Day: September 10, 2018

UN Chief: ‘Climate Change Moving Faster Than We Are’

U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres warned Monday that climate change is moving faster than efforts to combat it and that the international community needs to “put the brake” on greenhouse gas emissions, which drive global warming.

“If we do not change course by 2020, we risk missing the point where we can avoid runaway climate change with disastrous consequences for people and all the natural systems that sustain us,” Guterres told a gathering of youth, business leaders and diplomats at U.N. headquarters.

“We are careening towards the edge of the abyss,” he said, standing at a podium in front of a rain-splattered window. “It is not too late to shift course. But every day that passes means the world heats up a little more, and the cost of our inaction mounts.”

The U.N. chief renewed his call for action on the eve of the Global Climate Action Summit in San Francisco. California announced Monday that it is committing to 100 percent clean electricity by 2045.

The summit aims to mobilize international and local leaders from states, cities, business and civil society with national government leaders, scientists, students and nonprofits.

Paris agreement

Guterres said the targets agreed to in the 2015 Paris Climate Accord are the “bare minimum” to avoid the worst impacts of climate change. In the agreement, world leaders committed to stop global temperatures rising by 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels and to keep it as close to 1.5 degrees as possible. 

“But scientists tell us that we are far off track,” he cautioned, noting these commitments represent just one-third of what is needed. 

“We need to shift away from our dependence on fossil fuels,” Guterres said. “We need to replace them with clean energy from water, wind and sun.” 

The U.N. says that the planet is still consuming 85 percent of its energy from fossil fuels and only 15 percent from renewable energies, including nuclear wind and solar power. 

The United States, which is the only country to have signed and then withdrawn from the Paris accord, has loosened federal regulations on the fossil fuel industry under President Donald Trump’s administration. Trump has also vowed to save the coal industry.

Guterres urged governments to end subsidies for fossil fuels and institute carbon pricing that reflects the true cost of greenhouse gas emissions. 

He said the rise of renewable energy has been “tremendous.”

“Today, it is competitive with — or even cheaper — than coal and oil, especially if one factors in the cost of pollution.”

Guterres singled out China, a major polluter, for investing $126 billion last year in renewable energy — a 30 percent increase over 2016. He noted that countries that have long depended on oil, such as the Arab Gulf states and Norway, are looking at ways to diversify their economies away from fossil fuels. 

“We know what is happening to our planet,” Guterres said. “We know what we need to do. And we even know how to do it. But sadly, the ambition of our action is nowhere near where it needs to be.”

‘Vast opportunity’

Guterres said the transition to cleaner energy and lower carbon emissions can have great economic opportunities. 

“The International Labor Organization reports that common sense green economy policies could create 24 million new jobs globally by 2030,” he noted. 

He appealed for leadership from all sectors to mitigate the impact of global warming. 

In September 2019, Guterres plans to convene a climate summit in New York to try to push climate action to the top of the international agenda. 

“I am calling on world leaders to come to next year’s climate summit prepared to report not only on what they are doing, but what more they intend to do when they convene in 2020 for the U.N. climate conference, and where commitments will be renewed and surely ambitiously increased,” he said.

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‘The Hate U Give’ Puts Black Lives Matter on Screen

The short story that begat Angie Thomas’ breakthrough young adult novel The Hate U Give was inspired by the shooting of Oscar Grant III, the Oakland, Calif., African-American 22-year-old who was shot by a white transit police officer in 2009.

In the years that followed, more shootings followed and Thomas kept on writing. Now, a year and a half after The Hate U Give became a bestselling phenomenon, Thomas’ book has been adapted to the big screen by director George Tillman Jr. from a screenplay by Audrey Wells with just as much honesty and urgency as were in Thomas’ first pages. And the tale’s timeliness has painfully persisted.

“This film will empower a lot of people and give them hope,” said Thomas in an interview shortly after the film’s Toronto International Film Festival premiere. “It’s going to explain some things to people who don’t get it. I think it’s going to open a lot of eyes and change a lot of perspectives, and hopefully help people understand why we say ‘black lives matter’ so that eventually we won’t have to say it. It’ll be understood.”

In a wave of films, including a number at the Toronto Film Festival, the kinds of police brutality-inflicted tragedies that gave birth to the Black Lives Matter movement are being filtered into fiction film with anguished and stirring passion. They aren’t the first movies to delve into such stories; Ryan Coogler, for one, told the story of Grant in 2013’s Fruitvale Station.

But many more filmmakers are seeking to capture the humanity beneath the headlines, explicitly confronting the racial fissures in American society while channeling the sorrow and outrage of generations of black Americans.

