Category: Security

The new year is off to a ominous start for the entertainment industry, which is facing heavy layoffs at companies spanning film, TV, music and gaming.

The tidal wave of job cuts has affected several major players, including Amazon, Pixar, Discord and Universal Music Group.

Entertainment, media, gaming and tech companies have been broadly under pressure to reduce costs amid economic headwinds, Hollywood strikes, corporate consolidation and other factors following rapid hiring during the COVID-19 pandemic.

UMG, the music industry’s largest record company, said Friday in a statement to The Times that it aims to create “efficiencies in other areas of the business so we can remain nimble and responsive to the dynamic market” in response to reports that the record label is poised to lay off hundreds of employees in the coming weeks.

The Times has independently confirmed that UMG, which has its operational headquarters in Santa Monica, is bracing for cuts — a move that had already been discussed during a quarterly earnings call in October and alluded to in an internal memo to staff on Monday.

“We continue to position UMG to accelerate its leadership in music’s most promising growth areas and drive its transformation to capitalize on them,” a spokesperson for UMG said in a statement provided to The Times. “Over the past several years, we have been investing in future growth—building our ecommerce and D2C (direct-to-consumer) operations, expanding geographically, and leveraging new technologies.”

The latest UMG news landed in the wake of other reports of job losses across the entertainment business, perhaps most notably at Amazon. Earlier this week, the tech giant announced plans to let go of several hundred employees working for its streaming platform, Prime Video, and its film and TV arm, Amazon MGM Studios.

”(W)e’ve identified opportunities to reduce or discontinue investments in certain areas while increasing our investment and focus on content and product initiatives that deliver the most impact,” wrote Mike Hopkins, senior vice president of Prime Video and Amazon MGM Studios, in a note to staffers. “Our prioritization of initiatives that we know will move the needle, along with our continued investments in programming, marketing and product, positions our business for an even stronger future.”

At the same time, Amazon’s livestreaming platform Twitch— a force in the gaming industry — said it planned to lay off about 500 workers, or about one-third of the staff.

In a blog post, Twitch Chief Executive Daniel Clancy said the company had been working to build a more sustainable business, cutting costs throughout the year.

“Unfortunately, despite these efforts, it has become clear that our organization is still meaningfully larger than it needs to be given the size of our business,” he wrote.

Other tech and gaming companies in Northern California have been hit hard with layoffs this month, continuing a trend of cuts that first began early last year.

Game company Unity Software, based in San Francisco, announced another round of layoffs as part of its restructuring efforts. A filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission noted that the company would be cutting 1,800 jobs — roughly 25% of its current workforce — as it “restructures and refocuses on its core business, and to position itself for long-term and profitable growth.”

Staff at messaging platform Discord were impacted as well by some 170 cuts — nearly 17% of the workforce. The San Francisco company has deep ties to the video game industry; gamers often use the service to voice-chat as they play games together, or chat in channels about gaming.

“We grew quickly and expanded our workforce even faster, increasing by 5x since 2020,” Discord Chief Executive Jason Citron wrote in a memo obtained by The Verge. “As a result, we took on more projects and became less efficient in how we operated.”

On Thursday and Friday, reports of layoffs at Pixar began to surface as well. The Disney-owned animation studio is expected to cut up to 20% of its staff — roughly 300 jobs — according to TechCrunch. However, a source close to the situation who was not authorized to comment told The Times that the 20% figure is inflated.

The staff reduction at Pixar comes as the once-preeminent animation studio struggles to break out of a COVID-19 pandemic-induced slump at the box office.

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© 2024 Los Angeles Times

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A survey conducted using sonar and undersea robots has discovered a World War II-era munitions dump on the seafloor off California, researchers reported.

Oceanographers with the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego conducted the survey off Los Angeles in 2023, a Jan. 5 news release by the institution said.

The study followed an earlier survey in 2021 that found barrels scattered across the seafloor in the area, researchers said.

In the April study, oceanographers identified many of the objects as depth charges and other munitions over a 135-square-mile area, the institution said and the Los Angeles Times reported.

