristofferson recorded include “Why Me,” “Loving Her Was Easier (Than Anything I’ll Ever Do),” “Watch Closely Now,” “Desperados Waiting for a Train,” “A Song I’d Like to Sing” and “Jesus Was a Capricorn.”

In 1973, he married fellow songwriter Rita Coolidge and together they had a successful duet career that earned them two Grammy awards. They divorced in 1980.
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New York — Francis Ford Coppola’s decades-in-the-making, self-financed epic “Megalopolis” flopped with moviegoers, while the acclaimed DreamWorks Animation family film “The Wild Robot” soared to No. 1 at the weekend box office.

“The Wild Robot,” Chris Sanders’ adaptation of Peter Brown’s bestseller, outperformed expectations to launch with $35 million in ticket sales in U.S. and Canada theaters, according to studio estimates Sunday. “Wild Robot” was poised to do well after critics raved about the story of a shipwrecked robot who raises an orphan gosling. Audiences agreed, giving the film an A CinemaScore. “Wild Robot” is likely to set up a long and lucrative run for the Universal Pictures release.

Paul Dergarabedian, senior media analyst for Comscore, predicts “The Wild Robot” “may take a page from the ‘Elemental’ playbook by opening to respectable box office and then looking toward long-term playability.” Pixar’s “Elemental,” which like “The Wild Robot” wasn’t a sequel, debuted with a modest $30 million but went on to gross nearly $500 million worldwide.

Family movies, led by the year’s biggest hit “Inside Out 2,” have particularly powered the box office this year. David A. Gross, a film consultant who publishes a newsletter for Franchise Entertainment, said the genre should reach $6 billion worldwide in 2024 — which, he noted, “is back to pre-pandemic levels.”

“Megalopolis,” Coppola’s vision of a Roman epic set in modern-day New York, was never expected to perform close to that level. But the film’s $4 million debut was still sobering for a movie that Coppola bankrolled himself for $120 million. Following its premiere at the Cannes Film Festival, critics have been mixed on Coppola’s first film in 13 years. Audiences gave it a D+ CinemaScore.

By any financial measure, “Megalopolis” was a mega-flop. But from the start, the 85-year-old Coppola maintained money wasn’t his concern. Coppola fashioned the film, which he first began developing in the late 1970s, as a grand personal statement about human possibility. 

“Everyone’s so worried about money,” Coppola told The Associated Press in an interview ahead of the film’s release. “I say: Give me less money and give me more friends.”

Studios passed on “Megalopolis” after Cannes. Lionsgate ultimately stepped forward to distribute it, for a fee. Coppola also picked up the tab for most of its $15 million in marketing costs. The film, which stars Adam Driver, Nathalie Emmanuel and Aubrey Plaza, also played in about 200 IMAX locations, which accounted for $1.8 million of its ticket sales.

After three weeks atop the box office, Tim Burton’s “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” slid to second place with $16 million in its fourth weekend of release. The Warner Bros. sequel to the 1988 “Beetlejuice,” starring Michael Keaton and Winona Ryder, has amassed $250 million domestically in a month of release.

Third place went to “Transformers One,” the Transformers prequel starring Chris Hemsworth and Brian Tyree Henry. After its lower-than expected debut last weekend, the Paramount release collected $9.3 million on its second weekend.

“Megalopolis” was even bested by the Indian Telugu-language action film “Devara: Part 1.” It grossed $5.1 million in its opening weekend, good enough for fourth place.

Also debuting in theaters was Jason Reitman’s “Saturday Night,” an affectionate dramatization of the sketch-comedy institution on the night it first aired in 1975. On the same weekend the NBC series began its 50th season, Reitman’s movie launched in five New York and Los Angeles theaters and collected $265,000, good for a strong $53,000 per-theater average. “Saturday Night” goes nationwide in 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. “The Wild Robot,” $35 million. 

2. “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice,” $16 million. 

