# Dutch police cleared out climate protesters blocking a highway over fossil fuel subsidies
By **ALEKSANDAR FURTULA**
September 9th 2023. 11:46 AM GMT-4

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**THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP)** - Several thousand climate activists blocked a Dutch highway on Saturday in anger at billions of euros in government subsidies for industries that use oil, coal and gas - before police dispersed them with water cannons.

A report earlier this week detailed 37.5 billion euros ($40.5 billion) in such subsidies in the Netherlands, notably related to the shipping industry, prompting calls for a quick halt to the practice.

The protesters - from Extinction Rebellion, Greenpeace and other organizations - broke through a police barrier Saturday morning and sat on a main road in The Hague heading to the temporary venue for the lower house of parliament.

They threatened to stay until the subsidies are lifted, and to come back every day if the police remove them.

"This is much larger than any one of us. This concerns the whole world," activist Yolanda de Jager said.

The activists brandished signs with sayings like "Fossil Fuel Subsidies are Not Cool," and warned that the extreme temperatures seen around the world this summer are a sign of the future, if fossil fuels aren't abandoned.

After several hours, police moved in and fired volleys from water cannons at the crowd, and picked up or dragged some protesters away, wheeling them away in special orange wagons.

Protesters on the front line held up their fists in resistance or put their heads down to protect themselves from the jets of water. Those farther back danced and jumped up and down under the spray, appearing to enjoy the shower on an unusually hot September day for the Netherlands

The roadblock is part of a series of protests led by Extinction Rebellion targeting the Dutch parliament.

The report published Monday said the Dutch government spends tens of billions per year in subsidies to industries that use fossil fuels. It was published by the The Centre for Research on Multinational Corporations, known as SOMO, the Dutch arm of Friends of the Earth and Oil Change International.

The country is often seen as a leader in renewable energy and progressive climate policies, and Minister for Climate and Energy Rob Jetten acknowledged that the country has to end the subsidies, but has offered no timeline.

The report calls on lawmakers to begin phasing out the subsidies before the country's Nov. 22 general election.

A new protest is planned for Sunday.


# Rescue begins of ailing US researcher stuck 3,000 feet inside a Turkish cave, Turkish officials say
September 9th, 2023. 3:26 PM GMT-4

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**TASELI PLATEAU, Turkey (AP)** - Rescue teams began the arduous process Saturday of extricating an American researcher who became seriously ill while he was 1,000 meters (3,000 feet) below the entrance of a cave in Turkey, officials said.

It could take days to bring Mark Dickey to the surface since rescuers anticipate he will have to stop and rest frequently at camps set up along the way as they pull his stretcher through the narrow passages.

"This afternoon, the operation to move him from his camp at 1040 meters to the camp at 700 meters began," Turkey's Disaster and Emergency Management Directorate, AFAD, told The Associated Press.

The 40-year-old experienced caver began vomiting on Sept. 2 because of stomach bleeding while on an expedition with a handful of others in the Morca cave in southern Turkey's Taurus Mountains.

Rescuers from across Europe rushed to the cave to help Dickey and to extract him, including one Hungarian doctor who treated him inside the cave on Sept. 3. Doctors gave Dickey IV fluids and 4 liters (1 gallon) of blood inside the cave, officials said. Teams comprised of a doctor and three or four others take turns staying with the American at all times.

There are 190 personnel from eight countries assisting in the rescue effort, including doctors, paramedics and experienced cavers, Mersin Gov. Ali Hamza Pehlivan told media on Saturday. He said 153 of them were search and rescue experts.

"We have received information that his condition is getting better, thanks to medical intervention. He has been in stable condition as of yesterday," he said.

Speaking with the AP before rescue operations began, Recep Salci, head of AFAD's search and rescue department, said the rescue will depend on Dickey's condition.

"If he feels well, we will assist him, and he will come out (of the cave) fast. But if his condition worsens, we will have to bring him up on a stretcher." He said bringing Dickey up in a stretcher could take up to 10 days.

Yusuf Ogrenecek of the Speleological Federation of Turkey says that one of the most difficult tasks of cave rescue operations is widening the narrow cave passages to allow stretcher lines to pass through at low depths.

"Stretcher lines are labor intensive and require experienced cave rescuers working long hours," Ogrenecek said, adding that other difficult factors range from navigating through mud and water at low temperatures to the psychological toll of staying inside a cave for long periods of time.

In Rome, Federico Catania, the spokesman for Italy's National Alpine and Speleological Rescue, described the cave as one of the deepest in the world.

"The cave is made up of many vertical shafts, so many sections that are extremely vertical with few horizontal sections where (the) rescuers are setting up temporary camps," he said.

Turkish authorities made a video message available that showed Dickey standing and moving around on Thursday. While alert and talking, he said he was not "healed on the inside" and needed a lot of help to get out of the cave. He thanked the caving community and the Turkish government for their efforts to rescue him.


# Moroccans sleep in the streets for 3rd night following an earthquake that took more than 2,100 lives
By **SAM METZ** and **MOSA'AB ELSHAMY**
September 10th, 2023. 6:08 PM GMT-4

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**AMIZMIZ, Morocco (AP)** - People in Morocco slept in the streets of Marrakech for a third straight night as soldiers and international aid teams in trucks and helicopters began to fan into remote mountain towns hit hardest by a historic earthquake.

The disaster killed more than 2,100 people - a number that is expected to rise - and the United Nations estimated that 300,000 people were affected by Friday night's magnitude 6.8 quake.

Amid offers from several countries, including the United States and France, Moroccan officials said Sunday that they are accepting international aid from just four countries: Spain, Qatar, Britain and the United Arab Emirates.

"The Moroccan authorities have carefully assessed the needs on the ground, bearing in mind that a lack of coordination in such cases would be counterproductive," the Interior Ministry said in a statement.

While some foreign search-and-rescue teams arrived on Sunday as an aftershock rattled Moroccans already in mourning and shock, other aid teams poised to deploy grew frustrated waiting for the government to officially request assistance.

"We know there is a great urgency to save people and dig under the remains of buildings," said Arnaud Fraisse, founder of Rescuers Without Borders, who had a team stuck in Paris waiting for the green light. "There are people dying under the rubble, and we cannot do anything to save them."

Help was slow to arrive in Amizmiz, where a whole chunk of the town of orange and red sandstone brick homes carved into a mountainside appeared to be missing. A mosque's minaret had collapsed.

"It's a catastrophe," said villager Salah Ancheu, 28. "We don't know what the future is. The aid remains insufficient."

Residents swept rubble off the main road into town and people cheered when trucks full of soldiers arrived. But they pleaded for more help.

"There aren't ambulances, there aren't police, at least for right now," Ancheu said, speaking about many parts of the region on Sunday morning.

Those left homeless - or fearing more aftershocks - slept outside Saturday, in the streets of the ancient city of Marrakech or under makeshift canopies in hard-hit Atlas Mountain towns like Moulay Brahim. Both there and in Amizmiz, residents worried most about the damage in hard-to-reach communities. The worst destruction was in rural communities that rely on unpaved roads that snake up the mountainous terrain covered by fallen rocks.

Those areas were shaken anew Sunday by a magnitude 3.9 aftershock, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. It wasn't immediately clear if it caused more damage or casualties, but it was likely strong enough to rattle nerves in areas where damage has left buildings unstable and residents feared aftershocks.

In a region where many build bricks out of mud, Friday's earthquake toppled buildings not strong enough to withstand such a mighty temblor, trapping people in the rubble and sending others fleeing in terror. A total of 2,122 people were confirmed dead and at least 2,421 others were injured - 1,404 of them critically, the Interior Ministry reported.

Most of the dead - 1,351 - were in the Al Haouz district in the High Atlas Mountains, the ministry said.

Flags were lowered across Morocco, as King Mohammed VI ordered three days of national mourning starting Sunday. The army mobilized search and rescue teams, and the king ordered water, food rations and shelters to be sent to those who lost homes.

He also called for mosques to hold prayers Sunday for the victims, many of whom were buried Saturday amid the frenzy of rescue work nearby.

Though it said for the first time Sunday that it would accept aid from four countries, Morocco has not made an international appeal for help like Turkey did in the hours following a massive quake earlier this year, according to aid groups.

Aid offers poured in from around the world, and the U.N. said it had a team in Morocco coordinating international support. About 100 teams made up of a total of 3,500 rescuers are registered with a U.N. platform and ready to deploy in Morocco when asked, Rescuers Without Borders said. Germany had a team of more than 50 rescuers waiting near Cologne-Bonn Airport but sent them home, news agency dpa reported.

A Spanish search-and-rescue team arrived in Marrakech and headed to the rural Talat N'Yaaqoub, according to Spain's Emergency Military Unit. Foreign Minister José Manuel Albares said in a radio interview that Moroccan authorities asked for help. Another rescue team from Nice, France, also was on its way.

Officials in the Czech Republic earlier said the country was sending about 70 members of a rescue team trained in searching through rubble after receiving an official request from the Moroccan government. Czech Defense Minister Jana Cernochova said three military planes were prepared to transport the team.

In France, which has many ties to Morocco and said four of its citizens died in the quake, towns and cities have offered more than 2 million euros ($2.1 million) in aid. Popular performers are collecting donations.

The epicenter of Friday's quake was near the town of Ighil in Al Haouz Province, about 70 kilometers (44 miles) south of Marrakech. The region is known for scenic villages and valleys tucked in the High Atlas Mountains.

Devastation gripped each town along the High Atlas' steep and winding switchbacks, with homes folding in on themselves and people crying as boys and helmet-clad police carried the dead through the streets.

"I was asleep when the earthquake struck. I could not escape because the roof fell on me. I was trapped. I was saved by my neighbors who cleared the rubble with their bare hands," said Fatna Bechar in Moulay Brahim. "Now, I am living with them in their house because mine was completely destroyed."

There was little time for mourning as survivors tried to salvage anything from damaged homes.

Khadija Fairouje's face was puffy from crying as she joined relatives and neighbors hauling possessions down rock-strewn streets. She had lost her daughter and three grandsons aged 4 to 11 when their home collapsed while they were sleeping less than 48 hours earlier.

