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California sues Trump administration while Iran War fears greet Congress

Shanka Cheryl
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California sues Trump administration while Iran War fears greet Congress

After Donald Trump pulled $1 billion from California, it’s not surprising that they’ve now sued him for that action while Congress met with officials to discuss Iran war fears.

California sued Tuesday to block the Trump administration from cancelling nearly $1 billion for the state’s high-speed rail project, escalating the state’s feud with the federal government.

The Federal Railroad Administration announced last week it would not give California the money awarded by Congress nearly a decade ago, arguing that the state has not made enough progress on the project.

The state must complete construction on a segment of track in the Central Valley agricultural heartland by 2022 to keep the money, and the administration has argued the state cannot meet that deadline and has failed to show adequate progress. That line of track would be the first built on what the state hopes will eventually become a 520-mile (837-kilometer) line.

But Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom says the move is retribution for California’s criticism of President Donald Trump’s immigration policies.

“The decision was precipitated by President Trump’s overt hostility to California, its challenge to his border wall initiatives, and what he called the “green disaster” high-speed rail project,” the state said in the lawsuit.

The lawsuit further faulted the Trump administration for halting cooperation with the state on granting environmental clearances for the project. It said terminating the funding would “wreak significant economic damage on the Central Valley and the state.”

Newsom told reporters the administration is “after us in every way, shape or form.” But he expressed confidence the state will win in court.

“Principles and values tend to win out over short-term tweets,” Newsom said.

The lawsuit highlighted a series of tweets Trump sent about the project, including one that said California’s rail project would be far more expensive than Trump’s proposed border wall.

That tweet came a day after California led 15 states in suing over Trump’s plans to fund the border wall, and hours before the administration first threatened to revoke the rail funding.

The Federal Railroad Administration did not immediately respond to an email message seeking comment about California’s lawsuit.

California has worked for more than a decade on the project to bring high-speed rail service between Los Angeles and San Francisco, but the project has been plagued by delays and cost overruns. It’s now projected to cost around $77 billion and be finished by 2033.

The $929 million the Trump administration wants to cancel is a key source of funding for a Central Valley track segment expected to cost about $12 billion.

California was not expected to tap that funding until 2021. If the lawsuit is not resolved before then, the election could put Democrats in the White House and Congress who may be friendlier to the project.

The state has already spent $2.5 billion in federal funding, and the Trump administration is exploring whether it can try to get that money back.

The lawsuit also asks the court to block the administration from awarding the money to any other project.

The lawsuit was filed in the Northern District of California.

donald trump team tamps down iran war worries

Trump Team Tells Congress They’re Preventing War

Tamping down talk of war, top Trump administration officials told Congress on Tuesday that recent actions by the U.S. deterred attacks on American forces. But some lawmakers remained deeplyskeptical of the White House approach in the Middle East.

After a day of closed-door briefings on Capitol Hill, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan said their objective over recent days has been to deter Iran. Now they want to prevent further escalation, Shanahan said.

“We’re not about going to war,” Shanahan told reporters.

“Our biggest focus at this point is to prevent Iranian miscalculation,” said Shanahan, flanked by Pompeo, after back-to-back briefings for the House and Senate. “We do not want the situation to escalate.”

The officials arrived on Capitol Hill as questions mounted over President Donald Trump’s tough talk on Iran and sudden policy shifts in the region. Skeptical Democrats sought out a second opinion, holding their own briefing with former Obama administration officials, former CIA Director John Brennan and Wendy Sherman, an architect of the Iran nuclear deal.

The competing closed-door sessions Tuesday came after weeks of escalating tensions that raised alarms over a possible military confrontation with Iran.

Trump, veering between bombast and conciliation in his quest to contain Iran, threatened Monday to meet provocations by Iran with “great force,” but he also said he’s willing to negotiate.

The results of the meetings Tuesday were mixed, with views settling largely along partisan lines.

Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, said the action taken by the Trump administration “is totally appropriate” and sends a message that “if you attack our people, there will be a response.”

Romney characterized it as defensive in nature and meant to deter Iran from “malign” actions.

Democratic Rep. Ruben Gallego, a veteran of the Iraq War, left the classified House briefing, saying: “What I heard in there makes it clear that this administration feels that they do not have to come back and talk to Congress in regards to any action they do in Iran.”

Democrats are particularly concerned the Trump administration may try to rely on nearly 20-year-old war authorizations rather than seek fresh approval from Congress for any action.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said he told Pompeo and the others their consultation with Congress has been “inadequate.” Shananan said he and the others heard that message and vowed to better communicate with lawmakers and the public.

In recent weeks, the U.S. sent an aircraft carrier strike group, four bomber aircraft and other assets to the region, and is moving a Patriot missile battery to an undisclosed country in the area. The Trump administration has evacuated nonessential personnel from Iraq, amid unspecified threats the administration says are linked to Iran.

Shanahan said the recent U.S. actions in the region were based on “credible threats” to U.S. forces and interests in the Middle East.

“We have deterred attacks based on our repositioning of assets, deterred attacks against American forces,” he said.

Pompeo said he tried to put the Iran situation in the country’s 40-year history of “malign” actions.

Pompeo, a former congressman, has become somewhat of a polarizing figure on Capitol Hill, and some lawmakers left the meeting saying he was lecturing and arrogant.

Democratic Rep. Adam Smith of Washington, the chairman of the Armed Services Committee, said he interjected at one point during the briefing: “We know Iran is bad, OK? What is the policy going forward? There wasn’t enough information on that.”

Smith said Pompeo was asked why it took so long to brief Congress. The congressman said the secretary’s answer was, “We were busy.” He said it was not an acceptable answer.

Earlier, Brennan told House Democrats that while Tehran wants to avoid conflict, the country’s leadership will not capitulate to Trump. Sherman warned that reckless behavior by the Trump administration in Iran is hurting the U.S.’s credibility and undermining moderates in the country. Their comments were conveyed by a person in the room who was not authorized to discuss the private meeting by name.

Top Democrats say Trump escalated problems by abruptly withdrawing the U.S. from the Iran nuclear deal, a complex accord negotiated during the Obama administration to prevent Iran from nuclear weapons production.

“I have yet to see any exhibited strategy,” said Democratic Rep. Abigail Spanberger of Virginia, a former CIA officer. She said she finds many of the administration’s recent statements on Iran to be “deeply troubling.”

Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., the chairman of the House intelligence committee, said, “What I’m interested in more right now is what the administration’s strategy is — if they have one — to keep us out of war.”

Republicans and Trump’s allies in Congress said the threats from Iran are real. Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., suggested lawmakers who say otherwise are doing so for political reasons. GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina urged Trump to “stand firm.”

The U.S. military appears to have concluded that Iran was behind the reported attack May 12 on four commercial vessels off the coast of the United Arab Emirates. A U.S. official said Monday a probe into the attack was finished and evidence still pointed at Iran, although the official did not provide details. The official was not authorized to publicly discuss the matter and so spoke on condition of anonymity.

On Sunday, a rocket landed near the U.S. Embassy in the Green Zone of Iraq’s capital of Baghdad, days after nonessential U.S. staff were ordered to evacuate from diplomatic posts in the country. No one was reported injured.

Defense officials said no additional Iranian threats or incidents had emerged in the days since the USS Abraham Lincoln carrier battle group arrived in the Arabian Sea late last week.

Iran, meanwhile, announced that it has quadrupled its uranium-enrichment production capacity. Officials said it remains set to the limits of a 2015 nuclear deal with world powers, making it usable for a power plant but far below what’s needed for an atomic weapon.

Tehran long has insisted it does not seek nuclear weapons, though the West fears its program could allow it to build them.

Quentin Tarantino’s mellow Cannes return plus Terrence Malick’s ‘A Hidden Life’

George Cando
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Quentin Tarantino’s mellow Cannes return plus Terrence Malick’s ‘A Hidden Life’

Quentin Tarantino fans expect a lot of blood, noise, guns, and explosions from his films, but as the director has gotten older, he’s taken a shot with a more mellow take in “Once Upon a Time In … Hollywood,” and it’s paid off. After the film ended, a standing ovation erupted lasting many many minutes.

Elle Fanning blames her dress for her collapse, and Terrence Malick’s “A Hidden Life” made an appearance although the filmmaker wasn’t so easy to find.

Twenty-five years after premiering “Pulp Fiction” in Cannes, Quentin Tarantino returned to the French film festival with neither great vengeance nor furious anger but a gentler fairy tale about 1960s Los Angeles.

“Once Upon a Time In … Hollywood” made its much-anticipated debut Tuesday in Cannes, giving the festival its most concentrated splash of celebrity and frenzy. The film’s two stars, Brad Pitt and Leonardo DiCaprio, brought a fittingly old-school Hollywood glamour to the Cannes red carpet, where throngs of onlookers swelled along the Croisette.

leonardo dicaprio sideways with brad pitt once upon a time in hollywood cannes

Much of the plot of “Once Upon a Time In … Hollywood” had been carefully kept under wraps leading up to the premiere. DiCaprio plays a Westerns actor anxious that his notoriety is slipping. Pitt plays his stunt double, friend and, because of a drunk driving offense, his driver. Though set against the backdrop of the Manson Family murders, much of Tarantino’s film is invested in recapturing the radiance of a bygone Hollywood.

For a filmmaker often associated with blistering dialogue and ecstatic explosions of violence, “One Upon a Time in … Hollywood” finds the 56-year-old Tarantino working at a more relaxed pace, spending generous amounts of time in odes to spaghetti Westerns and ’60s TV shows.

Ahead of the premiere, Tarantino, whose “Pulp Fiction” won the Palme d’Or in 1994, issued a statement to festival audiences imploring them not to spoil the film for future moviegoers — a request repeated before the film’s press screening. Journalists lined up hours in advance.

quentin tarantino with leonardo dicaprio brad pitt at cannes once upon a time

“Once Upon a Time in … Hollywood” is Tarantino’s first movie not being released by Harvey Weinstein. After Tarantino cut ties with the disgraced mogul, the project attracted the interest of most studios. Sony Pictures landed the film and gave it a $95 million budget — a very rare gamble on a high-priced original movie.

Instead of superheroes or intellectual property, “Once Upon a Time in … Hollywood” will instead bank on the draw of Tarantino and his two movie stars. Margot Robbie also co-stars as Sharon Tate.

Columbia Pictures released the new trailer for the film shortly before it premiered at Cannes.

