LUY-Development

Category: Entertainment

Americans load up on candy, trick or treat – or not

Americans may not know if trick or treating will happen this year because of the pandemic, but they’re buying a lot of Halloween candy while they wait to find out.

U.S. sales of Halloween candy were up 13% over last year in the month ending Sept. 6, according to data from market research firm IRI and the National Confectioners Association. That’s a bigger jump than the usual single-digit increases. Sales of Halloween chocolate alone are up 25%. Earlier Halloween displays at some chains, like dollar stores, Meijer and ShopRite, likely helped boost sales. But Americans may also be in a mood to celebrate after months of pandemic anxiety.

Cassandra Ambrosius, who lives in central Wisconsin, was surprised to see bags of Halloween candy at the grocery in early September; her husband snapped one up. She expects to buy more bags as Halloween gets closer, because she thinks people in her neighborhood will figure out how to trick or treat safely.

That enthusiasm is good news for candy companies, which rely on the 10-week Halloween period for nearly 14% of their annual $36 billion in U.S. sales. Halloween is the biggest holiday of the year for candy makers, followed closely by Christmas and Easter. Valentine’s Day is a distant fourth.

Ferrara Candy Co., which makes Brach’s Candy Corn, says it saw online demand three months earlier than usual. Some stores also asked Ferrara for earlier shipments.

But while early demand are strong, sales in late October could suffer if the coronavirus clamps down on trick or treat. Fifty-five percent of Mars Wrigley’s Halloween candy sales usually happen in the last two weeks of October, says Tim LeBel, the company’s chief Halloween officer and head of U.S. sales.

New York’s governor recently announced that he won’t ban trick or treating in the state. But some cities, like Springfield, Massachusetts, and Antigo, Wisconsin, have called it off. Big Halloween events at places like Disney World and Salem, Massachusetts aren’t happening. Ben Reed, of Arlington, Texas, takes pride in giving out full-size candy bars for Halloween. He usually buys between 160 and 200 candy bars.

“This year I have no idea how many to purchase,” he said. “I do not want to disappoint the kids, but on the other hand, I do not want to be stuck with too many and add more COVID pounds to myself.”

Numerator, a market research firm, surveyed 2,000 consumers in early August and found that 52% planned to buy less candy this year than they usually do. Just 11% planned to buy more.

Candy companies have been making some changes to deal with all the uncertainty around Halloween. Hershey is selling fewer large Halloween-themed bags of candy and shifting more candy to smaller, everyday bags that can still be sold after the holiday, said Phil Stanley, Hershey’s global chief sales officer.

Mars is customizing bag sizes. A place like Los Angeles County, which is discouraging trick or treating, may get smaller bags, for example.

“We’re trying to cover all the bases because each market is going to celebrate a little bit differently,” LeBel said.

CVS Caremark says it’s reduced the number of large and giant bags of candy stores will receive. It’s also expanded its assortment of “instant consumable” sized candy and gum that parents can pick up to treat themselves. Target says it’s cut back its assortment of Halloween candy in anticipation of a reduction of trick or treating this year.

Still, online sales could give candy companies a boost as the pandemic changed shopping habits. Digital sales more than doubled at Easter, LeBel said, and that could happen again at Halloween.

Companies have also shifted their marketing in response to the pandemic. Mars is launching a Treat Town website that will let people trick or treat virtually and earn credits toward real candy. Hershey has a map showing COVID risk by county on its website.

Miranda Leon of Albany, Georgia, still plans to buy Halloween candy in mid-October and make treat bags for her three kids’ classrooms. There’s no official word on Halloween in her city, but she plans to take her kids trick or treating and hand out candy.

“So much has been taken from our kids this year — classes cut short, sports cancelled, summer camps cancelled,” she said. “I refuse to take away the joy of trick or treating from my kids.”

___

AP Business Writer Anne D’Innocenzio contributed from New York.

September 24, 2020
Buffett Inducted Into Mississippi Songwriters Hall Of Fame

PASCAGOULA, Miss. (AP) — Jimmy Buffett, Mac McAnally and the late B.B. King are among the latest inductees to the Mississippi Songwriters Hall of Fame.

