Breaking
Financial Vision Daily
Author

admin

Browsing
In World news

At least 90 Palestinians killed in Israeli school strike, Gaza officials say

2 Mins Read

At least 90 Palestinians have been killed in an Israeli strike on a school in Gaza, according to local officials.

Gaza Civil Defense said the Al-Tabi’in school was housing displaced Palestinians in the Al-Daraj neighborhood in the eastern part of Gaza City when it was hit overnight into Saturday.

In its statement, the military claimed the “command and control center served as a hideout for Hamas terrorists and commanders, from which various attacks were planned and advanced against IDF troops and the State of Israel.”

The military also said that before the airstrike, “numerous steps were taken to mitigate the risk of harming civilians, including the use of precise munitions, aerial surveillance, and intelligence information.”

Israeli military action in Gaza has killed nearly 40,000 Palestinians and injured over 90,000, according to Gaza’s Ministry of Health. As of early July, nearly 2 million people had been displaced in the enclave – almost its entire population, according to figures from the United Nations.

Israel launched the military offensive on October 7, after militant group Hamas attacked southern Israel. At least 1,200 people were killed, and more than 250 others abducted in the Hamas-led assault, according to Israeli authorities.

A doctor working in a nearby hospital earlier said at least 50 people had been killed in Saturday’s strike.

Basal said many of the dead were yet to be identified.

“There are still large quantities of body parts and torn bodies inside Al-Ahli hospital,” he said. “Families are having a hard time identifying their children.”

Basal also said that many of the injured transferred to hospital are in very serious condition.

Saturday’s attack follows similar lethal strikes by Israel over the past week.

Airstrikes on multiple school buildings sheltering displaced Palestinians last weekend killed at least 47, including many children, and injured dozens more.

This is a developing story.

This post appeared first on cnn.com

Keep Reading
In World news

Britain is hoping its riots have peaked. But the far right is lingering, and more trouble could lie ahead

6 Mins Read

For a few hours on Wednesday evening, tension pulsed through Britain’s streets.

Shops and businesses closed early in dozens of cities and towns, boarding up their storefronts and getting out. Police descended on high streets and residential roads, and locals showed up too, ready for the worst.

But then the counter-protests started. Anti-racism rallies stole back the narrative and kept away far-right antagonists, and a nervous country breathed a huge sigh of relief after a night that could have felt very different.

Wednesday felt like a turning point after a string of violence that had put a country on edge and thrown its new government into a sudden crisis.

Large crowds gathered at an anti-racism protest in Walthamstow on Wednesday, where far-right violence had been expected.
Reuters

But the government says it remains on high alert for more unrest this weekend. The fury simmering in a subset of White Britain remains a live danger; these riots were shocking, but not entirely surprising.

And the causes that aided and enabled the racist violence – misinformation, anti-migrant rhetoric in Britain’s media and politics, a hobbled police force and stuffed prisons and courts – will take far longer than a night to fix.

“The chickens come home to roost,” he said. “As a country, this is a bed that we’ve made, and now we’re sleeping in it.”

Online provocateurs and far-right foot soldiers

Fittingly, after a week of misinformation-fuelled fury, the origin and authenticity of the list of supposed far-right targets on Wednesday isn’t clear.

The addresses included were mainly immigration centers and lawyers dealing with migration cases. It was a scattershot collection, seemingly collated with little knowledge of the local areas; some were offices based in non-descript business parks; others on quiet, residential streets.

But after a weekend of ugly anger on Britain’s streets, in which hotels housing asylum seekers were set on fire by racist mobs, it quickly went viral: first on Telegram channels used by the far right, then across social media, and among the communities that appeared to be targets. A huge police operation across the country was launched; in the end, few far-right disruptors showed up anywhere.

Misinformation on social media has added an element of unpredictability to the far right’s organization.

Leading platforms, especially X, have provided new soapboxes to incendiary figures intent on stirring anti-migrant sentiment. In many cases, their posts are eagerly shared and viewed by the far-right foot soldiers who joined the weekend’s riots – even if the authors quietly condemn violence after the fact.

Tommy Robinson, the figurehead of Britain’s far right, was reinstated to X (then Twitter) days after Elon Musk bought the platform. Robinson, whose profile picture shows him with tape across his mouth, has nearly a million followers.

Almost every one of his tweets is an anti-migrant tirade, frequently using dehumanizing and othering language to describe the high rate of legal and illegal migration to the UK.

Those themes are echoed by other high-profile Twitter users, like provocateur Laurence Fox, who hosted a show on the right-wing GB News TV channel until he was fired last October for demeaning the appearance of a female journalist on air. Amid the weekend’s riots, Fox told his followers: “Islam needs to be removed from Britain. Completely and entirely.”

Starmer has become an enemy in the eyes of the far right over the past week, but he has little ability to quell a right-wing and far-right online ecosystem that exists in private messaging apps and, increasingly, on public sites accessible by anyone.

And remarkably, the first spat that Britain’s new Prime Minister Keir Starmer found himself engaged in was with Musk himself, who has taken an interest in goading Starmer on his platform.

Musk tweeted Sunday that “civil war is inevitable” in Britain – a prediction most Brits would scoff at, and one that prompted an unusually direct rebuke from the prime minister’s spokesperson, who told reporters there was “no justification” for the comments.

