Month: September 2022

Categories
Business

Confused concerning the housing market? This is what’s taking place

How the Fed affects the real estate market

The slowdown in the otherwise red-hot real estate boom has been amazingly quick.

The US housing market has skyrocketed during the pandemic as housebound people looked for new places to live, boosted by record-low interest rates.

Now real estate agents, who once reported queues of buyers outside open houses and bidding wars on the back deck, say houses are sitting longer and sellers are being forced to lower their views.

This leaves both potential buyers and sellers wondering where they stand.

“As recession concerns weigh on consumer prospects, our survey shows that uncertainty has entered the minds of many shoppers,” said Danielle Hale, chief economist at Realtor.com.

Here are the key factors behind the upside-down housing market.

mortgage rates

The main driver of the slowdown is rising mortgage rates. The average interest rate on the 30-year fixed-rate mortgage, which is by far the most popular product today and accounts for more than 90% of all mortgage applications, was around 3% earlier this year. It’s now just over 6%, according to Mortgage News Daily.

That means a person buying a $400,000 home would now have a monthly payment about $700 more than they did in January.

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High prices, low supply

The other drivers of the slowdown are high prices and low supply.

Prices are now 43% higher than when the coronavirus pandemic began, according to S&P Case-Shiller’s national home price index. The supply of homes for sale is up 27% in early September compared to the same time a year ago, according to Realtor.com. While that comparison seems big, it’s still not enough to make up for years of lack of homes for sale.

Active inventory is still 43% lower than in 2019. New listings were also down 6% at the end of September, meaning potential sellers are now concerned as they see more homes staying on the market longer.

Real estate wealth decreases when vulnerable equity decreases

Paul Legere is a buying agent at the Joel Nelson Group in Washington, DC. Focusing on the embattled Capitol Hill neighborhood, he said he saw offers jump by 20 to 171 just after Labor Day. He now calls the market “bloated.” For comparison: In March, only 65 houses were for sale.

“This is a very traditional post-Labor Day inventory increase and it will be very instructive to see how the market absorbs the new inventory in about a week,” he said. “Very.”

Inventory is taking a hit nationwide as homebuilders slow production due to fewer potential buyers touring their models. According to the US Census, single-family housing starts fell 18.5% in July from July 2021.

According to the National Association of Home Builders, homebuilder sentiment in the single-family home market fell into negative territory in August for the first time since a brief dip earlier in the pandemic. Builders reported lower sales and weaker buyer traffic.

“Tighter Federal Reserve monetary policy and persistently elevated construction costs have led to a housing recession,” NAHB chief economist Robert Dietz said in the August report.

Some buyers stay tuned

However, buyers have not completely disappeared despite the still expensive selling market and equally expensive rental market.

“The data suggests some homebuyers are finding silver lining in the form of cooling competition for the rising number of homes for sale,” Realtor.com’s Hale said. “Especially for buyers who are getting creative, for example by exploring smaller markets, this fall could offer a relatively better chance of finding a home on budget.”

We could expect falling home prices nationwide, says Yale's Robert Shiller

Real estate prices are finally starting to cool down. They fell 0.77% from June to July, the first monthly decline in almost three years, according to Black Knight, a mortgage technology and data provider.

While the drop may seem small, it’s the biggest one-month price drop since January 2011. It’s also the second-worst July performance since 1991, after the 0.9% drop in July 2010 during the Great Recession.

affordability issues

Still, this fall in prices will do little to improve the affordability crisis caused by rising mortgage rates. While interest rates fell slightly in August, they have risen sharply again this week, marking the least affordable week for housing in 35 years.

Currently, 35.51% of the median income is required to pay the monthly principal and interest payment for the median home with a 30-year mortgage and 20% down payment. That’s a slight increase from the previous 35-year high in June, when the pay-to-earnings ratio hit 35.49%, according to Andy Walden, vice president of corporate research and strategy at Black Knight.

In the five years before interest rates started to rise, the income-to-payments ratio was steady at around 20%. Although house prices rose sharply in 2020 and 2021, record-low interest rates offset the increases.

“Given the large role that affordability challenges appear to be playing in changing housing market dynamics, the recent decline in house prices is likely to continue,” Walden said.

The housing market slows as mortgage rates hit 6.25%

A new report from real estate brokerage firm Redfin showed that while demand from homebuyers picked up a bit in August, the recent rise in mortgage rates over the past week immediately put them to sleep. Fewer people searched Google for “homes for sale” in the week ended September 3 — 25% fewer than a year ago, according to the report.

Redfin’s Demand Index, which measures requests for home inspections and other home-buying services from Redfin agents, showed that demand in the seven days ended Sept. 4 was up 18% from the 2022 low in June, but still year-on-year has decreased by 11% year.

“The housing market always cools off this time of year,” said Daryl Fairweather, Redfin’s chief economist, “but this year I expect the fall and winter to be particularly cold as sales dry up more than usual.”

Categories
Politics

In Ohio, Biden Says Democrats Have Began a Manufacturing Revival

In Ohio, Biden Says Democrats Have Started a Manufacturing Revival

WASHINGTON — President Biden attended the groundbreaking ceremony for a $20 billion computer chip factory in a heavily Republican section of Ohio on Friday, testing the power of his election-year message that Democrats helped kickstart a revival in manufacturing with record amounts of government spending .

Mr. Biden traveled to Licking County, Ohio, outside of Columbus, where Intel plans to build a semiconductor fab. In a remark at the event, the president said the company’s decision to build the facility was the result of a law he signed authorizing his government to spend up to $52 billion to support the chip industry.

“This new law is a historic investment for companies to build advanced manufacturing facilities here in America,” said Mr. Biden, standing in front of an open field on which the sprawling 10-football facility will be built. “Since I signed the CHIPS and Science Act, it’s already started.”

Intel, one of the world’s leading chipmakers, announced construction of the Ohio plant in January, months before the bill passed in the summer, and said it was building the plant to meet rising global demand. In its press release announcing the investment, the company didn’t specifically mention the possibility that federal laws will help fund it.

But Pat Gelsinger, the company’s chief executive, welcomed the legislation, known as the CHIPS and Science Act, and said federal spending could boost the construction sector even more in the years to come. In introducing the President, Mr. Gelsinger praised Mr. Biden and other Washington officials.

“It was a bipartisan bill,” he said at Friday’s event. “How often do you hear that today?”

For Mr. Biden, praising Intel’s blueprints is part of a strategy to draw voters’ attention to parts of the economy that are improving — and away from record-high inflation that has frustrated many Americans and dragged his approval ratings lower.

White House officials note that manufacturing jobs in the United States have risen by 680,000 since the president took office, the fastest pace in 50 years. In his remarks, Mr. Biden said that three other high-tech companies — Micron, Qualcomm and GlobalFoundries — recently announced plans to expand manufacturing in the United States.

Government officials have promised that the investment in chipmaking will not be a giveaway to companies that are already making big profits. The law prohibits companies from using the federal investment to buy back shares or invest in construction projects in China. And it includes rules to encourage the use of unionized workers.

Gina Raimondo, the Commerce Secretary, told reporters this week that her department will be “vigilant and aggressive” to ensure the money is not misused.

“We will push companies to be bigger and bolder,” she said. “So if a company already has funding for a $10 billion project right now, we want them to think bigger and see how they’re going from $10 billion to $50 billion with taxpayer funding.”

With the primaries over, both parties are beginning to shift their focus to the November 8 general election.

She pledged that the government would “claw back” investments if companies failed to comply with government rules.

Friday’s visit to Ohio is the latest example of efforts by Mr. Biden and his advisers to rewrite the nation’s economic narrative ahead of the midterm elections, drawing on legislative wins and some bright spots in economic data in hopes to reassure consumers who have been rocked by soaring prices following the pandemic recession.

Polls show that the economy – and persistently high inflation in particular – remains a burden for the President. Mr. Biden’s economics team has been increasingly encouraged by the state of the recovery over the past few weeks, as job growth has remained solid and gasoline prices continued to fall across the country.

On Friday, Mr. Biden’s economic team released a 58-page “economic plan” aimed at claiming credit for the strong job market and manufacturing sector, and reiterated the president’s still-unfinished plans for additional tax and spending changes that would benefit the economy should help .

The document breaks Mr. Biden’s economic strategy into five parts: empowering workers, improving American manufacturing, supporting families, strengthening industrial competitiveness, and aligning tax laws to help middle-class workers.

Will it work politically to help Democrats avoid deep losses in this fall’s midterm elections?

White House officials are betting that messages like Mr. Biden’s on Friday will appeal to a broad constituency of voters, including middle-class workers, independents, and those with and without college degrees.

Places like Ohio will be a test of that theory.

The state is home to one of the most competitive Senate races in the country. JD Vance, an author who appropriated the style and ideology of former President Donald J. Trump, is running as a Republican against Rep. Tim Ryan, a Democrat from Ohio, to replace Sen. Rob Portman, who was in the going into retirement.

Mr Ryan has distanced himself from Mr Biden, refused to court the president and said the country needs “new leadership” when asked if the president should run for a second term. Mr Ryan, who also attended the Intel event on Friday, noted that during the 2020 campaign Mr Biden had hinted that he might only serve one term.

“The president said from the start that he would be a bridge to the next generation,” Ryan told reporters, “which is basically what I said.”

Mr. Biden’s approval rating has recovered somewhat from the lows earlier this year, although a majority of Americans continue to disapprove of his leadership in most polls. Still, the president’s appearance in one of the most conservative parts of Ohio suggests his political advisers believe talking about manufacturing can be a winning strategy.

In 2016, Mr. Trump won Licking County, where the Intel plant is to be built, 61 percent to 33 percent over Hillary Clinton. Four years later he won again, this time against Mr. Biden, 63 percent to 35 percent.

Prior to Mr. Biden’s comments, the White House announced that the government had allocated $17.7 million to Ohio colleges and universities to support programs focused on developing a workforce capable of Taking jobs in next-generation semiconductor fabs like the ones Intel plans to build.

Officials said the National Science Foundation plans to spend $100 million to invest in similar programs across the country, all aimed at helping people take on new, high-paying jobs in the industry regardless of where they live .

In his speech, the President made clear the message he hoped voters would take with them from these announcements.

“Jobs now,” he said. “Jobs for the future. Jobs in all parts of the country.”

Jim Tankersley contributed reporting.