This year’s ceremony was held online instead of in-person because of concerns about the coronavirus pandemic, WLOX-TV reported.

During the Thursday event, Pascagoula Mayor Steve Demetropoulos congratulated Buffett, who was born in the city on the Mississippi Gulf Coast.

“It’s been said that Mississippi is the birth place of America’s music. Well, Jimmy Buffett is America’s music,” Demetropoulos said.

Buffett is famous for hits including “Margaritaville” and “Changes in Latitudes, Changes in Attitudes.”

In a recorded message, Buffett said: “It’s a long way from the Pascagoula run and my early days growing up in Mississippi certainly had an impact on the way I wrote songs and what I wrote about. So, thank you Mississippi for that.”

The Mississippi Songwriters Alliance sponsors the Hall of Fame.

September 21, 2020
TikTok Owner Picks Oracle Over Microsoft As US Tech Partner

Oracle said Monday that the Chinese owner of TikTok has picked the U.S. company to be its “trusted technology provider,” beating out rival Microsoft in a deal that could help keep the popular video-sharing app running in the U.S.

Oracle spokeswoman Deborah Hellinger said she was confirming remarks made by U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, who told CNBC on Monday that TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, submitted its proposal to the U.S. government for approval.

“We did get a proposal over the weekend that includes Oracle as the trusted technology partner with Oracle making many representations for national security issues,” Mnuchin said.

Mnuchin said there’s also a commitment to make TikTok’s global operations a U.S.-headquartered company with 20,000 new jobs.

TikTok said in a statement Monday that its proposal to the Treasury Department should “resolve the Administration’s security concerns” and emphasized the importance of its app to the 100 million users it claims in the U.S.

President Donald Trump’s administration has threatened to ban TikTok by Sept. 20 and ordered owner ByteDance to sell its U.S. business, claiming national security risks due to its Chinese ownership. The government worries about user data being funneled to Chinese authorities. TikTok denies it is a national security risk and is suing to stop the administration from enacting the threatened ban.

Much remains unclear about the proposed deal with Oracle, which is pointedly not referring to it as a sale or acquisition.

Any deal must still be reviewed by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, known as CFIUS, a U.S. government group chaired by the Treasury Secretary that studies mergers for national security reasons. Mnuchin said he expects the group to review the proposal this week and later make a recommendation to the president.

The president can approve or deny a transaction recommended by the panel, though Trump has already voiced support for Oracle as a “great company” that could handle the acquisition.

If the arrangement is approved by the U.S. government, TikTok would be allowed to continue operating.

Microsoft said in a Sunday statement that ByteDance “let us know today they would not be selling TikTok’s US operations to Microsoft.”

Proposals to acquire TikTok’s U.S. business raised questions among outside observers about how it would be split from the rest of TikTok’s social media platform, which is popular worldwide. ByteDance also owns a similar video app, Douyin, for the Chinese market.

Microsoft added it was “confident our proposal would have been good for TikTok’s users, while protecting national security interests.” The company said it “would have made significant changes to ensure the service met the highest standards for security, privacy, online safety, and combating disinformation.”

Walmart, which had planned to partner with Microsoft on the acquisition, said Sunday it “continues to have an interest in a TikTok investment” and is talking about it with ByteDance and other parties.

TikTok, which says it has 100 million U.S. users and about 700 million globally, is known for its fun, goofy videos of dancing, lip-syncing, pranks and jokes. It’s recently become home to more political content such as the comedian Sarah Cooper, who drew a large audience by lip-syncing Trump’s often-disjointed statements from public appearances.

But the app has also raised concerns because of its Chinese ownership. The White House has cracked down on a range of Chinese businesses, including telecom equipment makers Huawei and ZTE and messaging app WeChat, over worries that they would enable Chinese authorities to access U.S. user data. Republican and Democratic lawmakers have raised concerns about censorship and children’s privacy.

TikTok denies that it has shared user data with the Chinese government or that it would do so if asked. The company says it has not censored videos at the request of Chinese authorities and insists it is not a national-security threat.

TikTok has sued to stop the ban, but not the sale order. The negotiations have been complicated by several factors, including Trump’s repeated demands that the U.S. government should get a “cut” of any deal, a stipulation and role for the president that experts say is unprecedented.

