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“One Battle After Another” director Paul Thomas Anderson won top honors at the Directors Guild of America Awards in Los Angeles on Saturday, solidifying his film’s position as a strong favorite for the Oscars.Anderson, whose movie follows a former revolutionary who tries to protect his teenage daughter when the past comes back to haunt him, won the feature-film prize — the award considered a key indicator of what might happen at the Academy Awards, which cap off the Hollywood awards season.”It’s a tremendous honor to be given this,” Anderson said upon accepting the award at the gala held in Beverly Hills.”We’re going to take it with the love that it’s given and the appreciation of all our comrades in this room,” he added.Starring Leonardo DiCaprio, the film, which depicts a timeless America where white supremacists plot behind the scenes, immigration raids sweep through communities and revolutionary groups take up arms, also won recognition in January at the Critics’ Choice Awards and the Golden Globes.”One Battle After Another” will enter the Oscars as the second-most-nominated film, with 13 nominations. It is behind only the vampire film “Sinners” directed by Ryan Coogler, which garnered 16 nominations, a record for the Academy Awards.Coogler was also nominated for the feature-film prize at the Directors Guild Awards.Anderson received the statuette from Sean Baker, who won last year with his dark comedy “Anora,” which went on to be an Oscar winner.Twenty of the 22 winners of the Directors Guild Awards have subsequently won the Oscar for best director, including the winners of the last three years: “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” “Oppenheimer” and “Anora.” Also on Saturday, Oscar-winning Ukrainian filmmaker and journalist Mstyslav Chernov won the award for best documentary film. His film “2000 Meters to Andriivka” follows a Ukrainian platoon on a campaign to liberate a Russian-occupied village and offers a glimpse into the harsh realities of war.”It’s scary to live in a world where, instead of a camera, you have to get a gun to defend your home, to defend what you believe in,” Chernov said at the event hosted by comedian Kumail Nanjiani.”I want to thank… every soldier, every civilian, every filmmaker who made a choice to leave the camera for now and get a gun and go and fight so I have a chance,” he added.

It has become a staple of every NFL game’s pre-show coverage — footage of players strutting their way to stadium locker rooms wearing the latest daring sartorial choices.And a VIP fashion show Saturday ahead of the New England Patriots’ Super Bowl clash with the Seattle Seahawks was the latest bet by the league that indulging its players’ penchant for high-end designers is also good for the NFL’s bottom line.A sport for decades associated with no-nonsense jocks has in recent years encouraged its stars’ newfound obsession with attire as a way to capture new fans beyond the sport’s traditional base.Female and global supporters are particularly coveted by a league that has essentially saturated its core, male-heavy demographic, with some 125 million Americans already tuning into last year’s Super Bowl.”People who love fashion are paying attention to it. Brands are getting involved. So I think it’s opened another element to the game,” Detroit Lions star wide receiver Amon-Ra St Brown told AFP at the event.NFL marketing bosses have been pursuing a broader “helmets off” strategy, including behind-the-scenes documentaries and social media clips, that seeks to make players more relatable by emphasizing their personalities and off-field interests.Clubs regularly share footage of their players in designer outfits, or attending events like an Abercrombie & Fitch fashion event in San Francisco, hosted the night before Sunday’s Super Bowl. Guests included league boss Roger Goodell and Jacksonville Jaguars quarterback Trevor Lawrence.”Fashion is global,” the San Francisco 49ers’ All-Pro running back Christian McCaffrey, also in attendance, told AFP.”Especially when you talk about the European market, a lot of the Asian markets where fashion is such a big part of culture.”I think when you add a lot of our walk-out or entrance outfits that guys wear now, it helps reach a global audience.”- ‘Gives us that swagger’ -Abercrombie & Fitch was last year named the NFL’s first official fashion partner, and athletes have countless personal tie-ins with brands like American Eagle.Some of the game’s top players, including Cincinnati Bengals quarterback Joe Burrow, have dedicated personal stylists and have popped up at global fashion shows in Paris and at the Met Gala.According to Bengals wide receiver Tee Higgins, experimenting with haute couture can serve as a confidence booster.”We don’t just do it when we go to the games,” he said. “We put this stuff on because it makes us feel good personally, and just gives us that little swagger, just to go about our day like that.”The adventures into fashion can relax players in the locker room prior to games, as athletes rib one another for their more brash selections.”You’ll always get some comments, especially when your outfit is pretty loud. But guys have fun with it, man,” said McCaffrey.Still, St Brown added, the fun stops when game time arrives.”At the end of the day I’m still there to play football. It’s not a fashion show,” he said.”But I still want to dress nice and feel good.”