Reinaldo Marcus Green’s Monsters and Men, which played at Toronto before opening in theaters later this month, has similarities to the killing of Eric Garner, the Staten Island man who was choked and killed by New York police after being approached on suspicion of selling single cigarettes. Green’s film, set in Brooklyn’s Bed-Stuy neighborhood, is about a Nuyorican teenager who witnesses a police officer kill an unarmed man selling loose cigarettes on the street. 

Released this summer, Carlos Lopez Estrada’s Blindspotting stars Daveed Diggs as an Oakland mover who, while stopped at a red light, watches a black man gunned down by a police officer. While deciding to come forward, he’s racked by nightmares and arresting visions, like of a cemetery populated by hooded black men standing over their graves.  

Barry Jenkins’ If Beale Street Could Talk, is a period film, adapted from James Baldwin’s novel and set in Harlem in the early 1970s. But its intimate tale of two black lovers, Tish and Fonny, whose young lives are wrecked by a racist police officer who frames Fonny for rape, has obvious reverberations today.

“Right now we’re living in a time and a moment where so many things he was writing about are incredibly relevant to the American soul,” said Jenkins in an interview ahead of the film’s Sunday premiere in Toronto. “There’s an ecstatic quality to the way Baldwin writes love, but yet there’s this permanent dread that hovers around them because of the situation they find themselves in. But also, too, because of what Baldwin is saying about the condition of black folks in America at the time he wrote this.”

Other films have come under criticism for not fitting with the times. Some questioned whether Kathryn Bigelow’s Detroit, about a hellacious night of police-inflicted torture during the Detroit riots, was the ideal filmmaker to tell that story. Spike Lee’s BlacKkKlansman, about a black police officer who infiltrates a Ku Klux Klan chapter in 1970s Colorado, drew raves for its timely story about race and white supremacy. But it was criticized by Sorry to Bother You director Boots Riley for, at this moment, making a police officer “the protagonist in the fight against racist oppression.”

“It’s being put out while Black Lives Matter is a discussion, and this is not coincidental,” argued Riley. He questioned the film’s historical accuracy, claiming that its real-life police detective, Ron Stallworth, was really a “villain,” since he may have helped destabilize black radical groups, not topple the KKK.

Real life also intruded on The Hate U Give. One of its young white actors, Kian Lawley, was replaced by K.J. Apa after a video surfaced of Lawley using the n-word and making racist jokes. And while it was being prepped, Philando Castile, a 32-year-old black American, was pulled over while driving in Falcon Heights, Minnesota, and killed in a remarkably similar manner.

But part of what makes The Hate U Give so powerful is the way it takes such debate and disagreement around Black Lives Matter and compassionately distills it into a story about a 16-year-old girl (Amandla Stenberg) whose childhood best friend (Algee Smith) is shot and killed for reaching for a hairbrush after he’s pulled over for not signaling a turn. The subsequent fallout is seen through the prism of family (it opens with a father’s firm instruction on how motionless to act around police) and a community. It reserves empathy for all, while not minimizing fury over such injustice.

“I really just want people to take a moment and just feel again. Everybody. We’ve become a cynical society. We’ve lost the idea of human interaction, communicating with each other,” said Russell Hornsby, who memorably plays the father in the film. “I hope that people get that through this movie. And they can feel. However it pierces your heart, let it out. We’re in a pressure-cooked society right now and I feel like, just for a moment, that this movie represents a release valve.”

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Canada’s Freeland to Hold NAFTA Talks Tuesday as Time Runs Short

Canadian Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland will meet U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer in Washington on Tuesday for another round of talks to renew the NAFTA trade pact, an official said on Monday, as time runs short to seal a deal.

Freeland spokesman Adam Austen did not give details. After more than a year of negotiations, Canada and the United States are still trying to resolve differences over the North American Free Trade Agreement, which also includes Mexico.

U.S. officials say time is running out to agree on a text on which the current Congress can vote. Canadian officials say they are working on the assumption they have until the end of September.

Freeland spent three days in Washington last week and said on Friday as she prepared to leave that she and Lighthizer were making very good progress in some areas, although a deal remained out of reach.

U.S. President Donald Trump, who says he is prepared to tear up NAFTA, has struck a trade deal with Mexico and threatened to push ahead without Canada.

Uncertainly over the future of NAFTA, which underpins $1.2 trillion in trade, is weighing on markets as well as the Canadian and Mexican currencies.

Officials say the main sticking points are Canada’s dairy quota regime, Ottawa’s desire to keep a dispute-resolution mechanism, and Canadian media laws that favor domestically produced content.

U.S. Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue, speaking in an interview broadcast on Sunday, said Canada had to scrap a low-price milk proteins policy to reach a deal on NAFTA. U.S. farmers complain Canada is flooding export markets.

