Prince Harry says he and his wife, the Duchess of Sussex Meghan Markle, will have no more than two children because of the concerns they have for the environment.
“We are the one species on this planet that seems to think that this place belongs to us, and only us.” Prince Harry said in an interview of ethologist Dr Jane Goodall for the September issue of British Vogue.
Prince Harry Duchess Markle welcomed a baby boy in May.
The September issue of British Vogue was guest-edited by Markle, and has been rocked by controversy. The cover features 15 women who are “raising the bar for equality, kindness, justice, and open-mindedness.” But Markle is being accused of copying a cover of a book she reportedly helped produce called The Game Changers by Samantha Brett and Steph Adams. about three years before guest editing Vogue’s Forces of Change issue, and it also uses a grid cover with black-and-white photos.
Markle is expected to interview former First Lady Michelle Obama for the magazine.
Temporary and contract staff in EU embassies will lose their jobs if they have only British nationality | Carl de Souza/AFP via Getty Images
British EU diplomats to be recalled to Brussels in 2019
Most EU diplomats with a British passport will get to keep their jobs.
The European Commission and European External Action Service will recall all British diplomats working in EU embassies around the world no later than September 2019, according to a letter obtained by POLITICO.
Martin Selmayr, the Commission’s secretary-general, and Helga Schmid, who has the same job at the EEAS, wrote to U.K. staff on July 27 to break the news.
Ambassadors and other senior British officials working for the EU will “have to return to Headquarters by 29 March 2019.” More junior staff will be able to time their return to Brussels to coincide with the EEAS’ annual staff rotation in September.
The good news for EU diplomats with a British passport is that they’ll get to keep their jobs in nearly all cases.
Selmayr and Schmid said they were aware that Brexit has “created a lot of uncertainty and anxiety for our staff with UK nationality.”
They said their institutions would “make a generous and transparent use of the exceptions provided by Article 47 of the Conditions of Employment of Other Servants” — that’s the article allowing them to terminate the contracts of staff who cease to be citizens of an EU member country.
Selmayr and Schmidt wrote that “in specific cases such as conflicts of interests or because of international obligations,” British staff may be let go.
As expected, temporary and contract staff in EU embassies will lose their jobs if they have only British nationality. Likewise, U.K. nationals will no longer be recruited to EU embassies.
The new policy clarifies a position first outlined by European commissioner for human resources Günther Oettinger in January, and later by all commissioners in March.
Arrested Development star Jason Bateman joined the plethora of Hollywood figures who have pledged to boycott Republican-controlled states that attempt to pass legislation putting restrictions on abortion.
In recent weeks, states including Alabama and Georgia have passed legislation restricting access to abortion, with the state of Georgia introducing a “heartbeat” bill that will make the procedure illegal for physicians after six weeks of pregnancy.
“If the ‘heartbeat bill’ makes it through the court system, I will not work in Georgia, or any other state, that is so disgracefully at odds with women’s rights,” Jason told The Hollywood Reporter, in an article complaining that the entertainment industry is not doing enough to fight back against the proposals.
Bateman’s comments are particularly notable given that his Netflix show Ozark and HBO show The Outsider are currently filming in Georgia, suggesting he may have to pull out or force them to re-film part of the series.
Jason Bateman in Ozark (Tina Rowden/Netflix, 2017)
However, Bateman’s pledge aligns him with the over 100 industry figures who signed an open letter threatening to boycott the state over the legislation, a list that also includes the likes of Alyssa Milano, Judd Apatow, and Alec Baldwin.
The 50-year-old actor is not known for overt political activism, but did attract headlines last year after defending his co-star Jeffrey Tambor over his alleged bullying of actress Jessica Walter. Bateman later apologized for his remarks, saying he was “incredibly sorry” to be seen as excusing his behavior.
Follow Ben Kew on Facebook, Twitter at @ben_kew, or email him at [email protected].
Jurgen Klopp’s side went down 1-0 at Atletico Madrid and are up against it to reach the quarter-finals and extend their defence of the title
Liverpool are underdogs to reach the quarter-finals of the Champions League after falling to a 1-0 defeat at Atletico Madrid in the first leg of their last-16 clash.
Saul Niguez’s early goal gave Diego Simone’s side a deserved victory in the Estadio Wanda Metropolitano – the stadium where Liverpool won last season’s Champions League – and leaves the tie finely poised.