The film tells the story of stars Brad Pitt and Leonardo DiCaprio’s respective characters, Cliff Booth and Rick Dalton, as they try and navigate an evolving Los Angeles as the city and its starry inhabitants enter the early 1970s. Tarantino — who serves as the film’s director, producer, and writer — describes it as “a story that takes place in Los Angeles in 1969, at the height of hippy Hollywood.” 

In addition to Dicaprio and Pitt, the film stars Margot Robbie as the late actress Sharon Tate who, in real life, was murdered in August 1969 by followers of Charles Manson. Along with Pitt, DiCaprio and Robbie, “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” features an impressive cast including Al Pacino, Damian Lewis, Dakota Fanning, Emile Hirsch, Timothy Olyphant, Kurt Russell, Bruce Dern and the late Luke Perry, among others.

“I’ve been working on this script for five years, as well as living in Los Angeles County most of my life, including in 1969, when I was seven years old,” Tarantino has said of the film. “I’m very excited to tell this story of an L.A. and a Hollywood that don’t exist anymore. And I couldn’t be happier about the dynamic teaming of DiCaprio and Pitt as Rick and Cliff.”

“Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood” will be released in U.S. theaters July 26.

elle fanning dress caused her cannes 2019 collapse images

Elle Fanning Dress Culprit

Elle Fanning says she fainted at a Cannes Film Festival dinner because her dress was too tight.

The 21-year-old actress collapsed at the Chopard Trophee dinner Monday evening at Cannes. Fanning later posted a message with a thumbs-up photo on Instagram saying she was “all good” despite what she called a fainting spell from her snug Prada gown.

Fanning is on the jury in Cannes. She’s the youngest person ever to be on the nine-person panel that will decide the Palme d’Or.

terrence malick a hidden life movie images

Terence Malick’s Warm Cannes Return

“Have you seen Terrence Malick?”

It’s a familiar question for the famously press-shy filmmaker that was, predictably, hollered again Monday at the Cannes Film Festival. Malick, whose “Tree of Life” won the Palme d’Or in 2011, returned to the French festival with a movie whose title could double for a description of the seldom-seen director himself: “A Hidden Life.”

The film, based on the true story of an Austrian conscientious objector to Adolf Hitler’s army in World War II, premiered Sunday night in Cannes where Malick was, in fact, in attendance. Though he eluded the festival’s red carpet photographers, a tuxedoed Malick was given a warm standing ovation following the film. The filmmaker — whom TMZ (not known for the most refined taste in film) has called “a Hollywood Bigfoot” — was even caught in a handful of photographs that quickly circulated on social media.

Perhaps that made some in the Cannes press corps hopeful that Malick would show up at the film’s press conference Monday, too. After all, the reclusive Jean-Luc Godard called in to talk to reporters on FaceTime last year. But the lone representatives for the film — stars August Diehl and Valerie Pachner — had no response to shouts about Malick’s whereabouts other than: “We don’t know!”

The more exciting reveal for critics, anyway, was “A Hidden Life.” The film is about Franz Jagerstatter (Diehl), who refused to fight for the Nazis. When he’s imprisoned, his wife (Pachner) raises their three daughters alone while tending to their alpine farm on a lush mountainside.

“A Hidden Life,” which runs about three hours, was hailed by some critics as the director’s best film in years, perhaps since “The Tree of Life.” In some critical quarters, Malick’s more recent output — including “To the Wonder,” ″Knight of Cups” and “Song to Song” — have grown too full of performative bliss, and lack the cohesion of earlier films like “The New World” and “The Thin Red Line.”

While “A Hidden Life” may not win back many who have strayed from Malick’s flock, its majesty is more grounded in a linear narrative, one deeply rooted in spirituality and faith. IndieWire called it a “lucid and profoundly defiant portrait of faith in crisis.” Variety called it “an epic return to form.”

Fox Searchlight acquired “A Hidden Life” shortly after its premiere.

As is often the case with Malick’s productions, the film was shot years before finally seeing the light of day. Diehl and Pachner said they, too, patiently awaited updates on its post-production progress.

“It seems to not be a linear process this editing. It’s more like circles,” said Pachner. “We talked to Terry and the editors throughout those two and a half years, and they’d always be like: ‘It’s so good you didn’t see it already because now it’s so different now and it’s so much better now.’”

The passage of time was enough to see several of its actors, Bruno Ganz and Michael Nyqvist, pass away in the interim. But Diehl said the arrival of “A Hidden Life” is timely.

“The person who says, ‘No’ — this is getting more and more rare in our whole world. We’re all jumping on one train and saying, ‘Yes, that’s the world now. We have to go with it,’” said Diehl. “If there would be more people like this, especially right now in Europe with all the political developments, it would maybe be a solution. Maybe that’s a bridge to our days.”

Diehl pointed to the rise of the far-right in Europe and elsewhere as a further connection to “A Hidden Life.” Later this week, elections to the European Parliament will be held in 28 countries.

“It is time to stand up against all this right-wing development in the whole of Europe. It’s going a very wrong way,” said Diehl. “We all have our private choices to make. Our voice counts, I think. Each voice.”

Who suffers most from US ban on Huawei?

Jeffrey Lang
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Who suffers most from US ban on Huawei?

Huawei says that Donald Trump is being a bully in regard to the United States placing a man on the tech giants products. The Trump Administration says its for security reason, but who winds up losing the most in this fight?

Trump administration sanctions against Huawei have begun to bite even though their dimensions remain unclear. U.S. companies that supply the Chinese tech powerhouse with computer chips face a drop in sales, and Huawei’s smartphone sales could get decimated with the anticipated loss of Google’s popular software and services.

The U.S. move escalates trade-war tensions with Beijing, but also risks making China more self-sufficient over time.

Here’s a look at what’s behind the dispute and what it means.

WHAT’S THIS ABOUT?

Last week, the U.S. Commerce Department placed Huawei on its so-called Entity List, effectively barring U.S. firms from selling it technology without government approval.

Google said it would continue to support existing Huawei smartphones but future devices won’t have its flagship apps and services, including maps, Gmail and search. Only basic services would be available, making Huawei phones less desirable. Separately, Huawei is the world’s leading provider of networking equipment, but it relies on U.S. components including computer chips. About a third of Huawei’s suppliers are American.

WHY PUNISH HUAWEI?

The U.S. defense and intelligence communities have long accused Huawei of being an untrustworthy agent of Beijing’s repressive rulers — though without providing evidence. The U.S. government’s sanctions are widely seen as a means of pressuring reluctant allies in Europe to exclude Huawei equipment from their next-generation wireless networks. Washington says it’s a question of national security and punishment of Huawei for skirting sanctions against Iran, but the backdrop is a struggle for economic and technological dominance.

The politics of President Donald Trump’s escalating tit-for-tat trade war have co-opted a longstanding policy goal of stemming state-backed Chinese cyber theft of trade and military secrets. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said last week that the sanctions on Huawei have nothing to do with the trade war and could be revoked if Huawei’s behavior were to change.

THE SANCTIONS BITE

Analysts predict consumers will abandon Huawei for other smartphone makers if Huawei can only use a stripped-down version of Android. Huawei, now the No. 2 smartphone supplier, could fall behind Apple to third place. Google could seek exemptions, but would not comment on whether it planned to do so.

WHO USES HUAWEI ANYWAY?

While most consumers in the U.S. don’t even know how to pronounce Huawei (it’s “HWA-way”), its brand is well known in most of the rest of the world, where people have been buying its smartphones in droves.

Huawei stealthily became an industry star by plowing into new markets, developing a lineup of phones that offer affordable options for low-income households and luxury models that are siphoning upper-crust sales from Apple and Samsung in China and Europe. About 13% of its phones are now sold in Europe, Gartner analyst Annette Zimmermann estimates.

That formula helped Huawei establish itself as the world’s second-largest seller of smartphones during the first three months of this year, according to the research firm IDC. Huawei shipped 59 million smartphones in the January-March period, nearly 23 million more than Apple.

RIPPLE EFFECTS

The U.S. sanctions could have unwelcome ripple effects in the U.S., given how much technology Huawei buys from U.S. companies, especially from makers of the microprocessors that go into smartphones, computers, internet networking gear and other gadgetry.

The list of chip companies expected to be hit hardest includes Micron Technologies, Qualcomm, Qorvo and Skyworks Solutions, which all have listed Huawei as a major customer. Others likely to suffer are Xilinx, Broadcom and Texas Instruments, according to industry analysts.

Being cut off from Huawei will also compound the pain the chip sector is already experiencing from the Trump administration’s rising China tariffs.

As expected, the Commerce Department on Monday announced a grace period of 90 days that applies to existing Huawei smartphones and networking equipment. The grace period allows U.S. providers to alert Huawei to security vulnerabilities and engage the Chinese company in research on standards for next-generation 5G wireless networks. It also gives operators of U.S. rural broadband networks that use Huawei routers time to switch them out.

The Commerce Department could extend the temporary license to continue to ease the blow on smartphone owners and network operators with installed Huawei gear. Whether that happens could depend on whether countries including France, Germany, the U.K. and the Netherlands continue to refuse to completely exclude Huawei equipment from their wireless networks.

Still in place are requirements that government licenses be obtained for any U.S. sales to Huawei unrelated to existing equipment.

COULD THIS BACKFIRE?

Huawei is already the biggest global supplier of networking equipment and is now likely to move toward making all components domestically. China already has a policy seeking technological independence by 2025.

U.S. tech companies, facing a drop in sales, could respond with layoffs. More than 52,000 technology jobs in the U.S. are directly tied to China exports, according to the Computing Technology Industry Association, a trade group also known as CompTIA.

WHAT ABOUT HARM TO GOOGLE?

Google may lose some licensing fees and opportunities to show ads on Huawei phones, but it still will probably be a financial hiccup for Google and its corporate parent, Alphabet Inc., which is expected to generate $160 billion in revenue this year.

THE APPLE EFFECT

In theory, Huawei’s losses could translate into gains for both Samsung and Apple at a time both of those companies are trying to reverse a sharp decline in smartphone sales.

But Apple also stands to be hurt if China decides to target it in retaliation. Apple is particularly vulnerable because most iPhones are assembled in China. The Chinese government, for example could block crucial shipments to the factories assembling iPhones or take other measures that disrupt the supply chain.

Any retaliatory move from China could come on top of a looming increase on tariffs by the U.S. that would hit the iPhone, forcing Apple to raise prices or reduce profits.

What’s more, the escalating trade war may trigger a backlash among Chinese consumers against U.S. products, including the iPhone. 

“Beijing could stoke nationalist sentiment over the treatment of Huawei, which could result in protests against major U.S. technology brands,” CompTIA warned.