Austen, asked whether Freeland might return to Washington later in the week, said no decisions had been taken. She is due to attend a two-day meeting of legislators from the ruling Liberal Party in western Canada on Wednesday and Thursday.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said last Wednesday he did not see the need to attend the talks for the time being.

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Documentary Explores Scottish Workers’ Boycott Over Chile 1973 Coup

When Chilean air force jet engines arrived for repair at a Rolls-Royce factory in Scotland in 1974, inspector Bob Fulton swiftly decided he would not touch them.

The World War II veteran had been shaken by images thousands of miles away in Santiago of Hawker Hunter jets bombing La Moneda presidential palace in the Sept. 11, 1973, military coup that toppled democratically elected socialist president Salvador Allende.

Despite risking his job, Fulton refused to let the engines through maintenance and, with fellow trade union workers, led an act of international solidarity against the coup and ensuing dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet.

Documentary Nae Pasaran, meaning “they shall not pass,” takes a look at the boycott of Chilean air force engines by the engineers in East Kilbride and the impact it had.

“It’s very rare … for anyone … to find out decades later that something you’ve done … actually pays off and affects positively the lives of others,” film director Felipe Bustos Sierra told Reuters.

The son of an exiled Chilean journalist living in Belgium, Bustos Sierra said he first heard of the Scottish workers’ actions as a child.

“I suppose as I got older that story stuck with me because it connects directly with the most iconic image of the coup in Chile, which is the Hawker Hunters flying low over Santiago, and firing … into the palace,” he said. “The idea that Scottish workers on the other side of the world had managed to, I suppose, dent that image in some ways was quite incredible.”

The workers labeled the engine parts “black,” meaning they would not be touched on the factory assembly line for months.

They were then put and left outside, until they disappeared in 1978. The workers were told they had gone back to the Chile.

“That’s the only information they got … for years until we started making this film,” Bustos Sierra said.

Nae Pasaran shows Fulton, now in his 90s, and colleagues, who were honored by the Chilean government in 2015, look back on their actions and hear stories from Chileans jailed after the coup. A Pinochet-era general is also interviewed.

The documentary, which got an ovation at a festival in Glasgow and is to be released in Britain in November, has yet to be screened in Chile, where Bustos Sierra said he had seen positive comments on social media about it and some who thought the story was “science fiction.” He hopes for a 2019 cinema release there.

“I think somebody taking that sort of action today would probably be in more jeopardy than Bob was back then,” he said, when asked if such defiance was still possible. “But I think the idea of a peaceful civil disobedience still stands today.”

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Ebola Fight Has New Science but Faces Old Hurdles in Restive Congo

When Esperance Nzavaki heard she was cured of Ebola after three weeks of cutting-edge care at a medical centre in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, she raised her arms to the sky with joy and praised the Lord.

Her recovery is testament to the effectiveness of a new treatment, which isolates patients in futuristic cube-shaped mobile units with transparent walls and gloved access, so health workers no longer need to don cumbersome protective gear.

“I started to feel sick, with a fever and pain all over my body. I thought it was typhoid. I took medicine but it didn’t work,” Nzavaki told Reuters in Beni, a city of several hundred thousand, where officials are racing to contain the virus.

“Then an ambulance came and brought me to hospital for Ebola treatment. Now I praise God I’m healed.”

The fight against Ebola has advanced more in recent years than in any since it was discovered near the Congo River in 1976. When the worst outbreak killed 11,300 people in West Africa in 2013-2016, there was no vaccine and treatment amounted to little more than keeping patients comfortable and hydrated.

Now there’s an experimental vaccine manufactured by Merck which already this year helped quash an earlier outbreak of this strain of the virus on the other side of the country in under three months. And there are the cube treatment centers, pioneered by the Senegal-based medical charity, ALIMA.

“With this system … where there are not people donning masks, the patients feel reassured and perceive that there is life here,” said Claude Mahoudeau, ALIMA’s coordinator for the Ebola outbreak in Beni.

In addition, three experimental treatments have been rolled out for the first time, offering patients additional reason to hope that their diagnosis is not a death sentence.

Yet even the smartest science can do little about the marauding rebel groups and widespread fear and mistrust that could yet scupper efforts to contain Congo’s tenth outbreak of the deadly haemorrhagic fever.

The latest outbreak is so far believed to have killed 90 people since July and infected another 40.

The stakes are high, not just for health reasons. Ebola could complicate Congo’s first democratic change of power, the holding of a Dec. 23 election to replace President Joseph Kabila that is already two years late.