In addition, the Chinese government in late August unveiled new regulations that restrict exports of technology, likely including the artificial intelligence system TikTok uses to choose which videos to spool up to its users. That means ByteDance would have to obtain a license from China to export such technology to a foreign company.

“The Chinese government has implied it may block export of TikTok’s AI systems, so that might complicate a direct sale,” said Tiffany Li, a visiting professor at the Boston University School of Law.

She said that TikTok’s AI-backed video recommendation system is one of the app’s competitive advantages.

Whether the Oracle-TikTok deal will allow the sidestepping of Chinese export restrictions depends on which entity retains control of TikTok in the U.S., said Paul Haswell, a Hong Kong-based partner at law firm Pinsent Masons.

The deal had come together rapidly after the administration ramped up its threats against TikTok this summer, despite TikTok’s efforts to put distance between its app and its Chinese ownership. It installed former Disney executive Kevin Mayer as its American CEO, but he resigned in August after just a few months on the job, saying the “political environment has sharply changed.”

Both Microsoft and Oracle are known more for their business software offerings than for those intended for consumers.

Oracle primarily makes database software. It competes with tech giants such as Microsoft and Amazon that provide cloud services as well as business-software specialists like Salesforce.

Some analysts see Oracle’s interest in a consumer business as misguided. Oracle should focus on enterprise-market acquisitions and not invest in a consumer app like TikTok that doesn’t fit with the rest of its business, said Jefferies analyst Brent Thill, who compares the idea to Delta Airlines buying a motorcycle company. “It doesn’t make any sense,” he said.

Thill suggested that TikTok competitors like Facebook and Snapchat should be “cheering on Oracle” as a buyer, because Oracle wouldn’t “add a lot of value to the app.”

Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison is unusual among tech executives for his public support of Trump, hosting a fundraiser for him in February at his Rancho Mirage, California, estate. The company also hired a former top aide to Vice President Mike Pence; its CEO, Safra Catz, also served on Trump’s transition team.

The president said on Aug. 18 that Oracle was “a great company” that “could handle” buying TikTok. He declined to state his preference between Oracle and Microsoft as buyers.

“We have a lot of confidence in both Microsoft and Oracle,” Mnuchin said Monday. “They’ve chosen Oracle.”

__

AP technology writer Zen Soo in Hong Kong contributed to this report.

September 14, 2020
Brad Paisley, Wife Fights Hunger With 1 Million Meal Pledge

LOS ANGELES (AP) — After opening a free grocery store earlier this year, country music star Brad Paisley and his wife are expanding their efforts to fight hunger in America.

Paisley and his wife, actress Kimberly Williams-Paisley, have pledged to donate 1 million nutritional meals this month. The initiative is billed as the Million Meal Donation Tour, which kicked off in Detroit last week.

The tour will run for two weeks visiting food banks in 16 major cities including Los Angeles, New York, Houston, Atlanta, Miami and Nashville, Tennessee. It will end in Chicago on Sept. 21.

“We’re just rallying to feed people,” Paisley said in a recent interview.

The couple and their food brand, Tiller & Hatch, are working with Feeding America on the initiative. They are hoping to serve individuals and families who are experiencing food insecurities and financial hardship.

Some of the distributed meals will include artisanal pastas, hearty stews and flavorful soups. The meals will be packed in semi-trucks with about 750,000 pounds of food to feed more than 60,000 families.

Williams-Paisley said they are grateful to be servants to the community during the coronavirus pandemic.

“So many of us feel helpless during this time,” she said. “It just feels like there’s one disaster after another. One challenging situation after another. But it’s been really wonderful for both of us to have this outlet that was coming into fruition. We can’t solve all the problems. But to tackle this issue, it’s been really empowering.”

The couple’s new initiative comes after they opened their free grocery store called The Store in May in Nashville, Tennessee, to help needy families. The idea for their store originated after the couple volunteered their kids’ service at a similar store in Santa Barbara, California.

Since their store’s opening, the couple has heard countless stories about people who never thought they’d need food assistance but are now seeking it. He said more than 54 million people have experienced food insecurity in 2020, including 18 million children.