Although there is only a one-goal deficit for the reigning European champions to overturn, the lack of away goal means that bet365 make Jurgen Klopp’s side 10/11 (1.91) in the ‘to qualify’ market.
More teams
Atletico are available at 4/5 (1.80), making them slight favourites, but are out at 8/1 (9.0) to become the first visiting team to win at Anfield in any competition since Chelsea won 2-1 there in September 2018.
A draw would also be enough for the Liga side and that is a 14/5 (3.80) shot with bet365, with Simeone highly likely to set his side up to protect their lead rather than necessarily add to it.
It is 10/11 (1.91) that the game features under 2.5 goals whilst a 0-0 draw is available at 9/1 (10.0). Atletico to keep a clean sheet is priced at 5/1 (6.0) and the visitors winning to nil is out at 11/1 (12.0).
However, that will be no easy task considering Liverpool have won their last 12 games at Anfield in all competitions. In fact, since drawing 0-0 with Bayern Munich in last year’s round of 16, they have won 25 of their 27 home matches.
It is no surprise, then, to see victory for the hosts priced at just 9/20 (1.45) whilst it is 11/8 (2.37) that Klopp’s men qualify inside 90 minutes.
That particular result would require Liverpool to win by more than a single goal and they will certainly take heart from the fact that they have kept a clean sheet in their last five home games.
Of course, holding Atletico to nil would mean that the Reds would guarantee extra time at a minimum whilst their potent attack scoring more than once would see them qualify for the next round.
Odds correct at the time of writing. Please gamble responsibly.
Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia Mohammad bin Salman al-Saud shares a laugh with Russian President Vladimir Putin during the opening day of Argentina G20 Leaders' Summit 2018 | Amilcar Orfali/Getty Images
Strongmen strut their stuff on G20 stage
Russian leader and Saudi crown prince set tone with jovial greeting.
BUENOS AIRES, Argentina — The strongmen are rampaging across the world stage with impunity, and they know it.
Only moments after European Council President Donald Tusk used a news conference to urge G20 leaders to address Russia’s aggression in Ukraine and Saudi Arabia’s evident disregard for human rights, video footage of the leaders’ arrivals showed Russian President Vladimir Putin slapping hands in jovial fashion with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman as they took their seats for the summit’s opening session.
It was a striking display of locker-room camaraderie between the two vilified tough guys — Putin, the former KGB agent who has been Russia’s supreme leader for just shy of two decades, and the young monarch who, according to Western and Turkish intelligence, ordered the killing and dismemberment of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
If Putin was feeling any concern about Tusk’s vow that Western economic sanctions against Russia would be extended yet again in January, he did not give the smallest hint of it. And if the crown prince was worried in the slightest about the international condemnation that he has faced in recent weeks, there was also no indication as he adjusted his gold-trimmed thawb and took his seat at the conference table.
Indeed, the only tough guy in Argentina who seems to be having the slightest trouble these days is U.S. President Donald Trump, who flew to Buenos Aires amid the latest blockbuster developments in special prosecutor Robert Mueller’s investigation of Russian collusion with the Trump election campaign.
Still, Trump, while conceding nothing, signalled that the latest Mueller development remains very much on his mind.
The president glibly brushed aside the news with a dismissive tweet that declared, once again, his usual reply to Mueller’s investigation: “Witch hunt!”
In a twist, Trump, who has long admired powerful authoritarian leaders, finds himself shunning the very men that he has praised for exuding strength.
White House officials have been at pains to fill the president’s schedule to limit the possibility of a lengthy interaction with Putin or MBS. And aides were frustrated by reports — notably in state media in Saudi Arabia and Russia — that Trump is planning to hold an informal chat with Putin and that he met with MBS.
Trump on Thursday canceled his planned meeting with Putin, calling it a response to the military operations against Ukraine. In response, Putin’s spokesman noted that the Russian leader would have a couple of hours of extra time for “useful meetings” at the G20.
U.S. aides dismissed the Russian report of a Putin-Trump huddle being back on, arguing it is an effort by the Russians to save face after the cancelation. And they acknowledged that Trump “exchanged pleasantries” with MBS as he did with many other world leaders.
“We had no discussion. We had no discussion. We might. But we had none,” Trump said when asked about the report that he met with MBS.
Asked by a reporter whether he’s going to be exchanging pleasantries with Putin during the summit, Trump said, “I don’t know. Not particularly. I don’t know.”
