NEWS

Arizona’s top prosecutor is investigating whether Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump violated state laws for suggesting that one of his most prominent critics should face “gunfire” in combat.

Trump has been widely criticised for comments he made about former Republican lawmaker Liz Cheney at a campaign event in Arizona on Thursday.

“She’s a radical war hawk,” Trump said of Cheney. “Let’s put her with a rifle standing there, with nine barrels shooting at her, OK? Let’s see how she feels about it, you know, when the guns are trained on her face.”

On Friday, speaking to a local TV station, Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes, a Democrat, said Trump might have violated state laws that prohibit death threats.

“I have already asked my criminal division chief to start looking at that statement, analysing it for whether it qualifies as a death threat under Arizona’s laws,” Mayes told 12News.

Mayes said it was not yet clear if Trump’s comment amounted to protected free speech or a criminal threat.

“That’s the question, whether it did cross the line. It’s deeply troubling,” Mayes said. “It is the kind of thing that riles people up, and that makes our situation in Arizona and other states more dangerous.”

Cheney endorsed Democrats

Cheney, a former top Republican in the US House of Representatives, has endorsed Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris and called the former president “a danger”.

Harris told reporters the comments were a sign Trump has become increasingly unhinged.

“Anyone who wants to be president of the United States who uses that kind of violent rhetoric is clearly disqualified and unqualified to be president,” she said in Madison, Wisconsin.

Trump spokesperson Karoline Leavitt said his remarks were misinterpreted.

“President Trump is 100 percent correct that warmongers like Liz Cheney are very quick to start wars and send other Americans to fight them, rather than go into combat themselves,” she said.

Trump goes after former VP

At a rally in Warren, Michigan, earlier in the day, Trump attacked Harris and Cheney again, and this time his comments included her father – former Vice President Dick Cheney.

“They want the Arab American vote. They want to get the Muslim votes, so she picks Liz Cheney whose father virtually destroyed the Middle East,” he said.

He added: “It’s easy for her to say she wants to start wars from the comfort of her nice home, or her father’s lavish home, that he got from killing a big portion of the Middle East. You know that, right? You know he headed up a company, that was a big company, a big beneficiary of the wars.”

Cheney was vice president under President George W Bush and played a key role in the so-called “war on terror” – the US response to the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001.

Before he served as vice president, Cheney was the former CEO of Halliburton, a multinational oil services company that won multibillion-dollar contracts with the US military in Iraq.

Cheney has also refused to back Trump’s third presidential run and has endorsed Harris.

Both Harris and Trump held evening campaigns in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, on Friday as part of a final push for votes in the crucial swing state.

Republicans wanted some so-called provisional ballots to be rejected.

The United States Supreme Court has dismissed an effort by Republicans to prevent the counting of provisional ballots in Pennsylvania – a move that would have meant thousands of votes were not tallied.

Republicans in the state, which Joe Biden and the Democrats narrowly won in the 2020 US presidential election on their way to victory, had argued that “tens of thousands of votes” could be at stake and ought to have been rejected.

Reports suggested that as of late this week, somewhere close to 9,000 ballots out of more than 1.6 million were returned, as they had arrived at election offices around Pennsylvania lacking a secrecy envelope, a signature or a date.

The ruling is a victory for voting-rights advocates, who had tried to force various counties, especially Republican-controlled counties, to allow voters to cast a provisional ballot on Election Day if they had realised their mail-in ballot was to be rejected for any of a variety of errors.

Provisional ballots generally protect voters from being excluded from the voting process if their eligibility is uncertain on Election Day. The vote is counted once officials confirm eligibility.

The Associated Press said the court ruling could apply to thousands of ballots, and possibly more, according to elections experts.

‘The right to vote means the right to have your vote counted’

The Supreme Court justices left in place a decision by Pennsylvania’s top court that elections officials must count provisional ballots cast by voters whose mail-in ballots were rejected.

Democrats had intervened on the side of the activists, arguing that if a defective mail-in ballot could not be counted, that person had not yet voted and a provisional ballot must be counted.

Harris campaign spokesperson Michael Tyler and Democratic National Committee spokesperson Rosemary Boeglin said in a joint statement after the Supreme Court acted: “In Pennsylvania and across the country, Trump and his allies are trying to make it harder for your vote to count, but our institutions are stronger than his shameful attacks. [This] decision confirms that, for every eligible voter, the right to vote means the right to have your vote counted.”

FORTNITE just held its Remix: The Prelude live event, revealing what’s in store for the game’s next season, which kicks off later today.

Details of the live event were kept secret, but we knew that the upcoming season was going to be throwback to the original Fortnite Chapter 2 from five years ago.

2

2

For The Prelude event, which was held at the Restored Reels POI in-game, Fortnite had prepared a surprise live performance.

Ice Spice and Snoop Dogg took the stage, both in-game and in real life at Times Sqaure in New York, to kick off the game’s next season.

The throwback season will bring back a remixed version of Fortnite’s island map as players remember it from the game’s original Chapter 2.

Chapter 2 Remix has a musical theme and will feature one iconic rapper each week, starting with Snoop Dogg himself in Week 1.

The “Drop It Like It’s Hot” rapper will be followed by Eminem, Ice Spice, and the late Juice WRLD for Weeks 2 through 4.

The new Chapter 2 Remix starts later today, November 2, 2024, and will run until November 30, 2024.

You can check out the exact launch times in our Fortnite Remix Chapter 2 start time explainer.

This week, The Agency POI in the game will turn into Snoop Dogg’s headquarters, The Doggpound.

Defeating the legendary rapper will drop a Mythic weapon, Snoop’s Drum Gun.

Next week, starting on November 7, will be all about Eminem.

The rapper will show up at The Grotto POI in-game, which will be transformed into the Spaghetti Grotto.

There players will be able to defeat Slim Shady for an RG Minigun Mythic weapon.

In Week 3, Ice Spice will be headlining the Shark Island area of the map, which will be renamed to Ice Isle.

Beating her will reward players with an Ice Spice’s Grappler and Ice Spice’s Rifle Mythics.

Finally, Week 4 will be a tribute to the late Juice WRLD, who passed away at 21 in 2019.

To honour the “Lucid Dreams” singer there will be a special WRLD Point landmark in the game.

Players who log into Fortnite from November 30, at 1am ET / 6am UK time, and December 1 at 1am ET / 6am UK time, will receive a cel-shaded Juice WRLD outfit.

Each week, the Item Shop will feature skins and items based on the respective rapper.

Fortnite promises to close the season with another live event, Remix: The Finale, which starts on November 30, at 2pm ET / 7pm UK time.

For more on the game, check out a recent Item Shop leak that got Fortnite players raging.

All the latest PS5 reviews from The Sun

Get the lowdown on more of the latest PS5 releases from our expert reviewers.

Israeli strikes pounded Gaza’s Nuseirat refugee camp and the surrounding areas, killing dozens. Children, including a one-month-old infant and his mother, are among the victims.

As the saying goes, you can pick your friends, but you can’t pick your family. But what happens when a family member is also a friend, albeit one who is as loving and magnetic as he is exasperating and inappropriate?

“A Real Pain,” writer-director-star Jesse Eisenberg’s loosely autobiographical, beautifully observed dramedy, takes an affecting look at this familial dynamic as mismatched cousins David (Eisenberg) and Benji (Kieran Culkin) travel to Poland to visit the childhood home of their beloved, recently deceased grandmother Dory, a Holocaust survivor.