“Now it’s a matter of what’s happening and trying to figure out how to not let people fall through the cracks,” Paisley said. “It’s been a lot of people who have been poor for a longtime. But then, there are others who were financially sound six months ago, but now have fallen on hard times. We are seeing this firsthand. We are trying to meet their needs.”

____

Follow AP Entertainment Writer Jonathan Landrum Jr. on Twitter: http://twitter.com/MrLandrum31

September 14, 2020
Kanye West makes presidential ballot in Mississippi

JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — Kanye West will appear as a presidential candidate on Mississippi’s ballot in November, after being approved as a qualified candidate by the State Board of Election Commissioners on Tuesday.

The rapper has already qualified to appear on the ballot as an independent candidate in several states, including Arkansas, Idaho, Iowa, Tennessee, Oklahoma and Utah.

To qualify in Mississippi, he was required to pay a $2,500 fee to the Secretary of State’s Office and get the signatures of at least 1,000 Mississippi voters.

“It was interesting to see him pick Mississippi, and obviously it will be interesting to see what happens with that vote on Nov. 3,” Mississippi Secretary of State Michael Watson said after the board’s meeting. “But he did qualify.”

West, who once backed Republican President Donald Trump, announced last month that he had broken with Trump and would launch his own presidential bid. His campaign filed paperwork July 15 with the Federal Election Commission.

September 8, 2020
Airline Crews Report Jetpack Flier Near Los Angeles Airport

LOS ANGELES (AP) — The Federal Aviation Administration and the FBI said Tuesday they are investigating reports from airline pilots that someone was flying in a jetpack as they approached Los Angeles International Airport to land last weekend.

“Two airline flight crews reported seeing what appeared to be someone in a jetpack as they were on their final approaches to LAX around 6:35 p.m. PDT Sunday,” the FAA said.

The statement did not elaborate.

The Los Angeles Times reported Tuesday that the FBI has launched an investigation.

FBI spokeswoman Laura Eimiller told the Times that agents at the airport were investigating after the pilot reported the incident to the control tower. “The FBI is aware of the reports by pilots on Sunday and is working to determine what occurred,” the agency said in a statement.

Fox 11 Los Angeles obtained recordings of communications between the aircraft and the tower.

“Tower, American 1997, we just passed a guy in a jetpack,” a pilot said.

“American 1997, OK, thank you, were they off to your left side or your right side?” the controller asked.

“Off the left side at maybe 300 yards or so at our altitude,” the pilot said.

Another pilot also reported a sighting.

“We just saw the guy pass by us in the jetpack,” he said.

The controller then advised another aircraft flight crew to use caution.

“Person in a jetpack reported 300 yards south of the LA final at about 3,000 feet (914 meters), 10-mile (16-kilometer) final,” the controller said.

Industry expert David Mayman was dubious that it was a jetpack spotted by the pilots.

“It’s very, very unlikely with the existing technology,” said Mayman, CEO of the Los Angeles-based company Jetpack Aviation. “I’m open to being surprised. But I don’t think there’s anyone working on technology that could do a flight from ground level to 3,000 feet and then come back down again.”

Mayman speculated that it could have been a drone, but he added that 3,000 feet was on the high end of what most drones were capable of.

September 2, 2020
Miranda Lambert leads CMA nominations, Luke Combs’ streak continues

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — Country star Miranda Lambert turns her “Wildcard” into an ace as she’s the leading nominee at the 2020 Country Music Association Awards, including her first entertainer of the year nomination in five years.

The CMAs announced Tuesday that Lambert earned seven nominations. The Grammy winner was pushed by the success of songs like “Bluebird,” her first country airplay No. 1 in years, as well as positive reviews of her smart and sassy “Wildcard” album. Lambert — who has won 13 CMAs throughout her career — makes history this year, breaking the record for most nominations by a female artist with 55 overall nods.

She’s followed by Luke Combs, who continues his streak of success as one of country music’s biggest streaming artists with six nominations, including his first for entertainer of the year. Combs earned his first all-genre No. 1 album last year with “What You See Is What You Get,” which had the largest streaming week ever for a country album with 74 million on-demand streams.