Categories
World News

Bitcoin (BTC) tops $20,000 in ‘bearish rally’ as U.S. greenback falls

Institutional investors are becoming increasingly excited about The Merge, says President of Anchorage Digital

Bitcoin prices came under pressure in 2022 following the collapse of algorithmic stablecoin terraUSD and subsequent bankruptcy filings by lender Celsius and hedge fund Three Arrows Capital.

Nicolas Economous | Nurphoto | Getty Images

Bitcoin skyrocketed on Friday, breaking through $20,000 again as the US dollar weakened and stocks soared.

The world’s largest cryptocurrency was last trading 8.7% higher at $20,974.00 after falling to its lowest level since mid-June earlier in the week. Bitcoin briefly jumped above $21,000 earlier in the day.

Other digital coins were higher, including ether, which gained about 4%. The total market value of the cryptocurrency jumped back to over $1 trillion.

The recent uptrend for bitcoin was prompted by a slight weakening of the US dollar, which has staged a stunning rally this year. The US dollar index, which measures the greenback against a basket of other currencies, was down about 1% on Friday morning.

US stock indexes closed higher on Thursday and futures were higher on Friday. Bitcoin is closely correlated with US markets, which often rise when stock indices do. Bitcoin also tends to rise when the dollar weakens.

Bitcoin has been trading in a range of around $18,000 to $24,000 since June and has failed to break this pattern.

Vijay Ayyar, vice president of corporate development and international at crypto exchange Luno, said Friday’s rally could be a “bearish retest” of the price of $22,500-$23,000.

“As such, unless it convincingly breaks through and closes above this level, I would still think this is a bearish rally that could see more reach and downside,” Ayyar said.

Bitcoin has taken a hit this year, and is more than 60% down from its record high in November, when the Federal Reserve aggressively hiked interest rates to dull risky assets like cryptocurrencies.

The crypto market has also been hit by failed projects and high-profile bankruptcies that have spread across the industry.

Ethereum “merge”, focus on inflation

Crypto markets have been anticipating a major network upgrade for Ethereum called Merge, which proponents say will make the blockchain more efficient.

The merger is expected to be completed by mid-September.

Ahead of the event, the price of Ether, Ethereum’s native token, has far outperformed Bitcoin.

Financial markets are also looking for signs of a slowdown in inflation when the US CPI is released next week. And investors are also watching signals on the Fed’s rate hike path.

On Thursday, Fed Chair Jerome Powell said he was “strongly committed” to fighting inflation and hinted that more rate hikes could be on the way.

As inflation cools and Ethereum merger awaits, Yuya Hasegawa, a crypto market analyst at Japanese crypto exchange Bitbank, said Bitcoin could test $22,000 but also issued a warning.

“Given what some Fed members, including Chairman Powell, have said this week, too much optimism could be dangerous,” Hasegawa said in a note on Friday.

Categories
Entertainment

159 Movies, for Each Style, Coming This Fall

159 Films, for Every Taste, Coming This Fall

Steven Spielberg returns to his childhood, Ryan Coogler returns to Wakanda and James Cameron returns to Pandora in just some of the films coming out this fall, following what was generally perceived as a blah summer for movies. And these listings are just a start. Some titles, like “Causeway,” with Jennifer Lawrence, and the Cannes prizewinner “Close,” hadn’t settled on release dates by press time.

And it should be noted: This is a highly select list of noteworthy films. Release dates are subject to change and reflect the latest information as of deadline.

TERRA FEMME Courtney Stephens (a director of the experimental documentary “The American Sector”) presents travelogues shot by women from the 1920s to the ’50s. It’s an essay film, of sorts, although Stephens will narrate it in person at two screenings at Anthology Film Archives. (Sept. 15 in theaters)

THE AFRICAN DESPERATE The artist Martine Syms makes her feature-directing debut with this film about a graduate student (Diamond Stingily) on her last day of art school. It closed last spring’s edition of the New Directors/New Films series. (Sept. 16 in theaters)

CASABLANCA BEATS Nabil Ayouch directed this drama about a former hip-hop artist teaching Moroccan youth to rap. (Sept. 16 in theaters)

CONFESS, FLETCH Is Jon Hamm the 2022 equivalent of Chevy Chase circa 1985? Not exactly: Greg Mottola (“Superbad”) directed Hamm as the sleuth I.M. Fletcher in a fresh adaptation of the second novel in the author Gregory Mcdonald’s mystery series. The comedian Roy Wood Jr. and Kyle MacLachlan are in the cast. (Sept. 16 in theaters and on demand)

DO REVENGE Camila Mendes and Maya Hawke put a high school comedy spin on “Strangers on a Train”; each one plays a student who sets out to get payback on the other’s enemies. (Sept. 16 on Netflix)

DRIFTING HOME Hiroyasu Ishida directed this anime feature about two friends in a housing complex that somehow winds up floating through an ocean. (Sept. 16 on Netflix)

FOUR WINTERS Julia Mintz directed this documentary, which features interviews with surviving partisans who fought the Nazis from the woods of Eastern Europe. (Sept. 16 in theaters)

FROM THE HOOD TO THE HOLLER Charles Booker, the Democratic candidate running to unseat Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky this fall, is profiled in a documentary. (Sept. 16 in theaters, Sept. 30 on demand)

GOD’S COUNTRY Thandiwe Newton plays an academic in a remote area of the West who faces hostility from hunters who insist on parking on her property. Julian Higgins directed. (Sept. 16 in theaters, Oct. 4 on demand)

GOODNIGHT MOMMY Naomi Watts stars in a remake of an Austrian horror film released here in 2015. In that movie, which Jeannette Catsoulis praised in The New York Times as a “carefully controlled creep-out,” twins begin to suspect that the woman who has returned from the hospital, her face wrapped in bandages, is not, in fact, their mother. (Sept. 16 on Amazon)

MOONAGE DAYDREAM Brett Morgen (“Jane”) compiled this prismatic, all-archival survey of the career of David Bowie. It’s said to be the first cinematic portrait supported by the singer’s estate and uses what are described as rare materials. Screenings in Imax theaters are planned. (Sept. 16 in theaters)

PEARL If you saw Ti West’s retro-horror film “X” in theaters earlier this year and stayed through the credits, you would have caught a surprise teaser for this prequel, which stars West’s co-writer, Mia Goth, as a younger version of the farmer’s wife she also played — albeit unrecognizably — in one of her two roles in the first movie. (Sept. 16 in theaters)

RIOTSVILLE, U.S.A. When this nonfiction feature from Sierra Pettengill played at the New Directors/New Films series last spring, Manohla Dargis described it as “a mesmerizing documentary essay that tracks American anti-Black racism through a wealth of disturbing, at times super-freaky 1960s archival footage.” (Sept. 16 in theaters)

SEE HOW THEY RUN Saoirse Ronan and Sam Rockwell plays police partners investigating a murder in the 1950s London theater scene. Adrien Brody, Ruth Wilson and David Oyelowo also star. Tom George directed. (Sept. 16 in theaters)

THE SILENT TWINS Based on the 1986 nonfiction book by Marjorie Wallace, this drama concerns twins who for much of their lives did not speak, except with each other. Letitia Wright and Tamara Lawrance star. Agnieszka Smoczynska (“The Lure”) directed. (Sept. 16 in theaters)

THE WOMAN KING In a drama drawn from the history of the Agojie, also known as the Dahomey Amazons, Viola Davis plays a general leading an army of women in a fight to protect their West African kingdom from slavers in the 19th century. Thuso Mbedu, Lashana Lynch, Sheila Atim and John Boyega also star. Gina Prince-Bythewood directed. (Sept. 16 in theaters)

WHAT WE LEAVE BEHIND The documentarian Iliana Sosa pays tribute to her grandfather, who is nearly 90, as he builds a house in Mexico. (Sept. 16 in theaters and on Netflix

ME TO PLAY This documentary watches as two actors with Parkinson’s disease prepare a production of Samuel Beckett’s “Endgame.” (Sept. 20 on Fandor)

ESCAPE FROM KABUL A year after the United States withdrew from Afghanistan, this documentary assembles footage and recollections from people who were present during the evacuation at the airport in Kabul. (Sept. 21 on HBO Max)

MEET CUTE Per the title, Kaley Cuoco and Pete Davidson meet in a manner that is cute. Or have they already met cute? A time machine is involved. (Sept. 21 on Peacock)

RAVEN’S HOLLOW That’s not just any raven. William Moseley plays Edgar Allan Poe during his time as a West Point cadet, before he found fame as a writer. The young Poe stumbles into a mystery. (Sept. 22 on Shudder)

THE AMERICAN DREAM AND OTHER FAIRY TALES Abigail E. Disney, who directed with Kathleen Hughes, serves as an onscreen guide to an examination of income inequality in the United States, not sparing her family’s own business ventures. (Sept. 23 in theaters)

ATHENA Dali Benssalah plays a young man whose brother dies after an encounter with police. His other brothers and his neighborhood grapple with their response. Romain Gavras directed. The filmmaker Ladj Ly, who shared a prize at Cannes in 2019 for “Les Misérables,” is among the screenwriters. (Sept. 23 on Netflix)

BANDIT In a feature inspired by a real case from the 1980s, Josh Duhamel plays a robber who pulls off heists across Canada. He also goes into business with a loan shark (Mel Gibson). Elisha Cuthbert co-stars. (Sept. 23 in theaters and on demand)

BLANK A writer secludes herself to get some work done, and the android there, having gone on the fritz, really wants her to finish her project. Natalie Kennedy directed. (Sept. 23 in theaters and on demand)

CARMEN Natascha McElhone plays a woman in Malta who, at 50, leaves the church she has pledged herself to since her teenage years and finds romance. (Sept. 23 in theaters and on demand)

CATHERINE CALLED BIRDY When you hear the name Lena Dunham, you don’t exactly think 13th century — but that’s when this irreverent costume picture, which Dunham adapted from Karen Cushman’s novel and directed, is set. Bella Ramsey plays a rebellious teenager whose father tries to marry her off. With Lesley Sharp, Sophie Okonedo and Joe Alwyn. (Sept. 23 in theaters, Oct. 7 on demand)

DON’T WORRY DARLING Florence Pugh plays a 1950s housewife who lives with her husband (Harry Styles) in a company town that, apart from the desert scenery, has a certain affinity with Stepford, Conn., judging from the trailer. Olivia Wilde co-stars and directed this thriller, which also features Gemma Chan, KiKi Layne and Chris Pine. (Sept. 23 in theaters)

