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News Shows We Are Breeding Generations of Little Tyrants

Sam Bankman-Fried, the former CEO and founder of cryptocurrency exchange FTX, is on trial for criminal fraud and conspiracy. Bankman-Fried is accused of bilking investors out of billions of dollars when his company spectacularly collapsed. The trial is not going well for SBF. His former lover, Caroline Ellison, provided damning testimony against him. Ellison — who has already pleaded guilty to several counts of financial fraud — told the court that Bankman-Fried thought rules like “don’t lie” on balance sheets and “don’t steal” from customers didn’t apply to ...

House Approves $14.5B For Israel As Biden Vows Veto

WASHINGTON (AP) — The House approved $14.5 billion in military aid Thursday for Israel, a muscular U.S. response to the war with Hamas but also a partisan approach by new Speaker Mike Johnson that poses a direct challenge to Democrats and President Joe Biden. In a departure from norms, Johnson’s package required that the emergency aid be offset with cuts in government spending elsewhere. That tack established the new House GOP’s conservative leadership, but it also turned what would typically be a bipartisan vote into a divisive one. Biden has said he would veto the bill, which ...

Donald Trump Jr. Testifies In Trial

NEW YORK (AP) — Donald Trump Jr. testified Wednesday that he never worked on his father’s financial statements, the documents now at the heart of the civil fraud trial that threatens former President Donald Trump’s real estate empire. The ex-president’s eldest son is an executive vice president of the family’s Trump Organization and has been a trustee of a trust set up to hold its assets when his father was in the White House. At least one of the annual financial statements bore language saying the trustees “are responsible” for the document. But Donald Trump Jr. said ...

Foreign Nationals And Wounded Palestinians Allowed To Leave Gaza

RAFAH, Gaza Strip (AP) — Israeli ground troops have advanced to “the gates of Gaza City” in heavy fighting with militants, the military said Wednesday, as hundreds of foreign nationals and dozens of seriously injured Palestinians were allowed to leave Gaza after more than three weeks under siege. The first people to leave Gaza — other than four hostages released by Hamas and another rescued by Israeli forces — crossed into Egypt, escaping the territory’s growing misery as bombings drive hundreds of thousands from their homes, and food, water and fuel run low. The U.S. ...

DeNiro Lashes Out At Ex-Assistant Who Sued Him

NEW YORK (AP) — Actor Robert De Niro shouted “Shame on you!” as he testified Tuesday in a New York courtroom, directing the comments toward his former executive assistant and vice president who is seeking millions of dollars after accusing her former boss of being abusive. Graham Chase Robinson watched with her lawyers while De Niro’s anger built as attorney Andrew Macurdy pelted him with some tabloid-style accusations his client made about De Niro’s behavior toward Robinson as she served his needs, large and small, from 2008 until several months into 2019. Robinson, 41, ...

Sofia Coppola Is Turning Her Lens On An American Icon: Priscilla Presley

By LINDSEY BAHR AP Film Writer In her 25 years of making films, Sofia Coppola has always found the poetry behind the headlines, the banality in the glamour, the soul in the superficial. Her dreamy, lyrical portraits of girl culture and gilded cages have brought her to 18th century Versailles, 1970s suburban Michigan, the 1860s South, noughties Calabasas and modern-day Tokyo, West Hollywood and Manhattan. In Priscilla Presley’s 1985 memoir “Elvis and Me,” Coppola saw something that was glamourous and wild, something that would provide an opportunity for beautiful filmmaking ...