Rebellion, fear, mistrust

The affected North Kivu and Ituri provinces have been a tinder box of armed rebellion and ethnic killing since two civil wars in the late 1990s. Some areas near the epicenter require armed escorts to reach because of insecurity. Two South African peacekeepers there were wounded in a rebel ambush last week.

And last week, authorities confirmed the first death from Ebola in the major trading hub of Butembo, a city of almost a million people near the border with Uganda, dampening hopes that the virus was being brought under control.

On Monday, the World Health Organization (WHO) said more than 60 of its experts had arrived in the city and that a mobile laboratory had started testing samples.

Insecurity aside, the biggest challenges the government faces could be panic and downright denial, as they were during the catastrophic West Africa outbreak.

“Ebola does not exist in Beni,” resident Tresor Malala said, shaking his head. “For a long time, people got sick with fever, diarrhoea, vomiting and they healed. Now someone gets a fever, they get sent to the Ebola treatment center and then they die.”

Taxi driver Mosaste Kala was equally skeptical: “The only people dying are the ones going to the … treatment center.”

Tackling these perceptions will be crucial if authorities are to halt the epidemic.

At a news conference on Saturday, Health Minister Oly Ilunga Kalenga acknowledged that “community resistance is the first challenge to the response to the epidemic.”

In the district of Ndindi, in Beni, Ebola is spreading due to the community’s reluctance to cooperate with health workers, the ministry says. Some locals have hidden sick relatives or refused to be vaccinated.

The problem, says school teacher Alain Mulonda, many of whose pupils were being kept at home by anxious parents, is that locals have little understanding of Ebola.

“If the population of Beni continues to show this distrust,” he said, “this disease will consume the whole town.”

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Survey: Number of Americans Getting News on Social Media Slows

About two-thirds of American adults say they occasionally get their news from social media, according to a survey released Monday by the Pew Research Center.

The number is 1 percent more than last year, indicating a slowdown in the growth of news consumption on social media.

Despite the popularity of social media, 57 percent said they expected the news they received on these platforms to be inaccurate.

Republicans were far more negative than Democrats about social media news, with 72 percent saying they expect it to be inaccurate. Forty-six percent of Democrats and 55 percent of independents reported feeling the same. Pew surveyor Katerina Eva Matsa said this falls in line with years of research on political attitudes toward news media in general.

“We’ve seen stark differences between Republicans and Democrats when it comes to the perception of fairness, the media’s watchdog role, trust toward the media,” Matsa said.

Despite the partisan breakdown, more people listed accuracy as their greatest concern with news on social media than political bias. Thirty-one percent were concerned with accuracy, while 11 percent worried about political bias.

Facebook remained the dominant platform for online news consumption, with 43 percent of respondents saying they get news there. YouTube came in second with 21 percent, and Twitter third with 12 percent. Other major social media platforms such as Instagram and Reddit scored in the single digits.

Reddit stood out as the site where the highest portion of its users were exposed to news, at 73 percent. Twitter and Facebook came in second and third respectively, with 71 percent and 67 percent.

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Creditors Warn Greece on Debt Relief as Inspectors Return

Greece’s lead creditor warned the country on Monday not to stray from reforms agreed upon before the end of its international bailout, as European monitors arrived to check the nation’s finances.

The five-day inspection is expected to focus on government promises over the weekend to offer tax relief as well as plans to scrap promised pension cuts that are due to take effect in 2019.

Klaus Regling, managing director of the European Stability Mechanism, the eurozone’s rescue fund, told Austria’s Die Presse newspaper that Greece needed to stick to its commitments.

`We are a very patient creditor. But we can stop debt relief measures that have been decided for Greece if the adjustment programs are not continued as agreed,” he said. “The debt level appears to be frighteningly elevated. But Greece can live with that as the loan maturities are very long and the interest rates on the loans are much lower than in most other countries.”

Left-wing Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras is trailing opposition conservatives in opinion polls and must call a general election within the next 12 months. Amid large protest rallies led by labor unions over the weekend, the prime minister said that relief measures promised to taxpayers would not jeopardize fiscal performance targets and would be introduced gradually.

Greece has promised to deliver high primary surpluses — the budget balance before calculating the cost of servicing debt — for years to come, along with a series of reforms in exchange for better debt repayment terms.

The end of the bailout means Greece will have to return to international capital markets to finance itself. However, the country faces a troubled return after the financial turmoil in Turkey and Italy halted a decline in Greek borrowing rates. The yield on Greece’s 10-year-bond remains above 4 percent.

The bailout program ended August 20 but the country’s debt level remains near 180 percent of gross domestic product.

