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‘Wicked’ director says movie theaters are ‘a space that we have to protect’

admin - Latest News - November 9, 2025
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“Wicked: For Good” director Jon M. Chu tells Kristen Welker that movie theaters are “one of our last analog spaces” as he reflects on the return of big-screen musicals and the communal power of shared storytelling.



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Nov. 9, 2025, 5:00 AM ESTBy Tyler KingkadeVAIL, Ariz. — Cienega High School Principal Kim Middleton woke up early last Saturday to urgent messages from district administrators. They told her to call immediately.A photo — in which Cienega math teachers wore matching white T-shirts on Halloween stained with red blotches and reading “Problem Solved” — was circulating rapidly online. Right-wing influencers were claiming that the educators were mocking conservative activist Charlie Kirk’s assassination. Though the district quickly announced the shirts were a math joke and unrelated to Kirk, conservatives and some Republican officials from around the country amplified the image and portrayed it as a glorification of political violence. In the following days, the high school and its staff received more than 3,000 hateful messages, including dozens of death threats, and so many obscene calls that they disconnected the phones. Teachers stayed home. Sheriff’s deputies stepped up patrols on campus. Confused students asked if they were safe at school.“They were devastated and terrified, and my kids were scared,” Middleton said. “No matter how much I say ‘We’re safe and we’re OK, I love you, we got you’ — people outside of our community who don’t know who we are and what we do terrorized us and targeted us for clicks.”The disruption reminded Vail School District Superintendent John Carruth of a cyberattack, which the district has dealt with before. “Except instead of bots, it’s people,” he said.The deluge of threats that engulfed the district left administrators and teachers feeling helpless to stem the tide of harassment and shows how quickly social media storms can upend a small community based on a single image taken out of context and incorrectly tied to a political motive.In the eight weeks since Kirk, co-founder of the conservative youth organization Turning Point USA, was fatally shot while speaking at a college campus in Utah, conservative influencers and some Republican lawmakers have called attention to educators who make light of or justify it, leading to dozens of firings and suspensions.But in the Vail School District, no one said anything about Kirk. The only connection was an inference because the red blood-like stains were on the left side of white T-shirts that some said reminded them of how Kirk was dressed the day he was shot. “This feels like a coordinated effort, and I think people’s emotions are being weaponized,” Carruth said. The district, located in an unincorporated area of Pima County, 24 miles south of Tucson that grew rapidly in recent years, has been the target of far-right extremism before. In 2021, a group of people angry about mask mandates took over a school board meeting and declared themselves as the elected leaders. One of the people involved in the takeover was later criminally charged for threatening to zip-tie a principal in a supposed citizen’s arrest; he was convicted of disrupting an educational institution, trespassing and disorderly conduct, sent to jail for 30 days and placed on probation for three years.But those experiences hadn’t prepared them for a controversy on this scale.The Vail School District originally posted the math teachers photo on Facebook in a batch of images from Halloween festivities late Oct. 31. It appears to have first been circulated individually in local Facebook groups devoted to town gossip before getting picked up by prominent conservative influencers on X, who continued to spread inaccurate claims about it widely.Turning Point USA spokesman Andrew Kolvet tweeted at 12:06 p.m. ET Saturday that the teachers “deserve to be famous, and fired.” Kolvet has since deleted the post, but it had accrued almost 10 million views on X as of Tuesday.Middleton and her staff moved quickly. They called all the teachers, and she said each denied the shirts had anything to do with Kirk or politics; they were a joke about math teachers slaying math problems, worn in the spirit of a “zombie run” activity the student council had organized. Additionally, at least three of the teachers said they were fans of Kirk, and some had voted for Donald Trump last year. No students or parents had complained, she said.“One teacher said a kid asked him, ‘What’s the problem?’ And the teacher looked at him and went, ‘It doesn’t matter, it’s solved,’ and then the whole class laughed,” Middleton said. “And I thought, oh, my God, that’s math humor.”At 11 a.m. ET Saturday, the district posted a statement on Facebook that explained the context for the photo, but conceded that it could be misconstrued and apologized for it. School leaders hoped things would calm down, but the backlash was just getting started.After the district issued the statement explaining the photo, Kolvet posted it on X — just more than an hour after his initial comments — adding that he’d be relieved if they didn’t intend to reference Kirk, but he didn’t think everyone in the photo was innocent, and said teachers “have been among the worst offenders of mocking and celebrating Charlie’s assassination.” He did not respond to an interview request.The photo only spread from there. One conservative commentator on X posted the photo alongside the names and phone numbers of the teachers. That post has received more than 20 million views.Some Republican politicians also seized on the photo. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis posted on X that the Arizona teachers were “glorifying a murder.” He later posted the district’s statement and said people can “decide for themselves.” Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, quoted a post featuring the photo and the teachers’ names and phone numbers, adding “Anyone else think this might be the best advertisement ever for school choice and homeschooling?” A spokesperson for DeSantis referred back to his posts. Lee’s office did not respond to a request for comment. Arizona State Treasurer Kimberly Yee, a Republican, posted on X that the shirts were bad even if they didn’t intend to reference Kirk. In a statement to NBC News, she said “threats of violence against anyone” are unacceptable, but that the shirts were “deeply disturbing and should also be condemned, especially when it occurs on a taxpayer-funded school campus.”Others, like Ryan Fournier, co-founder of the national political group Students for Trump, refused to accept the district’s explanation. Fournier, who falsely accused an elementary school administrator in September of justifying Kirk’s murder, updated his post on Facebook — where he has more than 1 million followers — Saturday about the photo with the district’s statement, but said, “I do not believe this for one second.” He did not respond to a request for comment.District officials later found an email from October 2024 that included a photo of the teachers wearing the “Problem Solved” shirts at that time, and released a screenshot of it. Some on social media claimed it was created with artificial intelligence or photo editing software. Arizona state Rep. Rachel Keshel, a Republican from Tucson, continued posting about it on X, stating, “I’m not buying his BS story one bit.” She also emailed the math teachers directly asking for the original photo so she could examine the metadata, district officials said. Keshel did not respond to a request for comment.Hundreds of harassing emails, Facebook messages and phone calls poured in to district employees all weekend. Some were directed at the wrong math teachers — who hadn’t been in the photo — and others sent to random district staff, such as maintenance workers. The personal phone numbers and addresses of teachers were circulated online. Rumors spread that there would be protests and snipers at the school Monday. A guidance counselor said a steady stream of students came into her office this week asking about their safety. One of the math teachers in the photo, who asked to remain anonymous to avoid further harassment, said he didn’t know anything about Kirk until he heard Saturday that people thought he was making fun of his death. It was a stressful weekend, he said, already worried about severe weather threatening extended family abroad, and trying to calm his wife and son who were worried about the reaction to the photo. He hid in his bathroom to cry so his wife wouldn’t see.“Nowadays, everything is scary online,” he said.The math department had considered doing a group costume based on the Gen Alpha meme “6-7,” the teacher said, but decided to reuse the “Problem Solved” shirts they bought on Amazon last year because they’d won a costume contest with them and they didn’t want to spend more money. The “Problem Solved” shirt for sale on Amazon.Amazon via Vail School DistrictHe, like half of the math department, stayed home Monday. When he returned Tuesday, he said, students told him they thought he was going to quit. “I told them, ‘No, I’m not gonna leave you guys behind, you know, we’re family.’” Cienega High School is surrounded by housing developments and advertisements for people to make reservations on yet to be built houses. Cacti and palo verde trees dot the neighborhood. Students on campus are just as likely to be wearing a cowboy hat as they are to have brightly-dyed hair or intricately-designed braids.Students were well-aware of the controversy but largely sided with the teachers. There were extra sheriff’s deputies stationed on campus and patrolling nearby all week.As one student named Elijah, 15, stood feet away from an officer’s patrol car this week, he said he wished the people posting about the teachers online understood how they affected his school. “It’s making us feel uneasy and unsafe just going to school,” he said. The student leaders of the Cienega High School chapter of Turning Point USA sent a letter Tuesday to the math teachers telling them they “hold your department in high regard.”