AFP USA

Long, blond, wavy hair, heavy makeup and cosmetic injections: like many women in Donald Trump’s orbit, political consultant Melissa Rein Lively wears her support for the US president on her face.With the rise of Trump’s Make America Great Again (MAGA) movement, a group of well-connected and well-off Republican women have come into the spotlight sporting what the US media have dubbed the “MAGA look.””This has always been my look. I just found my tribe,” said Rein Lively, 40, founder of “America First,” a public relations agency that provides “anti-woke” services.”It’s so much bigger than politics. It’s friendships. It’s relationships,” she told AFP in a recent interview. “That MAGA look really signals to other people that you’re on the same team.”These new-style conservatives, almost always devout Christians, espouse traditional values while pursuing personal ambition.Since the September assassination of top MAGA influencer and Trump ally Charlie Kirk, his widow Erika has taken the reins of his youth mobilization group.During a memorial service for her husband, the 36-year-old former Miss Arizona dabbed her impeccably made-up eyes with a handkerchief and praised a Christian marriage. She cited a New Testament passage that instructs wives to submit to their husbands for protection.”It’s so hard to articulate the beauty of an Ephesians 5 marriage when you actually have a man that’s worth following,” she said.- Not just fashion -While professing family values and religious beliefs, these MAGA women are anything but shy in their appearance.Clad in skirts and dresses, almost always wearing their hair long, they can be recognized by heavy makeup, which includes well-defined eyebrows and “contouring,” a technique that uses dark and light shades to sculpt the face. Many opt for cosmetic interventions, including fillers and surgery to achieve fuller cheeks, plumper lips and a refined nose.Rein Lively points to Trump’s daughter Ivanka and his daughter-in-law Lara as her role models.”It’s a mistake to dismiss this as just about fashion, just about makeup,” said Juliet Williams, a professor of gender studies at UCLA. “It’s actually absolutely central because this Trump MAGA movement was able to return to the White House in 2024, I believe, essentially because of leveraging the gender war.”- ‘Two hours in the gym every day’ -The 79-year-old Trump has mobilized many young voters with his nationalist, pro-business and macho appeal.The MAGA face is political because it is “a way of signaling to all women that your value depends on your attractiveness to men,” said Williams, adding that Trump used to run a beauty pageant.Rein Lively, however, rejects any idea of submission or coercion.”By absolutely nobody’s volition other than my own do I spend two hours in the gym every day, get my hair done every three and a half weeks on the button, get my nails done, get my eyebrows done, get my skincare done, get Botox,” she said.The PR consultant vied for the job of White House spokesperson for Trump’s second term, but the president ultimately picked long-time loyalist Karoline Leavitt.Leavitt, 28, has surrounded herself with young assistants who emulate her impeccably groomed look, which includes high heels, even on trips that involve a lot of running around.”I look at these MAGA women and I don’t see them as fashion victims… but I see it as war paint,” Williams said. “And, you know, embracing a system that is ultimately designed to work against them.”- ‘It is ironic’ -One of the women most frequently cited as embodying the so-called “MAGA face” is Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, who has led Trump’s hardline immigration policy.”The long-hair extensions, the big lips, the big cheeks, the makeup, the lash extensions, it’s like she’s doing drag,” said Daniel Belkin, a dermatologist in New York.Belkin finds it paradoxical that MAGA supporters are hostile to drag queen shows and condemn breast augmentation and facial reconstruction surgery for transgender people. They often resort to similar procedures to accentuate their femininity and masculinity.”It is ironic, because they’re so against gender-affirming care for trans people, but they’re doing gender affirming care for themselves,” Belkin said.In a recent episode, the popular animated series “South Park” ridiculed Noem as a shrew with a face butchered by cosmetic procedures, which her assistants must constantly patch up for the cameras.”It’s so lazy to just constantly make fun of women for how they look,” Noem protested during a recent interview.

