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☆ Pedro Almodóvar’s Answer to ‘Brokeback Mountain’
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-16 | by ( Kyle Buchanan | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Follow our live updates from the opening night of the Cannes Film Festival. “How do you want me to look at you?” replies the gunslinger, flirting. It wouldn’t be a western without a fraught standoff, but when Pedro Almodóvar is behind the camera, the glances are even more loaded than the pistols. In “Strange Way of Life,” a new short film that will premiere at the Cannes Film Festival on Wednesday, Ethan Hawke and Pedro Pascal star as a lawman and a cowboy who reunite 25 years after having a passionate affair. But will their old magic be rekindled, or are both men concealing ulterior motives for the meeting?

“One thing is that this will be the first year in the history of the Cannes Film Festival when the publicists will have no rumors to tell to each other,” Ostlund said. In Ostlund’s films, which skewer class and social hypocrisies, any character who made a vow like that would wind up doing the opposite. But don’t expect the top prizewinner or any of the other awards to be his choices alone. Damián Szifron, from Argentina, is best known for his comic anthology feature “Wild Tales,” which showed in competition in 2014. And the Moroccan filmmaker Maryam Touzani was here last year with “The Blue Caftan,” which showed in the festival’s Un Certain Regard section.

☆ CNBC Daily Open: Markets are playing a waiting game
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-16 | by ( Yeo Boon Ping | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +2 min

This report is from today's CNBC Daily Open, our new international markets newsletter. CNBC Daily Open brings investors up to speed on everything they need to know, no matter where they are. President Joe Biden, likewise, expressed optimism that a deal with Republicans to raise or suspend the debt ceiling could be reached. Biden will meet congressional leaders today to continue talks about the debt ceiling. Subscribe here to get this report sent directly to your inbox each morning before markets open.

☆ CNBC Daily Open: Investors are playing a waiting game
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-16 | by ( Yeo Boon Ping | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +2 min

CNBC Daily Open brings investors up to speed on everything they need to know, no matter where they are. President Joe Biden, likewise, expressed optimism that a deal with Republicans to raise or suspend the debt ceiling could be reached. The S&P 500 added 0.3%, the Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 0.14% to snap a five-day losing streak and the Nasdaq Composite rose 0.66%. Biden will meet congressional leaders today to continue talks about the debt ceiling. Subscribe here to get this report sent directly to your inbox each morning before markets open.

☆ Cannes 2023: The Films We’ve Excited About Seeing
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-15 | by ( Kyle Buchanan | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Wes Anderson’s films have premiered at a wide variety of festivals, but after “Moonrise Kingdom” (2012), “The French Dispatch” (2021) and his upcoming ensemble comedy “Asteroid City,” Cannes is the fest he keeps coming back to. Last week, I asked Anderson what he finds so compelling about a debut on the Croisette. “The reason to go to Cannes, I think, is because they said yes,” he deadpanned. “After that, there isn’t really much to contemplate.”Well, there’s a little more to it than that, Anderson admitted: For cinema lovers, there is no holier pilgrimage to make than to the Cannes Film Festival, where movies are treated with the utmost reverence and routinely given marathon standing ovations. It is a place where great auteurs have been canonized, like Martin Scorsese, who won the Palme d’Or in 1976 for “Taxi Driver” and will return this year with his new feature “Killers of the Flower Moon,” and Quentin Tarantino, a Palme winner (for “Pulp Fiction” in 1994) and Cannes habitué who’ll be back at the fest this year for a wide-ranging conversation that may touch on his upcoming final film.

☆ James Gunn Always Knew How ‘Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3’ Would End
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-12 | by ( Kyle Buchanan | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +2 min

2” [2017], and then we talked about it happening in “Infinity War” and that worked better for the story. I knew that the whole trilogy is about Rocket, who we think of as a supporting character, becoming the captain of the Guardians. Drax realizes that he’s a father and that’s what he’s really good at — he’s not a destroyer. Well, Gamora’s death is the big one, but even her first kiss with Quill comes in “Infinity War” after the first two “Guardians” movies appear to be building to it. It wasn’t really about the kiss, it was about showing that they were now a couple.