“As a chapter, we recognize that emotions and tensions have run high and we cannot express enough empathy for the massive misunderstanding it has multiplied into,” their message stated, according to a copy reviewed by NBC News. “Our goal as a club remains as it should always be, to foster respectful and healthy conversation, not to divide or harm.”A few minutes after Middleton, the principal, read the club’s message that afternoon, she received another note from the front desk. A man had continuously called the school, demanded to know the names of the women answering the phone and shouted “are you ready to motherf—–g die?” Middleton felt bad that front office staff making around $9 an hour were facing harassment for a situation they had no involvement in. The next day, she decided to send all calls to voicemail, so staff could filter and respond to parents.But the staff has also seen support. Several parents dropped off iced coffee and doughnuts Monday and Tuesday, telling them they were doing so because they felt so bad about the harassment. “This horrific loop of flinging poo and insults at others who we think disagree with us will never be broken online or via a phone call or via an email,” Carruth, the superintendent, said. “It’s only going to be broken by stepping out and meeting our neighbors.”Tyler KingkadeTyler Kingkade is a national reporter for NBC News, based in Los Angeles.
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Savewith a NBCUniversal ProfileCreate your free profile or log in to save this articleOct. 16, 2025, 4:20 AM EDTBy Doha MadaniDiane Keaton, the cherished Oscar-winning actor known for her charming presence on and off the screen, died of pneumonia, her family has said. A statement from the family released to People Magazine on Wednesday said: “The Keaton family are very grateful for the extraordinary messages of love and support they have received these past few days on behalf of their beloved Diane, who passed away from pneumonia on October 11.”The statement continued: “She loved her animals and she was steadfast in her support of the unhoused community, so any donations in her memory to a local food bank or an animal shelter would be a wonderful and much appreciated tribute to her.”The 79-year-old’s family confirmed her death to NBC News last week but did not offer additional details, requesting privacy at the time. Keaton, a Los Angeles native, dropped out of drama school in California and moved to New York to pursue her acting career. It was there she earned her first breakout role on Broadway, starring in Woody Allen’s “Play it Again, Sam.” She’d take her role in the 1968 theatrical production to the big screen just a few years later. Keaton played opposite Al Pacino in the 1974 hit “The Godfather,” quickly cementing herself as a rising Hollywood star. Diane Keaton and Woody Allen in the film “Annie Hall.”Bettmann Archive / Getty Images fileKeaton won her sole Academy Award in 1977, reuniting with Allen to play his love interest in “Annie Hall.” She’d later earn nominations for other works, including “Marvin’s Room,” which co-starred Meryl Streep and a young Leonardo DiCaprio. While Keaton had an undoubtedly prolific career both as an actor and director, it seems her uniqueness and humble personality are what her loved ones remembered her for after her death. Jane Fonda, who acted alongside Keaton in the 2018 movie “Book Club,” wrote that it was hard to believe her friend had died. “She was always a spark of life and light, constantly giggling at her own foibles, being limitlessly creative … in her acting, her wardrobe, her books, her friends, her homes, her library, her worldview,” Fonda wrote in a post on Instagram. Diane Keaton in Hollywood, Calif., in 2022.Jerod Harris / Getty Images fileIn an appearance over the weekend, Reese Witherspoon recalled first meeting Keaton as a 15-year-old early in her career. Witherspoon auditioned for a role in the Keaton-directed film “Wildflower” and described Keaton as one of her first mentors.”She is just incredible and indelible and just a truly original person,” Witherspoon said. Keaton is survived by her daughter, Dexter, and son, Duke, whom she adopted when she was in her 50s. Doha MadaniDoha Madani is a senior breaking news reporter for NBC News. Pronouns: she/her.