“These munitions are likely a result of World War II-era disposal practices,” the U.S. Navy said in a statement to the institution. “While disposal of munitions at sea at this location was approved at that time to ensure safe disposal when naval vessels returned to US ports, the Navy follows Department of Defense guidance for the appropriate disposal of munitions that aligns with state and federal rules and regulations.”

The Navy is reviewing the results of the newest survey to help determine a cleanup plan, the statement said.

The survey also found sunken fishing vessels, barrels of industrial waste and “whale falls,” or sunken whale carcasses, researchers said.

“The number of whale falls seems quite high relative to previous models of how many may occur on the seafloor off California,” said marine biologist Greg Rouse, who has studied the ecosystems around whale falls.

“However, the skeletons were mainly in very low oxygen water that likely slowed decomposition markedly and the burial rate by sediment may also be very slow there,” Rouse said. “This would mean the whale falls may have accumulated over many decades.”

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© 2024 The Charlotte Observer

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Latvia’s defense chief said the Baltic nation is making progress in assembling a coalition of almost 20 countries to arm Ukrainian forces with “thousands” of new unmanned aerial vehicles.

The comments by Defense Minister Andris Spruds are the first indication of the scale of the drone initiative after the plan was unveiled at a meeting with Ukraine’s defense chief, Rustem Umerov, in December. A fresh inventory will help Kyiv’s military in a conflict in which drone warfare has become a significant element in the fighting, he said.

“The primary goal is to do everything so that as many of these drones as possible are also delivered to Ukraine,” Spruds said in an interview in Riga on Monday.

Russia’s military has used barrages of drones and missiles to hit Ukrainian cities, ports and infrastructure since its invasion almost two years ago. The Kremlin launched some 90 drones — almost all of which Ukraine said were were downed by defenses — in a New Year’s Eve attack on targets near the Black Sea port of Odesa and the western city of Lviv.

Drones have been at the top of the list of military hardware sought by Ukraine’s military leaders. Ukrainian and Russian forces are aggressively using the aerial vehicles for surveillance and targeting troops with explosives. Ukraine is also building a fleet of naval drones, which it’s deployed to target Russian vessels in the Black Sea.

Ukraine has set out to produce a million modified so-called first-person view UAVs for use on the battlefield this year, as well as more than 10,000 mid-range and 1,000 long-range strike drones, Oleksandr Kamyshin, minister of strategic industries, said last month.

The Baltic states — Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia — have been among the most vocal NATO member states in condemning President Vladimir Putin’s war aims. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy made a tour of the region this month, where he reinforced his message that Kyiv had no intention of acquiescing to Russia’s assault.

Spruds declined to give further details of the drone project, saying that “we are currently at the stage where we are approaching 20 partners.”

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© 2024 Bloomberg L.P

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An Alabama lawmaker is sponsoring a bill that would allow public schools in Alabama to hire chaplains or use volunteer chaplains to work with students.

Rep. Mark Gidley, R-Hokes Bluff, said he modeled the bill after one the Texas legislature passed last year.

“The bottom line is this, and it’s very, very, very simple,” Gidley said. “We have chaplains for everything. We have chaplains in the military, we have chaplains for police. The list goes on and on and on.”

Gidley’s bill, which he has pre-filed for the legislative session that starts in three weeks, says that beginning with the 2024-2025 school year, public schools can employ or accept as a volunteer a chaplain “to provide support, services, and programs for students.”

The bill says chaplains would not be required to be certified by the state Board of Education. They would have to pass the criminal background check required for school employees.

The bill would require every local board of education to take a recorded vote by April 1, 2025, on whether to adopt a policy authorizing its schools to hire a chaplain or use a volunteer chaplain.

“It’s simply an opportunity for schools to implement this to help with discipline, to help with order, to pick up areas to help in the school where maybe administration is not able to do due to just time restraints or whatever it might be,” said Gidley, whose district includes parts of Etowah and Chilton counties. “It’s just an opportunity to help schools in these areas that, as you know, our schools really desperately need help.”

Gidley said he did not think the bill would violate the First Amendment prohibition on government-established religion because of the precedents set by chaplains employed by the military and by law enforcement agencies.

“This is not a government establishment of religion at all,” Gidley said. “It’s just an opportunity of doing in our schools what we do in almost every other organization. It’s not an establishment of religion. It’s an opportunity to help our schools, should they take advantage of it, with discipline and other things that arise, just like we have in almost every other organization from the national level all the way down.”