Toothless West
For Tusk and European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, the evident self-assuredness of the Russian and Saudi leaders highlights just how powerless the West has been in responding to what it views as grave transgressions of international norms.
“This is a difficult moment for international cooperation,” Tusk said at a joint news conference with Juncker. “I would like to appeal to the leaders to use this summit, including their bilateral and informal exchanges, to seriously discuss real issues such as trade wars, the tragic situation in Syria and Yemen and the Russian aggression in Ukraine. I see no reason why the G20 leaders shouldn’t have a meaningful discussion about solving these problems. Especially because all the instruments lie in their hands. The only condition is good will.”
Tusk, in an unsubtle jab at the Saudi prince, continued, “We also cannot underestimate other issues which remain difficult for some leaders, such as human rights, freedom of press and basic safety of journalists. It is our obligation, as the EU, to take this opportunity and press our partners to respect these basic principles.”
But the policy response so far has been weak. In a follow-up tweet, Tusk said European leaders are united in demanding a further investigation of what happened to Khashoggi in the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul.
Even as Tusk reiterated his belief that sanctions already in place against Russia would be extended, there was no announcement of any new punitive measures in response to the recent naval attack on Ukrainian ships in the Sea of Azov.
Apart from stern criticism, there has been no policy action by the EU. One senior official said that such responses are in the hands of national governments, as happened in Germany, which has banned arms sales to Saudi Arabia.
French President Emmanuel Macron interacted briefly with the Saudi prince, and made an effort to rebuke him.
A video of their encounter picked up the prince telling Macron “don’t worry” and the French president replying, “I do worry. I am worried.”
Later in the conversation Macron added, “You never listen to me.” And the prince replied, “I will listen, of course.”
Asked about the conversation, a French official told reporters that Macron had conveyed “a very firm” message.
Beyond the prince and the czar, the G20 summit as a whole was largely shaping up to be a sideline event to the bilateral trade negotiations between Trump and another strongman: Chinese President Xi Jinping.
The two are scheduled to meet over dinner on Saturday night in an effort to find a truce in their trade dispute. An all-out trade war between the U.S. and China would potentially set off a devastating domino effect, putting all of the economic powers at the summit under severe pressure.
Hollywood Actress Rosanna Arquette is apologizing for being born white, saying she’s ashamed of the privilege she believes her skin brings.
“I’m sorry I was born white and privileged. It disgusts me. And I feel so much shame,” the Pulp Fiction actor said on Wednesday.
It’s not clear exactly why the award-winning actress, whose net worth is estimated at about $9 million, announced her shame for being white. But the Crashing star is certainly no stranger to outrageous statements.
On Monday, Arquette posted a photo of herself kneeling in front of dozens a American flags. She captioned the tweet by saying, “I’ll never stand for the flag again.”
Actress Rosanna Arquette kneels in front of American flags. Arquette captioned her now-deleted tweet: “I’ll never stand for the flag again.”
When the Whole Nine Yards star isn’t denouncing her skin color and the American flag, she’s bashing the country and President Donald Trump.
In March, Arquette said President Donald Trump is perpetuating a “sick dictatorship” and running “a government that has normalized racism rape, mass killings from Guns Pedophilia, homophobia.” She followed up that missive with another, lambasting U.S. immigration and border enforcement. “Children are sick and dying inside the cruel concentration camps in the united states of America this will be the trump administrations legacy.”
Rosanna Arquette isn’t the only blonde award-winning actress to wish she wasn’t white. In 2016, Actress Julie Delpy said she believes there’s “nothing worse than being a woman” in Hollywood and wished she were black instead.
“Two years ago, I said something about the Academy being very white male, which is the reality, and I was slashed to pieces by the media,” the Oscar-winning star told The Wrap. “It’s funny—women can’t talk. I sometimes wish I were African American because people don’t bash them afterward.” Delpy later apologized.
This piece has been updated. Screenshots of Rosanna Arquette’s tweets have been added as they were deleted after publication.
Jerome Hudson is Breitbart News Entertainment Editor and author of the forthcoming book 50 Things They Don’t Want You to Know, fromHarperCollins. Follow Jerome Hudson on Twitter @jeromeehudson
WARSAW — Poland’s new Wiosna party is expected to win about six of the European Parliament’s 751 seats in this Sunday’s election — but that’s enough to make it a very tempting morsel.
Frans Timmermans, the Socialist nominee to be the next European Commission president, has taken the lead in battling the nationalist Polish Law and Justice (PiS) party government over accusations that it is violating the EU’s democratic rules.
