Electric vehicle manufacturers are hoping for continued growth under President-elect Donald Trump, especially as Tesla CEO Elon Musk now appears to be one of his top advisers. Genia Dulot has our story from the Los Angeles Auto Show.
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Washington — The United States announced new export restrictions Monday taking aim at China’s ability to make advanced semiconductors — used in weapon systems and artificial intelligence as competition intensifies between the world’s two biggest economies.
“The United States has taken significant steps to protect our technology from being used by our adversaries in ways that threaten our national security,” said White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan in a statement.
He added that Washington will keep working with allies and partners to “to proactively and aggressively safeguard our world-leading technologies and know-how.”
The latest rules include a restriction of exports to 140 companies, including Chinese chip firms Piotech and SiCarrier Technology.
They also impact Naura Technology Group, which makes chip production equipment, according to the Commerce Department.
“We are constantly talking to our allies and partners as well as reassessing and updating our controls,” added Under Secretary of Commerce for industry and security Alan Estevez.
The latest announcement also includes controls on two dozen types of chipmaking equipment and three kinds of software tools for developing or producing semiconductors.
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Notre Dame cathedral reopens this weekend (Dec 7/8) five years after a massive fire devastated the iconic Paris landmark. Political and religious leaders and ordinary visitors are expected to attend the events, which mark a bright spot in an otherwise turbulent year. Lisa Bryant reports from the French capital.
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New York — Christmas came early at the box office this year. “Moana 2” brought in a tidal wave of moviegoers over the Thanksgiving Day weekend, setting records with $221 million in ticket sales, according to studio estimates Sunday. That, combined with “Wicked” and “Gladiator II,” made for an unprecedented weekend in cinemas and a confluence of blockbusters more like what’s often found in late December.
Expectations were high for Walt Disney Co.’s “Moana 2,” but the film — originally planned as a series for Disney+ before it was redirected to the big screen — blew predictions out of the water. Its five-day opening set a new record for Thanksgiving moviegoing. (The previous best was $125 million for “Frozen 2” in its second week of release in 2019.) “Moana 2” added $165.3 million internationally; with $386 million worldwide, it’s the second-best global launch of the year.
At the same time, the sensation of “Wicked” showed no signs of slowing down. The Universal Pictures musical brought in $117.5 million over the five-day weekend, pushing its two-week global total to $359.2 million. Not accounting for inflation, “Wicked” is now the highest grossing Broadway adaptation over “Grease.” (That 1978 film grossed $190 million, but factoring in inflation would put it past $900 million.)
“Gladiator II,” meanwhile, also held well, dipping 44% from its opening weekend. Ridley Scott’s sequel to his Oscar-winning best picture original collected $44 million in its second weekend. While its steep price tag of $250 million will make profitability challenging, “Gladiator II” has swiftly gathered $320 million worldwide.
Those three films drove the overall box office to a record $420 million in overall Thanksgiving weekend ticket sales, according to Comscore — more than $100 million more than ever before. For an industry that has been battered in recent years by the pandemic, work stoppages and the upheaval caused by streaming, it was a triumphant weekend that showed the still-potent power of Hollywood’s blockbuster machine. Before “Wicked,” “Moana 2” and “Gladiator II” arrived in theaters, ticket sales were running about 25% behind pre-pandemic levels.
Michael O’Leary, president and chief executive of the National Association of Theater Owners, said the weekend showed what’s possible when “all the pieces of the puzzle come together” in compelling big-budget movies with marketing muscle.
“We’re very optimistic that this weekend is the start of what we believe is a full-on charge into the future,” he said. “The remaining quarter of this year looks very promising and then on into 2025 and 2026. We’re hoping next year is the first kind of normal year this industry has had in a long time.”
Like the last time such anticipated movies collided on the release calendar — 2023’s much-ballyhooed “Barbenheimer” — the movie industry again could see evidence of a rising moviegoing tide lifting all blockbusters. In recent years, studios have typically tried to space out most of their biggest releases. Earlier this fall, “Venom: The Last Dance,” for example, was the No. 1 film for three straight weeks, despite not being particularly successful.
“For a long, long time in Hollywood, there’s been a belief that you don’t put big blockbuster movies up against each other,” said O’Leary. “But the truth of the matter is that competition is good. It’s good for the movies. It’s good for the studios. It’s good for the theater owners. But it’s particularly good for the moviegoing public.”
“Moana 2” was the nexus of a strategy shift for Disney. When it first began development, it was fashioned as a series for streaming. But when Bob Iger returned as chief executive, he reconsidered the balance between theatrical and streaming. The original “Moana,” after all, was the most streamed movie on Disney+ in 2023, with the added benefit of $680 million in box office in 2016. Only in February this year did Iger announce the release of “Moana 2,” with Auli’i Cravalho and Dwayne Johnson returning as the voices of Moana and Maui.
“It just shows you that the big screen and small screen are not adversarial. They can be complementary and additive,” says Paul Dergarabedian, senior media analyst for Comscore. “Whoever made that decision to go big screen globally with ‘Moana 2,’ that was one of the greatest decisions ever.”
And it helped lead a resurgence for Walt Disney Co., whose last two animated November releases — “Strange World” and “Wish” — fizzled in theaters. “Moana 2” may become the third $1 billion-grossing movie for the studio in 2024, along with “Inside Out 2” and “Deadpool & Wolverine.” Though reviews for “Moana 2″ have only been 65% “fresh” on Rotten Tomatoes, audiences gave it an “A-” CinemaScore.