"Nothing's left. Everything fell," said her sister, Hafida Fairouje.

The Mohammed V Foundation for Solidarity was coordinating help for about 15,000 families in Al Haouz province, including food, medical aid, emergency housing and blankets, the state news agency MAP quoted the organization's head, Youssef Rabouli, as saying after he visited the region.

Rescuers backed by soldiers and police searched collapsed homes in the remote town of Adassil, near the epicenter. Military vehicles brought in bulldozers and other equipment to clear roads, MAP reported. Ambulances took dozens of wounded from the village of Tikht, population 800, to Mohammed VI University Hospital in Marrakech.

In Marrakech, large chunks were missing from a crenelated roof, and warped metal, crumbled concrete and dust were all that remained of a building cordoned off by police.

Tourists and residents lined up to give blood.

"I did not even think about it twice," Jalila Guerina told The Associated Press, "especially in the conditions where people are dying, especially at this moment when they are needing help, any help." She cited her duty as a Moroccan citizen.

The quake had a preliminary magnitude of 6.8 when it hit at 11:11 p.m., lasting several seconds, the USGS said. A magnitude 4.9 aftershock hit 19 minutes later, it said. The collision of the African and Eurasian tectonic plates occurred at a relatively shallow depth, which makes a quake more dangerous.

It was the strongest earthquake to hit the North African country in over 120 years, according to USGS records dating to 1900, but it was not the deadliest. In 1960, a magnitude 5.8 temblor struck near the city of Agadir, killing at least 12,000. That quake prompted Morocco to change construction rules, but many buildings, especially rural homes, are not built to withstand such tremors.

In 2004, a magnitude 6.4 earthquake near the Mediterranean coastal city of Al Hoceima left more than 600 dead.


# A US Navy veteran got unexpected help while jailed in Iran. Once released, he repaid the favor
By **ERIC TUCKER**
September 10th, 2023. 4:20 PM GMT-4

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**WASHINGTON (AP)** - Michael White had only recently arrived in a grim Iranian jail when a curious fellow prisoner, an English-speaking Iranian, approached him in the courtyard for a conversation.

The American did not reveal much at first, but it was the beginning of an unlikely friendship between White, a Navy veteran imprisoned on spying charges he says were unfounded, and Mahdi Vatankhah, a young Iranian political activist whose positions on social issues had drawn his government's ire.

As the men connected behind bars over a shared interest in politics and human rights, they developed a bond that proved vital for both.

Vatankhah, while in custody and after his release, helped White by providing White's mother with crucial, firsthand accounts about her son's status in prison and by passing along letters White had written while he was locked up. Once freed, White did not forget. He pushed successfully for Vatankhah's admission to the United States, allowing the men to be reunited last spring inside a Los Angeles airport, something neither could have envisioned when they first met in prison years earlier.

"He risked his life to get the information out for me when I was in the prison in Iran. He really, really did," White said in an interview alongside Vatankhah. "I told him I would do everything I could in my power to get him here because I felt, one, that would be for his safety in his own life. And also I felt he could be a great contributing member of society here."

This year, White received permission for Vatankhah to live temporarily in the U.S. under a government program known as humanitarian parole, which allows people in for urgent humanitarian reasons or if there is a significant public benefit.

Vatankhah told AP he had dreamed about coming to the U.S. ever since he could remember. When he landed, "It was like the best moment of my life. My whole life changed."

White, 50, a Southern California native who spent 13 years in the Navy, was arrested in Iran in 2018 after traveling to the country to pursue a romantic relationship with a woman he met online. He was jailed on various charges, including espionage accusations that he calls bogus, as well as allegations of insulting Iran's supreme leader.

He endured what he says was torture and sexual abuse, an ordeal he documented in a handwritten diary that he secretly maintained behind bars, and was sentenced to 10 years in prison in what the U.S. government has said was a wrongful detention.

Vatankhah, now 24, said he had been in and out of prison since he was a teenager because of his involvement in left-leaning causes and vocal criticism of the Iranian government, including through protests, social media posts and university newspaper pieces. He met White in 2018 after one such arrest when Vatankhah faced accusations of spreading propaganda against Tehran's government.

Though Vatankhah was later released, he was arrested again, this time winding up in the same cell as White in Iran's Mashhad prison.

During the course of their friendship, Vatankhah helped White navigate his imprisonment and better understand the judicial system, functioning as an interpreter to help him communicate with guards and other inmates. In early 2020, while Vatankhah was out on furlough, he also became a vital conduit to the outside world for White.

Using contact information White had given him, Vatankhah got in touch with Jonathan Franks, a consultant in the U.S. for families of American hostages and detainees who was working on White's case and later helped spearhead the humanitarian parole process for Vatankhah. He also spoke with White's mother and smuggled out letters White had written.

The detailed information about White, his status and his health - he suffered from cancer and COVID-19 in prison - came at a crucial time, providing a proof-of-life of sorts at a time of heightened tensions between the U.S. and Iran due to a U.S. drone strike that killed Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani, who led the expeditionary Quds Force of the paramilitary Revolutionary Guard.

White was released in a June 2020 prisoner swap, exchanged for an American-Iranian physician imprisoned in the U.S. for violating American sanctions laws. Vatankhah, released the same year, made his way to Turkey.

White argued in his March application on Vatankhah's behalf that his friend met the criteria for humanitarian parole because, despite having relocated to Turkey, he was continuing to face harassment on account of his political viewpoints.

Vatankhah wrote in his own petition that the situation was unsafe for him in Turkey. He noted that Turkish police had raided his home and that he remained at risk of deportation to Iran.

Paris Etemadi Scott, a California lawyer who has worked with White and Vatankhah and filed the humanitarian parole application on the Iranian's behalf, said Vatankhah's assistance to an American - a veteran, no less - enhanced the legitimacy and urgency of his petition because it added to the potential that Vatankhah could face imminent harm.

While many applicants do not have significant supporting documentation, "Mahdi had this amazing amount of evidence to show that he was in fact incarcerated over and over again," she said.

A State Department spokesman said in a statement that the office of the department's special presidential envoy for hostage affairs had worked hard to secure White's release in 2020, and after learning of Vatankhah's case, "worked hand-in-hand with multiple partners in the U.S. government," including the White House National Security Council and Department of Homeland Security, to ensure his arrival in the U.S.

Vatankhah is now living in San Diego, where White is from. Vatankhah said his humanitarian parole is good for one year, but he already has applied for asylum, which would allow him to remain in the U.S. He's obtained a work permit and found work as a caregiver.

He's also enjoying freedom to share his political views freely without fear of retribution.

"I like to express my ideas here where I can. I can continue to use my freedom to talk against the Iranian regime."


# Hawaii volcano Kilauea erupts after nearly two months of quiet
September 11th, 2023. 1:56 AM GMT-4

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**HONOLULU (AP)** - Kilauea, one of the most active volcanoes in the world, began erupting Sunday after a two-month pause, displaying glowing lava that is a safe distance from people and structures in a national park on the Big Island.

The Hawaii Volcano Observatory said the eruption was observed in the afternoon at the summit of Kilauea.

The observatory said gases released by the eruption will cause volcanic smog downwind of Kilauea. People living near the park should try to avoid volcanic particles spewed into the air by the eruption, the observatory said.

The volcano's alert level was raised to warning status and the aviation color code went to red as scientists evaluate the eruption and associated hazards.

In June, Kilauea erupted for several weeks, displaying fountains of red lava without threatening any communities or structures. Crowds of people flocked to the Big Island's Hawaii Volcanoes National Park, which offered safe views of the lava.

Kilauea, Hawaii's second-largest volcano, erupted from September 2021 until last December. A 2018 Kilauea eruption destroyed more than 700 homes.


# Djokovic celebrates No. 24 with a tribute to Kobe Bryant, who wore that number and became a friend
By **BRIAN MAHONEY**
September 10th, 2023. 10:23 PM GMT-4

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**NEW YORK (AP)** - Novak Djokovic couldn't think about No. 24 without thinking of Kobe Bryant.

So after winning the U.S. Open on Sunday night for a historic 24th Grand Slam title, Djokovic put on a blue T-shirt that honored the Los Angeles Lakers great.

The shirt read "Mamba Forever" on the front, along with pictures of Bryant and Djokovic. On the back in purple was the No. 24, one of two numbers Bryant wore during his Hall of Fame career.

Djokovic said he came up with the idea about a week ago as a way to honor his friend. He said he received advice on his own career from Bryant, who died in 2020 in a helicopter crash that also killed his daughter, Gianna, and seven others.

"Kobe was a close friend, we chatted a lot about the winner's mentality when I was struggling with injury and trying to make my comeback, work my way back to the top of the game," Djokovic said. "He was one of the people that I relied on the most."

"He was always there for any kind of counsel, advice, any kind of support in the most friendly way," Djokovic continued. "So of course what happened a few years ago and him and his daughter passing hurt me deeply, and I thought 24 is the jersey he wore when he became a legend of the Lakers and world basketball, so I thought it could be a nice, symbolic thing to acknowledge him for all the things he's done."

Bryant's widow, Vanessa, congratulated Djokovic with an Instagram post, saying that "Real recognize Real" with the hashtag MambaMentality.


# Giants fall flat against Cowboys after entering the season with high expectations
By **TOM CANAVAN**
September 11th, 2023. 1:29 AM GMT-4

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**EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. (AP)** - After being one of the NFL's biggest surprises last season and making the playoffs for the first time since 2016 under new coach Brian Daboll, the New York Giants came into the season looking to take that next step.

They did in the season opener against the Dallas Cowboys, and it was a major step backward.

Despite drafting impact players at cornerback, center and wide receiver, trading for explosive tight end Darren Waller and signing several free agents to shore up the defense, Daboll and the Giants fell flat Sunday night while being embarrassed by the Cowboys 40-0.

"I think there is a little bit of anger, a little bit of embarrassment," defensive lineman Leonard Williams said. "I think we obviously didn't come out here and perform the way we wanted to. But at the same time, I think we prepared well this camp, we prepared well for this week. And I think what we put on display today is not us. The leaders in this room know that, and this team knows that.