The Washington Post said Saturday its CEO and publisher Will Lewis was leaving effective immediately, just days after the storied newspaper owned by billionaire Amazon founder Jeff Bezos made drastic job cuts that angered readers.Though newspapers across the United States have been facing brutal industry headwinds, Lewis’s management of the outlet was sharply criticized by subscribers and employees alike during his two-year tenure as he tried to reverse financial losses at the daily.Lewis, who is English, has been replaced by Jeff D’Onofrio, a former CEO of social media platform Tumblr who had joined the Post as chief financial officer last year, the paper announced.In an email to staff shared on social media by one of the newspaper’s reporters, Lewis said it was “the right time for me to step aside.” A statement from the Post said only that D’Onofrio was succeeding Lewis “effective immediately.”Hundreds of Post journalists — including most of its overseas, local and sports staff — were let go in the sweeping cuts announced on Wednesday.The Post did not disclose the number of jobs being eliminated, but The New York Times reported approximately 300 of its 800 journalists were laid off.The paper’s entire Middle East roster was let go as was its Kyiv-based Ukraine correspondent as the war with Russia grinds on.  Sports, graphics and local news departments were sharply scaled back and the paper’s daily podcast, Post Reports, was suspended, local media reported.Hundreds turned out Thursday at a protest in front of the paper’s headquarters in downtown Washington.- Editorial interference -Newspapers across the country have cratered under falling revenues and subscriptions as they compete for eyeballs with social media, and as internet revenue pales in comparison to what print advertising once commanded.However, national papers like The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal have managed to weather the storm and come out financially solid — something the Post, even with a billionaire backer, has failed to do.In Lewis’s note to staff, shared on X by White House bureau chief Matt Viser, Lewis said “difficult decisions have been taken” during his tenure “in order to ensure the sustainable future of The Post so it can for many years ahead publish high-quality nonpartisan news.”Bezos, one of the world’s richest people, was quoted in the Post’s statement saying that the paper has “an extraordinary opportunity. Each and every day our readers give us a roadmap to success. The data tells us what is valuable and where to focus.”He and Lewis have come under scrutiny for intervening directly in the paper’s editorial processes.Bezos reined in the newspaper’s liberal-leaning editorial page and blocked an endorsement of Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris days before the 2024 election — breaking the so-called firewall of editorial independence. He was widely seen as bowing to Donald Trump, who went on to win the election.The decision also apparently had financial consequences: The Wall Street Journal reported that 250,000 digital subscribers left the Post after it refrained from endorsing Harris, and the paper lost around $100 million in 2024 as advertising and subscription revenues fell.As president, Trump has heaped direct pressure on journalists, launching multiple lawsuits against media organizations.A withered Post, critics worry, will leave the country’s press corps less able to hold the government accountable.Marty Baron, the Post’s executive editor until 2021, said that the job cuts ranked “among the darkest days in the history of one of the world’s greatest news organizations.”