Syria’s President Ahmed al-Sharaa is to meet US President Donald Trump at the White House on Monday for unprecedented talks just days after Washington removed him from a terrorism blacklist.Sharaa, whose rebel forces ousted longtime ruler Bashar al-Assad late last year, will be the first Syrian leader to visit the White House since the country’s independence in 1946.Formerly affiliated with Al-Qaeda, Sharaa’s group, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), was itself only delisted as a terrorist group by Washington in July.Since taking power, Syria’s new leaders have sought to break from their violent past and present a more moderate image to ordinary Syrians and foreign powers.Sharaa’s White House visit is “a hugely symbolic moment for the country’s new leader, who thus marks another step in his astonishing transformation from militant leader to global statesman,” said Michael Hanna, US program director at the International Crisis Group.The interim president met Trump for the first time in Saudi Arabia during the US leader’s regional tour in May.After his arrival in Washington, Sharaa over the weekend met with IMF chief Kristalina Georgieva over possible aid for the war-wrecked country, and with representatives from Syrian organizations.Washington’s envoy to Syria, Tom Barrack, said earlier this month that Sharaa may on Monday sign an agreement to join the international US-led alliance against the Islamic State (IS) group.The United States plans to establish a military base near Damascus “to coordinate humanitarian aid and observe developments between Syria and Israel,” a diplomatic source in Syria told AFP.The State Department’s decision Friday to remove Sharaa from the blacklist was widely expected.State Department spokesman Tommy Pigott said Sharaa’s government had been meeting US demands on working to find missing Americans and on eliminating any remaining chemical weapons.”These actions are being taken in recognition of the progress demonstrated by the Syrian leadership after the departure of Bashar al-Assad and more than 50 years of repression under the Assad regime,” Pigott said.On Saturday, the Syrian interior ministry announced that it had carried out 61 raids and made 71 arrests in a “proactive campaign to neutralize the threat” of IS, according to the official SANA news agency.It said the raids targeted locations where IS sleeper cells remain, including Aleppo, Idlib, Hama, Homs, Deir ez-Zor, Raqqa and Damascus.Sharaa’s Washington trip comes after he visited the United Nations in September — his first time on US soil — where the ex-jihadist became the first Syrian president in decades to address the UN General Assembly in New York.Last week Washington led a vote by the Security Council to remove UN sanctions against him.Sharaa is expected to seek US funds for Syria, which faces significant challenges in rebuilding after 13 years of civil war.In October, the World Bank put a “conservative best estimate” of the cost of rebuilding Syria at $216 billion. mam-at-burs/bgs/iv

In the race for AI dominance, American tech giants have the money and the chips, but their ambitions have hit a new obstacle: electric power.”The biggest issue we are now having is not a compute glut, but it’s the power and…the ability to get the builds done fast enough close to power,” Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella acknowledged on a recent podcast with OpenAI chief Sam Altman.”So if you can’t do that, you may actually have a bunch of chips sitting in inventory that I can’t plug in,” Nadella added. Echoing the 1990s dotcom frenzy to build internet infrastructure, today’s tech giants are spending unprecedented sums to construct the silicon backbone of the revolution in artificial intelligence.Google, Microsoft, AWS (Amazon), and Meta (Facebook) are drawing on their massive cash reserves to spend roughly $400 billion in 2025 and even more in 2026 — backed for now by enthusiastic investors.All this cash has helped alleviate one initial bottleneck: acquiring the millions of chips needed for the computing power race, and the tech giants are accelerating their in-house processor production as they seek to chase global leader Nvidia.These will go into the racks that fill the massive data centers — which also consume enormous amounts of water for cooling.Building the massive information warehouses takes an average of two years in the United States; bringing new high-voltage power lines into service takes five to 10 years.- Energy wall -The “hyperscalers,” as major tech companies are called in Silicon Valley, saw the energy wall coming.A year ago, Virginia’s main utility provider, Dominion Energy, already had a data-center order book of 40 gigawatts — equivalent to the output of 40 nuclear reactors.The capacity it must deploy in Virginia, the world’s largest cloud computing hub, has since risen to 47 gigawatts, the company announced recently.Already blamed for inflating household electricity bills, data centers in the United Statescould account for 7 percent to 12 percent of national consumption by 2030, up from 4 percent today, according to various studies.But some experts say the projections could be overblown.”Both the utilities and the tech companies have an incentive to embrace the rapid growth forecast for electricity use,” Jonathan Koomey, a renowned expert from UC Berkeley, warned in September.As with the late 1990s internet bubble, “many data centers that are talked about and proposed and in some cases even announced will never get built.”