BEIJING — The former coach of the Chinese men’s national football team has received a 20-year-prison sentence for bribery, Chinese state media reported Friday.

Liu Tie, who once played in the English Premier League as a midfielder for Everton, was found guilty of “leveraging his positions” as head coach of the national football and national selection team to receive bribes of more than 50 million yuan (about $7 million), by a court in the city of Xianning in the central Hubei province.

Liu coached the Chinese men’s team between January 2020 and December 2021. He was also charged with taking bribes between 2015 to 2019, when he worked for local football clubs.

The investigation into Liu’s conduct began in November 2022. He pleaded guilty to bribery and corruption in March of this year.

His sentencing is the latest in a series of high-profile corruption cases involving Chinese football.

In March, the former president of the Chinese Football Association, Chen Xuyuan, was sentenced to life in prison for bribery. Earlier this week, three other CFA officials received prison sentences for bribery, according to state media.
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SAN FRANCISCO — A photojournalist who captured one of the most enduring images of World War II — the U.S. Marines raising the flag on the Japanese island of Iwo Jima — had a block in downtown San Francisco named for him Thursday.

Joe Rosenthal, who died in 2006 at age 94, was working for The Associated Press in 1945 when he took the Pulitzer Prize-winning photo.

After the war, he went to work as a staff photographer for the San Francisco Chronicle, and for 35 years until his retirement in 1981, he captured moments of city life both extraordinary and routine.

Rosenthal photographed famous people for the paper, including a young Willie Mays getting his hat fitted as a San Francisco Giant in 1957, and regular people, including children making a joyous dash for freedom on the last day of school in 1965.

The 600 block of Sutter Street, near downtown’s Union Square, became Joe Rosenthal Way after a short ceremony Thursday morning. The Marines Memorial Club, which sits on the block, welcomed the street’s new name.

Aaron Peskin, who heads the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, welcomed the city’s political elite, military officials and members of Rosenthal’s family to toast the late photographer, who was born in Washington, D.C., to Russian Jewish immigrant parents.

The famous photo became the centerpiece of a war bonds poster that helped raise $26 billion in 1945. Tom Graves, chapter historian for the USMC Combat Correspondents Association, which pushed for the street naming, said the image helped win the war.

“But I’ve grown over the years to appreciate also his role as a San Francisco newspaper photographer who, as Supervisor Peskin says, went to work every day photographing the city where we all live, we all love,” he said.

Graves and others said they look forward to tourists and locals happening upon the street sign, seeing Rosenthal’s name for perhaps the first time, and then going online to learn about the photographer with the terrible eyesight but an eye for composition.

Rosenthal never considered himself a wartime hero, just a working photographer lucky enough to document the courage of soldiers.

When complimented on his Pulitzer Prize-winning photo, Rosenthal said: “Sure, I took the photo. But the Marines took Iwo Jima.”
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Rovaniemi, Finland — Shuffling across icy ground on a cold December afternoon, lots of tourist groups poured into Santa Claus Village, a winter-themed amusement park perched on the edge of the Arctic Circle.

They frolic in the snow, take a reindeer sleigh ride, sip a cocktail in an ice bar or even meet Saint Nick himself in the capital of Finnish Lapland, Rovaniemi, which happily calls itself the “official hometown of Santa Claus.”

The Santa Claus Village theme park, which attracts more than 600,000 people annually, is especially popular during the holiday season.

“This is like my dream came true,” beamed Polish visitor Elzbieta Nazaruk. “I’m really excited to be here.”

Tourism is booming in Rovaniemi — which has hotel and restaurant owners, as well as city officials, excited as it brings lots of money to the town. However, not everyone is happy about the onslaught of visitors, 10 times the town’s population, each year at Christmas time.

“We are worried about the overgrowth of tourism. Tourism has grown so rapidly, it’s not anymore in control,” said 43-year-old Antti Pakkanen, a photographer and member of a housing network that in September organized a rally through the city’s streets.

It’s a feeling that has been echoed in other popular European travel destinations, including Barcelona, Amsterdam, Malaga and Florence.

Across the continent, locals have protested against “over-tourism” — which generally describes the tipping point at which visitors and their cash stop benefiting residents and instead cause harm by degrading historic sites, overwhelming infrastructure and making life markedly more difficult for those who live there.

Now, it seems to have spread north, all the way to the edges of the Arctic Circle.

Rovaniemi counted a record 1.2 million overnight visitors in 2023, almost 30 percent growth on 2022, after rebounding from pandemic travel disruptions.

“Nordic is a trend,” Visit Rovaniemi CEO Sanna Karkkainen, said as she stood in an ice restaurant, where snow carvers were working nearby.

“People want to travel to cool countries to see the snow, to see the Northern Lights, and, of course, to see Santa Claus,” she added.

Thirteen new flight routes to Rovaniemi Airport opened this year, bringing passengers from Geneva, Berlin, Bordeaux and more. Most tourists come from European countries like France, Germany and the UK, but Rovaniemi’s appeal has also spread further.

Hotel availability is scarce this winter, and Tiina Maatta, general manager of the 159-room Original Sokos Hotel, expects 2024 to break more records.

Local critics of mass tourism say many apartment buildings in Rovaniemi’s city center are also used for accommodation services during peak season and are thus no longer available for residential use. They say the proliferation of short-term rentals has driven up prices, squeezed out long-term residents, and turned its city center into a “transient space for tourists.”

Finnish law prohibits professional accommodation services in buildings intended for residential use, so campaigners are calling on authorities to act.

“The rules must be enforced better,” said Pakkanen.

Not everyone agrees. Mayor Ulla-Kirsikka Vainio notes some make “good money” on short-term rentals.

Either way, stricter regulations likely won’t be in place to impact this winter season, and despite the unease expressed by locals, mass tourism to Rovaniemi is probably only going to grow in 2025 — as visitors want to experience the unique atmosphere up north, especially during the holiday season.

“It’s Christmas time and we would love to see the Northern Lights,” says Joy, a visitor from Bangkok. “Rovaniemi seems to be a good place.”
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MONTREAL — Powered by TikTok, the song Je te laisseai des mots by Quebecer Patrick Watson has become the first French-language song to surpass 1 billion listens on Spotify, the streaming platform announced Tuesday.

“It’s a dizzying number,” Canadian singer-songwriter Patrick Watson posted on Facebook on Wednesday. “It’s a huge number, almost impossible to comprehend.”

“I grew up in Montreal and am extremely proud that a French song has crossed the language barrier,” continued Patrick Watson. The Quebec artist thus ranks ahead of other French-speaking artists with global influence, such as the Belgian Stromae or the Franco-Malian Aya Nakamura.

Patrick Watson, represented by the Montreal independent label Secret City Records, composed this song almost 15 years ago, for the film Mothers and Daughters with Catherine Deneuve released in 2009.

The piano-vocal song saw renewed interest in 2019 on YouTube in a video pairing the melody with archival footage.

The melancholic anthem was then used to accompany scenes of everyday life in tens of thousands of videos on TikTok during the COVID-19 pandemic, with users adding melodrama to snippets of their everyday lives.

Celebrities like Justin Bieber also helped make the song popular among a wide audience.