Huawei Donald Trump ban gets grace period

Jeffrey Lang
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Huawei Donald Trump ban gets grace period

Tensions continue escalating between China and the United States, but tech giant Huawei got a slight reprieve from Donald Trump. The president is trying to prove that the Huawei ban and China trade war aren’t connected.

The United States is delaying some restrictions on U.S. technology sales to Chinese tech powerhouse Huawei in what it calls an effort to ease the blow on Huawei smartphone owners and smaller U.S. telecoms providers that rely on its networking equipment.

The Trump administration insists the sanctions are unrelated to its escalating trade war with China, and many analysts see it as aimed at pressuring U.S. allies in Europe to accede to Washington’s entreaties to exclude Huawei equipment from their next-generation wireless networks, known as 5G.

The U.S. government on Monday amended last week’s order restricting all technology sales to Huawei, the world’s biggest maker of mobile network gear and the No. 2 smartphone brand. It granted a temporary, 90-day exemption, but only for existing hardware and software.

It also said that grace period could be renewed.

Shares in tech companies rose Tuesday after some news organizations erroneously reported that the amended order amounted to a blanket reprieve for Huawei.

“It’s just housekeeping. It’s not a capitulation. It’s a very pragmatic solution to avoid unintended consequences to third parties,” said Kevin Wolf, who oversaw a related case involving China’s No. 2 telecoms supplier ZTE as assistant secretary of commerce for export administration under President Barack Obama.

The U.S. claims Huawei is a cybersecurity risk and has targeted it against the backdrop of a wider battle with China over economic and technological pre-eminence that has included tariffs on billions worth of trade and limits on business. U.S. officials say Huawei is legally beholden to China’s repressive rulers but have provided no evidence that it has intentionally allowed its equipment to be used for espionage.

Huawei founder Ren Zhengfei sought to put a brave face on the situation, saying Tuesday that the company has “supply backups” if it loses access to American components. Huawei Technologies Ltd. relies on Google’s Android operating system and U.S. components suppliers for its smartphones.

“I should say this impact will be very big, but Google is an extremely good company,” Ren Zhengfei told Chinese reporters. “We are discussing emergency relief measures,” he added, without giving details.

Industry analysts say Huawei might struggle to compete if it cannot line up replacements for Google services that run afoul of the U.S. curbs.

Google says its basic services still will work on existing Huawei smartphones. However, the company would be barred from transferring hardware or software directly to Huawei. That would affect maps or other services that require the American company’s support.

In Brussels, a senior Huawei European representative lashed out at the U.S. sanctions.

“This is dangerous. Now it is happening to Huawei. Tomorrow it can happen to any other international company,” Abraham Liu, Huawei chief representative to the European Union’s institutions, told reporters.

China’s government repeated its promise to defend Chinese companies abroad but gave no details of what Beijing might do.

The 90-day grace period announced Monday by Washington exempts from U.S. licensing requirements any technology needed to maintain and support existing networking equipment and smartphones. It also authorizes U.S. providers to alert Huawei to security vulnerabilities and engage the Chinese company in research on standards for next-generation 5G wireless networks.

“This license will allow operations to continue for existing Huawei mobile phone users and rural broadband networks,” Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross said in a statement.

But still in place are requirements that government licenses be obtained for any sales to Huawei unrelated to existing equipment.

The Commerce Department said the grace period would allow rural U.S. telecom operators that depend on Huawei equipment for “critical services” time to make other arrangements. Companies that supply software — such as Google for Huawei’s Android smartphones — can continue to provide updates.

Britain’s cybersecurity agency issued guidance saying the temporary reprieve means “people should be able to update their handsets as normal.”

In a report, the global risk assessment firm Eurasia Group said that if the sanction process helps persuade European network carriers to also shun Huawei equipment, a full ban on purchases of U.S. technology products and services could be avoided.

The move to delay the restrictions on Huawei may follow a familiar script with the Trump administration, which in its attempt to change the U.S.’s trade relations with major economies like China and Europe has often announced restrictions or tariffs only to delay their implementation. That increases pressure on the other side but also gives them an incentive to negotiate.

It hasn’t always worked. The U.S. has announced new tariffs on European and Chinese goods several times, only to see them retaliate with tariffs on U.S. goods. That has raised the stakes in the trade wars, hurting global commerce and economic growth.

As China looks to respond to President Donald Trump’s move against Huawei, Apple makes a prominent potential target for retaliation.

Apple is Huawei’s main American rival in smartphones and its iPhones are assembled in China. The country is also Apple’s No. 2 market after the United States.

Attacking Apple might be politically awkward for Chinese leaders who have accused Washington of mistreating Huawei. Business groups say Chinese officials are trying to reassure American companies they are welcome despite the tariffs war.

But regulators have an array of tools including tax and safety inspections that can hamper a company with no official acknowledgement it is targeted.

Huawei’s U.S. sales collapsed in 2012 after a congressional panel told phone carriers to avoid the company and its smaller Chinese competitor, ZTE Corp., as security threats.

Despite that, Huawei’s sales elsewhere have grown rapidly. The company reported earlier its global sales rose 19.5% last year over 2017 to 721.2 billion ($105.2 billion).

Huawei smartphone shipments rose 50 percent over a year earlier in the first three months of 2019 to 59.1 million, while the global industry’s total fell 6.6%, according to IDC. Shipments by Samsung and No. 3 Apple declined.

Paris ready for Serena Williams plus 2019 French Open predictions

Luka Alario
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Paris ready for Serena Williams plus 2019 French Open predictions

Serena Williams has had an injury-filled season like Rafael Nadal, but like Rafa, she isn’t letting a rough knee stop her from the 2019 French Open at Roland Garros. Plus, we have the odds on winners for this year just below.

Welcome back to Paris, Serena Williams. The tennis world can’t wait to find out exactly how that bothersome left knee is holding up.

Williams practiced at the French Open’s redesigned main stadium on Monday — alas, Court Philippe Chatrier’s retractable roof won’t be ready until next year — and will want to get some more work in over the coming days, given how little she’s played on clay courts lately.

As in: a total of just one match on the surface since last year’s tournament at Roland Garros. Forever, it seems, Williams has been the woman to beat on the Grand Slam stage, provided she is in the field and is healthy. No one really knows this time just how ready she is.

“We just don’t know her physical status at this point,” 18-time major champion Chris Evert said in a telephone interview. “She relies so much on the physicality of her game and her movement and her sprinting and just her court coverage and setting up those big shots. Her legs are vital to her game. I don’t know if we’ve seen her 100 percent since the beginning of the year.”

With the French Open set to start Sunday, the 10th-ranked Williams has played only nine matches in 2019.

Five were at the Australian Open in January, when she lost to Karolina Pliskova in the quarterfinals after blowing a 5-1, 40-30 lead in the third set and four match points in all.

She retired from a match at Indian Wells, citing an illness, then withdrew from tournaments in Miami and Rome, citing her knee.

“I haven’t played a ton of matches this year. Not my choice; just by force,” Williams said after her lone clay appearance, an opening victory at the Italian Open before she pulled out ahead of what would have been a match against her older sister, Venus. “I really, really actually desperately wanted to be on the tour and to be playing, but it hasn’t been able to work out.”

The red clay used in Paris never has been the most natural surface for success for Williams, in part because it slows down her massive serves and groundstrokes that earn so many quick points on grass or hard courts.

“Remember, she hits the ball very early and very flat. So if she doesn’t have control of her body, many errors will come,” International Tennis Hall of Fame coach Nick Bollettieri said, “because she’s not going to push a ball.”

Still, it’s a testament to her greatness that Williams did manage to win three titles in France, part of her haul of 23 Grand Slam singles trophies. That’s a record in the professional era, which began in 1968, and one shy of Margaret Court’s all-time mark.

“She takes great pride in Grand Slams and her lead-in has not been up to her high standards,” Evert said. “It’s all about the knee, which has been nagging her. It is a concern, especially now on the clay, where you’ve got to move more to win a point. You use your legs, your knees, more than on any other surface.”

Here’s the thing: Williams is not just any player, of course.

After 16 months away from Grand Slam competition because of her pregnancy and the birth of her daughter in September 2017, Williams showed up in Paris a year ago and looked to be approaching the height of her powers right away. She knocked off a pair of seeded women to set up a showdown against Maria Sharapova in the fourth round, but then pulled out because of a chest muscle injury.

Williams would go on to reach the finals at Wimbledon and the U.S. Open before coming up just short of her 24th major trophy each time.

That showed what she’s still capable of doing, even without much prep work.

“Serena’s always — always — someone that you’re thinking about in the draw. Whenever she’s there, she can win any tournament that she plays,” said 14th-ranked Madison Keys, the 2017 U.S. Open runner-up and a semifinalist in Paris in 2018. “She played a handful of tournaments last year and made the finals of, what, at least two Grand Slams? So Serena’s Serena, and there’s a reason that she has so many titles to her name.”

So can Williams go to the French Open and contend, despite the lack of action? Keys’ response: “100 percent.”

rafael nadal kiki bertens best bets to win 2019 french open roland garros

Kiki Bertens, Rafeal Nadal Best Bets For 2019 Roland Garros

The year’s second tennis major, the French Open, begins on Sunday, May 26 at Roland Garros, with Romanian clay-court specialist Simona Halep favored to repeat as champion. Halep has made the French Open women’s final in three of the past five years and owned the world No. 1 ranking until Naomi Osaka seized it this January. The Westgate Las Vegas SuperBook lists Halep at 4-1 in the latest 2019 French Open odds, followed by Osaka and Kiki Bertens at 8-1 and Serena Williams at 10-1. Osaka has won two straight Grand Slams. Bertens just defeated Halep on clay to take the Madrid Open, and the Dutch standout did not drop a set in the entire tournament. Williams, 37, is looking to add to her 23 Grand Slam titles. Before you make any 2019 French Open picks, you need to see what Gavin Mair has to say.

An uncanny international women’s tennis guru, Mair called Naomi Osaka winning the 2018 U.S. Open at 32-1 — part of his mind-boggling two-year streak. Over that period, $100 bettors following Mair’s tournament picks are up more than $21,000.

Now, Mair has analyzed the latest women’s French Open odds 2019 and released his three best bets to win. All are 20-1 long shots or higher, including a massive 60-1 long shot.

Mair told media outlets that Halep is an understandable favorite, but “there is a good chance she will not retain her championship. Prior to the start of this season, Halep’s coach, Darren Cahill, decided he would no longer take charge of the Romanian’s camp.  