THE GREATEST BEER RUN EVER You thought Smokey and the Bandit had the greatest beer run? Not so. Zac Efron plays Chick Donohue, a New Yorker who in 1967 traveled to Vietnam to bring brews to his American soldier pals. Peter Farrelly, seemingly splitting the difference between his comedies and the earnestness of “Green Book,” directed. With Russell Crowe and Bill Murray. (Sept. 23 in theaters; Sept. 30 on Apple TV+)

INVISIBLE DEMONS The documentarian Rahul Jain (“Machines”) looks at the impact of pollution and climate change in Delhi. (Sept. 23 in theaters)

A JAZZMAN’S BLUES Tyler Perry wrote, produced and directed this decades-spanning story of two lovers (Joshua Boone and Solea Pfeiffer) in the South. (Sept. 23 on Netflix)

THE JUSTICE OF BUNNY KING In a drama from New Zealand, Essie Davis (“The Babadook”) plays a down-and-out mother scrambling to avoid breaking a promise to her daughter. Thomasin McKenzie plays her niece. (Sept. 23 in theaters)

LOU Jurnee Smollett plays the mother of a kidnapped girl and Allison Janney the neighbor who helps her retrieve her. Anna Foerster directed, and J.J. Abrams is among the producers. (Sept. 23 on Netflix)

MY IMAGINARY COUNTRY The celebrated Chilean filmmaker Patricio Guzmán directed this documentary about the efforts for social change catalyzed by the protests that began in his country in 2019. (Sept. 23 in theaters)

NOTHING COMPARES Sinead O’Connor looks back on her singing career and the height of her fame in the 1980s and ’90s. Kathryn Ferguson directed. (Sept. 23 in theaters, Sept. 30 on Showtime)

ON THE COME UP Based on a novel by Angie Thomas (“The Hate U Give”), the actress Sanaa Lathan’s feature-directing debut centers on a teenage rap artist (Jamila C. Gray) who is faced with pressure to sell out. (Sept. 23 on Paramount+)

PETROV’S FLU The dissident Russian filmmaker Kirill Serebrennikov directed this fever dream of a film, based on a novel by Alexey Salnikov and centered on a comics artist (Semyon Serzin) in the grip of the grippe. (Sept. 23 in theaters)

RAILWAY CHILDREN In Britain this was known as “The Railway Children Return,” a sequel to the 1970 film “The Railway Children.” It’s set in 1944 and finds Jenny Agutter playing an older version of a character she originated as a teenager. (Sept. 23 in theaters)

SIDNEY Reginald Hudlin directed this documentary on the career of Sidney Poitier, who died in January. It includes interviews with Oprah Winfrey, Denzel Washington and Spike Lee. (Sept. 23 in theaters and on Apple TV+)

BLONDE A faintly recognizable Ana de Armas embodies one of the most recognizable women on the planet — Marilyn Monroe — in this much-anticipated, NC-17-rated adaptation of Joyce Carol Oates’s 2000 novel. The film comes from Andrew Dominik (“The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford”), in his first dramatic feature in a decade. Bobby Cannavale and Adrien Brody also star. (Sept. 28 on Netflix)

ARGENTINA, 1985 The Argentine director Santiago Mitre (“Paulina”) directed this legal drama based on the work of Julio Strassera and Luis Moreno Ocampo, who prosecuted members of the junta that had controlled the country from 1976 to 1983. (Sept. 30 in theaters, Oct. 21 on Amazon)

ART & KRIMES BY KRIMES Alysa Nahmias directed this portrait of Jesse Krimes, who made artwork in prison and managed to get it to the world outside. Now out of prison, he had his work featured in an exhibition at the Philadelphia Museum of Art last year. (Sept. 30 in theaters)

BROS Billy Eichner stars in — and wrote, with the movie’s director, Nicholas Stoller (“Forgetting Sarah Marshall”) — this rom-com about two men, seemingly opposites, falling for each other. Universal is billing it as the “first romantic comedy from a major studio about two gay men maybe, possibly, probably, stumbling towards love.” Judd Apatow is among the producers. (Sept. 30 in theaters)

DEAD FOR A DOLLAR One of the few remaining filmmakers who knows his way around a western, Walter Hill directed this story of a bounty hunter, an outlaw and an abducted woman. Christoph Waltz, Willem Dafoe and Rachel Brosnahan star. (Sept. 30 in theaters)

GOD’S CREATURES In an Irish village that runs on oyster harvesting, a mother (Emily Watson) has to face a truth about her son (Paul Mescal), who has just returned home. Aisling Franciosi (“The Nightingale”) also stars. Saela Davis and Anna Rose Holmer, who collaborated on “The Fits,” directed. (Sept. 30 in theaters and on demand)

THE GOOD HOUSE An alcoholic Massachusetts real estate agent (Sigourney Weaver) and a man from her past (Kevin Kline) get back together. Maya Forbes and Wallace Wolodarsky directed. (Sept. 30 in theaters)

HOCUS POCUS 2 Bette Midler, Sarah Jessica Parker and Kathy Najimy reprise their roles as witches in a sequel to “Hocus Pocus” (1993). (Sept. 30 on Disney+)

I DIDN’T SEE YOU THERE In an essay film that considers how the disabled perceive the world and are perceived, the director Reid Davenport shot this debut feature from his own perspective as a wheelchair user. (Sept. 30 in theaters)

MONA LISA AND THE BLOOD MOON A woman who has escaped from a mental institution (Jong-seo Jun, from “Burning”) joins forces with a heavily Brooklyn-accented mother (Kate Hudson) in New Orleans for a crime spree in the latest film from Ana Lily Amirpour (“A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night”). (Sept. 30 in theaters and on demand)

MY BEST FRIEND’S EXORCISM Elsie Fisher (“Eighth Grade”) finds out how to get her pal (Amiah Miller) a — well, you know. (Sept. 30 on Amazon)

SIRENS Rita Baghdadi directed this documentary, well regarded at Sundance, about an all-female thrash metal band in Lebanon. (Sept. 30 in theaters)

SMILE You’ve heard of six degrees of Kevin Bacon? How about six degrees of a … weird chain curse that causes victims to see creepy smiling faces before they die? Into this chain enters a doctor played by Sosie Bacon, daughter of the actor and Kyra Sedgwick. It sounds like “The Ring” with grins instead of a videotape. (Sept. 30 in theaters)

October

MR. HARRIGAN’S PHONE Jaeden Martell plays a teenager whose friendship with a billionaire (Donald Sutherland) continues after the older man dies and is buried with an iPhone. John Lee Hancock directed this adaptation of a novella by Stephen King. (Oct. 5 on Netflix)

AMSTERDAM Based on a trailer, the writer-director David O. Russell’s first feature since “Joy” (2015) will be maddeningly difficult to classify, genre-wise. It comes described as a historical crime epic involving three friends (played by Christian Bale, Margot Robbie and John David Washington). A dead body is involved, as are many other starry names: Chris Rock, Anya Taylor-Joy, Robert De Niro and even Taylor Swift. (Oct. 7 in theaters)

BATTLEGROUND This documentary from Cynthia Lowen had its world premiere at Tribeca in June, less than two weeks before the Supreme Court handed down its decision overturning Roe v. Wade. The movie chronicles the work of anti-abortion activists who were trying to achieve that goal. (Oct. 7 in theaters)

HELLRAISER The director David Bruckner (“The Night House”) resurrects a gender-swapped Pinhead (now played by Jamie Clayton) in a remake. (Oct. 7 on Hulu)

LAST FLIGHT HOME The documentarian Ondi Timoner made this portrait of her father, Eli Timoner, who chose to end his life under a California law that permits certain terminally ill patients to do so. (Oct. 7 in theaters)

LUCKIEST GIRL ALIVE Mila Kunis stars in this adaptation of Jessica Knoll’s 2015 novel, about a magazine writer coping with the aftermath of a sexual assault she experienced as a teenager. Knoll wrote the screenplay. Mike Barker directed. (Oct. 7 on Netflix)

LYLE, LYLE, CROCODILE The titular anthropomorphic reptile of Bernard Waber’s children’s books comes to the screen as a computer-generated creation surrounded by real actors. The pop star Shawn Mendes provides his voice and sings songs by Benj Pasek and Justin Paul (“The Greatest Showman”). Javier Bardem and Constance Wu are among the actors appearing in the flesh. (Oct. 7 in theaters)

ONODA: 10,000 NIGHTS IN THE JUNGLE This epically scaled yet cerebral biopic tells the story of Hiroo Onoda, the Japanese soldier who until 1974 labored under the delusion that World War II was still happening and continued to prosecute it in his way from an island in the Philippines. (Coincidentally, Onoda is also the subject of Werner Herzog’s recent debut novel.) Arthur Harari directed. Yuya Endo and Kanji Tsuda play Onoda at different ages. (Oct. 7 in theaters)

THE REDEEM TEAM Dwyane Wade, LeBron James, Carmelo Anthony and others look back on how the United States’ basketball team won the gold in the 2008 Olympics. Jon Weinbach, a producer on the Michael Jordan series “The Last Dance,” directed. (Oct. 7 on Netflix)

TÁR The actor-filmmaker Todd Field won acclaim for directing “In the Bedroom” (2001) and “Little Children” (2006) but hasn’t stepped behind the camera to make a feature since then. That changes with this film, about the (fictitious) conductor of a German orchestra. Cate Blanchett no doubt brings the requisite intensity to the title character. (Oct. 7 in theaters)

TO LESLIE Andrea Riseborough plays a Texas mom who wins the lottery, squanders the proceeds, turns to booze — then tries to get her life back in order. Allison Janney, Stephen Root and Marc Maron also star. (Oct. 7 in theaters and on demand)

TRIANGLE OF SADNESS The Swedish director Ruben Ostlund won his second Palme d’Or at Cannes (his first was for “The Square” in 2017) for this sendup of the very, very, very wealthy and vain, a group that includes two models (played by Charlbi Dean, who died at 32 in August, and Harris Dickinson) and a Russian oligarch (Zlatko Buric) — all passengers on a cruise liner with a Marxist captain (Woody Harrelson). (Oct. 7 in theaters)

DARK GLASSES The giallo maestro Dario Argento is still spilling blood in his 80s. His new thriller concerns a prostitute and a boy who are on the trail of a serial killer who wronged them both. Asia Argento, Dario’s daughter, has a supporting role. (Oct. 7 in theaters; Oct. 13 on Shudder)

