Even though the presidential election is finished, Hollywood's campaign season is only getting started. Film industry executives and publicists will be scouting America's movie capital over the next two months, urging the approximately 10,000 members who vote on the Oscars to support the 97th Academy Awards, which are scheduled for March 2. (If you are in the Los Angeles region, be prepared to see advertisements for For Your Consideration everywhere you look.) Unlike the last two Oscar cycles, when Everything Everywhere All at Once and Oppenheimer established distinct and early advantages, there isn't a clear front-runner in the best picture race this year. The field is wide open this year, and as the campaigns heat up in the upcoming weeks and months, there's still time for things to chan...

On Wednesday, a State Department official announced the release of three American nationals who had been imprisoned in China for years. They are John Leung, Kai Li, and Mark Swidan. Long Island, New York native Li, 62, was arrested in 2016 and given a 10-year term in 2018 on espionage allegations that his family claims are unfounded. Swidan, a 40-year-old Texas businessman who had been in custody since 2012, was found guilty of drug-related accusations that a United Nations working group deemed lacked evidence, and in 2019 he was given a death sentence with a reprieve. The State Department believed that Li and Swidan had been illegally detained. Last year, a court in eastern China found John Leung, a 70-year-old American with permanent citizenship in Hong Kong, China, guilty of espionage a...

Washington U.S.-China relations are expected to be one of the biggest foreign policy issues facing the next government when President-elect Donald Trump takes the oath of office next year. The two countries have had a tense relationship in recent years, with politicians from both parties taking a more aggressive stand against Beijing. The amount to which Trump keeps his promise to impose hefty tariffs on China and the degree to which he is swayed by advisors who believe that the United States should challenge China on issues other than trade will determine the future course of that relationship, according to experts. Tariffs 2.0 Trump already shook international markets this week when he said that, in addition to higher tariffs on goods from Canada and Mexico, he would impose a 10% du...

Gloria Holland can still clearly recall a picture from her early years: a man standing outside his front door in just his underwear, begging that his home in Palm Springs, California's Section 14 neighborhood not be razed. Before a bulldozer leveled the building and the man scrambled to safety, he ranted for a few minutes. Holland, who is now 70, stated from her home outside of Atlanta, "I was 8 or 9 years old." I had never seen a grown guy cry before. It caused trauma. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, the man and Holland were part of 195 Black and Latino families whose homes were burned down and demolished with little to no warning. Native American-owned land had long been sought after by city officials, who wanted Palm Springs' downtown to expand with upscale hotels and retail establi...

China disputed rumors that Defense Minister Dong Jun was being investigated for corruption on Thursday, stating that a senior military officer had been suspended and was being investigated for major discipline violations. According to his official biography, the suspended officer, Admiral Miao Hua, was stationed in the coastal province of Fujian when President Xi Jinping was employed there as a local official. He was a member of the ruling Central Military Commission, which is China's highest-level military authority. Miao, the top political officer in the military, started his career in the army. Wu Qian, a spokesman for the military ministry, gave reporters no additional information during a monthly press briefing in Beijing. Since last year, the Chinese military has been undergoing a ma...

Los Angeles As local officials, advocacy organizations, and the country's second-largest school system begin organizing to fight mass deportations, the pushback that blue state governors pledged following Donald Trump's election is starting to take shape. The cities of Philadelphia, Chicago, and Los Angeles have pledged to protect undocumented residents of the United States from the incoming Trump administration's plans to carry out what it claims will be the most extensive deportation campaign in history. The ACLU of Southern California sued U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement this month, seeking information on how the next administration intends to conduct the roundups, while the Los Angeles Unified School District declared itself a sanctuary for migrants. Although local authoriti...

Donald Trump, the incoming president, ran on tariffs. He made even more promises this week. Trump stated on Monday that he plans to increase a previously planned tariff of up to 60% on all Chinese imports by an extra 10% and slap a 25% tariff on goods imported by the United States from Mexico and Canada. The duties would represent a substantial rise over Trump's earlier proposal, which was already a big increase over more targeted tariffs that Trump implemented during his first term and that President Joe Biden maintained. According to a Yale Budget Lab assessment that was shared with NBC News on Wednesday, if retaliatory charges on U.S. exports are implemented, the average cost to consumers of the tariffs Trump has proposed could be as high as $1,200 in lost purchasing power based on 2023...

This month, Ron DeSantis received a political gift from President-elect Donald Trump when he was assigned to fill a U.S. Senate seat. Don't expect the governor of Florida to unlock it before Christmas, though. As the president-elect stocked his fledgling administration with state political leaders, one of Trump's first significant cabinet appointments was Florida Senator Marco Rubio, who was appointed secretary of state. Rubio's seat will become available due to the nomination, which will immediately spark conjecture about DeSantis' choice and the extent of Trump's involvement—the most well-known resident in the state—in the process. However, according to five people familiar with the process, the DeSantis team is still considering its choices around two weeks after the Rubio announcement ...

Ukraine's KYIV The Witches of Bucha are preparing to protect their city from a relentless barrage of Russian missiles and drones in a snow-covered woodland west of Kyiv. The main responsibility of the 90% female volunteer civil defense group is to protect the skies by destroying the Iranian-made Shahed drones that arrive almost every night. The majority are from Bucha, a city outside Kyiv that was overrun by Russian forces in the early weeks of the conflict and the scene of some of the worst invasion-related crimes, such as the killing of citizens in the street. According to Tetyana, her brother and husband were both murdered in the conflict, and her soldier nephew was reported missing. Tetyana, 41, who chose not to provide her last name in accordance with Ukrainian military regulations,...

During his previous two campaigns, President-elect Donald Trump used the disco song YMCA as a standard at his rallies. Additionally, recent research indicates that interest in the song is rising, much like Trump's electoral fortunes. Four decades later, the Village People's 1978 hit has had a busy month, with Google search interest soaring, measured listenership on the song-tracking website last.fm tripling, and, finally, the song reaching the top of one Billboard sales chart for the first time. At the conclusion of his 2020 rallies, Trump started dancing to the tune, jumping to the beat while putting his fists in the air. You know what makes them happy? YMCA, Trump stated in a 2022 podcast. The YMCA encourages individuals to get up and move. This year, as athletes started imitating Trump...