“The Australian previously coached Lleyton Hewitt and Andre Agassi and he was instrumental in Halep’s rise to the top of the sport,” Mair continued. “That is not to say that Halep is a diminished player since Cahill’s departure — far from it. Halep has still had a strong season to this point, but there have been several occasions where she has failed to get over the finishing line. And I wonder if Cahill was the missing link between Halep and the Grand Slam-winning mindset.”

Instead, Mair is all over a major long shot who grew up playing on clay and enters the 2019 French Open in top form. “She has a much better chance than her French Open odds indicate,” Mair said. “She’s been one of the best players so far in 2019.”

Kiki Bertens currently now has the second best odds to win the French Open surpassing Serena Williams.

Entering the 2019 French Open sees Rafael Nadal at even odds to win the tournament.

Mona Barthel avoids rain delay nuremberg cup

Mona Barthel Overcomes Rain

Rain disrupted play at the Nuremberg Cup on Monday, with Mona Barthel the only player to progress on the second day.

The German defeated Paula Ormaechea 6-3, 3-6, 6-2 despite an interruption of almost four hours in the first set due to rain.

Other matches, including defending champion Johanna Larsson’s opener against two-time Grand Slam champion Svetlana Kuznetsova, were all postponed to Tuesday.

No.3 seed Ajla Tomljanovic’s match against Sabine Lisicki was also put back.

Ashleigh Barty injury withdrawal

Ashleigh Barty Injury

Top-seeded Ashleigh Barty withdrew from the Internationaux de Strasbourg clay-court tournament on Tuesday because of a right arm injury.

Barty was replaced in the main draw by lucky loser Diana Marcinkevica.

The eighth-ranked Australian said she would not take any risk ahead of the French Open, which starts Sunday in Paris.

“I gave it my best chance, but unfortunately I wouldn’t be playing my best tennis,” Barty said. “I’m busy the next two months and I need to look after my body now.”

Joe Biden becomes Democratic donation king plus Fox News Democrat divide

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Joe Biden becomes Democratic donation king plus Fox News Democrat divide

Donald Trump’s biggest worry continues to be Joe Biden, and the president went out of his way to slam him during his recent visit to Pennsylvania. Even going so far as to say that the former vice president abandoned the state, but he forgot to mention that his parents moved when Biden was a child. Plus Democrats are continuing to be divided about taking part in FOX News town halls which will only hurt those that choose to avoid it.

By avoiding FOX News, they only prove those viewers correct in feeling like Dems are always looking down on them. Elizabeth Warren is right on many things, but decrying other Democrats showing up on FOX News is a bad move. Why not move outside of the echo chamber and prove yourself to people who oppose you?

Joe Biden Donation King

Joe Biden is finding unexpected online fundraising success from low-dollar donors, with more than 97% of his contributions coming from those who gave less than $200, his presidential campaign announced Tuesday.

The former vice president, who last month raised $6.3 million in his first 24 hours as a candidate, was widely expected to do well with conventional big-dollar Democratic donors, who have lasting loyalty to President Barack Obama’s No. 2. But it was an open question whether he’d be able to raise small amounts online from the party’s base, a metric that is often touted as a demonstration of grassroots support.

His campaign says the newly released figures are a clear sign that he will be able to compete not just with Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont and former Rep. Beto O’Rourke of Texas, whose online fundraising operations led the Democratic field last quarter, but also with President Donald Trump.

“We’re continuing to build a robust digital operation that brings new voters to Team Joe and puts our campaign in a position of strength to take on Donald Trump,” said Biden digital adviser Brandon English. “On Day One, a record-breaking 65,000 people found us online and donated to Joe Biden. These are people we didn’t have email addresses for 24 hours earlier.”

The campaign says nearly two-thirds of Biden’s donors gave a total of less than $25, with teachers comprising the largest professional block of contributors.

But while Biden’s campaign is happy to talk about the percentage of donors who have given small contributions over the internet, including 96,000 who gave during the first 24 hours of his campaign, they won’t say how much has been raised online. Meanwhile, much of his recent campaign schedule has centered around high-dollar donor events in Los Angeles and Florida.

Sanders, a prolific online fundraiser, took in more than $15 million last quarter from those who gave less than $200, including nearly $6 million collected from about 220,000 donors in the 24 hours after launching his campaign. O’Rourke took in about $5.5 million from donors who gave less than $200 during the first quarter, according to Federal Election Commission records.

Many candidates in the race have spent years building out their online fundraising operations, which often target prospective donors through social media ads and emails that ask for a small contribution.

Biden is a relative newcomer, though he did have one major advantage: Obama’s email list. Another likely factor is his nascent success in online ad spending that has outpaced Trump $1.5 million to $969,000, according to spending data tabulated by the digital firm Bully Pulpit Interactive.

“Every story until now has been ‘Trump is outspending Democrats online,’ and it’s clear Biden and his team understand that,” said Tim Lim, a Democratic digital strategist who worked for Obama and Hillary Clinton. “They are putting their money where their mouth is.”

The campaign says their biggest fundraising moment yet was during a Biden rally in Philadelphia on Saturday, when they took in about $1,000 per minute.

Lim, however, said that for all the talk about online fundraising, the most important numbers remain how much cash you have and how quickly you’re spending it.

“There will be a lot of spin about those metrics, but unless they are impacting your bottom line, they don’t really matter,” he said.

pete buttigieg with chris wallace fox news town hall

FOX NEWS DEMOCRAT FIGHT 2020

Bernie Sanders appeared on a Fox News town hall and attracted nearly 2.6 million viewers. Elizabeth Warren turned down a similar chance while branding the network a “hate-for-profit racket.” Pete Buttigieg used Fox News’ own air to criticize two of its most popular personalities.

Whether to appear on the nation’s top-rated cable news channel has become an unlikely marker for the divergent strategies top Democrats vying for the White House are employing. They are seeking to deny a second term to one of Fox News Channel’s most avid viewers, President Donald Trump.

It’s forcing them to weigh the possibility of extended airtime in front of conservative audiences who could be impressed against possibly alienating some of their own party’s primary voters, who don’t want to encourage what they see as the network’s overly sympathetic relationship to the Trump administration and other Republican causes.

And how they choose can sometimes saymore about the candidates than anything they actually say — or don’t — on Fox News Channel.

“It is very tough to win an American election and concede blue-collar, middle-class votes. And they don’t watch MSNBC,” said Rory McShane, a Las Vegas-based Republican strategist, referring to the cable network whose star commentators are left-of-center. “They watch Fox News.”

Complicating matters is the Democratic National Committee’s decision in March to bar Fox News from hosting one of the party’s 2020 presidential primary debates, with DNC Chairman Tom Perez saying the network isn’t “fair and neutral enough” to do so.

Still, enough Democrats have refused to shun the network that even Trump has taken notice.

“What’s going on with Fox, by the way? What’s going on there? They’re putting more Democrats on than you have Republicans,” Trump said Monday at a campaign rally in Pennsylvania. “Something strange is going on at Fox, folks.”

Sanders, a senator from Vermont, drew his largest TV town hall audience of the primary season when he appeared on Fox News last month. Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar did her own town hall on the channel and is a frequent Fox News guest, saying it boosts her credentials with voters from both parties. Kirsten Gillibrand will have a Fox News town hall on June 2, which her campaign says reinforces the New York senator’s “taking on the tough fights and winning in red and purple places.”

Former Texas Rep. Beto O’Rourke, New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker and former Obama administration housing chief Julian Castro all say they’d be willing to do similar town halls, though a Fox News spokeswoman declined to comment on ongoing conversations about possible town halls with any candidates.

In declining her own town hall invitation, Warren, a senator from Massachusetts, tweeted, “Fox News is a hate-for-profit racket that gives a megaphone to racists and conspiracists — it’s designed to turn us against each other, risking life and death consequences.”

Sen. Kamala Harris of California also isn’t interested in doing a Fox News town hall. And others have faced backlash for not flatly refusing to do one.

“I understand the short-term incentives for Bernie Sanders and Pete Buttigieg to appear on Fox News, but putting an imprimatur of legitimacy on one of the most destructive forces in American politics has long-term consequences,” Dan Pfeiffer, once a senior adviser to President Barack Obama, tweeted last month.

But Warren’s decision was panned by Whoopi Goldberg, co-host of ABC’s “The View,” a program where Democratic presidential hopefuls have lined up to appear for its large, presumably bipartisan, daytime viewership.

“If you can’t face a Fox audience, you can’t face the U.S.,” Goldberg said. “It’s that simple.”

Joe Brettell, a Texas-based public relations consultant and media strategist, said “both Harris and Warren were playing to the crowd to a certain extent.”

“But the reality of it is, the rule of thumb for any candidate in this day and age should be to actively and genuinely engage with the media to drive their message,” Brettell said. “Because the half-life of a memorable quip or a solid quote or a good moment is endlessly reverberated on social media.”

Buttigieg, the mayor of South Bend, Indiana, acknowledged Democrats’ Fox News divide during Sunday’s appearance, which drew an average of 1.1 million viewers, saying, “A lot of folks in my party were critical of me for even doing this.”

He added, “I get where that’s coming from,” then blasted network personalities Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham for their views on immigration.

Fox & Friends co-host Brian Kilmeade bristled at that, saying Monday on-air, “Don’t hop on our channel and continue to put down the other hosts on the channel, or the channel.”

“If you feel that negative about it, don’t come,” Kilmeade said.

Trump himself complained that the mayor had appeared on the network “knocking the hell out of Fox.”

Buttigieg fundraised off his decision to appear, writing in an email to supporters, “If we ignore the viewers of Fox News and every news platform that doesn’t share our worldview, we will surrender our ability to speak directly to millions of American voters.”

McShane, the GOP consultant, said he agrees with that sentiment — if not most of the rest of what Democratic presidential hopefuls say.

“You can be Elizabeth Warren and rally all the Zabar’s-eating, Starbucks-drinking, associate professors,” he said of food chains based in New York and Seattle. “But most of the rest of the country thinks those people are whack-a-doo.”

Donald Trump keeps Don McGahn hidden away, contempt vote coming

Shanka Cheryl
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Donald Trump keeps Don McGahn hidden away, contempt vote coming

Donald Trump is putting former White House lawyer Don McGhan through the ultimate loyalty test. Don’t show up for a subpoena and risk losing your law license or do the patriotic legal thing. McGhan chose to side with Trump for now.

House Judiciary Chairman Jerrold Nadler gaveled open a Trump-Russia hearing Tuesday with an empty witness chair and a stern warning that former White House Counsel Don McGahn will be held in contempt for failing to appear in defiance of the committee’s subpoena..

“Our subpoenas are not optional,” Nadler said. The panel will hear from McGahn “one way or another,” he said. “This committee will have no choice but to enforce the subpoena against him.”

