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– A Michigan man with a rare genetic disorder is seeking more than $25,000 in damages from Shaquille O'Neal, NBA player Trey Burke, and rapper Waka Flocka for making fun of his pic on social media, reports the Detroit Free Press. Jahmel Binion has ectodermal dysplasia, a condition that can cause facial deformities and an inability to regulate body temperature, among other symptoms, according to the National Institutes of Health. Shaq did apologize with a repentant tweet and phone call, according to TMZ, but Binion isn't buying the good-guy act. "When they said sorry, I felt like they were saying it to get the pressure off of them for being considered ‘bad people,'" he tells the Macomb Daily.

People with ectodermal dysplasia may not sweat or may have decreased sweating because of a lack of sweat glands.

 In children with the disease, their bodies may have a problem controlling fevers. Even a mild illness can produce an extremely high fever, because the skin cannot sweat and control temperature properly.

 Affected adults are unable to tolerate a warm environment and need special measures to keep a normal body temperature.

 Other symptoms include: ||||| Jahmel Binion’s “selfie” on social media was mocked by NBA star Shaquille O’Neal, former Michigan star and Utah Jazz rookie Trey Burke and rapper Waka Flocka.

 Now, the Warren man — who has a rare genetic disorder that affects his facial features — is suing them.

 Binion‘s story went national earlier this year. On Wednesday, he filed a lawsuit in Macomb County Circuit Court seeking more than $25,000 in damages.

 Binion took a picture of himself last summer and it was later mocked on social media. Binion then created an antibullying campaign Hug Dont Judge and a Facebook group page that took off.

 Binion said O’Neal and Burke later called him to apologize and the trio posted apologies on Twitter.

 Binion’s condition, called ectodermal dysplasia, can affect a person’s appearance and cause health problems. In Binion’s case, he does not sweat, and the condition has affected his hair and teeth. If he gets overheated and can’t cool himself down, he said, he could faint or suffer heat stroke.

 According to the lawsuit, the “offensive communications” were communicated nationally and globally to more than 8.4 million recipients, including those in Macomb County.

 The lawsuit alleges invasion of privacy, intentional infliction of emotional distress, defamation and general negligence.

 It states that publication of the photos, mocking Binion, publicly disclosed embarrassing private facts about Binion, was widely regarded as “extreme and outrageous conduct,” and caused him severe emotional distress.

 “The defendants’ communications clearly implied that the plaintiff was an appropriate object of mockery, ridicule and shame. The defendants’ communications had the effect of lowering the plaintiff’s reputation in the eyes of those who respected the views and opinions of the defendants,” according to the lawsuit. “The defendants’ communications were false because the plaintiff’s medical condition is not an appropriate reason for mockery, ridicule and shame.”

 Neither Binion nor his attorney could be immediately reached for comment. ||||| Jahmel Binion

 A Warren man afflicted with a rare disease sued a trio of celebrities, including Shaquille O’Neal, who ridiculed him over his appearance on social media.

 Jahmel Binion, 23 at the time of the incident, filed a lawsuit Wednesday against O’Neal, Trey Burke and the rapper known as Waka Flocka Flame in Macomb County Circuit Court. He claims defamation, intentional infliction of emotional distress, invasion of privacy and general negligence for the incidents earlier this year.

 “The defendants mocked and ridiculed the plaintiff, a person completely unknown to themselves in public forums where their activity would be widely disseminated,?the lawsuit says. “The defendants?communications clearly implied that the plaintiff was an appropriate object of mockery, ridicule and shame?and “had the effect of lowering the plaintiff’s reputation in the eyes of those who respected the views and opinion of the defendants.?/p>

 O’Neal, a former NBA superstar, in April obtained a selfie photo that Binion posted on social media and took a picture of himself, making a face, and posted it adjacent to Binion on Instagram and Twitter. It was accompanied by the words, “Smile today.?Others joined in the online teasing, including former University of Michigan and current Utah Jazz basketball player Burke and rapper Waka Flocka Flame.

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 Binion has hypohidrotic ectodermal dysplasia, a rare disorder characterized by a reduced ability to sweat, sparse hair growth, missing teeth and facial deformities.

 Upon learning about Binion’s condition, O’Neal and Burke apologized and called Binion.

 But Binion, who attended Madison High School in Madison Heights, told The Oakland Press in May that the apology came several days after the celebrities were criticized nationally by several media sources.

 “When they said sorry, I felt like they were saying it to get the pressure off of them for being considered ‘bad people,’” Binion said. “Even though I accept their apology, I still hope that they donate to my cause or other organizations that connect with ectodermal dysplasia.?/p>

 In the lawsuit, Binion’s attorney, John Henke III, says the mocking photos “constituted a public disclosure of embarrassing private facts about the plaintiff?and “placed plaintiff in a false light in the public eye.?/p>

 The ridiculing was done “with reckless disregard to the harm that might be caused?to Binion, the complaint says.

 The “offensive communications?were relayed to 8.4 million people, including many in Macomb County, the lawsuit says.

 Binion, who was diagnosed with the disorder shortly after birth, said he has had trouble maintaining employment; he can’t work in hot conditions. He has lived beyond his life expectancy of five years upon diagnosis.

 Binion has turned the turn of events into positive actions.

 He started the Facebook group “Hug Don’t Judge.?/p>

 A few weeks after the incident, well-known boxing manager Jackie Kallen arranged to have Binion and his cousin, Maxine Montgomery, picked up in a limousine and taken to a Dearborn Civic Center for her fighter Ray Edwards?boxing match, where he was treated like a celebrity.

 The lawsuit doesn’t name a damage figure but seeks more than $25,000.

 O’Neal resides in Windermere, Fla., and has a residence in Massachusetts, the lawsuit says. Burke, whose legal first name is Alphonso Clark Burke III, lives in Salt Lake City, Utah, while Waka Flocka Flame, whose legal name is Juaquin Malphurs, resides in McDonough, Ga. |||||


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A 12-year-old jaguar is being sent back from New Delhi zoo after he was found “too fat to breed,” zoo officials said, adding that he just “lies in a corner and refuses to respond” to females enticing him.

 Salman the jaguar was brought from the Thiruvananthapuram Zoological Garden in Kerala, southern India in October 2014. In the year that has passed since he has shown “complete disinterest” in females, Delhi zoo officials told the Indian Express.

 In fact he “reached out for its meals more keenly” than for the passionate embrace of Kalpana, his female would-be partner, Delhi zoo curator Riaz Khan said.

 “He was brought on a breeding loan but it has been over a year and Salman has shown no interest in mating. In fact, the female is seen trying to entice him but he lies in a corner and refuses to respond. He is too fat to breed.”