- Emergency coal -If the projected growth does materialize, it could create a 45-gigawatt shortage by 2028 — equivalent to the consumption of 33 million American households, according to Morgan Stanley.Several US utilities have already delayed the closure of coal plants, despite coal being the most climate-polluting energy source.And natural gas, which powers 40 percent of data centers worldwide, according to the International Energy Agency, is experiencing renewed favor because it can be deployed quickly.In the US state of Georgia, where data centers are multiplying, one utility has requested authorization to install 10 gigawatts of gas-powered generators.Some providers, as well as Elon Musk’s startup xAI, have rushed to purchase used turbines from abroad to build capability quickly. Even recycling aircraft turbines, an old niche solution, is gaining traction.”The real existential threat right now is not a degree of climate change. It’s the fact that we could lose the AI arms race if we don’t have enough power,” Interior Secretary Doug Burgum argued in October.- Nuclear, solar, and space? -Tech giants are quietly downplaying their climate commitments. Google, for example, promised net-zero carbon emissions by 2030 but removed that pledge from its website in June.Instead, companies are promoting long-term projects.Amazon is championing a nuclear revival through Small Modular Reactors (SMRs), an as-yet experimental technology that would be easier to build than conventional reactors.Google plans to restart a reactor in Iowa in 2029. And the Trump administration announced in late October an $80 billion investment to begin construction on ten conventional reactors by 2030.Hyperscalers are also investing heavily in solar power and battery storage, particularly in California and Texas.The Texas grid operator plans to add approximately 100 gigawatts of capacity by 2030 from these technologies alone.Finally, both Elon Musk, through his Starlink program, and Google have proposed putting chips in orbit in space, powered by solar energy. Google plans to conduct tests in 2027.

US senators reached a bipartisan deal Sunday that would resume federal funding and end a shutdown which has stretched to a record 40 days and forced many government operations to grind to a halt.The deal between Democratic and Republican senators — just the first step to halting the shutdown — came as authorities warned US air travel could soon “slow to a trickle” as thousands more flights were cancelled or delayed over the weekend.Outlets including CNN and Fox News reported lawmakers had reached a stopgap agreement to fund the government through January after wrangling over health care subsidies, food benefits and President Donald Trump’s firings of federal employees.As news of the breakthrough emerged, Trump told reporters when he arrived at the White House after a weekend at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida: “It looks like we’re getting very close to the shutdown ending.”The Republican-led Senate swiftly held a procedural vote Sunday aimed at moving the legislative measure forward, and the vote appeared to have support from enough Democrats to advance.Once it clears the Senate, it would need to pass the House of Representatives, also in Republican control, and then head to Trump’s desk for his signature — a process that could take days.Earlier Sunday, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said that if the shutdown continued, the number of flights being snarled or cut would multiply while Americans gear up to travel for the Thanksgiving holiday later this month.By Sunday evening, the number of cancellations of flights within the United States and to and from the US had surpassed 2,700, with nearly 10,000 delays, according to data from tracking platform FlightAware.Airports that were particularly hard hit included the three New York City area airports, Chicago’s O’Hare, and Hartsfield-Jackson in Atlanta.Newark’s Liberty International Airport — a major northeastern US hub — was among the worst-hit. At New York’s LaGuardia Airport more than half of all outbound flights were delayed.- Splits over health care -Without a deal, Duffy warned that many Americans planning to travel for the November 27 Thanksgiving holiday would “not going to be able to get on an airplane, because there are not going to be that many flights that fly if this thing doesn’t open back up.”It could take days for flight schedules to recover after the shutdown is finally ended, and federal funding — including salaries — starts to flow again.Sunday marked the third day of flight reductions at airports nationwide, after the Trump administration ordered reductions to ease strain on air traffic controllers working without pay.According to lawmakers, the bill would restore funding for the SNAP food stamp program which helps more than 42 million lower-income Americans pay for groceries.It would also reverse Trump’s firings of thousands of federal workers over the past month, and assure a vote on extending health care subsidies that are set to expire at the end of this year.”This deal guarantees a vote to extend Affordable Care Act premium tax credits, which Republicans weren’t willing to do,” Senate Democrat Tim Kaine said in a statement.The bill — a so-called continuing resolution (CR) to keep government funded at pre-shutdown levels — “will protect federal workers from baseless firings, reinstate those who have been wrongfully terminated during the shutdown, and ensure federal workers receive back pay” as required by law, he added.But many Senate Democrats are opposed to the deal, including the chamber’s top Democrat Chuck Schumer, who expressed anger that it offers a vote for extending the health care subsidies instead of extending them directly.”I can not in good faith support this CR that fails to address the health care crisis,” Schumer told the chamber, adding: “This fight will and must continue.”