“It’s pretty crazy. It’s been shocking to say the least,” Combs said of his entertainer of the year nod, which comes two years after he was named new artist of the year. “You’re kind of up in the big leagues.”

Carrie Underwood joins Combs and Lambert in the entertainer of the year category, along with Keith Urban and Eric Church. Garth Brooks, who won last year, recently announced he no longer wanted to be nominated for entertainer of the year because it was time for others to win.

Combs’ nominations include album, single and male vocalist of the year. He’s nominated twice in the song of the year category for his own track, “Even Though I’m Leaving,” and for co-writing the Carly Pearce-Lee Brice duet “I Hope You’re Happy Now.”

“It’s a dream come true for somebody that writes their own stuff,” said Combs. “Having won that award last year was just really really really special.”

The CMA Awards will be held Nov. 11 in Nashville.

Dan + Shay’s Dan Smyers has six nominations, including four he shares with bandmate Shay Mooney and three with pop star Justin Bieber for their crossover hit “10,000 Hours.” Smyers earned individual nominations for his work as a producer on the song. These are the first CMA nominations for Bieber, who won a CMT Music Award in 2011 for “That Should Be Me” with Rascal Flatts.

Other top nominees include Maren Morris, who scored five nominations including song and single of the year for her love song, “The Bones.” Her track became the longest-running No. 1 on Billboard’s Hot country songs chart by a solo female artist since Taylor Swift’s “We Are Never Getting Back Together.”

Producer Jay Joyce also earned five nominations for his work on albums by Lambert and Ashley McBryde, who earned three nominations including album of the year and female vocalist of the year.

After years of criticism for the lack of women on country radio, women actually outnumber men in the new artist category, which include Pearce, Gabby Barrett and Ingrid Andress. Pearce earned three more nominations for “I Hope You’re Happy Now,” and her producer busbee, who died last year after a fight with cancer, is posthumously nominated for musical event of the year.

“September marks a year that he’s been gone,” said Pearce. “I know that he is so proud looking down at how far I’ve come and this was the last song that he worked on before he got sick, so it would be huge to take it home for him.”

Barrett, who competed on “American Idol,” earned a nomination for single of the year with “I Hope,” a No. 1 country hit and Top 10 success on the pop charts. And Andress was nominated for song of the year with “More Hearts Than Mine.” Morgan Wallen and Jimmie Allen round out the new artist nominees.

Notable snubs missing from the nomination list include country icon Tanya Tucker, who earned her first two Grammy Awards this year for her comeback album “While I’m Livin.’” The Chicks, who returned with their first new album in 14 years, also weren’t nominated, likely due to a longstanding rift between some country fans and the outspoken female group. Sam Hunt, who put out a long-awaited album this year, was also missing from the nominations.

The coronavirus pandemic likely affected some of the nominations this year because touring was postponed and some albums were pushed back. Luke Bryan, who delayed his album until after the cutoff deadline for this year’s awards show, was not nominated.

September 2, 2020
Colon cancer claims the life of 43 year-old actor Chadwick Boseman

The 43-year old starred in “Black Panther,” “Get On Up,” and several other Hollywood blockbuster films

LOS ANGELES (AP) — First Chadwick Boseman slipped on the cleats of Jackie Robinson, then the Godfather of Soul’s dancing shoes, portraying both Black American icons with a searing intensity that commanded respect. When the former playwright suited up as Black Panther, he brought cool intellectual gravitas to the Marvel superhero whose “Wakanda forever!” salute reverberated worldwide.

As his Hollywood career boomed, though, Boseman was privately undergoing “countless surgeries and chemotherapy” to battle colon cancer, his family said in a statement announcing his death at age 43 on Friday. He’d been diagnosed at stage 3 in 2016 but never spoke publicly about it.

The cancer was there when his character T’Challa visited the ancestors’ “astral plane” in poignant scenes from the Oscar-nominated “Black Panther,” there when he first became a producer on the action thriller “21 Bridges,” and there last summer when he shot an adaptation of a play by his hero August Wilson. It was there when he played a radical Black leader — seen only in flashbacks and visions — whose death is mourned by Vietnam War comrades-in-arms in Spike Lee’s “Da 5 Bloods.”