The cousins’ journey — which starts with a guided Jewish heritage tour of Warsaw and Lublin, after which they splinter off to Dory’s rural birthplace — covers as much emotional territory as it does physical. Though the sightseeing may, at first, seem like a device to throw the estranged David and Benji together for a much needed if inevitably fraught reunion, Eisenberg deftly blends the story’s strands in darkly amusing, moving and combustible ways.

But it’s the creation of Benji that proves the film’s secret sauce; he’s one of the most vivid and compelling characters you’ll see onscreen this year. Culkin, in a career-best turn, tears into the role with a remarkable mix of exuberance and pathos.

A rudderless, sporadically volatile guy who hit bottom after his grandma’s death (and reacted in drastic form), the unfiltered Benji is also the life of the party: an F-bombing, rules-be-damned whirling dervish who can charm the pants off a TSA agent, blithely mail himself a brick of weed (to Poland, no less) or turn a sober photo op into a buoyant theatrical experience.

But at times, there’s a defensive, slightly cruel streak to his patter that can eclipse his better angels (of which there are many) and test the goodwill of those around him.

In this case, that mainly includes the earnest David, a digital ad salesman and devoted family man with controlled obsessive-compulsive disorder and a low threshold for embarrassment, the latter of which Benji repeatedly tests. Benji may think David is too tightly wound — and he may be — but so is Benji, just in different, less overt ways.

The cousins’ complementary natures may have bonded them in their youth, and a genuine and abiding love clearly remains. But as adult traveling companions, their longtime dynamic too often creates more stress than camaraderie. When, in one of the film’s many fine exchanges, David succinctly tells Benji, “You light up a room and then, like, s— on everything inside of it,” you wonder how long he’s been waiting to say that.

Also subjected to Benji’s highs and lows are the other members of the tour group: wistful divorcee Marcia (Jennifer Grey, a pleasure); Rwandan genocide survivor and Jewish convert Eloge (a poignant Kurt Egyiawan); middle-aged marrieds Mark (Daniel Oreskes) and Diane (Liza Sadovy); and their bookish guide James (Will Sharpe, in a lovely U-turn from his enigmatic role in “The White Lotus”), a British non-Jew fascinated by Jewish history.

Kurt Egyiawan, left, Will Sharpe, Kieran Culkin and Jesse Eisenberg in the movie “A Real Pain.”

(Searchlight Pictures)

The genial bunch can’t help but be drawn to the warmly ebullient Benji — Marcia, in particular, finds in him a ready ear — until he has some hairpin meltdown about Jews riding first-class on a Polish train (“Eighty years ago we would have been herded into the backs of these things like cattle”) or what he deems James’ invasive fact-sharing at a hallowed cemetery. He leaves the others stunned and David mortified until the storm cloud passes and he’s his jaunty, loquacious self again. But we can see the increasing chinks in Benji’s armor with each passing setback.

For all the vivid historical spots the tourists explore (enhanced by Michal Dymek’s vibrant cinematography), nothing proves as much of a gut-punch as the group’s visit to the Majdanek concentration camp on the outskirts of Lublin. With a hushed reverence (the film’s splendid, Chopin-heavy soundtrack goes pin-drop silent here), James escorts them through the stark, gruesome chambers of the compound, accompanied by the ghosts of its countless victims.

The sequence crystallizes James’ early-on warning that this would be a tour about pain and, although Eisenberg as a filmmaker doesn’t linger at the heartbreaking site, it has an outsized effect on the action, as well as on everyone’s emotions, especially Benji’s.

The cousins’ eventual arrival at the home Grandma Dory left behind to escape the Nazis is handled in a way that’s unsentimental yet also credible and thoroughly touching, with a gentle twist that nicely serves the arc of David and Benji’s roller-coaster relationship.

If you know (and now you do) that the humble house seen here is the same one Eisenberg’s great-aunt fled from in 1939, it adds an eerie touch of verisimilitude to the already resonant scene.

Although Culkin walks away with the film, Eisenberg gives one of his best, most heartfelt performances (his famously urgent speech pattern is largely intact) as a man who has come to appreciate life’s responsibilities but has maybe lost a piece of himself in the process. The restaurant scene in which David, in Benji’s brief absence, tearfully reveals a profound array of feelings about his troubled cousin to their concerned tour mates is a knockout.

In a step up from his feature writing-directing debut, 2022’s “When You Finish Saving the World,” Eisenberg furthers himself here as a distinctive voice, one with a keen visual sense, a masterful ability to juggle tones and an innate feel for timing and pacing.

Indonesia is at a turning point—a story of struggle poised to become one of triumph. Developing an ideal smart city requires striking a balance between the rapid economic growth seen in China and the democratic, participatory values of Western countries. This vision aligns with President Prabowo’s goal for Indonesia to become a high-income country by 2045. According to Finance Minister Sri Mulyani, this ambitious target will require economic growth of 6-8% annually. To reach this goal, Indonesia’s smart cities must be technologically advanced, inclusive, and democratic to uplift all its citizens.

From the ashes of rapid deindustrialization and economic challenges, a new narrative can emerge—one of transformation through technology and empowerment. Here’s how Indonesia could build a smart city model that embodies this potential ‘rags to riches’ journey:

1. Prioritize Inclusive Economic Growth

The path to success starts with uplifting all citizens. The smart city should focus on creating quality jobs, especially in the technology and innovation sectors. Incentives and infrastructure support must be provided to small and medium enterprises (SMEs) and startups to thrive. The contribution of SMEs to Indonesia’s GDP is immense. According to data from the Ministry of Cooperatives and SMEs in 2022, SMEs contributed 60.5% to the national Gross Domestic Product (GDP), and there were 65.47 million SME units across the country.

This growth is particularly crucial now, as Indonesia is experiencing rapid deindustrialization due to new technologies such as AI and automation. Ensuring better access to public services like healthcare, education, and transportation is fundamental to fostering inclusivity. Access to essential services allows individuals to improve their quality of life, participate in the economy, and contribute to overall productivity, which ultimately helps mitigate the negative effects of deindustrialization. In the pursuit of inclusive economic growth, no one should be left behind.

2. Wisely Integrate Technology

For Indonesia, adopting the right technology is a way out of the challenges that have held the nation back. Smart city initiatives must focus on practical, relevant technologies that fit Indonesia’s unique needs—avoiding the hype and embracing what works. Privacy protection should be a priority, and strong regulations must safeguard citizen data.

The government must also empower its citizens through massive digital literacy campaigns that are simple and engaging. A gamification approach could be an effective alternative, making learning fun and accessible on popular platforms like TikTok and WhatsApp. With the right tools, Indonesia can transform technological advancements into opportunities for everyone.

3. Encourage Public Participation

True success is shared success, and the road to a smart city must involve everyone. Public involvement is crucial in planning and decision-making. This means holding open consultations and making sure every voice is heard. Informal leaders—religious figures, traditional leaders, and social media influencers—should be engaged to make sure programs are effective, meet community needs, and contribute to economic growth.

To ensure high levels of public participation, popular platforms like TikTok and WhatsApp must be leveraged. With Generative AI, these platforms can facilitate personalized and scalable interactions that help connect citizens directly to smart city initiatives.