Blue Origin, the space company owned by billionaire Jeff Bezos, was forced Sunday to postpone the anticipated launch of its New Glenn rocket due to unfavorable weather conditions.Rain and a ground system issue caused delays that were followed by cumulus cloud cover as the 88-minute launch window closed, leaving managers with the only option of pushing back the rocket’s planned second mission.The launch had been due to proceed amid intensifying competition between Blue Origin and Elon Musk’s SpaceX.To relieve airspace congestion during the US federal government shutdown, the Federal Aviation Administration is limiting commercial rocket lift-offs starting Monday.But after scrubbing the launch Blue Origin said late Sunday that, in coordination with the FAA, it was aiming for another attempt as soon as Wednesday within the window of 2:50pm to 4:17pm (1950-2117 GMT).When it eventually launches, the 322-foot (98-meter) New Glenn rocket has the task of sending US space agency NASA’s ESCAPADE twin spacecraft to Mars, a bid to study the Red Planet’s climate history with the eventual hope of human exploration.Blue Origin’s launch is to also serve as a key test of whether it can achieve booster recovery, which would prove a technical breakthrough for the company if successful.New Glenn’s inaugural flight in January was marked as a success, as its payload achieved orbit and successfully performed tests.But its first-stage booster, which was meant to be reusable, did not stick its landing on a platform in the Atlantic, and instead was lost during descent.In its second effort Blue Origin will try once more to recover the booster stage. Thus far, only Musk’s company SpaceX has managed that feat.- Progress indicator -The competing companies of billionaires Musk and Bezos are locked in a commercial space race that recently escalated, as NASA opened up bids for its planned Moon mission — and with complaints emerging that SpaceX was “behind.”George Nield — a senior aerospace executive whose work promotes the commercial space industry, and who has flown with Blue Origin in the past — told AFP the stakes of New Glenn’s eventual launch are high.How it plays out will be an indicator of “how well they’re doing and how much progress they’ve made,” he said.US President Donald Trump’s second term in the White House has seen the administration pile pressure on NASA to accelerate its progress to send a crewed mission to the Moon amid a race with China.Mason Peck, an aeronautics professor at Cornell University and former NASA chief technologist, said increased competition between SpaceX and Blue Origin could “expand our options with regard to launch.””More launches means more ideas in space,” Peck said. “It can’t be a bad thing to have Blue Origin, even trailing behind.”

Air travel in the United States could soon “slow to a trickle,” authorities warned Sunday as thousands more flights were cancelled or delayed and passengers faced chaos triggered by the federal government shutdown.Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said the number of flights being snarled or cut would multiply if the funding impasse between Democrats and Republicans continues while Americans gear up to travel for the Thanksgiving holiday later this month.”It’s only going to get worse,” Duffy said on CNN’s “State of the Union,” a Sunday news talk show. “The two weeks before Thanksgiving, you’re going to see air travel be reduced to a trickle.”Meanwhile, the Senate took the rare step of meeting Sunday to convene a test-vote on ending the shutdown, which has stretched to a record 40 days.Senate Majority Leader John Thune, a Republican, told reporters Sunday that a potential deal was “coming together,” in the latest sign of activity on Capitol Hill that could see a reopening of government on the horizon.US media reported the potential deal would be a budget package that includes short-term government funding through January.By Sunday evening the number of cancellations of flights within the United States and to and from the US had surpassed 2,300, with more than 8,000 delays, according to data from tracking platform FlightAware.Airports that were particularly hard hit included the three New York City area airports, Chicago’s O’Hare, and Hartsfield-Jackson in Atlanta.Newark’s Liberty International Airport — a major northeastern US hub — was among the worst-hit. Twenty-seven percent of flights due to leave Newark were scrapped, with delays to 40 percent of outbound flights, FlightAware showed.At New York’s LaGuardia Airport more than half of all outbound flights were delayed.Duffy warned that many Americans planning to travel for the November 27 Thanksgiving holiday “are not going to be able to get on an airplane, because there are not going to be that many flights that fly if this thing doesn’t open back up.”The Thanksgiving weekend also kicks off the busy winter shopping season on which many retailers rely.