AFP USA

Driving up to the Rocky Mountains for the Sundance premiere of her new movie would be a joyful experience for Meera Menon — if she weren’t leaving behind the scorched rubble of her Los Angeles home, where much of it was filmed.In a cruel example of life imitating art, Menon’s indie zombie apocalypse flick “Didn’t Die” is all about how survivors of loss and disaster find the strength to cope through community, good humor and sheer resilience.It has taken on brutal new context and meaning thanks to the Los Angeles wildfires, which have killed more than two dozen people and destroyed thousands of homes — including her own.The film’s producer and editor, who lived near to Menon and her co-writer husband, also lost their house, just days after sending the final cut to Sundance.”The four of us really lost everything. But we’re still here,” said Menon.”We loved it so much. I mean, it can’t be overstated — Altadena was our dream, our home was our dream home,” she added, in a tearful voice.The first part of the film — in which survivors podcast to an ever-dwindling human population — was shot in New York state.But Menon and husband Paul Gleason filmed several key scenes a year later in their Californian living room.These include a brutal zombie attack — and several sweet moments of a couple and their baby living there in earlier, happier times.”There’s snippets in the film that capture that home that is no longer. And the most poignant are these flashbacks with the family,” said Menon, whose own three-year-old daughter appears in “Didn’t Die” as an infant.It means the film itself has become a memento of sorts — evidence of the beloved place where their daughter grew up.”That community and the neighborhood… so beautiful right by the mountains,” said Menon.”Having the film capture this place for us, at that time, is grounding in some way. Because it just reminds us that it wasn’t a dream.”- ‘Daunting’ -Menon fell in love with the zombie genre after directing an episode of hit TV show “Fear The Walking Dead.”It felt like the perfect metaphor for a film about rebuilding a world hit by disaster after disaster.The real-life catastrophes Menon had in mind when writing “Didn’t Die” with Gleason were the pandemic and strikes that have recently upended their industry. Now, in the wake of the still-burning fires, some in the industry have called for Hollywood’s glitzy award season to be toned down or even scrapped.There was even speculation that Sundance might be cancelled, though festival bosses decided to press ahead after speaking with filmmakers like Menon.”I don’t know what the right thing to do is,” admitted Menon, whose premiere is set to go ahead on Tuesday night.”For me, it’s just very helpful to move forward and have work in the world, and still be enjoying some aspect of our filmmaking life, despite all of this.”Organizers of the Oscars, less than two months away, have promised to pay tribute to the bravery of firefighters and the resilience of Los Angeles at their ceremony in March.While appreciating the gesture, Menon said the “daunting” prospect of rebuilding their lives will take many years, wherever they end up relocating.”I don’t want people to move on from this too quickly either. We have such short attention spans in this world,” she said.”I hope people still do carry this in their hearts throughout this whole season.”

