List of All Articles with Tag 'pce'

Hollywood actors on Wednesday anxiously awaited their union's decision on whether to strike, right at the peak of the summer blockbuster season, as last-ditch talks...

Sheila E will celebrate her star with a concert at The Bourbon Room in Hollywood on Wednesday night, titled 'Sheila E and Friends'

Depending on who you ask, cleaning up can either be seen as a complete slog or a joyful task. R29 shopping editors, on the whole, fall into the latter camp, relishing everything from getting stains out of their go-to outfits to getting their baseboards dust-free.

Elon Musk on Wednesday announced the formation of a new company focused on artificial intelligence, after months of teasing plans to build a rival to ChatGPT.

HBO absolutely dominated the nominations for the 75th Primetime Emmy Awards, which were announced July

Watch live as Joe Biden holds a news conference following talks at the Nato summit on Wednesday, 12 July. The US president met with world leaders in Lithuania as G7 countries announced an international framework that paves the way for long-term security assurances for Ukraine to boost its defences against Russia. On Tuesday, Volodymyr Zelensky slammed the military alliance’s leaders for not extending membership to Ukraine, calling the inaction “absurd” Mr Biden has previously said that he thinks Ukraine is “not ready” for membership. His remarks came after US national security adviser Jake Sullivan said that Nato would be at war with Russia if Ukraine were to join the alliance now. Read More The Body in the Woods | An Independent TV Original Documentary The harrowing discovery at centre of The Independent’s new documentary

Milan Kundera, whose dissident writings in communist Czechoslovakia transformed him into an exiled satirist of totalitarianism, has died in Paris

An eight-count indictment against Israeli professor and think tank co-founder Gal Luft appeared in a small, 137-word item on page 10 of the New York Post. Under the headline “Anti-Biden witness indicted”, it described Mr Luft, 57, as “a key figure in House Republicans' investigation of the Biden family” and said the charges against him are for “arms trafficking and conspiring to flout US sanctions on Iran”. It ended with a line about how Mr Luft claims the case is an attempt to stop him “testifying to Congress about allegations the first family received payments from individuals with ties to Chinese military intelligence and that the Bidens had an FBI mole who shared classified information with their Chinese benefactors”. The low-key treatment was a far cry from how the anti-Biden tabloid covered Mr Luft just days earlier, when Post columnist Miranda Devine – a frequent purveyor of conspiracy theories about President Joe Biden and his son, Hunter – wrote a column exclusively on a video on which Mr Luft claims he is being “hunted” by the FBI and facing “the rest of his life on the run”. Mr Luft’s dispatch to the Post came from parts unknown – as he has been a fugitive since February. He disappeared shortly after posting bail following his arrest by Cypriot authorities pursuant to an Interpol warrant on suspicion of arms trafficking. At the time, he tweeted that the arrest was part of a “politically motivated extradition request” by the US. “I've been arrested in Cyprus on a politically motivated extradition request by the US … claiming I'm an arms dealer. It would be funny if it weren't tragic. I've never been an arms dealer. DOJ is trying to bury me to protect Joe, Jim [and] Hunter Biden,” he said. Mr Luft’s Israeli lawyer, Mordechai Tzivin, told Ynet that his client was being targeted because he provided derogatory information about the Bidens to the FBI in 2019. The accusations "would be a good way to shut him up," Mr Tzivin said, “because he knows a lot of information on Hunter”. He added that it wasn’t beyond the realm of possibility that prominent Democrats would try to have his client killed. “If this would have happened in Russia, they would have carried out a 'diplomatic car crash,' but luckily, he is in a safe location where no one can hurt him,” he said. Despite Mr Luft’s claim that the arms charges coincide with his emergence as a figure in the Republican-led crusade to tar the Bidens with corruption allegations, it’s not clear from the public record that he ever said a word about Mr Biden or his son prior to his arrest. But the Israeli-American academic – who was once a Lieutenant Colonel in the Israeli Defense Forces and more recently served as co-director of the DC-based Institute for the Analysis of Global Security – has been critical of US foreign policy since Mr Biden took office with the aim of restoring relations with America’s democratic allies. In January, his think tank released a report that accused the US of “pursuing illegal economic policies” by way of an "extremely trigger-happy" use of sanctions, most notably against Russia. And last year, he appeared on CNBC to criticise the Biden administration’s efforts to impose a worldwide oil price cap on Russian oil to keep Moscow from using petrodollars to finance the war in Ukraine. “It's kind of a ridiculous idea in my view,” Mr Luft said. "That's not how the oil market works," he said. "This is a very sophisticated market, you cannot force the prices down." He also spoke to the South China Morning Post in August last year about who the Chinese government would tap to lead its foreign ministry after that year’s Communist Party Congress and last September penned an op-ed for the same publication in which he complained that the Ukraine war had become “a quagmire” and ridiculed Mr Biden’s prediction that US sanctions would have an effect on Moscow’s economy. “To date, Russia’s economy has contracted by 4 per cent – a far cry from President Biden’s suggestion at the beginning of the war that it would halve. If anyone is nearing implosion, it is probably Europe’s heavily indebted economies, facing an unprecedented pre-winter energy crisis, inflation, deindustrialisation and a growing social unrest already causing fissures in the Western alliance,” he said. Indeed, the first mention of Mr Luft’s claims against the Bidens came in his February post-arrest tweet. And though Republicans have now embraced his claims to have been speaking out against the president and his family since 2019, there’s no evidence he voiced his alleged concerns to anyone, even though unproven claims about the Bidens have been a fast-track to stardom in GOP media circles since Donald Trump’s first impeachment. Based on that pattern, it might be reasonable to conclude that Mr Luft is hoping to garner himself enough goodwill in the GOP that, should he remain a fugitive, a future Republican president — perhaps Mr Trump — will pardon him. Read More ‘Whistleblower’ who accused Bidens of corruption is charged with arms trafficking and violating Iran sanctions GOP cries foul over spy charges for Biden ‘whistleblower’ Top Republicans are gearing up to investigate the Hunter Biden case. Here's what to know. Dems call for probe into whether Gal Luft made claims about Biden to help China Biden and Zelenskyy praise each other despite divisions over Ukraine war Finland's new finance minister apologizes for racist comments in 2008 blog post

