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King Charles welcomes Ukraine's Zelenskyy to the U.K.

admin - Latest News - October 24, 2025
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King Charles welcomes Ukraine’s Zelenskyy to the U.K.



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Oct. 24, 2025, 5:00 AM EDTBy Gary Grumbach and Dareh GregorianNew York Attorney General Letitia James, a longtime political foe of President Donald Trump who previously sued him for making misleading statements to banks, is scheduled to be arraigned Friday in federal court on bank fraud charges.A grand jury in Virginia indicted James, a Democrat, this month, weeks after Trump posted a message on Truth Social pressing Attorney General Pam Bondi to take action against her and two other political adversaries.James is charged with one count of bank fraud and one count of making false statements to a financial institution. The indictment alleges she falsely claimed that a home in Norfolk, Virginia, was her second residence, allowing her to obtain favorable loan terms, and that she rented the property to a family of three.The indictment indicates she is alleged to have saved about $50 a month.After she was charged, James called the allegations “baseless” and said Trump’s “own public statements make clear that his only goal is political retribution at any cost.”James’ office brought a civil fraud suit against Trump and his company in 2022. It alleged they were submitting misleading financial statements to banks and insurers, exaggerating his net worth by billions of dollars and enabling Trump and his company to obtain bank loans and insurance policies at rates they were not entitled to. As a result, James’ office has said, he “reaped hundreds of millions of dollars in ill-gotten gains.”Trump was found liable for fraud and hit with a $464 million judgment last year. A divided state appeals court upheld the fraud finding in August but tossed out the financial penalty, finding it was “excessive.” Trump has denied wrongdoing in the case and is appealing the fraud finding.James is the third prominent Trump critic to be arraigned on federal criminal charges in the past three weeks.John Bolton, Trump’s former national security adviser, was arraigned last week, while former FBI Director James Comey was arraigned the week before that. Both pleaded not guilty.James and Comey were indicted after Trump’s former personal lawyer Lindsey Halligan was named acting U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia.Her predecessor, Erik S. Siebert, resigned under pressure last month after Trump said he wanted him “out.” NBC News previously reported that both the Comey and the James investigations were stalled during Siebert’s tenure because federal agents and prosecutors did not believe they had the evidence to secure convictions.Comey has challenged the legality of Halligan’s appointment, something James’ attorneys said in a court filing Thursday that they plan to do, as well.Halligan was sworn in days after Trump’s social media post urging Bondi to take action against James, Comey and Sen. Adam Schiff, D-Calif.Schiff is being investigated in Maryland over allegations of mortgage fraud, and he has denied any wrongdoing. NBC News, citing four people familiar with the investigation, reported Thursday that the investigation has stalled, with prosecutors believing they do not have enough evidence to bring charges.Gary GrumbachGary Grumbach is an NBC News legal affairs reporter, based in Washington, D.C.Dareh GregorianDareh Gregorian is a politics reporter for NBC News.
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Nov. 27, 2025, 5:04 AM ESTBy Kathy Park and Jackie MontalvoOn Thanksgiving, turkeys are usually a comfort food and the main attraction at the dinner table. But on one farm just outside Nashville, Tennessee, the birds offer a different kind of comfort — cuddle therapy. “You can get on the ground in front of them, and you can scootch up real close so they’re right here,” Ellie Laks, founder of the Gentle Barn, said as she sat down in front of a turkey named Serena. “Then you can kiss their fuzzy pink heads and just pet them and talk to them.”The act of cuddling a turkey is just like it sounds: It’s a chance to slow down, sit with a turkey and gobble up a connection you might not expect.“The majority of people who come to the Gentle Barn and cuddle a turkey for the first time burst into tears because they’re so surprised at their unexpected show of affection,” Laks said. She founded the original Gentle Barn in 1999 in California’s San Fernando Valley, a lifelong dream come true. In 2015, she opened a second location in Tennessee with her husband.“It was all because of a cow named Dudley. He was here in Nashville, lost a foot because of an accident, hobbling around in tremendous pain, and the rancher could only do so much,” Laks said. On Thursday, the Gentle Barn is hosting a “Gentle Thanksgiving,” a day dedicated to connecting and cuddling with turkeys.NBC News“A friend of his reached out to 200 sanctuaries to see if someone could take him in, and no one was able to, so she called us all the way in California and said, ‘I know you’re far away. I don’t know what to do. Can you at least give me advice?’”Instead, Laks and her husband flew to Dudley and helped find him a bovine surgeon and a prosthetic foot.They brought him to UT Knoxville for amputations, surgeries, acupuncture and underwater treadmill therapy. When it was time for him to be discharged, Laks said, “we didn’t want to drive him all the way to California, so we opened a location here.”Now, the Gentle Barn has more than 200 rescue animals from turkeys and chickens to sheep, cows, and goats. Over the last 26 years, it has welcomed more 1 million visitors, many coming for turkey cuddle therapy.In addition to school field trips and private tours, the barn offers therapeutic sessions. “It was always my dream to be able to help animals and then partner with them to heal and help hurting humans,” Laks said.Volunteer Nicole Downs had never been on a farm before visiting the Gentle Barn. “My first experiences here were with chicken cuddling, and I fell in love with the chickens,” said Downs. “It was a natural progression then to want to cuddle with the turkeys.” Laks hopes visitors will see that underneath it all, we’re all the same.NBC NewsThe volunteer is now a weekly visitor and says these cuddle sessions have been a game-changer in helping her manage her anxiety.