A detention center in rural Texas has become a harsh symbol of President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown, with disease breaking out among the throng of people held, including some families who entered the United States legally. The Dilley Immigration Processing Center sits in a small town of just 3,200 people, just about 85 miles (135 kilometers) from the Mexico border, but has become a grim global melting pot.Many detainees were picked up as their asylum claims were being processed or as they were checking in with authorities on their cases, lawyers told AFP, as Trump massively expands the scope of who can be targeted for detention and deportation.”I cry all the time. My son tries to wipe the tear from my eyes,” said W, a Haitian woman who along with her son crossed the border legally to seek asylum, under a program run by Trump’s predecessor Joe Biden.Historically, asylum seekers have generally been allowed to live and work in the United States while their claims work their way through the court system. But W and her son were arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents and sent to Dilley in October, where W says authorities have tried to force her to sign a deportation order.Her testimony, like that of others in this report, was taken by the Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services (RAICES), a legal advocacy group, and shown to AFP. Many names have been fully or partially withheld.- Bugs in food -Protests have erupted over bugs being found in the detention center’s food, W said, while lights are kept on 24 hours a day, making it difficult to sleep.On Monday, Texas health authorities warned of two measles cases at the facility, prompting ICE to quarantine some people held there.”These families have become a political pawn,” Javier Hidalgo, legal director at RAICES, told AFP.”They were in a process. They had future court dates… there’s no purpose to (detention) other than trying to convince them to give up their legal cases.”CoreCivic, the private company that the government contracts to run the facility, told AFP “the health and safety of those entrusted to our care is the (company’s) top priority.”The Dilley center is the same facility that held Liam Conejo Ramos, the five-year-old Ecuadoran boy who lawyers allege was detained as bait to lure his mother to agents.Liam has since been ordered released, though the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is seeking to dismiss the family’s asylum claim — lodged after they entered the country legally in 2024 — and deport them.- Family held over father’s arrest -Also held at the facility is the family of Mohamed Sabry Soliman, who is accused of firebombing a protest in support of Israeli hostages last year in Colorado.The Egyptian national told authorities that no one knew of his plans, CNN reported, but his wife and five children have been held at Dilley for months while the government claims it is “investigating to what extent his family knew about this heinous attack.””Why would the government insist on detaining us with no evidence?” his daughter Habiba wrote in a letter shared by immigration attorney Eric Lee last month.The family entered the country legally in 2022 and filed for asylum. DHS has said the family is “in our country illegally” and is trying to deport them. None of the other family members has been charged with a crime.Days after speaking to CNN, Habiba was separated from her family.DHS told the broadcaster it was because she had turned 18 and needed to be moved to the adult section, though her birthday had passed months before without any action.- Alleged medical neglect -Other detainees complain of medical neglect. “One of the children had appendicitis last year, and it took days to get him medical care,” lawyer Chris Godshall-Bennett told AFP, adding that the child was told “to take a Tylenol and get over it.”Diana, a Colombian woman, is detained with her 10-year-old daughter who suffers from Hirschsprung’s disease, which causes blocked bowels and can require a special diet.But a doctor “told me that I needed to remember they are not there to accommodate me… that their only responsibility is to ensure that detainees do not go hungry,” she said.CoreCivic said that its medical staff “meet the highest standards of care.””We will be detained for who knows how long,” Habiba Soliman wrote in her letter.”We have been falling apart.”