 READ MORE: ‘Gay’ bull gets #SaveBenjy campaign for slaughterhouse reprieve

 Now the Zoo officials have given up hope that the jaguar will ever get interested in Kalpana. Jaguars have no breeding season and can mate at any time, but Salman seems to be ignoring the calls of mother nature, zoo staff said.

 “He is lazy, a glutton, just loves to eat and relax. Every morning, we find leftovers in the cages of the other jaguars but this one polishes off his entire food. I am sure if we gave him more food, he would finish off that too. He has a bigger appetite than the tigers here,” said one of Salman’s keepers.

 Tigers are usually much bigger than jaguars. While the weight of a Bengal tiger can vary from 180kg to 258kg, a jaguar’s normal weight is considered to be in the 56-96kg range.

 Jaguar Salman to be Sent Back to Kerala as he is 'Too Fat to Breed' http://t.co/1Csj3Ifuxapic.twitter.com/vNv5X4aGkS — New Indian Express (@NewIndianXpress) October 10, 2015

 According to the zoo, the approximate weight of the lazy jaguar who doesn’t want to cope with his sexual responsibilities is more than 100kg.

 READ MORE: Penguin missing from flood-ravaged Tbilisi Zoo found hiding in debris

 The zoo officials tried to fight the jaguar’s love for food – they put him on a strict diet and released it into the larger enclosure, so that the animal would get more exercise.

 Delhi zoo to return jaguar named Salman from Kerala because it is ‘too fat to breed’ http://t.co/XJuFDqIxpApic.twitter.com/BVianfpJEQ — TheNewsMinute (@thenewsminute) October 10, 2015

 However, all attempts failed – he wouldn't abandon his two favourite sins, gluttony and sloth, for that of lust. He still “would stroll for a bit, then lie in a corner,” according to the keeper.

 “So it is best that we send him back home… if he is not fulfilling that purpose then what is the point in keeping him here?” Khan said. ||||| Image copyright AFP Image caption This jaguar in Hyderabad does not appear to suffer from Salman's "gluttony" (file photo)

 A jaguar on a breeding loan to Delhi zoo in India is being sent back as he is too fat to mate, keepers say.

 Twelve-year-old Salman was borrowed from a zoo in Kerala a year ago, but has shown little interest in their female jaguar, Kalpana, the Indian Express reports.

 Keepers say he reaches out for his meals "more keenly than for Kalpana".

 "The female is seen trying to entice him but he lies in a corner and refuses to respond," Riaz Khan told the paper.

 The Delhi zoo says it feeds its jaguars 6kg of buffalo meat a day in the summer, six days a week.

 Salman eats more than a tiger, keepers claimed, and efforts to reduce his weight with a strict diet were unsuccessful.

 Image copyright AFP Image caption The jaguar is found in the wild in the Americas (file photo)

 "He is lazy, a glutton, just loves to eat and relax," they said.

 Releasing him into the larger enclosure did not prompt him to take exercise or trigger an interest in mating.

 However, the portly big cat's supporters at the zoo point out that Delhi's two male jaguars have also failed to provide Kalpana with offspring - and say that it may be the trauma of the relocation that caused his lethargy.

 Salman is not the only big cat in an Indian zoo whose lack of mating interest has drawn criticism.

 Earlier this year experts at Alipore zoo in Kolkata said Vishal, a white tiger, had spurned the advances of a tigress - despite being de-wormed and given libido-enhancing vitamins.

 Jaguars are native to the Americas and are listed as "near threatened" on the International Union for Conservation of Nature's red list. ||||| Lazy, obese and now lonely, Salman on Thursday. Amit Mehra

 Obesity has been identified as a life-threatening condition among human beings. But as officials in the Delhi zoo have realised over the last year, it can stall life in the animal kingdom too. That’s why they are returning Salman, a 12-year-old jaguar, to Kerala with this stinging verdict: “he’s too fat to breed”.

 Salman was borrowed on a “breeding loan” from the Thiruvananthapuram Zoological Garden last October, but has since shown “complete disinterest” in pairing up with the lone female jaguar in the National Zoological Park here, say Delhi zoo officials. They say Salman has “reached out for its meals more keenly than for Kalpana”, the female jaguar.

 “He was brought on a breeding loan but it has been over a year and Salman has shown no interest in mating. In fact, the female is seen trying to entice him but he lies in a corner and refuses to respond. He is too fat to breed,” Delhi zoo curator Riaz Khan told The Indian Express.

 “Now we know for sure nothing is going to happen. So it is best that we send him back home. He was brought for a purpose and if he is not fulfilling that purpose then what is the point in keeping him here?” Khan said.

 Although no scientific tests have been done to establish the case against Salman, some zoo officials are inclined to take his side, arguing that the two other male jaguars, Mohan and Shankar, have also failed to give Kalpana a cub.

 “It’s not necessarily about obesity. In some cases, animals that are proven breeders stop after relocation,” said a wildlife expert at the Delhi zoo, who did not wish to be named.

 But the counter-argument from Khan and the others is that unlike the other two, Salman has not even shown any interest in mating after reaching Delhi on October 20, 2014. “He is lazy, a glutton, just loves to eat and relax,” said one of Salman’s caretakers.

 “Every morning, we find leftovers in the cages of the other jaguars but this one polishes off his entire food. I am sure if we gave him more food, he would finish off that too. He has a bigger appetite than the tigers here,” he said.

 All the four jaguars in Delhi’s zoo are given approximately 6 kg of buffalo meat daily, and for a while zoo staff tried their best to win this battle of the bulge.

 “Salman was put on a strict diet but showed no signs of losing weight and had to be brought back to the usual ration,” said the caretaker. They also tried releasing him into the larger enclosure more often, hoping he would play around and get some exercise. “But he would stroll for a bit, then lie in a corner,” the caretaker said.

 Salman’s weight has not been officially measured yet, but at the time of relocation, the Thiruvananthapuram zoo had certified that he was “fit”.

 Last month, officials from the Thiruvananthapuram zoo offered to take Salman back with them when they were in Delhi to accept a white tiger as part of another programme. But the Delhi zoo decided to hold him back till the one-year loan period ends — “hoping against hope”.

 For all the latest India News, download Indian Express App now |||||

– A jaguar is being sent home to Kerala, India, from a New Delhi breeding program after being accused of having a dad bod without the "dad" part. Salman had been borrowed by the Delhi Zoo to mate with Kalpana, its female jaguar, but there were problems: Salman turned out to be too corpulent and lethargic to mate, the BBC reports. Salman has "reached out for its meals more keenly than for Kalpana," a zookeeper complains to the Indian Express, adding that "the female is seen trying to entice him but he lies in a corner and refuses to respond. He is too fat to breed." Salman, who RT.com notes is said to weigh around 220 pounds, does have his defenders, who point out to the Express that two other male jaguars also didn't produce offspring with Kalpana and that breeding cats sometimes just don't feel like mating after being relocated. But workers at the zoo say Salman is a different animal altogether than the previous competition. "He is lazy, a glutton, just loves to eat and relax," one of the caretakers tells the paper. (Maybe Vin Diesel needs to have a heart-to-heart with Salman.)