“It has become my kind of go-to grounding space for if I’m having an anxiety attack,” said Downs. “We have so many things available to us now that we can put in our toolkit, but this is by far the best.”“It’s therapy that you didn’t know you needed until you do it, and then you’re like, Where was this all fof my life?” she said.Laks said the farm is a sanctuary for animals and people alike. “As depression and anxiety come to an all time rise, I would invite people to come out to the gentle barn and find the love and nurturing here,” she said. “We need each other, and we need the animals, and they’re here for us.”On Thursday, the Gentle Barn is hosting a “Gentle Thanksgiving,” a day dedicated to connecting and cuddling with turkeys.Laks hopes visitors will see that underneath it all, we’re all the same. “There’s just so much unconditional love and gentleness, and I don’t know, there’s not a lot of that in the world today, so sometimes you have to get it from a turkey.”Kathy ParkKathy Park is a correspondent for NBC News.Jackie MontalvoJackie Montalvo is a producer-editor for NBC News.
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Oct. 23, 2025, 3:51 PM EDTBy Rebecca KeeganAfter “The Voice of Hind Rajab,” which counts Brad Pitt, Joaquin Phoenix and Rooney Mara as executive producers, received a nearly 23-minute standing ovation at its Venice Film Festival premiere in September, filmmaker Kaouther Ben Hania took a slew of meetings with potential North American distributors.Executives praised the film, which follows the Palestine Red Crescent Society’s failed attempt to save Hind, a Palestinian child who was killed in Gaza in 2024 after being trapped in a car under Israeli fire. But not a single major studio or streamer made an offer on the movie, the official Oscar submission of the Tunisian Culture Ministry, Ben Hania said.“People never say, ‘I’m afraid to pick up a movie,’” Ben Hania said. “Maybe they are. I don’t know. They can’t openly talk about it, because it’s a shame to be afraid of talking about the killing of a child.”Four movies that tell stories about Palestinian people, set from 1936 to 2024, are competing for this year’s Academy Award for best international feature, just as a ceasefire takes hold in the region. The films, “All That’s Left of You,” “Palestine 36,” “The Sea,” and “The Voice of Hind Rajab,” are screening for awards voters this fall. Three of them are slated to run at the American Film Institute Festival in Los Angeles this week. Despite interest at the start of filming, and in some cases A-list backers, none of these films have secured a deal with a major studio or streamer, which is uncommon when a title receives buzz overseas. In past years, other foreign language films about major conflicts in history, such as Brazil’s “I’m Still Here” Germany’s “All Quiet on the Western Front” and the United Kingdom’s “Zone of Interest” all found prominent distributors.As Hollywood has grown more outspoken in recent months about the situation in the Middle East, the challenges of convincing its distributors — the lifelines that can take movies from obscurity to national recognition — remain. The batch of movies arrives as the crisis in the Gaza Strip remains a flashpoint issue in the entertainment industry. More than 5,000 film and television professionals have signed on to a boycott of Israeli film institutions, while two studios, Paramount and Warner Bros.. have condemned the boycott. Just as some in Hollywood have worried about saying the wrong thing in a social media post or a red carpet interview, others have been vocal, like Javier Bardem, who wore a keffiyeh to the Emmy Awards in September and openly criticized the war in interviews on the red carpet, or Amy Schumer, who posted frequently on her Instagram account calling for the release of the Israeli hostages.A still from the film “Palestine 36.”Watermelon PicturesForeign films that get picked up for distribution often land with smaller independent companies, limiting the films to a few cities and small marketing budgets. International films have also long struggled with marketing to English-speaking audiences with non-English language films. Multiple distributors declined to comment on the record about why studios aren’t buying the movies about Palestinians, but studio sources said either that their slates were already full or that the movies don’t seem likely to draw large audiences to theaters.Without a major distributor, it can be hard for films from the region to demonstrate theatrical potential. But last year’s Oscar-winning “No Other Land,” a documentary about a Palestinian community in the occupied West Bank, shows both an appetite among American audiences for Palestinian stories and the complex issues these films face.When “No Other Land” failed to close a theatrical deal in North America, producers paid to release it in theaters themselves, collecting $2.5 million domestically, enough to make theirs the third highest grossing documentary of the year so