September 24, 2025
Sept. 24, 2025, 5:00 AM EDTBy Lauren Sausser and Darius Tahir | KFF Health NewsTaking a page from the private insurance industry’s playbook, the Trump administration will launch a program next year to find out how much money an artificial intelligence algorithm could save the federal government by denying care to Medicare patients.The pilot program, designed to weed out wasteful, “low-value” services, amounts to a federal expansion of an unpopular process called prior authorization, which requires patients or someone on their medical team to seek insurance approval before proceeding with certain procedures, tests, and prescriptions. It will affect Medicare patients, and the doctors and hospitals who care for them, in Arizona, Ohio, Oklahoma, New Jersey, Texas, and Washington, starting Jan. 1 and running through 2031.The move has raised eyebrows among politicians and policy experts. The traditional version of Medicare, which covers adults 65 and older and some people with disabilities, has mostly eschewed prior authorization. Still, it is widely used by private insurers, especially in the Medicare Advantage market.And the timing was surprising: The pilot was announced in late June, just days after the Trump administration unveiled a voluntary effort by private health insurers to revamp and reduce their own use of prior authorization, which causes care to be “significantly delayed,” said Dr. Mehmet Oz, administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services.“It erodes public trust in the health care system,” Oz told the media. “It’s something that we can’t tolerate in this administration.”But some critics, like Dr. Vinay Rathi, an Ohio State University doctor and policy researcher, have accused the Trump administration of sending mixed messages.On one hand, the federal government wants to borrow cost-cutting measures used by private insurance, he said. “On the other, it slaps them on the wrist.”Administration officials are “talking out of both sides of their mouth,” said Rep. Suzan DelBene, a Washington Democrat. “It’s hugely concerning.”Patients, doctors and other lawmakers have also been critical of what they see as delay-or-deny tactics, which can slow down or block access to care, causing irreparable harm and even death.“Insurance companies have put it in their mantra that they will take patients’ money and then do their damnedest to deny giving it to the people who deliver care,” said Rep. Greg Murphy, a North Carolina Republican and a urologist. “That goes on in every insurance company boardroom.”Insurers have long argued that prior authorization reduces fraud and wasteful spending, as well as prevents potential harm. Public displeasure with insurance denials dominated the news in December, when the shooting death of UnitedHealthcare’s CEO led many to anoint his alleged killer as a folk hero.And the public broadly dislikes the practice: Nearly three-quarters of respondents thought prior authorization was a “major” problem in a July poll published by KFF, a health information nonprofit that includes KFF Health News.Indeed, Oz said during his June press conference that “violence in the streets” prompted the Trump administration to take on the issue of prior authorization reform in the private insurance industry.Still, the administration is expanding the use of prior authorization in Medicare. CMS spokesperson Alexx Pons said both initiatives “serve the same goal of protecting patients and Medicare dollars.”Unanswered questionsThe pilot program, WISeR — short for “Wasteful and Inappropriate Service Reduction” — will test the use of an AI algorithm in making prior authorization decisions for some Medicare services, including skin and tissue substitutes, electrical nerve stimulator implants, and knee arthroscopy.The federal government says such procedures are particularly vulnerable to “fraud, waste, and abuse” and could be held in check by prior authorization.Other procedures may be added to the list. But services that are inpatient-only, emergency or “would pose a substantial risk to patients if significantly delayed” would not be subject to the AI model’s assessment, according to the federal announcement.While the use of AI in health insurance isn’t new, Medicare has been slow to adopt the private-sector tools. Medicare has historically used prior authorization in a limited way, with contractors who aren’t incentivized to deny services. But experts who have studied the plan believe the federal pilot could change that.Pons told KFF Health News that no Medicare request will be denied before being reviewed by a “qualified human clinician,” and that vendors “are prohibited from compensation arrangements tied to denial rates.” While the government says vendors will be rewarded for savings, Pons said multiple safeguards will “remove any incentive to deny medically appropriate care.”