- ‘People are hurting’ -Travelers expressed their frustration on social media. “Moral of the story, if you don’t have to travel and have a low patience threshold, don’t fly,” said one.Sunday marked the third day of flight reductions at airports nationwide, after the Trump administration ordered reductions to ease strain on air traffic controllers working without pay.”We’re going to see air traffic controllers, very few of them coming to work, which means you’ll have a few flights taking off and landing,” Duffy told Fox News Sunday.Duffy sought to blame Democrats for the high-stakes political standoff, but Senator Adam Schiff said Republicans were rejecting a “reasonable” compromise deal to end the shutdown.”And the result from the Senate Republicans was ‘no,’ from the House Republicans ‘we are staying on vacation,’ and from the president ‘I’m going out to play golf,’ and that’s where we are while people are hurting,” Schiff said.When asked whether Democrats would turn around and vote with Republicans, Schiff, a California Democrat, indicated that the issue of healthcare subsidies remained a sticking point in negotiations.Democrats to date have refused to vote for re-opening the government unless the subsidies for the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, are extended as part of the deal. They are set to expire at the end of this year. “Let’s just extend the ACA for a year, reopen the government, and then we can negotiate a more permanent fix to this crisis in health care in this country,” Schiff said on ABC’s “This Week with George Stephanopoulos.””We need to end this. We proposed something, I think very reasonable. It was a compromise. Certainly wasn’t everything I want, which is a permanent extension of the tax credits,” he said, urging Republicans to allow “more time to work on this and reopen the government.” 

The director general of the BBC announced his resignation Sunday following a row over the editing of a documentary about Donald Trump as the US president attacked “corrupt journalists”.Tim Davie and the broadcaster’s head of news, Deborah Turness, resigned after accusations that a documentary by its flagship Panorama programme had edited a speech by Trump in a misleading way.Reacting to the news, Trump said “corrupt journalists” had been exposed, adding “these are very dishonest people who tried to step on the scales of a Presidential Election”.Announcing his resignation Davie said in a statement posted on the BBC website: “Like all public organisations, the BBC is not perfect, and we must always be open, transparent and accountable.”While not being the only reason, the current debate around BBC News has understandably contributed to my decision… I have to take ultimate responsibility.”The latest controversy follows a Daily Telegraph report this week that said concerns were first raised in the summer in a memo on impartiality by Michael Prescott, a former external adviser to the BBC’s editorial standards committee.Earlier Sunday, the UK Culture, Media and Sport Minister Lisa Nandy called the allegations “incredibly serious”.The BBC has promised “a full response” to parliament’s culture media and sport committee on Monday.- Trump speech edited -The criticism emerged over clips spliced together from sections of a Trump speech on January 6, 2021, when he was accused of fomenting the mob attack on the US Capitol seeking to keep him in power despite losing his re-election bid. The edit made it appear he had told supporters he was going to walk to the US Capitol with them and “fight like hell”.In the undoctored clip, however, the president urged the audience to walk with him “and we’re going to cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women”.At the time, Trump was still disputing President Joe Biden’s election victory, in a vote that saw him ousted after his first term in office.The edit was included in a documentary entitled “Trump: A Second Chance?” that was broadcast by the BBC the week before last year’s US election.- ‘Bias’ allegation -Nandy had said earlier Sunday that the Trump edit was one of several concerns about editorial standards at the BBC.”It isn’t just about the Panorama programme, although that is incredibly serious,” she told BBC television in an interview.”There are a series of very serious allegations made, the most serious of which is that there is systemic bias in the way that difficult issues are reported at the BBC,” she said.Nandy said she was concerned about a tendency for editorial standards and the language used in reports to be “entirely inconsistent” whether it be on “Israel, Gaza… trans people or on this issue about President Trump”.White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt seemed to rejoice over the news, posting on X a screen-shot of the BBC news site announcing the resignation.Leavitt was previously quoted by the Telegraph condemning “this purposefully dishonestly, selectively edited clip by the BBC”.The BBC is funded by a licence fee paid by anyone who watches live TV in the UK.Earlier this year, it issued several apologies for “serious flaws” in the making of another documentary entitled “Gaza: How To Survive A Warzone”, broadcast in February.In October it accepted a sanction from the UK media watchdog for what was deemed a “materially misleading” programme, whose child narrator was later revealed to be the son of Hamas’s former deputy agriculture minister.