Britain’s far-right rioting broke out less than a month into the tenure of its new prime minister, but Starmer has been here before.

Formerly Britain’s highest-ranking prosecutor, Starmer oversaw a rapid legal response to the 2011 rioting that broke out after the shooting of a Black man by police in north London. Courts stayed open 24 hours and sentences were well publicized, in an effort not just to deal justice but to send a message.

He has reached for the same playbook this week. There have been hundreds of arrests, and already dozens of rioters have been charged and sent to begin hefty prison terms, ranging from several months to nearly three years. Their ages, so far, span from 16 to 69. Some judges’ sentencing remarks have been broadcast live, a novel tactic in a country where courtroom cameras are a recent and heavily restricted phenomenon.

Arrests were made at a far-right demonstration in Sheffield this week.
CNN

Early signs suggest the legal blitz has worked in deterring far-right supporters from taking to the streets.

It has also led to a moniker – “two-tier Keir” – among those far-right groups, who claim Starmer is using tougher rhetoric on the far right than he did against other protesters, like climate activists.

Starmer will be unbothered by that fringe grievance. But there are wider inequalities that gave rise to the unrest which will take years to resolve.

Riots took hold disproportionately in cities and towns suffering from high levels of deprivation; places where, over recent years, people have increasingly seen the creaking foundations of the British state through a lens that focuses unforgivingly on migration.

The motives of the far-right stray well beyond concern about migration, and into hatred and racism. “We are losing our heritage to a Muslim situation that has got out of control. They want this country for their own,” McDermott also said. Referring to a larger crowd of counter-protesters in Sheffield, he added: “I don’t know what the hell’s going on with them. They’re not human.”

But the explosion of anti-migrant discourse on Britain’s airwaves and online, coupled with the breakdown of the country’s underfunded public services, has given Brits tempted by far-right discourse a more emotive, and socially acceptable, entry point.

The combination of those grievances with the proliferation of far-right material is a trend that Britain is not facing alone, but it is a force Starmer has pledged to counter.

Starmer styled himself as an antidote to populism at the start of his time in office, and told rioters in an address from Downing Street: “I guarantee you will regret taking part in this disorder.” How quickly he comes through on those promises may become a defining question of his premiership.

This post appeared first on cnn.com

Keep Reading
In Business

‘People are stretched’: Average consumer now carries $6,329 in credit card debt

2 Mins Read

Credit card debt is on the rise.

Americans now owe a record $1.14 trillion on their credit cards, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York reported Tuesday.

The average balance per consumer stands at $6,329, up 4.8% year over year, according to a separate quarterly credit industry insights report from TransUnion.

Credit card delinquency rates are also higher across the board, the New York Fed and TransUnion found. Over the last year, roughly 9.1% of credit card balances transitioned into delinquency, the New York Fed reported.

Borrowers with revolving debt “are maxing out their credit cards,” said Michele Raneri, vice president and head of U.S. research and consulting at TransUnion, “that’s usually a pretty good indicator that people are stretched.”

“Credit card balances briefly fell in 2020 and early 2021 due to pandemic-related factors,” said Ted Rossman, Bankrate’s senior industry analyst, which included government-supplied stimulus checks and fewer opportunities for spending.

“But since early 2021, credit card balances have rocketed upward by 48%, fueled by a post-pandemic boom in services spending as well as high inflation and high interest rates,” he said.

Consumers have showed a remarkable willingness to splurge on travel and entertainment, a recent report by Bankrate also shows, to recapture the experiences they lost during the Covid years.

“Maybe people can reassess that now,” Raneri said.

The surge in “revenge spending” has now lasted several years, she added. “Maybe there is a way to position it that they can check off some of the things that they feel like they missed and get back to normal.”

Credit cards are one of the most expensive ways to borrow money. The average credit card charges more than 20% — near an all-time high.

“With credit card balances at an all-time high and the average credit card rate hovering near record territory, it’s more important than ever to pay down this debt as soon as possible,” Rossman said.

If you’re carrying a balance, try consolidating and paying off high-interest credit cards with a lower interest personal loan or switch to an interest-free balance transfer credit card, he advised.

This post appeared first on NBC NEWS

Keep Reading
In Business

Boeing’s new outsider CEO Ortberg takes the helm, this time from the factory floor

7 Mins Read

Aerospace veteran Robert “Kelly” Ortberg becomes Boeing’s new CEO on Thursday with a singular mission: restoring the reputation of a U.S. manufacturing icon.

That enormous goal will involve thousands of daily decisions that will determine whether Boeing can earn back the trust of regulators, airlines and the public; end persistent production defects; deliver aircraft on time and consistently to customers large and small; and stop burning cash.

Boeing’s new CEO, Robert ‘Kelly’ Ortberg.Boeing via AFP – Getty Images

That cash burn is running about $8 billion so far this year and counting. Meanwhile, Boeing shares are down some 37% so far in 2024, as of Wednesday.

Ortberg’s Day 1 activity is walking the floor of Boeing’s factory in Renton, Washington, where it builds its bestselling but problematic 737 Max. He plans to talk with employees and review safety and quality plans, with similar visits ahead at other Boeing plants.