"And I think we're going to make sure we don't let something like that happen again."

This was a game the Giants' offense looked great for most of the opening drive - and then it all went south at the Cowboys 8. Faced with third-and-short, there was a motion penalty, a bad snap and then the totally unexpected. A missed block on a 45-yard field goal attempt led to a blocked kick that Noah Igbinoghene picked up and returned 58 yards for a touchdown.

"It was a game shift as you started to see after that happened," Igbinoghene said. "I felt like we were going to do it anyway, but that was an amazing start."

Things only got worse for the Giants after that. After a field goal by the Cowboys, DaRon Bland scored on a 22-yard interception return later in the first quarter on a play set up when Trevon Diggs hit Saquon Barkley as he was attempting to catch a pass from Daniel Jones. The ball popped in the air and Bland grabbed it.

The Cowboys' defense took over after that and forced two more turnovers and sacked Daniel Jones seven times in Dallas' biggest shutout win ever.

"We got skunked in the National Football League against Dallas, and at home, but I don't think that takes away anything from what we did in training camp," said Barkley, who ran for 51 yards on 12 carries. "I feel like we had a good week of practice. We came out and we just didn't execute and play to the level we could play to."

Cowboys coach Mike McCarthy said the sacks were the key for his team after New York fell behind and had to throw.

"They were going to pound the ball and challenge our run defense over and over again and soften up the pass rush," McCarthy said. "The pass rush was relentless tonight. We gave up contain a couple of times early but after that, it was in total control of the game."

Waller, who was acquired in a trade with Las Vegas and is supposed to be a game breaker for the offense, finished with a team-high three catches for 36 yards.

"I tell the guys I've been on the losing end of games like this before, and it's (about) how you come in, is your head is high, and are you picking guys up?" he said. "Are you making sure you're not pointing the finger at other people, (but) knowing your part and taking personal accountability? That's how you move forward."

No one felt the pain more than Jones, who was also hit 12 times on a night he was 15 of 28 for 104 yards.

"We are certainly frustrated and extremely disappointed with how we performed tonight, and I know I certainly am with myself, so a lot to work on and clean up," he said in his first start after signing a four-year, $160 million contract. "We are going to be critical of ourselves and look to correct it and get back on the right page."


# UN atomic watchdog warns of threat to nuclear safety as fighting spikes near a plant in Ukraine
By **SAMYA KULLAB**
September 9th, 2023. 11:58 AM GMT-4

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**KYIV, Ukraine (AP)** - The United Nations atomic watchdog warned of a potential threat to nuclear safety from a spike in fighting near Europe's largest nuclear power plant in Ukraine, whose forces continued pressing their counteroffensive on Saturday.

The International Atomic Energy Agency said its experts deployed at the Russia-occupied Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant reported hearing numerous explosions over the past week, in a possible indication of increased military activity in the region. There was no damage to the plant.

"I remain deeply concerned about the possible dangers facing the plant at this time of heightened military tension in the region," IAEA Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi warned in a statement issued late Friday.

He noted that the IAEA team was informed that staff at the nuclear power plant had been reduced temporarily to minimum levels due to concerns of more military activity in the area.

"Whatever happens in a conflict zone, wherever it may be, everybody would stand to lose from a nuclear accident, and I urge that all necessary precautions must be taken to avoid it happening," Grossi said.

The IAEA has repeatedly expressed concern that the fighting could cause a potential radiation leak from the facility, which is one of the world's 10 biggest nuclear power stations. The plant's six reactors have been shut down for months, but it still needs power and qualified staff to operate crucial cooling systems and other safety features.

As Ukrainian forces pressed to expand their gains after recently capturing the village of Robotyne in the Zaporizhzhia region, the U.K. Defense Ministry noted in its latest report that Russia has brought in reinforcements to stymie the Ukrainian advances.

"It is highly likely that Russia has redeployed forces from other areas of the frontline to replace degraded units around Robotyne," it said. "These redeployments are likely limiting Russia's ability to carry out offensive operations of its own along other areas of the front line."

The Washington-based Institute for the Study of War noted that the Russian military has made notable changes to its command and control structure to "protect command infrastructure and improve information sharing."

Russian forces have continued their barrage across Ukraine. The regional authorities in the northeastern region of Sumy that borders Russia said that the latest Russian shelling left four people wounded, one of whom later died in a hospital.

The Kremlin reaffirmed Saturday that Russia will not extend a landmark deal allowing Ukraine to export grain safely through the Black Sea until the West fully meets Moscow's demands regarding its own agricultural exports.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov commented on reports that Western powers were allegedly discussing a deal that would allow the Russian Agricultural Bank to open a subsidiary that would be reconnected to the SWIFT payment system and meet other Russian demands. He said that Moscow expects the West to fulfill the original agreements to facilitate Russian agricultural exports that were reached in July 2022.

"For instance, they are now saying that the West is allegedly ready to promise to open SWIFT for a subsidiary of the Russian Agricultural Bank, but the thing is that the agreements envisage SWIFT access for the Russian Agricultural Bank, not its subsidiary," Peskov said in a conference call with reporters.

He added that "because they have already made a lot of promises, we considered ourselves entitled and obligated to wait first for the implementation before resuming the deal."

Russia refused to extend the deal in July, complaining that a parallel agreement promising to remove obstacles to Russian exports of food and fertilizer hadn't been honored. It said restrictions on shipping and insurance hampered its agricultural trade, though it has shipped record amounts of wheat since last year.

Ukraine and its Western allies have dismissed the Kremlin's demands as a ploy to advance its own interests.

On Saturday, Japanese Foreign Minister Yoshimasa Hayashi arrived to Ukraine for an official visit and prayed at a church in the Kyiv suburb of Bucha, where some of the worst atrocities of Russia's war occurred early during the invasion.

"I am grateful to Japan for remaining our key partner in Asia and supporting Ukraine," Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said.

Speaking after talks with his Ukrainian counterpart, Hayashi pledged that "Japan will go hand in hand with Ukraine until peace returns to its beautiful land."

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said that while Japan cannot provide Ukraine with lethal weapons, it has "already demonstrated that it can do many other important things to improve our security."

Japan has given Ukraine more than $7 billion in assistance since the start of the full-scale invasion. As part of its assistance, Tokyo provided two transformers to help Ukraine restore its energy systems after relentless Russian strikes, and donated 24 trucks to help Ukraine clear unexploded ordnance.


# Movie Review: In 'Big Fat Greek Wedding 3,' the wedding's in Greece and the formula feels ancient
By **JOCELYN NOVECK**
September 8th, 2023. 3:30 PM GMT-4

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"We're getting married!" This rather inevitable line crops up early in "My Big Fat Greek Wedding 3," and if you're like me, it will inspire mixed reactions.

First: Wait, so soon? We didn't know anyone was even engaged! And second: Phew, it's about time! Because, just like there can be no sunrise over the glittering Ionian sea without a sun, there can be no "big fat Greek wedding" movie without ... you know.

Yet the mere fact that a wedding is so crucial to the DNA of this trilogy - which surely will morph into a quadrilogy and then a quintology - raises its own issues. Which Greek philosopher was it who said there's no problem that can't be solved with a wedding? Right, that would be Nia Vardalos, the franchise star, writer and now director, too. But is she also saying a wedding is the only possible happy ending?

That would be out of sync with certain obvious efforts in this script - some more swallowable than others - to modernize a formula that worked so well in the beloved, hugely successful 2002 original. It's a formula that lost luster with that first, deflating sequel in 2016, a whole 14 years later. And if "My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2" felt like a pale imitation of the buoyant original, "My Big Fat Greek Wedding 3" feels sorta like a pale imitation of that pale imitation. Or, to analogize with a favored franchise food item: like a thrice-warmed piece of baklava.

Then again, even thrice-warmed baklava can be worth the calories. So too this sequel will prove worthwhile for those most eager to reconnect with characters they loved, and willing to overlook clunky pacing and dialogue and sometimes absurd plot machinations. On the plus side: Vardalos and crew are really, really good at staging weddings.

For those who need a refresher: The last film left us at an NYU dorm room, dropping off Paris, teen daughter of Toula (Vardalos, empathetic and appealing as usual) and her wholesomely hunky husband Aidan, oops, Ian (John Corbett, wink wink). Paris' choice to leave her hometown of Chicago for college provided much of the half-boiled suspense in the first sequel. She got her way, but perhaps also her punishment when the whole extended family - aunts, uncles, cousins - came to drop her off. Ugh!

Because it's hard to let go of things that worked so well in the original - did we mention it was a ginormous hit? - Vardalos hasn't, really. The Portokalos family is still loving, boisterous and invasive. We've sadly lost patriarch Gus ( Michael Constantine, who died in 2021). But wife Maria is still there (Lainie Kazan has only a cameo here) and Toula is still married to hunky Ian. Everyone still uses Windex to clean objects and cure diseases.

And the clan is on the move, led by spunky, oversharing Aunt Voula (Andrea Martin, still by far the the funniest onscreen presence), this time to ... Greece! Yes! The ostensible reason: a family reunion in their lovely ancestral mountain village (shooting was done in Corfu). The plan is to find Gus' childhood friends and fulfill his wish of giving them a precious journal he kept.

Why that journal shouldn't stay with Gus' adoring children is not truly explained - but neither is much else. Subplots are introduced and then largely ignored. A handful of new characters arrive with little backstory - like Victory (Melina Kotselou), the young, nonbinary mayor of the village - and even less character development.

The same lack of detail plagues the story arcs of returning characters. Toula's brother Nick (Louis Mandylor) - poor Nick - has been saddled with an ugly habit, namely trimming nose hairs and toenails at the family table. Why? Who knows? As for Ian, he's still a nice, patient husband, with little else to distinguish him. Toula's still the glue holding everyone together.

As for their marriage, it's fine. That's perhaps a problem. In most rom-com relationships, you don't get through three movies without some meaty conflict - we need the breakup to have the makeup! Vardalos doesn't want to go there.