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Records: Understaffing Causes Assisted Living Facility Snags

Complaints filed with a West Virginia state agency say assisted living ResCare Agency facilities are struggling with staff shortages, causing problems such as missed doctors’ appointments and incorrectly administered medication. 

The Charleston Gazette-Mail reports nine substantiated complaints filed with the state Office of Health Facility Licensure and Certification since last year lay out the problems due to staff shortages. One says a lack of supervision allowed a patient to run away. Another says patients are commonly told their doctors appointments have been “cancelled due to staffing issues.” 

The state agency confirmed 32 ResCare facility complaints from 2012 to 2016. Some also included allegations of neglect and sexual abuse. 

The legal director of Disability Rights of West Virginia, Jeremiah Underhill, says low pay may be to blame.

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Opening Ceremony Puts on a Festive Drag Show at Fashion Week

Opening Ceremony, the label that always seems to find quirkier and more unusual ways to display its clothes during Fashion Week, upped the ante on Sunday with a festive drag show, featuring a surprise performance by Christina Aguilera and an appearance by Nicki Minaj — her first fashion show since a very public altercation with fellow rapper Cardi B.

The event, called “The Gift of Showz,” was created by Sasha Velour, the drag performer who last year won Season 9 of “RuPaul’s Drag Race,” and starred Velour and a number of other prominent drag performers.

The performers wore items from Opening Ceremony’s latest collection as they took the stage at a West Village cabaret, Le Poisson Rouge, to model or to lip sync, cheered on by an enthusiastic crowd that included Minaj in the front row. The rapper was attending her first show since Friday’s altercation with Cardi B at a Fashion Week party that made headlines.

As the performers did their numbers, a running joke emerged that Aguilera was there, but at first, it turned out only to be a cutout figure of her, and then it was an imitator. At the end, though, the kidding was over, and the real Aguilera turned up to delight the crowd with a song of her own.

Over the years, Opening Ceremony’s founders, Humberto Leon and Carol Lim, have found a series of inventive ways to present their clothes at Fashion Week. They once had an edible wall of oozing chocolate. Another time, it was a martial arts display. Last year, they gave a 40-minute dance performance.

Leon wrote in a program note that growing up gay in a traditional Chinese family in Los Angeles, he discovered an all-ages club that featured drag shows, teaching him about “a community I didn’t know I had been longing for.”

“What drew me to drag shows as a teenager is the same thing that propelled Carol and me to start Opening Ceremony,” he said. “A celebration of individuality, freedom of expression, and the idea that realizing your dreams is only a fabulous outfit away.”

Performers included Hungry, who is based in Berlin and is singer Bjork’s makeup artist, and the American drag artist Lypsinka, along with a number of other artists.

 

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Zimbabwe Finance Minister: Reviving Economy is ‘Herculean’ Task

Zimbabwe’s new finance minister has described his task of reviving the country’s moribund economy as extraordinarily difficult, but he is hopeful of success.

“It’s enormous, it is Herculean. I am very energetic and I am very up to the task. I am starting now, but in the process what I will do is listen,” said Finance Minister Mthuli Ncube, a former chief economist and vice president of the African Development Bank.

He spoke to VOA at the State House after being sworn into office Monday by President Emmerson Mnangagwa.

Nearby, 21-year-old Isaac Madyira is jobless. He dropped out of school seven years ago after his also parents, also unemployed, failed to pay the fees. He now sells cash, which has been in acute short supply for the past two years in Zimbabwe. He says he expects change from the new Cabinet Mnangagwa put into office Monday.

“What we want is corruption to be get rid of. We want development as quickly as possible. I think [on] the issue of money, we need our own currency which is valued as compared to other currencies, then bond notes must go [the last two words in Shona],” he said.

Zimbabwe started printing bond notes about two years ago to ease cash shortages. They were supposed to trade at par with the U.S. dollar, but on the black market the notes are worth about half as much as a dollar and cash shortages have not ended.

Almost as if Ncube had talked to Madyira, the new finance minister said he has to address the currency issue for Zimbabwe’s economy to get back on track.

“Restoring confidence in the economy, I make sure that international investors are interested in the Zimbabwean economy again,” said Ncube. “I will be rolling [out] a plan on the arrears clearance and the whole debt restructuring process, coupled with that is building credit lines globally. Internally I make that on the expenditure side we live within or means or move towards that. We need to strengthen our tax collection systems. Ultimately we need to have the Zimbabwe dollar that is stable, that people have confidence in. To have a domestic currency, you need to build reserves.”

Zimbabwe abandoned its worthless dollar in 2009 and has been using the U.S. dollar, South African rand and British sterling pound for trading.

An economist for the Labor and Economic Development Research Institute of Zimbabwe, Prosper Chitambara, says the Ncube is a good choice for the job.

