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Friday, 29 May 2020

America Is a Tinderbox

By BY MICHELLE GOLDBERG from NYT Opinion https://ift.tt/2AjyYzu

Flynn Discussed Sanctions at Length With Russian Diplomat, Transcripts Show

By BY JULIAN E. BARNES, ADAM GOLDMAN AND NICHOLAS FANDOS from NYT U.S. https://ift.tt/3eA2AY2

How the Supreme Court Lets Cops Get Away With Murder

By BY THE EDITORIAL BOARD from NYT Opinion https://ift.tt/3cgI3qf

‘The Pain Is Too Intense’: Biden Challenges White Americans

By BY JONATHAN MARTIN AND KATIE GLUECK from NYT U.S. https://ift.tt/2XLfQSS

New York City, Battered by Outbreak, Finally Moves Toward Reopening

By BY ALAN FEUER AND ANDY NEWMAN from NYT New York https://ift.tt/2zH8Q1q

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Fox News Breaking News Alert

White House briefly locked down as unrest reported in Atlanta, Washington and New York City in wake of George Floyd's death

05/29/20 5:38 PM

FOX NEWS: As coronavirus scams proliferate, Google launches scam-spotter tool

As coronavirus scams proliferate, Google launches scam-spotter tool

Scammers beware: Google is on the lookout for you.

via FOX NEWS https://ift.tt/2ZMuXyh

George Floyd Was Pinned Down for Nearly 3 Minutes After He Became Unresponsive, Prosecutors Say

By BY SARAH MERVOSH from NYT U.S. https://ift.tt/2zBC0iK

China and the Rhineland Moment

By BY BRET STEPHENS from NYT Opinion https://ift.tt/3gE2vo7

Coronavirus Briefing: What Happened Today

By BY LARA TAKENAGA AND JONATHAN WOLFE from NYT U.S. https://ift.tt/3dkR0A0

A Continent Reopens

By BY PATRICK KINGSLEY AND LAETITIA VANCON from NYT World https://ift.tt/3diaoNV

Ex-Officer Charged in Death of George Floyd in Minneapolis

By BY NEIL MACFARQUHAR, TIM ARANGO AND MANNY FERNANDEZ from NYT U.S. https://ift.tt/2Am86Pv

George Floyd Worked With Officer Charged in His Death

By BY MATT FURBER, AUDRA D. S. BURCH AND FRANCES ROBLES from NYT U.S. https://ift.tt/2XeUwGB

A Justice Dept. Skeptical of Police Abuse Cases Vows to Investigate Floyd Death

By BY KATIE BENNER AND EMILY BADGER from NYT U.S. https://ift.tt/2yLsx7T

Beauty Brand Coty Sees Shares Tumble After ‘Forbes’ Report Questions Kylie Jenner’s Wealth

(Bloomberg) — Coty Inc. tumbled Friday after Forbes reported that Kylie Jenner allegedly provided the magazine with misleading financial information about her cosmetics brand.

Shares of Coty, which acquired a majority stake in Kylie Cosmetics last year, dropped 13% to close at $3.63, extending its 2020 decline to 68%.

The news report raises questions about one of Coty’s most visible brands as it seeks to overcome stagnating sales, changing consumer tastes and retail challenges caused by the coronavirus pandemic. The company, which took billions of dollars in writedowns last year, agreed this month to sell the Wella and Clairol brands to buyout firm KKR & Co. as part of a $4.3 billion deal, allowing it to focus on mass beauty and the Jenner brand. Last week, it launched the Kylie Skin beauty line in Europe.

Representatives at management company Jenner Communications and her publicist, Christy Welder, didn’t immediately reply to messages seeking comment, nor did Lisa Kessler, a spokeswoman for New York-based Coty.

“All I see are a number of inaccurate statements and unproven assumptions,” Jenner said Friday in one of several tweets responding to the Forbes report. “I can name a list of 100 things more important right now than fixating on how much money I have.”

Forbes spokesman Matthew Hutchison defended the report.

“Today’s extensively-reported investigation was triggered by newly filed documents that revealed glaring discrepancies between information privately supplied to journalists and information publicly supplied to shareholders,” he said in an email. “Our reporters spotted the inaccuracies and spent months uncovering the facts.”

Jenner, 22, a scion of the Kardashian family, became the world’s youngest self-made billionaire in March 2019 and agreed to sell a 51% stake in her cosmetics line to Coty in November. The $600 million deal valued her business at roughly $1.2 billion.

Some analysts questioned the price tag at the time and, on top of the recent writedowns, “any renewed suggestion they overpaid for Kylie Cosmetics will shake investors,” said Deborah Aitken at Bloomberg Intelligence.