“Moana 2” is also part of a major rebound for family moviegoing. According to David A. Gross, a film consultant who publishes a newsletter for Franchise Entertainment, family moviegoing in 2024 is going to account for approximately $6.8 billion in ticket sales, roughly the sums of 2022 and 2023, combined.
After such large debuts, “Moana 2” and “Wicked” are likely to continue to drive moviegoing through December. The only question will be if this year’s Christmas movies — historically a much bigger holiday period for theaters — can come anywhere near the Thanksgiving lineup. Among the movies aiming for that holiday corridor are Disney’s “Mufasa: The Lion King,” Paramount’s “Sonic the Hedgehog 3″ and Searchlight’s “A Complete Unknown,” with Timothee Chalamet as a young Bob Dylan.
Final domestic figures will be released Monday. Estimated ticket sales for Friday through Sunday at U.S. and Canadian theaters, according to Comscore:
“Moana 2,” $135 million.
“Wicked,” $80 million.
“Gladiator II” $30.7 million.
“Red One,” $12.9 million.
“The Best Christmas Pageant Ever,” $3.3 million.
“Bonhoeffer: Pastor. Spy. Assassin,” $2.4 million.
“Venom: The Last Dance,” $2.2 million.
“Heretic,” $956,797.
“The Wild Robot,” $670,000.
“A Real Pain,” $665,000.
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DAKAR, SENEGAL — Interpol arrested 1,006 suspects in Africa during a massive two-month operation, clamping down on cybercrime that left tens of thousands of victims, including some who were trafficked, and produced millions in financial damages, the global police organization said Tuesday.
Operation Serengeti, a joint operation with Afripol, the African Union’s police agency, ran from September 2 to October 31 in 19 African countries and targeted criminals behind ransomware, business email compromise, digital extortion and online scams, the agency said in a statement.
“From multi-level marketing scams to credit card fraud on an industrial scale, the increasing volume and sophistication of cybercrime attacks is of serious concern,” said Valdecy Urquiza, the Secretary General of Interpol.
Interpol pinpointed 35,000 victims, with cases linked to nearly $193 million in financial losses worldwide, stating that local police authorities and private sector partners, including internet service providers, played a key role in the operation.
Jalel Chelba, Afripol’s executive director, said in the statement: “Through Serengeti, Afripol has significantly enhanced support for law enforcement in African Union Member States.”
Serengeti’s results were a “drastic increase” compared to operations in Africa in previous years, Enrique Hernandez Gonzalez, Interpol’s Assistant Director of Cybercrime Operations, told The Associated Press.
Interpol’s previous cybercrime operations in Africa had only led to 25 arrests in the last two years.
“Significant progress has been made, with participating countries enhancing their ability to work with intelligence and produce meaningful results,” Gonzalez said.
In Kenya, the police made nearly two dozen arrests in an online credit card fraud case linked to losses of $8.6 million. In the West African country of Senegal, officers arrested eight people, including five Chinese nationals, for a $6 million online Ponzi scheme.
Chelba said Afripol’s focus now includes emerging threats like Artificial Intelligence-driven malware and advanced cyberattack techniques.
Other dismantled networks included a group in Cameroon suspected of using a multi-level marketing scam for human trafficking, an international criminal group in Angola running an illegal virtual casino and a cryptocurrency investment scam in Nigeria, the agency said.
Interpol, which has 196 member countries and celebrated its centennial last year, works to help national police forces communicate with each other and track suspects and criminals in fields like counterterrorism, financial crime, child pornography, cybercrime and organized crime.
The world’s biggest — if not best-funded — police organization has been grappling with new challenges including a growing caseload of cybercrime and child sex abuse, and increasing divisions among its member countries.
Interpol had a total budget of about 176 million euros (about $188 million) last year, compared to more than 200 million euros at the European Union’s police agency, Europol, and some $11 billion at the FBI in the United States.
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BERLIN — The smells of mulled wine, roasted almonds and hot bratwurst are wafting through the air across the German capital again, as the city’s more than 100 Christmas markets are opening their doors this week. But the annual tradition that Germans have cherished since the Middle Ages — and successfully exported to much of the Western world — has become a pretty diverse affair, at least in Berlin.
The city of 3.8 million, which takes pride in its tolerance and diversity, offers Christmas markets for pretty much every taste these days. Nowadays, almost 40% of Berliners have immigrant roots, and the city’s LGBTQ+ community is considered one of the biggest in the country.
So it comes as no surprise that popular Christmas markets include a LGBTQ+ one offering rainbow pierogi and entertainment by drag queens, a Scandinavian market selling moose goulash and reindeer salami and a market tempting revelers with naughty gift ideas, along with a historical market that takes visitors back to medieval times.
“It’s a lovely atmosphere,” Paul Middleton said of the LGBTQ+ market Christmas Avenue, which is illuminated in the colors of the rainbow.
“It’s great to do something for the LGBTQ+ community and offer something positive in a safe environment where everyone’s welcome, no matter what background,” said Middleton, who moved to Berlin from London three years ago “for love.”
Middleton was busy selling gay-themed Christmas shirts next to stalls offering suggestive candles and soaps in neon colors.
The market also attracts heterosexual couples, neighborhood residents and groups of moms with baby strollers, said Sebastian Ahlefeld, a spokesperson for Christmas Avenue.