Shares of PayPal Holdings (PYPL.O) dropped 12% and led declines on the benchmark S&P 500 index (.SPX) after the company cut its margin forecast. They were also among the top drags on the Nasdaq Composite index (.IXIC). Shares of other Apple suppliers including Qualcomm (QCOM.O), Broadcom (AVGO.O), Qorvo (QRVO.O) and Corning (GLW.N) fell between 1.2% to 2%. The action-packed week will see the release of the much-awaited inflation data on Wednesday. The S&P index recorded 13 new 52-week highs and 12 new lows, while the Nasdaq recorded 52 new highs and 130 new lows.

☆ UK police face backlash over handling of anti-monarchy protests during coronation
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-07 | by ( Sophie Tanno | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +4 min

It comes after the much-maligned Metropolitan Police force faced criticism for what many said was a heavy-handed approach toward demonstrators. Frazer said the police were tasked with balancing people’s right to protest with overseeing an international event on the world stage. Anti-monarchy protesters demonstrate near the procession route for Britain's King Charles III coronation in London on Saturday. Republic, Britain’s largest anti-monarchy group, told CNN Saturday that police – without providing any reason – arrested organizers of the anti-monarchy protest. A member of the public attends a "Rally For A Republic - Not My King" anti-monarchy rally on Calton Hill in Edinburgh on Saturday.

☆ Will Poulter Is Just Getting Used to His Superhero Era
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-03 | by ( Kyle Buchanan | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +2 min

“For that to be my introduction to the film industry, I couldn’t have asked for a gentler, nicer, more wholesome experience,” he said. That’s why, now that the tide has turned toward appreciative tweets instead of cruel jokes, Poulter is skeptical about putting any stock into what social media has to say about him. “It shouldn’t inform how I treat myself, because I don’t know those people,” he said. “One of the dangers with social media is we can conflate things that exist online to the real world without even questioning it. We just carry the one and don’t really ask whether it actually adds up at the end of the day.”He smiled.

☆ Opinion | How Donald Trump and Tucker Carlson Upended the G.O.P. Foreign Policy Apparatus
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-03 | by ( Rosie Gray | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +3 min

Mr. Trump has a talent for the populist art of reflecting supporters’ instincts, feeding off them and intensifying them. Mr. DeSantis, instead of intuiting this potential, merely mirrored a position to an audience already primed to accept it. Mr. Trump, with his bloodhound’s nose for potential weakness in his competition, dismissed Mr. DeSantis as a copycat who is merely “following” him. “Whatever I want, he wants,” Mr. Trump said in March after Mr. DeSantis’s initial statement on Ukraine. Ms. Haley, Mr. Trump’s former ambassador to the U.N., who is herself running for president this cycle, also accused Mr. DeSantis of “copying” Mr. Trump.

☆ Banking in the metaverse? A.I. could be about to change the way you manage your money
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-02 | by ( Sophie Kiderlin | In | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +3 min

Users often don't even notice when AI is involved, adds Sarah Coles, head of personal finance at Hargreaves Lansdown. "For example, AI is used by banks to track spending, and automatically alert people when they spend, or reach a specific level in their account. Kimberly Dillon, vice president for brand at AI-powered financial services app Cleo, also believes new money management tools could emerge. Many banks and financial services providers are establishing a presence in the metaverse," she said. Chatbots can often execute basic financial interactions, for example, and AI tools can set off alarm bells around suspected fraud, she explained.

☆ The US Navy is putting its submarines on rare public display in a message to Russia's growing undersea force
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-01 | by ( Christopher Woody | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +9 min

The US Navy has announced several visits by its subs to North Atlantic ports in recent years. Since 2020, when Norway allowed NATO subs to use a port near Tromsø, announcements of such visits appear to have increased. 'We're in your backyard'British Royal Navy attack submarine HMS Astute sails to the base at Faslane in November 2009. Russian Navy Yasen-class submarine Kazan at its base in Severomorsk on Russia's Arctic coast in June 2021. During the Cold War, US attack subs operated in the high north to get the Soviets to keep their attack subs close by to protect their ballistic-missile subs.