“The modern pop song is now the soundtrack to people’s home movies,” Watson told the Canadian newspaper Globe and Mail in 2022, speaking of its viral popularity.

“The modern hit is the song that makes your daily life more interesting and romantic” on social networks, he added.

Je te laisserai des mots was the most-streamed French-language song worldwide on Spotify over the past 12 months, the platform announced in September, surpassing tracks like Stromae’s Alors on danse.

Patrick Watson’s music has been featured in the popular American TV series Grey’s Anatomy and The Walking Dead, and he and his eponymous band won the prestigious Canadian Polaris Music Prize in 2007. 
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ZURICH — FIFA has confirmed Saudi Arabia as host of the 2034 World Cup in men’s soccer.

The Saudi bid was the only candidate and was acclaimed by the applause of more than 200 FIFA member federations. They took part remotely in an online meeting hosted in Zurich on Wednesday by the soccer body’s president, Gianni Infantino.

The decision was combined with approving the only candidate to host the 2030 World Cup. Spain, Portugal and Morocco will co-host in a six-nation project, with Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay each getting one of the 104 games.

The South American connection will mark the centenary of Uruguay hosting the first World Cup in 1930.

The decision announced Wednesday completes a mostly opaque 15-month bid process that FIFA president Gianni Infantino helped steer toward Saudi Arabia without a rival candidate, without taking questions, and which human rights groups warn will put the lives of migrant workers at risk.

FIFA and Saudi officials say hosting the 2034 tournament can accelerate change, including more freedoms and rights for women.

It will kick off a decade of scrutiny on Saudi labor laws and treatment of workers mostly from South Asia needed to help build and upgrade 15 stadiums, plus hotels and transport networks ahead of the 104-game tournament.

One of the stadiums is planned to be 350 meters above the ground in Neom — a futuristic city that does not yet exist — and another named for the crown prince is designed to be atop a 200-meter cliff near Riyadh.

During the bid campaign, FIFA has accepted limited scrutiny of Saudi Arabia’s human rights record, which was widely criticized this year at the United Nations.

The kingdom plans to spend tens of billions of dollars on projects related to the World Cup as part of the crown prince’s sweeping Vision 2030 project, which aims to modernize Saudi society and economy. At its core is spending on sports by the $900 billion sovereign wealth operation, the Public Investment Fund, which he oversees. Critics have called it “sportswashing” of the kingdom’s reputation.

The prince, known as MBS, has built close working ties to Infantino since 2017 — aligning with the organizer of sport’s most-watched event rather than directly confronting the established system as it did with the disruptive LIV Golf project.

The result for Saudi Arabia and FIFA has been smooth progress toward the win Wednesday with limited pushback from soccer officials, although some from women international players.

The steady flow of Saudi cash into international soccer is set to increase.

FIFA created a new and higher World Cup sponsor category for state oil firm Aramco, and Saudi funding is set to underwrite the 2025 Club World Cup in the United States, which is a pet project for Infantino.
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In December, many Africans return to their ancestral homes to reconnect with their families and traditions. In South Africa, that includes traditional healers. As Zaheer Cassim reports from Johannesburg, many are finding that a new app is helping to bring this age-old practice into the digital age.
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BEVERLY HILLS, California — Musical thriller “Emilia Perez” and historical epic “The Brutalist” led the roster of films nominated on Monday for the 2025 Golden Globes, the Hollywood honors that kick off the movie awards season leading to the Oscars.

“Emilia Perez,” released by Netflix NFLX.O, scored 10 nods and “The Brutalist,” from independent distributor A24, earned seven.

Taking home a Globe can help movies in the race to the Academy Awards in March. Last year’s Hollywood strikes scrambled this year’s release schedule, and awards pundits say there is no clear frontrunner for best picture at the Oscars.

The Globe winners will be chosen by 334 entertainment journalists from 85 countries and will be announced Jan. 5 at a ceremony broadcast live on CBS and streamed on Paramount+.

“Emilia Perez” stars Zoe Saldana as a lawyer who helps a drug cartel leader (Spanish actor Karla Sofía Gascón) fake his death and transition from a man to a woman. Selena Gomez co-stars as the cartel leader’s wife. All three were nominated for by Globes voters for acting honors.

“The Brutalist” stars Adrien Brody in an epic tale of a Hungarian immigrant who flees the horrors of World War Two to rebuild his life in the United States.

Box office smash “Wicked,” adapted from a long-running Broadway play about the witches in “The Wizard of Oz,” landed four nominations.
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The results of the 2024 U.S. presidential election rattled the country and sent shockwaves across the world — or were cause for celebration, depending on who you ask. Is it any surprise then that the Merriam-Webster word of the year is “polarization”?

“Polarization means division, but it’s a very specific kind of division,” said Peter Sokolowski, Merriam-Webster’s editor at large, in an exclusive interview with The Associated Press ahead of Monday’s announcement. “Polarization means that we are tending toward the extremes rather than toward the center.”

The election was so divisive, many American voters went to the polls with a feeling that the opposing candidate was an existential threat to the nation. According to AP VoteCast, a survey of more than 120,000 voters, about 8 in 10 Kamala Harris voters were very or somewhat concerned that Donald Trump’s views — but not Harris’ — were too extreme, while about 7 in 10 Trump voters felt the same way about Harris — but not Trump.

The Merriam-Webster entry for “polarization” reflects scientific and metaphorical definitions. It’s most commonly used to mean “causing strong disagreement between opposing factions or groupings.”

Merriam-Webster, which logs 100 million pageviews a month on its site, chooses its word of the year based on data, tracking a rise in search and usage.

Last year’s pick was “authentic.” This year’s comes as large swaths of the U.S. struggle to reach consensus on what is real.

“It’s always been important to me that the dictionary serve as a kind of neutral and objective arbiter of meaning for everybody,” Sokolowski said. “It’s a kind of backstop for meaning in an era of fake news, alternative facts, whatever you want to say about the value of a word’s meaning in the culture.”

It’s notable that “polarization” originated in the early 1800s — and not during the Renaissance, as did most words with Latin roots about science, Sokolowski said. He called it a “pretty young word,” in the scheme of the English language. “Polarized is a term that brings intensity to another word,” he continued, most frequently used in the U.S. to describe race relations, politics and ideology.

“The basic job of the dictionary is to tell the truth about words,” the Merriam-Webster editor continued. “We’ve had dictionaries of English for 420 years and it’s only been in the last 20 years or so that we’ve actually known which words people look up.”

“Polarization” extends beyond political connotations. It’s used to highlight fresh cracks and deep rifts alike in pop culture, tech trends and other industries.

All the scrutiny over Taylor Swift’s private jet usage? Polarizing. Beef between rappers Kendrick Lamar and Drake? Polarizing. The International Olympic Committee’s decision to strip American gymnast Jordan Chiles of her bronze medal after the Paris Games? You guessed it: polarizing.

Even lighthearted memes — like those making fun of Australian breakdancer Rachael “Raygun” Gunn’s performance — or the proliferation of look-alike contests, or who counts as a nepo baby proved polarizing.

Paradoxically though, people tend to see eye to eye on the word itself. Sokolowski cited its frequent use among people across the political spectrum, including commentators on Fox News, MSNBC and CNN.