“Shared savings arrangements mean that vendors financially benefit when less care is delivered,” a structure that can create a powerful incentive for companies to deny medically necessary care, said Jennifer Brackeen, senior director of government affairs for the Washington State Hospital Association.And doctors and policy experts say that’s only one concern.Rathi said the plan “is not fully fleshed out” and relies on “messy and subjective” measures. The model, he said, ultimately depends on contractors to assess their own results, a choice that makes the results potentially suspect.“I’m not sure they know, even, how they’re going to figure out whether this is helping or hurting patients,” he said.Pons said the use of AI in the Medicare pilot will be “subject to strict oversight to ensure transparency, accountability, and alignment with Medicare rules and patient protection.”“CMS remains committed to ensuring that automated tools support, not replace, clinically sound decision-making,” he said.Experts agree that AI is theoretically capable of expediting what has been a cumbersome process marked by delays and denials that can harm patients’ health. Health insurers have argued that AI eliminates human error and bias and will save the health care system money. These companies have also insisted that humans, not computers, are ultimately reviewing coverage decisions.But some scholars are doubtful that’s routinely happening. “I think that there’s also probably a little bit of ambiguity over what constitutes ‘meaningful human review,’” said Amy Killelea, an assistant research professor at the Center on Health Insurance Reforms at Georgetown University.A 2023 report published by ProPublica found that, over a two-month period, doctors at Cigna who reviewed requests for payment spent an average of only 1.2 seconds on each case.Cigna spokesperson Justine Sessions told KFF Health News that the company does not use AI to deny care or claims. The ProPublica investigation referenced a “simple software-driven process that helped accelerate payments to clinicians for common, relatively low-cost tests and treatments, and it is not powered by AI,” Sessions said. “It was not used for prior authorizations.”And yet class-action lawsuits filed against major health insurers have alleged that flawed AI models undermine doctor recommendations and fail to take patients’ unique needs into account, forcing some people to shoulder the financial burden of their care.Meanwhile, a survey of physicians published by the American Medical Association in February found that 61% think AI is “increasing prior authorization denials, exacerbating avoidable patient harms and escalating unnecessary waste now and into the future.”Chris Bond, a spokesperson for the insurers’ trade group AHIP, told KFF Health News that the organization is “zeroed in” on implementing the commitments made to the government. Those include reducing the scope of prior authorization and making sure that communications with patients about denials and appeals are easy to understand.‘This is a pilot’The Medicare pilot program underscores ongoing concerns about prior authorization and raises new ones.While private health insurers have been opaque about how they use AI and the extent to which they use prior authorization, policy researchers believe these algorithms are often programmed to automatically deny high-cost care.“The more expensive it is, the more likely it is to be denied,” said Jennifer Oliva, a professor at the Maurer School of Law at Indiana University-Bloomington, whose work focuses on AI regulation and health coverage.Oliva explained in a recent paper for the Indiana Law Journal that when a patient is expected to die within a few years, health insurers are “motivated to rely on the algorithm.” As time passes and the patient or their provider is forced to appeal a denial, the chance of the patient dying during that process increases. The longer an appeal, the less likely the health insurer is to pay the claim, Oliva said.“The No. 1 thing to do is make it very, very difficult for people to get high-cost services,” she said.As the use of AI by health insurers is poised to grow, insurance company algorithms amount to a “regulatory blind spot” and demand more scrutiny, said Carmel Shachar, a faculty director at Harvard Law School’s Center for Health Law and Policy Innovation.The WISeR pilot is “an interesting step” toward using AI to ensure that Medicare dollars are purchasing high-quality health care, she said. But the lack of details makes it difficult to determine whether it will work.Politicians are grappling with some of the same questions.