US President Donald Trump ordered the declassification Thursday of the last secret files on the assassination of president John F. Kennedy, a case that still fuels conspiracy theories more than 60 years after his death.Trump signed an executive order that will also release documents on the 1960s assassinations of JFK’s younger brother Robert F. Kennedy and civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr.”That’s big one, huh? A lot of people have been waiting for this for years, for decades,” Trump told reporters as he signed the order in the Oval Office of the White House. “Everything will be revealed.”After signing the order, Trump passed the pen he used to an aide, saying “Give that to RFK Jr.,” JFK’s nephew and the current president’s nominee to become secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services.The order Trump signed requires the “full and complete release” of the JFK files, without redactions that he accepted back in 2017 when releasing most of the documents.”It is in the national interest to finally release all records related to these assassinations without delay,” the order said.Trump had previously promised to release the last of the files, most recently at his inauguration on Monday.- ‘Overwhelming evidence’ -The US National Archives has released tens of thousands of records in recent years related to the November 22, 1963 assassination of president Kennedy but held thousands back, citing national security concerns.It said at the time of the latest large-scale release, in December 2022, that 97 percent of the Kennedy records — which total five million pages — had now been made public.The Warren Commission that investigated the shooting of the charismatic 46-year-old president determined that it was carried out by a former Marine sharpshooter, Lee Harvey Oswald, acting alone.But that formal conclusion has done little to quell speculation that a more sinister plot was behind Kennedy’s murder in Dallas, Texas, and the slow release of the government files has added fuel to various conspiracy theories.Trump’s move is partly a gesture to one of the most prominent backers of those conspiracies — Robert F. Kennedy Jr. himself.RFK Jr. said in 2023 there was “overwhelming evidence the CIA was involved” in his uncle JFK’s murder and “very convincing” evidence the agency was also behind the 1968 assassination of his own father, Robert F. Kennedy. The former attorney general was killed while campaigning for the Democratic nomination for president. Sirhan Sirhan, a Palestinian-born Jordanian, was convicted of his murder.Anti-vaccine activist RFK Jr. was rewarded with the health nod in Trump’s cabinet for dropping his independent presidential bid and backing the Republican, but he faces a rocky nomination process.- Conspiracy theories -Thousands of Kennedy assassination-related documents from the National Archives were released during Trump’s first term in office, but he also held some back on national security grounds.Then-president Joe Biden said at the time of the December 2022 documents release that a “limited” number of files would continue to be held back at the request of unspecified “agencies.”Previous requests to withhold documents have come from the CIA and FBI.Kennedy scholars have said the documents still held by the archives are unlikely to contain any bombshell revelations or put to rest the rampant conspiracy theories about the assassination of the 35th US president.Oswald, who had at one point defected to the Soviet Union, was shot to death two days after killing Kennedy by a nightclub owner, Jack Ruby, as he was being transferred from the city jail.Hundreds of books and movies such as the 1991 Oliver Stone film “JFK” have fueled the conspiracy industry, pointing the finger at Cold War rivals Russia or Cuba, the Mafia and even Kennedy’s vice president, Lyndon Johnson.Martin Luther King Jr was assassinated in April 1968 in Memphis, Tennessee.James Earl Ray was convicted of the murder and died in prison in 1998 but King’s children have expressed doubts in the past that Ray was the assassin.

Legislation to reduce the impact of increasingly devastating forest fires on US federal land passed the House of Representatives on Thursday as firefighters battled to tame the latest in a series of blazes threatening southern California.One of the first bills to pass the lower chamber of Congress in Donald Trump’s presidency, the Fix Our Forests Act would increase the pace and scale of forest management projects by speeding up environmental reviews, deterring frivolous lawsuits.It was reintroduced after passing the House of Representatives last September with overwhelming bipartisan support but did not make it through the Senate, and will need to compete for floor space in the upper chamber before it can be signed into law.It passed the House comfortably in a 279-141 vote but environmental groups said the bill had been “misleadingly” named and would open public lands to massive logging projects under the guise of preventing wildfires. “This is nothing more than a bill of goods that will do little of anything to combat fires and instead plays favorites with the timber industry which is hungry to consume more of our forests — removing large fire-resilient trees and devastating the lands and species which call them home,” said Robert Dewey, vice president of government relations at Defenders of Wildlife.The group said the bill would remove science from land management decisions and weaken protections for endangered species. The vote came with the greater Los Angeles area on edge after two enormous fires tore through America’s second largest metropolis, killing more than two dozen people and wreaking billions of dollars of devastation.Firefighters on Thursday were trying to tame a new blaze in Castaic, 35 miles (56 kilometers) north of Los Angeles, that forced 31,000 people to flee their homes.Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson blasted Democratic leaders in Los Angeles and California for having “mismanaged virtually every aspect” of the wildfires, leaving a reservoir empty and allowing forest debris to pile up near homes.”They assumed the risk because they advanced their radical political agenda, and now people are paying a heavy price for that,” he told reporters.”We think that needs to be taken into account going forward, but the bipartisan Fix our Forest Act will do what the governor of California would not do, and that is restore the health of our forests and make communities more resilient to wildfires.”