The legislative session starts Feb. 6.

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© 2024 Advance Local Media LLC

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Johnny Depp has Al Pacino to thank for getting him back behind the camera for “Modi” — his first directorial effort in 25 years.

The film comes just two years after Depp’s personal life took the spotlight in his successful 2022 defamation suit against ex-wife Amber Heard.

The “Pirates of the Caribbean” star, 60, spoke to Entertainment Tonight about the “transformative experience” of working on the film, which takes place over two days in the life of Italian artist Amedeo Modigliani (played by Riccardo Scamarcio) amid the backdrop of World War I Paris.

Depp — who last directed 1997’s “The Brave” — says Al Pacino, who appears as French art collector Maurice Gangnat, “requested that I make” the film.

“How could I refuse Pacino?” said Depp, who co-starred with the legendary actor in 1997’s “Donnie Brasco.”

“Embarking on this cinematic journey as the director of ‘Modi’ has been an incredibly fulfilling and transformative experience,” he told the outlet. “I would like to express my profound gratitude to the entire cast, crew, and producers for their unwavering commitment and creativity.”

He thanked Pacino, 83, “for generously contributing his talent and dedication to this project,” which was predominantly filmed in Budapest, Hungary.

Depp dubbed the film “a testament to the collaborative spirit of independent filmmaking, and I am excited to present this unique and compelling story to the world.”

The “Edward Scissorhands” star’s roles have been few and far between since Heard’s 2018 Washington Post op-ed, in which she referred to herself as “a public figure representing domestic abuse.”

Though she didn’t name Depp — to whom she was married from 2015 to 2016 — in the piece, she had previously leveled allegations of domestic violence against him. Depp has repeatedly denied the “Aquaman” star’s accusations.

Depp sued Heard for $50 million, claiming the op-ed was an act of defamation. She filed a $100 million counterclaim due to her ex-husband’s lawyer denouncing her claims as a hoax.

After six weeks of a trial that aired every bit of the former couple’s dirty laundry and dominated public discourse online, a Virginia judge ruled that Depp should be awarded over $10 million in compensatory damages and $5 million in punitive damages. The latter was capped by the state. After reaching a settlement, the two dropped their respective appeals and Heard paid $1 million to Depp.

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© 2024 New York Daily News

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This article was originally published by Radio Free Asia and is reprinted with permission.

A dissident writer from the southwestern Chinese megacity of Chongqing, who pledged allegiance to the 1911 Republic of China government in Taiwan in protest at local police, was recently detained for 15 days in a local detention center, Radio Free Asia has learned.

Liu Ermu, who has been a long-time critic of the ruling Chinese Communist Party, vowed last August to switch allegiance to the government of democratic Taiwan if a court didn’t decide in his favor in an administrative lawsuit he filed against police.

Taiwan, which recently saw a Democratic Progressive Party president elected for an unprecedented third consecutive term, has never been ruled by the Chinese Communist Party, nor formed part of the People’s Republic of China, although Beijing claims the island as its own.

It has been governed as a sovereign state called the Republic of China since the Kuomintang government fled to the island after losing a civil war to Mao Zedong’s communists on the mainland in 1949.

Liu made the pledge after the Xiushan County People’s Court rejected his complaint about the police handling of a workplace dispute, which they characterized as a “fight,” while Liu insisted he was acting in self-defense.

“I felt I was being persecuted in China,” he said. “It felt as if the law was unable to protect me under this government, so I openly pledged my allegiance to the Republic of China government.”

“The territory [claimed by] the Republic of China includes mainland China,” Liu said.

Liu was placed under administrative detention on Dec. 30, ahead of the Jan. 13 presidential and legislative elections in Taiwan.

“Three policemen came and handed a summons directly to my wife, then activated a 15-day sentence suspended in 2021, and took me to the Youyang county police department,” he told RFA following his release.

“My guess is that they mostly wanted a way to keep control of me before voting began in the Taiwan elections,” he said.

‘Longing’ for democracy

Liu said he made the pledge to draw attention to Taiwan’s democratic system.

