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David Fincher debuts ‘The Killer’ at Venice Film Festival

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:30:58 GMT

LIDO, Venice, Italy – Michael Fassbender may be “The Killer” but like Hitchcock or Spielberg, it is director David Fincher who looms large as its real star.A violent, often black-humored descent into the mindset of a professional hit man, “The Killer” world-premiered Sunday night at the Venice Film Festival minus Fassbender and co-star Tilda Swinton due to the actors’ strike.Cinema has a long and venerable tradition of the lone assassin, which Fincher, 61, said in a press conference was appealing.Assassins are attractive because, “It’s a very simple, compelling straight line drawn. We took something people know — the goals of an assassin – which is fun to illustrate. It’s high stakes. It’s also extremely procedural before you exhale and pull the trigger.“But I think this is more a revenge movie than an assassin movie. The corpses he leaves on the side of the road don’t fit in any way shape or form on the schedule he has for himself.”Which is part of the joke, the disconnect be...

Editorial: Strict price controls sending insurers packing

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:30:58 GMT

Make price controls strict enough, and eventually they’ll produce shortages. California homeowners are learning that the hard way.State Farm is the largest homeowners insurance company in California. In May, it announced that it won’t be accepting applications for new policies. That’s odd. Companies with a dominant market position don’t usually walk away. But now, State Farm looks like a trendsetter.Farmer’s Insurance, the second-biggest player, is limiting how many new homeowners policies it issues. Allstate, ranked No. 4, has stopped selling. It’s hard to keep up with the exodus. AmGUARD Insurance, connected to Berkshire Hathaway, is out. Berkshire Hathaway had the third most market share in 2022.Liberty Mutual, No. 5 on that list, will not renew business owner policies at the end of this year.It shouldn’t be hard to understand why this is happening. Something is preventing these companies from making money. Things are so dire that they believe it will be more profitable to walk a...

Schoen: If Biden steps aside, could Gavin Newsom challenge Kamala Harris?

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:30:58 GMT

Right now, there is little reason to believe that the Democratic nominee for president in 2024 will be anyone other than Joe Biden. Still, the question of who would be Democrats’ “Plan B” looms large due to Biden’s age, fitness, and his son Hunter’s ongoing legal drama.If, for whatever reason, Biden is unable or unwilling to seek a second term, the front runners to be the next leader of the Democratic Party would likely come down to two Californians: Vice President Kamala Harris and current Gov. Gavin Newsom. While any vice president is the most obvious choice to succeed a president, Harris’ low polling numbers have caused many Democratic insiders to consider other high-profile politicians who could mount a last-minute campaign, like Newsom.Indeed, new polling by my firm, Schoen Cooperman Research, found that Harris’ favorability – just 41% favorable – was even lower than Biden’s (46%), and recent NBC polling revealed that Harris was viewed more negatively than any other Vice Presid...

Young: Don’t let pols take credit for economic recovery

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:30:58 GMT

Workers have much to celebrate this Labor Day. Unemployment is near its lowest level since the 1960s, and real wages are growing again. Post-pandemic inflation is finally under control, even if it’s not yet all the way back to normal.Barring another crisis, there will be a soft landing from the pandemic downturn.This is fantastic news, and President Biden has quickly taken credit for it under his Bidenomics umbrella. He, along with Republicans, deserves more blame than credit, however. Neither Biden nor Congress have much control over inflation, and their massive bipartisan spending binge is doing more harm than good for working families.It helps to think of today’s primarily healthy economy as the third act of a three-act story. In the opening act, a mostly healthy economy was humming along, much like it is now.In the second act, the pandemic shut everything down.We are now in the third act, when things are getting back to normal.The economy is mostly healthy now because the pre-CO...

Dear Abby: Hubby prefers breakfast over babies

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:30:58 GMT

Dear Abby: My husband is tired of paying to keep my eggs frozen. He has seven children of his own. I know utility costs are through the roof these days, but I can’t disagree with him more.He meets up with his friends at the breakfast joint every weekend, and they drop a lot of money there. If he just reallocated his spending money, we could afford to continue freezing my eggs. I keep telling him, “You’re spending money on the wrong eggs!” I’d like to have a baby within the next year. What should I do? — Freezing in FargoDear Freezing: If your husband doesn’t already know how important having your own child is to you, now is the time to impress it upon him. I am sorry you didn’t mention how long he has been paying for freezing your eggs, but if you hope to conceive next year, he can afford to continue paying a few months longer. Would his preference be that you remain childless? If that’s the case and you have been misled, you mig...