THE CURSE OF BRIDGE HOLLOW Marlon Wayans and Priah Ferguson play a father and daughter who try to save Halloween from vivified holiday decorations. (Oct. 14 on Netflix)

DECISION TO LEAVE The South Korean filmmaker Park Chan-wook (“The Handmaiden”) won the best-director prize at Cannes for this labyrinthine thriller, which centers on a detective (Park Hae-il) who becomes infatuated with a woman (Tang Wei) who may or may not have murdered her husband. (Oct. 14 in theaters)

HALLOWEEN ENDS Does it really? Come now. This franchise will never end. Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) takes one more whack at killing the killer. David Gordon Green takes one more whack at directing. (Oct. 14 in theaters)

THE OTHER TOM Laura Santullo and Rodrigo Plá directed this drama about an El Paso mother who stops medicating her son for A.D.H.D. and risks losing custody of him. (Oct. 14 in theaters)

PIGGY A girl (Laura Galán) who is bullied by her peers lucks out, in a way, when they are kidnapped. She has to decide whether to reveal the culprit. Carlota Pereda directed. (Oct. 14 in theaters and on demand)

ROSALINE Tom Stoppard gave us “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead.” Now Hulu gives us “Rosaline,” which in the same spirit views the events of a major play (“Romeo and Juliet”) from the perspective of a peripheral character: the Capulet girl Romeo pined for before Juliet. And in this telling, Rosaline (Kaitlyn Dever) tries to get him back. Isabela Merced and Kyle Allen play the star-cross’d lovers. (Oct. 14 on Hulu)

SELL/BUY/DATE In a movie said to combine documentary and dramatization, Sarah Jones, who wrote and performed a 2016 show of the same title at City Center, investigates the nature of sex work. (Oct. 14 in theaters)

SEPA: OUR LORD OF MIRACLES When it was shown at MoMA’s To Save and Project series earlier this year, this little-known 1987 documentary was billed as “having languished in a closet for 30 years.” Directed by Walter Saxer, a longtime production manager for Werner Herzog, it captures life at a penal colony in the Peruvian jungle. (Oct. 14 in theaters)

STARS AT NOON The second English-language feature from the French director Claire Denis (and her second feature of the year, after “Both Sides of the Blade”) pivots on the relationship between an American journalist (Margaret Qualley) and a British oil company consultant (Joe Alwyn) in Nicaragua. Their sweaty trysts play out against a backdrop of international intrigue. Denis shared the Grand Jury Prize (basically second place) at Cannes this year. (Oct. 14 in theaters and on demand)

TILL Chinonye Chukwu, who won the top prize at Sundance for “Clemency,” directed this biopic, centered on the efforts of Mamie Till Mobley (Danielle Deadwyler) to seek justice after the lynching of her 14-year-old son, Emmett Till (Jalyn Hall). (Oct. 14 in theaters)

THE SCHOOL FOR GOOD AND EVIL The children’s book series by Soman Chainani becomes the start of a potential “Harry Potter”-esque movie franchise. Sophia Anne Caruso and Sofia Wylie star as best friends at a new (and magical) school. Charlize Theron and Kerry Washington chaperone. (Oct. 19 on Netflix)

V/H/S/99 If the fifth film in this horror-anthology franchise has already reached 1999, we must be due for “D/V/D” soon. (Oct. 20 on Shudder)

AFTERSUN The Scottish director Charlotte Wells’s debut was one of the big discoveries in Cannes this year. It follows a young father (Paul Mescal) and his daughter (Frankie Corio), who normally lives with her mother, on a vanishingly brief resort getaway that will lastingly shape her impressions of her dad. (Oct. 21 in theaters)

ALL THAT BREATHES Shaunak Sen’s documentary, which won the top international-documentary prize at Sundance, concerns two brothers in India who work to protect and care for black kites, a type of bird. (Oct. 21 in theaters)

AMERICAN MURDERER An F.B.I. agent (Ryan Phillippe) pursues a con artist (Tom Pelphrey). Idina Menzel and Jacki Weaver also star. (Oct. 21 in theaters, Oct. 28 on demand)

THE BANSHEES OF INISHERIN Martin McDonagh’s new film isn’t a sequel to his “In Bruges,” but it does reunite Brendan Gleeson and Colin Farrell, who resume their acerbic bantering as two friends who no longer get along. With Kerry Condon and Barry Keoghan. (Oct. 21 in theaters)

BLACK ADAM Dwayne Johnson plays the latest DC Comics character — who has the powers of Egyptian gods — to get a big-screen feature. Aldis Hodge and Pierce Brosnan co-star. Jaume Collet-Serra directed. (Oct. 21 in theaters)

BRAINWASHED: SEX-CAMERA-POWER In a documentary version of a talk she has given, the filmmaker Nina Menkes (“Queen of Diamonds”) takes viewers through a wide variety of film clips to examine how sexism has been encoded in basic film grammar. (Oct. 21 in theaters)

DESCENDANT Margaret Brown’s documentary involves the search for the Clotilda, the last-known ship that brought enslaved people to the United States, and the Mobile, Ala., residents who are descendants of those aboard. (Oct. 21 on Netflix)

FACE A 2009 feature from the director Tsai Ming-liang gets a belated run in New York, as part of a retrospective of Tsai’s work at the Museum of Modern Art that was itself postponed by the pandemic. (Oct. 21 in theaters)

MY POLICEMAN The lives of a policeman, a teacher and a curator intertwine in the 1950s and again in the 1990s. Harry Styles ages into Linus Roache, Emma Corrin into Gina McKee and David Dawson into Rupert Everett. Michael Grandage directed this adaptation of the novel by Bethan Roberts. (Oct. 21 in theaters, Nov. 4 on Amazon)

RAYMOND & RAY Ethan Hawke and Ewan McGregor play half brothers. Their father’s funeral offers an opportunity to figure out where they stand. Rodrigo García directed. (Oct. 21 on Apple TV+)

THE RETURN OF TANYA TUCKER — FEATURING BRANDI CARLILE This documentary concerns the cross-generational friendship between the two singers of the title — Tucker a pioneering country-music star, Carlile a fan who wrote an album for her. (Oct. 21 in theaters)

ROUGE The Hong Kong director Stanley Kwan’s 1988 feature — with Anita Mui as a ghost looking for the man (Leslie Cheung) she loved in the 1930s — finally gets a New York run. (Oct. 21 in theaters)

2ND CHANCE Turning to documentaries, Ramin Bahrani — nominated for an adapted screenplay Oscar for “The White Tiger” — examines the legacy of Richard Davis, who devised the contemporary version of the bulletproof vest. (Oct. 21 in theaters)

SLASH/BACK Aliens arrive at 66 degrees north — or more specifically, a hamlet in Nunavut where teenagers are prepared to fend them off. Nyla Innuksuk directed. (Oct. 21 in theaters and on demand)

TICKET TO PARADISE Julia Roberts and George Clooney play ex-spouses who hate each other but join forces on the cusp of the wedding of their daughter (Kaitlyn Dever) to prevent her from getting married. Ol Parker directed. (Oct. 21 in theaters)

VOODOO MACBETH Made by a whopping 10 directors working collaboratively, this film dramatizes the making of Orson Welles’s famed “voodoo Macbeth” production, staged in 1936 in Harlem with an all-Black cast. With Inger Tudor and, as Welles, Jewell Wilson Bridges. (Oct. 21 in theaters)

THE GOOD NURSE Jessica Chastain is the title character, who investigates whether a string of patient deaths might have been murder. Eddie Redmayne plays the object of her suspicions. It’s based on a nonfiction book. Krysty Wilson-Cairns (“Last Night in Soho”) wrote the screenplay. Tobias Lindholm directed. (Oct. 26 on Netflix)

ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT The latest screen version of Erich Maria Remarque’s chronicle of German soldiers during World War I has the soldiers speaking their native language. (Lewis Milestone’s Oscar-winning 1930 film with Lew Ayres was in English.) The cast includes Felix Kammerer and Daniel Brühl. Edward Berger directed. (Oct. 28 on Netflix)

ARMAGEDDON TIME James Gray’s latest film, filled with elements of barely veiled autobiography, centers on an artistically inclined Jewish boy (Banks Repeta) growing up in Queens in 1980, and on his friendship with a Black classmate (Jaylin Webb) who doesn’t get the same breaks he does. Anthony Hopkins plays the protagonist’s British-born grandfather, and Anne Hathaway and Jeremy Strong play the boy’s parents. (Oct. 28 in theaters)

CALL JANE The second of two films to be released this year about the Jane Collective, a group of women in Chicago who provided abortions before the Supreme Court decided Roe v. Wade in 1973. “The Janes” was a documentary; this is a dramatization, with Elizabeth Banks as a woman who seeks out the group for an abortion and subsequently joins the women who run it. Sigourney Weaver co-stars. Phyllis Nagy (the screenwriter of “Carol”) directed. (Oct. 28 in theaters)

HOLY SPIDER Zar Amir Ebrahimi won the best-actress prize at Cannes for playing a journalist in Iran on the trail of a serial killer the police seem to be in no hurry to catch. Ali Abbasi (“Border”) directed. (Oct. 28 in theaters)

THE NOVELIST’S FILM It’s the South Korean director Hong Sangsoo’s custom to premiere two films every year. (“Walk Up,” his other 2022 offering, is playing at fall festivals.) Lee Hyeyoung plays a writer who aspires to make a movie. The Hong regular Kim Minhee co-stars. (Oct. 28 in theaters)

PLEASE BABY PLEASE A couple of Lower East Siders (Andrea Riseborough and Harry Melling) witness a gang killing in the 1950s. Amanda Kramer directed. (Oct. 28 in theaters)

RUN SWEETHEART RUN Long-delayed since its premiere at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival, this thriller stars Ella Balinska as a woman terrorized by her date (Pilou Asbaek). Shana Feste directed. (Oct. 28 on Amazon)

WENDELL & WILD Jordan Peele and Keegan-Michael Key reunite to provide voices for two demons who try to persuade a teenager to help break them out of their demonic realm. Peele wrote it with Henry Selick (“Coraline”), who directed. Angela Bassett and James Hong are also in the vocal cast. (Oct. 28 on Netflix)

November

THE BOX In Mexico, a teenager preparing to bury his father begins to wonder if his dad is still alive. Lorenzo Vigas directed. (Nov. 4 in theaters)

ENOLA HOLMES 2 Millie Bobby Brown returns as a sister of Sherlock Holmes who now has a detective agency of her own. Henry Cavill, David Thewlis and Helena Bonham Carter also star. (Nov. 4 on Netflix)