Democrats are facing yet another attempt by President Donald Trump to stonewall their investigations. This time they’re blocked from hearing from McGahn — a chief eyewitness to the president’s handling of the federal Russia investigation — on orders from the White House.

Rep. Doug Collins, the ranking Republican on the Judiciary Committee, spoke scornfully of Nadler’s position, calling the session a “circus” and saying the chairman preferred a public “fight over fact-finding.”

Democrats are “trying desperately to make something out of nothing,” Collins said, in the aftermath of special counsel Robert Mueller’s findings in the Russia probe.

The committee voted to adjourn the hearing immediately after Collins’ remarks.

A lawyer for McGahn had said he would follow the president’s directive and skip Tuesday’s hearing, leaving the Democrats without yet another witness — and a growing debate within the party about how to respond.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, backed by Nadler, is taking a step-by-step approach to the confrontations with Trump. Nadler said the committee would vote to hold McGahn in contempt, and take the issue to court.

“We will not allow the president to stop this investigation,” the chairman said. A contempt vote is not expected until June, as lawmakers are scheduled to leave town for a weeklong recess.

Democrats are encouraged by an early success on that route as a federal judge ruled against Trump on Monday in a financial records dispute with Congress. Trump’s team filed notice Tuesday that they would appeal.

But Pelosi’s strategy hasn’t been swift enough for some members of the Judiciary panel who feel Democrats should be more aggressive and launch a formal impeachment inquiry as they try to get information from the administration. Impeachment hearings would give Democrats more standing in court and could stop short of a vote to remove the president.

The issue was raised in a meeting among top Democrats Monday evening, where some members confronted Pelosi about it, according to three people familiar with the private conversation who requested anonymity to discuss it.

Maryland Rep. Jamie Raskin made the case that launching an impeachment inquiry would consolidate the Trump investigations and allow Democrats to keep more focus on their other legislative work, according to the people.

Pelosi pushed back, noting that several committees are doing investigations already and they have already been successful in one court case. But some members, several of whom have spoken publicly about a need to be more aggressive with Trump, are increasingly impatient. Other Democrats in the meeting siding with Raskin included Rhode Island Rep. David Cicilline, California Rep. Ted Lieu and freshman Colorado Rep. Joe Neguse.

Just before the start of Monday’s meeting, Cicilline tweeted: “If Don McGahn does not testify tomorrow, it will be time to begin an impeachment inquiry of @realDonaldTrump.”

In the hours after the discussion, Pelosi and Nadler met privately. Shortly afterward, Nadler said “it’s possible” when asked about impeachment hearings.

“The president’s continuing lawless conduct is making it harder and harder to rule out impeachment or any other enforcement action,” Nadler said.

McGahn’s refusal to testify is the latest of several moves to block Democratic investigations by Trump, who has said his administration will fight “all of the subpoenas.” The Judiciary Committee voted to hold Attorney General William Barr in contempt earlier this month after he declined to provide an unredacted version of special counsel Mueller’s report. And the House intelligence committee is expected to vote on a separate “enforcement action” against the Justice Department this week after Barr declined a similar request from that panel.

McGahn’s lawyer, William Burck, said in a letter to Nadler that McGahn is “conscious of the duties he, as an attorney, owes to his former client” and would decline to appear Tuesday.

Still, Burck encouraged the committee to negotiate a compromise with the White House, saying that his client “again finds himself facing contradictory instructions from two co-equal branches of government.”

McGahn was a key figure in Mueller’s investigation, describing ways in which the president sought to curtail that federal probe. Democrats have hoped to question him as a way to focus attention on Mueller’s findings and further investigate whether Trump did obstruct justice.

If McGahn were to defy Trump and testify before Congress, it could endanger his own career in Republican politics and put his law firm, Jones Day, in the president’s crosshairs. Trump has mused about instructing Republicans to cease dealing with the firm, which is deeply intertwined in Washington with the GOP, according to one White House official and a Republican close to the White House not authorized to speak publicly about private conversations.

Administration officials mulled various legal options before settling on providing McGahn with a legal opinion from the Department of Justice to justify defying the subpoena.

“The immunity of the President’s immediate advisers from compelled congressional testimony on matters related to their official responsibilities has long been recognized and arises from the fundamental workings of the separation of powers,” the department’s opinion reads.

A federal judge rejected a similar argument in 2008 in a dispute over a subpoena for Harriet Miers, who was White House counsel to George W. Bush. U.S. District Judge John Bates said it was an unprecedented notion that a White House official would be absolutely immune from being compelled to testify before Congress. Miers had to show up for her testimony, but still had the right to assert executive privilege in response to any specific questions posed by legislators, said the judge.

But in 2014, under the Obama administration, the Justice Department issued an opinion arguing that if Congress could force the president’s closest advisers to testify about matters that happened during their tenure, it would “threaten executive branch confidentiality, which is necessary (among other things) to ensure that the President can obtain the type of sound and candid advice that is essential to the effective discharge of his constitutional duties.”

Donald Trump’s ‘treason’ talk fact check

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Donald Trump’s ‘treason’ talk fact check

Donald Trump is always savvy at jumping on a word before it can be used against him. In this case, the word is ‘treason,’ and he’s working it in to every rally speech now. Expect loyal Republicans begin to echo this word on FOX News.

President Trump is using “treason” rather lightly as he assails unidentified U.S. officials for investigating operatives of his campaign in 2016. There’s no allegation or even suggestion that they committed this punishable-by-death crime, if any crime at all.

Trump’s hyperbolic characterization echoed at the end of a week of unsupported assertions by the president on trade, the economy, drug prices and more. Meantime, Russian President Vladimir Putin declared inaccurately that no traces of collusion between his country and Trump’s 2016 campaign were found in the “exotic” special counsel investigation by Robert Mueller.

A Closer Look At The Facts:

RUSSIA INVESTIGATION AKA TREASON

TRUMP: “My Campaign for President was conclusively spied on. Nothing like this has ever happened in American Politics. A really bad situation. TREASON means long jail sentences, and this was TREASON!” — tweet Friday and retweet Saturday.

THE FACTS: It wasn’t treason. Indeed, his officials have said they have no specific evidence that anything illegal was done when the Trump campaign came under FBI surveillance that was approved by a court.

Treason only occurs when a U.S. citizen, or a non-citizen on U.S. territory, wages war against the country or provides material support to a declared enemy of the United States. Nothing of that sort has been alleged, let alone anything illegal in the surveillance.

FBI Director Chris Wray told Congress this month that he did not consider the FBI surveillance to be “spying” and that he has no evidence the FBI illegally monitored Trump’s campaign during the 2016 election. Wray said he would not describe the FBI’s surveillance as “spying” if it’s following “investigative policies and procedures.” His comments irritated Trump.

Attorney General William Barr has said he believed “spying” did occur, but he also made clear at a Senate hearing last month that he had no specific evidence to cite that any surveillance was illegal or improper.

The FBI obtained a secret surveillance warrant in 2016 to monitor the communications of former Trump campaign aide Carter Page. The New York Times also reported that the FBI used a woman posing as a research assistant to approach ex-Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos, who had earlier been told by a Maltese professor that Russia had “dirt” on Democrat Hillary Clinton in the form of stolen emails.

PUTIN SAID IT

PUTIN: “However exotic the work of special counsel Mueller was, I have to say that on the whole, he has had a very objective investigation, and he confirmed that there were no traces whatsoever of collusion between Russia and the incumbent administration, which we said was absolutely fake.” — remarks Tuesday before a private meeting with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in Sochi, Russia.

THE FACTS: Putin is wrong about the Mueller report in regards to its findings of “collusion.”

The Mueller report and other scrutiny revealed a multitude of meetings between Trump associates and Russians. Among them: Donald Trump Jr.’s meeting with a Russian lawyer who had promised dirt on Hillary Clinton.

On collusion, Mueller said he did not assess whether that occurred because it is not a legal term.

He looked into a potential criminal conspiracy between Russia and the Trump campaign and said the investigation did not collect sufficient evidence to establish criminal charges on that front.

Mueller noted some Trump campaign officials had declined to testify under the Fifth Amendment or had provided false or incomplete testimony, making it difficult to get a complete picture of what happened during the 2016 campaign. The special counsel wrote that he “cannot rule out the possibility” that unavailable information could have cast a different light on the investigation’s findings.

CALIFORNIA WILDFIRES

TRUMP, on California Gov. Gavin Newsom: “Talking about forests — clean up your forests; you won’t have forest fires. Clean them up. He blames it on global warming. I said, ‘No, try cleaning the floor of the forest a little bit so you don’t have four feet of leaves and broken trees that have sit there for 25 years.’ … It’s called ‘forest management.’” — remarks to National Association of Realtors on Friday.

THE FACTS: Both nature and humans share responsibility for California’s devastating wildfires, but fire scientists say forest management is not the main contributor. And most of California’s forests are controlled by the federal government, not the state.

Nature provides the dangerous winds that have whipped the fires, and human-caused climate change over the long haul is killing and drying the shrubs and trees that provide the fuel. That’s not to say California is blameless: Urban development encroaching on wildlands also is a factor. But about 19 million or 57 percent of California’s 33 million acres of forests are managed or owned by the federal government, according to the University of California.

Last year’s wildfire that incinerated the Northern California town of Paradise and surrounding areas was the single deadliest such blaze in California history.

Another recent major fire, in Southern California, burned through shrubland, not forest.

“It’s not about forest management,” said University of Utah fire scientist Philip Dennison at the time. “These aren’t forests.”

The dean of the University of Michigan’s environmental school, Jonathan Overpeck, said Western fires are getting bigger and more severe. He said it “is much less due to bad management and is instead the result of our baking of our forests, woodlands and grasslands with ever-worsening climate change.”

Wildfires have become more devastating because of the extreme weather swings from global warming, fire scientists said. The average number of U.S. acres burned by wildfires has doubled from 30 years ago.

DRUG PRICES

TRUMP: “Drug prices down for first time in 51 years (& soon will drop much further).” — tweet Sunday.

TRUMP: “Drug prices have gone down for the first time in 51 years — they’ve gone down. First time in 51 years.” — remarks May 13 at White House dinner.

THE FACTS: He’s making an outdated boast. Trump appeared to be referring to recent decreases in the Labor Department’s Consumer Price Index for prescription drugs. But the index was updated this month, before Trump’s latest claims, and it showed an increase of 0.3% in April for prescription drug prices when compared with the same month last year.

The index tracks a set of medications, both brand drugs and generics.

Other independent studies point to increasing prices for brand name drugs as well and more overall spending on medications.