"Succession," the HBO drama about an ultra-wealthy family fighting for control of a sinister media empire, led the nominations Wednesday for the Emmys --...

The promotional tour for Greta Gerwig's Barbie, easily the most anticipated film of the year,

Sound of Freedom debuted in theatres earlier this month and has earned more than $41 million at the box office so far, but the film has found itself at the centre of controversies and conspiracy theories. The film follows Tim Ballard (Jim Caviezel), a former Department of Homeland Security agents who catches child sex traffickers by staging sting operations. It is based on Ballard’s life who left Homeland Security roughly 10 years ago to found the group Operation Underground Railroad. The group catches child sex traffickers in other countries by working with local police. Former President Trump previously appointed Ballard to a State Department advisory council on human trafficking in 2019. However, two and half years before the film’s release an investigation by VICE found that the organisation has often exaggerated its role in the rescues. Multiple law enforcement agencies that partnered with the group said that the group’s support was “insubstantial”. But that isn’t the only controversy this group, and the film, has found itself in. Sign up to our free Indy100 weekly newsletter Sound of Freedom has been accused by many of being linked to QAnon as has Ballard and Caviezel, who portrays him in the film. Critics have accused it of playing into the belief of the movement that global elites run a highly organised child sex trafficking network to harvest their blood. Ballard had previously supported a debunked theory that the furniture retailer Wayfair was using its platform to sell children. And Caviezel has promoted numerous QAnon theories and ‘Q drops’ which refer to posts that are made by Q on sites such as 4chan, 8chan and 8kun. Caviezel has even been reported to have appeared at QAnon events. Speaking to Charlie Kirk - founder of the right-wing organisation Turning Point USA - Caviezel supported theories about the chemical compound Adrenochrome. QAnon theorists believe that global elites such as Hilary Clinton torture children and harvest the chemical from them. "Adrenochrome is a chemical compound that's been around since the 1930s. There is a natural form.. which is caused by torturing kids. I brought this up a few years ago and all of a sudden I was attacked by every media group,” Caviezel said in the interview. “The next day I never heard from my agency for 14 months. My lawyers let me go. My agency never called me after that.” In an interview with right-wing commentator Jordan Peterson, Ballard also affirmed his belief in the adrenochrome blood harvesting theory saying he had seen it himself when in parts of Africa, but that there is no evidence certain celebrities had done it. Ballard also said that he and his group have “condemned the majority of what they see with conspiracy theories.” In a review of the film, Rolling Stone criticised the film for “fetishising the torture of its child victims” and said that it may be used as a gateway for the audience to “far-right conspiracy theories”. Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.

Taiwanese pop superstar Jay Chou’s mother is about to become very rich from her son’s image. On Thursday,