Or maybe she's just in a rush to get to the altar. That, we can understand. Here in Greece, all roads lead to ... the wedding. The party's in the quaint village square. The candlelit table is gorgeous, the food sumptuous. And the dancing is a joyous mix of Greek and Syrian tradition - one of the spouses-to-be is a migrant from Syria, a nod to contemporary Greek politics. Other efforts to contemporize include the briefest of nods to Victory's nonbinary status - one line from Aunt Voula - just as the first sequel introduced a gay couple, equally briefly.

But how contemporary are we getting if nothing brings resolution but a wedding? And more importantly, who will be married in the inevitable "Greek Wedding 4?"

Will Paris (Elena Kampouris), whose own turbulent existence is quickly hinted at, marry the cute young Aristotle? (Yes, that's his name). Will there be a big fat Greek alternative wedding? Who knows, but if there's a movie, there will be a wedding. "My Big Fat Just-Cohabiting-For-Now" doesn't quite cut it.

"My Big Fat Greek Wedding 3," a Focus Films release, has been rated PG-13 by the Motion Picture Association "for suggestive material and some nudity." Running time: 91 minutes. Two stars out of four.


# Movie Review: Oh, sister, what happened? 'The Nun II' is a face-plant horror splat
By **MARK KENNEDY**
September 7th, 2023. 12:51 PM GMT-4

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"The Conjuring" Universe celebrates 10 years in business this fall with the dull "The Nun II," a movie that seems destined to pound a nail into this franchise's undead coffin.

A new directing and writing team fails to shock or scare with a color-by-numbers plot and a meandering, languid wannabe frightfest. A few audience members fired up their phones halfway through a recent preview, a bad sign for anyone hoping for a gripping experience.

A sequel to "The Nun" - the top-earning film in the franchise, with more than $366 million worldwide - was never going to be denied and the sequel hews carefully to the previous success. You could even say it's haunted by its better precedent.

This time it is 1956 - four years after the events of "The Nun" - and a demon is once again stalking Europe. It's the same horrific Valak we met last time and suspected didn't die, despite being splashed by the blood of Christ. "The demon lives," we are told.

Returning are Taissa Farmiga - younger sister of "The Conjuring" star Vera Farmiga - as wide-eyed Sister Irene, and Jonas Bloquet as Maurice, the French-Canadian hero dripping with charm. The filmmakers attempt to give us more backstory for Sister Irene - mostly flashbacks to her mom - but it doesn't add much.

New this time is Storm Reid as a skeptical novice who smokes and doesn't really buy the water-into-wine story. She is well introduced and seems a good foil to Sister Irene's devoted nun but is soon abandoned and never has her come-to-Jesus moment.

The screenplay by Ian Goldberg, Richard Naing and Akela Cooper sets most of the action in a boarding school in the South of France as Maurice tries to create a new life with a love interest but a terrible secret threatens his happiness. The characters are thin and there's lots of padding but the ancient towns the location department found are terrifically eerie and foreboding. The fatal mistake is that Sister Irene gets lost in her own film.

Director Michael Chaves, who also helmed "The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It," oversees a few great moments - a possessed newsstand with all the magazine pages frantically flipping is awesome - but it's mostly the same flashlights-and-heavy-footsteps stuff. Wait for the quick cut, jump, wait, repeat.

"The Nun II" apes the structure of its predecessor as our heroine needs to find a powerful relic to defeat the demon - and maybe Satan also, who appears as a goat but weirdly can be hindered by a strong wooden door. There's a Dan Brown-esque feel as Sister Irene searches for clues in ancient Vatican archives.

Is it mere coincidence that this year also marks a truly poor "Insidious" outing? Both these low-budget, Patrick Wilson-connected horror franchises need a good startling. Or CPR paddles.

"The Nun II," a Warner Bros. Pictures release, is rated R for "violent content and some terror." Running time: 110 minutes. One star out of four.


# Movie Review: Pinochet as a vampire in surreal, frightening 'El Conde'
By **LINDSEY BAHR**
September 6th, 2023. 4:03 PM GMT-4

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The Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet is not dead in Pablo Larraín's "El Conde." He is instead a 250-year-old vampire living in semi-exile and wishing for death in this audacious allegory about history's tendency to repeat itself, shot in sublime, otherworldly black and white.

It is fitting that the film, in theaters Friday and on Netflix Sept. 15, is being released around the 50-year anniversary of the Sept. 11, 1973 coup which brought Pinochet to power for almost 17 years. Pinochet's regime tortured, killed and disappeared 3,065 people in the name of fighting communism, but for some in Chile the legacy is now remembered as not all bad.

Evil ideas, Larraín cautions, have a tendency to live on, to mutate and to infect societies again and again even many years after they're supposedly dispelled and destroyed. Kind of like vampires living in stark, hellish exile as greedy heirs circulate to try to claim what's theirs and keep the money flowing.

Larraín, the 47-year-old filmmaker behind "Spencer," "Jackie" and "No," has always considered himself a political filmmaker and has already gestured at Pinochet in previous films. In "El Conde," which he co-wrote, he uses "the language of satire and political farce" to show the world the true nature of a dictator who "never faced true justice," he said in his director's statement.

Pinochet stepped down in 1990 after Chileans voted against military rule, only to assume the role of commander-in-chief of the army and, later, the self-created position of lifelong senator until he resigned in 2002. He died in 2006 without being convicted in Chilean courts. That he was not brought to justice is conceived in the film as placing the country in a kind of eternal limbo, doomed to continue suffering at the hands of the General and his disciples.

Jaime Vadell, who is a vibrant 87, plays Pinochet. He flies around Chile like an evil, aging superman, unsure if he wants to hunt or starve himself of blood and let his clock run out. He is world weary but also prideful; He gets especially aggravated when it's suggested that he's a thief (murder, he was essentially fine with). Alfredo Castro is his devoted butler, who also hungers for blood. And Gloria Münchmeyer is composed and sinister as his string-wielding wife Lucía, trapped with their mid-age, lazy, entitled offspring as a pretty, young accountant/nun (Paula Luchsinger) attempts to take stock of the general's assets but also exorcise him. Her character, who masks her shrewdness with a wide-eyed earnestness is styled and shot with nods to Renée Jeanne Falconetti in "The Passion of Joan of Arc."

"El Conde" is obviously not a history lesson, but information flies at you fast nonetheless. It could rival "His Girl Friday" in words per minute, which can be challenging to process in subtitles but this is where the Netflix of it all comes in handy - the dialogue is so sharp, you don't want to miss a word. There is also an English-speaking narrator (whose identity will be revealed eventually), giving it a whimsically macabre, storybook feel.

In this fantastical, allegorical nightmare, sense and logic should be the last thing on your mind - especially when engrossed in cinematographer Ed Lachman's ("Carol," "The Virgin Suicides") splendid photography. He apparently shot with a camera made especially for the film (an Arri Alexa Monochrome for anyone interested).

"El Conde" might stretch its gimmicky premise a little past its welcome, but it is an intoxicating, overwhelming and gruesome cinematic experience nonetheless, which would make a fitting double feature with last year's great historical legal thriller "Argentina 1985."

"El Conde," a Netflix release in theaters Friday and streaming on Sept. 15, is rated R by the Motion Picture Association for "some graphic nudity, gore, rape, language and sexual content, strong violence." Running time: 110 minutes. Three stars out of four.


# Movie Review: Denzel Washington's vigilante battles the Italian mafia in 'Equalizer 3'
By **JAKE COYLE**
August 30th, 2023. 3:07 PM GMT-4

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There's an awful lot of talk about the end of movie stars considering Denzel Washington is right over here, walking around.

Antoine Fuqua's "Equalizer 3," a taut and textured sequel to Washington's vigilante series, isn't one of the actor's best films. It wouldn't crack his top 10. But it vividly encapsulates Washington's formidable on-screen potency.

You might think this would be in the movie's brutal action sequences, but no. It's the scenes of Washington fastidiously having a cup of tea at a sidewalk cafe or strolling the streets of a Sicilian town. This is a movie stitched together less by its plot mechanics than the pleasure of watching Denzel smirk, scowl and smile, in leisurely scenes mixed in with all the murder.

In that way, the "Equalizer" movies (the third of which is certainly the best of a so-so bunch), remind me of those great Walter Matthau thrillers like "Charley Varrick" and "Hopscotch" - movies about old men with expressive eyebrows who are set in their ways but have plenty of tricks left up their sleeve. (Washington, now 68, also took over Matthau's role in the remake of "Pelham One Two Three.")

There's no shortage these days of older stars plying their special sets of skills in action thrillers. Throw a stone in a movie theater and you're likely to hit (and risk drawing the lethal ire of) Liam Neeson, Harrison Ford or Tom Cruise. "Equalizer 3," an all-in-all good entry in the genre, is on the bloodier end of the spectrum.

Yet curiously neither the fight sequences (rapid and grotesque) nor the film's sense of suspense (perfunctory) are much of a selling point. The film, scripted by Richard Wenk, opens with a trail of bodies through the main house of an Sicily vineyard. In the wine cellar calmly sits Robert McCall (Washington), who shrugs, "Wouldn't let me in, so..."

"The Equalizer" is loosely based on an 1980s TV series about a former intelligence service agent who spends his retirement bringing the scales of justice back in balance for regular folks he happens to encounter. And there's a pleasantly episodic quality to the third film in the series.

A bullet in the back leaves McCall laid up in recovery after he's taken in by a kindly village doctor named Enzo (Remo Girone). We're in Southern Italy. Most of the film was shot along the Amalfi coast, specifically the enchanting medieval fishing village of Atrani. If there's one truly implausible thing about "Equalizer 3," it's the fact that there isn't a tourist in sight. McCall, who once out of bed strolls the village's cobbled steps with a cane, seems to be the only American in town. He's quickly charmed by the people who warmly welcome the "Americano."

And the same time, the Camorra mafia is pushing harder into the village, with intentions of driving out locals to make room for hotels and casinos. They make a small army of designer-dressed, tattoo-covered thugs, and they descend on the village, unaware of the lurking elite vigilante quietly sipping tea across the street from their shakedowns or eating pasta at the next table.