An analysis of brand-name drug prices by media outlets showed 2,712 price increases in the first half of January, compared with 3,327 increases during the same period last year. However, the size of this year’s increases was not as pronounced.

Both this year and last, the number of price cuts was minuscule. The information for the analysis was provided by the health data firm Elsevier.

An analysis by Altarum, a nonprofit research and consulting firm, found that in 2018, spending on prescription drugs was one of the main factors behind a 4.5% increase in U.S. health spending. Spending on prescription drugs grew much faster than in 2017, according to the study.

Economist Paul Hughes-Cromwick of Altarum, said he expects drug prices will continue to creep up.

“I would be quite surprised if by July the annual rate doesn’t return to a more normal 2%-4% growth,” said Hughes-Cromwick.

JOBS

TRUMP: “And after years of stagnation, wages are rising fast, with the quickest growth for blue-collar workers. The best statistic of all — and people don’t know. … The blue-collar worker has the biggest percentage increase of anybody … These things didn’t just happen by accident. They happened because we are taking out this power out of Washington.” — remarks to real estate group Friday.

THE FACTS: He’s claiming credit for a trend of rising wages for lower-income blue-collar workers that predates his presidency.

Some of the gains also reflect higher minimum wages passed at the state and local level; the Trump administration opposes an increase to the federal minimum wage.

With the unemployment rate at 3.6 %, the lowest since December 1969, employers are struggling to fill jobs. Despite all the talk of robots and automation, thousands of restaurants, warehouses, and retail stores still need workers.

They are offering higher wages and have pushed up pay for the lowest-paid one-quarter of workers more quickly than for everyone else since 2015. In March, the poorest 25% saw their paychecks increase 4.4% from a year earlier, compared with 3% for the richest one quarter.

ECONOMY

TRUMP: “Our Economy is setting records, with more people employed today than at any time in U.S. history.” — tweet Sunday.

TRUMP: “We have the most people working today than at any time in the history of our country.” — remarks to real estate group Friday.

THE FACTS: Yes, but the record workforce is driven by population growth.

A more relevant measure is the proportion of Americans with jobs, and that is still far below record highs.

According to Labor Department data, 60.6 percent of people in the United States 16 years and older were working in April. That’s below the all-time high of 64.7 percent in April 2000, though higher than the 59.9 percent when Trump was inaugurated in January 2017.

TRADE

TRUMP: “We’ve been losing, for many years, anywhere from $300 billion to $500 billion a year with China and trade with China. We can’t let that happen.” — remarks Tuesday at the White House.

TRUMP: “We lost $180 billion with the European Union.” — remarks to National Association of Realtors on Friday.

THE FACTS: This is not how almost any economist would describe what is happening.

The United States does have a huge trade deficit with China, totaling $378.7 billion last year, as well as a $109 billion trade deficit with the EU. That means China and the EU exported far more to the United States than vice versa. But in return, U.S. businesses and consumers received goods and services with that money. Economists compare Trump’s take on trade deficits to a shopper going to a store and complaining they “lost” money with what they bought.

Most trade experts see trade deficits or surpluses between two specific countries as economically meaningless. China’s deficit with the United States is large in part because many goods, particularly electronics, that used to be made in different countries, typically in Asia, are now sent to China for final assembly, even though many key parts are still manufactured in countries such as Japan, South Korea and Taiwan.

That has lowered the U.S. trade deficit with those countries over the years while increasing the gap with China.

TAXES

TRUMP: “We have the biggest tax cut bill in the history of our country.” — remarks to real estate group Friday.

THE FACTS: His tax cuts are nowhere close to the biggest in U.S. history.

It’s a $1.5 trillion tax cut over 10 years. As a share of the total economy, a tax cut of that size ranks 12th, according to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. President Ronald Reagan’s 1981 cut is the biggest followed by the 1945 rollback of taxes that financed World War II.

Post-Reagan tax cuts also stand among the historically significant: President George W. Bush’s cuts in the early 2000s and President Barack Obama’s renewal of them a decade later.

BORDER

TRUMP: “The wall is being built as we speak. We’ll have almost 500 miles of wall by the end of next year.”

THE FACTS: It’s unclear how Trump arrives at 500 miles (800 kilometers), but he would have to prevail in legal challenges to his declaration of a national emergency or get Congress to cough up more money to get anywhere close. Those are big assumptions.

So far, the administration has awarded contracts for 244 miles (390 kilometers) of wall construction, but more than half comes from Defense Department money available under Trump’s Feb. 15 emergency declaration. Two judges — in Washington and in San Francisco — are weighing whether to block the administration for tapping those funds.

And nearly all of what Trump has awarded so far is for replacement barriers and fencing, not new miles of wall. Even if Trump prevails in court, all but 14 miles (22 kilometers) of those awarded contracts replace existing barriers.

The White House says it has identified up to $8.1 billion in potential money under the national emergency, mostly from the Defense Department.

Customs and Border Protection officials say the administration wants Congress to finance 206 miles (330 kilometers) next year. The chances of the Democratic-controlled House backing that are between slim and none.

Hollywood tests ‘Rocketman,’ ‘Taron Egerton’ against ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’

George Cando
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Hollywood tests ‘Rocketman,’ ‘Taron Egerton’ against ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’

Let’s face it, for all the mythology of Hollywood being the land of liberals, it’s exactly that. A myth. While the actors and actresses may be, the studios are about as conservative as it gets. Studios love safe bets, and oftentimes, movies like “Bohemian Rhapsody” are watered down to make them more palatable to a wider audience. Meaning, more box office tickets sold.

In the 90’s, when arthouse films began making money (due to minuscule budgets) the studios took notice and created offshoots indie studios. The only problem is that those indie film budgets began to balloon so there were many more bombs which led studio heads to say “See, those types of films don’t make money.”

can taron egerton rocketman make as much as rami malek bohemian rhapsody 2019 images

When “Bohemian Rhapsody,” took off at the box office, suddenly all eyes turned to the over the top R-rated Elton John biopic “Rocketman” which doesn’t shy away from sex, drugs and rock and roll. Heck, even Netflix’s Motley Crue biopic “The Dirt” was edgier than “Bohemian Rhapsody.” Freddie Mercury’s story was whittled down to a PG-13, and anyone who knew him can tell you that his life was far from that. What the studios aren’t also taking into consideration is that even with the flaws of the film, it was Rami Malek’s performance that saved the film.

The only reason why “Rocketman” got made was pure desperation on the part of Paramount Pictures, who felt like they had nothing to lose going all out. Now, of course, some studios are hoping for a disaster to say, “See, America still isn’t ready for gay stuff in mainstream movies (aside from girl on girl action, of course). If “Rocketman” takes off, they’ll say it’s an anomaly, but suddenly you’ll see floodgates open up a little more for that kind of film action.

It should come as no surprise that nearly all the movie studios passed on “Rocketman,” an R-rated musical fantasia about Elton John’s hedonistic breakthrough years. Too gay. Too expensive. Too reliant on an unproven star.

With nothing to lose, the down-on-its-luck Paramount Pictures saw the audacious project as a chance to prove something to both Hollywood and Wall Street — namely that, to borrow a reference from Sir Elton, it’s still standing.

So, now everyone waits with baited breath to see what happens next. Will it come close to “Bohemian Rhapsody” at the box office? Doubtful as it’s a hard R which limits the audience. Also, Queen had an even larger worldwide audience than Elton John. As a big fan of Elton John’s earlier hits (Philadelphia Freedom will always have a special place in my heart), I am rooting for the film to do well. Even if it doesn’t, it will have a great cult following.

taron egerton as elton john in rocketman

“Rocketman” will arrive in theaters on May 31 as perhaps the most ambitious movie of Hollywood’s summer season, a four-month period that typically accounts for 40 percent of annual ticket sales and relies overwhelmingly on franchises. Starring Taron Egerton and costing an estimated $120 million to make and market worldwide, “Rocketman” trails glitter — a million Swarovski crystals adorn the costumes and eyewear — and depicts gay sex, a first for a major studio. Mr. Egerton, 29, known for the “Kingsman” action comedies, did all of his own singing, reinterpreting classics like “The Bitch Is Back.” There is intricate choreography (one stylized scene finds an entire London neighborhood dancing in formation) and an orgy musical number set to “Bennie and the Jets.”

Depending on its box office performance, “Rocketman” could have wide ripple effects. Paramount has delivered nine consecutive quarters of improved financial results for Viacom, its corporate owner, but a turnaround is still tenuous. A big hit — and one that’s not a sequel, spinoff or reboot, at that — would provide a morale boost and send an important message to Hollywood’s creative community and Viacom investors: that even in the age of Netflix and Marvel, Paramount can deliver.The stakes are also high for Mr. Egerton. His previous movie, Lionsgate’s big-budget “Robin Hood,” was a critical and commercial bomb. If this one fizzles, Mr. Egerton’s leading man opportunities may vanish. Dexter Fletcher, who directed “Rocketman,” is also hoping for a career-making moment. Mr. Fletcher, who also acts, has never had a breakout success as a filmmaker, although he earned points in Hollywood for finishing “Bohemian Rhapsody” after the credited director, Bryan Singer, was fired.

In some ways, almost every major studio has something riding on “Rocketman.” Movies built around song catalogs have become white hot in Hollywood. Baz Luhrmann is working on an Elvis Presley movie for Warner Bros. Sony recently bought the rights to “Once Upon a One More Time,” described as a fairy tale fueled by Britney Spears songs. Universal is developing a Madonna biopic called “Blond Ambition.” Celine Dion, David Bowie and Judy Garland films are on the way from smaller studios.

Turnout for “Rocketman” could either heat up or cool down studio interest. Right now, film executives are dreaming of finding another “Bohemian Rhapsody.” The Queen bio-musical collected a jaw-dropping $908 million worldwide last year and won four Academy Awards, including one for Rami Malek as Freddie Mercury.

“It will be interesting to see how broad the ‘Rocketman’ audience will be — whether it bridges the gaps,” said Paul Dergarabedian, senior media analyst at Comscore, which tracks box office data.

Heterosexual men are typically the hardest audience for musicals to reach. “Bohemian Rhapsody” overcame that hurdle, but no one is exactly sure why. Some longtime movie marketers point out that Queen anthems like “We Will Rock You” and “We Are the Champions” are sporting event mainstays. “Or it could be that these movies are hitting on multiple levels: biopic, jukebox musical, an anchor performance, a little documentary even,” Mr. Dergarabedian said.