“It’s used by both sides,” he said, “and in a little bit ironic twist to the word, it’s something that actually everyone agrees on.”

Rounding out Merriam-Webster’s top 10 words of 2024:

Demure

TikToker Jools Lebron’s 38-second video describing her workday makeup routine as “very demure, very mindful” lit up the summer with memes. The video has been viewed more than 50 million times, yielding “huge spikes” in lookups, Sokolowski said, and prompting many to learn it means reserved or modest.

Fortnight

Taylor Swift’s song “Fortnight,” featuring rapper Post Malone, undoubtedly spurred many searches for this word, which means two weeks. “Music can still send people to the dictionary,” Sokolowski said.

Totality

The solar eclipse in April inspired awe and much travel. There are tens of millions of people who live along a narrow stretch from Mexico’s Pacific coast to eastern Canada, otherwise known as the path of totality, where locals and travelers gazed skyward to see the moon fully blot out the sun. Generally, the word refers to a sum or aggregate amount — or wholeness.

Resonate

“Texts developed by AI have a disproportionate percentage of use of the word ‘resonate,'” Sokolowski said. This may be because the word, which means to affect or appeal to someone in a personal or emotional way, can add gravitas to writing. But, paradoxically, artificial intelligence “also betrays itself to be a robot because it’s using that word too much.”

Allision

The word was looked up 60 times more often than usual when, in March, a ship crashed into the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore. “When you have one moving object into a fixed object, that’s an allision, not a collision. You’re showing that one of the two objects struck was not, in fact, in motion,” Sokolowski said.

Weird

This summer on the TV news show “Morning Joe,” Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz called Republican leaders “weird.” It may have been what launched his national career, landing him as the Democratic vice presidential nominee. Though it’s a word that people typically misspell — is it “ei” or “ie”? — and search for that reason, its rise in use was notable, Sokolowski said.

Cognitive

Whether the word was used to raise questions about President Joe Biden’s debate performance or Trump’s own age, it cropped up often. It refers to conscious intellectual activity — such as thinking, reasoning, or remembering.

Pander

Pander was used widely in political commentary, Sokolowski said. “Conservative news outlets accused Kamala Harris of pandering to different groups, especially young voters, Black voters, gun rights supporters.” Whereas Walz said Trump’s visit to a McDonald’s kitchen pandered to hourly wage workers. It means to say, do, or provide what someone — such as an audience — wants or demands even though it is not “good, proper, reasonable, etc.”

Democracy

In 2003, Merriam-Webster decided to make “democracy” its first word of the year. Since then, the word — which, of course, means a form of government in which the people elect representatives to make decisions, policies and laws — is consistently one of the dictionary’s most looked up. “There’s a poignancy to that, that people are checking up on it,” Sokolowski said. “Maybe the most hopeful thing that the curiosity of the public shows, is that they’re paying attention.”
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Vancouver, British Columbia — Taylor Swift’s “The Eras Tour” officially ended Sunday in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. The nearly two-year-long tour was record-breaking and trend-setting.

It is finally the end of an era for Taylor Swift.

The last show here in Vancouver is the finale of a 149-concert tour that spanned almost two years. It is estimated that it earned around two-billion dollars since the first concert in March 2023.

Each concert lasted about three-and-a-half hours and featured at least 44 songs, divided into 10 parts, or “eras,” of her recording career. The tour stopped in 53 cities on five continents.

For Vancouver residents, the arrival of Swiftmania took over the city and drew comparisons to when the area hosted the 2010 Winter Olympic and Paralympic Games. 

Chris May is the general manager of BC Place Stadium, the venue that hosted the final three Swift concerts.

He said organizing and preparations for these concerts was similar to ceremonies for the Olympics, Paralympics and the 2015 Women’s World Cup of Soccer, which were held in the stadium.

He said 70% of attendees for the final concerts were from outside of the greater Vancouver area.

“That means we have a huge amount of guests that have never been here before. So, you know, it’s working through those realities of ensuring we have enough staffing, enough signage and wayfinding, and people to help to get people where they’re going,” he said.

May said the April 2024 concert for Diljit Dosanjh, which was the biggest Punjabi music concert outside of India, drew more than 50,000 fans. All told, Swift’s three Vancouver concerts drew about 160,000 people.   

 

Jarrett Vaughan, an adjunct professor at the Sauder School of Business at the University of British Columbia, said Swift’s adept use of social media played a crucial role in the tour’s success.  

He also said the COVID-19 pandemic played a part for some younger members of her audience. 

“I think when we look at the current audience that she has, you know, they were fairly young at that time. They didn’t have the opportunity to attend concerts going through maybe middle school or elementary school, and so for them now, to be able to attend something like this is pretty remarkable,” he said.

Vaughan said the legacy of the Eras Tour will not solely be just Swift’s use of social media, but the positivity she created for her fan base.

Stephanie Burt is an English professor at Harvard College and recently taught a very popular class at the school on Swift.

For her, the secret to Swift’s Eras Tour and her career itself is simple, she is really good at writing songs that are aspirational and relatable.

“We hear the songs, and we hear both someone who’s already like us and someone who we want to be more like and want to be closer to and aspire to be like. That’s a rare gift to extend it that long, and the tour testifies to the persistence of her talent and to her versatility and to her ability to collaborate and organize and plan,” she said.

Vancouver’s tourism office estimates the final dates of Swift’s tour boosted the city’s economy by $112 million. 
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The Walt Disney Co.’s animated film “Moana 2” remained at the top of the box office in its second weekend in theaters as it brought in another record haul. 

The film added $52 million, according to studio estimates Sunday. That brings its domestic total to $300 million, surpassing the original, and its global tally to a staggering $600 million.

The amount set a record gross for a movie on the weekend following Thanksgiving weekend, unseating “Frozen II,” which earned $35.2 million in the same time frame in 2019. The numbers are not adjusted for inflation. Originally conceived as a Disney+ series, “Moana 2” has already broken into the top five highest grossing releases of the year. Its performance means Disney has three films in this year’s top five, including “Inside Out 2” and “Deadpool & Wolverine.” The studio also has another big movie on the way before the year ends: Barry Jenkins’ “Mufasa,” out Dec. 20.

The weekend also showcased several new releases, including A24’s horror comedy “Y2K” and the Jude Law crime thriller “The Order.” But nothing was ever going to present significant competition to the enticing Thanksgiving leftovers, “Moana 2,” “Wicked” and “Gladiator II.”

Second place at the box office was occupied by “Wicked,” which added $34.9 million, bringing its domestic total to $320.5 million in three weeks. Globally, the musical adaptation released by Universal is at $455.6 million. “Gladiator II” followed in third place with $12.5 million, while “Red One” came in fourth with $7 million.

“These holdovers are going to create the momentum that’s going to put an $8.5 billion-plus box office year on the horizon,” said Paul Dergarabedian, the senior media analyst for Comscore.

Pre-pandemic, $11 billion had become the annual norm for the movie business. Since then, the closest the industry has gotten to that number was last year, which cracked $9 billion. This year started off slow and up to a few months ago, Dergarabedian said, even hitting $8 billion for the year was in doubt. But in the two weeks since Thanksgiving, the deficit from last year has narrowed by over 5%. 