3. “Transformers One,” $9.3 million. 

4. “Devara: Part 1,” $5.1 million. 

5. “Speak No Evil,” $4.3 million. 

6. “Megalopolis,” $4 million. 

7. “Deadpool & Wolverine,” $2.7 million. 

8. “My Old Ass,” $2.2 million. 

9. “Never Let Go,” $2.2 million. 

10. “The Substance,” $1.8 million. 
    …

MUNICH — The head brewmaster for Weihenstephan, the world’s oldest brewery, has a secret: He really likes alcohol-free beer.

Even though he’s quick to say he obviously enjoys real beer more, Tobias Zollo says he savors alcohol-free beer when he’s working or eating lunch. It has the same taste but fewer calories than a soft drink, he said, thanks to the brewery’s process of evaporating the alcohol.

“You can’t drink beer every day — unfortunately,” he joked last week at the Bavarian state brewery in the German town of Freising, about 30 kilometers north of Munich.

Zollo isn’t alone in his appreciation for the sober beverage. Alcohol-free beer has been gaining popularity in recent years as beer consumption shrinks.

At Weihenstephan, which was founded as a brewery in 1040 by Benedictine monks, non-alcoholic wheat beer and lager now make up 10% of the volume. The increase over the last few years, since they started making alcohol-free drinks in the 1990s, mirrors the statistics for the rest of Germany’s beer industry.

“The people are unfortunately — I have to say that as a brewer — unfortunately drinking less beer,” Zollo said Friday, the day before Oktoberfest officially started. “If there’s an alternative to have the crisp and fresh taste from a typical Weihenstephan beer, but just as a non-alcoholic version, we want to do that.”

Even at Oktoberfest — arguably the world’s most famous ode to alcohol — alcohol-free beer is on the menu.

All but two of the 18 large tents at the festival offer the drink through the celebration’s 16 days. The sober beverage will cost drinkers the same as an alcoholic beer — between 13.60 and 15.30 euros ($15.12 and $17.01) for a 1-liter mug — but save them from a hangover.

“For people who don’t like to drink alcohol and want to enjoy the Oktoberfest as well, I think it’s a good option,” Mikael Caselitz, 24, of Munich said Saturday inside one of the tents. “Sometimes people feel like they have more fun with alcohol, which is not a good thing because you can also have fun without alcohol.”

He added: “If you want to come and drink alcohol-free beer, nobody will judge you.”

This year marked the first time an alcohol-free beer garden opened in Munich. “Die Null,” which means “the zero” in German, served non-alcoholic beer, mocktails and other alcohol-free drinks near the city’s main train station this summer but was scheduled to close a few day before Oktoberfest opened.

Walter König, managing director of the Society of Hop Research north of Munich, said researchers have had to breed special hops varieties for alcohol-free beer. If brewers use the typical hops for alcohol-free beer, the distinct aroma gets lost when the alcohol is reduced during the brewing process.

But customers don’t care about that, König said Friday as he prepared for Oktoberfest.

“They only want to know that what they are tasting is as good as traditional beers with alcohol,” he said.
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After Russia invaded Ukraine, Yuliia Lebedynska moved to Brussels with her daughter and granddaughter. She was an entrepreneur in Ukraine but in Belgium, she found herself in a Ukrainian women’s choir.  Valentina Vasileva has the story, narrated by Anna Rice. Camera: David Gogokhia  
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Washington — Johnny Cash now stands among the most famous politicians, trailblazers and activists of American history as he became the first professional musician to be honored with a statue in the U.S. Capitol.

Congressional leaders from both parties and members of the Cash family were among the several hundred guests who gathered Tuesday for the unveiling of the statue. They shared their memories of a man who grew up on an Arkansas cotton farm and turned a love of music into a decades-long career that gave voice to the struggles and triumphs of everyday Americans.

“Some may ask: Why should a musician have a statue here in the halls of the great American republic?” House Speaker Mike Johnson said at the unveiling ceremony. “The answer is pretty simple. It’s because America is about more than laws and politics.”