“You can meet lots of friends, relax, enjoy a mulled wine and simply kick off the Christmas season,” said Marco Klingberg, who visited the market with friends on Monday night.
Klingberg, a police officer and member of the LGBTQ+ police organization in Brandenburg, the state surrounding Berlin, pointed out that despite the city’s reputation as a gay-friendly city, attacks on members of the community are a concern, and it was great to have a protected environment for celebrating.
“First and foremost, it’s a safe space,” he said.
Security is an issue not only at the LGBTQ+ market, where all visitors undergo a bag check before entering. Groups of police officers were patrolling most markets on Monday night, as memories of a deadly terror attack on a Christmas market eight years ago are still fresh for many Berliners.
On December 19, 2016, an Islamist attacker plowed through a crowd of Christmas market-goers with a truck, killing 13 people and injuring dozens more in the German capital. The attacker was killed days later in a shootout in Italy.
Despite increased surveillance, visitors at the Scandinavian-themed Lucia market in Berlin’s Prenzlauer Berg neighborhood were hanging out in crowds on the compound of a former brewery. Kids enjoyed merry-go-rounds while their parents stood in line for Finnish honey and Icelandic mulled wine infused with hard liquor or chatted and warmed up at fire pits.
“I’ve been coming here every year since kindergarten times,” said Mathilda Schmidt, 21, pointing to kids cheering as they jumped on a trampoline. She was standing in line with her boyfriend for bratwurst and potato pancakes.
At Humboldt Forum Christmas market near the Spree river, vendors were offering more exotic dishes including jerk chicken with cooked bananas at a Jamaican food stand, Argentinian empanadas, French salamis and Hungarian langos, a deep-fried flatbread.
While the city’s biggest markets are open for weeks and usually close only the day before Christmas Eve, smaller markets often open for a weekend or a day.
They include the Kinky Christmas market in the Kreuzberg neighborhood that invites visitors on December 1 only, seeking those who may find traditional markets “too overwhelmingly contemplative and traditional.” More than 20 stalls will offer sexy “fashion, accessories, jewelry, toys and all kinds of naughty gift ideas,” the city of Berlin says on its website.
While Berliners seem to nonchalantly enjoy the variety of Christmas market offerings, they were fiercely united in their complaint about the increasing price of mulled wine — with one small cup now selling for up to seven euros ($7.36).
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NEW YORK — Likely most people have seen iconic footage of the Beatles performing on “The Ed Sullivan Show.” But how many have seen Paul McCartney during that same U.S. trip feeding seagulls off his hotel balcony?
That moment — as well as George Harrison and John Lennon goofing around by exchanging their jackets — are part of the Disney+ documentary “Beatles ’64,” an intimate look at the English band’s first trip to America that uses rare and newly restored footage. It streams Friday.
“It’s so fun to be the fly on the wall in those really intimate moments,” says Margaret Bodde, who produced alongside Martin Scorsese. “It’s just this incredible gift of time and technology to be able to see it now with the decades of time stripped away so that you really feel like you’re there.”
“Beatles ’64” leans into footage of the 14-day trip filmed by documentarians Albert and David Maysles, who left behind 11 hours of the Fab Four goofing around in New York’s Plaza hotel or traveling. It was restored by Park Road Post in New Zealand.
“It’s beautiful, although it’s black and white and it’s not widescreen,” says director David Tedeschi. “It’s like it was shot yesterday and it captures the youth of the four Beatles and the fans.”
The footage is augmented by interviews with the two surviving members of the band and people whose lives were impacted, including some of the women who as teens stood outside their hotel hoping to catch a glimpse of the Beatles.
“It was like a crazy love,” fan Vickie Brenna-Costa recalls in the documentary. “I can’t really understand it now. But then, it was natural.”
The film shows the four heartthrobs flirting and dancing at the Peppermint Lounge disco, Harrison noodling with a Woody Guthrie riff on his guitar and tells the story of Ronnie Spector sneaking the band out a hotel back exit and up to Harlem to eat barbeque.
The documentary coincides with the release of a box set of vinyl albums collecting the band’s seven U.S. albums released in ’64 and early ’65 — “Meet The Beatles!,” “The Beatles’ Second Album,” “A Hard Day’s Night” (the movie soundtrack), “Something New,” “The Beatles’ Story,” “Beatles ’65” and “The Early Beatles.” They had been out of print on vinyl since 1995.
The Beatles’ U.S. visit in 1964 also included concerts at Carnegie Hall, a gig at the Washington Coliseum in Washington, D.C., and a visit to Miami, where the band met Muhammad Ali. The documentary shows members of the band reading newspaper coverage of themselves.
Viewers may learn that the Beatles — now revered — were often met with ridicule or rudeness from the older generation. At the British Embassy in New York, the four were treated as lower class, while renowned broadcaster Eric Sevareid, doing a piece for CBS, compared the reaction to the Beatles to the German measles.
“You’re nothing but four Elvis Presleys,” one reporter told them during a press conference, to which the boys good-naturedly started gyrating as Ringo Starr screamed “It’s not true!”
“Why the establishment was against them is sort of a mystery to me,” says Tedeschi. “I think older people believed that music would go back to the big bands.”
Musicians like Sananda Maitreya, Ron Isley and Smokey Robinson also discuss the Fab Four and what they took from Black music. There also are interviews with residents of Harlem, critic Joe Queennan and filmmaker David Lynch, who saw the Beatles play the Washington Coliseum.