The newcomers struggled to make a significant impact. Even the 10th anniversary rerelease of Christopher Nolan’s “Interstellar,” which played in only 165 theaters, did better than “Y2K” ($2.1 million) and “The Order” ($878,000) combined. Paramount reported that the science fiction epic starring Matthew McConaughey and Anne Hathaway brought in an estimated $4.4 million. IMAX also noted that all the 70mm IMAX presentations of “Interstellar” were sold out through the weekend.

“I was thrilled so many moviegoers took advantage of the original IMAX experience of ‘Interstellar’ this weekend,” Nolan said in a statement.

The biggest of the many newcomers was the Indian action pic “Pushpa: The Rule – Part 2,” which earned $4.9 million. Sony and Crunchyroll’s anime release, “Solo Leveling – ReAwakening,” made $2.4 million. Fathom also released pop duo for KING + COUNTRY’s “A Drummer Boy Christmas” concert in theaters where it made $2.1 million.

“It’s a really diverse marketplace,” Dergarabedian said. “There’s event cinema, international cinema, a rerelease of a 10-year-old film. It’s easily one of the most eclectic and interesting lineups I’ve ever seen.”

Next weekend theaters are in for another influx of bigger movies, with both Sony’s comic book film “Kraven the Hunter” and the animated “The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim” opening in wide release. Awards contenders “Nickel Boys” and “September 5” will also open in a limited number of theaters.

Estimated ticket sales for Friday through Sunday at U.S. and Canadian theaters, according to Comscore. Final domestic figures will be released Monday.

1. “Moana 2,” $52 million. 

2. “Wicked,” $34.9 million. 

3. “Gladiator II,” $12.5 million. 

4. “Red One,” $7 million. 

5. “Pushpa: The Rule – Part 2,” $4.9 million. 

6. “Interstellar” rerelease, $4.4 million. 

7. “Solo Leveling – ReAwakening,” $2.4 million. 

8. “Y2K,” $2.1 million. 

9. “for KING + COUNTRY’S: A Drummer Boy Christmas,” $2.1 million. 

10. “The Best Christmas Pageant Ever,” $1.5 million.
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TOKYO — A frog holding a taro-leaf umbrella. A parade of frolicking animals. An Ukiyo-e style Mount Fuji. Giant waves. A Japanese artist who goes by the name Lito carves these delicate designs on fallen leaves, giving life back to them.

The world of Lito’s delicate art, which he began in 2020 and posts on social media almost daily, has won fans from around the world. The leaf art has also given him solace after earlier struggles with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, and a purpose in life — the joy of making people happy with his art.

He enjoys working at night. From a pile of leaves treated with a wrinkle-free chemical, he picks one and places it on a cutting board.

First, he outlines the design on the leaf with a pen in his right hand. Then he takes a design knife in his left hand and starts cutting the leaf carefully. Slowly, the leaf begins to take the shape of a frog carrying an umbrella — a simple design he demonstrated in a recent interview with The Associated Press.

More complex, highly intensive work on a single leaf can take more than eight hours to complete.

His leaf-cutting works include titles such as Scrolls of Frolicking Animals, Leaf Aquarium and Thirty-six Views of Mt. Fuji: The Great Wave off Kanagawa. Each piece includes his own twists and often uses animals.

“I would rather finish it in one go when I am focused,” Lito, 38, said. He didn’t want to disclose his real name for personal reasons.

Since his childhood, Lito says he has had high levels of concentration and patience. But he had trouble fitting into what was considered the norm at school or at work, despite all his efforts. He struggled to interpret others’ feelings and to avoid confrontations.

After years of difficulty, he went to a hospital at age 30 and was told he has ADHD, a diagnosis that he felt explained why he has always done things differently.

He saw no point in forcing himself to do things the same way as other people, and began to adjust his life.

In early 2020, Lito came across the art of leaf cutting. He saw it as the perfect use of his patience and concentration.

Word of his skills has spread across social media, and he has published books on his leaf-cutting work. He holds a near monthly solo exhibition in various places in Japan.

“If I can make people happy by doing what I am doing, I want to do more. That’s my driving force for what’s next,” Lito says. 
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LONDON — London’s Royal Albert Hall, the gilded concert venue known for an annual Rule Britannia singalong, is preparing to host a different kind of spectacle: Sumo wrestling.

Camera shutters clicked furiously and reporters “Ahhhed” in delight Wednesday as wrestlers Daisuke Kitanowaka and Akira Fukutsuumi demonstrated a sideways stamp and put on an exhibition of heavyweight grappling to promote a tournament scheduled for next October.

It marks only the second time an elite five-day tournament will be held outside Japan. The first was in 1991 at the same venue.

Organizers are hoping to whip up the kind of excitement that was generated three decades ago, when the deeply ritualistic sport attracted sell-out crowds and a national television audience.

“It wasn’t just an event here at the hall,” said James Ainscough, chief executive of the Royal Albert Hall. “It became a national moment. People talked about it in the workplace. You could see kids acting it out each day in playgrounds the length and breadth of the country. So it’s a huge honor and a huge matter of excitement to welcome it back in 2025.”

A variety of factors, including a series of sumo wrestling scandals, the financial crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic, delayed the sport’s return to London. But organizers believe the time is right because sumo is having a bit of a moment.

Two Netflix series have introduced audiences to the intricacies of the sport, which has roots stretching back 1,500 years. Earlier this year, Hanshin Contents Link opened a sumo hall in Osaka, Japan’s third-largest city, that entertains foreign tourists with explanatory exhibitions and actual bouts.

Organizers of the London event say they hope to show Japan’s rich culture as well as its traditional sport that pits two huge men clad in very little against each other in a test of strength and technique.

On hand Wednesday was the winner of the previous U.K. tournament, Nobuyoshi Hakkaku, nicknamed “bulldog” by British fans in 1991. Now the chairman of the Japan Sumo Association, he reminisced about how the only thing that made him really nervous was preparing for a victory speech in English.

Japan’s ambassador to the U.K., Hiroshi Suzuki, also made an appearance, a reflection of the event’s importance to the nation. Organizers promised that spectators also would see exhibitions of Kabuki theater and other Japanese traditions.

But the main attraction were the wrestlers.

Kitanowaka and Fukutsuumi gamely tried to show off their sport. Clad in their mawashi, or ceremonial aprons, they faced off on a mat in front of several dozen journalists. The big men slammed into each other with an “oomph” as flesh slapped flesh. A grunt or two broke the silence.

No sweat was evident. It was over in a flash.

Then they went outside, dropping their robes and exposing their flesh to the frosty November air as they entered and exited a classic London black cab for photographers.

Nothing seemed to bother them. Not the cold. Not the demands to stand this way or that. As the concert hall loomed behind them, they did their best to be sumo diplomats.

“Sumo has a wonderfully intriguing collection of culture and ritual and sport and excitement,” Ainscough said. “And to bring sumo back to the Royal Albert Hall again doesn’t just create a sporting moment, it creates a moment where we can learn and be inspired by another culture and another set of principles to live by. It’s a moment where we can all grow closer together.'”
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MINNEAPOLIS — A pair of iconic ruby slippers that were worn by Judy Garland in The Wizard of Oz and stolen from a museum nearly two decades ago fetched $28 million in an auction Saturday.