Taiwan was ruled as a Japanese colony in the 50 years prior to the end of World War II, but was handed back to the 1911 Republic of China under the Kuomintang government as part of Tokyo’s post-war reparation deal.

The island began a transition to democracy following the death of Chiang Kai-shek’s son, President Chiang Ching-kuo, in January 1988, starting with direct elections to the legislature in the early 1990s and culminating in the first direct election of a president, Lee Teng-hui, in 1996.

“Based on my long-term observation of Taiwan, I have a longing for a political system like that in the Republic of China,” Liu said. “One that’s full of freedom, justice and the rule of law.”

“I said publicly on Douyin that if the appeal verdict was also unjust, I would choose to be loyal to the government of the Republic of China,” he said. “The state security police contacted me many times to ask me not to do this.”

But a person familiar with the case who asked to remain anonymous for fear of reprisals said Beijing would see such a pledge as subversive.

“Pledging allegiance to the Republic of China while living in the People’s Republic of China isn’t an option,” the person said. “[An action like that] at the very worst could be regarded as subversion of state power, and at best as picking quarrels and stirring up trouble.”

China Pan-Blue Alliance

The 1911 Republic of China officially lays claim to the whole of mainland China, the whole of the independent country of Mongolia, along with parts of Myanmar, India, Russia, Tajikistan and Afghanistan, although the current government is largely focused on holding onto the islands it does control – Taiwan, Penghu, Kinmen and Matsu – in the face of Beijing’s territorial claims.

Support for Taiwan among Chinese dissidents isn’t unheard of, however.

In 2006, state security police cracked down on a group of activists known as the China Pan-Blue Alliance, in a reference to the “blue camp” group of parties led by the Kuomintang in Taiwan, after they tried to field candidates in elections to district People’s Congresses in a number of locations across the country.

Alliance members in the northern province of Hebei and in the eastern province of Jiangsu taken in for questioning by police, as well as the group’s founder, Wuhan-based Sun Bu’er.

Police told them they were an “illegal organization,” and “monkeys” that wouldn’t be allowed to “create havoc in Heaven,” a reference to the Monkey King Sun Wukong, a key figure in Chinese mythology.

A 25-year-old former military member was sentenced Thursday to 10 years’ imprisonment for the 2021 death of a 37-year-old man and injury to a woman, both her friends from Texas and passengers in the Nissan Rogue she was driving while intoxicated and crashing into a police car on the H-1 freeway.

Klarissa Lopez, also known as Klarissa Velasquez, of Texas, who had been stationed in Hawaii in 2021, pleaded no contest Sept. 19 to first-degree negligent homicide in the death of Ronald Garcia and first-

degree negligent injury to Paula Rosas.

Deputy Prosecutor Hon-Lum Cheung-Cheng said Thursday during sentencing that Lopez was convicted of impaired driving after a crash in Texas just seven months after causing the crash that killed Garcia.

Circuit Judge Shanlyn Park sentenced Lopez to 10 years in prison for the negligent homicide and ordered her to pay $31,487.54 in restitution to Kriscia Garcia Alarcon. The judge also sentenced her to five years for the negligent injury, with credit for time served, which was a total of one day when she was arrested May 11, 2022. Both prison sentences are to run concurrently.

A restitution hearing is set for April 23 for the negligent injury.

Lopez was immediately taken into custody after the sentencing.

“We are pleased the judge recognized the seriousness of the offense and gave Lopez the full 10-year sentence,” Honolulu Prosecutor Steve Alm said in a written news release. “There is evidence Lopez had been drinking and was looking at her phone when she crashed into a police car that had stopped to help another motorist.”

Lopez had been out on $50,000 bail bond and living in Texas after a judge allowed her to leave the jurisdiction in 2022 to live with her parents in Houston.

Victor Bakke, Lopez’s attorney, told the court five months ago, on Aug. 9, that Lopez was three months pregnant and was concerned about her ability to fly to Hawaii for court proceedings due to her pregnancy.

The state’s sentencing memorandum says Lopez was arrested for driving while intoxicated March 11, 2022, after a vehicle collision in Houston, less than a year after the Honolulu crash. The crash left the other driver with hand and foot lacerations.