“It is a good start. He is someone who is credible, a professional. But what has to be done is to begin real work,” he said. “To roll up his sleeves and begin to implement key fiscal policies that will bring back confidence into the economy. Reining down on recurrent expenditure. In general, what we need are fiscal consolidation reforms that curtail drastically recurrent government expenditure.”

Chitambara says Zimbabwe’s government spends much of its revenue on salaries, leaving social services sectors like education and health in dire need unless Western aid agencies, like USAID, assist. Chitambara says Ncube has to change that if the country is to recover.

 

 

 

 

 

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Emmy Predictions: ‘Game of Thrones’ or ‘Handmaid’s Tale’?

Scaling Emmy heights is tough in the era of so-called peak TV, with the volume of shows matched by lofty expectations from academy voters.

Good isn’t enough for comedies and dramas, which need to resonate with the current political and social zeitgeist. Actors who also pull off the high-wire act of writing and directing collect more respect and trophies.

Talent aside, a lavish marketing campaign helps in a crowded field: With as many as seven or eight nominees in some key categories, about 14 percent of the TV academy vote can determine who gets a trophy, according to awards website Gold Derby.

So is it “Game of Thrones” (with a leading 22 nods, but the majority technical ones) or “The Handmaid’s Tale” for best drama? Will Donald Glover repeat as best comedy actor for “Atlanta” or could Bill Hader of freshman “Barry” be an upset winner?

The comedy arena is the big unknown: It’s wide open with two-time winner “Veep” and its star, six-time comedy actress champ Julia Louis-Dreyfus, sitting this one out.

Despite such daunting wild-card factors, we’re still game to predict who will win, and who should, at the ceremony airing on NBC at 8 p.m. EDT Monday, Sept. 17. It’s hosted by “Saturday Night Live” players Michael Che and Colin Jost.

Here’s AP Television Writer Lynn Elber and Entertainment Writer Mark Kennedy’s guesses in the glamour categories.

DRAMA SERIES

ELBER:

Should win: “The Handmaid’s Tale.” It remains true to its unsparing vision of a poisoned society, daring us to watch or choose blind ignorance. No other show matches its demands with equal rewards.

Will win: “The Handmaid’s Tale.” For many viewers and voters, it’s got that zeitgeist thing down pat.

KENNEDY:

Should win: “The Handmaid’s Tale.” Even though the second season was more brutal than the first, it went beyond the source material brilliantly. “Game of Thrones” may have returned to claim its crown with a visually stunning season, but the zeitgeist is indeed firmly in Gilead.

Will win: “The Handmaid’s Tale.”

COMEDY SERIES

ELBER:

Should win: “Atlanta.” Auteur TV at its best, with star Donald Glover the series’ creator as well as creative force, winning Emmys last year for acting and directing. But does it include enough punchlines per dramatic moments for voters?

Will win: “Atlanta.” While worthy freshman competitor “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel” offers a female-empowerment vibe and more wisecracks, the series set in the 1950s can’t compete with the contemporary edge of “Atlanta.”

KENNEDY:

Should win: “Atlanta.” The show, led by Glover’s Hall of Fame abilities, has added audiences and nominations in its second season and has given many Americans a view into a world they hadn’t known.

Will win: “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel.” This is safer, sad to say.

ACTOR, DRAMA SERIES

ELBER:

Should win: Matthew Rhys, “The Americans.” Rhys’ somber, conflicted depiction of Soviet spy Mischa, aka American family man Philip Jennings, grounded the now-ended series. Time to honor him, comrades.

Will win: Sterling K. Brown, “This Is Us.” Brown was the only network drama series cast member to win last year, with cable and streaming gobbling all the other awards. And his tender-hearted family man is as affecting as ever.

KENNEDY:

Should win: Remember when Jon Hamm of “Mad Men” finally won his Emmy on his eighth and last attempt? How he crawled onto the stage to accept his trophy, out of relief and exhaustion? Maybe Rhys will do the same this time. He deserves to after six brilliant seasons of “The Americans.”

Will win: Brown. Emmy voters like to ride a winner — hello, Julia Louis-Dreyfus! — and Brown’s perpetually unsure brother-dad-son on “This Is Us” is a portrait both lovingly comedic and dramatically empathetic.

ACTRESS, DRAMA SERIES

ELBER:

Should win: Sandra Oh, “Killing Eve.” The five-time Emmy nominee for “Grey’s Anatomy” gives an intense, visceral performance in this female version of a mano a mano spy thriller and shines anew.

Will win: Elisabeth Moss, “The Handmaid’s Tale.” Moss won the trophy last year for her portrayal of an unbroken victim, and her steeliness remains magnetic.