Iga Swiatek’s US Open title defense ends with a loss to Jelena Ostapenko in the fourth round

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:30:58 GMT

NEW YORK (AP) — Iga Swiatek arrived at the U.S. Open as its reigning champion, as the winner at three of the past six Grand Slam tournaments and as the owner of the No. 1 ranking for nearly 1 1/2 years. None of that mattered on Sunday night against Jelena Ostapenko, whose powerful style disrupts Swiatek’s rhythm — and beats her every time.Swiatek’s title defense at Flushing Meadows ended in the fourth round with a 3-6, 6-3, 6-1 loss to 2017 French Open champion Ostapenko in the fourth round at Arthur Ashe Stadium. The result also means Swiatek’s stay at atop the WTA will end next week, when current No. 2 Aryna Sabalenka will rise to the top spot for the first time.“The main thing is that she doesn’t really like to play against big hitters. … She likes to have some time,” said the 20th-seeded Ostapenko, a 26-year-old from Latvia. “When I play fast, aggressive and powerful, she’s a little bit in trouble.”Ostapenko accumulated 31 winners to 18 for Swiatek.More i...

South Korea’s Yoon will call for strong response to North’s nuclear weapons at ASEAN and G20 summits

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:30:58 GMT

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — South Korea’s president says he’ll tell world leaders about the need to faithfully enforce U.N. sanctions on North Korea and block the country’s illicit activities to fund its weapons programs when they converge in Indonesia and India for annual summits this week.President Yoon Suk Yeol is to visit Jakarta for four days starting Tuesday to attend a series of summits scheduled on the margins of a meeting of Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) leaders. On Friday, he’ll travel on to New Delhi for a summit of the leading rich and developing nations.“At the upcoming ASEAN-related Summits and the G20 Summit, I intend to urge the international community to resolutely respond to North Korea’s ever-escalating missile provocations and nuclear threats and to work closely together on its denuclearization,” Yoon said in written responses to questions from The Associated Press.“As long as the U.N. Security Council sanctions currently in place are faithfully im...

New Delhi got a makeover for the G20 summit. The city’s poor say they were simply erased

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:30:58 GMT

NEW DELHI (AP) — New Delhi’s crowded streets have been resurfaced. Streetlights are illuminating once dark sidewalks. City buildings and walls are painted with bright murals and graffiti. Planted flowers are everywhere.Many of the city’s poor say they were simply erased, much like the stray dogs and monkeys that have been removed from some neighborhoods, as India’s capital got its makeover ahead of this week’s summit of the Group of 20 nations. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government hopes the elaborate effort to make New Delhi sparkle — a “beautification project” with a price tag of $120 million — will help showcase the world’s most populous nation’s cultural prowess and strengthen its position on the global stage. But for many street vendors and those crammed into New Delhi’s shantytowns, the makeover has meant displacement and loss of livelihood, raising questions about the government’s policies on dealing with poverty. In a city of more than...

Four astronauts return to Earth in SpaceX capsule to wrap up six-month station mission

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:30:58 GMT

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — Four astronauts returned to Earth early Monday after a six-month stay at the International Space Station. Their SpaceX capsule parachuted into the Atlantic off the Florida coast.Returning were NASA astronauts Stephen Bowen and Warren “Woody” Hoburg, Russia’s Andrei Fedyaev and the United Arab Emirates’ Sultan al-Neyadi, the first person from the Arab world to spend an extended time in orbit. Before departing the space station, they said they were craving hot showers, steaming cups of coffee and the ocean air since arriving in March. Their homecoming was delayed a day because of poor weather at the splashdown locations, but in the end, provided a spectacular middle-of-the-night show as the capsule streaked through the sky over Cape Canaveral toward a splashdown near Jacksonville.The astronauts said it was incredible to be back. “You’ve got a roomful of happy people here,” SpaceX Mission Control radioed.SpaceX launched their replacements o...

Security in Ecuador has come undone as drug cartels exploit the banana industry to ship cocaine

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:30:58 GMT

GUAYAQUIL, Ecuador (AP) — Men walk through a lush plantation between Ecuador ’s balmy Pacific coast and its majestic Andes, lopping hundreds of bunches of green bananas from groaning plants twice their height. Workers haul the bunches to an assembly line, where the bananas are washed, weighed and plastered with stickers for European buyers. Owner Franklin Torres is monitoring all activity on a recent morning to make sure the fruit meets international beauty standards — and ever more important, is packed for shipment free of cocaine.Torres is hypervigilant because Ecuador is increasingly at the confluence of two global trades: bananas and cocaine.The South American country is the world’s largest exporter of bananas, shipping about 6.5 million metric tons (7.2 tons) a year by sea. It is also wedged between the world’s largest cocaine producers, Peru and Colombia, and drug traffickers find containers filled with bananas the perfect vehicle to smuggle their product.Drug traffickers’ inf...