☆ After being on pause for more than 3 years, student loan payments are expected to resume soon
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-28 | by ( Annie Nova | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +2 min

Three companies that serviced federal student loans — Navient , the Pennsylvania Higher Education Assistance Agency (also known as FedLoan) and Granite State — all said they'd be ending their relationship with the government. Impacted borrowers should get multiple notices, said Scott Buchanan, executive director of the Student Loan Servicing Alliance, a trade group for federal student loan servicers. But if you can afford it, the standard repayment plan is just 10 years. To calculate how much your monthly bill would be under different plans, use one of the calculators at Studentaid.gov or Freestudentloanadvice.org, said Betsy Mayotte, president of The Institute of Student Loan Advisors, a nonprofit. If you do decide to change your repayment plan, Mayotte recommends submitting that application with your servicer before payments turn back on.

☆ Opinion | Will Biden Face a Democratic Challenger?
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-22 | by ( Ross Douthat | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +2 min

Biden has also avoided the kind of gambits and defeats that might leave a large constituency ready to revolt. None of this eliminates the difficulty of imagining his campaign for four more years. But it’s outstripped by the difficulty of seeing how any serious and respectable force inside the Democratic Party could be organized to stop it. However, as the Trump era has taught us, the serious and the respectable aren’t the only forces in American politics; disreputability has potency as well. Right now there’s no clear opening for a major rival like Newsom to replace Biden as the Democratic nominee.

☆ Opinion: Why Biden has little 2024 Democratic opposition
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-21 | by ( David Axelrod | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +7 min

CNN —President Joe Biden was the toast of Ireland last week, as he was treated to a hero’s welcome in a pageant-laden return to his ancestral home. Biden, who is expected to formalize his plans next week, has a significant body of achievements on which to run. So is the absence of a real primary challenge simply the luck of the Irish? Perhaps with that primary battle in mind, Biden has worked assiduously to court the progressive wing of the party, from which such Democratic primary challenges generally arise. Finally, there is former President Donald Trump, whose candidacy is a boost to Biden among Democrats.

☆ Trump racks up Florida endorsements in blow to DeSantis
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-19 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

[1/2] Former U.S. President Donald Trump and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis speak at midterm election rallies, in Dayton, Ohio, U.S. November 7, 2022 and Tampa, Florida, U.S., November 8, 2022 in a combination of file photos. REUTERS/Gaelen Morse, Marco BelloApril 19 (Reuters) - Donald Trump continued to rack up endorsements in Florida for his presidential campaign on Wednesday, outmaneuvering the state's Governor Ron DeSantis on his home turf. "If we want to get our economy back on track, Donald Trump is just the guy to get it done," Buchanan said. "They have the DeSantis campaign in a vulnerable position." Only one, Laurel Lee, stuck with DeSantis, announcing her endorsement on Tuesday.

☆ Netflix Put His Photo in a True-Crime Film. Now, He’s Suing.
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-18 | by ( Remy Tumin | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

In 2019, Taylor Hazlewood posted a picture of himself holding a friend’s hatchet on Instagram as a tribute to his favorite childhood book, “Hatchet,” a young-adult wilderness survival novel by Gary Paulsen. Mr. Hazlewood is suing Netflix for using his photo in “The Hatchet Wielding Hitchhiker,” a true-crime documentary about a hitchhiker turned convicted murderer. He is seeking $1 million in damages for defamation and the misappropriation of his likeness..Reached by phone on Tuesday, Mr. Hazlewood referred requests for comment to his lawyer, Angela Buchanan. In a statement, Ms. Buchanan said “there should have been no confusion” if Netflix had done “its homework.”“Because of the lack of due diligence,” she said, “Mr. Hazlewood has a constant fear regarding the impact the film will have on his personal relationships, his employment and his reputation in general.”

☆ 35 Ways Real People Are Using A.I. Right Now
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-14 | by ( Francesca Paris | Larry Buchanan | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +24 min

People are using ChatGPT and other A.I. Here’s how 35 real people are using A.I for work, life, play and procrastination. People are using A.I to …Plan gardens. Chris Norn Researcher at the University of Washington Two years ago researchers cracked the code on using A.I. When you run a Dungeons & Dragons game, Mr. Green says, you have to be creative, but that almost always means pulling from existing fantasy literature.

☆ DeSantis is calling up Republican lawmakers in his state to try to stop them endorsing Trump, report says
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-13 | by ( Sinéad Baker | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

DeSantis aides have called Florida lawmakers to try stop them endorsing Trump, NBC News reported. They asked lawmakers to delay endorsements, after four state lawmakers backed Trump. Ron DeSantis have been calling other lawmakers in the state to try and stop them endorsing former President Donald Trump for the 2024 presidency, NBC News reported. DeSantis' team have contacted at least six members of Florida's congressional delegation, sources close to four of those members told NBC News. Insider has contacted DeSantis' office for comment.