KENNEDY:

Should win: Keri Russell. No disrespect to Moss, but she has her Emmy. This is the last chance for Russell, who played a ferocious Russian mole as well as a tender wife and mother on “The Americans.”

Will win: Moss. In her second season as Offred, there seemed less dialogue but her eyes managed to convey horror, red-hot anger and resignation, all at once.

ACTOR, COMEDY SERIES

ELBER:

Should win: William H. Macy, “Shameless.” Must Macy’s damaged, erratic patriarch Frank Gallagher clean up his act or die for Macy to get the award he so richly deserves, and has been denied him four times? Is that a rhetorical question?

Will win: Donald Glover, “Atlanta.” He’s a master of performance as well as seriocomic storytelling, bringing his searching young character to life with nuance and without cliche. Give the man a second Emmy.

KENNEDY:

Should win: Agreed. Glover. Macy’s a worthy competitor but Bill Hader is too much of a dark horse.

Will win: Glover. Totally.

ACTRESS, COMEDY SERIES

ELBER:

Should win: Rachel Brosnahan is dazzling as a betrayed wife who finds her voice in witty and cathartic stand-up rants. Brosnahan is the right interpreter for creator Amy Sherman-Palladino’s post-“Gilmore Girls” realism.

Will win: Brosnahan. A breakout charmer in the right vehicle.

KENNEDY:

Should win: No Louis-Dreyfus this time, so the Emmys will crown a new comedy queen for the first time in six years. TV moms Tracee Ellis Ross and Allison Janney have been patient. But Pamela Adlon in “Better Things” is a raw, unflinching, loving portrait of a modern, messy middle-aged one.

Will win: Brosnahan, who delivers a mannered, winning performance — as a mom, naturally.

LIMITED SERIES

ELBER:

Should win: “Patrick Melrose.” Actor-producer Benedict Cumberbatch’s passion project (based on Edward St Aubyn’s semi-autobiographical novels) is a flawlessly executed exploration of a tormented man and his past.

Will win: “The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story.” Producer Ryan Murphy knows how to work the big canvas, as he proved with Emmy-lavished “The People v. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story.”

KENNEDY:

Should win: “The Looming Tower.” Mixing fact and fiction to trace the messy U.S. response to the rise of al-Qaida and Osama bin Laden, the series bites off a lot but delivers deftly.

Will win: “Gianni Versace.” The “American Crime Story” franchise, like Murphy’s horror anthology series, is just too hard to beat, being equal parts lurid and fascinating.

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CBS to Pay Moonves Up to $120M Depending on Outcome of Probe

CBS Corp said on Monday it will pay up to $120 million to former Chief Executive Officer Leslie Moonves if an internal investigation into allegations of harassment fails to provide grounds for his dismissal.

Moonves, who turned CBS from an aging radio and TV broadcaster into a successful provider of shows to digital platforms, had been expected to reap an estimated $100 million in severance.

CBS said it and Moonves will donate $20 million of Moonves’ severance to organizations supporting the #MeToo movement.

Moonves, the top executive at CBS since 2006 and a major figure at the broadcast network and media company for more than two decades, resigned on Sunday amid a new wave of allegations against him of sexual assault and harassment.

CBS shares were down 2.5 percent at $54.63 in early trade.

Under terms, CBS said in a filing that the settlement of $120 million would be put in a trust within 30 days and Moonves could end up with nothing if the result of the investigation goes against him.

The board will decide on the course of action before Jan. 31 and its determination will be subject to binding arbitration.

Separately, CBS and its controlling shareholder National Amusements Inc (NAI) will also end litigation for control of the company.

NAI has agreed to withdraw its proposal to merge CBS and with Viacom for two years unless it gets a vote of two-thirds of directors not affiliated with the controlling shareholder.

Shari Redstone-controlled NAI will also consider in good faith any other deal suggested by those unaffiliated directors.

Chief Operating Officer Joe Ianniello will take over as interim CEO as the board searches for a replacement of Moonves.

“We view Ianniello’s elevation to temporary CEO as the best choice for CBS and its shareholders,” Cowen analyst Doug Creutz wrote in a client note. “Ianniello has worked for the company since 1997 and thus is very familiar with the assets.”

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EU, US Make First Push for Closer Ties After Trade Detente

European Union trade chief Cecilia Malmstrom met her U.S. counterpart for the first time on Monday since President Donald Trump dropped his threat to impose tariffs on EU cars, saying they had discussed how to achieve concrete results soon.

Malmstrom hosted United States Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer in Brussels on Monday. The two are set to meet again at the end of September.

Malmstrom, who is the European Trade Commissioner, described the meeting as a first opportunity to follow through on an agreement between Trump and European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker two months ago.