Boseman is survived by his wife and a parent and had no children, Fioravante said.

Born and raised in South Carolina, where he played Little League baseball and AAU basketball, Boseman graduated from Howard University in Washington, D.C. He wrote plays, acted and directed in theater and had small roles in television before landing his breakthrough role.

His striking portrayal of the color-line-demolishing baseball star Robinson opposite Harrison Ford in 2013′s “42” drew attention in Hollywood and made him a star. A year later, he wowed audiences as Brown in the biopic “Get On Up” which had many scenes filmed in Natchez, Mississippi.

Boseman died on a day that Major League Baseball was celebrating Jackie Robinson day. “His transcendent performance in ‘42’ will stand the test of time and serve as a powerful vehicle to tell Jackie’s story to audiences for generations to come,” the league wrote in a tweet.

The film’s vision of Afrofuturism and the technologically advanced civilization of Wakanda resonated with audiences, some of whom wore African attire to showings and helped propel “Black Panther” to more than $1.3 billion in global box office. It is the only Marvel Studios film to receive a best picture Oscar nomination.

Boseman said he more easily identified with the film’s antagonist, played by Michael B. Jordan, who had been cut off from his ancestral roots: “I was born with some Killmonger in me, and I have learned to T’Challa throughout my studies,” he told AP while promoting the film.

“It’s the place where you start. All African Americans, unless they have some direct connection, have been severed from that past. There’s things that cannot be tracked,” he continued. “You were a product, sold. So it’s very difficult as an African American to connect at some points directly to Africa. I have made that part of my search in my life. So those things were already there when I got into the role.”

The character was last seen standing silently dressed in a black suit at Tony Stark’s funeral in “Avengers: Endgame.” A “Black Panther” sequel had been announced, and was one of the studio’s most anticipated upcoming films.

Even at the outset of his Hollywood career, Boseman was clear-eyed about — and even skeptical of — the industry in which he would become an international star.

“You don’t have the same exact experience as a Black actor as you do as a white actor. You don’t have the same opportunities. That’s evident and true,” he told AP while promoting “42.” “The best way to put it is: How often do you see a movie about a black hero who has a love story … he has a spirituality. He has an intellect. It’s weird to say it, but it doesn’t happen that often.”

“Black Panther,” written and directed by Ryan Coogler, helped drive a conversation in Hollywood about the importance of featuring non-white characters in and hiring non-white filmmakers for its most high-profile films. Actor Simu Liu, starring in Marvel’s first film centered on an Asian character, tweeted: “Without Chadwick, and what he gave to his character, there is no Shang Chi. Period. My career rides on the coattails of a great man.”

In addition to Robinson and Brown, Boseman portrayed the future U.S. Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall in 2017′s “Marshall.” He humanized the larger-than-life historical figures with the same soulful, reserved dignity — interrupted by flashes of sparkling wit — that he would later bring to T’Challa.

He took on his first producing job in last year’s action thriller “21 Bridges,” in which he also starred. Boseman completed one last performance, in a Netflix adaptation of August Wilson’s “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom.”

He revered the playwright famous for his depiction of the Black experience, writing in a 2013 Los Angeles Times essay: “For the songs, rituals and folklore that were lost in slavery’s middle passage, his plays are those forgotten songs remixed for the struggles of adapting to these shores … In the similar way that Wilson’s work was influenced by the blues of Bessie Smith, Muddy Waters and W.C. Handy, my plays were infused with Tupac, Biggie and Black Star.”

Boseman first got into theater, acting and writing plays as an undergrad at Howard. He visited Africa for the first time during college with director and theater professor Mike Malone, working in Ghana to preserve and celebrate rituals with performances on a proscenium stage. He told AP the trip had been “one of the most significant learning experiences of my life.”

Boseman had roles on TV shows like ABC Family’s “Lincoln Heights” and NBC’s “Persons Unknown,” but before “42” he had only acted in one film, 2008’s football drama “The Express.”