She fled the scene, and returned later admitting she had three drinks before driving. She had a blood alcohol level of 0.135 grams of alcohol per 210 liters of breath. In Hawaii, driving with a blood alcohol level of 0.08% is illegal.

The memorandum also details the facts of the Hawaii case.

Garcia and Rosas were visiting Lopez, who was stationed in Hawaii. The three had gone to Whiskey Dix Saloon, a Pearl City bar, where Lopez had a beer, a mixed drink and two shots of alcohol in an hour and a half before driving them back to Waikiki, Rosas told police.

Rosas said Lopez was going about 70 mph, faster than the other cars, driving erratically, “bobbing and weaving through traffic,” in the five minutes before the crash in an area where the speed limit is 45 mph.

The car’s black box showed no braking 0.5 second before the crash, and the car was traveling at 63 mph.

Police officer Christopher Chong responded at 11:55 p.m. to a stalled vehicle and parked his blue-and-white police SUV in the far-right lane of the eastbound H-1 freeway near the Queen Emma Street overpass.

His SUV’s roof-mounted strobe light was on and flashing, along with rear arrows directing oncoming traffic to move left.

At about 11:59 p.m., Lopez’s Nissan Rogue crashed into the rear of the police vehicle, the force of which caused the police car to move forward and rotate clockwise.

The Nissan veered to the left, crossing all the eastbound lanes of the freeway, striking the center median and coming to a stop there.

Chong found Garcia unconscious with blood on his shirt and head, and wedged between the front passenger seat and the rear passenger floor. He died of multiple blunt force injuries to head, neck, torso, arms and legs.

Rosas was found pinned down in the front passenger seat, screaming. An officer noted she was in a “very awkward position,” with both legs on the dashboard and her head touching her knees. She had a protruding exposed bone near her hand, and her right hand appeared to be completely severed from her wrist. She suffered right wrist dislocation, open right distal ulnar radial (part of the forearm) fracture, several fractured ribs, a sternum fracture and intestinal injury.

Lopez told police she did not see Chong’s vehicle because she was looking at her phone trying to look at directions, and offered that she was not intoxicated.

Another officer noted she had red, watery and glassy eyes, and he detected a strong odor of alcohol from her breath and person.

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(c) 2024 The Honolulu Star-Advertiser

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A bipartisan panel of Illinois lawmakers approved guidelines Tuesday covering how state police will maintain and enforce a registry of gun owners who possess high-powered firearms that are now banned.

The requirement for residents who possessed guns covered by the ban before it took effect on Jan. 10, 2023, to register those firearms by Jan. 1 has been one of the law’s most controversial aspects.

During Tuesday’s hearing of the Joint Committee on Administrative Rules, or JCAR, state police officials addressed issues raised by Republican legislators who oppose the ban that ranged from privacy for gun owners to what information would be available to police when they stop someone whose firearm information is in the registry.

State Rep. Ryan Spain, a Peoria Republican who co-chairs the panel, unsuccessfully called for a motion to block permanent rules from being put into place. Spain criticized the state police for filing their proposed enforcement rules too close to the Jan. 1 deadline.

“I’m really quite frustrated that we could’ve approached this differently with a clear time frame and trying to resolve many of these issues much earlier on so that firearm owners throughout the state of Illinois trying to understand this very complicated and conflicting legislation, in many ways, could’ve had better guidance on what they need to do,” Spain said.

Failure to register banned guns could result in a misdemeanor charge, or a felony for repeated violations.

“This legislation made criminals out of law-abiding citizens from the get-go,” state Sen. Don DeWitte, of St. Charles, said after the hearing. “Many people on our side of the aisle believe that it was unconstitutional going in.”

Over a series of hearings in recent months, gun rights advocates expressed confusion over the registration process, particularly on what they view as varying definitions of certain firearm accessories that need to be registered.

The gun ban has been upheld at the federal level, but legal challenges continue and state police officials told legislators that if it is deemed unconstitutional the gun registration data would be destroyed.

While Republicans on JCAR failed to stop the rules from being put into place, their motion to object to the rules passed in a 6-5 vote along partisan lines, meaning the state police will have 90 days to address the objection.

State Sen. Bill Cunningham, the Chicago Democrat who co-chairs JCAR with Spain, said he was satisfied by the number of changes made by the state police to their proposed rules before Tuesday’s vote.