There are signs that Paramount’s gamble on “Rocketman” will pay off. The movie had its world premiere on Thursday at the Cannes Film Festival, where attendees openly boo if they don’t like what they see. “Rocketman” received a prolonged standing ovation and positive reviews. “A full-blown song-and-dance spectacular, in which fantasy and reality often blur together — sometimes with seamless fluidity, and sometimes with quasi-Brechtian distance,” wrote Justin Chang, a critic for The Los Angeles Times.

Paramount certainly seemed pleased. Publicists for the studio, which has placed last at the domestic box office for the last seven years, even as it found occasional hits like “A Quiet Place,” sent out a news release that said in capital red letters, “We’ve been waiting a long, long time — ‘Rocketman’ blasts off in Cannes!”

Doug Creutz, an analyst at Cowen and Company, expects “Rocketman” to collect roughly $120 million in the United States and Canada and rank as one of the 12 biggest movies of the summer. Sequels and reboots will fill every other slot, Mr. Creutz predicted in a recent report, with one exception. He also has high hopes for “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” (Sony), a lavish 1969-set drama from Quentin Tarantino and starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Brad Pitt and Margot Robbie.

“Buzz for the film seems pretty solid,” Mr. Creutz said of “Rocketman,” which he described as “a counterprogramming alternative to younger audience-targeted fare.” Also arriving on May 31 is “Godzilla: King of the Monsters” (Warner/Legendary) and “Ma,” a Universal-Blumhouse horror movie.

Still, success for “Rocketman” is far from guaranteed.

How much clamor is there for Elton John music? There may be a great deal: Mr. John has spent the last decade performing sold-out shows in Las Vegas and touring the world to similar results. On the other hand, Mr. John has spent the last decade performing. “Bohemian Rhapsody” benefited from pent-up demand for Mercury, who died in 1991 of complications from AIDS.

One of Paramount’s biggest challenges involves the perception of success. If “Rocketman” sells even half the number of tickets as “Bohemian Rhapsody” it will be a runaway success. But try telling that to box office headline writers.

There is no way for Paramount to avoid comparisons to “Bohemian Rhapsody,” even though “Rocketman” is a sharper-edged film that has a more auteur sensibility. Mr. Fletcher’s film begins and ends with Mr. John in rehab, where he identifies himself as an alcoholic, with addictions to cocaine and sex.

Gay imagery was largely underplayed in “Bohemian Rhapsody,” to the dismay of people eager for Hollywood to become less timid about homosexuality. But the depiction of same-sex relationships in “Rocketman” could limit interest in more conservative parts of the United States. The contemporary romantic comedy “Love, Simon” was a hard sell last year because it ventured a kiss between teenage boys. “Rocketman” is expected to generate enormous ticket sales in countries like England, but the film will not make it past Chinese censors without severe sanitization, something that Mr. John is likely to deem a nonstarter.

“Even if the movie doesn’t make one penny at the box office — which will kill Jim Gianopulos — it is the movie I wanted to make,” Mr. John said from the stage after the Cannes premiere, referring to Paramount’s chairman.

To overcome any box office difficulties, Paramount has thrown all of its weight into marketing the film. Fans can upload photos of themselves to a Paramount website and find out what they would look like in flamboyant Elton John eyewear. (Tagline: “Show the world you were never ordinary.”)

To generate word of mouth, Paramount teamed up with Fandango to offer sneak-peek screenings at 400 theaters on Saturday.

Mr. Gianopulos even likened “Rocketman” to a superhero movie as part of a push for the movie at the most recent CinemaCon, a convention for theater owners. “If musicians were superheroes, Elton John would be Rocketman — capable of escaping the gravity of the ordinary, fear and prejudice,” Mr. Gianopulos said on stage at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas, where Mr. John performed 450 shows for 1.8 million fans from 2004 to 2018.

Paramount then sent attendees home with sparkly “Rocketman” T-shirts.

Robert Eggers ‘Lighthouse’ stuns Cannes Film Festival with Robert Pattinson, Willem Dafoe

George Cando
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Robert Eggers ‘Lighthouse’ stuns Cannes Film Festival with Robert Pattinson, Willem Dafoe

When it was announced that Robert Pattinson would become the new Batman, the reaction was swift with some wondering if this was the end of his post “Twilight” indie film, but with “The Lighthouse,” those fears should be allayed. This film is a wonderful crazy torrent of strangeness featuring Pattinson with bulging eyes underscored by quite the hipster style mustache.

Robert Eggers’ “The Lighthouse,” starring Robert Pattinson and Willem Dafoe as turn-of-the-century lighthouse keepers, created quite an impact Sunday at the Cannes Film Festival with a wave-making, madhouse period tale that seemingly washed ashore from another era.

“The Lighthouse,” Eggers’ anticipated follow-up to the 2015 indie horror hit “The Witch,” premiered in the festival’s Directors’ Fortnight section.

While “The Witch” adopted the psychological folktales and terrors of a 1630s New England family, “The Lighthouse” is about a taciturn and weathered duo of 1890 seamen keeping the light on a remote Maine island. They gradually descend into the kind of isolation-induced maritime madness that Herman Melville would approve of.

Eggers shot it in black-and-white, on 35mm, in a nearly square format and through early 20th-century lenses. Filmed on a desolate spit of volcanic rock on the southern edge of Nova Scotia, “The Lighthouse” has already developed the stuff of legend as an audacious and harsh on-location production. Eggers built a 70-foot (20-meter) lighthouse with a working beam that, he proudly said in an interview before the movie’s premiere, could shine for 16 miles (25 kilometers).

“I had fun every day,” said Eggers. “But it was extremely miserable. Filmmakers and actors complaining about suffering, but, I mean, that’s part of what’s exciting about this. But it was very harsh and unforgiving. I’m from New England. I don’t mind the cold. I prefer to be cold than hot. But the wind on this rock was relentless. There’s no relief. At times, the wind was so loud that you can’t hear the person five feet away from you.”

Pattinson and Dafoe certainly agreed. When asked by an audience member after the movie’s first screening if any animals were hurt during the production (some seagulls have a rough go of it), Dafoe laughed and gestured at himself and his co-star.

“Yeah, these two animals,” Dafoe said.

The elements, both said, were grueling. Pattinson recalled filming a scene in which he runs over jagged rock in period-appropriate shoes as “one of the more terrifying things I’ve ever done in my life.”

“Even the simplest things I was doing, like pushing a wheelbarrow around, it’s impossible,” Pattinson said. “Because of the nature of the story, you could really push the physicality. There’s not too many movies or parts where you can really let fly with your body without looking completely ridiculous and out of place.”

the lighthouse movie with willem dafoe robert pattinson cannes film festival

Feverish and funny, bleak and bone-chilling, “The Lighthouse” is a unique and darkly comic gothic nightmare. Critics received it in Cannes as one of the festival’s certain highlights. A24 is expected to release it in theaters later this year.

After “The Witch,” Eggers spent a few years developing larger projects, including remake of 1922 “Nosferatu.” But when those stalled, he turned to a contemporary story that his brother, Max Eggers, had begun about a ghost in a lighthouse. Robert took it in a different direction that, given his deeply researched “The Witch” (which was written in period dialect), inevitably turned toward the past.

“I started researching and decided that I would make mine a period story, unsurprisingly,” Eggers said. “I came across a real account of two lighthouse keepers that had the same name, one older and one young, and that inspired the idea of this two-hander about identity that could evolve into something mythological.”

While a bigger budget than “The Witch,” the scale was still small, allowing the 35-year-old New Hampshire-native filmmaker complete artistic control — a major factor for Eggers ultimately choosing “The Lighthouse” as his second movie, he says.

So he plunged, again, into fiction and nonfiction period sources and dictionaries “of strange origins.”

“I like striving for the best interpretation of historical accuracy because I feel like that is a very high bar for all of my collaborators to reach,” Eggers said. “We know what it is. You’re not inventing things, you have clear goals. And I also like transporting an audience to another time and place. With this film, like everything that I’ve written or tried to write, the atmosphere comes first.”

The results astonished much of the cast and crew. The older lenses, for example, brought out new textures in the faces of Dafoe and Pattinson.

“I was doing ADR with Rob and he was like, ‘My god, I look like I’m 50 years old,’” recalls Eggers. “He was happy about that.”

Rafael Nadal slump ends by beating Novak Djokovic, winning Italian Open

Luka Alario
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Rafael Nadal slump ends by beating Novak Djokovic, winning Italian Open

Rafael Nadal may have been in a clay slump this season suffering from injuries, but that all ended Sunday when he defeated Novak Djokovic making more Italian Open history.

After losing in the semifinals of three straight clay-court tournaments, Nadal dominated for stretches against his longtime rival, Novak Djokovic, in a 6-0, 4-6, 6-1 win Sunday for a record-extending ninth Italian Open title.

“You were asking for titles. Finally, I have a title,” Nadal told reporters. “Here we are. Important title, important moment.”

It marked the first time in an Open Era-record 54 meetings, and in their 142nd set against each other, that Nadal won a set against Djokovic without conceding a game — otherwise known as a bagel.

In all, Nadal had a career-high four bagel sets in this tournament.

“I played a great first set in all aspects. No mistakes. Playing so aggressive, changing directions,” Nadal said. “It’s not usual and probably will not happen again.”

rafael nadal sweat winning italian open trophy

The timing for Nadal’s return to form could not have been more opportune, as he will seek a record-extending 12th title at the French Open starting next weekend.

“Winning a title is important but for me the most important thing is (to) feel myself competitive, feel myself healthy,” Nadal said. “Then with the feeling that I am improving. I know if I’m able to reach my level you can win, you can lose, but normally I’m going to have my chances — especially on this surface.

“Now is the moment to keep going,” Nadal added.

In the women’s final, Karolina Pliskova captured the biggest clay-court trophy of her career by beating Johanna Konta 6-3, 6-4.

Top-ranked Djokovic, meanwhile, appeared exhausted after spending more than 5 ½ hours on court against Juan Martin del Potro and Diego Schwartzman the previous two days.

Djokovic was also coming off the Madrid Open title last week.

“I don’t want to talk about fatigue or things like that,” Djokovic told the crowd during the post-match ceremony. “Rafa was simply too strong today.”

novak djokovic hugging rafael nadal win at italian open 2019 images


Speaking to reporters later, Djokovic said, “I was just running out of fuel a little bit today. Just kind of missed that half a step, especially on the backhand side.”

The Foro Italico crowd continually tried to encourage Djokovic with chants of “Vai Nole!” — Go Nole! — but the top-ranked Serb struggled with his overhead and drop shots.

Midway through the second set, Nadal chased down a lob with an over-the-shoulder shot and Djokovic’s ensuing overhead landed in the net to conclude a long point.