“How is this being tested in the first place? How are you going to make sure that it is working and not denying care or producing higher rates of care denial?” asked DelBene, who signed an August letter to Oz with other Democrats demanding answers about the AI program. But Democrats aren’t the only ones worried.Murphy, who co-chairs the House GOP Doctors Caucus, acknowledged that many physicians are concerned the WISeR pilot could overreach into their practice of medicine if the AI algorithm denies doctor-recommended care.Meanwhile, House members of both parties recently supported a measure proposed by Rep. Lois Frankel, a Florida Democrat, to block funding for the pilot in the fiscal 2026 budget of the Department of Health and Human Services.AI in health care is here to stay, Murphy said, but it remains to be seen whether the WISeR pilot will save Medicare money or contribute to the problems already posed by prior authorization.“This is a pilot, and I’m open to see what’s going to happen with this,” Murphy said, “but I will always, always err on the side that doctors know what’s best for their patients.”Lauren Sausser and Darius Tahir | KFF Health NewsLauren Sausser and Darius Tahir | KFF Health News
October 19, 2025
Oct. 19, 2025, 5:00 AM EDTBy Peter Guo and Jennifer JettHONG KONG — For years, pro-Beijing lawmakers in Hong Kong have been steadfastly in support of the government. That is, until the issue of same-sex partnerships came up.Last month, Hong Kong’s opposition-free Legislative Council overwhelmingly voted down a government-sponsored bill that would have partially recognized same-sex unions in the Chinese territory.The rejection, which LGBTQ rights advocates said was “disappointing,” has rekindled discussions about gay rights and the rule of law in Hong Kong as its leaders grow more in sync with the central Chinese government.The bill, which would have granted limited rights to same-sex couples, was a response to a 2023 order by Hong Kong’s top court that gave the government until Oct. 27, 2025, to establish an alternative framework for legal recognition of same-sex partnerships, such as registered civil partnerships or civil unions.Marriage equality remains a work in progress in Asia, with only three jurisdictions — Taiwan, Nepal and Thailand — having fully legalized same-sex marriage. A 2023 survey of Hong Kong residents by the Chinese University of Hong Kong found that same-sex marriage was supported by about 60% of respondents.Though the Hong Kong legislation fell far short of fully recognizing same-sex marriage, equality campaigners said it still would have been a step forward for the international financial hub, whose global image has suffered greatly after mass anti-government protests, severe pandemic restrictions and a crackdown on dissent.Hong Kong lawmaker Maggie Chan giving a speech last month in front of a sign that reads “Resolutely Oppose Registration of Same-Sex Partnerships Bill.”Chan Long Hei / APHowever, 71 out of 86 lawmakers opposed the bill, with some blasting it as an attack on marriage and traditional Chinese values.The veto marked the legislature’s first big split with the government since Beijing’s “patriots-only” electoral reform in 2021, which aimed to ensure “consistent” and “strong” legislative support for the executive after the 2019 protests. The changes have essentially shut out the pro-democracy lawmakers who traditionally challenged the government.The Hong Kong government said it was “disappointed” by the veto but that it would respect the legislature’s decision and turn to administrative means to protect the rights of gay couples. The details of its next steps are not immediately clear.‘No enthusiasm’Hong Kong, a city of 7.5 million people, had been making some progress on LGBTQ rights through a string of court victories.In 2023, Hong Kong’s top court ruled that transgender people could change their gender on their official identity cards without undergoing full sex reassignment surgery. In July, a Hong Kong court ruled that transgender people have the right to use public toilets in line with their affirmed genders.And last month, a Hong Kong judge ruled in favor of a lesbian couple who wanted to include both mothers’ names on their son’s birth certificate.But there have also been setbacks as the space for activism in Hong Kong has diminished. Pink Dot, the city’s largest LGBTQ event, said last month that