Each state selects two statues to place within the Capitol. The Cash statue is the second new figure Arkansas has sent to replace two existing images that had represented the state at the U.S. Capitol for more than 100 years. Another statue depicting civil rights leader Daisy Bates was unveiled at the Capitol earlier this year. Bates mentored the nine Black children who desegregated Little Rock Central High School in 1957.

The state’s legislature in 2019 voted to replace Arkansas’ two prior statues, which depicted little-known figures from the 18th and 19th centuries, with Bates and Cash.

Known as the “The Man in Black,” Cash was a vivid storyteller who sang with a deep voice songs like “I Walk The Line,” “Ring of Fire,” “Jackson” and “A Boy Named Sue.” The statue depicts the singer with a guitar slung across his back and a Bible in his hand. Little Rock sculptor Kevin Kresse created the statue.

Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries said artistic creativity is an important part of the country’s growth, and Cash’s “substance” and “swagger” inspired generations of artists from every genre imaginable. He quoted singers such as Bob Dylan and Snoop Dogg about Cash’s impact.

“He called Johnny Cash a real American gangster. That a compliment from Snoop Doggy Dogg,” Jeffries said as the audience laughed. “What a life, what a legend, what a legacy.”

Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders led a group of Arkansas lawmakers at the ceremony. She said she grew up in a musical family where “after God and country, came Johnny Cash.” She noted how Cash struggled with addiction but went on to perform for prisoners and held a deep religious faith. She described him as a “hymn-singing Christian” who also experienced difficult times.

“When so much in today’s world is fake, Johnny Cash was very real,” Sanders said.

Cash’s daughter, Rosanne Cash, said her father would have viewed the statue “as the ultimate” honor in his life. She said her father’s hard upbringing instilled in him a strong work ethic and that he loved the idea of America as a place of dreams and refuge.

“This man was a living redemption story,” Rosanne Cash said. “He encountered darkness and met it with love.”

Cash was born in Kingsland, a tiny town about 100 kilometers south of Little Rock. He died in 2003 at age 71. His achievements include 90 million records sold worldwide spanning country, rock, blues, folk and gospel. He is among the few artists inducted into both the Country Music Hall of Fame and the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.

Cash’s statue will be the newest added to the Capitol since one from North Carolina depicting the Rev. Billy Graham was unveiled in May.
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ZHENGZHOU, China — On a film set that resembles the medieval castle of a Chinese lord, Zhu Jian is busy disrupting the world’s second-largest movie industry.

The 69-year-old actor is playing the patriarch of a wealthy family celebrating his birthday with a lavish banquet. But unbeknownst to either of them, the servant in the scene is his biological granddaughter.

A second twist: Zhu is not filming for cinema screens.

“Grandma’s Moon” is a micro drama, composed of vertically shot, minute-long episodes featuring frequent plot turns designed to keep millions of viewers hooked to their cellphone screens — and paying for more.

“They don’t go to the cinema anymore,” said Zhu of his audience, which he described as largely composed of middle-aged workers and pensioners. “It’s so convenient to hold a mobile phone and watch something anytime you want.”

China’s $5 billion a year micro drama industry is booming, according to Reuters’ interviews with 10 people in the sector and four scholars and media analysts.

The short-format videos are an increasingly potent competitor to China’s film industry, some experts say, which is second in size only to Hollywood and dominated by state-owned China Film Group. And the trend is already spreading to the United States, in a rare instance of Chinese cultural exports finding traction in the West.

Three major China-backed, micro-drama apps were downloaded 30 million times across both Apple’s App Store and Google Play in the first quarter of 2024, grossing $71 million internationally, according to analytics company Appfigures.

“The audience only has that much attention. So obviously, the more time they spend in short videos, the less time they have for TV or other longer-format shows,” said Ashley Dudarenok, founder of a Hong Kong-based marketing consultancy.