4. Balance Technological Growth with Democratic Values

Growth at any cost is not true success. Transparency and accountability must lie at the heart of every smart city initiative. The government can leverage blockchain technology, which ensures transparency, data security, and resilience against cyberattacks. This approach aligns with President Prabowo’s commitment to eradicating corruption and protecting digital rights, including freedom of expression and access to information.

Examples from around the world highlight the risks and challenges associated with surveillance technologies. In San Francisco, the city became the first in the United States to ban the use of facial recognition technology by police and government agencies due to concerns about potential misuse for mass surveillance, discrimination, and privacy violations. The lack of transparency in how data was collected, stored, and used, along with limited public control over the technology, led to public protests and demands for change.

Similarly, the Sidewalk Labs project in Toronto, proposed by Alphabet’s subsidiary, promised numerous technological innovations, including sensors for air quality and traffic monitoring, and an automated waste management system. However, the project faced significant criticism due to a lack of transparency regarding data collection and use, raising fears that personal data could be exploited for commercial purposes or abused. The project was ultimately canceled in 2020 following strong public opposition.

The risks are real—without proper management, data collection could lead to tyranny, terror, and a lack of public trust. Other potential challenges include the digital divide, which could leave segments of the population without access to smart city benefits, cybersecurity threats that could compromise sensitive data and disrupt services, and the need for a skilled workforce capable of managing and sustaining advanced technologies. Indonesia must tread carefully, ensuring that technological progress does not come at the expense of individual freedoms.

5. Local Adaptation and Innovation

Indonesia’s journey must be its own. Learning from international models is beneficial, but true success comes from adapting these models to local realities. For instance, Jakarta can learn from Singapore’s efficient transportation systems but adapt them to fit local infrastructure and cultural contexts. Reducing traffic congestion requires more than infrastructure; it requires shifting cultural perceptions—changing the mindset that owning a private vehicle is a symbol of success and social status.

Local innovation is key. In cities like Yogyakarta, integrating traditional community values like gotong royong (mutual cooperation) into smart city initiatives helps foster community involvement and ensures that growth is rooted in local culture.

6. Build Resilience Against Natural Disasters

Indonesia’s vulnerability to natural disasters makes resilience a critical part of its smart city story. From early warning systems to disaster preparedness and climate change adaptation, resilience measures are crucial for safeguarding citizens and ensuring public services continue during crises. The government needs to encourage and provide incentives for local startups and relevant foreign technologies to tackle these challenges. The biggest current threat is the potential megathrust earthquake that could trigger a tsunami, and preparing for such threats is vital.

Information related to disasters must also be communicated in innovative and relevant ways, considering the low literacy levels and limited risk mitigation capabilities among some segments of the population. This means utilizing visual and easy-to-understand formats, leveraging popular platforms, and working closely with community leaders to ensure the message reaches everyone effectively.

Incorporating these elements into smart city planning will help mitigate disaster impacts and ensure communities remain strong and united.

7. Existing Regulations and Proposed Incentives

Indonesia already has some foundational regulations to support smart city development. Presidential Regulation No. 95 of 2018 on Electronic-Based Government Systems aims to accelerate the implementation of digital governance to improve public services, while Presidential Instruction No. 3 of 2003 provides guidelines for developing e-Government to enhance government efficiency and transparency. These regulations are an important starting point, but more comprehensive frameworks are needed to make the dream of smart cities a reality.

To motivate regional leaders to develop smart cities, fiscal incentives such as grants, tax reductions, and ease of permits must be introduced. Non-fiscal incentives, including awards, capacity-building programs, and technical support, will further boost smart city initiatives.

Countries like Singapore, South Korea, and the UAE provide valuable insights into effective smart city development. Singapore has established a comprehensive regulatory framework that encourages technological innovation through its Smart Nation Initiative, regulatory sandboxes, and substantial investments in digital infrastructure. Public-private partnerships further bolster smart city projects, demonstrating how a balanced approach to regulation and collaboration can drive progress.

South Korea’s U-City Project, along with its R&D support and tax incentives, showcases the importance of government involvement in fostering technological advancement. The UAE’s Smart Dubai Initiative, Dubai Data Law, and Dubai Blockchain Strategy underline the role of ambitious visions, strong data governance, and technology integration in creating thriving smart cities.

The new capital city, IKN, could potentially serve as a sandbox and benchmark to inspire other regional leaders. IKN can demonstrate successful partnerships, funding mechanisms, and the implementation of new technologies relevant to Indonesia, and act as a proof-of-concept (POC) center for smart city startups. By building an integrated support ecosystem, IKN can be a model for how to create sustainable and innovative urban solutions. With regional autonomy, local leaders play a vital role in demonstrating commitment to smart city development. Their dedication can turn struggling regions into thriving examples of progress and innovation.

Specific regulations that are still needed include:

• Setting clear standards for smart city implementation.
• Structuring the incentive distribution mechanism.
• Ensuring privacy and data protection.
• Mandating public participation in all planning and development stages.

Conclusion

Indonesia’s journey from adversity to prosperity in smart city development could depend on thoughtful incentives, clear regulations, the right technology, and effective risk management. With strong support and a structured regulatory framework, regional leaders could be motivated to create cities that are not only advanced in technology but also sustainable, inclusive, and democratic—ultimately aiming to build a brighter future for every citizen in Indonesia.

STRANGER Things superfans will get a chance to stay the night at a house featured in the TV show.

The exterior was used in the Netflix supernatural hit and the inside has now been furnished to look like the sets from the drama.

6

6

It was the home of Joyce, Will and Jonathan Byers — played by Winona Ryder, Noah Schnapp and Charlie Heaton.

After real estate investing platform Arrived bought the property in 2022, it was decorated with VHS tapes and records to match the decor from the 1980s-themed show.

Decorators spent a year transforming the rooms in Fayetteville, Georgia, and copied the alphabet wall, a poster from 1975 film Jaws and the kitchen.

Rates start from £271 a night.

Fans will also be able to buy shares in the home.

The Airbnb listing reads: “Are you ready to step into the Upside Down?”

“Visit the iconic filming location that served as the home to Jonathan, Joyce, and Will Byers in the hit show Stranger Things.

“Immerse yourself in the eerie ambiance and meticulously recreated details that will transport you straight into Hawkins circa 1983.

“This is a one-of-a-kind destination to make memories in a setting that blurs the line between fiction and reality.”

6

6

6

6

As the United States presidential election approaches on November 5, polls show Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris and Republican former President Donald Trump locked in a tight, too-close-to-call race.

But while the US election is about who the American people want to see leading them, the country’s outsized influence means the contest is being watched closely in capitals around the world.

So who would various world leaders want to see in the White House?

Vladimir Putin, Russia

While the Russian leader has suggested — perhaps in jest — that he might prefer Harris as president, many signs point towards Putin actually favouring a Trump win.

“Putin would love Trump as president for various reasons,” Timothy Ash, an associate fellow in the Russia and Eurasia Programme at Chatham House, told Al Jazeera.

“First, Putin thinks Trump is soft on Russia and will roll over to give him a great deal on Ukraine – cutting military support to Ukraine and lifting sanctions on Russia,” he said.

“I think Putin looks at Trump and sees a mirror image of himself, an authoritarian, sociopath. He likely thinks he understands Trump,” Ash added.