it was holding its 2025 edition online after losing its usual venue with no explanation.The case that prompted the same-sex marriage legislation was brought in 2018 by Jimmy Sham, a leading local gay rights activist who took the government to the Court of Final Appeal to have his overseas same-sex marriage recognized.Gay rights activist Jimmy Sham in front of the Court of Final Appeal in Hong Kong in August.Chan Long Hei / APThe 2023 court ruling in his favor came while Sham, 38, one of 47 pro-democracy figures arrested in 2021 under a Beijing-imposed national security law, was on trial on subversion charges. Sham, who like most of the defendants pleaded guilty, was released from prison in May after serving more than four years.To comply with the landmark ruling, the Hong Kong government proposed a mechanism in July by which gay couples could visit their partners in the hospital, access their medical records and make decisions about organ donation and funeral arrangements. It did not address parental or adoption rights.The protections also would have applied only to same-sex couples who had registered their partnerships outside Hong Kong, a provision that advocacy groups criticized as discriminatory.Yet the proposal met with strong objections from lawmakers, who cited a “lack of social consensus” in Hong Kong on the “highly controversial” subject of same-sex partnership.They argued that the bill, even though it did not legalize gay marriage, would still lead to a “collapse of traditional family ethics and values” if passed.LGBTQ couples at a mass wedding in Hong Kong in 2024, which a U.S. pastor performed online.Peter Parks / AFP via Getty Images file“Why stir up trouble and break tradition for a small group, throwing the whole society into turmoil?” said lawmaker Junius Ho, a vocal opponent of LGBTQ rights.Sham said that although the veto was a “great pity,” he hoped authorities would relaunch the legislative process. “The question is whether those in power have the courage and wisdom to resolve differences and seek consensus,” he wrote in a Facebook post.Hong Kong officials said the government had made its “best effort” to secure support from the legislature, basing the proposal on what they deemed “societal common ground.”However, John Burns, an emeritus professor at the University of Hong Kong who specializes in the city’s politics and governance, said he saw “no enthusiasm” from the government to create an alternative framework for recognizing same-sex partnerships.After being forced into action by the court, Burns said, the Hong Kong government “waited until virtually the last possible moment” before proposing a “minimalist bill.”“They had many opportunities to fix this, and they sat on their hands and looked at the sky,” he added.What’s nextThe Chinese central government and pro-Beijing lawmakers, who have denied any erosion of freedoms in Hong Kong, said the veto would not create a constitutional crisis but rather showcased the checks and balances of Hong Kong’s governance.But legal experts said the government still has to find a way to comply with the court order.“The legislature rushed through this decision,” said Azan Marwah, a Hong Kong barrister specializing in public law and family litigation.He said lawmakers should have proposed and debated amendments to the bill if they had concerns.“But instead of doing that, they simply abdicated their responsibility,” Marwah said. “Now, what will the court do? To be really frank with you, I don’t know.”The Constitutional and Mainland Affairs Bureau, which proposed the failed legislation, did not respond to a request for comment.The lack of legal protections for same-sex couples may lead to a “big loss” of local or foreign talent in Hong Kong, as many multinational companies value diversity and equality, said Marie Pang, deputy secretary-general of the centrist political party Third Side.“It would directly undermine Hong Kong’s competitiveness as an international city, especially when other regions in Asia already have relevant systems in place,” Pang said.Amid the uncertainty, many people in Hong Kong’s LGBTQ community are continuing to look forward.The campaign for equality and inclusion is more than legal victories, said Louis Ng, a law student and gay rights advocate.“Real change requires open communication and engagement with all sides. Only then may we persuade the strong opponents,” Ng said. “It all takes time and effort.”Peter GuoPeter Guo is an associate producer based in Hong Kong.Jennifer JettJennifer Jett is the Asia Digital Editor for NBC News, based in Hong Kong.
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