Lighthizer’s office described the talks as constructive, adding that experts would meet in October to identify tariff and non-tariff barriers that could be cut, with the trade chiefs following that up in November to finalize certain results.

“Specifically, we hope for an early harvest in the area of technical barriers to trade,” the U.S. Trade Representative’s office statement said.

Trump agreed with Juncker in July to refrain from imposing tariffs on EU cars while the two sides launched discussions to remove tariffs on non-auto industrial products.

A working group, headed by the two trade chiefs, has also been charged with finding ways to cut tariffs, boost U.S. liquefied natural gas exports and to reform the World Trade Organization.

“We discussed how to move forward and identify priorities on both sides and how to achieve concrete results in the short to medium term,” Malmstrom wrote. “Lots of work remains this autumn, our services will be in close contact in the coming weeks.”

Malmstrom said last month that the easing of trade tensions between the two partners had not put to rest “profound disagreements” on trade policy.

She also said then that the EU would be willing to reduce its car tariffs to zero if the United States did the same.

Trump rejected the idea as “not good enough”, adding that EU consumers simply tended to buy European rather than American cars.

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New Miss America Glad She Didn’t Have to Don Swimsuit to Win

The first woman to win the Miss America crown without having to don a swimsuit says she’s glad she didn’t have to.

Nia Imani Franklin, who won the title Sunday night in Atlantic City while competing as Miss New York, said the changes in the 98-year-old are a welcome modernization.

Meeting reporters soon after winning the crown, Franklin said she’s glad there was no swimsuit competition because it enabled her to eat a little more.

“These changes, I think, will be great for our organization,” she said. “I’ve already seen so many young women reaching out to me personally as Miss New York asking how they can get involved because I think they feel more empowered that they don’t have to do things such as walk in a swimsuit for a scholarship.”

“And I’m happy that I didn’t have to do so to win this title tonight because I’m more than just that,” Franklin said. “And all these women onstage are more than just that.”

Her victory Sunday night resurrected a string of successes the Empire State has had in the pageant in recent years. Mallory Hagan, Nina Davuluri and Kira Kazantsev won the title from 2013 to 2015 competing as Miss New York.

A classical vocalist whose pageant platform is “advocating for the arts,” Franklin sang an operatic selection from the opera La Boheme on Sunday night.

She wrote her first song at age 5. It went “Love, love, love, love, is the only thing that matters to me, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey.” At the prompting of an Associated Press reporter, she sang the song at her post-victory press conference as audience members snapped their fingers.

Franklin won a $50,000 scholarship along with the crown in the first Miss America pageant to be held without a swimsuit competition.

She said during her onstage interview that she was one of only a small number of minority students in school growing up, but used her love for music and the arts to grow and fit in.

The fourth runner up was Miss Massachusetts Gabriela Taveras; third runner up was Miss Florida Taylor Tyson; second runner up was Miss Louisiana Holli’ Conway, and the first runner up was Miss Connecticut Bridget Oei.

The judges narrowed the field of 51 candidates during the pageant Sunday night from Jim Whelan Boardwalk Hall.

The decision to drop the swimsuit competition created a good deal of controversy and criticism of current Miss America leadership. Minutes before the nationally televised broadcast began, a comedian warming up the crowd mentioned that there would be no swimsuit competition this year, and was met with loud boos in the hall.

The swimsuits were replaced by onstage interviews, which have generated attention-grabbing remarks from contestants regarding President Trump, and NFL player protests, among other topics. 

Behind the scenes, a revolt is underway among most of the Miss America state organizations who demand that national chairwoman Gretchen Carlson and CEO Regina Hopper resign. 

The former Miss America, Cara Mund, says the two have bullied and silenced her, claims that the women deny. 

Upon taking over at the helm of the Miss America Organization last winter following an email scandal in which former top leaders denigrated the appearance, intellect and sex lives of former Miss Americas, Carlson and Hopper set out to transform the organization, dubbing it “Miss America 2.0.” 

Unhappy with how the swimsuit decision was reached, as well as with other aspects of Carlson and Hopper’s performance, 46 of the 51 state pageant organizations (the District of Columbia is included) have called on the two to resign. 

Mund only appeared at the very end of the pageant before the next winner was crowned. She was not allowed to speak live; instead a 30-second taped segment of her speaking was broadcast. 

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Tiwa the Talking Monkey Uses Tech to Help Revive Nigerian Folk Tales

A stuffed toy monkey called Tiwa holds some of Nigeria’s oldest folk tales and is helping to revive the traditional practice of storytelling by appealing to a younger generation. Faith Lapidus reports.

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