“Beatles ’64” tries to explain why young people were so besotted by John, Paul, George and Ringo. Their visit came just months after the assassination of President John. F. Kennedy and Tedeschi argues Beatlemania was a salve for a nation in mourning.
“Part of it is I think that the light was just off. They were depressed. Everything was dark. And ‘I Want to Hold Your Hand’ lit them up,” says Tedeschi.
As McCartney says in the documentary: “Maybe America needed something like the Beatles to lift it out of mourning and just sort of say ‘Life goes on.'”
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NEW YORK — As she anticipates her estranged uncle’s return to the White House, Mary Trump isn’t expecting any future book to catch on like such first-term tell-alls as Michael Wolff’s million-selling Fire and Fury or her own blockbuster, Too Much and Never Enough.
“What else is there to learn?” she says. “And for people who don’t know, the books have been written. It’s all really out in the open now.”
For publishers, Donald Trump’s presidential years were a time of extraordinary sales in political books, helped in part by Trump’s legal threats and angered tweets. According to Circana, which tracks around 85% of the hardcover and paperback market, the genre’s sales nearly doubled from 2015 to 2020, from around 5 million copies to around 10 million.
Besides books by Wolff and Trump, other bestsellers included former FBI Director James Comey’s A Higher Loyalty, former national security adviser John Bolton’s The Room Where it Happened and Bob Woodward’s Fear. Meanwhile, sales for dystopian fiction also jumped, led by Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, which was adapted into an award-winning Hulu series.
But interest has dropped back to 2015 levels since Trump left office, according to Circana, and publishers doubt it will again peak so highly. Readers not only showed little interest in books by or about President Joe Biden and his family — they even seemed less excited about Trump-related releases. Mary Trump’s Who Could Ever Love You and Woodward’s War were both popular this fall, but neither has matched the sales of their books written during the first Trump administration.
“We’ve been there many times, with all those books,” HarperCollins publisher Jonathan Burnham says of the various Trump tell-alls. He added that he still sees a market for at least some Trump books — perhaps analyzing the recent election — because “there’s a general, serious smart audience, not politically aligned in a hard way,” one that would welcome “an intelligent voice.”
“It’s like the reboot of any hit TV show,” says Eric Nelson, publisher and vice president of Broadside Books, a conservative imprint of HarperCollins that’s released books by Jared Kushner, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and Trump Cabinet nominees Pete Hegseth and Sen. Marco Rubio. “You’re not hoping for ratings like last time, just better ratings than the boring show it’s replacing.”
In the days following Trump’s victory, The Handmaid’s Tale and George Orwell’s 1984 returned to bestseller lists, along with more contemporary works such as Timothy Snyder’s On Tyranny, a 2017 bestseller that expanded upon a Facebook post Snyder wrote soon after Trump defeated Hillary Clinton. Books appealing to pro-Trump readers also surged, including those written by Cabinet picks — Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s The Real Anthony Fauci and Hegseth’s The War on Warriors — and Vice President-elect J.D. Vance’s Hillbilly Elegy, his 2016 memoir that’s sold hundreds of thousands of copies since Trump selected him as his running mate.
First lady Melania Trump’s memoir, Melania, came out in October and has been high on Amazon.com bestseller lists for weeks, even as critics found it contained little newsworthy information. According to Circana, it has sold more than 200,000 copies, a figure that does not include books sold directly through her website.
“The Melania book has done extraordinarily well, better than we thought,” says Barnes & Noble CEO James Daunt. “After Election Day, we sold everything we had of it.”
Conservative books have sold steadily over the years, and several publishers — most recently Hachette Book Group — have imprints dedicated to those readers. Publishers expect at least some critical books to reach bestseller lists — if only because of the tradition of the publishing market favoring the party out of power. But the nature of what those books would look like is uncertain. Perhaps a onetime insider will have a falling out with Trump and write a memoir, like Bolton or former Trump attorney Michael Cohen, or maybe some of his planned initiatives, whether mass deportation or the prosecution of his political foes, will lead to investigative works.
A new Fire and Fury is doubtful, with the originally only possible because Wolff enjoyed extraordinary access, spending months around Trump and his White House staff. Members of the president-elect’s current team have already issued a statement saying they have refused to speak with Wolff, calling the author a “known peddler of fake news who routinely concocts situations, conversations, and conclusions that never happened.”
A publicist for Wolff declined to comment.
Woodward, who interviewed Trump at length for the 2020 bestseller Rage, told The Associated Press that he had written so much about Trump and other presidents that he wasn’t sure what he’d take on next. He doesn’t rule out another Trump book, but that will depend in part on the president-elect, how “out of control he gets,” Woodward said, and how far he is able to go.
“He wants to be the imperial president, where he gets to decide everything and no one’s going to get in his way,” Woodward said. “He’s run into some brick walls in the past and there may be more brick walls. I don’t know what will happen. I’ll be watching and doing some reporting, but I’m still undecided.”
5 bestselling Trump-related books, per Circana
Too Much and Never Enough, by Mary Trump: 1,248,212 copies
Fire and Fury, by Michael Wolff: 936,116 copies
Fear, by Bob Woodward: 872,014 copies
The Room Where It Happened, by John Bolton: 676,010 copies
Rage, by Bob Woodward: 549,685 copies
These figures represent total sales provided by Circana, which tracks about 85% of the print market and does not include e-book or audiobook sales.