A jury has been confirmed in a landmark social media addiction trial in the US state of California, a process dominated by references to tech giant Meta’s divisive founder Mark Zuckerberg.Meta’s lawyers fought for six days in court to remove jurors who they deemed overly hostile to Facebook and Instagram, two of the social media platforms involved in the case.The plaintiff’s lawyers sought to dismiss people, mostly men, who believed that young internet users’ mental health issues are more attributable to parental failures rather than tech platform designers.With the jury of 12 members and six alternates approved on Friday, arguments in the case are now scheduled to begin Monday in Los Angeles Superior Court.The case is being called a bellwether proceeding because its outcome could set the tone for a tidal wave of similar litigation across the United States.Defendants at the trial are Alphabet and Meta, the tech titans behind YouTube and Instagram. TikTok and Snapchat were also accused, but have since settled for an undisclosed amount.The trial focuses on allegations that a 20-year-old woman identified by the initials K.G.M. suffered severe mental harm because she became addicted to social media as a child.She accuses Meta and YouTube of knowingly designing addictive apps, to the detriment of her mental health. – ‘Start fairly’ -Jury selection was dominated by recurring references to Zuckerberg, the head of Meta and co-founder of Facebook who reached global fame after the Hollywood film “The Social Network.””I feel impartial toward the plaintiff, but based on things Mark Zuckerberg has done objectively — I have strong feelings about — and I think the defendant would start further behind,” said one young woman.Many potential jurors criticized Facebook’s early days — it was designed as a platform for college students to rate women’s looks — and cited the Cambridge Analytica privacy breach of 2018.They also said it would be difficult for them to accept the billionaire’s testimony — expected in the next two weeks — without prejudice.Meta’s lawyer, Phyllis Jones, raised frequent objections to such jurors.She said it was “very important that both sides start fairly, with no disadvantage, that you look at the evidence fairly and decide.”Others were dismissed for the opposite reason.”I like this guy,” said one rare Zuckerberg fan. “I regret not owning Meta shares.” He was dismissed by the plaintiff’s lawyer, Mark Lanier.Others to be removed included a man who expressed his anger against psychiatrists, and several people whose loved ones suffered from social media addiction or harassment.- Seeking distance -Alphabet’s lawyers were keen to ensure that their platform YouTube was not lumped in with Meta.”Does everybody understand that YouTube and Meta are very different companies? Does everyone understand that (Zuckerberg) doesn’t run YouTube?” asked Luis Li, a lawyer for Google’s video platform.One man said he saw the potential for YouTube to seek to trigger “immediate dopamine” rushes among users through its “Shorts” feature.He said his niece spends too much time on TikTok, which popularized a platform that provides endless scrolling of ultra-short-format videos.The case will focus not on content, on which front platforms are largely protected by US law, but on the design of algorithms and personalization features.The plaintiffs allege that the platforms are negligent and purposely designed to be harmful, echoing a strategy successfully used against the tobacco industry.Meta and YouTube strongly deny the allegations, and also unsuccessfully argued on Friday for the judge to declare statements comparing their platforms to tobacco and other addictive products to be illegitimate.The debate on the platform’s level of responsibility for their effect on users was already underway, even at this early stage of the trial.Alphabet’s lawyer Li asked the panel if people spend too much time on phones, with the majority nodding in agreement.”As a society, is it a problem?” he asked, with most hands again going up.He then asked if this is “because of YouTube?” prompting hesitation from the jurors.

The International Olympic Committee said on Saturday it hoped for “fair play” after US Vice President JD Vance was booed at the opening ceremony of the Milan-Cortina Winter Olympics.There were audible boos at the San Siro stadium in Milan when Vance, who was attending Friday’s ceremony with his wife Usha, appeared on a big screen.The US team itself was loudly applauded.”With the vice president, what I would say is that with the next Games coming up in Los Angeles we are super happy that the US administration is so engaged with the Games here and obviously going forward that’s a great thing for the Olympic movement,” IOC communications director Mark Adams told a news conference.”I was in the stadium last night and we’re largely a sports organisation and seeing the US team cheered as they were by the audience, fair play, that was fantastic,” he added.”In general, I would say at sporting events, we like to see fair play but in terms of having a good relationship with the administration, that is only good news for us.”IOC chief Kirsty Coventry, the former Zimbabwean swimmer and sports minister, met Vance for the first time before the ceremony to discuss preparations for the 2028 Summer Games in Los Angeles.Adams said the meeting “went incredibly well” and that they had “very good chemistry” but said he could give no further details of the content of their discussions.Hundreds protested in Milan on Friday against Vance’s visit and the presence of some agents from the US immigration enforcement agency ICE who are in Italy to help protect the American delegation.The Israeli team also received a smattering of boos when it entered the stadium for the athletes’ parade.Adams said: “Whatever background they’re from, I don’t think you want to see any booing there.”If you want to get philosophical about it, one of the ideas is that the athletes shouldn’t be punished for whatever their country has done.”