Cleveland Guardians pitchers Emmanuel Clase and Luis Ortiz were indicted Sunday in New York on federal charges involving rigged bets on individual pitches in Major League Baseball games.The Dominican right-handers had been placed on leave by MLB since July while the league conducted an investigation into sports gambling surrounding them.Ortiz was arrested Sunday in Boston and will appear in court on Monday while Clase is not in custody.Prosecutors in Brooklyn charged Clase, a 27-year-old closing reliever, and Ortiz, a 26-year-old starter, with being part of a scheme with corrupt bettors who placed hundreds of thousands of dollars in wagers on specific throws.Charges included wire fraud conspiracy, honest services wire fraud conspiracy, conspiracy to influence sporting contests by bribery, and money laundering conspiracy.”Professional athletes, like Luis Leandro Ortiz and Emmanuel Clase de la Cruz, hold a position of trust — not only with their teammates and their professional leagues, but with fans who believe in fair play,” US attorney Joseph Nocella said.”As alleged, the defendants sold that trust to gamblers by fixing pitches,” he added.”When corruption infiltrates the sport, it brings disgrace not only to the participants but damages the public trust in an institution that is vital and dear to all of us.”The announcement follows the late October arrests of two prominent NBA basketball figures, Miami Heat guard Terry Rozier and Portland Trail Blazers coach Chauncey Billups, in a separate far-ranging probe into illegal gambling.Prosecutors in the baseball case said the pitchers agreed in advance with their co-conspirators on specific pitches they would throw, the bettors using that inside information to place hundreds of fraudulent bets.Clase agreed to the scheme around May 2023 to rig “prop” bets on particular pitches he threw, with wagers on the speed and type of throws he would make, coordinating with Clase at times during games, prosecutors said.”Clase often threw these rigged pitches on the first pitch of an at-bat,” a statement from prosecutors said. “To ensure certain pitches were called as balls, Clase threw many of them in the dirt, well outside the strike zone.”Clase received kickbacks from the bettors for the information and sometimes provided money to finance the scheme, according to charges.Among the rigged pitches was one in New York in a game against the host Mets.Prosecutors claimed Clase caused his co-conspirator bettors to win at least $400,000 in fraudulent wagers.- June pitches eyed -This past June, charges claim, Ortiz joined the conspiracy, agreeing in advance to throw balls rather than strikes on certain pitches in two games in exchange for bribes and kickbacks.Before a game on June 15, Ortiz allegedly agreed to throw a ball on a particular pitch in exchange for a $5,000 bribe with Clase getting a $5,000 bribe for arranging the rigged pitch.Ortiz allegedly agreed to throw another rigged pitch on June 27 in exchange for a $7,000 bribe for himself and another for Clase.Clase allegedly withdrew $50,000 in cash and provided $15,000 to a co-conspirator to wage on Ortiz’s rigged pitch during the June 27 contest, with Ortiz producing at least $60,000 in winning wagers for the co-conspirators.Each defendant faces a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison on wire fraud conspiracy, 20 years for honest services wire fraud conspiracy, five years on conspiracy to influence sporting contests by bribery and 20 years on the money laundering conspiracy charge.