The US Senate on Thursday confirmed John Ratcliffe with overwhelming bipartisan support as director of the CIA, filling a key post in President Donald Trump’s national security team.The upper house of the US legislature voted 74-25 to approve Ratcliffe, who served as the director of national intelligence from 2020-2021 during Trump’s first term in office.Ratcliffe said during his confirmation hearing last week that under his leadership, the agency would “produce insightful, objective, all-source analysis, never allowing political or personal biases to cloud our judgment or infect our products.”He also zeroed in on Beijing, saying the CIA needs to “continue and increase in intensity the focus on the threats posed by China and its ruling Chinese Communist Party.”And he emphasized the importance of having the agency focus on technology as a target, saying that understanding adversaries’ capabilities on that front “is more important than ever.”Ratcliffe, a former federal prosecutor, was a US representative for Texas from 2015-2020 — a period in which he helped defend Trump during the first impeachment proceedings against him.Trump then appointed Ratcliffe to serve as the director of national intelligence, leading the US intelligence community and serving as the president’s main advisor on that topic.

Several US states have reached a $7.4 billion settlement with the Sackler family and their pharmaceutical company Purdue over the opioid crisis that has ravaged the lives of millions of Americans, officials said Thursday.The opioid crisis, which has caused more than 500,000 deaths over 20 years in the United States, has triggered a flurry of lawsuits against drugmakers, distributors and pharmacies from victims and the authorities.Thursday’s settlement, which will see funds routed to communities and individuals affected by opioids, is the largest of several targeting the makers and sellers of the highly addictive drugs.The $7.4 billion settlement was agreed “in principle with members of the Sackler family and their company Purdue Pharma for their instrumental role in creating the opioid crisis,” New York Attorney General Letitia James’s office said in a statement.”The settlement ends the Sacklers’s control of Purdue and ability to sell opioids in the United States and will deliver funding directly to communities across the country over the next 15 years to support opioid addiction treatment, prevention, and recovery programs. “The $7.4 billion settlement in principle (is) the nation’s largest.”Purdue and other opioid makers and distributors were accused of encouraging free-wheeling prescription of their products through aggressive marketing tactics while hiding how addictive the drugs are.- Litigation avalanche -Facing an avalanche of litigation, in 2021 Purdue pled guilty to three criminal charges over its marketing of OxyContin.The Sacklers have consistently denied wrongdoing over the opioid crisis.The settlement featured some 15 states including New York, Florida and Pennsylvania.”The Sackler family relentlessly pursued profit at the expense of vulnerable patients, and played a critical role in starting and fueling the opioid epidemic,” James said in a statement. “While no amount of money will ever fully repair the damage they caused, this massive influx of funds will bring resources to communities in need so that we can heal.”The settlement includes the eight heirs of the original Purdue founders Raymond and Mortimer Sackler who served on the company board — Richard, Kathe, Mortimer Jr, Ilene, David, and Theresa Sackler.For many people, opioid addiction begins with prescribed pain pills, before they increase their consumption and eventually turn to illicit drugs such as heroin and fentanyl, an extremely powerful synthetic opioid.Opioid victims and their families addressed the Sackler family, owners of Purdue Pharma, the maker of OxyContin, directly in a US courtroom in March 2022 as part of the company’s bankruptcy case. “We buried Matthew and Kyle because of your family’s vicious acts of disregard for human life,” Liz Fitzgerald said of the deaths of two of her sons, who died at ages 32 and 25 after years of dealing with opioid addictions.”Two boys are gone because of your ‘safe’ medication,” Fitzgerald said.

Is there anybody out there? Yes! says a Republican congressman: the aliens are right under the ocean.US congressional Representative Tim Burchett said in an interview Wednesday that an admiral — whom he did not identify — had told him of an alien craft moving at incredible speeds in the sea.”They tell me something’s moving at hundreds of miles an hour underwater… as large as a football field, underwater,” the Tennessee congressman told disgraced former Republican congressman Matt Gaetz, who now hosts a show on right-wing news outlet One America News.”This was a documented case and I have an admiral telling me this stuff.”Burchett, known for claims that the US government is hiding existence of UFOs and other alien activity, said anything is possible given “the vastness of God’s great universe.”However, he told Americans not to worry about the suspected extraterrestrials’ extraordinary advances.”I’m not worried about them harming me,” he said. “I mean, with that capabilities, they would have barbecued us a long time ago.”No evidence has been produced of intelligent life beyond Earth.However, Congress has taken an increasingly serious look at reports of mystery flying objects, treating the once widely mocked topic of UFOs — now often dubbed Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena — into a serious issue.In March 2024, the Pentagon released a report that it had no proof of UFOs, saying that many suspicious sightings turned out to be merely weather balloons, spy planes, satellites and other normal activity.The Pentagon rejected claims made at a congressional hearing in 2023 by a former Air Force intelligence officer that the US government had recovered a series of crashed alien craft and even non-human “biologics” over the decades.