“I can’t tell you how proud and excited I am to be a member of the Boeing team,” he said in a note to staff on Thursday. “While we clearly have a lot of work to do in restoring trust, I’m confident that working together, we will return the company to be the industry leader we all expect.”

Analysts and industry insiders are cautiously upbeat, painting the 64-year-old Ortberg — a more than three-decade veteran of the industry who spent years atop commercial and defense supplier Rockwell Collins after working up the ranks there — as a good listener with an engineering background (he has a mechanical engineering degree). Perhaps most importantly, he is a Boeing outsider.

“This guy has a fantastic reputation and level of experience in the industry,” said Richard Aboulafia, managing director at AeroDynamic Advisory. “He has a reputation for listening and for letting people push back.”

Those skills will be key as Boeing tries to stabilize its production and eliminate manufacturing flaws.

Boeing’s top safety executive for commercial aerospace told a National Transportation Safety Board hearing earlier this week that the company is working on a design fix so the near-catastrophic door plug blowout it faced at the beginning of the year never happens again.

The hearing was part of the NTSB’s probe of the midair blowout of a door plug from a packed, months-old Boeing 737 Max 9 as it climbed out of Portland, Oregon. While no one was seriously injured in the accident, it put Boeing back into crisis mode just as it was trying to move on from two fatal crashes of its bestselling 737 Max planes in 2018 and 2019.

Worker testimony at the NTSB hearing also showed manufacturing pressure and frequent fixes on planes, putting a spotlight on Boeing’s factories.

“I will be transparent with you every step of the way, sharing news on progress as well as where we must do things better,” Ortberg said in the memo. He vowed to share reports to staff, “giving you timely updates of what I’m seeing and hearing on the ground from our teammates and our stakeholders.”

Boeing last month agreed to plead guilty to defrauding the U.S. government during the Max certification, a deal that will require an independent corporate monitor at the company for three years.

But Ortberg will have to address issues not only in the commercial jet business, including the delayed certification of new 737 and 777 models, but also in its defense unit.

That segment of the business is facing issues with two 747s that will serve as the next Air Force One aircraft but are years behind schedule. Meanwhile, Boeing’s misfiring Starliner capsule, which launched in early June, has NASA debating whether to use SpaceX instead to bring astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams back from the International Space Station.

And on Thursday, NASA’s inspector general released an audit of the agency’s Space Launch System rocket program, which is being built for moon missions and counts Boeing as a leading contractor. The NASA watchdog slammed Boeing for its “ineffective quality management and inexperienced workforce, continued cost increases and schedule delays, and the delayed establishment of a cost and schedule baseline.”

A decision is also looming over whether to launch a new aircraft as Boeing loses ground to rival Airbus.

The first 100 days of Ortberg’s time as CEO will be crucial, said Bank of America aerospace analyst Ron Epstein.

“The decisions made early in his tenure will have generational impacts on the company,” he said in a note Monday.

Ortberg and his team will need to ensure Boeing’s workforce is trained, with thousands of new workers in factories after more experienced staff members took buyouts or were laid off in the pandemic. A union representing some 30,000 Boeing factory workers in Washington state and Oregon is seeking more than 40% raises and, last month, members authorized a strike if a deal isn’t reached this September.

“The principles of safety and quality should be equally important as the manufacturing rates,” Jon Holden, local president of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, said in a statement last week. “This potential collaboration with the new CEO could be a prime opportunity for Boeing to prove its dedication to its workforce and acknowledge the exceptional manufacturing capability and capacity of skilled IAM Members on the shop floor.”

Last week, alongside another quarterly loss, Boeing announced Ortberg would succeed Dave Calhoun, who had said in March he would step down by year’s end.

That was part of a larger executive shake-up after the door plug blowout. Calhoun himself took over a Boeing in crisis in early 2020, replacing Dennis Muilenburg, who was ousted for his handling of the two Max crashes.

While Boeing is still based in Arlington, Virginia — where it announced it would move its headquarters in 2022 from Chicago — Ortberg will be based in the Seattle area, giving him a close eye on where the majority of Boeing’s commercial jetliner production is based.

“In speaking with our customers and industry partners leading up to today, I can tell you that without exception, everyone wants us to succeed,” Ortberg said in his Day 1 note to employees. “In many cases, they NEED us to succeed. This is a great foundation for us to build upon.”

Getting off on the right foot with customers and the hundreds of suppliers that are struggling from pandemic-demand whiplash is important for Ortberg and the company. Boeing’s relationships with its bread-and-butter customers have suffered recently, and its leadership shake-up came after airline CEOs sought a meeting with the company’s board as delays of aircraft piled up in the wake of the door plug blowout.

Southwest Airlines is among Boeing’s biggest customers and, like other carriers, has scaled back its growth plans, citing delivery delays of new, more fuel-efficient jets from Boeing. The airline’s CEO hinted at the big feat Ortberg has ahead of him.

“We look forward to working with Kelly Ortberg in his efforts to return Boeing to its place as the leading American aerospace company,” CEO Bob Jordan said in a written statement. “A strong Boeing is great for Southwest Airlines and it’s great for our industry.”

— CNBC’s Michael Sheetz contributed to this article.