Heritage Auctions had estimated that they would fetch $3 million or more. Online bidding opened last month and by Friday had reached $1.55 million, or $1.91 million including the buyer’s premium, a commission that the buyer pays, said Robert Wilonsky, a vice president with the Dallas-based auction house. More than 800 people were tracking the slippers, and the company’s web page for the auction had hit nearly 43,000 page views by Thursday, he said.

As Rhys Thomas, author of the book, The Ruby Slippers of Oz, puts it, the sequined shoes from the beloved 1939 musical have seen “more twists and turns than the Yellow Brick Road.”

They were on display at the Judy Garland Museum in her hometown of Grand Rapids, Minnesota, in 2005 when Terry Jon Martin used a hammer to smash the glass of the museum’s door and display case.

Their whereabouts remained a mystery until the FBI recovered them in 2018. Martin, now 77, who lives near Grand Rapids in northern Minnesota, wasn’t publicly exposed as the thief until he was indicted in May 2023. He pleaded guilty in October 2023. He was in a wheelchair and on supplementary oxygen when he was sentenced last January to time served because of his poor health.

His attorney, Dane DeKrey, explained ahead of sentencing that Martin, who had a long history of burglary and receiving stolen property, was attempting to pull off “one last score” after an old associate with connections to the mob told him the shoes had to be adorned with real jewels to justify their $1 million insured value. But a fence — a person who buys stolen goods — later told him the rubies were just glass, DeKrey said. So Martin got rid of the slippers. The attorney didn’t specify how.

The alleged fence, Jerry Hal Saliterman, 77, of the Minneapolis suburb of Crystal, was indicted in March. He was also in a wheelchair and on oxygen when he made his first court appearance. He’s scheduled to go on trial in January and hasn’t entered a plea, though his attorney has said he’s not guilty.

The shoes were returned in February to memorabilia collector Michael Shaw, who had lent them to the museum. They were one of several pairs that Garland wore during the filming, but only four pairs are known to have survived. In the movie, to return from Oz to Kansas, Dorothy had to click her heels three times and repeat, “There’s no place like home.”

Among those bidding was the Judy Garland Museum. The city of Grand Rapids raised money for the slippers at its annual Judy Garland festival to supplement the $100,000 set aside this year by Minnesota lawmakers to help the museum purchase the slippers.

The Wizard of Oz story has gained new attention in recent weeks with the release of the movie Wicked, an adaptation of the megahit Broadway musical, a prequel of sorts that reimagines the character of the Wicked Witch of the West.

The auction also included other memorabilia from The Wizard of Oz, such as a hat worn by Margaret Hamilton, who played the original Wicked Witch of the West. 
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VATICAN CITY — Pope Francis was seen with a significant bruise on his chin Saturday, but he presided over a ceremony to install new cardinals without apparent problems.

A Vatican spokesperson said later Saturday that the bruise was caused by a contusion on Friday morning when Francis hit a nightstand with his chin.

The pontiff, who turns 88 later this month, appeared slightly fatigued but carried on as normal with the scheduled ceremony to create 21 new cardinals in St. Peter’s Basilica.

Francis has suffered several health problems in recent years and now uses a wheelchair due to knee and back pain.

In 2017, while on a trip to Colombia, Francis sported a black eye after he hit his head on a support bar when his popemobile stopped short.
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PARIS — Notre Dame will formally reopen Saturday, five years after the Paris cathedral was devastated by fire, with U.S. President-elect Donald Trump among world leaders there to celebrate its remarkably rapid restoration.

Held up as an example of French creativity and resilience by President Emmanuel Macron, Notre Dame’s renaissance so soon after a 2019 blaze that destroyed its roof and spire comes at a difficult time for the country.

The sense of national accomplishment in restoring a beloved symbol of Paris has been undercut by political turmoil that has left France without a proper government and in a budget crisis.

Macron is hoping that the first full service inside Notre Dame and the sight of around 40 world leaders in Paris might provide a fleeting sense of pride and unity — as the Paris Olympics did in July and August.

The re-opening “is the proof that we know how to do grand things, we know how to do the impossible and the whole world has admired us for it on two occasions this year,” Macron said during a televised address on Thursday, referring to the widely praised Olympics.

During a visit with TV cameras last week however, he somewhat undermined the suspense behind the reopening, revealing the cathedral’s freshly scrubbed limestone walls, new furniture and vaulted wooden roof cut from ancient oak trees selected from the finest forests of France.

The reconstruction effort has cost around $750 million, financed from donations, with the re-opening achieved within five years despite predictions it could take decades.

Workers had to overcome problems with lead pollution, the COVID-19 epidemic, and the general overseeing the project falling to his death while hiking in the Pyrenees last year.

Trump show?

While the reborn 12th-century architectural masterpiece will be the main focus of public attention on Saturday, TV cameras are also likely to linger on Trump who will be making his first overseas trip since winning reelection to the White House last month.

He accepted an invitation from Macron to attend earlier this week, saying the French leader had done “a wonderful job ensuring that Notre Dame has been restored to its full level of glory, and even more so.”

U.S. President Joe Biden will be represented by his wife Jill, while Britain’s Prince William and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy will also be present.

Zelenskyy is expected to seek his first face-to-face meeting with Trump who has vowed to force a peace agreement to end the war in Ukraine, possibly by withholding U.S. weapon supplies.

One surprising absentee will be Pope Francis, the head of the Catholic Church, who has decided against breaking off from a weekend trip to the French island of Corsica.

A message from Francis addressed to the French people will be read out to the congregation of VIPs, church figures and selected members of the public when the service begins on Saturday evening.

‘Universal sadness’

Parisians watched in horror in 2019 as flames ravaged Notre Dame, a landmark famed as the setting for Victor Hugo’s novel The Hunchback of Notre Dame and one of the world’s most-visited monuments.

The apocalyptic images were even seen by some as a sign of the demise of Western civilization, with the 850-year-old wonder saved from complete collapse only by the heroic intervention of firefighters.

The exact cause of the blaze has never been identified despite a forensic investigation by prosecutors, who believe an accident such as an electrical fault was the most likely reason.

“We felt a sense of universal sadness when Notre Dame burned,” said fashion designer Jean-Charles de Castelbajac, who has dreamed up colorful new priestly vestments that will be worn by senior clergy on Saturday.

“It was a moment of terrible emotions, like a premonition of our world in difficulty,” he told AFP recently.

The service will feature prayer, organ music and hymns from the cathedral’s choir, followed by a televised concert with performances by Chinese piano virtuoso Lang Lang, South African opera singer Pretty Yende and possibly American singer and fashion designer Pharrell Williams.

Harsh weather forced officials to move Macron’s planned speech indoors and pre-record the concert Friday night, with forecasts for winds of up to 80 kph as Storm Darragh put parts of France on red alert.

On Sunday, the first Mass with 170 bishops and more than 100 Paris priests will take place at 10:30 a.m. (0930 GMT) followed by a second service in the evening at 6:30 p.m. which will be open to the public. 
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LUQUE, PARAGUAY — Sake is perhaps more Japanese than the world-famous sushi. It’s brewed in centuries-old mountaintop warehouses, savored in the country’s pub-like izakayas, poured during weddings and served slightly chilled for special toasts.