The well-traveled Fuqua, who helmed both prior "Equalizer" movies and first directed Washington in "Training Day," is in his genre wheelhouse here. He trails McCall patiently and soaks up the local color, with a few touches of Christian imagery from the church above the town. There's a sinister, ominous sense of evil scourges - a heinous drug from Syria, sold by the mafia is funding terrorists cells - seeping into a society of "good people."

The clear dichotomy of good and bad is cozy, and so, too, is Washington's savage, untroubled dispatching of the mafia ring. There are CIA officials in the mix, too, including Dakota Fanning's desk clerk turned operative. But they are mostly following McCall's lead. He - Washington really - is in a league of his own, and "Equalizer 3," smartly, doesn't even try to suggest it's a close race. Not all are created equal, after all.

"Equalizer 3," a Sony Pictures release, is rated R by the Motion Picture Association for strong bloody violence and some language. Running time: 109 minutes. Three stars out of four.


# Movie Review: 'Bottoms' is a gonzo gay high-school comedy that comes out on top
By **JAKE COYLE**
August 23rd, 2023. 6:06 PM GMT-4

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The rites and rituals of the raunchy high-school comedy can be as prescribed as a class syllabus. But what makes Emma Seligman's "Bottoms" such an anarchic thrill is how much it couldn't care less.

Sure, come to "Bottoms" with your expectations of house parties and hijinks. But you'll be leaving with a field full of bloodied football players.

Seligman's film, which opens in theaters Friday, instead follows its own demented logic in a winding and surreal comedy of adolescent absurdity. The brash PJ ( Rachel Sennott ) and the more hesitant Josie ( Ayo Edebiri ) are longtime best friends who, in reaching senior year at Rock Ridge High, have either finally attained a much sought-after status ("We're finally hot," insists PJ) or bottomed out at the low end of the high-school totem pole.

"Could the ugly, untalented gays please report to the principal's office?" the principal (Wayne Pére) announces over the PA.

PJ and Josie, accepting that description, meekly make their way down the hall. But PJ plans to put up a fight. While Josie is more resigned to her lonely fate ("I'm not trying to sow my oats," she says), PJ is resolved to stir it up in her final year. They have no high-minded goals or even an especially coherent plan. "Bottoms" likewise aspires to be no paragon of lesbian representation or female empowerment. It would rather be sillier, more gleefully un-PC and way bloodier than your average high-school comedy.

PJ and Josie would most of all like to make more headway with their cheerleader crushes. Josie likes Isabel (Havana Rose Liu) and PJ swoons for Brittany ( Kaia Gerber ). Neither shows even the slightest interest in PJ or Josie; Isabel is dating the football quarterback Jeff ( Nicholas Galitzine ). In the history of high school comedies, football jocks have never been seen quite like this; they're outlandish, ridiculous people. They're also babies. When the girls' car ever so slightly taps Jeff on the knee, it's taken as a near-death experience, bringing down the principal's wrath and prompting rumors (stoked by PJ) that the girls are a violent duo who killed someone in "juvie."

This might have been a little running gag for most movies, but Seligman and Sennott's script takes it as a linchpin for the rest of movie. Playing off their bad reputation, PJ launches a self-defense group - a "fight club" - for girls, hoping that Brittany shows up, too. Of course, it would be implausible if such a student group didn't have a school-sanctioned advisor. Enter their divorcing social studies teacher Mr. G ( Marshawn Lynch ), who's in the midst of derisively giving a lesson on feminism. Yes, one of the few adults in "Bottoms" is the former NFL all-star running back known as "Beast Mode" - and he's hysterical.

This is the second movie by Seligman, whose 2020 "Shiva Baby" (also starring Sennott) was a clever and highly anxious debut about a bisexual Jewish woman attending a shiva with her family. Her follow-up is more antic and off-the-cuff but similarly allergic to falling back on the expected. "Bottoms" can feel slapdash and unmodulated. But it's always its own unhinged thing. There's one student here (Ruby Cruz, charming) planting pipe bombs. There isn't a line reading by Edebiri, currently everywhere, that doesn't have its own unique rhythm. And Sennott, a frizzy-haired ball of mayhem, is a comedy star in the making.

Not all the jokes land but they do fly. "Bottoms," a queer comedy with a chaotic beat, is here to break stuff - and that's a very good thing.

"Bottoms," an MGM release, is rated R by the Motion Picture Association for crude sexual content, pervasive language and some violence. Running time: 92 minutes. Three stars out of four.


# Movie Review: Filmmakers behind biopic 'Golda,' starring Helen Mirren, get lost in a swirl of smoke
By **MARK KENNEDY**
August 23rd, 2023. 4:08 PM GMT-4

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Golda Meir was many things - modern Israel's first and only female head of government and a wartime prime minister. And she now she's provided the vehicle for Helen Mirren to try to earn some more acting awards.

The great English actor dons prosthetics and an air of sourness in "Golda" to portray Meir facing two tragedies by fire - leading Israel's counterattack in the 1973 Arab-Israeli war while also undergoing cancer treatment.

The war's outcome laid the groundwork for a peace agreement, but Israel suffered heavy losses and Meir was criticized for the government's lack of preparation and slowness to act on intelligence indicating an attack was imminent. She resigned the following year.

Director Guy Nattiv and writer Nicholas Martin don't have much to say about Meir's childhood or early adulthood in "Golda." We find her very late in life, with terrible decisions to make as Israel is attacked on the holy day of Yom Kippur from two sides. This movie is mostly a snapshot of a few demanding weeks.

The filmmakers have seized on one recurring - and eventually irritating - image: smoke. Meir was a chain-smoker and that has given them license to have her lighting up at every turn; the crack of metal lighters and burning of paper seem to end every scene. There is even a half-hearted attempt to combine her cigarette smoke with artillery fire from the front lines, a dubious effort at best.

It's not clear why smoking is so important to the filmmakers. Perhaps it's to show Meir's stubbornness or single-mindedness or stress release - she even smokes on the hospital table while enduring treatment for lymphoma - but it just becomes a filmmaking crutch, like real nicotine.

Mirren - following in the sturdy, lace-up work shoes of previous Meir actors like Anne Bancroft, Judy Davis and Tovah Feldshuh - does an admirable job lurching from war meeting to war meeting and tossing off great lines like: "All political careers end in failure" and "I will not be taken alive." (Mirren has so far largely avoided the criticism that Bradley Cooper has faced for playing Leonard Bernstein, though they are both non-Jews using prosthetics.)

But the script gives Mirren little insight into what is going on inside Meir. We watch her diligently note each soldier and equipment loss in a little notebook and have panic attacks, yet what the war means to her is lost in prosthetics, the clicking of typewriters and wisps of smoke.

Another ham-fisted way the filmmakers try to instill empathy in their Meir is, bizarrely, through one of the stenographers whose son is fighting in the Suez Canal. While the men blithely natter on about troop movements and casualties, Meir will glance at the stenographer, sadly.

Liev Schreiber is very good as an amused Henry Kissinger - her few scenes with him give a welcome jolt to the movie - and Camille Cottin is very strong as Meir's patient aide, washing her back and administering soup and medicine.

"Golda" has seeds of interesting insights, like the suggestion that she was betrayed by some of the men she relied on during the war and yet protected them. Or how false intelligence is nothing new when it comes to Middle Eastern conflicts. Or how female leaders inevitably face catch-22s. But none of these is taken.

There is one moment that punctures Mirren's dour portrayal, and it comes at the very end. The credits feature footage of the real Golda Meir, smiling and laughing with Egyptian leader Anwar Sadat. Here, finally, is the complex, multidimensional woman Mirren had been chasing but failed to land.

"Golda," a Bleecker Street release that is in theaters Friday, is rated PG-13 for "thematic material and pervasive smoking." Running time: 100 minutes. Two stars out of four.


# Movie Review: 'Strays' is furry, foul, filthy, feculent - and occasionally funny
By **JOCELYN NOVECK**
August 17th, 2023. 6:52 PM GMT-4

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Hey there, fellow obsessive dog owner. Ever wonder what your beloved pooch is thinking? Of course you do. If they could only tell us what's on their minds, right?

Well, in "Strays," an aggressively raunchy, gleefully gross and only occasionally truly funny comedy voiced by Will Ferrell and Jamie Foxx, we find out. Turns out our canine friends are endlessly curious about why we collect their poop in little plastic bags. It must be for something really important, they surmise. But what? And why do we keep needing more?

It's actually one of the film's cleverer jokes, and Foxx's Boston terrier, Bug, has an opinion on the matter - but we won't elaborate because it's kinda gross. There's a lot of gross, both kinda and mega, over this film's 93-minute running time. Also a lot of poop jokes, and penis jokes, both canine and human. You get the picture. Although some of these pictures may stay in your mind for way longer than you'd like.

"Strays," directed by Josh Greenbaum with a script by Dan Perrault, begins with its star, Reggie, a border terrier with a furiously upbeat attitude, declaring that "today is the best day ever - because every day is the best day ever!" Hmmm, where else have we heard virtually that same line .... Oh yes, in "Barbie"! The resemblance pretty much stops there.

Reggie, voiced by Ferrell with relentless puppy-like innocence, loves his owner, Doug. But Doug doesn't love him back. Let's stop here to note that in this film, real dogs play the four leading canines - kudos to their hardworking trainers - and humans appear in supporting roles, including one celebrity cameo and also Will Forte as the most odious dog owner you've ever met.

Forte's Doug is particularly vile to Reggie, because it's Reggie who dug up (literally) incriminating evidence that Doug was two-timing his girlfriend, leading to her exit. Doug held onto her dog solely out of spite. He never plays with Reggie or takes him outside, except to play a profanely titled "game" in which Doug drives him somewhere and tosses a tennis ball, then drives away, hoping he won't return. But he always does.

But one day Doug takes Reggie far, far away and the poor pooch can't find his way back. In this gritty urban setting, he meets the strays - led by Bug (Foxx). Not exactly strays, but taking some time in the streets for various reasons, are sexy Australian Shepherd Maggie (Isla Fisher), and Hunter (Randall Park), a Great Dane with anxiety issues.

The group welcomes Reggie, who wants nothing more than to get home, and introduces him to the adventurous life of a stray. Rule number one: If you want to own something, pee on it. The other rules are too risqué to describe here.