Furthermore, Putin “hates” the system of Western liberal market democracy, and the Russian leader “thinks Trump will continue where he left off in Trump 1.0 in sowing disunity and chaos”, undermining institutions like NATO and the European Union.

However, Russian analysts say regardless of who wins, Moscow officials believe the US aversion towards Russia will remain, the Anadolu news agency reported.

Putin had previously been outspoken about his thoughts on US presidential politics and has made endorsements for candidates time and time again since 2004.

Before the 2016 election, Putin talked Trump up to reporters during an annual news conference. “He is a bright and talented person without any doubt,” he said.

In July 2016, the US intelligence community accused Putin of election interference with the aim of helping Trump defeat Democratic challenger Hillary Clinton. In 2020, a bipartisan US Senate report found that Russia had meddled in the 2016 election. US intelligence also alleged that Russia meddled in the 2020 election.

On July 9 this year, a US intelligence official – without naming Trump – indicated to reporters that Russia favoured Trump in the 2024 race.

“We have not observed a shift in Russia’s preferences for the presidential race from past elections, given the role the US is playing with regard to Ukraine and broader policy toward Russia,” the official from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) said.

In September, Putin made a tongue-in-cheek reference to Harris, describing her as having an “expressive and infectious laugh” which, he said, indicates “she’s doing well” and maybe would not impose sanctions on Russia.

“I don’t know if I’m insulted or he did me a favour,” Trump responded at a campaign rally on the same day as Putin made the wry remarks.

In October, veteran reporter Bob Woodward alleged in his new book that Trump had made at least seven phone calls to Putin since he left the presidency in January 2021. These allegations were rejected by Trump’s campaign and by Trump himself. “He’s a storyteller. A bad one. And he’s lost his marbles,” Trump said about Woodward to ABC news.

Later in October, during the closing of the BRICS summit, Putin said Trump “spoke about his desire to do everything to end the conflict in Ukraine. I think he is being sincere.”

Trump has been critical of the aid that the US sends to Ukraine against Russia’s war and says he will promptly end the war if elected.

Xi Jinping, China

Xi Jinping has not publicly made an endorsement.

As with Russia, both Democrats and Republicans have taken a tough stance towards China. During his presidency, Trump started a trade war with China, imposing tariffs on $250bn of Chinese imports in 2018. China hit back, placing tariffs on $110bn of US imports.

It does not seem like he will back down from that if elected, but Democrats could also rally against China’s growing influence worldwide.

When Biden became president, he kept Trump’s tariffs in place. Furthermore, on September 13 this year, the Biden administration announced increases in tariffs on certain Chinese-made products. If Harris wins, she is expected to stay consistent with Biden’s policy towards China.

Neither Trump nor Harris have gone into detail about what their course of action would be towards China if they are elected.

Despite Trump’s trade war, he has boasted of his good relationship with Xi. After Trump survived an assassination attempt on July 14, he said world leaders had reached out to him. “I got along very well with President Xi. He’s a great guy, wrote me a beautiful note the other day when he heard about what happened,” Trump told a rally.

However, behind the scenes, Chinese officials may be slightly leaning towards Harris, NBC news quoted Jia Qingguo, the former dean of the School of International Studies at Peking University, as saying.

“The irony is, Xi probably wants Harris, as does Iran,” Ash told Al Jazeera while talking about Putin.

Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel

Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has not publicly endorsed either candidate. However, it is widely believed that he leans towards a Trump win.

Netanyahu and Trump had a good relationship during the former US president’s first term. In 2019, at the Israeli-American Council, Trump said: “The Jewish state has never had a better friend in the White House than your president.”

The feelings were mutual. Netanyahu, in a 2020 statement, said that Trump was “the greatest friend that Israel has ever had in the White House”.

Relations between Trump and Netanyahu soured after Biden was elected. When Biden was sworn in, Netanyahu congratulated him. Trump said he felt betrayed by this, in an interview.

However, the Israeli PM has made attempts to rekindle the old bond. During a US visit in July this year, Netanyahu visited Trump at his Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida. Axios reported that an ally of Netanyahu even travelled to Mar-a-Lago before the actual meeting of the two leaders, to read passages from Netanyahu’s book, praising Trump.

The Israeli PM also posted a video on social media expressing shock about the assassination attempt on Trump at a rally in Pennsylvania in July, which was reposted by Trump on his social media platform, Truth Social.

At the same time, the Biden administration has shown unwavering diplomatic and military assistance to Netanyahu’s government amid Israel’s war on Gaza, where the death toll of Palestinians stands at 43,061 according to UN humanitarian agency OCHA as of October 29.

Since the start of Israel’s war on Gaza on October 7 last year – following a Hamas-led attack on villages and army outposts in southern Israel – Biden’s government has sent billions of dollars in military aid to Israel.

Last October 4, Biden told a news conference that he does not know whether Netanyahu is purposefully holding up a ceasefire deal in Gaza, despite reports and speculation that the Israeli PM might have been holding up an agreement on purpose, possibly to influence the US election result.

“No administration has helped Israel more than I have. None. None. None. And I think Bibi should remember that,” Biden said during the news conference, referring to Netanyahu by his nickname.

European and NATO leaders

A majority of European leaders prefer Harris as the US president.

“I know her well, she would certainly be a good president,” Olaf Scholz, the chancellor of Germany told reporters.

Trump has threatened to leave NATO several times. However, Politico reported that his national security advisers and defence experts say it is unlikely he will exit the alliance.

Regardless, his complaints about NATO remain. It is expected that he would want NATO allies to increase their defence spending targets.

In February, Trump stirred the pot with allies in Europe by suggesting he would tell Russia to attack NATO allies whom he considered “delinquent”.

Additionally, Trump’s victory could mean less alignment with European countries on collaboration for renewable energy initiatives.

This is because Trump has campaigned for more fossil fuel production to enable the US to reduce reliance on foreign energy imports. “We will drill, baby, drill,” he told the Republican national convention while accepting the party’s nomination in July.

On the other hand, Harris is likely to continue with Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act and clean energy transition plans, creating opportunities to collaborate with Europe. However, Harris has also been accused of making a U-turn on sustainability promises such as fracking.

During her 2019 run for the presidential primaries, Harris had promised to ban fracking, a technique of extracting oil and gas by drilling into the earth – which environmental campaigners say is particularly damaging as it consumes large amounts of water and releases greenhouse gas methane. Trump had criticised her for this promise.

During the presidential debate between Harris and Trump in Pennsylvania in September, however, Harris said: “I will not ban fracking, I have not banned fracking as vice president.”

Narendra Modi, India

While India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi shared a close relationship with Trump during the latter’s presidency, Modi was also one of the first world leaders to congratulate Biden on his 2020 election victory.

Congratulations @JoeBiden on your spectacular victory! As the VP, your contribution to strengthening Indo-US relations was critical and invaluable. I look forward to working closely together once again to take India-US relations to greater heights. pic.twitter.com/yAOCEcs9bN

— Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) November 7, 2020

“I don’t believe that Modi has a strong preference for one candidate over another,” Chietigj Bajpaee, senior research fellow for South Asia, Asia-Pacific Programme at the UK-based think tank Chatham House, told Al Jazeera.

“There is a high degree of bipartisan consensus in Washington on deepening relations with India and viewing it as a long-term strategic partner – arguably as much consensus as there is on viewing China as a long-term strategic rival,” Bajpaee wrote in an article for Chatham House.