Asked about his own childhood heroes and icons, Boseman cited Black political leaders and musicians: Malcolm X, Martin Luther King Jr., Bob Marley, Public Enemy, A Tribe Called Quest and Prince.

While deeply private and often guarded in his public appearances and interviews, he made clear that he understood the significance of his work and its impact on the broader culture.

At the 2019 Screen Actors Guild Awards, “Black Panther” won best ensemble, electrifying the room. Before an auditorium full of actors, Chadwick Boseman stepped to the microphone. He quoted Nina Simone: “To be young, gifted and black,” and put the moment in context.

“We know what it’s like to be told there isn’t a screen for you to be featured on, a stage for you to be featured on. … We know what’s like to be beneath and not above. And that is what we went to work with every day,” said Boseman. “We knew that we could create a world that exemplified a world we wanted to see. We knew that we had something to give.”

___

AP Film Writer Jake Coyle contributed to this report.

August 29, 2020
Bald Eagle Shows Air Superiority, Sends Drone Into Lake

ESCANABA, Mich. (AP) — A bald eagle launched an aerial assault on a drone operated by the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy — known as EGLE — ripping off a propeller and sending the aircraft into Lake Michigan.

The attack happened July 21, when the drone was mapping shoreline erosion near Escanaba in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula to document and help communities cope with high water levels, the department said in a statement.

Environmental quality analyst and drone pilot Hunter King said he had completed about seven minutes of the mapping flight when satellite reception became spotty.

King pressed a button to return the $950 drone to him and was viewing his video screen when the drone began to twirl.

“It was like a really bad roller coaster ride,” said King, who looked up and saw the eagle flying away, apparently unhurt by its confrontation with technology.

Two birdwatchers who were nearby saw the bird attack something but told officials they didn’t realize it was a drone.

The drone sent 27 warning notifications in the 3.5 seconds that it took to spiral to the water, including one noting that a propeller was missing. A search of the shoreline failed to find the drone. Data later revealed that it landed in 4 feet of water about 150 feet offshore.

EGLE’s drone team is considering what it can do to reduce the possibility of a repeat attack, including possibly using “skins” or other designs on the aircraft to make them look less like seagulls, the agency said.

August 13, 2020
Media Mogul Sumner Redstone Dies At 97

Sumner Redstone, who built a media empire from his family’s drive-in movie chain, has died. He was 97.

ViacomCBS Inc., which he lead for decades, remembered Redstone for his “unparalleled passion to win, his endless intellectual curiosity, and his complete dedication to the company.”

Redstone built the company through aggressive acquisitions, but many headlines with his name focused on severed ties with wives, actors and executives. In multiple interviews, he said he’d never die.

His tight-fisted grip on the National Amusements theater chain, which controlled CBS Corp. and Viacom Inc. through voting stock, was passed to his daughter Shari Redstone, who battled top executives to re-merge the two entities that split in 2006.

Sumner Redstone’s battles with his own family were as dramatic as his corporate maneuvers. Son Brent Redstone once sued his father to break up his media empire — then settled for a princely sum to give up his voting shares.

Redstone, a lanky man with a thick Boston accent, was married and divorced twice — first to Phyllis Gloria Raphael, mother of his children Shari and Brent — then to schoolteachers Paula Fortunato, a woman 39 years his junior.

Under his watch, Viacom became one of the nation’s media titans, home to pay TV channels MTV and Comedy Central and movie studio Paramount Pictures. Redstone often told interviewers, “content is king.”

And he was right. Despite sagging TV ratings at Viacom, his vast shareholdings in Viacom and CBS led Forbes magazine to estimate his net worth at $4.6 billion.

Besides being ruthless, Redstone was known for being doggedly determined. In 1979, he survived a fire at Boston’s Copley Plaza Hotel by gripping a third-floor window ledge with his right arm still inside. He suffered third-degree burns over half his body, his right wrist was nearly severed, and he was told he would never walk again. But he eventually recovered, and even was able to play tennis by strapping the racket to his wrist.

“I intend to live forever!” he told Upstart Business Journal in 2009.

Born in 1923 in Boston, Redstone was the oldest son of Michael and Belle Rothstein, who changed the family name to Redstone.