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Amazon wants to deliver everything you want to your doorstep, anywhere in the world. But the e-commerce giant faces several challenges in its pursuit of a global empire. WSJ's Karan Deep Singh breaks down the basics with the help of an Amazon delivery box. ||||| Amazon may be taking an even stronger hold on the delivery business 11:44 AM ET Fri, 9 Feb 2018 | 00:50

 Amazon is gearing up to launch a delivery service for businesses, the Wall Street Journal reported on Friday.

 This would pit the e-commerce giant against the likes of FedEx and UPS.

 The service is called "Shipping with Amazon" and will see the tech giant picking up packages from businesses and delivering them to customers, the WSJ said, citing people familiar with the matter.

 Amazon's business delivery is expected to roll out in Los Angeles in the coming weeks with third-party merchants that sell goods via its website. More cities are to follow.

 The U.S. firm will eventually roll this out to other businesses with Amazon planning to undercut UPS and FedEx on price, according to the WSJ.

 Shares of FedEx and UPS were sharply lower in pre-market trade on Friday morning.

 UPS said it is still a partner of Amazon.

 "UPS continues to support Amazon and many other customers and we don't make comments about their business strategies or decisions regarding their utilization of UPS services," a spokesperson for the company told CNBC in an emailed statement.

 Read the full Wall Street Journal article here. |||||

– Amazon isn't just expanding grocery deliveries: The company will soon offer a shipping service for businesses, putting it in direct competition with UPS and FedEx, whose shares saw sharp declines in pre-market trading Friday, per CNBC. "Shipping with Amazon" will see Amazon pick up packages from third-party merchants who sell on Amazon's website before shipping them to buyers at lower rates than offered by UPS and FedEx—though Amazon may have to use those companies to reach areas beyond its delivery network, sources familiar with the plan tell the Wall Street Journal. The service is expected to debut within weeks in Los Angeles, where a pilot program has been in the works for more than a year. The service could be expanded to more cities, possibly this year. "We're always innovating and experimenting on behalf of customers and the businesses that sell and grow on Amazon to create faster lower-cost delivery choices," a spokeswoman says, without offering specifics, though the Journal notes "Shipping with Amazon" could eventually be offered to other businesses, too. Sources say Amazon will be able to undercut UPS and FedEx because it already delivers some of its own orders in 37 cities. "Any extra space it can fill in its trucks with additional deliveries is considered added revenue," the Journal reports, noting Amazon eventually hopes to offer two-day deliveries, even on weekends.


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Published on Sep 25, 2017

 “I’m so excited; I’m also a little nervous,” Megyn Kelly admits as her new show, Megyn Kelly TODAY, premieres. She tells the live studio audience “I’m kind of done with politics for now,” talks about her family (including her mother and husband, who are in the audience), and describes events that have shaped her, especially the death of her father. Answering a question from the audience, she says, “my biggest challenge is the alarm clock.”

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 Megyn Kelly Launches Megyn Kelly TODAY: ‘I’m Done With Politics For Now’ | Megyn Kelly TODAY ||||| Megyn Kelly isn’t playing politics anymore – at least not on camera.

 The former Fox News anchor vowed to put aside the hard-edged interviewing style that made her famous and turned her energy Monday full-bore into the launch of a new morning program, in one of the bigger bets NBC has made on a single talent since, perhaps, it named an unknown Conan O’Brien in 1993 to succeed David Letterman at the helm of its wee-hours “Late Night” franchise.

 Kelly told a live studio audience in the opening moments of her new “Megyn Kelly Today” that “I’m kind of done with politics for now,” and said she hoped instead to help viewers “get yourself through the day, to have a laugh with us, a smile, sometimes a tear – and maybe a little hope to start your day. Some fun! That’s what we want to be doing.”

 The mission represents a marked change for the popular news host whose prosecutor-like style in Fox News Channel’s primetime made her a star. Kelly has no experience hosting a morning program of this sort, and just months ago was anchoring a Sunday-night newsmagazine program on NBC that at times proved polarizing. But she put all of that in the rear-view mirror Monday as she re-introduced herself to the audience, talking about her upstate New York roots and introducing her husband and mother to the in-studio crowd and the audience at home. It’s a technique that was put to good use by NBC colleague Jimmy Fallon in the opening moments of his run on the network’s late-night franchise “Tonight.”

 Related NBC Touts Megyn Kelly’s Softer Side in Bid to Launch New Morning Show To Lure Ad Dollars, NBC Tied Megyn Kelly to ‘Today’

 NBC is packaging Kelly as part of its “Today” empire. She’s coming on after colleagues Matt Lauer and Savannah Guthrie deliver most of the headlines – and a lot of lighter fare, as well. And she’s on before Hoda Kotb and Kathie Lee Gifford start sipping wine and delving into less serious topics. As the rest of the “Today” anchors came on set to toast her, Kelly offered the assemblage mimosas, meant to represent a transition between the wake-you-up coffee served on the show’s first two hours and the alcohol consumed in its last. But there was no talk of current events: No reference to the devastation in Puerto Rico, or the protests that took place over the weekend across the nation’s various NFL games.

 Kelly has long harbored ambitions of filling in the space in the TV-news business once occupied by Barbara Walters or Oprah Winfrey. “Diane Sawyer left her anchor role. Oprah has moved to the OWN network and is doing a different thing now. So why not me?” she told Variety during an interview in 2015.

 On Monday, she dove into the role, hosting a multi-segment visit with the cast of “Will & Grace,” the popular NBC sitcom that is getting a reboot this season. She bantered with the rest of the “Today” crew in a taped segment that had Kelly biking to work with Al Roker, and getting advice from Kathie Lee Gifford (“Be authentic!”) as she sat in the makeup chair. The show ended with a long field piece that had Kelly journey to the Windy City to meet a 77-year-old Chicago nun who was working diligently to improve a tough neighborhood. Sister Donna Liette and some of her supporters also joined Kelly in the studio. The title of the segment, “Settle For More,” is borrowed from Kelly’s recent memoir, and looks as if it might be a regular feature on the show about people trying to improve their situation in life. “If you want change, you must seek it,” Kelly told the crowd.

 NBC managed to weave promotional support from advertisers into the opening program – much like Oprah Winfrey did over the years. And while there was no mass giveaway of new cars to the in-studio crowd, as Winfrey did in 2004 when she gave free Pontiacs to more than 250 audience members, Kelly was able to offer one man a free trip to California to see a “Will & Grace” taping, courtesy of United Airlines. Coldwell Banker and Ace Hardware coughed up checks on stage to help Sister Liette continue her work. Unilever and General Mills were among the sponsors running multiple commercials during Kelly’s debut.