This post appeared first on NBC NEWS

Keep Reading
In Business

Amazon’s $4 billion investment in AI firm Anthropic faces U.K. merger investigation

4 Mins Read

LONDON — E-commerce giant Amazon’s multibillion-dollar investment in the U.S. artificial intelligence firm Anthropic is formally being investigated by a U.K. competition regulator.

The Competition and Markets Authority said Thursday that it has begun a “Phase 1” investigation into Amazon’s investment and partnership with Anthropic to assess whether the deal has resulted in a relevant merger situation that may harm competition in the U.K.

Following initial scrutiny into the Amazon-Anthropic partnership, the CMA now has “sufficient information” in relation to the tie-up to begin a formal probe, the regulator said in a notice on its website.

The CMA now has up to 40 working days to decide whether the transaction could harm competition and should therefore be scrutinized further in an in-depth “Phase 2” investigation.

Amazon completed in March a $4 billion investment in Anthropic. The deal consisted of an initial $1.25 billion equity stake in September, followed by a further $2.75 billion transaction finalized earlier this year.

As part of the deal Amazon will make Anthropic’s powerful large language models available on its Bedrock platform for building generative AI applications. Anthropic’s models will also be trained and deployed on Amazon’s own custom AI chips, which were built by its Amazon Web Services cloud computing division.

In a statement to CNBC, an Amazon spokesperson said the company is “disappointed” the CMA proceeded with an initial Phase 1 merger probe, adding that its collaboration with Anthropic “does not raise any competition concerns or meet the CMA’s own threshold for review.”

“By investing in Anthropic, Amazon, along with other companies, is helping Anthropic expand choice and competition in this important technology. Amazon holds no board seat nor decision-making power at Anthropic, and Anthropic is free to work with any other provider (and indeed has multiple partners),” the spokesperson said via email.

Amazon’s spokesperson added that the company will continue to make Anthropic’s models available to customers via Bedrock.

An Anthropic spokesperson told CNBC: “We are an independent company. Our strategic partnerships and investor relationships do not diminish our corporate governance independence or our freedom to partner with others.”

“Amazon does not have a seat on Anthropic’s board, nor does it have any board observer rights,” the Anthropic spokesperson added. “We welcome the opportunity to cooperate with the CMA and provide them with a comprehensive understanding of Amazon’s investment and our commercial collaboration.”

The Amazon-Anthropic pact is not the only deal facing scrutiny from regulators in the U.K.

The CMA is separately scrutinizing U.S. software giant Microsoft’s multibillion-dollar partnership and investment in AI giant OpenAI.

However, the watchdog is yet to reveal whether it will begin a Phase 1 investigation into the Microsoft-OpenAI partnership.

Stateside, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission in January sent orders to tech giants Microsoft, Amazon and Google, along with AI firms OpenAI and Anthropic, requiring them to share information about their respective recent investments and partnerships.

Some smaller tech companies have criticized Big Tech firms over their strategy of building stakes in some of the key companies building advanced AI systems to get closer to them.

In May, Matt Calkins, CEO of enterprise software firm Appian, told CNBC that getting as much data as possible and acquiring stakes in fast-growing AI startups won’t necessarily result in success in the field.

“This is a market for the clever,” Calkins said. “The fact that you’ve got enough money to buy, or buy a piece of, Anthropic or Mistral or any of that, that’s impressive. But AI may not be a ‘winner take all’ market.”

“There’s going to be different AI algorithms for different purposes, and they are going to be much more or less valuable, depending on whether and how you’ve loaded your own data into it,” he added.

This post appeared first on NBC NEWS

Keep Reading
In Business

Delta says chaos after CrowdStrike outage cost it $550 million

2 Mins Read

Delta Air Lines on Thursday said last month’s CrowdStrike outage and subsequent mass flight cancellations cost it some $550 million and reiterated that it is pursuing legal claims against the company as well as Microsoft.

The financial impact includes a $380 million revenue hit in the current quarter “primarily driven by refunding customers for cancelled flights and providing customer compensation in the form of cash and SkyMiles,” the Atlanta-based airline said in a securities filing.

The incident, in which it canceled some 7,000 flights, also meant a $170 million expense “associated with the technology-driven outage and subsequent operational recovery,” the carrier said, adding that its fuel bill will likely be $50 million lower because of the scrubbed flights.

Delta struggled more than its competitors to recover from the July 19 outage, which took millions of Windows-based machines offline around the world. The disruptions occurred at the height of the summer travel season, leaving thousands of Delta customers stranded, a rare incident for the carrier that markets itself as a premium carrier that gets top marks for reliability.

“An operational disruption of this length and magnitude is unacceptable, and our customers and employees deserve better,” CEO Ed Bastian said in the filing. “Since the incident, our people have returned the operation to an industry-leading position that is consistent with the level of performance our customers expect from Delta.”

This post appeared first on NBC NEWS

Keep Reading
In Business

Three Disney films could top $1 billion this year after box office rut

6 Mins Read

After years of starts and stops at the box office, Disney appears to have hit a groove in 2024.

Its latest Pixar film, “Inside Out 2,” is now the highest-grossing animated film of all time, topping $1.5 billion at the global box office. Its first R-rated Marvel Cinematic Universe flick — “Deadpool & Wolverine” —broke opening weekend records for an R-rated film and is set to surpass the $1 billion mark before the end of its run.