The leader in the space is Kuaishou, an app that accounted for 60% of the top 50 Chinese micro dramas last year, according to media analytics consultancy Endata.

Kuaishou vice president Chen Yiyi said at a media conference in January that the app featured 68 titles that notched more than 300 million views last year, with four of them watched over a billion times.

Some 94 million people — more than the population of Germany — watched more than 10 episodes a day on Kuaishou, she said. Reuters was not able to independently verify the data.

Initial episodes on such apps are often free, but to complete a micro drama like “Grandma’s Moon,” which has 64 clips, audiences may pay tens of yuan.

Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok that is owned by internet technology firm Bytedance, is also popular with micro drama fans.

Alongside other major Chinese social media apps like Instagram-like Xiaohongshu and YouTube competitor Bilibili, it has announced plans to make more.

In the United States, micro drama platform ReelShort, whose parent company is backed by Chinese tech giants Tencent and Baidu, has recently outranked Netflix in terms of downloads on Apple’s U.S. app store, according to market researcher Sensor Tower.

“China discovered this audience first,” said Layla Cao, a Chinese producer based in Los Angeles. “Hollywood hasn’t realized that yet, but all the China-based companies are already feeding the content.”

‘Low-brow and vulgar’

Many popular micro dramas, including “Grandma’s Moon,” have narratives that revolve around revenge or Cinderella-like rags-to-riches journeys.

Tales of how circumstances at birth are deterministic and can only be changed by near-miracles have struck a chord with viewers at a time when upward mobility in China is low and youth unemployment high.

The micro dramas often “show people who one day are lower class and the next day become upper class — you get so rich that you get to humiliate those who used to humiliate you,” said a 26-year-old screenwriter known by her pen name of Camille Rao.

Rao recently left her poorly paid job as a junior producer in the traditional film industry for what she described as the more dynamic and less hierarchical world of micro dramas. She now writes and adapts scripts for the U.S. market.

“Social mobility is actually very difficult now. Many people perceive this as a social reality,” said Xu Ting, associate professor of Chinese language and literature at Jiangnan University.

This has fueled interest in stories about billionaires and wealthy families, she added: “Everyone desires power and wealth, so it is normal for these type of stories to be popular.”

In the U.S. market, by contrast, fantasy stories about werewolves and vampires are particularly popular, several creators told Reuters.

The boom in micro dramas in China has brought scrutiny from the Communist Party.

Between late 2022 and early 2023, the National Radio and Television Administration regulator said it organized a “special rectification campaign” during which it removed 25,300 micro dramas, totaling close to 1.4 million episodes, due to their “pornographic, bloody, violent, low-brow and vulgar content.”

As Chinese leader Xi Jinping promotes values such as loyalty to the Communist Party and heteronormative marriages, the state-owned China Women’s News outlet in April complained that some micro dramas “portray unequal and twisted marriage and family relationships as a common phenomenon” and “deviate from mainstream social values.”

In June, the government began requiring some creators to register micro dramas with NRTA. The regulator didn’t respond to Reuters’ questions for this story.

Key to the commercial success of these films are plot twists that keep people paying as they scroll while commuting or in line at a grocery store. Episodes often end with a hook — such as a boyfriend walking in on his partner with another man — and viewers have to pay for the next episode to find out what happened.

“The plot of these micro dramas is exaggerated,” said Zhu, the actor. “It has plot reversals, it’s nonsensical, so it catches people’s attention and a large audience wants to see them.”

Zhu is a lover of cinema and an avid fan of Ingrid Bergman in “Casablanca.” Like many of his colleagues in micro dramas, he thinks the genre has limited artistic value. “I see it as fast food: a longer drama is a kind of sumptuous meal, and a micro drama is fast food.”

But its dedicated viewers disagree. Huang Siyi, a 28-year-old customer service agent, said she enjoyed watching romantic micro dramas because “the acting is good and the male and female leads are good-looking.”