Reggie's new friends soon make him understand that his owner actually abandoned him. It's a tough moment. "Maybe I should talk to him, since I'm a therapy dog," says Hunter. Suddenly, though, this makeshift family is on a mission. Reggie, newly aware of Doug's mendacity, is determined to get back home and, well, bite off Doug's favorite body part. This is an experience the rest of the pack refuses to miss. Us, we could maybe pass.

Anyway, the journey will include, among other things: Reggie and Bug getting dragged into the sky by a giant (computer-animated) eagle; the pack eating a forest worth of psychedelic mushrooms and mauling bunnies while high; and everyone falling prey to a dog-catcher. At the pound, it is Reggie who inspires the captive dogs to break free with the memorable slogan: "Let's all poop to freedom!"

What ensues is one of the grosser scenes you'll have witnessed in a while, but that's child's play compared to the harrowing (and somewhat tonally imbalanced) finale, a painful scene involving four dogs, one human, one baseball bat and one Miley Cyrus song ("Wrecking Ball") which you may now want to skip for a while.

The moral of the story, if you're a dog: Family is everything, but sometimes you find it where you least expect. Love your owner but not unconditionally, because he could be a terrible human.

Also: stay away from psychedelic mushrooms. And those plastic poop bags? Still a mystery.

"Strays," a Universal Studios release, has been rated R by the Motion Picture Association "for pervasive language, crude and sexual content, and drug use." Running time: 93 minutes. Two stars out of four.


# Movie Review: 'Blue Beetle' is a little more than a bug in the superhero system
By **JAKE COYLE**
August 17th, 2023. 11:19 AM GMT-4

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Franz Kafka never realized how close he came to kickstarting a superhero franchise.

Ever since Gregor Samsa awoke in his bed to find himself transformed into a monstrous dung beetle in "The Metamorphosis," we've had spider-men, wasps, ant-men, crime-fighting ticks and mighty mantises - such a super swarm of insectoids that you might be tempted to reach for a fly swatter.

We're now back to the beetle with the new DC Comics film "Blue Beetle," which opens in theaters Thursday. But what distinguishes "Blue Beetle" isn't its place in the bug brigade but the person doing the metamorphosizing.

Jaime Reyes (Xolo Maridueña) is the first Latino superhero in a leading role in a DC film. It's not just token casting, either. "Blue Beetle," directed by Ángel Manuel Soto and written by Gareth Dunnet-Alcocer, is firmly rooted in the experience of the Reyes clan, a close-knit Mexican-American family scraping by in the shadow of the gleaming Miami-like fictional metropolis of Palmera City.

Jaime is their first college graduate - "And last!" cheerfully chimes his sister, Milagro (the very funny, scene-stealing Belissa Escobedo). The parents, Alberto (Damián Alcázar) and Rocio (Elpidia Carrillo) are broke and on the cusp of losing their home to the encroaching, all-powerful Kord Industries. Also living with them are Jaime's grandmother (Adriana Barraza) and his truck-driving uncle (George Lopez, having a ball).

"We used to have the other side of the tracks," says Milagro. "Now they want that, too."

Despite big post-college ambitions, Jaime is stuck cleaning hotel rooms with his sister. Given what his family has sacrificed for him, he's saddled with guilt. So after a chance encounter with Jenny Kord (the Brazilian actress Bruna Marquezine), niece of the company's imperial chief executive Victoria (Susan Sarandon), Jaime jumps at the chance of a job opportunity.

He happens to turn up at Kord headquarters just as Jenny is fleeing with Victoria's prized discovery: a blue metallic scarab from outer space called the Khaji da that she's using to create an privatized robotic army. It's admittedly quite a jump from the real estate business, but, well, interest rates are sky high.

Before you know it, Jaime, tasked with hiding the beetle by Jenny, is looking down at the thing when it sinks itself onto his face and quickly seeps into his body. Gregor's initial response to changing into a beetle was simply to turn over ("How about if I sleep a little bit longer and forget all this nonsense"), but Jaime is afforded no such chance. He's immediately rocketed through the roof and into space.

In the broadly sketched but spirited "Blue Beetle," much of what follows is as you'd expect. There's getting used to the new outfit (and the sentient being that communicates Venom-style within Jaime). A recent past to uncover. The inevitable climactic battle between two hunks of CGI.

But "Blue Beetle," the final entry in a now defunct wave of DC films, distinguishes itself in other ways. Jaime's family is continually along for the ride, making up his supporting cast when the big fight comes. (The grandmother's younger days as a revolutionary emerge, comically.) Superheroes are ultimately empowerment fantasies, though they've often got away from that. "Blue Beetle" manages to come closer than most in evoking the thrill of the powerless suddenly handed cosmic strength.

Soto plays it fast and loose, mixing in a little lewdness ("Activate bug fart" is a new addition to the often solemn DC universe) and shades of neon blue and purple along the way. "Blue Beetle" doesn't have much originality going for itself and Maridueña doesn't make a significant impression. But the film crucially gets that superhero movies don't need to be self-serious to make a serious point.

"Blue Beetle," light, lively and sincere, is a tribute to the tenacity and indomitability of Mexican-American families that have clawed their way into an often inhospitable society. Family members, usually plot points of some animating trauma in superhero movies, are here a central part of the action. (Lopez gets countless cracks in, and most of them land.)

It's a time of self-inquiry for the superhero movie after hints of a new downward trend (despite some notable exceptions like the blistering "Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse," with its Afro-Latino protagonist ). "Blue Beetle," which had at one point been destined to go straight to streaming, falls in the middle of this new uncertain terrain. After a string of disappointments, future DC installments will take the comic book franchise in new directions. So it remains to be seen if "Blue Beetle" can be much more than a bug in the system amid larger industry shifts.

But I'd wager there will be plenty of moviegoers - especially young Hispanic ones not accustomed to seeing reflections of themselves in Hollywood comic book spectacles - who'll grin all the way through the breezy "Blue Beetle." If even a low-stakes, fairly derivative superhero movie like this can charm thanks to its warm Hispanic perspective and winning supporting cast, there's plenty of hope yet for the genre - bugs and all.

"Blue Beetle," a Warner Bros. release is rated PG-13 by the Motion Picture Association for sequences of action and violence, language, and some suggestive references. Running time: 127 minutes. Two and a half stars out of four.


# Movie Review: Gal Gadot turns superspy in 'Heart of Stone'
By **JAKE COYLE**
August 10th, 2023. 10:10 PM GMT-4

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It's turning out to be quite a summer for superspies and supercomputers.

A month after the action feast of "Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part I," in which Tom Cruise faced off with an AI supervillain called "the Entity," comes a very "MI"-like international espionage thriller with an equally fancy and powerful machine.

"Heart of Stone" stars Gal Gadot as Rachel Stone, an agent for an elite and clandestine intelligence agency called the Charter. Like "Mission: Impossible," "Heart of Stone" hits glamorous global destinations (the Italian Alps, Lisbon, Senegal, Iceland) and features lengthy actions sequence including a wingsuit skydive.

Whereas "Dead Reckoning" pushed old-school filmmaking to extremes for a gripping theatrical experience, "Heart of Stone" revels in its digital wizardry, feels vaguely algorithm-y in its conception and was made for Netflix. Both films, interestingly, are products of the same production company, Skydance.

"Mission: Impossible" was born out of the Cold War, but "Heart of Stone" conjures a peacekeeping spy unit outside of nationhood in the hopes of kickstarting a new franchise uncluttered by governments - a globetrotting spy movie without all those pesky geopolitics; a borderless intelligence agency for a borderless streaming era.

That may sound too harsh. After all, there have been countless lackluster espionage thrillers with little connection to the real world. ("Dead Reckoning," for all its thrills, has about as much to do with today's international politics as its star has to do with lengthy interviews with journalists.) And "Heart of Stone," directed by Tom Harper ("Wild Rose," "The Aeronauts"), does have a few nifty moves of its own.

The film's opening sequence begins in a very Bond-like Alpine hotel where Gadot's Stone is part of an MI6 mission posing as an inexperienced tech, not a field agent. This allows for plenty of "She can do that?" looks when the operation falls apart and Stone begins flashing Cruise-level skills while rushing off with a glowing parachute down the darkened slopes in slinky, snowy chase.

To the credit of Harper, cinematographer George Steel and production designer Charles Wood, the action is generally fluid in "Heart of Stone." The film's handsomest design comes in Charter's secret weapon: the Heart, the so-named quantum computer with supreme hacking abilities that can process chance-of-success scenarios in real time. Its operator (Matthias Schweighöfer), like a new-age John King, contorts a room full of pixels with the wave of his hand, while guiding Charter agents from afar.

Also in the mix is Jamie Dornan's Parker, the leader of the MI6 unit that Stone is initially masquerading in - though his affiliations are also murky. The trouble is kicked off by a hacker of mysterious intentions played by Alia Bhatt, a Bollywood star making her Hollywood debut. Glenn Close pops in as the head of the CIA.

I'm not sure any of them get a chance to do all that much, though Bhatt is charmingly mischievous in her scenes. Not for the first time, the actor I most wish was center stage is Sophie Okonedo, who, as a Charter leader, is the most soulful presence in a not particularly soulful film. Gadot makes for a slinky if unspectacular spy.

The plot, from screenwriters Greg Rucka and Allison Schroeder, revolves around the threat of the Heart falling into the wrong hands. This means that "Heart" is spoken of so much that you have expect the Wilson sisters to turn up eventually.

But there is nothing in the impressively generic "Heart of Stone," right down that title, that is even a little bit unexpected. All the pieces here are fine but nothing is distinct from dozens of films before it. You would swear that the movie's star AI wrote it - and even gave itself first billing, too.

"Heart of Stone," a Netflix release, is rated PG-13 by the Motion Picture Association for sequences of violence and action, and some language. Running time: 123 minutes. One and a half stars out of four.