And the box office hits aren’t expected to stop there.

Over the Thanksgiving holiday, the studio is set to release “Moana 2,” the hotly anticipated sequel to 2016′s “Moana.” While the first film generated a little less than $700 million at the global box office, audience fervor for more “Moana” content is expected to drive high ticket sales in November. After all, it was the most streamed film of 2023.

Disney has already seen success from its animated franchises this year, as “Inside Out 2” has generated nearly double the $850 million its predecessor secured in 2015.

“The billion-dollar club, while growing ever less exclusive with each passing year, is no less a remarkable achievement for any film to join its ranks, particularly when one studio has the potential to land a trifecta of such hits for film released in the same year,” said Paul Dergarabedian, senior media analyst at Comscore. “Such is the enviable position that Disney, after a fallow post-Pandemic period has returned to glory with a vengeance. They are in the midst of phenomenal comeback year for the studio.”

A wild card for the studio is December’s “Mufasa: The Lion King,” a prequel to 2019′s “The Lion King.” While its predecessor generated $1.6 billion at the global box office, more than $1.1 billion of which came from international audiences, it’s unclear what appetite moviegoers have for this photorealistically animated sequel.

Disney has long been a box office champion, driving significant ticket sales domestically and globally. While its theatrical business is a relatively small part of its overall annual revenues, its a large part of Disney’s wider strategy. The company uses its theatrical successes across many of its other departments. Franchises like Star Wars, Marvel, Avatar and Pixar have transcended the big screen to become popular theme park lands and TV shows, and characters from those films appear on merchandise.

Disney’s recent box office rut came at a time when its theme parks were growing rapidly and generating enough revenue to balance out other pieces of the business that were less successful or still in the process of becoming profitable, like streaming platform Disney+. However, in the most recent quarter, Disney parks and experiences segment felt pressure due to lower consumer demand and inflation.

Having its theatrical business return to form is key for Disney because of how it can fuel other areas of the business.

Disney churns out more billion-dollar hits than anyone in the business. Of the 53 titles that have achieved this feat at the box office, more than half, or 27, have been under the Disney banner, according to data from Comscore.

Two of those films — 2009′s “Avatar” and 1997′s “Titanic” — were produced by 21st Century Fox prior to the 2019 merger of the two companies, but are considered part of Disney’s collection of billion-dollar features. Additionally, two Marvel Cinematic Universe Spider-Man films that were co-produced by Disney and Sony topped $1 billion. However, those are not included in Disney’s haul because they were distributed by Sony.

In the year before the pandemic, Disney had seven theatrical releases top $1 billion at the box office. However, theater closures and production shutdowns, coupled with a creative team that was stretched too thin, led to a cinematic slump for the company in recent years.

Audiences and critics bemoaned Disney’s push for quantity, which sacrificed quality in major franchises. The company was also criticized for allowing some of its content to become too focused on social messages.

While “Avatar: The Way of Water” became one of the top all-time box-office hits in 2022, and several Marvel features topped $800 million in global ticket sales, Disney also saw some of its lowest animated feature hauls in decades and its lowest-ever MCU release.

“Much has been said about a few of Disney’s underwhelming box office performances in recent years but it was always a fool’s errand to count the studio out for long,” said Shawn Robbins, founder and owner of Box Office Theory. “Their leadership made clear and convincing strategic moves to address the commercial struggles of several key releases coming out of the pandemic era … We’re starting to see the early dividends of that pivot back to quality franchise content and a renewed emphasis on the moviegoing experience.”

Disney’s CEO Bob Iger has addressed the company’s theatrical woes on several occasions since returning to the helm of the company in late 2022.

He admitted Disney’s fall from theatrical grace had a number of causes. He said that during Covid lockdowns, the company conditioned audiences to expect its films on streaming, and that pandemic-related restrictions made it difficult for executives to oversee its increased number of film and television productions. Additionally, he said the company’s push to feed Disney+ with new content diluted its quality.

Iger promised investors that Disney’s creatives would right the ship. And he appears to be making good on that pledge.

Anxiety from Disney and Pixar’s “Inside Out 2” at the control panel inside Riley Andersen’s mind.

On Wednesday, he credited “Inside Out 2” for the company’s outperformance in its content sales and licensing division during the most recent quarter. The company noted that the first “Inside Out” drove more than 1.3 million Disney+ sign-ups and generated more than 100 million views globally since the first trailer for “Inside Out 2” was released last November.

He also touted the company’s slate of franchise features coming in the next few years.

“Let me just read to you the movies that we’ll be making and releasing in the next almost two years,” Iger said during Wednesday’s earning call. “We have ‘Moana,’ ‘Mufasa,’ ‘Captain America,’ ‘Snow White,’ ‘Thunderbolts*’, ‘Fantastic 4,’ ‘Zootopia,’ ‘Avatar,’ ‘Avengers,’ ‘Mandalorian’ and ‘Toy Story,’ just to name a few. And when you think about not only the potential of those in the box office but the potential of those to drive global streaming value, I think there’s a reason to be bullish about where we’re headed.”

2024

2025

2026

2027

Investors are expected to get a bigger glimpse into Disney’s theatrical plans during its biannual D23 Expo taking place in Anaheim, California this weekend.