GOOD NIGHT OPPY “Oppy” is Opportunity, a rover that roamed Martian craters from 2004 until its “death” in 2019. This documentary tells Oppy’s story. (Nov. 4 in theaters, Nov. 23 on Amazon)

I’M TOTALLY FINE Jillian Bell plays a woman who believes her best friend (Natalie Morales) has died — only to have the pal return, possibly as a space alien. (Nov. 4 in theaters and on demand)

MEMORIES OF MY FATHER Fernando Trueba directed this adaptation of a book by the Colombian novelist Héctor Abad Faciolince, about the author’s father (played by Javier Cámara), a doctor engaged in political activism in the 1970s. (Nov. 4 in theaters)

SALVATORE: SHOEMAKER OF DREAMS Luca Guadagnino (“Call Me by Your Name”) directed this biographical portrait of the shoe designer Salvatore Ferragamo, working from his 1955 memoir. Michael Stuhlbarg narrates. (Nov. 4 in theaters)

SOMETHING IN THE DIRT The directors Aaron Moorhead and Justin Benson also wrote and star in this determinedly lo-fi and paranoid science-fiction feature. It revolves around two men who witness what they think is a supernatural occurrence, an event that sends them spinning into elaborate theorizing. (Nov. 4 in theaters, Nov. 22 on demand)

UTAMA The winner of the top prize for an international dramatic feature at Sundance, Alejandro Loayza Grisi’s film is set in the Bolivian highlands, where an Indigenous couple (José Calcina and Luisa Quispe) confront the problems posed by a drought. (Nov. 4 in theaters)

WEIRD: THE AL YANKOVIC STORY Daniel Radcliffe dons some seriously curly locks to play the parodist singer, in a movie that is itself a parody of a biopic. (Nov. 4 on Roku)

FALLING FOR CHRISTMAS A skiing accident results in amnesia (and, presumably, the possibility of a fresh start) for a vain hotel heiress (Lindsay Lohan). (Nov. 10 on Netflix)

BLACK PANTHER: WAKANDA FOREVER After Chadwick Boseman’s death in 2020, Marvel Studios opted not to recast his role, King T’Challa, in this sequel to “Black Panther.” The character is dead in the new film, which concerns how Wakanda moves forward without him. It also stars Angela Bassett, Letitia Wright, Danai Gurira and Lupita Nyong’o. Ryan Coogler returns as director. (Nov. 11 in theaters)

A COUPLE In a career that includes more than 40 documentaries, Frederick Wiseman has seldom made features that could qualify as dramatized. But in “A Couple,” the actress Nathalie Boutefeu, who shares screenplay credit with the director, plays Sophia Tolstoy, wife of Leo Tolstoy, to explore a famous marriage. (Nov. 11 in theaters)

THE FABELMANS If Steven Spielberg’s last name evokes the idea of a story, it’s not too much of a stretch to get from there to “Fabelman” — the surname of Spielberg’s alter-ego family in an autobiographical feature inspired by his childhood. Michelle Williams, Paul Dano, Seth Rogen and Gabriel LaBelle star. Tony Kushner wrote the screenplay with Spielberg. (Nov. 11 in theaters)

IS THAT BLACK ENOUGH FOR YOU?!? Elvis Mitchell, a former film critic for The New York Times, directed this documentary on the American revolution in Black filmmaking in the 1970s. Among the interviewees are the filmmaker Charles Burnett (“Killer of Sheep”), Samuel L. Jackson and Whoopi Goldberg. (Nov. 11 on Netflix)

MY FATHER’S DRAGON Ruth Stiles Gannett’s 1948 children’s book — about a boy who ventures off to rescue a baby dragon — becomes an animated film directed by Nora Twomey, of the Oscar-nominated “The Breadwinner.” (Nov. 11 on Netflix)

THE SON In a companion piece to “The Father,” which won Anthony Hopkins a second Oscar, this Florian Zeller film concerns, naturally, the relationship between a father (Hugh Jackman) and his troubled teenage son, who returns to his life just as he is settling in with a new son and a new partner (Vanessa Kirby). Hopkins and Laura Dern also star. (Nov. 11 in theaters)

IN HER HANDS The documentarians Tamana Ayazi and Marcel Mettelsiefen assemble a portrait of Zarifa Ghafari, the mayor of the Afghan city of Maidan Shahr at the time of filming — and, not incidentally, in her 20s and a woman in a country without many women in power. The documentary follows her through American forces’ withdrawal from the country last year. (Nov. 16 on Netflix)

BAD AXE That’s Bad Axe, Mich., where the documentarian David Siev’s parents, one a survivor of the Khmer Rouge regime, own a restaurant and must grapple with the economic realities of the pandemic and the protests that convulse the city in the wake of the George Floyd killing. (Nov. 18 in theaters and on demand)

EO The Polish director Jerzy Skolimowski (“Deep End,” “Moonlighting”) riffs, with a bit of a hallucinatory spin, on Robert Bresson’s French classic “Au Hasard Balthazar” with the tale of an itinerant donkey who along its journeys becomes a passive witness to human cruelty. When Skolimowski shared the jury prize at Cannes, he thanked all six donkeys who played the role by name. (Nov. 18 in theaters)

THE INSPECTION For his first dramatic feature, Elegance Bratton, who has worked as a documentarian and street photographer, wrote and directed this autobiographically inspired film about a gay Black man’s time in basic training in the Marines. Jeremy Pope plays Bratton’s alter ego, Bokeem Woodbine a sergeant and Gabrielle Union the protagonist’s mother. (Nov. 18 in theaters)

THE MENU Mark Mylod, a regular director on “Succession,” is at the helm of this story of a couple (Anya Taylor-Joy and Nicholas Hoult) who travel to an island for an evening of molecular gastronomy and end up getting something closer to “The Most Dangerous Game.” Ralph Fiennes plays the chef. (Nov. 18 in theaters)

THE PEOPLE WE HATE AT THE WEDDING Nuptials become the occasion for an airing of intrafamilial loathing and reconciliation in a comedy that stars Kristen Bell and Ben Platt as siblings and Allison Janney as the matriarch. (Nov. 18 on Amazon)

SHE SAID The New York Times reporters Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey’s book on how they broke their landmark article about sexual harassment by Harvey Weinstein gets a film adaptation. Zoe Kazan plays Kantor and Carey Mulligan plays Twohey as they try to convince women to talk on the record. Maria Schrader directed. (Nov. 18 in theaters)

SLUMBERLAND The “Red Sparrow” filmmaker Francis Lawrence directs Jason Momoa as an outlaw in a fairy tale of sorts in which he assists a girl in navigating a dream world. (Nov. 18 on Netflix)

THERE THERE Working under pandemic restrictions, Andrew Bujalski (“Support the Girls”) makes a film that consists entirely of conversations; it’s best not to say anymore. Lili Taylor and Lennie James play a couple whose post-one-night-stand discourse kicks off the movie; Molly Gordon and Jason Schwartzman appear elsewhere. (Nov. 18 in theaters and on demand)

DEVOTION Jonathan Majors stars as Ensign Jesse L. Brown, the first Black aviator in the United States Navy, and Glen Powell — barely out of the skies since “Top Gun: Maverick” — plays Lt. Thomas J. Hudner Jr., his partner on a dangerous mission during the Korean War. J.D. Dillard directed. (Nov. 23 in theaters)

BONES AND ALL Timothée Chalamet bites into a meaty role as a cannibal drifter. Taylor Russell plays the woman who loves and road-trips with him in a film that reunites Chalamet with his “Call Me by Your Name” director, Luca Guadagnino. It’s based on the novel by Camille DeAngelis. (Nov. 23 in theaters)

NANNY Nikyatu Jusu’s debut feature, the winner of this year’s United States dramatic competition at Sundance, concerns a Senegalese immigrant (Anna Diop) who takes a job as a nanny for a wealthy white family. During the festival, Manohla Dargis wrote that the film kept her “rapt from the start with its visuals and mysteries, its emotional depths and the tight control” maintained by Jusu. (Nov. 23 in theaters, Dec. 16 on Amazon)

STRANGE WORLD Disney pays tribute to 1950s science fiction movies with an animated feature about the Clade family, a clan of explorers investigating an uncharted region. Jake Gyllenhaal, Dennis Quaid and Gabrielle Union provide some of the Clades’ voices. (Nov. 23 in theaters)

THE SWIMMERS Sally El Hosaini directed the opening-night film at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival, a dramatization of the story of Yusra and Sarah Mardini, two sisters from Syria. Yusra competed on the Refugee Olympic Team at the 2016 Olympics. (Nov. 23 on Netflix)

DISENCHANTED After finding a storybook life in New York in “Enchanted,” Giselle (Amy Adams), finds that many years later, the bloom is off the rose. So she and her husband (Patrick Dempsey) move to the suburbs. With Maya Rudolph. Adam Shankman directed. (Nov. 24 on Disney+)

December

FRAMING AGNES Using the story of Agnes, a transgender woman who took part in studies at the University of California, Los Angeles, in the 1960s, as a jumping-off point, this combination of documentary and dramatization examines how trans history is written. (Dec. 2 in theaters)

LADY CHATTERLEY’S LOVER This time, Emma Corrin embodies D.H. Lawrence’s unfulfilled British noblewoman. Jack O’Connell plays the gamekeeper she takes up with. Laure de Clermont-Tonnerre directed. (Dec. 2 on Netflix)

SPOILER ALERT: THE HERO DIES Michael Showalter, who mined thematically similar territory in “The Big Sick,” directed this adaptation of Michael Ausiello’s memoir of a longtime relationship altered by a terminal illness. Jim Parsons, Ben Aldridge and Sally Field star. (Dec. 2 in theaters)

VIOLENT NIGHT You might have thought the weirdest appearance of Santa Claus this season was by the actual democratic socialist of that name from North Pole, Alaska, who ran for a seat in Congress. But it could be in this movie, which stars David Harbour as Santa Claus, who is fortunately making his rounds when mercenaries attempt a home invasion. The “Atomic Blonde” and “John Wick” producers had a hand in this. (Dec. 2 in theaters)

WOMEN TALKING Women in a religious colony wrestle with their beliefs after a series of sexual assaults by the men. Sarah Polley directed and wrote the screenplay for this adaptation of Miriam Toews’s novel. The cast is formidable: It features Rooney Mara, Claire Foy, Jessie Buckley and Frances McDormand, among others. (Dec. 2 in theaters)