 Daytime TV is notoriously difficult, and reliable operatives including Anderson Cooper, Katie Couric and Meredith Vieira have faced headwinds in their attempts to launch programs similar to Kelly’s. NBC is clearly hoping the force of her personality and an inspirational backstory lend the host an edge – not the polarizing kind – with a broader audience that it was reaching with the previous inhabitant of the 9 a.m. timeslot.

 Will Kelly be able to maintain the lighter, inspirational tone of her debut in a swirling news cycle that seems utterly consumed with politics and cultural clashes? Will she want to bring her hard-news chops to bear now and again? The magic of a morning program is that it always has another broadcast waiting in the wings that might allow its host to try those ideas out. ||||| Kelly's much-anticipated new show, 'Megyn Kelly Today,' debuted Monday.

 Megyn Kelly, in a series of prelaunch interviews, has been very clear about the show she wants to run every day at 9 a.m. on NBC — one that's light on politics but heavy on inspiration and fun. She followed through on that early vision with the Monday morning launch of Megyn Kelly Today, which replaces the 9 a.m. hour of Today.

 "As you heard, we have the entire cast of Will & Grace live, along with the show creator," Kelly told her live studio audience. "And then we'll be dissecting the latest tweet from President Trump! Oh, wait! We will not be doing that. The truth is, I’m kind of done with politics for now. I know. You know why, right? We all felt it, it's everywhere. And it's just gotten so dark."

 The first episode of the show felt like something of a coming-out party for the new, warmer Kelly.

 Her mother was in attendance, as was her husband, who came out from the audience and gave her a bouquet of roses. Kelly said her husband, unlike her, is "not a TV person" and "likes his privacy."

 Kelly began the show by talking about her background and telling the story of losing her father to a heart attack at the age of 15. "We didn't have a lot of money, but we did have a lot of love and a ton of honesty," the former Fox News anchor said.

 Kelly also received a very warm welcome from the entire Today show family. In a taped segment, she rode a tandem bike to work with Al Roker and cooked an omelet with Matt Lauer, who earnestly seemed excited to have Kelly as a colleague. "I wish you success, honey," 10 a.m. co-host Kathie Lee Gifford told her. "Mostly, I wish you joy."

 Later, the cast of Today came out and held a mimosa toast to Kelly, who had said in a New York Times story last week that "if you had to put a drink on my show, it would be a mimosa." Lauer led the toast, and said, "Here's the newest addition to our family. Here's to many happy mornings. Here's to Megyn Kelly Today."

 Kelly interviewed the entire cast of the rebooted NBC show Will & Grace, and, like a good morning show host, asked at many points, "What did that feel like?" In another dose of corporate synergy, Kelly will have the cast of This Is Us on Tuesday morning's show. ||||| Megyn Kelly has officially made her morning show debut!

 On Monday, the former Fox News anchor debuted Megyn Kelly Today, which occupies the NBC morning show’s third hour.

 “I’m so excited,” she said. “I’m also a little nervous!”

 “We’ll be dissecting the latest tweet from President Trump — oh no, we will not be doing that,” she said. “The truth is, I am kind of done with politics for now.”

 Kelly, 46, encouraged her live studio audience in New York City to “have a laugh with us, a smile, and sometimes a tear” as she celebrated the show’s launch day, getting emotional as she recalled her father dying of a sudden heart attack in their family home when she was 15 years old, just 10 days before Christmas — “the single most devastating event of my lifetime,” as she called it.

 Kelly — whose mother was in the audience — said her goal at Megyn Kelly Today is to “deliver hope and optimism, and to have fun.”

 Kelly encouraged her audience to ask questions, informing them that every morning would begin with a dialogue between the host and the studio audience.

 RELATED: Megyn Kelly Left Fox So She Could Watch Her Kids Grow Up — ‘I Hadn’t Tucked Them Into Bed on a Weeknight in 3 Years’

 One audience member asked Kelly, who previously hosted The Kelly File on Fox News before leaving the network in January for a diverse new role at NBC, what has been her biggest joy — and biggest challenge — in transitioning from evening to morning television.

 “The biggest challenge by far is the alarm clock,” Kelly joked. “My biggest joy has been so far just all of it — I mean honestly, all of it. Professionally, I feel fulfilled, personally, I’ve been having dinner with my husband and my kids every night.”

 One minute to air here in Studio 6A! #MegynToday pic.twitter.com/udDcWXfv9b — Megyn Kelly TODAY (@MegynTODAY) September 25, 2017

 Kelly’s husband Douglas Brunt then made a surprise appearance, gifting his wife of 11 years with a bouquet of red roses.

 “You’ve already made us all laugh and cry,” he said as the two embraced. “Congratulations!”

 “That is so sweet, because he is not a TV person,” said Kelly after he exited the stage. “Doug, unlike me, likes his privacy!”

 Earlier this month, Kelly told PEOPLE she’s been “having so much fun [at NBC] it’s almost not right.”

 “I’ve been having a great time,” she said. “Just today in the audience, there were two people up front who were die-hard Fox viewers and remain die-hard Fox viewers and used to watch me every night on The Kelly File. They were so sweet. They said: ‘Oh we miss you, we miss you.’ The woman held my arm and said, ‘You seem so happy,’ and I am. She saw it and I feel it and it’s just been rewarding.”

 Megyn Kelly Today airs weekdays on NBC (check local listings). ||||| Megyn Kelly launched her daytime makeover on Monday with "Megyn Kelly Today," conspicuously trying to reintroduce herself in the mold of Oprah Winfrey or Ellen DeGeneres -- complete with a caffeinated, cheering studio audience -- while establishing distance from her time as a Fox News anchor.

 It's absurdly early, of course, to draw any conclusions about the efficacy of the Kelly experiment. Still, after tepid marks for her prime time newsmagazine and now her addition to "Today," it's worth considering that NBC News brass leapt at the opportunity to snag a high-profile news star without having fully thought through how best to deploy her.

 Related: Megyn Kelly turns to daytime for a shot at her own 'Oprah effect'

 Wasting no time, Kelly opened the show by essentially seeking to reintroduce herself in this new role, complete with a mission statement and biography, which included discussing the sudden death of her father when she was a teenager.

 "The truth is I am kind of done with politics for now," she stated, citing the show's objective as providing the audience a place to share "a laugh with us, a smile, sometimes a tear, and maybe a little hope to start your day."