“The past speaks for itself, but there’s no doubting the importance of Disney’s role in the industry’s present and future,” said Robbins. “If Marvel and Pixar continue their turnarounds, and if the Star Wars franchise can eventually execute a similar rebound under Lucasfilm, it won’t be long before the parent studio returns to some familiar box office prowess up and down the calendar each year.”

This post appeared first on NBC NEWS

Keep Reading
In Politics

Justice Neil Gorsuch says Americans getting ‘thwacked’ by too many laws

5 Mins Read

As U.S. Supreme Court Justice Neil M. Gorsuch sees it, an explosion in the complexity of the nation’s regulations is overburdening Americans and often trampling their rights and livelihoods.

Less than a century ago, the laws of the United States could fit into a single book, but since then they have swelled to fill enough volumes to take up an entire shelf in his office, Gorsuch said Thursday night during a conversation at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, Calif.

The Federal Register listing government regulations is now about 60,000 pages, and the number of federal crimes has grown to roughly 5,000 by some estimates, said Gorsuch, who is promoting a book, “Over Ruled: The Human Toll of Too Much Law,” which he co-wrote with a former clerk, Janie Nitze.

Gorsuch said that ever-expanding system has created a Kafkaesque maze, where Americans sometimes violate rules and regulations they didn’t know existed, compliance has become overly onerous, and even regulators sometimes don’t know the laws they are tasked with enforcing.

“I’ve been a judge now coming on 20 years,” he told the Reagan Library audience. “I’ve just seen so many cases come through my courtroom where ordinary Americans — decent, hardworking people who are trying to do their best — are just getting … thwacked by laws unexpectedly.”

Gorsuch illustrated his point by delving into several real-life vignettes from his book, involving magicians, monks and a hair-braider who found themselves in fights — sometimes surreal — with regulators.

He told the story of a commercial fisherman in Florida who was charged under a law, passed after the Enron corporate accounting scandal, that forbids the destruction of documents and “tangible objects” to impede a federal investigation. The man’s alleged crime: disposing of fish.

The government alleged that John Yates destroyed evidence by dumping his catch after a routine inspection found that the fish were smaller than the legal limit, then replacing them with other fish, a contention Yates denied. Prosecutors argued that the fish were tangible objects under the Sarbanes-Oxley Act.

Yates was eventually convicted and served 30 days in jail, but he appealed his case to the Supreme Court, which overturned his conviction in 2015, finding that the law was never meant to apply to such circumstances. By then, the legal drama had upended Yates’s life and career as a fisherman.

Gorsuch said the heavy reliance on laws has many causes, but it may have to do with the nation’s fraying bonds of community and trust. He lamented the downfall of churchgoing, the decline in social clubs and the deepening political divide in recent decades.

“If I trust you and my local community and we can work together to solve problems, we don’t need to resort to law for everything,” Gorsuch said. “We have a lot of work to do on civility and civics.”

The justice said too many schools have dropped civics classes, and he urged people to lobby their local districts to reinstate them. He said it was shocking that, as surveys have shown, many Americans cannot name all three branches of government.

The appearance at the library was part of a series of interviews by the Donald Trump-appointed conservative, who like other justices rarely speaks to the media. In the recent blitz to promote his book, Gorsuch has expressed reservations about President Joe Biden’s plans to overhaul the Supreme Court and defended a blockbuster ruling from the high court in July that granted Trump broad immunity from criminal prosecution for his official acts as president.

Gorsuch, who became a Supreme Court justice in 2017, told Fox News in an interview aired Sunday that he would not offer an opinion on Biden’s proposed changes for the court, which include 18-year term limits for justices and a stronger enforcement mechanism for its ethics code, but he worried about the impact of any overhaul, saying it could make the judiciary less independent.

“It’s there for the moments when the spotlight’s on you, when the government’s coming after you,” Gorsuch said of the court system. “Don’t you want a ferociously independent judge and a jury of your peers to make those decisions? Isn’t that your right as an American? And so I just say, be careful.”

Gorsuch’s comments came after Justice Elena Kagan struck a different tone, recently telling an audience in California that she would support the creation of a committee of judges to examine potential violations of the court’s ethics code, which critics have complained is toothless.

In a second interview with Fox News, aired Tuesday, Gorsuch defended the court’s decision on presidential immunity, which arose out of a criminal case against Trump related to his efforts to subvert the results of the 2020 election.

Gorsuch framed the decision as an outgrowth of a Nixon-era ruling by the court that insulated presidents from civil suits after they leave office, so as not to chill their actions while in office.

“All the court did in this case was simply apply that same precedent and idea to the criminal context,” Gorsuch said.

The Supreme Court has sharply curtailed the power of federal agencies in major rulings in recent terms.

The court struck down a 40-year-old bedrock of administrative law known as the Chevron doctrine that required courts to give broad deference to federal agencies’ interpretations of ambiguous statutes.

The court has also put on hold a major plan by the Environmental Protection Agency to combat smog-forming pollution that drifts across state lines, curtailed the EPA’s ability to regulate greenhouse gases and limited its powers to protect wetlands. It also invalidated the Securities and Exchange Commission’s use of in-house tribunals to go after securities fraud, among other actions.