He wrote that the three key pillars of US engagement with India are that India is the world’s largest democracy, that the US sees India as a bulwark against China and India’s potentially growing economy.

Michael Kugelman, director of the Washington, DC-based Wilson Center think tank’s South Asia Institute told Al Jazeera that the Indian government will weigh the pros and cons for both candidates.

When it comes to Trump, “there may be a sense in New Delhi that that would be a good thing for India because there may be a perception that Trump would not make a fuss about internal matters in India, including human rights issues,” Kugelman said, adding that despite this, the government of India would be concerned about Trump’s “unpredictable” governing style.

“While Donald Trump is more familiar to Modi from his first term in office, a Kamala Harris presidency offers a degree of continuity from the current Biden administration,” Bajpaee told Al Jazeera.

Under Biden, ties between the US and India deepened in terms of defence, technology and economy. Biden made India a Major Defence Partner, despite India not being a formal military ally and its reliance on Russia for military assistance.

In May 2022, on the sidelines of the Quad summit in Tokyo, India and the US announced an Initiative for Critical and Emerging Technologies (iCET), to enhance cooperation in AI, quantum computing and other technological advances.

Before Modi’s visit to India in September this year, Trump called Modi “fantastic” but, at the same time, called India an “abuser of import tariffs”.

South Korea

South Korea is a key ally of the US in the Indo-Pacific. While the country’s president, Yoon Suk Yeol, has not explicitly endorsed a candidate, the relationship between South Korea and the US has flourished under Biden.

Commentary published in September by US think tank Brookings said that during the Trump administration, “South Koreans were dismayed by charges they were not contributing enough to their defence and to the upkeep of US forces, despite providing the bulk of front-line combat forces against North Korea.”

On the other hand, “the Biden administration has done little to address the North Korean nuclear threat. It has, however, focused on strengthening bilateral and trilateral ties between Washington, Tokyo, and Seoul,” Edward Howell, a lecturer in international relations at the University of Oxford, told Al Jazeera.

Howell said this was made evident at the Camp David Summit of 2023, as well as in presidential-level meetings between Biden and Yoon Suk Yeol.

Howell added that South Korea will want to make sure that US support for it does not wither under the next president “at a time when the East Asian region faces not just the threat of a nuclear North Korea, but an increasingly coercive and belligerent China”.

Japan

For US ally Japan, a Trump win may mean he will shift focus to domestic policy and reduce collaboration with Japan, increase tariffs, as well as expect Japan to increase military spending, analysis published by Japanese website Nippon Communications Foundation says.

However, Japanese government officials have formed relationships with officials from the last Trump administration, including Bill Hagerty, who is a former ambassador to Tokyo and is seen as a favourite for secretary of state, the analysis by Kotani Tetsuo says.

On the other hand, while a Harris administration would mean more consistent policy with the Biden administration, new relationships would have to be formed with the officials on Harris’s team.

Australia

For US ally Australia, “a Trump victory would raise many questions,” Ben Doherty, a reporter from Australia wrote for The Guardian.

Doherty added that many in Australia believe Trump is likely to withdraw from the Paris Agreement if he is re-elected, which could weaken the influence of the informal climate coalition, the Umbrella Group, which Australia is a part of.

Australia also shares a trade relationship with China and a Trump win could mean trade war with China, which could be detrimental to Australia’s economy.

Sony Pictures Television, producer of the long-running “Wheel of Fortune” and “Jeopardy!” TV programs, is suing CBS, the game shows’ distributor, for breach of contract.

Sony claims that CBS entered into unauthorized licensing deals for the shows — two of the most popular and profitable TV programs — and then paid itself a commission on those deals, according to a lawsuit filed Thursday in Los Angeles Superior Court. It also alleges that CBS licensed the shows at below-market rates and failed to maximize advertising revenues.

“The reality is that CBS has been egregiously undercutting the value of these shows in favor of its own self-interest and in violation of its contractual obligations,” states the complaint.

According to the suit, CBS, a unit of Paramount Global, which is in the midst of being acquired by Skydance Media, receives 35% to 40% commission on the fees stations pay to carry the two shows.

However, Sony alleges that last year it learned that CBS entered into unauthorized deals to license the shows in New Zealand and Australia, in violation of its contract, and that the network then refused to turn over the money it received on those deals — worth more than $3.6 million — to Sony.

Sony called the breach “just the tip of the iceberg,” contending the network engaged in broader misconduct, including that it garnered below-market prices for the shows internationally and domestically, preferencing its own wholly owned shows in its licensing negotiations.

Sony further claims the turmoil at CBS, including a raft of layoffs, has negatively affected the ad sales, marketing and distribution teams responsible for the two game shows, as well as those charged with handling their foreign distribution obligations.

CBS refuted the allegations in a statement, saying, “Sony’s claims are rooted in the fact they simply don’t like the deal the parties agreed to decades ago.

“For more than 40 years, CBS and its predecessor company King World have been accomplished distribution partners and thoughtful stewards for ‘Wheel’ and ‘Jeopardy!’ in the syndication market,” CBS said in a statement. “This work has helped build shows into franchises, transform popular series into cultural icons and deliver Sony billions of dollars of revenue.”

At least one person killed in Kharkiv as Pentagon announces $425m in additional military assistance for Ukraine.

A Russian missile strike on Ukraine’s second-largest city, Kharkiv, hit a location used by policemen, killing at least one senior officer and wounding 30 other people, police said.

Four civilians were among those injured in the late afternoon attack on Friday, said a national police statement on the Telegram messaging app. It said S-300 missiles had been deployed by Russian forces.

“Today, the Russian enemy targeted a police station in the centre of Kharkiv with two missiles, killing a police officer,” Ivan Vygivsky, the head of Ukraine’s National Police, wrote on Facebook, naming the deceased as police colonel, Andriy Matviyenko.

He posted photos showing a huge crater next to a pile of rubble remaining from the building. In another picture, a policeman had his head bandaged and blood on his face.

Pictures posted on Telegram by Oleh Syniehubov, governor of Kharkiv region in Ukraine’s northeast, showed rescue teams sifting through mounds of rubble.

Syniehubov said some of the injured officers were in serious condition. He said an attack on the city earlier in the day had damaged an apartment block and several private houses.

Kharkiv, a city of 1.1 million, is about 30km (less than 20 miles) from the border and it has remained a frequent target of Russian air strikes. On Wednesday, a Russian-guided bomb struck a multistorey residence killing three people.

The city remained in Ukrainian hands throughout the initial unsuccessful advance by Russian forces on the capital, Kyiv, after their February 2022 invasion. But Moscow has increasingly used powerful glide bombs to pummel Ukrainian positions along the 1,000km (600-mile) line of contact and strike cities dozens of kilometres from the front line.

$425m in US military aid

Friday’s strike came on the same day that the United States announced an additional $425m in military assistance to Ukraine as Kyiv prepares to face Russian forces augmented by North Korean troops.

Kyiv is facing new uncertainty amid reports thousands of North Korean soldiers deployed to Russia are nearing Ukraine’s border. Some 8,000 are preparing to join Russia’s fight against Ukrainian troops in the coming days, according to the US and Ukrainian officials.

During a visit to Kyiv last week, US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said more military aid was coming to Ukraine, and soon.