The smooth rice wine that plays a crucial role in Japan’s culinary traditions was enshrined on Wednesday by UNESCO on its list of the “intangible cultural heritage of humanity.”

At a meeting in Luque, Paraguay, members of UNESCO’s committee for safeguarding humanity’s cultural heritage voted to recognize 45 cultural practices and products around the world, including Brazilian white cheese, Caribbean cassava bread and Palestinian olive oil soap.

Unlike UNESCO’s World Heritage List, which includes sites considered important to humanity like the Pyramids of Giza in Egypt, the Intangible Cultural Heritage designation names products and practices of different cultures that are deserving of recognition.

A Japanese delegation welcomed the announcement in Luque.

“Sake is considered a divine gift and is essential for social and cultural events in Japan,” Kano Takehiro, the Japanese ambassador to UNESCO, told The Associated Press.

The basic ingredients of sake are few: rice, water, yeast and koji, a rice mold, which breaks down the starches into fermentable sugars like malting does in beer production. The whole two-month-long process of steaming, stirring, fermenting and pressing can be grueling.

The rice — which wields tremendous marketing power as part of Japan’s broader cultural identity — is key to the alcoholic brew.

For a product to be categorized Japanese sake, the rice must be Japanese.

The UNESCO recognition, the delegation said, captured more than the craft knowledge of making high-quality sake. It also honored a tradition dating back some 1,000 years — sake makes a cameo in Japan’s famous 11th century novel, The Tale of Genji, as the drink of choice in the refined Heian court.

Now, officials hope to restore sake’s image as Japan’s premier alcoholic drink even as the younger drinkers in the country switch to imported wine or domestic beer and whiskey.

“It means a lot to Japan and to the Japanese,” Takehiro said of the UNESCO designation. “This will help to renew interest in traditional sake elaboration.”

Also, Japanese breweries have expressed hope that the listing could give a little lift to the country’s export economy as the popularity of sake booms around the world and in the United States amid heightened interest in Japanese cuisine.

Sake exports, mostly to the U.S. and China, now rake in over $265 million a year, according to the Japan Sake and Shochu Makers Association, a trade group.

Japan’s delegation appeared ready to celebrate on Wednesday — in classic Japanese style.

After the announcement, Takehiro raised a cypress box full of sake to toast the alcoholic brew and cultural rite.
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PARIS — U.S. President-elect Donald Trump and U.S. first lady Jill Biden are among global dignitaries expected in Paris Saturday as the city’s iconic Notre Dame Cathedral reopens five years after a massive fire.

Trump’s visit to Paris is expected to be his first foreign trip since winning the election last month. U.S. President Joe Biden is not expected to attend.

It has taken five years, 2,000 artisans and workers, and hundreds of millions of dollars to restore the medieval Gothic masterpiece. It was nearly destroyed during a fire in April 2019.

French President Emmanuel Macron visited the restored cathedral Friday and said the reconstruction workers had participated in an unprecedented project.

Macron will join the archbishop of Paris, along with Catholic and other dignitaries, for official opening ceremonies Saturday. The cathedral will open its doors to the public on Sunday as part of weeklong reopening events.

Even covered with scaffolding and closed to visitors, Notre Dame has attracted hordes of tourists during the years of reconstruction. Manuele Monica, a visitor from Italy, said, “I can understand why people in the past created buildings such as this one, because it’s so huge. It’s really tall — like it’s going up in the sky.”

The event offers a short reprieve for France, which is facing pre-Christmas strikes, soaring debt and an uncertain political future.
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Notre Dame cathedral reopens this weekend (Dec 7/8) five years after a massive fire devastated the iconic Paris landmark. Political and religious leaders and ordinary visitors are expected to attend the events, which mark a bright spot in an otherwise turbulent year. Lisa Bryant reports from the French capital.
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New York — Christmas came early at the box office this year. “Moana 2” brought in a tidal wave of moviegoers over the Thanksgiving Day weekend, setting records with $221 million in ticket sales, according to studio estimates Sunday. That, combined with “Wicked” and “Gladiator II,” made for an unprecedented weekend in cinemas and a confluence of blockbusters more like what’s often found in late December.

Expectations were high for Walt Disney Co.’s “Moana 2,” but the film — originally planned as a series for Disney+ before it was redirected to the big screen — blew predictions out of the water. Its five-day opening set a new record for Thanksgiving moviegoing. (The previous best was $125 million for “Frozen 2” in its second week of release in 2019.) “Moana 2” added $165.3 million internationally; with $386 million worldwide, it’s the second-best global launch of the year.

At the same time, the sensation of “Wicked” showed no signs of slowing down. The Universal Pictures musical brought in $117.5 million over the five-day weekend, pushing its two-week global total to $359.2 million. Not accounting for inflation, “Wicked” is now the highest grossing Broadway adaptation over “Grease.” (That 1978 film grossed $190 million, but factoring in inflation would put it past $900 million.)

“Gladiator II,” meanwhile, also held well, dipping 44% from its opening weekend. Ridley Scott’s sequel to his Oscar-winning best picture original collected $44 million in its second weekend. While its steep price tag of $250 million will make profitability challenging, “Gladiator II” has swiftly gathered $320 million worldwide.

Those three films drove the overall box office to a record $420 million in overall Thanksgiving weekend ticket sales, according to Comscore — more than $100 million more than ever before. For an industry that has been battered in recent years by the pandemic, work stoppages and the upheaval caused by streaming, it was a triumphant weekend that showed the still-potent power of Hollywood’s blockbuster machine. Before “Wicked,” “Moana 2” and “Gladiator II” arrived in theaters, ticket sales were running about 25% behind pre-pandemic levels.

Michael O’Leary, president and chief executive of the National Association of Theater Owners, said the weekend showed what’s possible when “all the pieces of the puzzle come together” in compelling big-budget movies with marketing muscle.

“We’re very optimistic that this weekend is the start of what we believe is a full-on charge into the future,” he said. “The remaining quarter of this year looks very promising and then on into 2025 and 2026. We’re hoping next year is the first kind of normal year this industry has had in a long time.”

Like the last time such anticipated movies collided on the release calendar — 2023’s much-ballyhooed “Barbenheimer” — the movie industry again could see evidence of a rising moviegoing tide lifting all blockbusters. In recent years, studios have typically tried to space out most of their biggest releases. Earlier this fall, “Venom: The Last Dance,” for example, was the No. 1 film for three straight weeks, despite not being particularly successful.

“For a long, long time in Hollywood, there’s been a belief that you don’t put big blockbuster movies up against each other,” said O’Leary. “But the truth of the matter is that competition is good. It’s good for the movies. It’s good for the studios. It’s good for the theater owners. But it’s particularly good for the moviegoing public.”

“Moana 2” was the nexus of a strategy shift for Disney. When it first began development, it was fashioned as a series for streaming. But when Bob Iger returned as chief executive, he reconsidered the balance between theatrical and streaming. The original “Moana,” after all, was the most streamed movie on Disney+ in 2023, with the added benefit of $680 million in box office in 2016. Only in February this year did Iger announce the release of “Moana 2,” with Auli’i Cravalho and Dwayne Johnson returning as the voices of Moana and Maui.