THE WONDER When an 11-year-old girl in the Irish Midlands seems to live for months without eating food, a British nurse (Florence Pugh) investigates. Sebastián Lelio (“A Fantastic Woman”) directed this adaptation, set in the 19th century, of a novel by the “Room” author Emma Donoghue. (Dec. 7 on Netflix)

EMPIRE OF LIGHT The writer-director Sam Mendes, reuniting with the cinematographer Roger Deakins (who has hopefully gotten some rest after the gymnastics of “1917”), directs what is described as story about the “magic of cinema.” It’s set in Britain in the 1980s. Olivia Colman and Micheal Ward star. (Dec. 9 in theaters)

GUILLERMO DEL TORO’S PINOCCHIO The “Nightmare Alley” filmmaker, who shares directorial credit (if not the title) with the animation director Mark Gustafson, mounts a stop-motion version of the story of the puppet who became a boy. Gregory Mann, Ewan McGregor and Tilda Swinton are in the vocal cast. (Dec. 9 on Netflix)

SOMETHING FROM TIFFANY’S “And I said, ‘What about ‘Something From Tiffany’s’?” Zoey Deutch stars in a comedy about an errant engagement ring. Daryl Wein directed. (Dec. 9 on Amazon)

THE WHALE The plot of Darren Aronofsky’s latest movie bears more than a slight resemblance to that of his film “The Wrestler” (2008). Brendan Fraser plays an overweight teacher who wants to make amends with his estranged daughter (Sadie Sink, from “Stranger Things”). Samuel D. Hunter wrote the script, adapting his own play. (Dec. 9 in theaters)

A MAN CALLED OTTO In what, after “Elvis,” is turning out to be a year of stunt casting for America’s most affable actor, Tom Hanks has to be convincing as, get this, a curmudgeon, albeit one who thaws a bit when he meets a new neighbor. Mariana Treviño also stars. Marc Forster directed. (Dec. 14 in theaters)

AVATAR: THE WAY OF WATER It is now 2022. More years have elapsed between the release of “Avatar” (2009) and this much-awaited sequel than had elapsed between “Avatar” and “Titanic” (1997) — and that was considered a very long gap. Is James Cameron working faster or slower than the technology evolves? He’d better pick up the pace on “Avatar 3” if he hopes to finish it while movie theaters still exist. (Dec. 16 in theaters)

BARDO, FALSE CHRONICLE OF A HANDFUL OF TRUTHS Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s feature “Birdman,” was subtitled “The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance.” But as a phrase, “False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths” definitely rivals that in sheer opacity. The film’s plot involves a journalist who returns to his native Mexico, where he is, per the official summary, pushed to “an existential limit.” Daniel Giménez Cacho stars. (Dec. 16 on Netflix)

THE VOLCANO: RESCUE FROM WHAKAARI Rory Kennedy, the documentarian who earlier this year made a case (or, rather, a movie) against Boeing, memorializes a deadly volcanic eruption that occurred in New Zealand in 2019. (Dec. 16 on Netflix)

I WANNA DANCE WITH SOMEBODY Naomi Ackie stars as Whitney Houston in this biopic of the soaring-voiced pop star. Stanley Tucci plays the architect of her career Clive Davis, who is one of the movie’s producers. Kasi Lemmons directed, from a screenplay by Mr. Biopic, Anthony McCarten (“Bohemian Rhapsody,” “Darkest Hour,” “The Theory of Everything”). (Dec. 21 in theaters)

PUSS IN BOOTS: THE LAST WISH Antonio Banderas once again lends his voice to the footwear’d feline — not the fairy-tale character, exactly, but a part of the extended “Shrek” cinematic universe. Olivia Colman and Salma Hayek Pinault purr alongside him. (Dec. 21 in theaters)

CORSAGE Technically, in 1878, Empress Elisabeth of Austria (Vicky Krieps) could not have heard “As Tears Go By” with a harp as instrumentation — or, for that matter, been photographed as a movie subject on flexible film. (This was still the era of plates.) But these sorts of anachronisms crop up periodically throughout the director Marie Kreutzer’s interpretation of Elisabeth’s life. (Dec. 23 in theaters)

GLASS ONION: A KNIVES OUT MYSTERY Daniel Craig’s Benoit Blanc, the detective with a French name and a Foghorn Leghorn drawl, as a character in “Knives Out” put it, has another mystery on his hands. The cast (and, probably, suspect list) includes Edward Norton, Janelle Monáe, Leslie Odom Jr., Kathryn Hahn and Jessica Henwick. (Dec. 23 on Netflix)

LET IT BE MORNING A Palestinian man returns to the village of his upbringing for a wedding, and he is trapped there, with the rest of the residents, when Israeli forces blockade the area. Eran Kolirin directed this adaptation of a novel by Sayed Kashua. (Dec. 23 in theaters)

LIVING The director Oliver Hermanus and the novelist Kazuo Ishiguro, serving here as the screenwriter, remake Akira Kurosawa’s “Ikiru” in an idiom not wildly removed from that of Ishiguro’s “The Remains of the Day.” Bill Nighy plays a postwar civil servant in London whose great ambition, after receiving a terminal diagnosis, is to build a playground. Aimee Lou Wood and Tom Burke co-star. (Dec. 23 in theaters)

THE PALE BLUE EYE Adapted from the novel by Louis Bayard, this is the second fall film set against the backdrop of Edgar Allan Poe’s formative years at West Point. Like “Raven’s Hollow” (see above), “The Pale Blue Eye” has the precocious Poe finding himself in the middle of a mystery. Harry Melling plays Poe, Christian Bale is a detective, and Gillian Anderson and Lucy Boynton co-star. Scott Cooper (“Black Mass”) directed. (Dec. 23 in theaters)

BABYLON The writer-director Damien Chazelle returns to La La Land — or, more precisely, Hollywood — to imagine the drama that unfolded in the movie industry during the transition to sound. Brad Pitt, Margot Robbie and Diego Calva have their names on the marquee. (Dec. 25 in theaters)

ROALD DAHL’S MATILDA THE MUSICAL The stage musical version of Dahl’s novel gets the screen treatment (with the same director, Matthew Warchus). Alisha Weir plays the title character and Lashana Lynch the warmhearted Miss Honey. Emma Thompson — whose fat suit has already prompted chatter over questions of representation — plays the gorgonlike Miss Trunchbull. (Dec. 25 on Netflix)

THEY CLONED TYRONE John Boyega, Jamie Foxx and Teyonah Parris play characters who stumble on some sort of government conspiracy. It’s a secret, even from us, but an educated guess is that it involves someone named Tyrone getting cloned. Juel Taylor directed. (Dec. 30 on Netflix)

TURN EVERY PAGE Lizzie Gottlieb, daughter of the famed editor Robert Gottlieb, directed this portrait of her father and his friendship with Robert A. Caro, who is still toiling away on the final volume of his multi-book Lyndon Johnson biography, a volume that Gottlieb, in his 90s, hopes to edit. (Dec. 30 in theaters)

WHITE NOISE Adam Driver plays the chairman of a college department in the field of “Hitler studies”; Greta Gerwig is his wife, who may be experiencing strange memory lapses. Together, with children from other marriages and the TV always humming, they confront environmental disaster and their fear of mortality in Noah Baumbach’s adaptation of Don DeLillo’s 1985 postmodern novel. Don Cheadle and Raffey Cassidy co-star. (Dec. 30 on Netflix)

Compiled with the assistance of Gabe Cohn and Shivani Gonzalez.

Categories
Health

Breast Implants Might Be Linked to Extra Cancers, F.D.A. Warns

Breast Implants May Be Linked to Additional Cancers, F.D.A. Warns

They are extremely rare, he added, and the new warning should not cause any general concern. Realizing that ALCL was associated with breast implants had already “allowed us to be more aware that other things might be happening in this area,” said Dr. Clemens.

“If ALCL is uncommon, these are very rare,” he added. It has long been known that scar tissue, such as that formed after breast implant surgery, can lead to squamous cell carcinoma, added Dr. added Clement.

“A wound that’s trying to heal and trying to heal for a long time can develop into these things,” he said. But the exact nature of the relationship between the implant and the cancer, and whether the implant causes the cancer, is not yet clear, he said.

In a typical year, approximately 400,000 women in the United States receive breast implants, 300,000 for cosmetic reasons and 100,000 for reconstruction after mastectomies performed to treat or prevent breast cancer.

Numbers dropped significantly in the first year of the pandemic, according to the American Society of Plastic Surgeons.

Last year, the FDA put so-called black-box labels on breast implants, warning that they have been linked to a variety of chronic conditions, including autoimmune diseases, joint pain, mental confusion, muscle pain and chronic fatigue to lymphoma.

Categories
Business

Twilight of Entrepreneurs in China as Extra Depart the Nation

Twilight of Entrepreneurs in China as More Leave the Country

BEIJING – Wealthy and powerful entrepreneurs in China were once idolized by the public, revered by the government and courted by foreign investors. They helped build the Chinese economy into a powerhouse, becoming the global face of Chinese business in a freer era, amassing billions of dollars in fortunes, buying villas abroad and holding court at elite international gatherings.

Now, billionaire tycoons are the underdogs in an increasingly state-run economy that prioritizes politics and national security over growth. As the government cracks down on businesses and the economy falters, they keep a low profile, stepping down from their businesses or leaving the country altogether.

In the latest exodus, two of China’s best-known entrepreneurs, Pan Shiyi and Zhang Xin, resigned as chairman and CEO, respectively, of their Soho China real estate empire this week. Both had relocated to the United States early in the pandemic and were trying to manage their business with late-night callbacks to China.

It’s been a tough year for your company. A deal to sell a majority stake to the Blackstone Group in New York fell through when regulators didn’t approve it. Soho China stock has lost more than half of its value over the past year.

“Highly successful entrepreneurs in the early 21st century generally have to ask themselves whether it’s in their best interest to keep running their businesses and stay in China,” said Michael Szonyi, former director of Harvard’s Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies University. “For these company founders, the writing is clearly on the wall.”

The husband-and-wife couple had embodied the broader rise of China’s economy from rags to riches. Mr. Pan was born into a poor family in Gansu Province, while Ms. Zhang worked in a garment factory in Hong Kong as a teenager.

They started their real estate business on the island of Hainan in China’s far south, a place that has a reputation, even by Chinese standards, for having experienced dizzying ups and downs in house prices. They then quickly focused on China’s largest cities, Beijing and Shanghai, building luxury apartment and retail complexes in some of the most expensive neighborhoods.