Redstone graduated first in his class from Boston Latin School in 1940 and completed his education at Harvard in less than three years. He was selected to work on an Army intelligence team during World War II that cracked Japan’s military codes.

After three years in the Army he went to Harvard Law School and became a partner at a Washington law firm. He gave it up to join his father’s drive-in movie business in 1954. Redstone grew it into a major chain of multi-screen movie houses called National Amusements Inc.

The privately held company became the base for his media empire, and the source of all his family’s feuds.

He made a killing by trading in the stocks of Hollywood studios and in 1987 — the year he turned 64 — bought Viacom in a hostile takeover for $3.4 billion, most of it borrowed, ousting founder Ralph Baruch as chairman.

Critics said that a cable network based on music videos was doomed, but Redstone disagreed, and rebuffed efforts from the company’s bankers to unload the fledgling MTV. Instead, he expanded its reach, bringing it into Europe, Asia, Latin America and Russia.

Redstone next went after Paramount Pictures, a four-year process that ended with a friendly offer from Viacom for $10 billion in 1993. He scooped up the Blockbuster video rental chain for its then-healthy cash flow, not knowing then that videotape rentals would collapse.

Viacom then swallowed CBS Corp. for $34.5 billion in September 1999, then the largest media merger until the AOL-Time Warner union came months later.

The deal brought Redstone together with CBS chief Mel Karmazin, another tough-talking executive from humble origins. By June 2004, Karmazin was out, later to become head of Sirius Satellite Radio Inc. CBS and Viacom were split into two public companies both under his control in 2006.

Another victim of Redstone’s rise: Tom Cruise, whose couch-jumping on “The Oprah Winfrey Show” and embrace of Scientology led Redstone to cut short a deal with Cruise and his production company.

“We don’t think that someone who effectuates creative suicide and costs the company revenue should be on the lot,” he told The Wall Street Journal in 2006. The two later patched things up ahead of the making of “Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol.”

By 2010, Redstone’s hand in the business became unwelcome. He shepherded onto TV a show featuring a scantily-clad girl group, the Electric Barbarellas, over protests from within. The day it aired, MTV Networks CEO Judy McGrath resigned. Then he was scandalized further after reporter Peter Lauria made public a voicemail in which Redstone offered to bribe him to reveal the leaker of the story about his meddling.

Redstone clashed with his two children. He bought son Brent’s stake in National Amusements to settle a lawsuit in 2007. And after favoring daughter Shari as his successor, they hit a cold patch.

In May 2015, he released a statement saying that after he dies, his ownership stakes in CBS and Viacom, through National Amusements, would be managed by a seven-person trust. The trust listed as trustees Viacom CEO Philippe Dauman, daughter Shari, her son Tyler Korff, and four lawyers. It is for the benefit of his five grandchildren. Shari was alone in opposing Dauman’s re-election to Viacom’s board in February 2016, and Redstone kicked Dauman and board member George Abrams out of the trust in May amid legal squabbling.

In late 2015, former companion Manuela Herzer sued Redstone after he kicked her out of his estate. The suit revealed a strange, secluded life in his Beverly Park mansion that included frequent demands for sex and steak.

The suit alleged Redstone was hospitalized numerous times in 2014, leaving him with a feeding tube, catheter and severe speech impediments. Herzer described him as a “living ghost.” A judge rejected the suit, but Herzer continued to pursue legal action against Shari Redstone, alleging criminal racketeering.

Daughter Shari Redstone was locked in a legal battle to merge CBS and Viacom. In May 2018, she sued CBS for trying to strip her of control in a series of maneuvers orchestrated by CBS CEO Les Moonves, who has opposed the merger because it would be detrimental to non-Redstone CBS shareholders.

Her aim was reportedly to re-unite the companies and then sell them off or merge them with a third company.

Moonves was fired by the board after The New Yorker reported on allegations that he has assaulted multiple women; Moonves has denied the reports.

CBS and Viacom agreed to merge in 2019, undoing the split Redstone had carried out 13 years earlier. National Amusements gave unanimous approval to the deal, with Redstone among the directors voting in favor.

___

Business Writer Seth Sutel in New York contributed to this report.

August 12, 2020