# Movie Review: The movie version of a beach read arrives in Amazon's 'Red, White & Royal Blue'
By **LINDSEY BAHR**
August 10th, 2023. 12:02 PM GMT-4

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"Red, White & Royal Blue" is a harmlessly enjoyable fantasy rom-com. It's not Nora Ephron or Nancy Meyers, nor is it really trying to be. It's more in line, aesthetically, tonally, emotionally (in other words not really emotional at all), with one of those early aughts trifles where a normal American girl discovers she's actual royalty or a not-normal American girl (usually the president's kid) starts dating. This is "What a Girl Wants" meets "First Daughter" except this time the romantic partners are men.

The movie, directed by Matthew López, the Tony-winning playwright of "The Inheritance," who co-wrote the script with Ted Malawer, is based on a popular novel by Casey McQuiston that quickly became a New York Times bestseller upon its debut in 2019 and got the attention of Amazon Studios. McQuiston's story dealt a hate-turns-to-love story between the son of the American president (a woman) and a senator who begins a secret romantic affair with a British prince. Prince Henry is gay. Alex Claremont-Diaz isn't quite sure how he identifies. But both are certainly closeted. Other characters are trans and pansexual, though not solely defined by that. The president is a woman, married to a man of Latino heritage. The LA Review of Books described it as "propulsive" and "pulpy" and "fantastical."

López keeps "Red, White & Royal Blue" in a solidly fantastical space. You don't ever quite believe anything you're seeing - from Prince Henry's ability to go undercover at a Texas bar by simply putting on a baseball hat, to the horrendously fake snow adorning a pivotal New Year's Eve scene. And yet, like a beach read, it goes down easy and has enough surprising wit and edge that makes it a cut above a lot of mediocre rom-coms. Plus, this has Stephen Fry as the King, Uma Thurman as the U.S. president and an ethically dubious Politico reporter.

Taylor Zakhar Perez (of "The Kissing Booth") and Nicholas Galitzine (of "Cinderella") star as Alex and Henry, who met once years before in an unseen "Pride and Prejudice"-style misunderstanding that have our two strapping leads hating one another from the start. This is a bit overdone, but at a royal wedding Alex gets quite drunk and he and the prince end up bumping into the $75,000 wedding cake which comes crashing down on them. The incident becomes known as the Buttercream Summit and has both countries scrambling to prove that they are still friends with some forced photo opportunities and interviews with the quarrelling men.

Have you heard this one before? Of course you have and at almost two hours it starts to wear thin by the end. "Red, White & Royal Blue" tries to keep things modern and cool, with its best approximations of CW-style "West Wing"- meets-"Veep" White House and campaign staffers who say things like "you're yucking my yum." Sometimes they work.

There's no "Call Me By Your Name" or "Passages"-level passion here, but López and his actors do go well beyond what their prudish predecessors ever attempted, which is not nothing. We even get a cheeky cutaway to the Washington Monument.

And yet these characters also leave a lot to be desired. Alex, who we're told has a working-class chip on his shoulder, wears Le Labo's Santal 33 and throws an annual New Year's Eve party that looks like something Paris Hilton would have attended in Georgetown in the George W. Bush-era. And Prince Henry has a real, heartbreaking dilemma that is given the most minimal, palatable space possible. There were more opportunities that could have been explored, but "Red, White & Royal Blue" chose a more vanilla soft serve version. Prince Henry also gets points in Alex's book for being a David Bowie fan (which seems about as unique as being a "Star Wars" fan).

Credit goes to Amazon, López and Berlanti Productions (also behind the teen rom-com "Love, Simon") for releasing this with an R-rating (though I can't imagine a similar movie with a heterosexual couple getting that).

Ultimately, it's not earth shattering but it's also perfectly pleasant for what it is and what it knows it isn't. "Red, White & Royal Blue" is a beach read in movie form and one that can and should be watched with friends.

"Red, White & Royal Blue," an Amazon Studios release streaming Friday, is rated R by the Motion Picture Association for "language, some sexual content and partial nudity." Running time: 118 minutes. Two and a half stars out of four.


# Republicans' opposition to abortion threatens a global HIV program that has saved 25 million lives
By **EVELYNE MUSAMBI**, **FARNOUSH AMIRI**, **CARA ANNA**, and **ELLEN KNICKMEYER**
September 9th, 2023. 1:40 AM GMT-4

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**NAIROBI, Kenya (AP)** - The graves at the edge of the orphanage tell a story of despair. The rough planks in the cracked earth are painted with the names of children, most of them dead in the 1990s. That was before the HIV drugs arrived.

Today, the orphanage in Kenya's capital is a happier, more hopeful place for children with HIV. But a political fight taking place in the United States is threatening the program that helps to keep them and millions of others around the world alive.

The reason for the threat? Abortion.

The AIDS epidemic has killed more than 40 million people since the first recorded cases in 1981, tripling child mortality and carving decades off life expectancy in the hardest-hit areas of Africa, where the cost of treatment put it out of reach. Horrified, Republican U.S. President George W. Bush and Congress two decades ago created what is described as the largest commitment by any nation in history to combat a single disease.

The program known as the U.S. President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, or PEPFAR, partners with nonprofit groups to provide HIV/AIDS medication to millions around the world. It strengthens local and national health care systems, cares for children orphaned by AIDS, and provides job training for people at-risk.

Now a small number of Republican lawmakers are endangering the stability of the program, which officials say has saved 25 million lives in 55 countries from Ukraine to Brazil to Indonesia. That includes the lives of 5.5 million infants born HIV-free.

At the Nairobi orphanage, program manager Paul Mulongo has a message for Washington.

"Let them know that the lives of these children we are taking care of are purely in their hands," Mulongo says.

The issue of abortion has been a sensitive one since PEPFAR's inception in 2003. But each time the program came up for renewal in Congress, Republicans and Democrats were able to put aside partisan politics to support a program that's long been seen as the vanguard of global aid.

"Most eras in countries are measured by loss of life in war and famine and pandemic," said Tom Hart, president of the ONE Campaign, a nonpartisan organization that worked with Bush to create the program. "This era has been measured in lives saved." The campaign has published a letter from dozens of faith leaders to Congress calling PEPFAR "a story of medical miracles and mercy."

But lawmakers' bipartisan support is cracking as the program is set to expire at the end of September. The trouble began in the spring, when the Heritage Foundation, an influential conservative Washington think tank, accused the Biden administration of using PEPFAR "to promote its domestic radical social agenda overseas."

The group pointed to new State Department language that called for PEPFAR to partner with organizations that advocate for "institutional reforms in law and policy regarding sexual, reproductive and economic rights of women." Conservatives argued that's code for trying to integrate abortion with HIV/AIDS prevention, a claim the administration has denied.

In language echoing the early, harsh years of the epidemic, Heritage called HIV/AIDS a "lifestyle disease" that should be suppressed by "education, moral suasion and legal sanctions." It recommended halving U.S. funding for PEPFAR, saying poor countries should bear more of the costs.

Shortly after that, Republican Rep. Chris Smith, a longtime supporter of PEPFAR who wrote the bill reauthorizing it in 2018, said he would not move forward with reauthorization this time unless it bars NGOs who use any funding to provide or promote abortion services. His threat comes with weight as he chairs the House Foreign Affairs subcommittee with jurisdiction over the program's funding.

But since that proposal faces stiff opposition from Democrats in Congress, Smith, with support from prominent anti-abortion groups, wants to cut PEPFAR's usual five-year funding to one year if that ban is not included. He said that would allow lawmakers annually to revisit contracts with partners they believe may support or provide abortion services.

"It's a false narrative that says that you can't do (the program) year by year as we try to protect the unborn child," Smith told The Associated Press.

Supporters of the program say that under existing U.S. law, partners are already prohibited from using its funding for abortion services. The head of PEPFAR, John Nkengasong, told the AP he knew of no instance of the program's money going directly or indirectly to fund abortion services.

He warned that any instability in the flow of U.S. funding for PEPFAR could have dangerous implications for health globally, including in the United States. The key to controlling AIDS, he said, is the assurance that infected people have a pill to take each day.

Without that, the virus could come back, "and about 20 million lives might be lost in the coming years," he said. "The fragile gains that we've achieved will be lost."

In Africa, many PEPFAR partners and recipients in largely conservative countries don't support abortion either because of religious beliefs. But the idea that the program reliant on the steady supply of HIV drugs could be subject to political winds is a cause for alarm.

"If PEPFAR goes, who is going to meet that cost?" asked Josephine Kaleebi, who leads an organization in Uganda that helped the program's first-ever recipient of HIV treatment medication.

"We are proud to say that the first recipient is alive," Kaleebi said.

The group, Reach Out Mbuya Community Health Initiative, was founded by members of Uganda's Catholic Church, which is against abortion. In the reception area, portraits of priests line the walls.

But Reach Out helps anyone who walks in needing HIV drugs, Kaleebi said. About 6,000 people are served, many of them "the extremely most vulnerable" from one of the poorest areas of the capital, Kampala.

Mark Dybul, who helped create and lead PEPFAR under Bush, warned that weakening PEPFAR would also hurt the diplomatic goodwill the U.S. has created in developing regions.

"It's no secret that we are in a geopolitical struggle for influence in Africa with Russia and China," he said. "And our biggest influence in many ways, visible and most impactful, is PEPFAR." A spokesperson for former president Bush declined comment.

In neighboring Kenya, Bernard Mwololo believes he is alive because of the drugs that PEPFAR provides. "Sometimes it's so crazy when you hear people saying that these HIV drugs should be bought by the local government," he said. "I am telling you, they can't manage it."

The 36-year-old, now an HIV activist, has lived most of his life at the Nairobi orphanage after his parents died of AIDS. He recalled arriving and learning that he could have hope. He was enrolled in a better school, was given a bicycle and ate balanced meals.

The number of children in sub-Saharan Africa newly orphaned by AIDS reached a peak of 1.6 million in 2004, the year that PEPFAR began its rollout of HIV drugs, researchers wrote in a defense of the program published by The Lancet medical journal last month. In 2021, the number of new orphans had dropped to 382,000.

And deaths of infants and young children from AIDS in the region have dropped by 80%.

Now the orphanage is transformed. Children dart around playing soccer or swing in the colorful play area. Some are among the 1.4 million children and adults living with HIV in Kenya, according to UNAIDS. More than 1 million have received free HIV drugs because of PEPFAR.