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New data released Wednesday from a Chinese government-affiliated research firm showed sales of foreign-branded smartphones, including Apple’s iPhone, fell 44.25% year-on-year in China in October, while overall phone sales in China have increased 1.8%, Reuters reported.
The data released by the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology revealed sales of foreign-branded phones in China decreased to 6.22 million units last month, down from 11.149 million units a year earlier.
The decrease of foreign phone sales comes in the wake of Chinese tech conglomerate Huawei’s rise to the top of the phone market in China.
Huawei was widely popular in China’s smartphone market last year when it released the Mate 60 Pro, a phone with a tiny computer chip more advanced than any other chip previously made by a Chinese company.
Chinese consumers have eagerly embraced Huawei’s smartphones, drawn to the appeal of locally made technology — an option that has swayed many who might have previously chosen iPhones.
On Tuesday, the Chinese phone maker launched the next generation of the Mate 60 Pro, the Mate 70 series. The smartphone was described by Huawei’s consumer group chairman Richard Yu as the “smartest” Mate phone, The New York Times reported.
The Mate 70 series features hardware and software that are the most independent from Western influence to date. Highlights of Huawei’s newest phone include artificial intelligence-enabled functions and improved photography. The phone uses an operating system of HarmonyOS, which allows the smartphones to connect with smart devices.
Huawei’s ability to self-supply the chips required for its hardware and software represents a notable development, following previous U.S. measures to restrict the company’s access to key partners and suppliers.
AI technology relies on advanced semiconductor chips, a critical resource that has received attention amid tensions between Beijing and Washington, as both countries compete to dominate the advanced technology industry.
Apple’s iPhone 16 features AI capabilities, but these features have yet to be implemented in iPhones in China.
Apple, which considers China its second-most important market, has seen its market share decrease substantially. Apple CEO Tim Cook is traveling to China this week for the third time this year to attend an industry conference.
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After more than five years of frenetic reconstruction work, Notre Dame Cathedral showed its new self to the world Friday, with rebuilt soaring ceilings and creamy good-as-new stonework erasing somber memories of its devastating fire in 2019.
Images broadcast live of a site visit by French President Emmanuel Macron showed the inside of the iconic cathedral as worshippers might have experienced it back in medieval times, its wide, open spaces filled with bright light on a crisp and sunny winter’s day that lit up the vibrant colors of the stained-glass windows.
Outside, the monument is still a construction site, with scaffolding and cranes. But the renovated interior — shown in its full glory Friday for the first time before the public is allowed back in on December 8 — proved to be breathtaking.
Stonemasons fixed the ripped-open ceilings
Gone are the gaping holes that the blaze tore into the vaulted ceilings, leaving charred piles of debris. New stonework has been carefully pieced together to repair and fill the wounds that had left the cathedral’s insides exposed to the elements. Delicate golden angels look on from the centerpiece of one of the rebuilt ceilings, soaring again above the transept.
The cathedral’s bright, cream-colored limestone walls look brand new, cleaned not only of dust from the fire but also of grime that had accumulated for centuries.
The cathedral attracted millions of worshippers and visitors annually before the April 15, 2019, fire forced its closure and turned the monument in the heart of Paris into a no-go zone except to artisans, architects and others mobilized for the reconstruction.
Macron entered via the cathedral’s giant and intricately carved front doors and stared up at the ceilings in wonder. He was accompanied by his wife, Brigitte, the archbishop of Paris and others.
Techniques new and old deployed
Powerful vacuum cleaners were used to first remove toxic dust released when the fire melted the cathedral’s lead roofs.
Fine layers of latex were then sprayed onto the surfaces and removed a few days later, taking dirt away with them. Cleaning gels were also used on some walls that had been painted, removing many years of accumulated dirt and revealing their bright colors once again.
Carpenters worked by hand like their medieval counterparts as they hewed giant oak beams to rebuild the roof and spire that collapsed like a flaming spear into the inferno. The beams show the marks of the carpenters’ handiwork, with dents made on the woodwork by their hand axes.
Some 2,000 oak trees were felled to rebuild roof frameworks so dense and intricate that they are nicknamed “the forest.”
Sneak peek ahead of reopening
Macron’s visit kicked off a series of events ushering in the reopening of the 12th-century Gothic masterpiece.
Macron will return on December 7 to deliver an address and attend the consecration of the new altar during a solemn Mass the following day.
Macron’s administration is hailing the reconstruction as a symbol of national unity and French can-do.
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Some images from the 98th Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade in New York.
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Since 2004, former New York Times editor and now artist Sheryl Oring has been giving Americans a chance to speak their truth to the world. Dressed in 1950s secretary attire, she invites the public to speak their mind and records it on her vintage typewriter as part of a project called, “I Wish To Say.” Elena Wolf has the story, narrated by Anna Rice. Camera: Vladimir Badikov
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The U.S. Federal Trade Commission has opened a broad antitrust investigation into Microsoft, including of its software licensing and cloud computing businesses, a source familiar with the matter said on Wednesday.
The probe was approved by FTC Chair Lina Khan ahead of her likely departure in January. The election of Donald Trump as U.S. president, and the expectation he will appoint a fellow Republican with a softer approach toward business, leaves the outcome of the investigation up in the air.
The FTC is examining allegations the software giant is potentially abusing its market power in productivity software by imposing punitive licensing terms to prevent customers from moving their data from its Azure cloud service to other competitive platforms, sources confirmed earlier this month.
The FTC is also looking at practices related to cybersecurity and artificial intelligence products, the source said on Wednesday.