This new aid package includes weapons that will be pulled from existing US stockpiles, including air defence interceptors for National Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile Systems, munitions for High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems and 155mm artillery, and armoured vehicles and antitank weapons.

“The United States will continue to work … to meet Ukraine’s urgently needed battlefield requirements and defend against Russian aggression,” the US Department of Defence said in a statement.

The aid package announced by the Pentagon on Friday brings the total amount of military assistance the US has provided Ukraine since Russia invaded in 2022 to $60.4bn.

UN Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories, Francesca Albanese, has called for UN member states to consider suspending Israel over the genocide of Palestinians in Gaza and its decades-long illegal occupation of Palestinian land.

JESY Nelson has revealed she almost got a boob job after a doctor told her she “needed” it.

The former Little Mix star opened up about how she deliberated over going under the knife while battling with her self-esteem.

6

6

She candidly spoke about her experiences after former Love Island star Anna Vakili and her sister Mandi posted a video in which they said they regretted ever having cosmetic surgery.

Sharing the video on Instagram, Jesy, 33, wrote: “I absolutely adore these two for being so real about this s***.

“I was actually going to get a boob job two years ago because a doctor once told me I needed it.

“I was in a very insecure stage of my life and just wanted to feel loved.

“But I didn’t really know that about myself until I did real work on my inner self that I realised no boob job would fix that.”

The Boyz singer, who is currently on a hiatus from music, went on to say that she is relieved she didn’t go ahead with the procedure.

And it sounds like she is in a much better place than she was at the time.

She continued: “Anyway what I’m trying to say is I’m so, so thankful I never got them done because I know I would have regretted it.

“I’m not against anyone having things done if it genuinely is going to make you happy and feel better because everybody needs to live their life how they want to.

“But please, please, like these two are saying, really think about it because these things can’t be reversed and could cause you to feel worse about yourself.

“We are all born different for a reason and that’s f***ing beautiful.”

Jesy quit Little Mix in 2020 and was the first member of the group to go solo.

Earlier this week, her former bandmate Perrie Edwards opened up about the breakdown of their friendship, after it was revealed they no longer talk.

Perrie, 31, told Fearne Cotton on her Happy Place podcast: “I wrote a song about a friendship I had that I no longer have.

“When you’ve been in that person’s life for years and they’ve had your back, you’ve been through highs, lows and everything, all these experiences, it’s a wild ride but you’ve gone through it together – then poof they’re gone – that’s hard to deal with.

“I struggled a lot with that. It’s really sad, but at the same time these things sometimes happen.

“It does make you think ‘do we try to rectify the situation? Should I reach out? It doesn’t feel like I should, it feels like I should just stay away.’

“It’s a really horrible dynamic to be in.”

Hugh’s big gig

6

HOLLYWOOD and Broadway big-hitter Hugh Jackman is becoming a rock star.

The Aussie actor has announced a 65,000-capacity gig as a headliner at BST Hyde Park in London next summer.

Accompanied by an orchestra, he will perform songs from musicals including Les Miserables, The Boy From Oz, The Music Man and The Greatest Showman.

Tickets for the July 6 gig go on sale on Wednesday and are sure to sell out.

I’ll keep my fingers crossed he covers blockbuster Deadpool & Wolverine, too – in or out of his Wolverine costume.

Less is more for Kylie

6

MOST people like to dress up for Hallo­ween, but Kylie Jenner decided to dress down by posing nude – just like Demi Moore in 1996 comedy flick Striptease.

Plenty of celebs vied to outdo each other, with Paris Hilton copying her pal Britney Spears from her Baby One More Time video.

6

Former tennis champ Andy Murray was probably the most menacing as a miserable clown, while Jade Thirlwall attended a bash in London as Bo Peep from Toy Story.

And with the movie version of Wicked, starring Ariana Grande, out this month, Halloween will be with us for a while yet.

Grace sure to strike it Richie

6

THEY say life can change in the blink of an eye and that couldn’t be more true for rising music star Grace Bridie.

The estate agent went viral after posting a TikTok video of her singing Sinead Hartnett’s Unconditional at her dad’s wedding.

And not long afterwards, she was tapped up by ­producers at US TV singing contest American Idol.

They flew her out to New York to audition in front of the judges, including Lionel Richie.

Speaking to me from her Brighton home, Grace says: “When I got the message, I thought it was a scam.

“But I eventually replied and from there I auditioned on Zoom and they then flew me out to New York.

“Singing for Lionel was crazy. I think it’s just weird because you kind of walk in and you think they’re like play figures. They don’t look real.”

If you check out Grace’s singing voice on her account @GraceBridieMusic, it’s not hard to see why the show is so taken with her.

“It’s so surreal,” Grace adds. “I know this TV show can change my life.

My boss is really supportive of me and allowed me to chase my dreams.

“I guess if I get an opportunity to make it through to the next stages and go on to have success like (2002 American Idol winner) Kelly Clarkson, that is the goal.”

We’ll have to watch the show when it airs to see how Grace gets on, but I suspect the future will be very bright for her.

Shadow home secretary James Cleverly has said he will not accept a frontbench role from the next leader of the Conservative Party, after they are unveiled on Saturday.

The winning candidate – Kemi Badenoch or Robert Jenrick – is likely to carry out an immediate reshuffle of the Tory frontbench team.

But Cleverly has told the Financial Times (FT) he will return to the backbenches rather than serve in either candidate’s shadow cabinet.

Following the Tory conference, Cleverly briefly became the frontrunner in the race to replace Rishi Sunak, but was surprisingly knocked out in the final ballot of MPs.

He told the FT he had been “liberated” from 16 years on the political front line and was now “not particularly in the mood to be boxed back into a narrow band again”.

Cleverly shot to the front of the pack of leadership candidates after a well-received speech to the Conservative conference early last month, in which he called for the party to be “more normal” and sell its policies “with a smile”.

However, his support unexpectedly fell away in the last round of MPs’ voting.

Many theories were advanced on why that had happened, including that some of his supporters had tried to engineer the final line-up they wanted.

The former home and foreign secretary was eliminated with 37 votes. Badenoch secured 42 and Jenrick 41.

There were gasps in the Commons committee room where the result was announced.

Cleverly admitted to the FT the result was a “bit of a punch to the gut”, saying he had repeatedly warned his backers that “Kremlinology is a fool’s game” – but that he “lost track” of the number of supporters who asked who he would prefer to go up against.

“I’d worried that that might happen,” he said, adding: “I kept saying there aren’t many votes to play with… it doesn’t take very many people to really distort outcomes.”

He declined to say who of the final two he had backed.

When Badenoch and Jenrick topped the MPs’ poll, both signalled they would offer him a position in their shadow cabinet if they became leader.

Badenoch said Cleverly’s campaign had been “full of energy, ideas and optimism”, and she looked forward to “continuing to work with him”.

Jenrick told Cleverly the party “needs you in its top team in the years ahead”, adding that he would be “delighted for him to serve in the shadow cabinet should he want to do so”.

Jenrick has made leaving the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) a key plank of his leadership offer, saying all Tory MPs would need to sign up to the policy – but Cleverly has rejected the idea.

However, a stint on the backbenches appears unlikely to last forever and Cleverly has left the door open to a future bid to become leader of the Conservative Party, saying he would not “rule anything in or anything out”.

