ANAHEIM, Calif. – The Democrats’ fragile majority in the U.S. Senate puts extra pressure on California Gov. Gavin Newsom to quickly pick a replacement for Sen. Dianne Feinstein following her death, a fraught decision for a two-term governor with national ambitions of his own. The Democratic governor had promised to appoint a Black woman in … Read more
LAS VEGAS – It started as a crude sketch — a circle with a stick person inside. Seven years later, that drawing has been made real: A $2.3 billion massive spherical venue standing 366 feet high and lighting up the Las Vegas skyline. The drawing was initially made by James Dolan, the executive chairman of … Read more
NEW YORK – Momentum has lately been hard to come by at the movies. The big trio of fall film festivals — Venice, Telluride, Toronto — came and went without the usual amount of buzz. With actors on strike, red carpets have been mostly bare. It’s almost like since the heady highs of “Barbenheimer,” the … Read more
LOS ANGELES – iHeartRadio has unveiled its star-studded 2023 Jingle Ball lineup, including performances by Olivia Rodrigo, Usher, Nicki Minaj, SZA, Niall Horan, and Jelly Roll. The 11-city tour will hit New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Detroit, Boston, Washington, Philadelphia, Atlanta, the Dallas-Fort Worth area and, in Florida, Tampa and the Fort Lauderdale-Miami area. “Our … Read more
TOKYO – Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami hosted a ghost story reading event in Tokyo amid growing attention before the announcement of this year’s Nobel Prize in literature, an award he is a perennial favorite to win. Murakami said at Thursday’s reading that he enjoys scary stories and wanted to write more of them. The event … Read more
HONG KONG – In the last few years, China’s government has promoted increasingly conservative social values, encouraging women to focus on raising children. It has cracked down on civil society movements and made laws to drive out foreign influence. So a 75-year-old Japanese feminist scholar who’s not married and does not have children is an … Read more
NEW YORK – The second Republican presidential debate this week attracted fewer viewers than the first debate in August, with an estimated 9.5 million tuning into Wednesday night’s event. The debate was the second in a row that the front-runner, former President Donald Trump, skipped to have the spotlight follow him instead of his distant … Read more