Microsoft declined to comment on Wednesday.
Competition complains about practices
Competitors have criticized Microsoft’s practices they say keep customers locked into its cloud offering, Azure. The FTC fielded such complaints last year as it examined the cloud computing market.
NetChoice, a lobbying group that represents online companies such as Amazon and Google, which compete with Microsoft in cloud computing, criticized Microsoft’s licensing policies, and its integration of AI tools into its Office and Outlook.
“Given that Microsoft is the world’s largest software company, dominating in productivity and operating systems software, the scale and consequences of its licensing decisions are extraordinary,” the group said.
Google in September complained to the European Commission about Microsoft’s practices, saying it made customers pay a 400% mark-up to keep running Windows Server on rival cloud computing operators, and gave them later and more limited security updates.
The FTC has demanded a broad range of detailed information from Microsoft, Bloomberg reported earlier on Wednesday.
The agency had already claimed jurisdiction over probes into Microsoft and OpenAI over competition in artificial intelligence and started looking into Microsoft’s $650 million deal with AI startup Inflection AI.
Other companies faced accusations
Microsoft has been somewhat of an exception to U.S. antitrust regulators’ recent campaign against allegedly anticompetitive practices at Big Tech companies.
Facebook owner Meta Platforms, Apple and Amazon.com Inc. have all been accused by the U.S. of unlawfully maintaining monopolies.
Alphabet’s Google is facing two lawsuits, including one where a judge found it unlawfully thwarted competition among online search engines.
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella testified at Google’s trial, saying the search giant was using exclusive deals with publishers to lock up content used to train artificial intelligence.
It is unclear whether Trump will ease up on Big Tech, whose first administration launched several Big Tech probes. JD Vance, the incoming vice president, has expressed concern about the power the companies wield over public discourse.
Still, Microsoft has benefited from Trump policies in the past.
In 2019, the Pentagon awarded it a $10 billion cloud computing contract that Amazon had widely been expected to win. Amazon later alleged that Trump exerted improper pressure on military officials to steer the contract away from its Amazon Web Services unit.
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MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA — Australia’s House of Representatives on Wednesday passed a bill that would ban children younger than 16 years old from social media, leaving it to the Senate to finalize the world-first law.
The major parties backed the bill that would make platforms including TikTok, Facebook, Snapchat, Reddit, X and Instagram liable for fines of up to $33 million for systemic failures to prevent young children from holding accounts.
The legislation passed 102 to 13. If the bill becomes law this week, the platforms would have one year to work out how to implement the age restrictions before the penalties are enforced.
Opposition lawmaker Dan Tehan told Parliament the government had agreed to accept amendments in the Senate that would bolster privacy protections. Platforms would not be allowed to compel users to provide government-issued identity documents including passports or driver’s licenses. The platforms also could not demand digital identification through a government system.
“Will it be perfect? No. But is any law perfect? No, it’s not. But if it helps, even if it helps in just the smallest of ways, it will make a huge difference to people’s lives,” Tehan told Parliament.
Communications Minister Michelle Rowland said the Senate would debate the bill later Wednesday. The major parties’ support all but guarantees the legislation will pass in the Senate, where no party holds a majority of seats.
Lawmakers who were not aligned with either the government or the opposition were most critical of the legislation during debate on Tuesday and Wednesday.
Criticisms include that the legislation had been rushed through Parliament without adequate scrutiny, would not work, would create privacy risks for users of all ages and would take away parents’ authority to decide what’s best for their children.
Critics also argue the ban would isolate children, deprive them of positive aspects of social media, drive children to the dark web, make children too young for social media reluctant to report harms they encountered and take away incentives for platforms to make online spaces safer.
Independent lawmaker Zoe Daniel said the legislation would “make zero difference to the harms that are inherent to social media.”
“The true object of this legislation is not to make social media safe by design, but to make parents and voters feel like the government is doing something about it,” Daniel told Parliament.
“There is a reason why the government parades this legislation as world-leading, that’s because no other country wants to do it,” she added.
The platforms had asked for the vote on legislation to be delayed until at least June next year when a government-commissioned evaluation of age assurance technologies made its report on how the ban could been enforced.
Melbourne resident Wayne Holdsworth, whose 17-year-old son Mac took his own life last year after falling victim to an online sextortion scam, described the bill as “absolutely essential for the safety of our children.”
“It’s not the only thing that we need to do to protect them because education is the key, but to provide some immediate support for our children and parents to be able to manage this, it’s a great step,” the 65-year-old online safety campaigner told The Associated Press on Tuesday.
“And in my opinion, it’s the greatest time in our country’s history,” he added, referring to the pending legal reform.
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November 27th marks the birthday of iconic American guitarist and songwriter Jimi Hendrix. In his hometown of Seattle, the Museum of Pop Culture, inspired by his groundbreaking music, celebrated his enduring legacy with family members, former colleagues, and fans. Natasha Mozgovaya has the story.
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SYDNEY — Google and Facebook-owner Meta Platforms urged the Australian government on Tuesday to delay a bill that will ban most forms of social media for children under 16, saying more time was needed to assess its potential impact.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s center-left government wants to pass the bill, which represents some of the toughest controls on children’s social media use imposed by any country, into law by the end of the parliamentary year on Thursday.
The bill was introduced in parliament last week and opened for submissions of opinions for only one day.
Google and Meta said in their submissions that the government should wait for the results of an age-verification trial before going ahead.