Stopping PEPFAR would be like committing "global genocide," said Mulongo, the orphanage program manager.

He recalled how helpless he felt watching children die before HIV drugs were readily available. Almost two decades ago, they would lose at least 30 children a month to AIDS.

Elsewhere in Nairobi, 16-year-old Idah Musimbi is part of a generation that has grown up without the fear that an HIV diagnosis was a likely death sentence.

She displayed the pills that have given her a sense of normalcy. She contracted HIV at birth.

"I don't think I would live for long if these drugs stopped coming. My grandparents cannot afford to buy food every day, let alone these ARVs," she said.

Her grandfather David Shitika, a pastor, said he owes the lives of his granddaughter and her mother to PEPFAR. His daughter was diagnosed with HIV in 1995, when many people were dying.

"It was called the slimming killer disease," he said. "Nobody wanted to live with an infected person, and those who died were wrapped in nylon bags before burial" for fear of infection.

Now he hopes that the Republicans' threat to PEPFAR will fade, and that his granddaughter will go on to study law and achieve her dream of becoming a judge.

"I want to tell the American people, God bless you," Shitika said. "I do not know why you decided to help us."


# Biden, Modi and EU to announce rail and shipping project linking India to Middle East and Europe
By **AAMER MADHANI** and **JOSH BOAK**
September 9th, 2023. 4:09 AM GMT-4

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**NEW DELHI (AP)** - President Joe Biden and his allies on Saturday were to outline plans for a rail and shipping corridor that would connect India with the Middle East and ultimately Europe - a possible game changer for global trade to be announced at the Group of 20 summit.

The project would include the United States, India, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, the European Union and other countries in the G20, said Jon Finer, Biden's principal deputy national security adviser.

Biden, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen plan to announce the project as part of the Partnership for Global Infrastructure Investment.

The rail and shipping corridor would enable greater trade among the countries, including energy products. It could also be one of the more ambitious counters to China's massive infrastructure program, through which it has sought to connect more of the world to that country's economy.

Finer laid out three big rationales for the project. He said first that the corridor would increase prosperity among the countries involved by increasing the flow of energy and digital communications. Second, the project would help address the lack of infrastructure needed for growth in lower- and middle-income nations. And third, Finer said it could help "turn the temperature down" on "turbulence and insecurity" coming out of the Middle East.

"We see this as having a high appeal to the countries involved, and also globally, because it is transparent, because it is a high standard, because it is not coercive," Finer said.

Von der Leyen was expected to describe the project as "nothing less than historic" and as an "India - Middle East - Europe economic corridor" that will make trade between India and Europe 40% faster, according to a draft of her prepared remarks.

The project will include a rail link as well as an electricity cable, a hydrogen pipeline and a high-speed data cable, according von der Leyen's prepared text, which also describes the project as "a green and digital bridge across continents and civilizations."

She is also expected to announce a "Trans-African Corridor" that will connect the Angolan port of Lobito with Kananga province in the Democratic Republic of Congo and the copper-mining regions of Zambia.

Biden participated in the summit's first session, which focused on the theme of "One Earth." The U.S. president plans to draw on the theme to push for more investments to address climate change, such as his own domestic incentives to encourage the use of renewable energy, Finer said. Biden also wants to make the case that Russia's war in Ukraine is hurting many other nations, which have had to cope with greater food and energy costs as well as higher interest rate costs on their debt.

Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who has been a regular presence at international summits, including last year's G20 in Indonesia, since Russia invaded his country more than 18 months ago, was not invited by Modi's government to this year's gathering.

Zelenskyy has the used the high-profile gatherings to argue for continued economic and military support for his country. India is one of the most prominent U.S. allies that has largely stayed on the sidelines of the war, and has even dramatically increased its purchases of Russian oil.

Finer said White House officials pushed for Zelenskyy's inclusion at the summit.

"Ultimately, it is not our decision," Finer said. "But you can expect that the United States and our other partners who are working with Ukraine so closely ... We'll make that case quite forcefully in the context of these conversations."

The summit's second session is about "One Family." Biden plans to use this portion to discuss his request to Congress for additional funding for the World Bank that could generate more than $25 billion in new lending for economic development, Finer said.

The White House more broadly is trying to strengthen the G20 as an international forum, while Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin decided not to attend.

Still, China and Russia are represented at the summit and that could make it difficult for the G20 to produce a joint statement on the war in Ukraine.

"Really it's incumbent upon the Chinese government to explain why a leader would or would not participate," Finer said.


# Georgia special grand jury recommended charges against 39 people, including Sen. Lindsey Graham
By **KATE BRUMBACK**
September 8th, 2023. 6:47 PM GMT-4

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**ATLANTA (AP)** - The special grand jury that investigated efforts by Donald Trump and others to overturn Georgia's 2020 election results recommended indictments against twice as many people as the 19 ultimately charged by prosecutors, leaving South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham among those not indicted.

The grand jurors' report released Friday showed they recommended racketeering charges against 39 people, including Graham, former U.S. Sens. Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue of Georgia and former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn. Charging recommendations against others included false statements and writings, influencing witnesses and criminal solicitation to commit election fraud.

Released at the request of the special grand jury, the report provides insight into one of the most expansive investigations into Trump, who is also facing two federal indictments along with unrelated state charges in New York City. While critics have accused Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis of launching an unwieldy, overly broad investigation, the report suggests she used her discretion to streamline the case.

There are many reasons Willis might have chosen not to charge all those recommended, including immunity deals with some, federal protections for others or insufficient evidence to prove charges beyond a reasonable doubt.

Anthony Michael Kreis, a law professor at Georgia State University who has been closely following the case, speculated that Willis took some of the special grand jury's vote breakdowns into consideration when deciding who to ultimately go after.

"If you have a jury and a group of folks who have pored over evidence for eight months and there's still a 50-50 divide or a two-thirds divide ... I don't think that's something that you'd look at and say, we have a high probability of a conviction there," Kreis said.

Of the 19 people ultimately indicted, only one was not included in the special grand jury's recommendations. A former White House aide who served as the director of Trump's Election Day operations, Michael Roman, was involved in efforts to put forth a set of fake electors after the 2020 election.

The special grand jury accused Graham and others of violating Georgia's Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations law -- a statute most commonly associated with mobsters -- saying they tried to overturn the state's 2020 election, which Trump, the incumbent Republican, lost to Democrat Joe Biden. The South Carolina senator, who was chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee at the time, called Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger shortly after the November election, and Raffensperger has said Graham asked him whether he had the power to reject certain absentee ballots.

Perdue and Loeffler were sitting U.S. senators who had failed to win enough votes in the November 2020 general election and were forced into a January 2021 runoff, which they ultimately lost to Democratic challengers. In the weeks after Trump lost and they were pushed into runoffs, they cast doubt on the validity of the election results.

In an interview on a right-wing cable news channel in mid-December 2020, Flynn said Trump "could take military capabilities" and place them in swing states and "basically rerun an election in each of those states." He also traveled in November 2020 to the South Carolina home of conservative lawyer Lin Wood, where Wood has said meetings were held to discuss possible ways to influence the election results in Georgia and elsewhere. The special grand jury also recommended charges for Wood.

Trump, the early front-runner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, blasted the report on his Truth Social site, saying, "They wanted to indict anybody who happened to be breathing at the time."

Graham, who has denied wrongdoing, said, "It should never be a crime for a federal elected official, particularly the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, who will have to vote to certify a presidential election, to question and ensure the integrity of that election."

Loeffler, who has stayed involved in politics by founding and funding a Republican-aligned group called Greater Georgia, said she was speaking up for people who felt disenfranchised in the 2020 election. "Trying to jail your party's leading political opponent ahead of 2024 is election interference. Speaking out in defense of election integrity is not," she said on X, formerly Twitter.

Flynn pointed to his lawyer Jesse Binnall's post on X: "General Michael Flynn will continue to fight for the truth, for America First principles, and for Donald Trump's return to The White House in 2024."

Wood, who testified to the special grand jury, said, "It seems unfair to me that I get smeared as someone that is recommended for indictment when the people with the power to look at the evidence and indict did not indict me."

Representatives for Perdue didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.

The special grand jury foreperson, Emily Kohrs, spoke of her experience in an interview with The Associated Press in February that was followed by interviews with other news outlets. She said she appreciated the weightiness of the responsibility but also enjoyed moments of levity, like joking with Graham. She said the grand jury recommended charges against multiple people and that there would be few surprises.

While Kohrs' whirlwind media tour was attacked by Trump's lawyers at the time and raised fears among some Trump critics that it could jeopardize the investigation, the judge overseeing the special grand jury made clear that grand jurors are free to talk about anything but their deliberations.

The panel heard testimony from some 75 witnesses before completing a report in December with recommendations for Willis on charges. She had no obligation to follow their recommendations, and she ultimately decided to go to a regular grand jury to obtain indictments.

The release of the identities of people recommended for indictment is a departure from ordinary grand jury protocol, which dictates that prosecutors do not disclose the names of individuals investigated but not charged so as to prevent potentially innocent subjects from being unduly maligned.

Special grand juries in Georgia are relatively uncommon and are essentially an investigative tool. They can subpoena witnesses and evidence but do not have the power to bring an indictment. Instead, they can produce a report with nonbinding recommendations.

Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney ordered the partial release of the report in February but declined to immediately release the panel's recommendations on who should or should not be prosecuted. The judge said at the time that he wanted to protect people's due process rights.

McBurney said in a new order filed Aug. 28 that the due process concerns were moot since a regular grand jury had indicted Trump and 18 other people under the state's anti-racketeering law. All have pleaded not guilty.

Many of those indicted - including former New York Mayor and Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani and Trump White House chief of staff Mark Meadows - are known to have testified before the special grand jury. Trump was never called. Late Friday, a judge in Atlanta denied Meadows' request to move his case to federal court.

The parts of the report previously released in February included its conclusions, as well as a section with the grand jurors expressing concerns that one or more witnesses may have lied under oath and urging prosecutors to seek charges for perjury.