☆ Stock futures are flat Monday as March inflation reports loom ahead: Live updates
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-10 | by ( Hakyung Kim | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +2 min

U.S. stock futures were little changed on Monday night as investors look toward the release of economic data later this week. Dow Jones Industrial Average futures ticked higher by 29 points, or 0.09%. And that can't be determined until we get those data points start coming in in real time. But I think that's what the market is waiting on," said Keith Buchanan, senior portfolio manager at GLOBALT Investments. Several central bank speakers will make appearances on Tuesday: Chicago Fed President Austan Goolsbee, Philadelphia Fed President Patrick Harker and Minneapolis Fed President Neel Kashkari will be speaking that afternoon and evening.

☆ Depleted Canada team a 'massive' chance for World Cup hopefuls-coach
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-10 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

April 10 (Reuters) - The absence of many first-choice players has presented a "massive opportunity" for others to stake their claim in Canada's World Cup squad, coach Bev Priestman said as the Olympic champions prepare to face France in a friendly on Tuesday. "There's a massive opportunity for anybody that gets on the pitch. And, you know, to get that one camp away from your World Cup squad being announced and, you know, going into that World Cup squad, I think I have to look at the opportunity in it and see the bigger picture." "I don't think it's a World Cup injury, but it's not a 'she'll be ready, you know, this week' type injury," said Priestman. Herve Renard took the reins late last month after leading Saudi Arabia to a shock group-stage win over eventual champions Argentina in last year's men's World Cup.

☆ Another SEAL parachuting death highlights the inherent danger of US special operators' go-to infiltration method
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-29 | by ( Stavros Atlamazoglou | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +6 min

Deadly accidentsNaval Special Warfare operators perform a free-fall jump in Alaska in September. The incident, which likely happened during as part of a pre-deployment workup, is still under investigation, according to Naval Special Warfare Command. Despite that danger, however, free-fall parachuting is also extremely valuable as an insertion method for special-operations units. The Navy SEAL community — especially the Naval Special Warfare Development Group, formerly known as SEAL Team 6 — is well-versed in free-fall operations. Most US special-operations units have recognized the value of free-fall parachuting and have incorporated it into their training.

☆ Employees at the $2 billion e-commerce startup Rokt once saw a photo of a colleague in blackface during a company Zoom meeting
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-28 | by ( Jack Newsham | Madeline Stone | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

An employee at e-commerce firm Rokt shared a photo of a colleague in blackface, shocking colleagues. An employee shared the photo, from an event in 2012, that appeared to show another employee in blackface and dressed as Michael Jackson. recalled one of more than a half-dozen former employees who told Insider they saw the photo. Rokt said that both employees completed a session of unconscious bias training with an expert facilitator, who also held a session for the whole company. Rokt"We were all, in America, like, 'We don't need to learn about blackface from you,'" the second former employee said.

☆ A student-loan borrower was promised a $5,000 refund on payments after Biden's broad debt relief. Months later, she's still waiting — and no one is picking up the phone to help.
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-19 | by ( Ayelet Sheffey | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +7 min

Roxanne Dougherty, 31, is waiting for a $5,000 refund on her student-loan payments. The Education Department directed Insider to guidance on refunds posted on Federal Student Aid's website. "No one is taking the time to help me or to listen to me when it comes to MOHELA," Dougherty said. "It just seems like there's something in it for them to not help," Dougherty said. Are you still waiting for a refund on your student-loan payments?

☆ Current and former Rokt employees told Insider about blackface, booze, and blurred lines
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-17 | by ( Diamond Naga Siu | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

They told my colleague Jordan Pandy that Charlotte seemed affordable and diverse on paper. The photo was shown at a company-wide meeting to highlight how "fun" working at $2 billion ad-tech startup Rokt was, an Insider investigation reveals. He said blackface isn't a big deal in Australia, where the company was founded and where the photo was taken. But more than 30 current and former employees told my colleagues Jack Newsham and Madeline Stone that they had a different experience. Come behind the scenes of Rokt with us, where Insider reports that booze and blurred lines flow rampantly.

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