This post appeared first on washingtonpost.com

Keep Reading
In Politics

Man who violently fought cops gets 2nd longest Jan. 6 sentence: 20 years

7 Mins Read

David N. Dempsey came to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol well prepared and well experienced in committing violence at political rallies. Dempsey wore a bullet-proof tactical vest, a black helmet, a gaiter to obscure most of his face, and he brought a spare gaiter and shirt that he changed into during the riot.

Before climbing up over rioters on the steps of the Capitol, he gave an interview in front of the gallows constructed nearby and rattled off the names of prominent Democrats he hated. “They don’t need a jail cell,” Dempsey said. “They need to hang from these.”

Dempsey then repeatedly attacked police officers in the lower West Terrace tunnel for more than an hour, throwing poles and deploying bear spray at the line of officers protecting the Capitol. He then sprayed bear spray directly inside the mask of one officer, who testified that he thought he might die, and used a crutch to smash one officer’s head, giving him a concussion.

Senior U.S. District Judge Royce C. Lamberth sentenced Dempsey, 37, to 20 years in prison Friday, the second-longest sentence of the approximately 950 defendants sentenced so far. Only Enrique Tarrio, the leader of the Proud Boys who was convicted of seditious conspiracy, received a longer sentence of 22 years.

“Your conduct on January 6 was especially egregious,” Lamberth told Dempsey. “You didn’t make a split-second decision to use violence. You did not get carried away in the moment. You have a long and well-documented history of inflicting violence on political opponents.”

Dempsey pleaded guilty in January of this year to two counts of assaulting police with dangerous or deadly weapons in the Capitol attack. His family started an online fundraiser for him, which has raised more than $20,000, saying that “he is being politically silenced for his beliefs in the Constitution.”

The judge also weighed Dempsey’s lengthy criminal history in California for burglary, drug dealing, evading police and “assault with a caustic chemical,” for spraying bear spray at anti-Trump protesters in 2020, one of multiple attacks he allegedly launched at political rallies.

Nearly 1,500 people have been charged in the Capitol riot, and more than a third of those were charged with assaulting the police. The average sentence for assaulting police has been slightly less than four years, according to a Washington Post database.

But “Dempsey was one of the most violent rioters, during one of the most violent stretches of time,” prosecutors argued in their sentencing memo, “at the scene of the most violent confrontations at the Capitol on January 6.” That was the West Terrace tunnel, where rioters used sheer numbers to push officers from U.S. Capitol and D.C. police back toward an internal door, hurling items, spraying chemicals and cursing the officers.

Prosecutors said Dempsey flew from his home in Van Nuys, Calif., to Detroit on Jan. 4, then drove with friends to Washington on Jan. 5. Shortly before 4 p.m. on Jan. 6, as rioters continued to swarm the Capitol, Dempsey was captured on video climbing atop the shoulders and backs of others to reach the front line of the skirmish, where he announced his presence by throwing a short pole at an officer and cursing them.

Dempsey grabbed whatever was nearby and threw it at police, prosecutors said, including a riot shield and a flagpole, swung a pole into some officers, then unleashed two bursts of spray into the line of officers. Then as fellow rioter Kyle Fitzsimons of Maine yanked at the gas mask of D.C. police Sgt. Phuson Nguyen, Dempsey fired some spray into Nguyen’s face before Fitzsimons snapped the mask shut, trapping the chemicals inside.

“I thought that’s, you know, where I’m going to die,” Nguyen testified in 2022 at Fitzsimons’s trial. “And in my head, I was thinking about my family at that point before anything else.”

Fitzsimons then got smashed in the top of his head by another rioter swinging a crutch. It’s not clear whether Dempsey was the one who inflicted that wound, but surveillance video later captured Dempsey swinging a crutch at officers at least nine times, striking D.C. police Sgt. Jason Mastony in the head and arm.

Prosecutors said Mastony declined to provide a victim impact statement in other cases but did so in Dempsey’s case because “Dempsey is one of the most violent rioters I encountered on Jan. 6.” Mastony said Dempsey’s crutch struck his head “with such force that it cracked the plastic face shield of my gas mask. I collapsed and caught myself against the wall as my ears rang.” Mastony told investigators he believed he suffered a concussion.

Dempsey remained in the tunnel, surveillance video showed, continuing to swing the crutch and poles at officers before retreating at about 4:42 p.m. Then, prosecutors said, he changed his gaiter and shirt, removed his helmet and put on a hat, and returned to the fray, continuing to swing and throw things at police. He was still fighting and throwing things past 5 p.m., prosecutors said.

Dempsey was first identified by a group of online sleuths who used open-source video and photos to supply suspect names to the FBI, as detailed in the book “Sedition Hunters” by NBC News reporter Ryan Reilly. The sleuths, who initially dubbed Dempsey “FlagGaiterCopHater,” even noticed Dempsey’s change of outfits, but he continued to wear the same Converse high-top sneakers and camouflage pants throughout.

Dempsey appears to wear the same or similar Converse sneakers in Santa Monica, Calif., in 2019, video shows, when he was arrested after spraying anti-Donald Trump protesters with bear spray. He was convicted of that assault in 2021 and received a two-year suspended sentence. Dempsey was also photographed assaulting anti-Trump protesters with a metal bat and a skateboard, twice, at three rallies in 2019 and 2020 but wasn’t charged, prosecutors said.