The pandemic has diminished her net worth, leaving her with a fortune of less than $1 billion. Forbes said the social media star spent years inflating the size and success of her business to the magazine in order to boost its estimate of her wealth.

Jenner, in one of the tweets, said: “I’ve never asked for any title or tried to lie my way there EVER. Period.”

Pixar Makes History With First LGBT Protagonist in Short Movie Out

(NEW YORK) — In Steven Clay Hunter’s 23 years as an animator at Pixar, he has drawn a seven-armed octopus, a Canadian daredevil and a wheezing toy penguin. But there were scenes he never expected to animate until he began working on his short, Out.

Hunter wrote and directed the nine-minute Pixar film, which recently debuted on Disney+. It’s about a man named Greg who, while packing up to move, temporarily switches bodies with his dog, Jim. While frantically trying to hide evidence of his boyfriend, Manuel, Greg discovers the courage to reveal his sexual orientation to his parents.

Greg, who’s loosely based on Hunter, is Pixar’s first LGBTQ protagonist. And while Out includes some more typically Pixar material (a pair of rainbow animals, a cameo from Wheezy of Toy Story), it features images never seen before in the 25 years of the studio, or in the longer history of Disney. Like when Greg and his boyfriend, Manuel, hug each other.

“The first time I drew Greg and Manuel holding each other in the bedroom, I was bawling my face off,” says Hunter. “All this emotion came welling up because I realized I had been in animation for decades and I had never drawn that in my career. It just hit me.”

Out is a small movie on a streaming service, not one of Pixar’s global blockbusters. But it has already had an outsized impact and been celebrated as a milestone for inclusion in family entertainment. GLAAD called it “a huge step forward for the Walt Disney Company.”

“Out represents the best of Disney and Pixar’s legacy as a place for heartwarming stories about finding one’s own inner strength in the face of life’s challenges,” said Jeremy Blacklow, GLAAD’s director of entertainment media.

From his home in Oakland, California, Hunter, a 51-year-old animator making his directorial debut, has humbly taken in the warm responses. He managed to meet his producer, Max Sachar, for a celebratory, socially distanced glass of rose last weekend. But he’s been reluctant to talk about such a personal film.

“I felt like this was something I had to do,” said Hunter in one of his first interviews. “I didn’t come out until I was 27 and I’m 51 now, and I feel like I’m still dealing with it. You can’t hide who you are for half of your life and then not carry that baggage around. You’ve got to process it somehow. I got lucky enough to process it in the making of this movie.”

It’s part joke, part truth that Out is labeled “based on a true story.” The first shot is of a magical dog and cat jumping through a rainbow. Hunter has had a dog named Jim but, naturally, hasn’t experienced a canine Freaky Friday. But the central story is autobiographical.

“The relationship of Manuel and Greg is something I went through,” he says. “I wasn’t out to my family and I was in a relationship but they didn’t know about him. It took a toll on our relationship and we ended up breaking up because of that. And that break-up led to me coming out to my family, over the phone in a conference room at Pixar.”

Hunter first came up with the idea of a coming-out film five years ago. But it was the Pixar SparkShorts program, which is meant to discover new voices and experiment with different techniques, that presented Hunter with an opportunity. After working on the Spark short Purl, he pitched Out. It was greenlit and finished by December.

“It was cool that he was telling this coming out story but he was doing so while coming out as a filmmaker,” says Sachar. “It was really wonderful for everyone to be a part of and witness.”

LGBTQ characters have been increasingly appearing in Disney films but often do so fleetingly. Gaston’s sidekick LeFou (Josh Gad) was suggested to be gay in 2017’s live-action Beauty and the Beast. Pixar’s Onward, released earlier this year, featured what many consider Disney’s first outwardly gay animated character: a police officer voiced by Lena Waithe who refers to her girlfriend. Some Middle East nations banned the film.

Out, finally, is far more straightforward. It includes, for example, a tender kiss between Manuel and Greg. To animate it, Hunter approached Wendell Lee, the only other gay animator still at Pixar from Hunter’s early days with the company.

“I just went to him and said, ‘You’ve got to animate this.’ And he was like, ‘Heck yeah,’” says Hunter. “I said: I want a kiss. I don’t want a peck.”

Hunter recently watched Out with his family, who live in Canada, over Zoom. It was a moment of connection that he hopes plays out similarly for others during quarantine. For young and old, gay and straight, Out is about being proud of who you are, whoever you are.

Reflecting on the film’s significance, Hunter on Thursday noted the passing of playwright and AIDS activist Larry Kramer. Out, not coincidentally, came out on Harvey Milk Day.

“We’re just an extension of that. We’re moving toward more visibility. It doesn’t mean we’re taking over. We’re just trying to tell our stories like everyone else,” says Hunter. “And we’re not going anywhere. We’re here to stay.”