President Donald Trump refused to apologize Friday for a video posted on his social media account depicting Barack and Michelle Obama as monkeys, though he said he condemned the post as the White House shifted the blame to staff.The video shared on Trump’s Truth Social account late Thursday night sparked censure across the US political spectrum, with the White House initially rejecting “fake outrage” only to then blame the post on an error by a staff member.”I didn’t make a mistake,” Trump said on Air Force One late Friday when asked if he would apologize for the post.Asked if he condemns the racist imagery in the video, Trump replied: “Of course I do.”Democrats slammed Trump as “vile” over the clip of the Obamas — the first Black president and first lady in US history — while a senior Republican senator said the video was blatantly racist.Near the end of the one-minute-long video promoting conspiracies about Republican Trump’s 2020 election loss to Joe Biden, the Obamas were shown with their faces on the bodies of monkeys for about one second.The video, uploaded late Thursday amid a flurry of other posts, repeated false allegations that ballot-counting company Dominion Voting Systems helped steal the election from Trump.White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt initially played down the row, saying the images were “from an internet meme video depicting President Trump as the King of the Jungle and Democrats as characters from The Lion King.””Please stop the fake outrage and report on something today that actually matters to the American public,” Leavitt said in a statement to AFP.- About-face -But almost exactly 12 hours after the post appeared on Trump’s account there was an unusual concession from an administration that normally refuses to admit the slightest mistake.”A White House staffer erroneously made the post. It has been taken down,” a White House official told AFP.Speaking to reporters on board Air Force One on Friday, Trump stood by the thrust of the video’s claims about election fraud, but said he had not seen the offensive clip.”I just looked at the first part… and I didn’t see the whole thing,” Trump said, adding that he “gave it” to staffers to post and they also didn’t watch the full video. There was no immediate comment from the Obamas.Former vice president Kamala Harris, who has long condemned Trump’s divisive racial rhetoric, called out the White House’s backpedaling in a post on X on Friday.”No one believes this cover up from the White House, especially since they originally defended this post,” she wrote. “We are all clear-eyed about who Donald Trump is and what he believes.” – ‘Disgusting bigotry’ -While Democrats pounced on the post, it was the outrage from some members of Trump’s own Republican Party that appeared to trigger the about-face.Tim Scott, the only Black Republican senator and once a contender for the 2024 presidential nomination, called the video “the most racist thing I’ve seen out of this White House.”Scott said he was “praying it was fake” and called for Trump to remove it.Roger Wicker, another Republican senator, said the post was “totally unacceptable. The president should take it down and apologize.”The top Democrat in the House of Representatives, Hakeem Jeffries, called Trump “vile, unhinged and malignant” and urged Republicans on X to “immediately denounce Donald Trump’s disgusting bigotry.”Trump launched his own political career by pushing the racist and false “birther” conspiracy theory that Barack Obama was lying about being born in the United States.Trump has long had a bitter rivalry with his Democratic predecessor, taking particular umbrage at his popularity and the fact that he won the Nobel Peace Prize.In his second term in the White House, Trump has used hyper-realistic but fabricated AI visuals on Truth Social and other platforms, often glorifying himself and rallying his conservative base around social issues.During negotiations to avoid a US government shutdown Trump posted a video of Jeffries, who is Black, wearing a fake mustache and a sombrero. Jeffries called the image racist.One AI-generated video showed fighter jets dumping human waste on protesters — which was created by the same X user who made the video showing the Obamas as monkeys.Since returning to the White House, Trump has led a crusade against diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs.US federal anti-discrimination programs were born of the 1960s civil rights movement, mainly led by Black Americans, for equality and justice after hundreds of years of slavery. Slavery was abolished in the United States in 1865, but other forms of institutional racism continued for decades.burs-dk/aha/ksb/lga/jfx