Many real estate developers built rectangular boxes with architectural palettes often limited to garish color choices for the glass and eccentric roofs in poor imitation of European mansions. Instead, Mr. Pan and Ms. Zhang enlisted star architects from the West like Zaha Hadid, a friend of Ms. Zhang’s, and created buildings with curved but minimalist façades.

Their resignations underscore growing concerns among private entrepreneurs that China is moving away from the free-wheeling capitalism pioneered by Deng Xiaoping and former Premier Zhu Rongji. Mr. Deng turned to entrepreneurs in the late 1970s to rebuild the economy after the devastation of Mao’s Cultural Revolution, and Mr. Zhu then ushered China into the World Trade Organization and to its role as the world’s largest exporter.

Xi Jinping, head of state since 2012, has instead led China towards a much more authoritarian, state-run society, where national security concerns increasingly take precedence over economic growth. Both business leaders and human rights activists who dared to publicly question Mr. Xi have been jailed as China tightened the reins on the private sector.

Very wealthy entrepreneurs used to be “able to operate as they wanted as long as they didn’t cross certain political boundaries, but those boundaries were fairly loose even during Xi Jinping’s first term in office,” which ended in 2017, said Victor Shih, a specialist in Chinese Economics and Politics from the University of California San Diego. “That has all changed. They’re not such stars anymore.”

Jack Ma, a co-founder of Alibaba who later led the company to dominance in China’s e-commerce sector, has resigned from top positions at the company. Colin Huang, founder of Pinduoduo, a rival of Alibaba, resigned as chairman early last year, less than a year after stepping down as chief executive.

A year ago, Zhang Yiming, founder of TikTok’s parent company ByteDance, said he would step down as CEO to focus on long-term strategy. And when Shanghai went into a two-month lockdown earlier this spring as part of China’s “zero Covid” strategy, Zhou Hang, another prominent tech entrepreneur and venture capitalist, left the city for Vancouver, British Columbia, where he had a strong case against she spelled out China’s current policy.

The problems in Soho China are piling up. The company announced on July 7 that police are investigating its chief financial officer over possible insider trading in Soho stock. Over the past year, Soho has been repeatedly accused of overcharging tenants for electricity and has been fined nearly $30 million.

The government’s efforts to stem a housing bubble, coupled with frequent lockdowns in Chinese cities as part of the country’s crackdown on the pandemic, have seen the entire property market stumble — and with it, the fortunes of Soho China. Soho China announced that the average occupancy rate of its investment properties in Beijing and Shanghai had fallen to 80 percent as of June 30.

updated

Aug 2022 7:04pm ET

Soho China and Ms. Zhang, who frequently speaks for the company, did not respond to calls and texts asking for comment. Two executives at the company, each with Soho for about two decades, Xu Jin and Qian Ting, have been promoted to co-chief executives, according to a filing with the Hong Kong Stock Exchange on Wednesday. A private equity manager, Huang Jingsheng, has been appointed non-executive chairman of the company.

Mr. Pan and Ms. Zhang will remain as executive directors at Soho, Soho China said in its filing, without specifying senior positions for them.

Her resignation comes as the Chinese Communist Party prepares to hold its national congress for the first time in five years, beginning Oct. 16. Congress is expected to give Mr Xi a third five-year term and possibly amend the party’s charter to further tighten its grip on the country’s private sector.

But China’s economy is on the wane and tensions with the United States are high. This combination has made it difficult for Mr. Xi to present himself to Congress as a successful leader.

“Here he is, six weeks before a convention, and things are tense, so that’s exactly what he didn’t want,” said Barry Naughton, a professor at the University of California, San Diego.

The troubles also make China a less attractive place for wealthy investors like Mr. Pan and Ms. Zhang to hold their money, he noted. “What a good time for her to step down.”

Over the past quarter century, Mr. Pan and Ms. Zhang had benefited from China’s rapid urbanization. When they founded Soho China in 1995, the country had 352 million urban residents — a number that had more than doubled by the last year. For many Chinese, housing has become the most important investment, accounting for two-thirds of household wealth.

The pair catered to China’s wealthiest elite with projects such as Galaxy Soho and Wangjing Soho in Beijing and Sky Soho in Shanghai, all designed by Zaha Hadid Architects. These ambitious projects were a symbol of the central role real estate plays in China’s economy, a sector that soon accounted for nearly a third of China’s total economic activity.

As Mr. Pan and Ms. Zhang’s wealth increased, so did their notoriety as the faces of a new generation of sophisticated, cosmopolitan Chinese business leaders. On his social media account Weibo, Mr. Pan has attracted more than 18 million followers and has used his influence for years to call for changes like cleaner air in Chinese cities. Ms. Zhang, who earned a master’s degree in economics from Cambridge and worked at Goldman Sachs early in her career, became a featured speaker at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

The couple’s penthouse duplex in Beijing has become one of China’s hottest lounges for dinner parties, drawing intellectuals, artists and government leaders from across the country and the world.

But China’s entrepreneurs have come under pressure as Mr Xi has continued his “shared prosperity” campaign for corporations and tycoons to share more wealth with their compatriots in a bid to reduce inequality. Mr. Xi has asserted the Communist Party’s control over the private sector and demanded political allegiance from corporations and businesspeople.

Ren Zhiqiang, another wealthy real estate developer and friend of Mr. Pan, was sentenced to 18 years in prison after criticizing Mr. Xi. Some entrepreneurs have been silenced on social media. While Mr. Pan and Ms. Zhang’s Weibo accounts are still active, they have rarely posted, sticking to mundane, boring topics.

“This is part of the development of the Communist Party,” said Drew Thompson, visiting scholar at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore. “Private entrepreneurs — high-profile, wealthy people — are increasingly inconsistent with ‘common prosperity’ and the direction that Xi Jinping has taken.”

Li You contributed to the research.

Categories
Politics

DOJ appeals particular grasp choice

Trump lawyers again push for special master in FBI raid of Mar-a-Lago

Documents seized by the FBI from Mar-a-Lago

Source: Ministry of Justice

The Justice Department on Thursday appealed a federal judge’s decision to authorize a special master to review documents seized by the FBI from former President Donald Trump’s Florida residence.

The Justice Department also asked Judge Aileen Cannon to stay her related order, which bars the government from further reviewing classified documents found in last month’s search of Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s Palm Beach resort .

The moves came three days after Cannon approved Trump’s request for a special foreman to sift through the seized materials to identify personal items and records protected by attorney-client privilege or executive privilege.

The DOJ opposed the request, saying it had already completed a privileged review of the documents and that a special master could harm the government’s national security interests.

The FBI seized more than 10,000 government records when it searched Mar-a-Lago on Aug. 8. Many of these documents bore classification marks, including dozens of folders that were empty when picked up by the FBI.

Cannon, who was appointed by Trump, wrote in her ruling Monday in the US District of South Florida that “the country is best served with an orderly process that encourages interest and perceptions of fairness.”

The DOJ’s appeal was filed with the US Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit, which has appellate jurisdiction over Florida district court cases.

The DOJ also asked Cannon to stay its order barring the agency from further reviewing and using the seized classified documents for criminal investigative purposes pending appeal. Last week, the department announced that the FBI had seized more than 100 classified documents during the raid.

The DOJ said in Thursday’s filing that it is likely to succeed in its appeal given the classified records, which represent a fraction of the documents found at Mar-a-Lago.

Trump “does not and could not claim that he possesses or possesses classified records, that he has a right to have those government records returned to him, or that he can make plausible claims of attorney-client records preventing the government from doing so would review or use them,” the DOJ wrote.

This is breaking news. Please check back for updates.

Categories
World News

Russia-Ukraine Warfare: U.S. Will Give $2 Billion Extra Assist, Blinken Says

Russia-Ukraine War: U.S. Will Give $2 Billion More Aid, Blinken Says

Recognition…Doug Mills/The New York Times

Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken, during a visit to Kyiv, the Ukrainian capital, on Thursday said he would inform Congress that the United States intends to send an additional $2 billion in long-term military assistance to Ukraine and 18 other countries. who are at risk of a Russian invasion.

Separately, President Biden has approved an additional $675 million in military assistance to Ukraine, Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III said.

The combined aid totals $13.5 billion in Biden administration aid to Ukraine since the Russian invasion in February.

Mr. Blinken’s visit to Ukraine’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs was his second since the start of the Russian invasion. The State Department has not publicly announced his trip in advance for security reasons.

His visit comes as Mr. Austin meets with allied defense ministers at a monthly meeting of the Ukraine Contact Group, which aims to coordinate the flow of military aid to Ukraine. The arrival of Western equipment, particularly longer-range HIMARS missile systems, has enabled Ukrainian forces to attack Russian military infrastructure behind front lines and aided a counteroffensive in the south — although some military experts argue aid to date is insufficient to avert this War decided in favor of Ukraine.

“Ukrainian forces have begun their counter-offensive in the south of their country and they are integrating the capabilities that we have all deployed to help themselves fight and retake their sovereign territory,” Mr Austin said at the start of the meeting at Ramstein Air Force Base in Germany.

“This contact group must position itself to provide long-term support to the brave defenders of Ukraine,” he said. “That now means the continuous and determined flow of skills.”

Russian forces are struggling to seize new territory but show no signs of retreating from the invasion, which US estimates have left tens of thousands of casualties on both sides and left vast areas of eastern and southern Ukraine in ruins. On Wednesday, President Vladimir V Putin delivered a defiant address, whitewashing the enormous toll of the war and the faltering performance of his army, and proclaimed at an economic conference in Russia’s Far East: “We have lost nothing and will lose nothing.”

In Germany, Mr Austin said the new weapons package included air-launched HARM missiles designed to seek out and destroy Russian air defense radar; guided multiple launch rocket systems, known as GMLRS; howitzers and other artillery; armored ambulances; and small arms.

The State Department said the $2 billion package, which will be drawn from pools of funds already approved by Congress but whose specific allocation requires Congress approval, would be split roughly half between Ukraine and 18 other nations. These are Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Estonia, Georgia, Greece, Kosovo, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Poland, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia.

The money will be used to “build the current and future capabilities” of the armed forces of Ukraine and other countries, including by strengthening their cyber and hybrid warfare capabilities, particularly to counter Russian aggression, the State Department said.

The money will also help integrate non-NATO members into the alliances’ armed forces.