Firefighters who battled through the night to tame a new blaze that erupted  near Los Angeles appeared to be making progress on Thursday, even as dangerous fire weather continued throughout Southern California.A massive response involving aircraft, bulldozers and 4,000 personnel had swung into action as flames raced across hillsides in Castaic, 35 miles (56 km) north of Los Angeles.Around 31,000 people were ordered to flee their homes, heaping misery on a region already reeling from the two deadly fires that ripped through America’s second biggest city this month.The newly emerged Hughes Fire continued to grow overnight, and by Thursday had consumed 10,000 acres (4,050 hectares), but its rate of growth had slowed considerably after an explosive first few hours.Firefighters said the blaze was 14 percent contained — an expression of how much of the perimeter they are confident is static.Bryan Lewis of the National Weather Service warned the strong winds that had fanned the flames would continue Thursday, gusting up to 50 miles (80 kilometers) an hour at times.But, he told AFP, there was good news in the forecast.”We’re expecting those winds to drop off…. Then by tomorrow, like late morning, afternoon, the wind should be a lot better.”However, super, super dry conditions persist, with mostly single digit relative humidities across most of the area,” he said describing conditions as “still dangerous.”- Rain -Some much-needed rain at the weekend looked set to bring real relief to a region that has seen no significant precipitation for eight months, with up to half an inch (one centimeter) forecast for much of Los Angeles.”It’s going to help in the near term. But, to really get us out of this fire season, we’re going to need at least a couple more inches,” Lewis said.Human activity, including the unrestricted burning of fossil fuels over decades, has warmed the planet and changed our weather patterns.That has left the wet periods wetter and the dry periods dryer, intensifying storms and making populations more vulnerable to disasters.Over the burn scars left by the horrific Palisades and Eaton Fire, which together consumed 40,000 acres (16,200 hectares) and killed more than two dozen people, officials were readying for possible mudslides and debris flows in the downpour.Workers in Los Angeles County have prepared sandbags, gravel and concrete barriers that can be deployed if the rain gets heavy.California Governor Gavin Newsom said he had prepositioned hundreds of personnel to try to head off problems caused by rain, including collapsing hillsides and poisonous chemicals being washed out of razed homes.”Without vegetation to anchor the soil, heavy rainfall can lead to sudden and fast-moving debris flows, which can destroy homes, block roads, and pose serious risks to life and property,” his office said.”The state also works closely with its partners to prevent toxic runoff from entering waterways by installing physical filtration barriers.”President Donald Trump, who continues to claim falsely that California could solve its water problems by simply turning a spigot, is expected in the region on Friday.Officials say he will meet firefighters and people who have been affected by the blazes.

US news network CNN will shed six percent of staff, some 200 people, the outlet said Thursday as it embarks on a major shakeup of staffing and programing amid a deluge of political news.The broadcaster, which said overall employee headcount could remain stable with new roles created, follows other outlets restructuring amid the return of Donald Trump to the White House on Monday.”Some of today’s announcements mean significant new job opportunities at CNN, but others will lead to the loss of some valued colleagues,” CNN chief executive Mark Thompson told staff in a memo.”Yes, there are job-losses — around 6 percent of the current CNN workforce will be impacted — but we don’t expect total headcount to fall much this year, if at all,” he added. “That’s because of the $70 million we’re investing in our digital plans and the many new jobs it will pay for.”It is unclear if the restructuring will follow the pattern of some other legacy media outlets where seasoned reporters and editors on higher salaries are cleared out to make way for younger, cheaper staff for digital projects.In November the storied Associated Press news agency said it would slash almost eight percent of jobs as the US-based wire battles client cancellations and economic headwinds.Last July CNN announced the elimination of around 100 posts, at the same time as the creation of a paid digital offering on its website to complement existing output.Thompson also announced on Thursday the future launch of a new paid streaming product, without giving details.CNN previously launched a streaming service in 2022, CNN+, but it was shut down with little fanfare after a month amid a complex multi-billion-dollar merger between legacy media titans WarnerMedia and Discovery.The channel, emblematic of declining cable TV viewership, has also suffered from stiff competition.Long overtaken by conservative favorite Fox News, which aired an exclusive interview with Trump on Wednesday, CNN has also been overtaken by MSNBC, which has positioned itself as a vanguard of opposition and criticism to Trump and his Republicans.