 Given that she was best-known for combatively grilling guests (HBO's John Oliver provided a montage on Sunday) before her run-ins with then-candidate Donald Trump, hope is certainly a change for Kelly. But there she was mounting a charm offensive -- fielding questions from the audience, receiving flowers from her husband and warmly yukking it up with the cast and producers of "Will & Grace," in an interview that wouldn't have looked out of place on any other daytime talk show or "Access Hollywood."

 Related: Megyn Kelly makes the case for Alex Jones interview

 The same tone characterized a taped piece in which the "Today" team introduced Kelly to her new gig, which simply felt like a hurried attempt to soften the image of the franchise's newest host by adding her to NBC's morning family.

 Kelly closed with "Settle for More," a segment designed to provide moments of hope and uplift -- the premiere's focus was a Chicago nun, who received some lovely gifts from sponsors -- but which simultaneously promotes her book.

 Kelly told the New York Times that the morning program is "the show that I was born to do. This is what I was meant to do." That sense of mission, of purpose, would only seem to ratchet up the self-imposed pressure, as if much more was needed given NBC's high-stakes investment in her.

 Kelly is a polished interviewer. Yet whatever her interests and concerns about psychic health, it's at best questionable to introduce a show that so consciously seeks to create space between itself and serious news at a moment when there's such an abundance of it.

 In the aforementioned taped segment, which was followed by a welcoming toast from the "Today" crew, Kelly asked Kathie Lee Gifford for the secret to success in daytime. Her answer: "Being authentic."

 Based on first impressions, Kelly is working awfully hard at being herself. And as they say in TV, if she can fake that, the rest should be easy. ||||| CLOSE “I’m so excited; I’m also a little nervous,” she admits as her new show, Megyn Kelly TODAY, premieres. She tells the live studio audience “I’m kind of done with politics for now,” talks about her family and describes events that have shaped her. NBC News’ Megyn Kelly TODAY

 Former Fox News host Megyn Kelly prepares for her morning debut on NBC's 'Megyn Kelly Today.' (Photo: Peter Kramer, NBC)

 Megyn Kelly is "done with politics for now."

 The host opened Monday's inaugural episode of Megyn Kelly Today, the 9 a.m. hour of NBC's Today show, with that declarative statement. She noted that politics are everywhere, infused into every facet of our lives, and her new morning show would be far more focused on "fun."

 It was a bit of necessary rebranding for the former Fox News anchor, who made her name diving into politics headfirst on the cable news channel, to enter the more lifestyle-focused world of morning TV.

 Minus politics, Monday's premiere was a blend of personal stories from Kelly, an audience Q&A, celebrity interviews and an "inspirational" field piece to close out the hour.

 More: 'Megyn Kelly Today': 'It's not going to be the Trump channel,' she promises

 The combination is tricky, and the first episode was a bit awkward. Like any new series, Megyn has some growing pains, and that was apparent in missed cues, clumsy seating arrangements and some stiffness from Kelly, who, whether because of nervousness or her attempts to develop a new tone, speaks with a strange cadence.

 And even an hour of the Today show cannot divorce itself from politics entirely. Her first guests were the cast and creators of NBC's returning Will & Grace, which, as Kelly repeatedly explained, was a groundbreaking show for LGBTQ representation on television. Kelly focused on the impact the series had on that community, except she only mentioned "gays and lesbians," and, in an ill-timed joke that didn't land, asked a superfan in the audience, "Is it true you became a lawyer and gay because of Will & Grace"?

 Kelly also devoted a segment to an elderly nun working against gun violence on the south side of Chicago, an area that Kelly called "like a war zone." Chicago's gun violence is another issue that's been politicized, particularly by President Trump, but her focus is on the feel-good aspect of the nun's "Peace Garden," and her efforts to bring the mothers of violence victims and perpetrators together. While that serves its own purpose, it doesn't make the issue entirely apolitical.

 That, perhaps, is the biggest hurdle. She can say that she's done with politics, but the subject is (by her own admission) everywhere, and side-stepping it won't make it go away. The show will get better at staging and timing as it goes on, but a purpose is something harder to refine.

 There's a difference between choosing to focus on lifestyle and entertainment over political news, and ignoring the fact that politics exist in everyday issues. Megyn Kelly Today would do well to strike a better balance.

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– Former Fox News host Megyn Kelly made her debut Monday as a morning-TV host, declaring that she's "kind of done with politics for now" and instead focusing on more lighthearted fare, reports Variety. (See video here.) Kelly is hosting the 9am slot of the Today show on NBC, and Monday's show included the cast of the rebooted Will & Grace and a feature on a nun fighting gun violence in Chicago. So how did show No. 1 go? A sampling of reviews: Warm and fuzzy: Episode No. 1 "felt like something of a coming-out party for the new, warmer Kelly," writes Jeremy Barr at the Hollywood Reporter. Especially when her husband emerged to give her flowers. Kelly also spoke emotionally about the death of her father when she was a teenager, notes People. Better balance? At USA Today, Kelly Lawler writes that the episode was a "bit awkward" as Kelly, who displayed "some stiffness" at times, transitioned into her new role. "There's a difference between choosing to focus on lifestyle and entertainment over political news, and ignoring the fact that politics exist in everyday issues," she writes. "Megyn Kelly Today would do well to strike a better balance." Questionable strategy: Brian Lowry at CNN also found the debut a little awkward. He cautions that it's too early to draw conclusions, but writes that it seems NBC landed Kelly without a clear sense of how to make use of her talents. What's more, "it's at best questionable to introduce a show that so consciously seeks to create space between itself and serious news at a moment when there's such an abundance of it." Harsh take: At the Washington Post, Hank Steuver delivers a particularly negative review. "The debut was like watching a network try to assemble its own Bride of Frankenstein, using parts of Ellen DeGeneres, Kelly Ripa and whatever else it can find," he writes. Kelly "moved stiffly" and "interviewed people nervously and so awkwardly that they were cowed into giving monosyllabic answers. She also never missed an opportunity to talk about herself." Ouch.


– It's been 40 years since Roman Polanski set foot on the US mainland, but the disgraced director is said to want to square things up and come back to America without facing jail time, TMZ reports. What needs squaring: his punishment for raping a 13-year-old girl in 1977 at Jack Nicholson's house. Lawyer Harland Braun reportedly wants long-sealed testimony in the Polanski case opened to prove that Polanski had cut a deal to spend just 48 days behind bars for the sexual assault. But when the director of Rosemary's Baby was released after serving 42 days, which included psychiatric evaluation, the judge (now deceased) who'd reportedly signed off on the deal allegedly had a change of heart and decided 50 years in prison was a more just punishment. Polanski fled to Paris, where he's been living as a fugitive since, shortly after he agreed to plead guilty to unlawful sexual intercourse and right before his sentencing, per Page Six. A Polish court ruling in a recent Polanski extradition case said Polanski, now 83, had honored his punishment with his original stint behind bars, prompting Braun to call for a Los Angeles County Superior Court to do the same. (Polanski was picked to lead the jury for France's equivalent of the Oscars this month—and women's rights advocates aren't happy.)