“Predator: Badlands,” the latest installment in the sci-fi horror franchise that started nearly 40 years ago, devoured the competition at the North American box office, debuting at $40 million, industry estimates showed Sunday.The 20th Century Studios film stars Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi as an outcast Predator who is the hero this time, teaming up with an android (Elle Fanning) on an epic journey to prove himself.It is the ninth entry in the popular franchise launched in 1987 with Arnold Schwarzenegger as its star.In second place was Paramount’s “Regretting You,” the latest film adaptation of a Colleen Hoover novel, at $7.1 million for the Friday to Sunday period, Exhibitor Relations reported.Directed by Josh Boone, the romantic drama tells the story of a mother (Allison Williams) and teenage daughter (McKenna Grace) navigating life and love after tragedy strikes.Universal’s horror sequel “Black Phone 2,” once again starring Ethan Hawke as a devilish villain, came in third with $5.3 million in ticket sales in the United States and Canada.Debuting in fourth place was “Sarah’s Oil,” MGM’s faith-based drama drawn from history about a young Black girl in early 20th century Oklahoma who inherits land she believes is oil-rich. It earned $4.5 million.And in fifth place at $4.1 million was another new film, Sony’s “Nuremberg,” which retells the story of the postwar Nazi trials with a focus on Hitler’s right-hand man, Hermann Goering.Russell Crowe’s portrayal of the Luftwaffe commander is earning Oscars buzz.Rounding out the top 10 were:”Chainsaw Man – The Movie: Reze Arc” ($3.6 million)”Bugonia” ($3.5 million)”Die My Love” ($2.8 million)”Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere” ($2.2 million)”Tron: Ares” ($1.8 million)

Syria’s President Ahmed al-Sharaa arrived in the United States on Saturday for a landmark official visit, his country’s state news agency reported, a day after Washington removed him from a terrorism blacklist.Sharaa, whose rebel forces ousted longtime ruler Bashar al-Assad late last year, is due to meet US President Donald Trump at the White House on Monday.It’s the first such visit by a Syrian president since the country’s independence in 1946, according to analysts.The interim leader met Trump for the first time in Riyadh during the US president’s regional tour in May.Washington’s envoy to Syria, Tom Barrack, said earlier this month that Sharaa would “hopefully” sign an agreement to join the international US-led alliance against the Islamic State (IS) group.The United States plans to establish a military base near Damascus “to coordinate humanitarian aid and observe developments between Syria and Israel,” a diplomatic source in Syria told AFP.The State Department’s decision Friday to remove Sharaa from the blacklist was widely expected.State Department spokesman Tommy Pigott said Sharaa’s government had been meeting US demands including on working to find missing Americans and on eliminating any remaining chemical weapons.”These actions are being taken in recognition of the progress demonstrated by the Syrian leadership after the departure of Bashar al-Assad and more than 50 years of repression under the Assad regime,” Pigott said.The spokesman added that the US delisting would promote “regional security and stability as well as an inclusive, Syrian-led and Syrian-owned political process.” The Syrian interior ministry announced on Saturday that it had carried out 61 raids and made 71 arrests in a “proactive campaign to neutralise the threat” of IS, according to the official SANA news agency.It said the raids targeted locations where IS sleeper cells remain, including Aleppo, Idlib, Hama, Homs, Deir ez-Zor, Raqqa and Damascus.After his arrival, Sharaa met with representatives from Syrian organizations in Washington, according to his country’s official media.The Syrian foreign minister posted a social media video, filmed before Sharaa’s departure, of him playing basketball with CENTCOM commander Brad Cooper and Kevin Lambert, the head of the international anti-IS operation in Iraq, alongside the caption “work hard, play harder.”- Transformation -Sharaa’s Washington trip comes after his landmark visit to the United Nations in September — his first time on US soil — where the ex-jihadist became the first Syrian president in decades to address the UN General Assembly in New York.On Thursday, Washington led a vote by the Security Council to remove UN sanctions against him.Formerly affiliated with Al-Qaeda, Sharaa’s group, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), was delisted as a terrorist group by Washington as recently as July.Since taking power, Syria’s new leaders have sought to break from their violent past and present a moderate image more tolerable to ordinary Syrians and foreign powers.The White House visit “is further testament to the US commitment to the new Syria and a hugely symbolic moment for the country’s new leader, who thus marks another step in his astonishing transformation from militant leader to global statesman,” International Crisis Group US program director Michael Hanna said.Sharaa is expected to seek funds for Syria, which faces significant challenges in rebuilding after 13 years of civil war.In October, the World Bank put a “conservative best estimate” of the cost of rebuilding Syria at $216 billion.