“It’s easy to be obsessed with micro dramas,” she said.

Explosive growth

Vertical filming and distribution through social media apps mean micro dramas can be made with small overhead costs. Budgets for such films range from between $28,000 and $280,000, according to market researcher iResearch.

In the central Chinese city of Zhengzhou, “Grandma’s Moon” is being made with a compressed budget and timeline. When Reuters visited the set in July, the filming day stretched until 2 a.m. The crew then moved to a new location and began shooting again at 7 a.m.

The show was shot in just six days, and Zhu, a muscular man with a wide smile and boundless energy, says he plays table tennis after hours to keep up with the young crew on set.

“We’d need to take two to three years to distribute one traditional TV series of film, but we only need three months to distribute a micro drama, saving us a lot of time,” said Zhou Yi, a showrunner at Chinese gaming giant NetEase, which also makes micro dramas.

As micro dramas gain in popularity, actors’ salaries have also grown. Leading roles used to pay $280 a day, said Zhu, adding that main actors in big productions can now make more than double the rate, though extras earn as little as $17 daily.

A retired railway employee who started acting in the 1970s in a theater troupe attached to the unit where he worked, Zhu now lives off his pension and occasional acting gigs.

Many Chinese micro drama producers have their eye on Western markets, where cultural exports from China have often struggled. NetEase last year started making productions for the U.S. that it distributes via an app called LoveShots; the made-for-export films aren’t typically available in China.

Micro dramas designed for the West are often made by production and acting crews in Los Angeles and shot on location. The scripts, which are in English, may also revolve around themes of wealth, cheating partners and miracles.

One of the latest micro dramas on LoveShots is about a woman who, after years of being paralyzed, miraculously regains her ability to move — and walks in on her husband cheating on her.
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Los Angeles — It’s a three-peat for “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice.”

The Tim Burton legacy sequel to his 1988 horror comedy topped the North American box office charts for the third straight weekend with $26 million in ticket sales, according to studio estimates Sunday.

It edged out the animated new release “Transformers: One,” which brought in $25 million. The Optimus Prime origin story from Paramount Pictures features the voices of Chris Hemsworth, Brian Tyree Henry and Scarlett Johansson.

“Beetlejuice Beetlejuice,” a Warner Bros. release with Michael Keaton and Winona Ryder returning as stars, has earned more than $226 million domestically in its three weeks after a monster opening of $110 million — the third best of the year — and a second weekend of $51.6 million.

Third place went to the James McAvoy horror “Speak No Evil,” which came in at $5.9 million in its second week for a total of $21.5 million.

On the whole, the box office was in a quiet phase that is expected to break when ” Joker: Folie à Deux ” dances its way onto the big screen on Oct. 4.

The year’s second-highest grosser ” Deadpool & Wolverine ” remained in the top 5 in its ninth weekend with another $3.9 million and a domestic total of $627 million. Only Pixar’s “Inside Out 2” has earned more.

The Demi Moore-starring, Coralie Fargeat-directed body horror “The Substance,” which made a splash at the Cannes Film Festival, brought in $3.1 million on limited screens in its first weekend for the sixth spot.

The Daily Wire movie “Am I Racist?” — in which conservative columnist Matt Walsh goes undercover as a “DEI trainee” — stayed in the top 10 after a fourth place finish last week, earning $2.9 million for seventh place and a two-week total of $9 million.

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

1. “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice,” $26 million.

2. “Transformers One,” $25 million.

3. “Speak No Evil,” $5.9 million.

4. “Never Let Go,” $4.5 million.

5. “Deadpool & Wolverine,” $3.9 million.

6. “The Substance,” $3.1 million.

7. “Am I Racist?” $2.5 million.

8. “Reagan,” $1.7 million.

9. “JUNG KOOK: I AM STILL,” $1.4 million.

10. “Alien Romulus,” $1.3 million.
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