The age-verification system may include biometrics or government identification to enforce a social media age cut-off.
“In the absence of such results, neither industry nor Australians will understand the nature or scale of age assurance required by the bill, nor the impact of such measures on Australians,” Meta said.
“In its present form, the bill is inconsistent and ineffective.”
The law would force social media platforms, and not parents or children, to take reasonable steps to ensure age-verification protections are in place. Companies could be fined up to $32 million for systemic breaches.
The opposition Liberal party is expected to support the bill though some independent lawmakers have accused the government of rushing through the entire process in around a week.
A Senate committee responsible for communications legislation is scheduled to deliver a report on Tuesday.
Bytedance’s TikTok said the bill lacked clarity and that it had “significant concerns” with the government’s plan to pass the bill without detailed consultation with experts, social media platforms, mental health organizations and young people.
“Where novel policy is put forward, it’s important that legislation is drafted in a thorough and considered way, to ensure it is able to achieve its stated intention. This has not been the case with respect to this Bill,” TikTok said.
Elon Musk’s X raised concerns that the bill will negatively impact the human rights of children and young people, including their rights to freedom of expression and access to information.
The U.S. billionaire, who views himself as a champion of free speech, last week attacked the Australian government saying the bill seemed like a backdoor way to control access to the internet.
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sydney — Australia’s Indian Ocean territory of Christmas Island will be connected by subsea cable to the northern garrison city of Darwin, a project backed by Alphabet’s Google that Australia says will boost its digital resilience.
Christmas Island is 1,500 kilometers (930 miles) west of the Australian mainland, with a small population of 1,250, but strategically located in the Indian Ocean, 350 kilometers (215 miles) from Jakarta.
The cable announcement comes as the Australian and U.S. militaries upgrade airfields in Australia’s north, where a rotating force of U.S. Marines will be joined by Japanese troops next year.
Google’s vice president of global network infrastructure, Brian Quigley, said in a statement the Bosun cable will link Darwin to Christmas Island, while another subsea cable will connect Melbourne on Australia’s east coast to the west coast city of Perth, then on to Christmas Island and Singapore.
Australia is seeking to reduce its exposure to digital disruption by building more subsea cable pathways to Asia to its west, and through the South Pacific to the United States.
“These new cable systems will not only expand and strengthen the resilience of Australia’s own digital connectivity through new and diversified routes but will also complement the Government’s active work with industry and government partners to support secure, resilient and reliable connectivity across the Pacific,” Communications Minister Michelle Rowland said in a statement.
The other partners in the cable project include Australian data center company NextDC, Macquarie-backed telecommunications group Vocus, and SUBCO.
SUBCO previously built an Indian Ocean cable from Perth to Oman, with spurs to the U.S. military base of Diego Garcia, and Cocos Islands, where Australia is upgrading a runway for defense surveillance aircraft.
Although 900 kilometers (560 miles) apart, Christmas Island is seen as an Indian Ocean neighbor of Cocos Islands, which the Australian Defense Force has said is key to its maritime surveillance operations in a region where China is increasing submarine activity.
The new cables will also link to a Pacific Islands network being built by Google and jointly funded by the United States, connecting the U.S. and Australia through hubs in Fiji and French Polynesia.
Vocus said in a statement the two networks will form the world’s largest submarine cable system spanning 42,500 kilometers (26,408 miles) of fiber optic cable running between the U.S. and Asia via Australia.
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Alfonso Cuarón spoke with VOA at the 2024 Miami Film Festival, where the director won a lifetime achievement award from Miami Dade College for his contributions to cinema. He urged aspiring filmmakers to study the history of cinema and the development of film language.
See the full story here.
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JOHANNESBURG — South African writer and poet Breyten Breytenbach, a staunch opponent of the former white-minority government’s apartheid policy of racial oppression, has died in Paris, his family announced on Sunday. He was 85.
Breytenbach was a celebrated wordsmith, a leading voice in literature in Afrikaans — an offshoot of Dutch that was developed by white settlers — and a fierce critic of apartheid that was imposed against the country’s Black majority between 1948 and 1990.
He moved to Paris but on a clandestine trip to his home country in 1975 he was arrested on allegations that he assisted Nelson Mandela’s then-outlawed African National Congress group in its sabotage campaign against the white-minority government.
He was convicted of treason and served seven years in prison. French president Francois Mitterrand helped secure his release in 1982.
Upon his release, Breytenbach based himself in Paris, becoming a French citizen, and continued his anti-apartheid activism.
Breytenbach is best known for “Confessions of an Albino Terrorist,” his account of his imprisonment and the events leading to it.
His work addressed themes of exile, identity and justice, his family said in a statement on Sunday.
“Known for his masterful poetry collections in Afrikaans, as well as autobiographical works such as ‘The True Confessions of an Albino Terrorist’ and ‘A Season in Paradise,’ he fearlessly addressed themes of exile, identity and justice,” his family said in a statement.
Breytenbach was a poet, novelist, painter and activist whose work touched on and influenced literature and the arts both domestically and abroad, his family added.
He was born in the Western Cape province in 1939 but spent much of his life abroad.
He joined Okhela, an ideological wing of South Africa’s African National Congress, in exile, but remained deeply connected to his South African roots.
He is survived by his wife, Yolande, daughter Daphnée and two grandsons.
Some information for this report came from Agence France-Presse.