Several US states have reached a $7.4 billion settlement with the Sackler family and their pharmaceutical company Purdue over the opioid crisis that has ravaged the lives of millions of Americans, officials said Thursday.The opioid addiction epidemic has caused more than 500,000 overdose deaths in the United States over two decades.Thursday’s settlement, which will see funds routed to communities and individuals affected by opioid, is the largest of several targeting the makers and sellers of the highly addictive drugs.The $7.4 billion settlement was agreed “in principle with members of the Sackler family and their company Purdue Pharma for their instrumental role in creating the opioid crisis,” New York Attorney General Letitia James’s office said in a statement.Purdue and other opioid makers and distributors were accused of encouraging free-wheeling prescription of their products through aggressive marketing tactics while hiding how addictive the drugs are.Facing an avalanche of litigation, in 2021 Purdue pled guilty to three criminal charges over its marketing of OxyContin.The Sacklers have consistently denied wrongdoing over the opioid crisis.

Marco Rubio will pay his first trip as US secretary of state to Central American nations including Panama, where President Donald Trump has threatened to seize the Panama Canal, a spokeswoman said Thursday.Rubio, who is the first Hispanic and first fluent Spanish speaker to serve as the top US diplomat, has vowed to put a top priority on Trump’s goal of curbing migration from Central American nations.State Department spokeswoman Tammy Bruce said Rubio would travel starting late next week to Panama as well as Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala and the Dominican Republic.”It’s about making sure that if we’re going to be safe and prosperous and in good shape, we’ve got to have an interest in our neighbors — and in today’s world, it’s certainly South and Central America,” Bruce said.”There’s a reason why this is the first trip. It signals how seriously he takes it,” she said.Bruce did not describe the details of any expected conversations on the Panama Canal. Trump in his inaugural address Monday vowed that the United States would be “taking it back.”Rubio in his confirmation hearing did not suggest military force but said the United States needed to address serious concerns about Chinese influence near the vital waterway between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.Panama, which has long been friendly to the United States, complained to the United Nations over Trump’s threat.President Jose Raul Mulino, during a panel at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, said that the canal “belongs to Panama and will continue to belong to Panama.”- Enforcement against migration -Trump — who during his campaign said that immigrants were “poisoning the blood of our country” — has put a top priority on halting undocumented migration into the United States.The Central American nations of El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras — torn by endemic violence, poverty and natural disasters exacerbated by climate change — have been among the top sources of migration.Trump’s predecessor Joe Biden vowed to look at the root causes of migration. Trump has quickly put an emphasis on enforcement, suspending a Biden program that gives asylum seekers a chance to make their case in an orderly way and threatening to use the military to help secure the US-Mexico border.El Salvador’s president, Nayib Bukele, has been a favorite of Trump supporters for his lethal and ruthless crackdown on crime. The president’s son Donald Trump Jr. attended Bukele’s second inauguration last year.The Biden administration had a more distant relationship with Bukele, amid concerns over human rights, although it also largely worked with him as it sought to address migration.Rubio’s decision to visit Guatemala likely marks a continuation of US support for President Bernardo Arevalo, a once-obscure anti-corruption advocate who pulled off an upset election victory in 2023.The Biden administration hailed Arevalo’s victory and quickly moved to work with him as he pushed back against an entrenched elite that sought to stop him from taking office.Arevalo has enjoyed some bipartisan support in Washington but his opponents have sought an alliance with fringe movements that refused to recognize Biden’s 2020 victory over Trump.Rubio, the son of Cuban immigrants, on taking office said he would stop State Department work that seeks to “facilitate or encourage mass migration,” vowing to pursue Trump’s goal of enforcement.