On Thursday afternoon, Mr Blinken met with Ukraine’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, Dmytro Kuleba. He previously visited the US embassy and a children’s hospital that treats children injured in Russian attacks.

Mr Blinken was also introduced to Patron at the hospital, a Jack Russell terrier who Ukrainian forces have credited with helping excavate hundreds of Russian landmines. Mr. Blinken declared the dog “world famous”.

— Michael Croley and Matthew Mpoke Bigg

Categories
Business

Trump SPAC deal in danger as merger deadline approaches

SPAC, partner of Trump Media, receives no support for an extension: report

Former US President Donald Trump on Oct. 20 announced plans to launch his own social networking platform, dubbed “TRUTH Social,” which is expected to begin beta launch for “invited guests” next month.

Chris Delmas | AFP | Getty Images

The fate of the proposed merger between former President Donald Trump’s media company and the shell company that aims to take it public — and give it a cash injection — has grown murkier as a crucial deadline approaches.

The Digital World Acquisition Corp. is due to merge with Trump Media and Technology Group, owner of Truth Social, on Thursday. DWAC, a special purpose acquisition company, has spent the past week collecting enough shareholder votes to extend the deadline for the transaction. The companies have not completed the merger, and federal investigations related to the deal and Trump have mounted.

The result of the shareholder vote will be announced Thursday at 12:00 p.m. ET.

DWAC was scheduled to publicly announce the result in a special meeting Tuesday, but CEO Patrick Orlando adjourned the meeting within two minutes to allow additional voting time. Earlier in the day, Reuters reported that the vote had failed, citing sources familiar with the matter.

DWAC has previously warned that failure to approve the extension could result in its liquidation, which would pay out roughly at its original share price of $10 per share. DWAC was trading around $22 on Wednesday; the stock was around $97 in March.

Trump Media and Technology Group is also facing obstacles. His Truth Social app, created by the former president after he was banned from Twitter following the January 6, 2021 uprising, has been banned from the Google Play Store.

The company signaled that they are still working on the deal.

“TMTG will continue to work with all stakeholders in connection with its proposed merger and hopes SEC officials will complete their review in a timely manner and free from political interference,” the company told CNBC on Tuesday.

But Trump indicated in a Truth Social post on Saturday that the issue will be resolved and that he doesn’t need DWAC or the cash injection from the deal to keep the platform going.

“Google is making good progress (I think?). SEC seeks to harm companies providing financing (SPAC),” the former president wrote to his 4 million Truth Social followers on Saturday. “Who knows? Anyway, I don’t need funding, ‘I’m really rich!’ Anyone private company???”

The failure of the DWAC merger could sear retail investors attempting SPAC investing because of the President.

Orlando may be able to delay DWAC’s liquidation, according to an SEC filing Wednesday. Orlando’s corporation and SPAC sponsor, ARC Global Investments II, plans to contribute $2.8 million of its own funds to initiate a three-month extension.

However, DWAC may not be out of the woods. The company faces federal investigations into possible securities violations by DWAC and Trump Media and Technology Group. Trump also faces multiple investigations related to the removal of sensitive documents from the White House and his role in the Jan. 6 Capitol riots.

DWAC has also warned in an SEC filing that Trump’s waning popularity could pose a risk to the deal.

Representatives from DWAC and Trump Media did not immediately respond to requests for comment Wednesday.

Categories
Health

Dr. Ounceshas ties to hydroxychloroquine corporations as he backs Covid therapy

Dr. Oz has ties to hydroxychloroquine companies as he backs Covid treatment

Republican Senate candidate from Pennsylvania, Dr. Mehmet Oz, has financial ties to at least two pharmaceutical companies that supply hydroxychloroquine, an antimalarial drug he circulated as a possible treatment for Covid-19.

Oz, a physician and veteran television host who is up against Democrat John Fetterman in the race for the Pennsylvania Senate seat, owns with his wife at least $615,000 in Thermo Fisher Scientific stock, according to its financial disclosure. Thermo Fisher Scientific’s website lists hydroxychloroquine sulfate as one of the available products. It’s unclear when Oz and his wife bought the stock or if they owned it, as Oz promoted hydroxychloroquine as a Covid treatment early in the pandemic.

Oz and his wife also own between $15,001 and $50,000 in McKesson Corporation stock, according to the disclosure. According to the FDA, the company labels and sells hydroxychloroquine sulfate. It’s also unclear when they bought McKesson stock.

Hydroxychloroquine sulfate is the anti-malarial drug commonly known as hydroxychloroquine, according to the Food and Drug Administration. Doctors across the country, helped in part by support from former President Donald Trump and conservative media figures, have been offering the drug to patients as a Covid treatment, despite its questionable effectiveness against the virus.

Oz’s financial ties to a manufacturer and distributor of the drug, and his promotion of it as a potential Covid treatment, raise questions about what he would benefit from its wider use during the pandemic. If he wins the Senate election, he could also face conflicts of interest as Congress grapples with a still-evolving coronavirus pandemic.

In a statement responding to CNBC questions about Oz’s ties with companies that manufacture or distribute hydroxychloroquine, including when he and his wife bought shares in Thermo Fisher Scientific, Oz campaign spokeswoman Brittany Yanick, does not affect the financial interests of the candidate.

“At the beginning of the pandemic, Dr. Mehmet Oz with healthcare professionals worldwide who are considering hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin as viable treatment options for critically ill COVID patients. He offered to fund the clinical trial at Columbia University,” she said.

The FDA has approved hydroxychloroquine to fight malaria but warned that it “has not been shown to be safe or effective for treating or preventing COVID-19.”

Oz took bold steps early in the pandemic to promote its use as a treatment. He urged Trump administration officials in 2020 to support a study he wanted to fund at Columbia University Medical Center on the effect of hydroxychloroquine on Covid-19 patients, according to emails obtained by the select subcommittee of the House of Representatives on the coronavirus crisis have been received and published.

Oz also has ties to a third company, which it says has divested hydroxychloroquine from its US portfolio.

Sanofi, which is headquartered in France and previously manufactured hydroxychloroquine, supported Oz’s nonprofit HealthCorps for years, according to the group’s annual disclosure reports. Between 2009 and 2018, Sanofi was listed as either a sponsor or donor in kind to the Oz-funded group, which owns aims to help teenagers with their health and well-being. In 2013, Sanofi is listed as one of the group’s “School Sponsors”. HealthCorps’ website states that a school sponsor must donate $100,000 to qualify.

Sanofi announced in April 2020 that it would donate 100 million doses of hydroxychloroquine to 50 countries around the world as studies evaluated the drug’s effectiveness in treating Covid-19.

A spokesman for Sanofi told CNBC that the company was not involved in Oz’s comments about Covid-19 or hydroxychloroquine. He explained that Sanofi divested hydroxychloroquine from its US portfolio in 2013 and was investigating the drug’s use as a potential way to fight the virus early in the Covid pandemic. After it was deemed ineffective against Covid-19, the company’s work on it was suspended.

The spokesperson also explained that the company’s last financial contribution to HealthCorps was in 2011. The company representative later corrected himself in a follow-up email to CNBC after the publication of this story, saying that 2013 was actually the last year that Sanofi made a financial donation to HealthCorps.

Oz’s ties to companies that would benefit from wider use of hydroxychloroquine could pose problems for the Republican if he wins the Senate seat. Kedric Payne, an ethics attorney at the Campaign Legal Center, told CNBC in an email that Oz could choose to walk away from the companies if he defeated Fetterman in November.

“He could have a rude awakening if elected because ethics rules could bar him from the job. Senators cannot use their positions to promote goods or services that benefit them financially,” Payne said. “Oz could voluntarily divest the shares if elected or stop promoting anything tied to his shares.”

A spokesman for Thermo Fisher Scientific declined to comment. A McKesson representative did not respond to a request for comment prior to publication.

Since launching his campaign late last year, Oz has downplayed warnings from the FDA and other experts against the use of hydroxychloroquine as a Covid treatment. He suggested political animus against Trump endorsing the drug as a treatment and Oz in the Senate election, motivating criticism of the drug as a way to combat Covid.

“Well let me say this real quick, I really don’t know if it works or not, we haven’t been able to prove to this day if it works [hydroxychloroquine] works or not, which is a shame because we should have known by now whether a cheap 70-year-old drug used by a billion people works or not,” Oz said at a campaign event earlier this year. “But we don’t know. t which is a problem in itself. However, I mentioned it and then President Trump mentioned it in a press conference and suddenly the whole world hated hydroxychloroquine without testing it, without knowing it.”

Before launching his campaign, Oz championed hydroxychloroquine more explicitly. During an interview with Fox News in March 2020 at the height of the pandemic, Oz said that “hydroxychloroquine has a role” in fighting the virus. An on-screen graphic while Oz was being interviewed called the anti-malarial drug “promising” as a treatment option for Covid-19.

Oz also sought White House help to get the hydroxychloroquine trial going, which he wanted to fund at Columbia, where he was once vice chairman of the department of surgery. He has since said the study never got off the ground.

The Pennsylvania nominee’s communications with White House officials were released last month by the House’s select subcommittee on the coronavirus crisis. In an email dated March 2020 Deborah Birx, former Trump White House coronavirus response coordinator, told Oz he would recruit patients and pay for the hydroxychloroquine trial himself.

Also in March 2020, Oz Trump’s son-in-law and adviser Jared Kushner emailed that “we must make the completion of this study a national priority and insist on immediate enrollment,” according to correspondence obtained by the House Committee and has published. Kushner replied to Oz the same day, “What do you recommend to speed it up?”

The New York Post reports that Oz spent $8,800 on hydroxychloroquine tablets for the study at the time and offered to spend $250,000.

Oz, during his campaign for the Pennsylvania Senate seat, accused then-New York Governor Andrew Cuomo of stopping the study after effectively banning the anti-malarial drug as a Covid treatment.

Oz’s financial ties could pose a bigger problem for him if he wins the Pennsylvania race, one of a few contests to decide which party will control the Senate next year. A Real Clear Politics poll average shows Fetterman leading Oz by almost 7 percentage points.

Share ownership in Congress will come under increased scrutiny. Some lawmakers in Congress have proposed a ban on individual stock deals that would require lawmakers to invest assets in a blind trust or to divest them outright.

Business Insider has identified at least 71 lawmakers who have violated the Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge Act, or STOCK Act. The law aims to prevent members of Congress from trading stocks using inside information gained from their work as legislators.

By and large, however, members of Congress had little impact on lucrative stock deals.