“It just shows you that the big screen and small screen are not adversarial. They can be complementary and additive,” says Paul Dergarabedian, senior media analyst for Comscore. “Whoever made that decision to go big screen globally with ‘Moana 2,’ that was one of the greatest decisions ever.”

And it helped lead a resurgence for Walt Disney Co., whose last two animated November releases — “Strange World” and “Wish” — fizzled in theaters. “Moana 2” may become the third $1 billion-grossing movie for the studio in 2024, along with “Inside Out 2” and “Deadpool & Wolverine.” Though reviews for “Moana 2″ have only been 65% “fresh” on Rotten Tomatoes, audiences gave it an “A-” CinemaScore.

“Moana 2” is also part of a major rebound for family moviegoing. According to David A. Gross, a film consultant who publishes a newsletter for Franchise Entertainment, family moviegoing in 2024 is going to account for approximately $6.8 billion in ticket sales, roughly the sums of 2022 and 2023, combined.

After such large debuts, “Moana 2” and “Wicked” are likely to continue to drive moviegoing through December. The only question will be if this year’s Christmas movies — historically a much bigger holiday period for theaters — can come anywhere near the Thanksgiving lineup. Among the movies aiming for that holiday corridor are Disney’s “Mufasa: The Lion King,” Paramount’s “Sonic the Hedgehog 3″ and Searchlight’s “A Complete Unknown,” with Timothee Chalamet as a young Bob Dylan.

Final domestic figures will be released Monday. Estimated ticket sales for Friday through Sunday at U.S. and Canadian theaters, according to Comscore:

1. “Moana 2,” $135 million.

2. “Wicked,” $80 million.

3. “Gladiator II” $30.7 million.

4. “Red One,” $12.9 million.

5. “The Best Christmas Pageant Ever,” $3.3 million.

6. “Bonhoeffer: Pastor. Spy. Assassin,” $2.4 million.

7. “Venom: The Last Dance,” $2.2 million.

8. “Heretic,” $956,797.

9. “The Wild Robot,” $670,000.

10. “A Real Pain,” $665,000.
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BERLIN — The smells of mulled wine, roasted almonds and hot bratwurst are wafting through the air across the German capital again, as the city’s more than 100 Christmas markets are opening their doors this week. But the annual tradition that Germans have cherished since the Middle Ages — and successfully exported to much of the Western world — has become a pretty diverse affair, at least in Berlin.

The city of 3.8 million, which takes pride in its tolerance and diversity, offers Christmas markets for pretty much every taste these days. Nowadays, almost 40% of Berliners have immigrant roots, and the city’s LGBTQ+ community is considered one of the biggest in the country.

So it comes as no surprise that popular Christmas markets include a LGBTQ+ one offering rainbow pierogi and entertainment by drag queens, a Scandinavian market selling moose goulash and reindeer salami and a market tempting revelers with naughty gift ideas, along with a historical market that takes visitors back to medieval times.

“It’s a lovely atmosphere,” Paul Middleton said of the LGBTQ+ market Christmas Avenue, which is illuminated in the colors of the rainbow.

“It’s great to do something for the LGBTQ+ community and offer something positive in a safe environment where everyone’s welcome, no matter what background,” said Middleton, who moved to Berlin from London three years ago “for love.”

Middleton was busy selling gay-themed Christmas shirts next to stalls offering suggestive candles and soaps in neon colors.

The market also attracts heterosexual couples, neighborhood residents and groups of moms with baby strollers, said Sebastian Ahlefeld, a spokesperson for Christmas Avenue.

“You can meet lots of friends, relax, enjoy a mulled wine and simply kick off the Christmas season,” said Marco Klingberg, who visited the market with friends on Monday night.

Klingberg, a police officer and member of the LGBTQ+ police organization in Brandenburg, the state surrounding Berlin, pointed out that despite the city’s reputation as a gay-friendly city, attacks on members of the community are a concern, and it was great to have a protected environment for celebrating.

“First and foremost, it’s a safe space,” he said.

Security is an issue not only at the LGBTQ+ market, where all visitors undergo a bag check before entering. Groups of police officers were patrolling most markets on Monday night, as memories of a deadly terror attack on a Christmas market eight years ago are still fresh for many Berliners.

On December 19, 2016, an Islamist attacker plowed through a crowd of Christmas market-goers with a truck, killing 13 people and injuring dozens more in the German capital. The attacker was killed days later in a shootout in Italy.

Despite increased surveillance, visitors at the Scandinavian-themed Lucia market in Berlin’s Prenzlauer Berg neighborhood were hanging out in crowds on the compound of a former brewery. Kids enjoyed merry-go-rounds while their parents stood in line for Finnish honey and Icelandic mulled wine infused with hard liquor or chatted and warmed up at fire pits.

“I’ve been coming here every year since kindergarten times,” said Mathilda Schmidt, 21, pointing to kids cheering as they jumped on a trampoline. She was standing in line with her boyfriend for bratwurst and potato pancakes.

At Humboldt Forum Christmas market near the Spree river, vendors were offering more exotic dishes including jerk chicken with cooked bananas at a Jamaican food stand, Argentinian empanadas, French salamis and Hungarian langos, a deep-fried flatbread.

While the city’s biggest markets are open for weeks and usually close only the day before Christmas Eve, smaller markets often open for a weekend or a day.

They include the Kinky Christmas market in the Kreuzberg neighborhood that invites visitors on December 1 only, seeking those who may find traditional markets “too overwhelmingly contemplative and traditional.” More than 20 stalls will offer sexy “fashion, accessories, jewelry, toys and all kinds of naughty gift ideas,” the city of Berlin says on its website.

While Berliners seem to nonchalantly enjoy the variety of Christmas market offerings, they were fiercely united in their complaint about the increasing price of mulled wine — with one small cup now selling for up to seven euros ($7.36).
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NEW YORK — Likely most people have seen iconic footage of the Beatles performing on “The Ed Sullivan Show.” But how many have seen Paul McCartney during that same U.S. trip feeding seagulls off his hotel balcony?

That moment — as well as George Harrison and John Lennon goofing around by exchanging their jackets — are part of the Disney+ documentary “Beatles ’64,” an intimate look at the English band’s first trip to America that uses rare and newly restored footage. It streams Friday.

“It’s so fun to be the fly on the wall in those really intimate moments,” says Margaret Bodde, who produced alongside Martin Scorsese. “It’s just this incredible gift of time and technology to be able to see it now with the decades of time stripped away so that you really feel like you’re there.”

“Beatles ’64” leans into footage of the 14-day trip filmed by documentarians Albert and David Maysles, who left behind 11 hours of the Fab Four goofing around in New York’s Plaza hotel or traveling. It was restored by Park Road Post in New Zealand.

“It’s beautiful, although it’s black and white and it’s not widescreen,” says director David Tedeschi. “It’s like it was shot yesterday and it captures the youth of the four Beatles and the fans.”

The footage is augmented by interviews with the two surviving members of the band and people whose lives were impacted, including some of the women who as teens stood outside their hotel hoping to catch a glimpse of the Beatles.