Expand this summary.

Known for his films, charges against him of statutory rape, and for his wife's murder by Charles Manson, Roman Polanski is a complex and controversial figure.

 Who Is Roman Polanski? Born Raimund Polanski, on August 18, 1933, in Paris, director Roman Polanski moved to Hollywood in 1968, making his American film debut with the classic Rosemary's Baby. In 1969, Polanski's pregnant wife, actress Sharon Tate, was brutally murdered by members of the Charles Manson cult, and in 1977 Polanski was indicted on six criminal counts for having sexual relations with a minor.

 Early Life in Europe Director, actor. Born Raimund Polanski, on August 18, 1933, in Paris, France. At the age of three, Polanski moved with his family to his father's native city of Krakow, Poland. In 1941, his parents were imprisoned in various Nazi concentration camps, where his mother eventually died in Auschwitz. In order to escape deportation, Polanski lived with several different Polish families until he was reunited with his father in 1944. ADVERTISEMENT Thanks for watching! Visit Website As a teenager, Polanski developed his acting skills in radio dramas and films. In 1954, he enrolled at the Polish National Film Academy in Lodz, where his body of work consisted of short films and documentaries. Upon his graduation, he appeared in a number of movies'many of which were the work of famed Polish director Andrzej Wajda, including Lotna (1959), Innocent Sorcerers (1960), and Samson (1961). In 1962, he directed his first feature-length film, Knife in the Water . The international recognition that followed, including an Academy Award nomination for Best Foreign Film, gave Polanski the chance to bring his movies to a more mainstream audience. The following year, he moved to London, where his next offering, the psychological thriller Repulsion (1965), was considered equally compelling by critics and audiences. ADVERTISEMENT Thanks for watching! Visit Website ADVERTISEMENT Thanks for watching! Visit Website

 Wife Sharon Tate's Murder In 1968, Polanski moved to Hollywood, making his American film debut with the classic thriller Rosemary's Baby, which featured exceptional performances by Mia Farrow and John Cassavetes. Despite his burgeoning film career, Polanski endured a devastating tragedy the following year when his pregnant wife, actress Sharon Tate, was brutally murdered by members of the Charles Manson cult. The extreme violence experienced by Polanski throughout his life was often reflected in his films, which tended to focus on the darker themes of alienation and evil-most notably, in the modern film noir Chinatown (1974), featuring John Huston, Jack Nicholson, and Faye Dunaway.

 Sexual Abuse Case In 1977, Polanski was indicted on six criminal counts for having sexual relations with a minor. The alleged act took place with a 13-year-old girl, in the home of the actor Jack Nicholson. Both Nicholson and his longtime girlfriend, actress Anjelica Huston, testified against Polanski when the highly publicized case was brought to trial. Polanski pleaded guilty to one charge of unlawful sexual intercourse and underwent six weeks of psychiatric evaluation at a state prison in California. Although additional criminal charges were still pending, Polanski fled the United States after his discharge. While authorities were not actively seeking him out, he continued to face the possibility of prison if he returned to America. In May 2018, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences expelled director due to their new ethical standards based on the #MeToo movement.

 Return to Filmmaking Polanski traveled to Europe and eventually settled in Paris, where he directed the critically acclaimed film Tess (1979)—an adaptation of Thomas Hardy's novel Tess of the d'Urbervilles. Throughout the 1980s, he concentrated on stage acting, appearing in productions of Amadeus (1981) and Metamorphosis (1988). Polanski returned to film work with the intense thriller Frantic (1988), starring Harrison Ford and Betty Buckley, followed by the erotic drama Bitter Moon (1992), with Hugh Grant and Polanski's current wife Emmanuelle Seigner. Both projects failed to impress critics, but Polanski reestablished himself in 1994 with Death and the Maiden, a film adaptation of Ariel Dorfman's play. In 1999, Polanski directed the supernatural thriller The Ninth Gate, which starred Johnny Depp. The film's critical and commercial reception was tepid. ||||| Exiled director Roman Polanski is making a new push to finally put to rest his decades-old child rape case — and return to the United States, his lawyer told The Post on Thursday.

 The “Chinatown” director’s attorney, Harland Braun, has requested that a Los Angeles judge unseal secret testimony that allegedly proves Polanski’s longtime contention that the judge in the 1977 case reneged on a deal for him to spend 42 days at Chino State Prison in Chino, Calif.

 Polanski completed the stint in the lockup and underwent psychiatric evaluation — and Braun now wants the court to honor the plea deal defense attorneys struck with the original LA prosecutor in the case, retired Deputy District Attorney Roger Gunson.

 “I believe there is no current excuse or justification for keeping DDA Roger Gunson’s sworn testimony under seal,” Braun wrote to Judge Scott Gordon in a February 6, 2017, letter obtained by The Post.

 “The truth is that the sealing of the Gunson statement makes it appear that someone fears its contents.”

 The 83-year-old Polanski was accused of drugging and raping a 13-year-old girl at the home of actor Jack Nicholson on March 10, 1977. Polanski had lured her there on the pretext of photographing her for French Vogue.

 The late Judge Laurence Rittenband initially signed off on the plea deal, but had a sudden change of heart and ordered Polanski to spend up to 50 years behind bars.

 Polanski fled the United States and has lived in Paris, France, ever since as a fugitive.

 In 2009, Polanski was captured while traveling through Zurich, Switzerland. He was jailed for over 300 days as US authorities tried unsuccessfully to extradite him.

 Braun has been working with Los Angeles prosecutors to resolve the case so that Polanski can travel freely throughout the world. |||||


The Coast Guard is coming down hard on the owners of a broken oil platform that has been allowed to leak off southeast Louisiana for more than 14 years.

 New federal estimates put the leak rate at the Taylor Energy Co. well at 10,500 gallons to 29,000 gallons of oil per day. That’s five to 13 times larger than government’s estimate from just a year ago, and would rank the Taylor Energy leak as one of the largest and longest-running oil spills in North America.

 Last week, the Coast Guard directed Taylor Energy to decide on a new containment plan and a contractor to do the work. The new method of containment “must eliminate the surface sheen and avoid the deficiencies associated with prior containment systems,” the Coast Guard wrote in an administrative order. The company will be fined up to $40,000 per day for failing to comply.

 Full containment of the leak could cost upwards of $1 billion, according to Taylor Energy. The company disputes the new leak estimates and the cause of the chronic sheens that often stretch for miles from the well site. According to scientists employed by Taylor Energy, the sheens are caused by oil and gas bubbling up from the oil-saturated seafloor, and not from leaky wells.