That, however, didn’t stop him from spending some of the campaign’s final hours in the Polish capital to woo Wiosna’s leader — 43-year-old Robert Biedroń.
The two toured Warsaw on Tuesday in a tram as Timmermans shouted enthusiastically “Spring is coming!” — a play on the party’s Polish name, which means “spring.”
Timmermans is scrambling for every possible vote following a shift in fortunes for the conservative European People’s Party (EPP), which is giving Socialists hope that they may squeeze out a victory against their rivals for the first time in decades.
Although the EPP is predicted to win 171 seats versus 144 for the Socialists, the actual outcome could be much narrower.
Thanks to internal squabbles within the EPP over the democratic credentials of Hungary’s ruling Fidesz, Viktor Orbán’s party may quit the center-right bloc, which would deprive it of about 12 seats.
If that happens, and if France’s Socialists manage to get more than 5 percent of the vote (they’re hovering near that level), then Wiosna’s MEPs might be enough for Timmermans to claim victory.
“Now, we are neck and neck with the EPP,” Timmermans told reporters after serving hot dogs to Wiosna supporters at a Warsaw bar. “So something might be working.”
On Wednesday, Timmermans said his Socialist group and Wiosna would be “allies” in the next Parliament. Officials at Wiosna say the party has not made any formal decision to join the Party of European Socialists, as Biedroń wants to wait for the election results.
But the mood music was very chummy.
“Timmermans is Wiosna,” Biedroń told POLITICO. “He speaks the Spring language. He has the same values, and a similar program.”
The Wiosna leader has been compared to French President Emmanuel Macron, who upended French politics two years ago, but Biedroń cut himself off from the liberals — who are also hunting for extra votes in the European Parliament.
“France has it own path. Macron is a liberal, and I am not,” said Biedroń.
An enemy of PiS
Although Timmermans is public enemy No. 1 for PiS, which accuses him of unfairly targeting Poland for its controversial reforms to the country’s judicial system, he’s widely praised by the liberal urban voters who form the core of Wiosna’s support.
Timmermans vociferously rejects accusations that he’s anti-Polish — in the past pointing out that his father’s Dutch home town had been liberated by Polish troops during the war.
Standing in front of Poland’s Supreme Court on Wednesday, Timmermans told reporters that he would “keep fighting” to make sure that “the justice system remains independent.”
“This country, sadly, sadly, has a long history before it freed itself of judges deciding on the basis of a phone call from party central,” he said. “We do not want to go back to that history.”
Timmermans insisted that he is a “great friend of Poland,” and that he has battled Warsaw in order to ensure that Poland is not isolated within the bloc by refusing to follow its democratic rules.
“I have seen over the last three years that whatever happens, whatever fight I may have with the Polish government, the Polish people is with Europe. You belong to Europe!” he told cheering Wiosna supporters.
The Socialist leader also dove into the widening sexual abuse scandal shaking Poland’s Roman Catholic Church in the wake of an unsparing documentary looking at the victims of priests and how the church hierarchy tried to cover up the problem.
Biedroń tweeted that while in Warsaw, Timmermans, a Catholic, said that he had been the victim of sexual assault by a priest — something the Socialist candidate has spoken about in the past.
That will likely buttress Wiosna’s program of enforcing a strict separation between church and state; much of the church is currently closely allied with PiS.
A new party
Wiosna is a small part of a broader political battle in Poland. The main players are PiS and the European Coalition, a grouping of five parties led by Civic Platform, the centrist party once headed by European Council President Donald Tusk.
POLITICO estimates that PiS will take 22 of Poland’s 51 seats, while the European Coalition will get 20 — 17 of which will go the EPP while three will go to the Socialists.
Wiosna has come under fire from the rest of the opposition for weakening the combined anti-PiS forces when Biedroń refused to join the coalition.
The European election is being treated as a prelude to Poland’s national elections this fall, with parties hoping that a good result this Sunday will boost their chances later in the year.
The global box office is down six percent this year because foreigners don’t like Hollywood’s crap any more than Americans do.
Hollywood’s greedy and cynical crusade to open the international market, even if that means licking the boots of tyrants and human rights abuses in places like China, was supposed to save the movie business, supposed to result in unheard of profits, but it didn’t work out that way. In fact, the push to make the movie business a worldwide enterprise has painted Hollywood into a dire and deadly corner that will someday blow up in their face.