Dempsey was arrested on multiple felony counts in August 2021 and has been held in jail since. His lawyers did not file any motions seeking his release in the intervening three years, an indication that they expected him to face a lengthy prison sentence.

Dempsey’s criminal record was so long he was classified as “criminal history category 6” for purposes of calculating his sentencing guidelines, the highest category. Someone with no criminal record would have qualified for a sentence of 10 to 12 years. Dempsey’s guidelines called for a sentence of 17 to nearly 22 years, and prosecutors asked Lamberth to give Dempsey the high end of that range.

In front of a packed courtroom with a number of officers who were at the Capitol on Jan. 6, Dempsey apologized to the police and the community. “You were doing your duties and I responded with anger and violence,” Dempsey said. “To the officers and their families, I really am sorry about everything that has transpired and I hope you find it in your hearts to forgive me.”

Lamberth noted that on Jan. 6, Dempsey “spoke at length about the need to lynch various public officials.” The judge said Dempsey “used every instrument at your disposal…to inflict the maximum harm on the members of the ‘thin blue line’ protecting members of Congress and the Capitol.” The judge declined to give the 22-year sentence sought by prosecutors, but imposed the longest sentence yet on a defendant convicted of assaulting the police at the Capitol.

This post appeared first on washingtonpost.com

Keep Reading
In Politics

U.S. will fund Israeli unit accused of gross human rights abuses

5 Mins Read

An Israeli security unit found by the United States to have committed gross violations of human rights will continue to receive U.S. funding because its actions have been “effectively remediated,” the Biden administration said Friday.

The announcement concludes a months-long investigation that coincided with an intense lobbying campaign by the Israeli government to oppose funding restrictions for the Netzah Yehuda battalion, an ultra-Orthodox unit accused of wrongdoing in the death in 2022 of an elderly Palestinian American man.

“This unit can continue receiving security assistance from the United States of America,” said State Department spokesman Matthew Miller.

The finding amounts to a victory for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and a stinging defeat for human rights experts inside the State Department and Pentagon who built a case over years that certain Israeli units should be barred from U.S. assistance under legislation known as the Leahy Laws.

Current and former officials said the decision by Secretary of State Antony Blinken to approve continued funding for the unit defied past practices of withholding assistance until serious accountability measures are taken such as criminal penalties for individuals accused of gross human rights violations.

“I have never seen a case where administrative measures such as the ones employed here were sufficient for remediation,” said Charles Blaha, a former State Department official in charge of the office that implements the Leahy Laws.

“This is especially troubling when one of the allegations against this unit is that the unit is responsible for the death of an American citizen, which really calls into question the value that the State Department places on Palestinian American lives,” he said.

The Israeli Embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

In 2022, a commander of the battalion was reprimanded and the platoon commander and company commander removed from their positions following the death of Omar Assad, a 78-year-old former grocery store owner from Milwaukee who had been detained at a West Bank checkpoint.

Assad was reported to have suffered a stress-induced heart attack that was probably brought on by being bound, gagged and held by Israeli forces, the Israel Defense Forces said in a statement at the time. The IDF added that his death was the result of “moral failure and poor decision-making” by the soldiers who had detained him.

Though the individuals faced no criminal penalties, the State Department said it was satisfied by the measures taken by the Israeli government and noted that the individuals in question no longer serve in the military.

The Israel Defense Forces “took several steps to avoid a recurrence of incidents: it enhanced screening requirements for personnel recruited into that battalion and put in place new control mechanisms during the soldiers’ training,” said the State Department. “Soldiers now receive a two-week educational seminar unique to the battalion, and conduct is documented.”

Republicans in Congress vehemently opposed any efforts to punish the Israeli unit or any members of it, with Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) saying the action would “stigmatize the entire IDF and encourage Hamas, Hezbollah and the Iranian regime.”

Blaha, who retired last year from the department and worked extensively on the case, said the consequences didn’t match what amounts to a “criminal homicide.”

“Just think about what they did: This was a 78-year-old man. They arrested him for no legitimate reason — he was never charged with anything, they gagged him, they bound him, they left him on the floor of a construction site in the middle of January. The man died of a stress-induced heart attack, according to the Israeli autopsy,” said Blaha.

“The autopsy, however, found no connection between what the soldiers did to him and his fatal heart attack. In what U.S. court would that be credible? How would that hold up?” he said.

The Israeli government told U.S. officials that the two soldiers were referred for prosecution, said a U.S. official, but those prosecutions could not go forward because witnesses declined to cooperate. The official spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive topic.

For months, Blinken weighed the recommendations from the panel known as the Israel Leahy Vetting Forum. The panel said it found multiple instances of gross violations of human rights by Netzah Yehuda and other Israeli units all occurring in the West Bank before Oct. 7. In each case, the State Department said the units had been remediated.

The review process was required under the landmark legislation created by Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.) that prohibits the U.S. government from providing military assistance to individuals or security force units that commit gross violations of human rights with impunity.

Long before the State Department had announced its decision, Netanyahu vowed to resist the action.

“If anyone thinks they can impose sanctions on a unit of the IDF — I will fight it with all my strength,” Netanyahu said in a statement earlier this year.

This post appeared first on washingtonpost.com

Keep Reading