“It was like a crazy love,” fan Vickie Brenna-Costa recalls in the documentary. “I can’t really understand it now. But then, it was natural.”

The film shows the four heartthrobs flirting and dancing at the Peppermint Lounge disco, Harrison noodling with a Woody Guthrie riff on his guitar and tells the story of Ronnie Spector sneaking the band out a hotel back exit and up to Harlem to eat barbeque.

The documentary coincides with the release of a box set of vinyl albums collecting the band’s seven U.S. albums released in ’64 and early ’65 — “Meet The Beatles!,” “The Beatles’ Second Album,” “A Hard Day’s Night” (the movie soundtrack), “Something New,” “The Beatles’ Story,” “Beatles ’65” and “The Early Beatles.” They had been out of print on vinyl since 1995.

The Beatles’ U.S. visit in 1964 also included concerts at Carnegie Hall, a gig at the Washington Coliseum in Washington, D.C., and a visit to Miami, where the band met Muhammad Ali. The documentary shows members of the band reading newspaper coverage of themselves.

Viewers may learn that the Beatles — now revered — were often met with ridicule or rudeness from the older generation. At the British Embassy in New York, the four were treated as lower class, while renowned broadcaster Eric Sevareid, doing a piece for CBS, compared the reaction to the Beatles to the German measles.

“You’re nothing but four Elvis Presleys,” one reporter told them during a press conference, to which the boys good-naturedly started gyrating as Ringo Starr screamed “It’s not true!”

“Why the establishment was against them is sort of a mystery to me,” says Tedeschi. “I think older people believed that music would go back to the big bands.”

Musicians like Sananda Maitreya, Ron Isley and Smokey Robinson also discuss the Fab Four and what they took from Black music. There also are interviews with residents of Harlem, critic Joe Queennan and filmmaker David Lynch, who saw the Beatles play the Washington Coliseum.

“Beatles ’64” tries to explain why young people were so besotted by John, Paul, George and Ringo. Their visit came just months after the assassination of President John. F. Kennedy and Tedeschi argues Beatlemania was a salve for a nation in mourning.

“Part of it is I think that the light was just off. They were depressed. Everything was dark. And ‘I Want to Hold Your Hand’ lit them up,” says Tedeschi.

As McCartney says in the documentary: “Maybe America needed something like the Beatles to lift it out of mourning and just sort of say ‘Life goes on.'”
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NEW YORK — As she anticipates her estranged uncle’s return to the White House, Mary Trump isn’t expecting any future book to catch on like such first-term tell-alls as Michael Wolff’s million-selling Fire and Fury or her own blockbuster, Too Much and Never Enough.

“What else is there to learn?” she says. “And for people who don’t know, the books have been written. It’s all really out in the open now.”

For publishers, Donald Trump’s presidential years were a time of extraordinary sales in political books, helped in part by Trump’s legal threats and angered tweets. According to Circana, which tracks around 85% of the hardcover and paperback market, the genre’s sales nearly doubled from 2015 to 2020, from around 5 million copies to around 10 million.

Besides books by Wolff and Trump, other bestsellers included former FBI Director James Comey’s A Higher Loyalty, former national security adviser John Bolton’s The Room Where it Happened and Bob Woodward’s Fear. Meanwhile, sales for dystopian fiction also jumped, led by Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, which was adapted into an award-winning Hulu series.

But interest has dropped back to 2015 levels since Trump left office, according to Circana, and publishers doubt it will again peak so highly. Readers not only showed little interest in books by or about President Joe Biden and his family — they even seemed less excited about Trump-related releases. Mary Trump’s Who Could Ever Love You and Woodward’s War were both popular this fall, but neither has matched the sales of their books written during the first Trump administration.

“We’ve been there many times, with all those books,” HarperCollins publisher Jonathan Burnham says of the various Trump tell-alls. He added that he still sees a market for at least some Trump books — perhaps analyzing the recent election — because “there’s a general, serious smart audience, not politically aligned in a hard way,” one that would welcome “an intelligent voice.”

“It’s like the reboot of any hit TV show,” says Eric Nelson, publisher and vice president of Broadside Books, a conservative imprint of HarperCollins that’s released books by Jared Kushner, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and Trump Cabinet nominees Pete Hegseth and Sen. Marco Rubio. “You’re not hoping for ratings like last time, just better ratings than the boring show it’s replacing.”

In the days following Trump’s victory, The Handmaid’s Tale and George Orwell’s 1984 returned to bestseller lists, along with more contemporary works such as Timothy Snyder’s On Tyranny, a 2017 bestseller that expanded upon a Facebook post Snyder wrote soon after Trump defeated Hillary Clinton. Books appealing to pro-Trump readers also surged, including those written by Cabinet picks — Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s The Real Anthony Fauci and Hegseth’s The War on Warriors — and Vice President-elect J.D. Vance’s Hillbilly Elegy, his 2016 memoir that’s sold hundreds of thousands of copies since Trump selected him as his running mate.

First lady Melania Trump’s memoir, Melania, came out in October and has been high on Amazon.com bestseller lists for weeks, even as critics found it contained little newsworthy information. According to Circana, it has sold more than 200,000 copies, a figure that does not include books sold directly through her website.

“The Melania book has done extraordinarily well, better than we thought,” says Barnes & Noble CEO James Daunt. “After Election Day, we sold everything we had of it.”

Conservative books have sold steadily over the years, and several publishers — most recently Hachette Book Group — have imprints dedicated to those readers. Publishers expect at least some critical books to reach bestseller lists — if only because of the tradition of the publishing market favoring the party out of power. But the nature of what those books would look like is uncertain. Perhaps a onetime insider will have a falling out with Trump and write a memoir, like Bolton or former Trump attorney Michael Cohen, or maybe some of his planned initiatives, whether mass deportation or the prosecution of his political foes, will lead to investigative works.

A new Fire and Fury is doubtful, with the originally only possible because Wolff enjoyed extraordinary access, spending months around Trump and his White House staff. Members of the president-elect’s current team have already issued a statement saying they have refused to speak with Wolff, calling the author a “known peddler of fake news who routinely concocts situations, conversations, and conclusions that never happened.”

A publicist for Wolff declined to comment.

Woodward, who interviewed Trump at length for the 2020 bestseller Rage, told The Associated Press that he had written so much about Trump and other presidents that he wasn’t sure what he’d take on next. He doesn’t rule out another Trump book, but that will depend in part on the president-elect, how “out of control he gets,” Woodward said, and how far he is able to go.

“He wants to be the imperial president, where he gets to decide everything and no one’s going to get in his way,” Woodward said. “He’s run into some brick walls in the past and there may be more brick walls. I don’t know what will happen. I’ll be watching and doing some reporting, but I’m still undecided.”

5 bestselling Trump-related books, per Circana

Too Much and Never Enough, by Mary Trump: 1,248,212 copies
Fire and Fury, by Michael Wolff: 936,116 copies
Fear, by Bob Woodward: 872,014 copies
The Room Where It Happened, by John Bolton: 676,010 copies
Rage, by Bob Woodward: 549,685 copies

These figures represent total sales provided by Circana, which tracks about 85% of the print market and does not include e-book or audiobook sales.
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