The problem with catering to the world is that there is only one kind of movie that appeals to the whole wide world, and that is the blockbuster, the $350 million (production budget plus advertising) gamble that has to gross between $600 and $750 million before anyone sees a profit.
That is no way to run a business.
Throwing out one massive gamble after another puts every studio at risk of catastrophe if just two or three of these dice throws comes up snake eyes.
Opening the foreign market was not a gift, it was Pandora’s Box.
Worse still, something else Hollywood discovered is that foreigners are not fools. With rare exceptions, if it bombs in America, it will bomb overseas. And so, unless intelligent life is found on another planet sometime soon, there is no place for the studios to peddle their garbage.
Here in America, even with the success of Spider-Man: Far From Home, the box office is still the worst in three years and trailing nine percent behind last year.
Globally, everything is down six percent.
And, surprise-surprise, all the movies that flopped here also flopped over there.
Here are the domestic and foreign grosses for this year’s biggest blockbuster flops…
Dumbo: $114M / $238M — this sucker lost a fortune.
Godzilla: King of the Monsters: $107M / $271M — will probably lose $100M.
Shazam!: $140M / $225M – maybe broke even.
The LEGO Movie 2:– $105M / $86M – catastrophe
Rocketman: $86M / $82M – less than 20 percent of Bohemian Rhapsody’s global gross.
Men In Black: International: $68M / $153M – will likely lose $100M – $200M.
Dark Phoenix: $64M – $181M – The red ink on this $300M X-Men flop could exceed $300M.
Hellboy: $21M / $0 foreign – speechless.
What’s more, other than Dumbo and Rocketman, these are golden geese franchises getting buried in a global market where there are only so many golden geese franchises to go around. Each one of these dead franchises is not just the loss of that particular release, but the loss of what was supposed to be a perpetual motion machine everyone was counting on to keep the movie business alive for generations.
Even if the box office year rebounds, the loss of these franchises is incalculable.
The number of tickets sold (admissions) in the U.S. alone cratered by 8 percent.
In a country where the population continues to grow, fewer people are going to the movies.
But what does Hollywood expect from their generic, sexless (unless it’s gay sex) blockbusters and woke lectures and cookie cutter actors and terrible comedy and tired horror and soul-darkening indies and a Star Wars franchise that tells us men suck and our hero Land Calrissian has sex with feminist robots, which it totes normal because everything is normal except the nuclear family.
Man, I miss T & A.
Follow John Nolte on Twitter @NolteNC. Follow his Facebook Page here.
Center-right politicians and activists from across the Continent are gathering in Helsinki to pick their lead candidate for next year’s European Parliament election.
That candidate, to be chosen on Thursday, will also become the nominee of the European People’s Party for one of the EU’s top jobs — president of the European Commission. But the path from Helsinki to the Commission’s Brussels HQ is far from straightforward.
Here’s a guide to how the candidates might — or might not — get there.
President of the European Union Commission Jean-Claude Juncker | John Thys/AFP via Getty Images | John Thys/AFP via Getty Images
Juncker: Hungary’s ruling Fidesz doesn’t belong in EPP
‘Against lies there’s not much you can do,’ Commission president says of campaign against him.
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz party should leave the center-right European People’s Party, European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker said Tuesday.
Juncker, a prominent member of the EPP, made the comments after the Budapest government launched a campaign specifically targeting the Commission president, accusing Brussels of pushing migration policies that “fundamentally threaten Hungary’s security.”
“Against lies there’s not much you can do,” Juncker said of the campaign. Speaking at a public meeting in Stuttgart, Germany, he said the EPP’s lead candidate in the European Parliament election, Manfred Weber, would be asking himself “if I need this voice” in the political group.
“The conservatives in Hungary in no way whatsoever represent Christian democratic values,” Juncker said. “I’m of the opinion that there’s no place [for them] in the European People’s Party.”
The EPP has faced calls to expel Fidesz from its ranks in the European Parliament, especially after MEPs passed a motion last year declaring that Hungary is at risk of breaching the EU’s core values, triggering a so-called Article 7 disciplinary process against Budapest.
In October last year, Juncker said that Orbán in particular “no longer has a place” in the conservative group.
“They didn’t vote for me in the European Parliament,” Juncker said Tuesday of Fidesz. “The far right didn’t either. I remember Ms. [Marine] Le Pen, she said ‘I’m not voting for you.’ I said: ‘I don’t want your vote.’ There are certain votes you just don’t want.”