far, after films featuring Taylor Swift and Led Zeppelin. The filmmakers then turned down an offer to stream on U.S. platforms from Mubi, citing the London company’s backing from Sequoia Capital, which also invests in an Israeli defense tech startup called Kela. (In August, Mubi’s CEO responded to backlash about Sequoia financing by saying that the profits Mubi generates “do not fund any other companies in Sequoia’s portfolio.”) For the filmmakers working in the region over the past two years, it’s been a long, arduous road to reach audiences, as the war impacted their physical productions and made potential distributors wary of facing political backlash for releasing their films. Seeking to fill what they see as a void in the marketplace, Palestinian-American brothers and producers Hamza and Badi Ali formed their own company, Watermelon Pictures, in April 2024. The duo also tapped model Alana Hadid as Watermelon’s creative director and unofficial brand ambassador.“Truthfully, we wish there was more competition,” Hamza Ali said. “It is almost like all of the pressure is on us to release these films and we feel obligated to do so. We hope that distributors of all sizes will start to engage.” The Chicago-based company is distributing “All That’s Left of You,” submitted by the Royal Film Commission–Jordan for Oscar consideration, and “Palestine 36,” submitted by the Palestinian Culture Ministry, both of which also received long ovations at film festivals and strong reviews from critics. Cherien Dabis as Hanan in “All That’s Left of You.”Watermelon PicturesOver a year since the company’s launch, the Ali brothers said that when they meet with executives at larger studios and streamers about buying films on Palestinian people, the buyers defer to higher ranking executives, citing the sensitivity of the subject matter, and effectively ending any conversation about a deal.For some directors, the barriers have come from their own governments. In Israel, filmmaker Shai Carmeli-Pollack won the country’s version of the Oscar for “The Sea,” the Ophir Award, only to have the Israeli government condemn the film and pull funding for the organization that granted the award. Each country chooses its own film to submit for Oscar consideration, and in Israel, the winner of best film at the Ophir Awards is automatically the country’s submission. “I wasn’t surprised,” said Carmeli-Pollack, whose film is about a 12-year-old Palestinian boy who wants to join a school trip to the beach. “I’m not the first film that they attacked. In a way, they saved us a lot of explaining to the world that we do not represent this government.”In a statement issued on social media in September regarding the decision, Israeli Culture Minister Miki Zohar wrote in Hebrew that he believes the country’s taxpayers shouldn’t have to support a “ceremony that spits on the heroic Israeli soldiers. (The film features a soldier questioning a Palestinian boy and his father as they are trying to go to the beach).Muhammad Gawazi as Khaled in the film “The Sea.”MubiCarmeli-Pollack shot his movie in the West Bank in the summer of 2023, and he said he saw distributors’ enthusiasm for it evaporate after the Oct. 7 attacks. “The Sea” is now being released in the U.S. by Menemsha Films, a small Los Angeles-based company that distributes a variety of Jewish films.Stories shot in the Palestinian territories have always faced hurdles when it comes to securing locations, but the crisis in Gaza made physical production virtually impossible, directors who spoke to NBC News said.Cherien Dabis, the director, writer and star of “All That’s Left Of You,” was scheduled to start shooting her film in October 2023 in Jericho. Plans changed after the Oct. 7, Hamas-led attacks on Israel, which led Dabis to evacuate her cast and crew from the West Bank.“We were hearing fighter jets and cities were being sealed off, checkpoints were closing,” she said. “We thought maybe we’d come back to Palestine, things would blow over. We had no idea.”We need to make sure that we’re speaking to the masses.-Cherien Dabis, the director, writer and star of “All That’s Left Of You”Dabis, whose movie she said is backed by a mix of European and Arab financing, ended up shooting in Greece, Cyprus and Jordan, telling the fraught history of the region through three generations of one family who were expelled from Jaffa in 1948. “Palestine 36” director Annemarie Jacir was also scheduled to shoot her historical drama in October 2023 in the West Bank, with a cast that includes British actor Jeremy Irons and Palestinian actress Hiam Abbass. But after Oct. 7, “There was no more insurance,” Jacir said. “No agents were going to send any of their cast to Palestine to film.” Jacir shot most of her movie in Jordan but was eventually able to return, with a much smaller crew, to film some scenes in Bethlehem, Jaffa and Jerusalem. In order to help their movies find wider audiences, some are enlisting high-profile Hollywood advocates. Dabis recruited Javier Bardem and Mark Ruffalo, two of the entertainment industry’s most outspoken figures on Gaza, as executive producers. “Given what we’ve watched unfold in the last two years, we understand that we need to break out of any kind of echo chamber,” she said. “We need to make sure that we’re speaking to the masses.”On Dec. 16, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences will announce a narrowed list of 15 movies in contention for the international Oscar, ahead of the awards telecast March 15. Rebecca KeeganRebecca Keegan is the senior Hollywood reporter for NBC News Digital, where she covers the entertainment industry.
October 24, 2025
Trump faces backlash as East Wing is demolished
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