Nor did he rule out the idea of a bid to become mayor of London in 2028, adding: “We do need to fight back in London. We need to fight back in big, big, big chunks of the country.”

Hello! I’m Mark Olsen. Welcome to another edition of your regular field guide to a world of Only Good Movies.

This has somehow become a blockbuster week for new releases, with a number of films that likely will wind up on many year-end best-of lists all landing in theaters. While some of them also will be launching on streaming platforms soon, seeing any of these in a theater with an audience would make for an ideal experience.

Written and directed by Jesse Eisenberg, the tender dramedy “A Real Pain” follows a pair of cousins (played by Eisenberg and Kieran Culkin) who go on a tour of Holocaust-related sites in Poland.

When I spoke to Eisenberg and Culkin for our fall preview, they both mentioned the connection they felt while shooting together.

“When we started working, there was an immediate rapport — something worked right away,” said Culkin. “We really got to know each other by being these characters and by wanting this thing to work.”

For me, among the year’s biggest surprises has been Alonso Ruizpalacios’ “La Cocina,” starring Raúl Briones and Rooney Mara as staffers at a tourist restaurant in Manhattan. The film is a dazzling allegory on work, life and the world at large, and it announces Ruizpalacios as a filmmaker fully in command of his voice. As I said in my review of the film, “Even while what is depicted onscreen veers wildly out-of-control, there is a sense of surety to the filmmaking that makes this one of the freshest movies of the year.”

Rooney Mara and director Alonso Ruizpalacios, photographed at the Aero Theatre in October.

(Marcus Ubungen / Los Angeles Times)

This is only Mara’s third screen role in the past six years. She responded to a letter from Ruizpalacios, the two having never met, and, as she said in an interview with Carlos Aguilar, “My time is very precious now that I have kids. To me now, the experience is so important. I’m like: Is this going to be a worthwhile experience? Is it something I can grow from? And everything about the way Alonso wanted to make the film to me was like, ‘Yes, this is an experience I’d like to have.’ It seemed different than anything I had done thus far.”

Jacques Audiard’s “Emilia Pérez” has been one of the most buzzed-about films of the year since it premiered at Cannes. A Mexico-set narco-themed melodrama about a drug lord who transitions in secret, the movie is also a musical.

In a rare move, all four lead actresses in the film — Karla Sofía Gascón, Zoe Saldaña, Selena Gomez and Adriana Paz — shared the actress prize at Cannes. In an interview with Manuel Betancourt, Saldaña said of working on the film, “It was a mixture of an experiment and an experience. I liked the experimental side of it. And we only achieved that because Jacques was not possessive over his words, his lines. That was incredibly collaborative. But also very freeing.”

Mati Diop‘s stirringly enigmatic documentary “Dahomey” won the top prize at the Berlin Film Festival earlier this year and is Senegal’s entry for the international feature Oscar. The film explores the return of artifacts from France to the country of Benin, formerly known as Dahomey, from the point of view of the objects themselves.

Steve McQueen, director of the movie “Blitz,” photographed at the Four Seasons Hotel in Los Angeles in October.

(Marcus Ubungen / Los Angeles Times)

Also in theaters this week is “Blitz,” Steve McQueen’s look at the German air raids of London during World War II, starring Saoirse Ronan and Elliott Heffernan. As McQueen said to Emily Zemler, “Often people think war is what happens in far distant places. I wanted to bring it home: This is what happened here. This movie has a real sense of urgency, unfortunately. I wanted it to be a roller-coaster ride through London during the war.”

Robert Abele reviewed Clint Eastwood’s “Juror #2,” a courtroom thriller starring Nicholas Hoult, Toni Collette, Zoey Deutch, Chris Messina and Kiefer Sutherland that is getting a curiously cursory limited release.

As Abele wrote, “If ‘Juror #2’ is this all-time-great filmmaker’s last effort, it may come across like a quiet goodbye: measured conversations replacing his oeuvre’s well-known violence and death. But in its relaxed professionalism, it’s still a worthy closing argument for what Eastwood has always cared about most — how we live as much as how we die, and in the final count, what condemns us all.”

A part of Cannes comes to L.A.

An image from Chantal Akerman’s “Histoires d’Amérique: Food, Family and Philosophy.”

(Collection Cinematek / Fondation Chantal Akerman)

Starting tonight and running through Sunday, Acropolis Cinema will be presenting “Directors’ Fortnight Extended,” spotlighting a selection of films from the Cannes sidebar Director’s Fortnight, also known as Quinzaine des cinéastes. Playing at the Culver Theater, this is the first time a program from the Fortnight has come to Los Angeles.

The series opens with Ryan J. Sloan’s neo-noir thriller “Gazer,” starring Ariella Mastroianni. Other highlights of the program include Caroline Poggi and Jonathan Vinel’s French thriller “Eat the Night,” set amid the world of online gaming; Chantal Akerman’s restored 1989 exploration of Jewish American identity, “Histoires d’Amérique: Food, Family and Philosophy”; and the closing selection of Jonas Trueba’s Spanish-language relationship comedy “The Other Way Around.”

The Fortnight began in 1969 as a response to the cultural and political upheaval at Cannes in 1968, and it has retained that rebellious spirit ever since, as a parallel event to the main selection of the festival.

“The Fortnite is this Cannes sidebar that was designed to be a new space capable of welcoming filmmakers from all over the world, regardless of their mode of production,” said Julien Rejl, artistic director of Directors’ Fortnight since 2023. “The idea was to give the priority to new cinematic language. Any kind of cinema could be from very radical and edgy filmmakers, like genre cinema, great masters. The idea was to have equality in the treatment of these films and to give the filmmakers a possibility, an opportunity, to take time and meet an audience, talk about their film, talk about cinema and also to meet between themselves.”

Itsaso Arana and Vito Sanz in the movie “The Other Way Around.”

(Los Ilusos Films)

On Saturday afternoon there will be a conversation with Rejl and filmmakers India Donaldson, who made “Good One,” and Tyler Taormina, the director of “Christmas Eve at Miller’s Point.”

Acropolis had previously been involved in bringing selections from the Locarno Film Festival to Los Angeles, and this new partnership with the Directors’ Fortnight continues the mission of screening little-seen art-house films for Los Angeles audiences.

“The idea behind Acropolis in general is to bring films that wouldn’t otherwise show here,” said Jordan Cronk, founder of Acropolis Cinema. “So that is a perfect marriage as far as just the idea behind it. A lot of these films, some of them are small enough that they would be hard for Acropolis to show even for just one night, but when you can put them in the context of something like the Quinzaine, we’re hoping it could generate enough interest so people can check out the smaller films.

“When you put the films in the context of a larger program from Cannes, I’m hoping people will discover the films that we’re showing during the day, artisanal cinema,” added Cronk. “That is definitely a goal, and it’s just a pleasure to try and introduce audiences out here to new and exciting cinema.”

GuadaLAjara Film Festival

An image from the movie “Sujo.”

(The Forge)

This weekend also will see this year’s edition of the GuadaLAjara Film Festival at a variety of venues around the city, with events at the United Theater on Broadway, Vidiots, Gloria Molina Grand Park, the Million Dollar Theater, Alamo Drafthouse and Milagros Cinema Norwalk.

