Hollywood directors on Tuesday reached a four-year tentative contract agreement with studios and streaming services.The deal struck between the Directors Guild of America and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers came four weeks after talks began.The talks were the first under new DGA President Christopher Nolan, who took the job in September.Along with similar four-year deals — longer than the industry three — ratified in recent weeks by unions representing writers and actors, the DGA agreement adds to the likelihood of long-term labor peace despite many other industry upheavals.The collective bargaining agreement must still be approved by the…
Author: Staff Writer
Bill Gates will appear Wednesday before a congressional panel investigating the Jeffrey Epstein files, becoming the latest powerful figure linked to the disgraced financier to testify.Members of the House Oversight Committee are slated to interview the billionaire Microsoft co-founder behind closed doors, as they have done with other witnesses in the investigation. Transcripts are often released later.Republican U.S. Rep. James Comer, the committee chairman, formally requested that Gates testify after he appeared multiple times in a trove of documents released by the Justice Department as part of its Epstein probe.The files read like a who’s who of powerful men across…
If you currently are receiving Social Security payments—or will begin to by 2032—there’s some very bad news. The Social Security Administration (SSA) has just revealed in a new report that a major trust fund it uses to pay monthly benefits will be depleted in just six years. And when that happens, your monthly Social Security payments will become much smaller. Here’s what you need to know. What’s happened? This week, the Social Security Administration published its annual OASDI Trustees Report. And the 2026 report had some bad news: a trust fund it uses to pay benefits could run dry in…
Many people traveling to Europe this summer may be greeted by lines stretching for hours at popular destinations—and that’s before they even leave the airport. The European Union’s new Entry/Exit System (EES) for non-EU travelers has been causing chaos at some airports since it was fully implemented in April. And with peak travel season now in full swing, that situation has only worsened. In recent weeks, passengers traveling through airports in places like Lisbon, Amsterdam, Copenhagen, and Milan have experienced waits of several hours to pass through the biometric screening process that uses face and fingerprint scans in lieu of…
My first job taught me three lessons that have stayed with me ever since: how you treat people matters, the power of conversation, and the importance of taking risks. These lessons began when I was 14 and my family bought and ran a motel together in Alexandria, Virginia. To understand the impact of this job, let me first take you back to 1935 in Vaso, Gujarat, India, where my father, Pramod Rambhai Amin, was born. My father faced hardship early in life. Both his father and brother passed away when he was young and much of the responsibilities of supporting…
Building a retail brand from scratch is harder than it looks. However, after transforming her jewelry business into a $1 billion brand, Kendra Scott is sharing her learnings with other entrepreneurs, including the three elements that were crucial to her success. When she started her business, wholesale was key, Scott explained during the Inc. Small Business Week Series. “I didn’t have money for advertising and marketing,” she said. “But Nordstrom, they’re a huge megaphone for my brand. I was in their books or their catalogs. They were doing the marketing for me. And that was driving my direct-to-consumer business or e-commerce business.” Scott…
We don’t often talk about love at work, but we should. I do not mean romantic love. A mentor of mine, Dr. Ken Ginsburg, a pediatrician and one of the nation’s leading experts on positive youth development, describes this kind of love as loving kindness—human respect for each other and the desire to lift each other up. If we could practice this with each other at work, the world would be a different place. Loving someone means seeing who they truly are and celebrating who they are. And the only way we can do this effectively is if we love…
I have said countless times that the biggest problem in Europe is not Russia. It is the complete abandonment of national sovereignty by politicians who seem more interested in satisfying Brussels than representing their own people. Bulgaria’s decision to halt further military aid to Ukraine is one of the first signs that some countries are beginning to recognize reality. After years of sending money, weapons, equipment, and resources into a war that has no military solution, there are finally voices asking the obvious question: When does this end? The Ukrainian conflict has become Europe’s black hole. Hundreds of billions have…
The Pentagon has added several prominent Chinese businesses, including the tech giant Alibaba, electric car maker BYD and search engine Baidu, to its list of Chinese military companies, preventing them from getting U.S. defense contracts.The list, updated and published Monday by the Pentagon, now sanctions well-known, non-state-owned Chinese companies that are not traditionally considered to be in the defense or security sector. It reflects growing wariness of Beijing’s strategy of tapping the strength of non-state businesses for military purposes.Created in 2021 by a congressional mandate, the list seeks to identify Chinese companies that the Pentagon considers to have links to…
The announcement by the Pentagon that Israel spies on the United States is being presented as some shocking revelation. Really? Jonathan Pollard stole massive quantities of classified intelligence for Israel and was convicted in 1987. The NSA reportedly caught Israeli officials discussing efforts to influence U.S. policy during the Obama administration. Even former CIA and FBI officials have repeatedly acknowledged that Israel conducts aggressive intelligence operations inside the United States. This is not a conspiracy theory. This is how nation-states behave. What caught my attention was not the allegation but the timing. Washington is warning about Israeli intelligence activities at…