US President Donald Trump’s administration on Friday re-approved the use of pesticide dicamba for spraying on top of genetically modified cotton and soybean crops, drawing swift backlash from environmental groups and the Make America Healthy Again movement.The move comes despite federal courts in 2020 and 2024 striking down the Environmental Protection Agency’s previous approvals of the contentious weedkiller. “This decision responds directly to the strong advocacy of America’s cotton and soybean farmers, particularly growers across the Cotton Belt, who have been clear and consistent about the critical challenges they face without access to this tool for controlling resistant weeds in their growing crop,” the EPA said in a statement.A persistent concern about dicamba is “drift”: when the chemical volatilizes in high heat it can spread for miles, poisoning other farms, home gardens as well as trees and plants.The 2020 court ruling that first overturned dicamba’s approval found it caused damage across millions of acres and “has torn apart the social fabric of many farming communities.”The EPA acknowledged this concern as real but said that by imposing certain restrictions, such as reducing the amount used and avoiding application in higher temperatures, it was safe.Agricultural industry giant Bayer, which acquired dicamba when it bought Monsanto, welcomed the news and said the chemical would be marketed under the name “Stryax.””With a federal registration in hand, we’ll begin the process of seeking state approvals,” said Ty Witten, the company’s vice president of commercial stewardship, in a statement.”In the coming weeks, we’ll launch applicator training opportunities, and stewardship education to help ensure that growers and applicators have the best experience possible with Stryax herbicide.”- Lobbyists turned regulators -Environmental advocates dismissed the safeguards as insufficient — pointing out, for example, the new approval allowed year-round use, including in the hottest summer months.”They’re clearly looking out for the interests of polluting companies much more than the interests of the public, and this is because this office is being run by former industry lobbyists,” Nathan Donley, environmental health science director for the Center for Biological Diversity, told AFP. Kyle Kunkler, a former lobbyist for the American Soybean Association, is now the deputy assistant administrator for pesticides in the EPA’s Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention.The decision also rattled MAHA activists — supporters of Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Kelly Ryerson, who last year started a petition calling for EPA administrator Lee Zeldin to resign over pesticide approvals, told AFP she was “very disappointed.””This is clearly the work of the chemical lobbyists who now are staffed throughout the EPA and are not aligned with the MAHA movement or with President Trump’s mandate,” she said.Alexandra Munoz, a molecular toxicologist who works at times with the MAHA movement, also cricitized the move. “EPA’s approval for over-the-top application of dicamba will result in poisonous drift that will damage American farmland, moving us farther away from a future where regenerative agriculture can thrive.” “This decision is not what is needed to make America healthy again,” she told AFP. 

US President Donald Trump on Friday issued a proclamation reopening commercial fishing in protected waters off the Atlantic coast, in a region renowned for its rich biodiversity.The Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument spans nearly 5,000 square miles — larger than Yellowstone National Park.Long a focus of scientific interest, the monument lies about 130 miles southeast of Cape Cod, Massachusetts, and was established in 2016 by former Democratic president Barack Obama, who warned it was threatened by overfishing and climate change.In a familiar political yo-yo, Republican Trump reopened the monument to commercial fishing during his first term, only for the decision to be reversed by Democratic successor Joe Biden. Biden’s administration cited the monument as part of its pledge to conserve 30 percent of US land and waters by 2030.Explaining the latest reversal, Trump’s proclamation said the plants and animals in question were already protected under existing laws, making a ban on commercial fishing unnecessary.The move, expected since last year, was welcomed by the New England Fishermen’s Stewardship Association (NEFSA).”For decades, overregulation has stopped fishermen from making a living and putting wild, heart-healthy, American-caught products on store shelves. NEFSA is pleased that the Trump administration is committed to making America’s natural resources available to all Americans,” said NEFSA CEO Jerry Leeman in a statement last May.Conservation groups, however, pushed back.During an aerial survey last August, the New England Aquarium documented more than 1,000 marine animals in the area, including an endangered fin whale and calf, an endangered sperm whale, pilot whales, and a wide array of other whales, dolphins and rays.”This Monument supports amazing species from the seafloor to the sea surface, and we see evidence of that during every aerial survey,” said Jessica Redfern, of the aquarium’s Anderson Cabot Center for Ocean Life.”Removing protections for Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument puts these species at risk.”