The fest opens with Mexico’s submission for the international feature Oscar, “Sujo,” directed by Astrid Rondero and Fernanda Valadez. Acclaimed cinematographer Rodrigo Prieto’s feature directing debut, “Pedro Páramo,” will screen ahead of its release on Netflix later this month. The festival closes with the first two episodes of the upcoming Prime Video series “La Liberacion,” created by Alejandra Marquez Abella.

Among the short films in the festival are “All the Words but the One,” directed by and starring “Baby Reindeer” star Nava Mau, and “Dovecote,” produced by and starring Zoe Saldaña. “La Cocina” will screen as part of the festival as well.

Points of interest

30 years of Giant Robot

An image from Wong Kar-Wai’s “Chungking Express.”

(Criterion Collection)

In honor of the magazine Giant Robot, founded by UCLA alumnus Eric Nakamura to celebrate alternative Asian and Asian American culture, the UCLA Film and Television Archive is launching “A Film Series for You: Celebrating Giant Robot’s 30th Anniversary.” The series launches Friday night with a 2022 episode of PBS SoCal’s series “Artbound” that interviewed key players from the magazine’s history, along with a screening of Wong Kar-Wai’s 1994 “Chungking Express,” which was reviewed in the magazine’s third issue. A Q&A will include Nakamura, magazine co-editor Martin Wong, filmmaker Dylan Robertson, actor Tamlyn Tomita and actor-filmmaker Daniel Wu.

Saturday night will see a double bill of Jon Moritsugu’s 1993 “Terminal USA” and a 35mm screening of Gregg Araki’s 2004 “Mysterious Skin.” Other films in the series include Shunji Iwai’s 2001 “All About Lily Chou-Chou,” Michael Arias’ 2006 “Tekkonkinkrett,” Shusuke Kaneko’s 1995 “Gamera: The Guardian of the Universe” and Derek Yee Tung-Sing’s 2004 “One Nite in Mongkok.”

‘Blonde Venus’ in nitrate 35mm

Marlene Dietrich stars in 1932’s “Blonde Venus.”

(Academy Museum)

Screening at the Academy Museum on Saturday in a rare 35mm nitrate print is Josef von Sternberg’s 1932 “Blonde Venus.” Starring Marlene Dietrich and a then-little-known Cary Grant, the film is about a chanteuse turned housewife who returns to the stage to earn money to save her ailing husband. The film features the notorious “Hot Voodoo” musical number that opens with Dietrich in a gorilla suit.

In other news

Teri Garr remembered

Teri Garr speaks with Johnny Carson in 1984.

(Frank Carroll / NBCUniversal via Getty Images)

Actor Teri Garr died this week at age 79. She skillfully blended comedy and dramatic pathos in films such as “Tootsie,” for which she was nominated for an Academy Award for supporting actress, as well as “Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” “Mr. Mom,” “Young Frankenstein” and “After Hours.” Her appearances on both “The Tonight Show With Johnny Carson” and “Late Night With David Letterman” remain iconic for their warmth, charm and disarming candor.

Reviewing “Tootsie,” critic Pauline Kael called Garr “the funniest neurotic dizzy dame on the screen.” Times critic Sheila Benson referred to Garr’s performance in “After Hours” as “touchingly bizarre.”

Garr publicly revealed her multiple sclerosis diagnosis in 2002, and the illness was her cause of death.

She continued working after opening up about her health, saying, “Actually, I thought, ‘What’s the difference — being handicapped in Hollywood or being a woman over 50?’”

Malkovich on ‘Malkovich’

Director Spike Jonze and actor John Malkovich at the Royal Hotel in New York City in 1999.

(Jim Cooper / For The Times)

As part of The Times’ ongoing 1999 Project celebrating the popular culture of that pivotal year, I spoke to actor John Malkovich about his experiences making the movie “Being John Malkovich.” The feature debut of director Spike Jonze and screenwriter Charlie Kaufman (both future Oscar winners), the film is about a down-on-his-luck puppeteer (John Cusack) who finds a portal to the inside of the head of Malkovich. The cast also includes Cameron Diaz, Catherine Keener, Charlie Sheen and, in a brief uncredited cameo as the national arts editor of the Los Angeles Times, filmmaker David Fincher.

As to how he prepared for the role of John Malkovich and whether it was different from any other part, Malkovich responded, “That’s an interesting question. The thing is, there wasn’t that much to search for, because the world is so specific that Charlie created. I remember one day when I did something and Spike Jonze said to me, ‘John Malkovich wouldn’t do it that way.’ And I kind of chuckled, but I said, ‘Oh, OK. How would he do it?’ And I really didn’t think that much of it because anything I do isn’t me. But John Malkovich isn’t me either, any more or less than anything else isn’t me. So if somebody says, ‘That’s not the way John Malkovich would do it,’ maybe they know better than I do.”

Hampton by Hilton, in collaboration with Paris Hilton’s 11:11 Media, is adding a pop of pink and a dash of sparkle to its legendary waffle lineup with the Sparkling Strawberry Hampton Waffle by Paris Hilton. Guests can enjoy the new waffle during their stay at more than 2,400 hotels in the U.S. and Canada beginning October 24 and, for the first time ever, purchase the waffle mix with edible glitter online to recreate Hampton’s beloved breakfast experience at home.

For 40 years, Hampton by Hilton has set the standard in its category, pioneering the concept of free hot breakfast and becoming the first hotel brand to offer make-your-own Belgian-style waffles. Now, through its partnership with Paris Hilton’s next-gen media and lifestyle company 11:11 Media, the Sparkling Strawberry Hampton Waffle by Paris Hilton takes center stage as the latest addition to the brand’s innovative flavors, joining previous guest favorites like pumpkin spice, red velvet, and lemon. 

“At Hampton by Hilton, breakfast is such a key part of what we offer, and our waffles have become an iconic symbol of that tradition of providing a friendly and reliable stay,” said Shruti Gandhi Buckley, global brand leader, Hampton by Hilton. “This collaboration with Paris Hilton brings a fresh, playful twist to something that’s already so loved. But it’s not just about the waffles—it’s about how we successfully set our guests up to take on the day. We provide a quality, balanced breakfast with healthy options and proteins, along with the warm, friendly service Hampton is known for. From a great night’s sleep to a hot meal served with a smile, we make sure guests feel energized, happy, and ready to take on whatever comes next.” 

Inspired by Paris Hilton’s signature style, this limited-time flavor is the delicious result of a creative partnership between the pop culture icon and Hampton by Hilton. In addition to indulging in the waffles at Hampton hotels, breakfast lovers can purchase a Sparkling Strawberry Hampton Waffle Kit for $29.99 at ShopHampton.com/Waffles while supplies last. The kit includes a 33-ounce canister of waffle mix, a container of edible glitter and Paris Hilton’s personal recipe for elevating breakfast with iconic fun and flavor and marks the first time that guests can create the Hampton Waffle at home.  

“I had so much fun partnering with Hampton by Hilton on this fabulous new flavor,” said Paris Hilton, CEO of 11:11 Media. “The Sparkling Strawberry Hampton Waffle is totally iconic, sweet, and so me. I’m excited for everyone to try it and start their mornings with a little sparkle.”  Paris Hilton added her own stylish twist to the Sparkling Strawberry Hampton Waffle, working in collaboration with the newly crowned Waffle Bosses, a trio of breakfast attendants from around the world who provide a memorable breakfast experience for our guests. Together, they helped create a decadent recipe that transforms this breakfast favorite into an over-the-top delight.