Djokovic again netted an overhead in the next game and then kicked the ball in frustration when he missed a drop shot attempt late in the second.

But Djokovic hung around in the second and converted his first set point when a looping forehand from Nadal sailed wide for his first break of the match. As he walked to his chair after winning the second set, Djokovic waved his arms to get the crowd behind him.

However, Djokovic didn’t have much left in the tank.

When Nadal pushed Djokovic deep into the corner in the opening game of the third set and Djokovic’s desperation lob sailed long to hand Nadal a break, Djokovic smashed his racket to the clay three times in frustration and received a warning from the chair umpire.

Djokovic won only 29 percent of the points on his second serve and committed 39 unforced errors to Nadal’s 17. Also, Nadal won 23 of the 31 rallies with nine or more shots.

rafael nadal kisses italian open trophy beating djokovic 2019

Rafa Speaks

In a press conference in Rome Rafael Nadal commented on how being able to work day in and day out helped him to get to his best level and win the title in the Italian capital. The Spaniard said: “Every practice and every match, no? It’s not a match that is very important.

It’s about every day looking for the things that I need with hope and with passion and with the right attitude, no? That’s daily work more than a match in particular. What helps is win matches, of course. What also helps is have the feeling you play better.

I say in Madrid I was playing better, then I played a bad match in the semifinals, true. But my feeling, especially after my lose against Thiem in semifinals of Barcelona, I think my personal feeling improved and my energy came back a little bit.

After that, I had the feeling that I was able to be back to play the level that I need to play. Before that, the energy I think was not that high in Monte-Carlo and in Barcelona before. Have been through some tough moments after Indian Wells.

Recovery of the knee again… Was not easy to come back and to prepare the right way. Mentally is tough to accept, too, that you cannot practice the way you need to practice. That’s part of the process. Then I had the chance to practice better, to do better things. Then the energy and motivation and passion back. In consequence, the level, too.”

karloina pliskova wins italian open beating johanna konta 2019

KAROLINA PLISKOVA NO. 2

Pliskova’s victory will move her up to No. 2 in the rankings and makes her one of the contenders for Roland Garros.

“I just hope to take the tennis I was playing here to Paris,” Pliskova said. “For sure there’s going to be a chance for me if I play this way.”

The 2016 U.S. Open runner-up, Pliskova also reached the Australian Open semifinals and the Miami Open final after opening this season with a title in Brisbane, Australia. But she lost in the second round of her previous two tournaments on clay in Stuttgart, Germany, and Madrid.

“Nobody really gave me chance for this tournament — even me,” Pliskova said. “Before the tournament, I was not super confident, not thinking about the final at all. I was just happy with every match which I played. So it’s little bit like a miracle for me.”

The unseeded Konta appeared nervous at the start, double faulting then landing a backhand into the net to hand Pliskova a break in her opening service game.

In the second set, Pliskova used a swinging forehand volley putaway to break for a 4-3 lead and never looked back.

“It’s always tough playing Karolina,” Konta said. “There’s rarely really a rhythm to the match. She plays with big shots, quite flat, and big serves. It can feel sometimes you’re fighting an uphill battle. That was the case today.”

Pliskova attributed a lot of her success to Conchita Martinez, the four-time Rome champion who she recently named her head coach.

“She loved clay so she knows exactly what I should do,” Pliskova said of Martinez. “There were small differences: movement, maybe to put more topspin on the balls, use drop shots — which I never use, but I start little bit, and to mix also the serves. … I know she loved this tournament. I think she prayed so I could win today.”

‘John Wick 3’ topples ‘Avengers: Endgame’ box office domination

George Cando
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0
‘John Wick 3’ topples ‘Avengers: Endgame’ box office domination

Keanu Reeves returned to the top of the box office charts for the first time in 11 years with “John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum.” The third film in the action franchise also gave Lionsgate a very much needed boost with better than expected ticket sales.

The box office has a new king and his name is John Wick. The third installment of the hyper violent Keanu Reeves franchise has taken the top spot at the North American box office and ended the three-week reign of “Avengers: Endgame.”

Studios on Sunday say “John Wick: Chapter 3 — Parabellum” has grossed an estimated $57 million in its opening weekend. Not only did it far exceed expectations, it’s a franchise best that nearly doubled the opening of the second film, which itself doubled the opening of the first film from 2014.

The audience, in other words, is growing exponentially for this series about a talented assassin who never seems to get a break. This time, there’s a $14 million price tag on his head.

Men made up the majority (63 of the “John Wick 3” opening weekend crowd. Overall audiences gave the film a rare A+ CinemaScore, indicating that word-of-mouth will be strong in subsequent weekends. According to Comscore’s PostTrak audience survey, 70% said they would “definitely recommend” to their friends and 21% said they would see it again in theaters.

“This is the best reviewed film of the series so far,” said Joe Drake, chairman of the Lionsgate Motion Picture Group, in a statement. “We believe word-of-mouth will continue to drive strong business for the film all over the world.”

Internationally “John Wick 3” earned $35.2 million from 66 territories.

“Avengers: Endgame” slid to second place in its fourth weekend with $29.4 million. Domestically, where the film has grossed $711 million, it’s now second only to “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” ($937 million) and globally, with $2.6 billion, it’s still second to “Avatar” ($2.8 billion).

In its second weekend, “Pokémon Detective Pikachu” also continued to do well, placing third with $24.8 million, but it still placed in the top spot internationally. But with the high-performing trifecta of John Wick, the Avengers and Pikachu, there weren’t very many moviegoers left over for the less flashy newcomers like “A Dog’s Journey” and “The Sun Is Also a Star.”

“The marketplace was so dominated by ‘John Wick,’” said Paul Dergarabedian, the senior media analyst for Comscore. “It’s tough when one movie overperforms by this kind of magnitude.”

“John Wick: Chapter 3 — Parabellum,” which finds the title’s super-assassin (Reeves) on the run from other contract killers, collected about $57 million at theaters in the United States and Canada over the weekend, according to Comscore. The R-rated Lionsgate series has grown remarkably more powerful with each installment: “John Wick: Chapter 2” had $30 million in initial ticket sales in 2017, improving on the $15 million that “John Wick” collected over its first three days in 2014.

That kind of audience expansion — extremely rare — is a dream result for Lionsgate, which has been struggling to turn around its movie operation, in part because Netflix has started to crank out the type of low- and mid-budget films in which Lionsgate has long specialized. Why go to theaters to see these diversions when Netflix is pumping them into your living room?

Last year, Lionsgate released 19 movies through various labels and took in a total of $379 million in North America, its worst showing since 2007. Lionsgate’s most recent releases, “Hellboy” and “Long Shot,” were both bombs. Tyler Perry delivered a hit in March with “A Madea Family Funeral,” but it was the last film that Mr. Perry intends to supply to Lionsgate, ending a 14-year run. He has a new alliance with Paramount.

Lionsgate said on Sunday that “John Wick: Chapter 3” collected an additional $35 million in partial release overseas. The film received strong reviews from most critics. David Gross, who runs Franchise Entertainment Research, a movie consultancy, said the results put the series “on outstanding footing going forward” and said it was now “an elite action thriller franchise.”

“John Wick: Chapter 3,” which stars Halle Berry in a supporting role, cost an estimated $75 million to make and roughly $40 million to market. The last time Reeves had a No. 1 opening was in 2008 with “The Day the Earth Stood Still.”

Amblin Entertainment and Reliance Entertainment’s “A Dog’s Journey” opened in fourth with an underwhelming $8 million. It might have beaten the PETA animal abuse claims, but it couldn’t beat the movie gods. The Universal-distributed film is a sequel to the 2017 hit “A Dog’s Purpose.” But unlike John Wick, the audience for this sequel was less than half of that for the first, which opened to $18.2 million. But audiences who did turn out gave it an A CinemaScore, which could point toward long-term playability.

Most disappointing, however, is the young adult adaptation “The Sun Is Also a Star” which grossed only $2.6 million from over 2,000 screens and landed in eighth place. Although modestly budgeted at a reported $9 million, and featuring popular television actors such as “Riverdale’s” Charles Melton and “grown-ish’s” Yara Shahidi, the Warner Bros.-released film failed to connect even with the audiences who turned out, 75% of whom were women. It got a poor B- CinemaScore.

It’s a far cry from the days of “The Fault in Our Stars’” $48 million debut in 2014, and even the last film based on a Nicola Yoon novel, “Everything, Everything,” which opened to over $11 million in 2017.

“As unpredictable and fickle as young adults are, so are the performances of films that target that audience,” Dergarabedian said.

In limited release, Joanna Hogg’s well-reviewed relationship drama “The Souvenir” did well with $85,851 from four screens.

Even with the success of “John Wick,” the weekend itself was down about 31% and the year to date is still down around 9%, but, Dergarabedian said that this is the calm before the storm. In the next few weekends, theaters will see an influx of could-be hits such as “Rocketman,” ″Aladdin” and “Godzilla: King of the Monsters.”

North American Box Office

Estimated ticket sales for Friday through Sunday at U.S. and Canadian theaters, according to Comscore. Where available, the latest international numbers for Friday through Sunday are also included. Final domestic figures will be released Monday.

1.“John Wick: Chapter 3 — Parabellum,” $57 million ($35.2 million international).

2.“Avengers: Engame,” $29.4 million ($46.8 million international).

3.“Pokémon Detective Pikachu,” $24.8 million ($53.8 million international).

4.“A Dog’s Journey,” $8 million ($13.9 million international).

5.“The Hustle,” $6.1 million ($9.5 million international).

6.“The Intruder,” $4 million.

7.“Long Shot,” $3.4 million ($1.8 million international).

8.“The Sun Is Also a Star,” $2.6 million ($484,000 international).

9.“Poms,” $2.1 million ($396,000 international).

10.“Uglydolls,” $1.6 million ($3.1 million international).

Worldwide Box Office

Estimated ticket sales for Friday through Sunday at international theaters (excluding the U.S. and Canada), according to Comscore:

1. “Pokémon Detective Pikachu,” $53.8 million.

2. “Avengers: Endgame,” $46.8 million.

3. “John Wick: Chapter 3 — Parabellum,” $35.2 million.

4. “A Dog’s Journey,” ($13.9 million international).

5. “The Hustle,” $9.5 million.

6. “The Gangster, The Cop, The Devil,” $9.4 million.

7. “Capernaum,” $3.5 million.

8. “Miss & Mrs. Cops,” $3.1 million.

9. “Uglydolls,” $3.1 million.

10. “Twin,” $2.9 million.

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