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New York — With a combined $270 million in worldwide ticket sales, “Wicked” and “Gladiator II” breathed fresh life into a box office that has struggled lately, leading to one of the busiest moviegoing weekends of the year.
Jon M. Chu’s lavish big-budget musical “Wicked,” starring Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo, debuted with $114 million domestically and $164.2 million globally for Universal Pictures, according to studio estimates Sunday. That made it the third-biggest opening weekend of the year, behind only “Deadpool & Wolverine” and “Inside Out 2.” It’s also a record for a Broadway musical adaptation.
Ridley Scott’s “Gladiator II,” a sequel to his 2000 best picture-winning original, launched with $55.5 million in ticket sales. With a price tag of around $250 million to produce it, “Gladiator II” was a big bet by Paramount Pictures to return to the Coliseum with a largely new cast, led by Denzel Washington and Paul Mescal. While it opened with a touch less than the $60 million predicted in domestic ticket sales, “Gladiator II” has performed well overseas. It added $50.5 million internationally.
The collision of the two movies led to some echoes of the “Barbenheimer” effect of last year, when “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer” launched simultaneously. The nickname this time, “Glicked,” wasn’t quite as catchy and the cultural imprint was also notably less. Few people sought out a double feature this time. The domestic grosses in 2023 – $162 million for “Barbie” and $82 million for “Oppenheimer” – were also higher.
“Glicked” falls short of “Barbenheimer”
For Universal, which distributed “Oppenheimer” last year, the weekend was more a triumph of “Wicked” than it was of “Glicked.”
“We saw an opportunity to dominate a weekend and get a very large running start into the Thanksgiving holiday,” said Jim Orr, distribution chief for Universal. “We’re very confident that it will play ridiculously well through the Christmas corridor and into the new year.”
But the counter-programming effect was still potent for “Wicked” and “Gladiator II,” which likewise split broadly along gender lines. And it was again the female-leaning release – “Wicked,” like “Barbie” before it – that easily won the weekend. About 72% of ticket buyers for “Wicked” were female, while 61% of those seeing “Gladiator II” were male.
“Standing on their own, each of these movies may have done pretty much what they did, but it’s hard to know,” said Paul Dergarabedian, senior media analyst for Comscore. “Raising awareness can indeed lead to an increase in box office. Let’s put it this way: They didn’t hurt each other at all.”
Massive marketing campaigns paved the way for opening weekend
While “Barbenheimer” benefitted enormously from meme-spread word-of-mouth, both “Wicked” and “Gladiator II” leaned on all-out marketing blitzes.
The “Gladiator II” campaign featured everything from a much-debated Airbnb cross-promotion with the actual Colosseum in Rome to simultaneously running a one-minute trailer on more than 4,000 TV networks, radio station and digital platforms.
The “Wicked” onslaught went even further, with pink and green themed “Wickedly Delicious” Starbucks drinks, Stanley mugs and Mattel dolls (some of which led to an awkward recall ). Its stars made appearances at the Met Gala and the Olympics.
“We had roughly 400 global brand partners on ‘Wicked,’ so the campaign was inescapable, said Orr. “And our cast, led by Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande, worked so hard on this. They were everywhere. They did everything we asked them to do.”
Going into the weekend, box office was down about 11% from last year and some 25% from pre-pandemic times. That meant this week’s two headline films led a much-needed resurgence for theaters. With “Moana 2” releasing Wednesday, Hollywood might be looking at historic sales over the Thanksgiving holiday.
The two films boosted sluggish box office performance
“This weekend’s two strong openers are invigorating a box office that fell apart after a good summer,” said David A. Gross, a film consultant who publishes a newsletter for Franchise Entertainment.
Though “Wicked” will face some direct competition from “Moana 2,” it would seem better set up for a long and lucrative run in theaters than “Gladiator II.” Though some have dinged “Wicked” for running long, at 2 hours and 40 minutes, the film has had mostly stellar reviews. Audiences gave it an “A” on CinemaScore. The reception for “Wicked” has been strong enough that Oscar prognosticators expect it to be a contender for best picture at the Academy Awards, among other categories.
Producers, perhaps sensing a hit, also took the step of splitting “Wicked” in two. Part two, already filmed, is due out next November. Each “Wicked” installation cost around $150 million to make.
“Gladiator II” has also enjoyed good reviews, particularly for Washington’s charismatic performance. Audience scores, though, were weaker, with ticket buyers giving it a “B” on CinemaScore. The film will make up for some of that, however, with robust international sales. It launched in many overseas markets a week ago, and has already accrued $165.5 million internationally.
Coming in a distant third place for the weekend was “Red One,” the Dwayne Johnson, Chris Evans holiday movie turned action film. In its second week of release, the Amazon MGM Studios release grossed $13.3 million to bring its two-week global haul to $117 million. At a cost of $250 million to make, “Red One” is the season’s biggest flop, though it could recoup some value for Amazon if it’s more popular once it begins streaming.
Final domestic figures will be released Monday. Estimated ticket sales for Friday through Sunday at U.S. and Canadian theaters, according to Comscore:
“Wicked,” $114 million.
“Gladiator II,” $55.5 million.
“Red One,” $13.3 million.
“Bonhoeffer: Pastor Spy Assassin,” $5.1 million.
“Venom: The Last Dance,” $4 million.
“The Best Christmas Pageant Ever,” $3.5 million.
“Heretic,” $2.2 million.
“The Wild Robot,” $2 million.
“Smile 2,” $1.1 million.
“A Real Pain,” $1.1 million.
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