“It’s a very complicated law, there’s no question about that. So it’s understandable that there would be confusion,” he said after the vote. “But I think there’s been a good faith effort made to try to address (the) confusion.”

The gun ban prohibits the delivery, sale, import and purchase of a long list of so-called assault weapons in the form of certain semi-automatic rifles, handguns and shotguns. Also banned are the delivery, sale or purchase of large-capacity ammunition magazines of more than 10 rounds for long guns and 15 rounds for handguns.

On New Year’s Eve, Darren Bailey, a far-right Republican congressional candidate from downstate who was defeated in the 2022 governor’s race by Gov. J.B. Pritzker, who signed the gun ban, posted a picture on social media showing him at a table with a puzzle and some guns, presumably firearms covered by the ban.

“I’ll be here putting together this puzzle waiting for Pritzker to knock on my door and take my guns. I will not comply,” Bailey wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter.

While figuring out the degree of compliance at this point isn’t possible, it appears clear Bailey is far from the only gun owner who has declined to register. Through Dec. 31, 29,357 people had registered nearly 69,000 prohibited guns and over 42,000 accessories.

About 2.4 million Illinoisans have firearm owner’s identification cards, meaning about 1.22% of FOID card holders registered guns or accessories subject to the ban.

According to the National Shooting Sports Foundation, a firearms industry trade group mounting one of the legal challenges to Illinois’ gun ban, there have been more than 24 million “modern sporting rifles” in circulation in the U.S. since the early 1990s, including many AR-15- and AK-47-type guns that are subject to the ban in Illinois.

Anyone wanting information about the state police’s registration process for grandfathered-in assault weapons can visit its website and read its section on frequently asked questions about the gun ban.

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© 2024 Chicago Tribune

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Israel insists its campaign against Hamas won’t end before the Palestinian militant organization capitulates and returns all the people it took captive over three months ago, a senior official said, despite mounting international pressure to wind down the offensive.

“We have to have the total surrender of Hamas, we have to have our hostages back,” Nir Barkat, Israel’s economy and industry minister, said in an interview with Bloomberg Television on Monday. “Hamas has to raise a white flag.”

Israel has suggested it has little appetite to ease off the offensive in Gaza that began after Hamas attacked from the territory on Oct. 7, killing 1,200 people in southern Israel and taking around 230 hostage. The military pulled some forces out of Gaza earlier this month and said it accomplished much of what it set out to do in the northern part of the Hamas-controlled territory.

Even so, fighting continues to rage in the enclave and Israeli officials have said it could continue for months, if not longer. Much of the Gaza Strip has been reduced to rubble and more than 24,000 people have died, according to health officials there.

Israel’s focusing most of its ground and air offensive on the center and south of the strip at the moment.

Barkat, a member of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party, sees “no other alternative” to the complete defeat of the group, designated as a terrorist organization by the U.S. and the European Union. Some Arab states have said signaled that, given Hamas’s deep roots within Gaza and the fact it’s run the territory since 2007, it will have to have some post-war role.

“We have to look at somebody out there that is going to recognize Israel, that doesn’t want to slaughter and kill and wipe Israel off the map,” Barkat said.

Hamas is committed to Israel’s destruction and does not recognize the Jewish state.

Israel ‘United’

Barkat said it’s “difficult to tell” if there would be elections in Israel this year. Netanyahu’s poll numbers have dived since Hamas’s attack and his coalition, the most right-wing in Israel’s history, contains many extremist parties unwilling to countenance any steps toward an eventual two-state solution with the Palestinians, something the U.S. and Israel’s European allies are calling for.

“Leave all this to the end of the war,” he said. “Everyone here understands that we’re all united. We’re focusing on one major thing: winning the war and bringing our hostages back.”

Barkat said Israel’s economy should see a quick rebound after the war, with the focus now on growth, tech investment and defense spending. The “smart money” is continue to flow into Israel, he said.

With the U.S. and its allies having conducted airstrikes against the Houthis to counter their shipping attacks, Barakat said the Yemeni militants are now are a “global challenge.” They operate, he said, in alignment with Hamas and Lebanon’s Hezbollah, movements backed, armed and funded by Iran.

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