 Site of the Taylor Energy platform.

 Taylor Energy’s platform, known as MC-20 Saratoga, was destroyed by Hurricane Ivan on Sept. 15, 2004. The storm triggered an underwater mudslide that snapped the 550-foot-tall platform’s legs and buried a cluster of wells. Taylor plugged some of the 28 wells and added three containment domes.

 Several environmental groups have for years disputed Taylor’s claim that its multimillion-dollar containment effort had limited pollution to just a trickle.

 In 2013, Skytruth, an environmental group based in Shepherdstown, W. Va., that specializes in remote sensing and digital mapping, measured the sheen at more than 20 miles long. The Gulf Monitoring Consortium, made up of Skytruth and other groups, estimated a daily release rate of between 100 and 400 gallons.

 It wasn’t until 2016 that federal regulators began investigating how oil and gas was still leaking from the site. That same year, Taylor Energy sued the federal government over the remaining $432 million from a $666 million trust, which the company was required to create to pay for the leak response. Taylor Energy argued that its response worked and that the remaining funds should be returned.

 12 years after Gulf oil platform destroyed, feds start investigating environmental damage

 In a 2017 legal filing, the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement estimated the leak’s range at 42 to 2,300 gallons per day. But this year, the government cited the vastly larger daily estimate of up to 29,000 gallons.

 The Coast Guard noted the new rate in its recent order for additional containment work.

 “The worst-case estimate of the daily volume of release far exceeds previous estimates and is in the order of hundreds of barrels per day,” the Coast Guard told Taylor Energy in a letter.

 The Coast Guard’s order is long overdue, said Dustin Renaud, communications director for the Gulf Restoration Network.

 “The time to clean this up was 14 years ago,” he said. “Taylor Energy has shown nothing but negligence all this time.”

 Taylor Energy says the government won’t reveal how it arrived at the much larger estimate. The Coast Guard declined to share details on the estimate with NOLA.com | Times-Picayune until it can determine whether the information is “publicly releasable.”

 Will Pecue, Taylor Energy president, said the new estimates are “ridiculous” and “based on erroneous science.” He believes the larger estimates are aimed at bolstering the government’s case for retaining the trust’s remaining $432 million.

 “There is intent to dismiss the past record,” he said.

 The wells at the Taylor Energy site were relatively low in pressure. The former platform’s production of 1,100 barrels, or about 46,000 gallons, of oil per day, the company required pressurized gas injections. It’s unlikely the platform site could leak at the new estimated rates without pressurization, said Christopher Reddy, a marine scientist hired by Taylor Energy to assess the site.

 A more likely source of the sheen is the sediment, which Reddy described as “heavily contaminated” with oil. Recent sediment sampling showed traces of drilling fluid, likely used during the work to plug and decommission wells after Hurricane Ivan. The sheen on the water’s surface was also found to have drilling fluid. The fluid’s presence indicates the sheen is coming from the sediment and not subsurface wells, which would be pure crude oil and contain no drilling fluid, Reddy said.

 Large sheens on the water’s surface often correspond with disturbances on the seafloor, such as when a remote observation vehicle or divers collect samples.

 “When you touch the bottom, you create a sheen,” he said.

 Buried oil from Deepwater Horizon disaster still harming wetlands

 Reddy cautioned that any restoration or cleanup work at the site could release a large quantity of oil.

 Based on the high end of the new leak estimates, the site may have released 150 million gallons of oil over the past 14 years. That would make the total release on par with the estimated 168 gallons spilled during the BP oil oil disaster in 2010. But, as Taylor Energy’s representatives note, the sheen has never been documented reaching the shore, nor has it caused large-scale damage to fisheries or wildlife.

 It doesn’t take a BP-level disaster to harm the Gulf of Mexico, said Renaud of the Gulf Restoration Network. While the BP spill’s impact was heavily studied, the environmental damage from the Taylor Energy leak has largely been ignored.

 “When you have 10,000 to 30,000 gallons of oil leaking into the Gulf there can’t help but be environmental impacts,” he said. “We just don’t know what they are yet, and we need to change that.” ||||| On April 20, 2010, the oil drilling rig Deepwater Horizon, operating in the Macondo Prospect in the Gulf of Mexico, exploded and sank resulting in the death of 11 workers on the Deepwater Horizon and the largest spill of oil in the history of marine oil drilling operations. 4 million barrels of oil flowed from the damaged Macondo well over an 87-day period, before it was finally capped on July 15, 2010. On December 15, 2010, the United States filed a complaint in District Court against BP Exploration & Production and several other defendants alleged to be responsible for the spill.

 This webpage provides information and materials on EPA’s enforcement response to the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill, settlements with several of the defendants, including the record-setting settlement with BP Exploration & Production for an unprecedented $5.5 billion Clean Water Act penalty and up to $8.8 billion in natural resource damages.

 This webpage is limited to EPA’s enforcement-related activities only, and does not cover all legal or other actions against BP Exploration & Production and other parties for the spill, such as private party/class action settlements for medical claims and economic damages, or other actions against those responsible for the spill. The U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana has established the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill website for this purpose. In addition, links for additional information on the spill, cleanup activities and other responses are provided below.

 On this page:

 You may need a PDF reader to view some of the files on this page. See EPA’s About PDF page to learn more.

 Case and Settlement Information

 Top of Page

 Additional Information on the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill

 Top of Page |||||
What is a one-paragraph summary of the above article?

– A massive cleanup effort has been ordered on a quietly devastating oil spill that's been contaminating the Gulf of Mexico for 14 years. The Washington Post reports the US Coast Guard has mandated Taylor Energy "institute a … system to capture, contain, or remove oil" from the affected site off the Louisiana coast, infused with up to 30,000 gallons (about 700 barrels) of oil a day since Hurricane Ivan destroyed a company oil platform in 2004, per DOJ estimates. Contractors commissioned by Taylor Energy had previously said the oil spill was minimal, at the most around 2,000 gallons a day. If the company doesn't comply with the Coast Guard's new decree, it could be hit with a fine of up to $40,000 per day. To put it in context, the BP Deepwater Horizon spill dumped 4 million barrels of oil into the Gulf before it was capped after 87 days in July 2010; the Taylor spill could be at 3.5 million barrels. The Taylor spill remained hidden from the public by both the company and the Coast Guard for six years after the hurricane. It was discovered only when nonprofits and environmental groups investigating the BP spill came upon oil slicks that didn't appear to be related to that particular incident. Taylor Energy—which contends the oil "sheens" on the surface of the water aren't from leaking wells, but from oil and gas floating up from the oil-heavy seafloor—says full containment of the leak could cost more than $1 billion, the Times-Picayune reports. Still, "the time to clean this up was 14 years ago," a rep for the Gulf Restoration Network says. "Taylor Energy has shown nothing but negligence all this time." (The largest tanker oil spill in three decades happened earlier this year.)


Summarize this article:

It is an idea that flies in the face of the prevailing ethos on Wall Street and in many executive suites the last few decades. But there is sound economic theory behind the idea. “Efficiency wages” is the term that economists — who excel at giving complex names to obvious ideas — use for the notion that employers who pay workers more than the going rate will get more loyal, harder-working, more productive employees in return.

 Walmart’s experiment holds some surprising lessons for the American economy as a whole. Productivity gains have been slow for years; could fatter paychecks reverse that? Demand for goods and services has remained stubbornly low ever since the 2008 economic crisis. If companies paid people more, would it bring out more shoppers — benefiting workers and shareholders alike?

 Deep in a warren of windowless offices here, executives in early 2015 sketched out a plan to spend more money on increased wages and training, and offer more predictable scheduling. They refer to this plan as “the investments.”

 The results are promising. By early 2016, the proportion of stores hitting their targeted customer-service ratings had rebounded to 75 percent. Sales are rising again.

 That said, the immediate impact on earnings and the company’s stock price have been less rosy.

 The question for Walmart is ultimately whether that short-run hit makes the company a stronger competitor in the long run. Will the investments turn out to be the beginning of a change in how Walmart and other giant companies think about their workers, or just a one-off experiment to be reversed when the next recession rolls around?

 The future health of the United States economy, and the well-being of its workers, may well depend on the answer.

 Pressure From Investors

 On the morning of Feb. 19, 2015, Walmart’s 1.2 million employees across the United States gathered — many in front of their stores’ vast walls of televisions for sale — to watch a video feed by their chief executive. Doug McMillon, wearing a sweater and sitting in the office once occupied by the company founder Sam Walton, more or less acknowledged that Walmart had made a mistake. It had gone too far in trying to cut payroll costs to the bone.

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 “Sometimes we don’t get it all right,” Mr. McMillon said in the video. “Sometimes we make policy changes or other decisions and they don’t result in what we thought they were going to. And when we don’t get it right, we adjust.”

 What most store employees probably didn’t know was that Mr. McMillon and his executive team, who had been promoted into their jobs a year earlier, were under extraordinary pressure from investors. They needed to reverse a slide in business and fight off threats in all directions — dollar discounters on the low end, Amazon online, direct competitors like Target and countless rivals specializing in one slice of Walmart’s business, from grocery chains to home-improvement warehouses.

 People were shopping more — at Walmart’s rivals.

 The company offers its millions of shoppers a simple way to make their dissatisfaction known. On the back of sales receipts is a message, “Tell us about your visit today,” along with instructions to log on to a website and answer questions about the store: Was it clean? Were they able to get what they came for quickly? Were employees friendly?

 In early 2015, the answers that poured into Walmart’s global headquarters were, in a word, awful. The people paid to analyze the company tended to agree, too. A report by analysts at Wolfe Research in 2014 included photographs from a visit to Walmart of a sad-looking display of nearly empty bins of oranges and lemons and disorganized shelves of crackers.

 “Walmart U.S.’s relentless focus on costs does seem to have taken some toll on in-store conditions and stock levels,” they wrote. The analysts wryly added: “If an item is not on the shelf, you cannot sell it.”

 The company had been busy raising profits by cutting labor costs. The number of employees in the United States fell by 7 percent from early 2008 to early 2013, for example, a span in which the square footage of stores rose 13 percent.

 Some of that reflects technological advances, like self-checkout kiosks. But when Mr. McMillon and a new team came in to reverse the slide starting in early 2014, they diagnosed the problem as having taken the cost-cutting logic too far.

 From store managers nationwide, they heard that years of cost-cutting meant Walmart had become viewed as a last-ditch option for employment — not the place that ambitious people might want to work. They were under such pressure to keep labor costs low that the employees they hired showed little loyalty or career-building devotion to their jobs.

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 “We realized quickly that wages are only one part of it, that what also matters are the schedules we give people, the hours that they work, the training we give them, the opportunities you provide them,” said Judith McKenna, who became chief operating officer in late 2014, in a recent interview. “What you’ve got to do is not just fix one part, but get all of these things moving together.”

 That is how Walmart decided to build 200 training centers to offer a clearer path for hourly employees who want to get on the higher-paying management track. And it said it would raise its hourly pay to a minimum of $10 for workers who complete a training course and raise department manager pay to $15 an hour, from $12. It said it would offer more flexible and predictable schedules to hourly workers.

 The news from Bentonville made headlines worldwide. The federal minimum wage had been $7.25 since 2009, and the labor market had awarded meager pay gains for people at the lower end of the spectrum for decade, facts that helped increase Walmart’s bottom line. Now, the United States’ largest private employer — Walmart has about 2.3 million workers around the world — was signaling it was about to gingerly try a different approach, putting $2.7 billion where its mouth was.

 Walmart says its average pay for a full-time nonmanagerial employee is now $13.69 an hour, up 16 percent since early 2014. In the same span, consumer prices have risen 2.1 percent.

 Back to the Classroom

 On a Thursday morning in late summer, at a Walmart Supercenter No. 359 in Fayetteville, Walmart trainees followed instructors around to learn what this particular store was doing right, and wrong, on this particular day. Teresa Rasberry praised a display of University of Arkansas tailgating equipment — coolers, grills and folding chairs — complemented by a fluttering effect created by putting electric fans beneath overhead banners for Razorbacks football.

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 “See how it pulls the eye?” she asked the trainees. “Step back and think about how the customer sees it.”

 Not so good was an end display of Mr. Clean, in which the various colors of the cleaning solution were jumbled together. Lining up the bottles so they make vertical stripes of color pulls more buyers in, she said.

 “It may sound silly,” Ms. Rasberry said, “but it works! I’ve tested it myself!”

 Back in a classroom, Walmart department managers discussed why a $15.86 bottle of Clairol hair coloring might be a bad fit for a store located in a place with an $80,000 average income. Women in that income bracket are more likely to get their hair colored at a salon, an instructor, Amanda Forslund, explained.

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 This is one of the first of Walmart’s planned 200 training academies. New department managers will come in for two weeks of training covering general retail principles (customer service, inventory management) as well as specialized training for their specific area (the bakery or electronics, for example).

 Walmart’s pay increases got most of the attention. But the new training and prospect of better career paths for hourly staff members could be more significant in the long term.

 It’s not that the retail industry doesn’t offer potential paths to good incomes. Starting pay for an assistant store manager at Walmart is $48,500, and the manager of one of its large stores can make comfortably above $100,000.

 The problem — described by Walmart managers and people outside the company who study labor markets — is that there is no clear path for an entry-level worker to get there. Much training is impromptu, and chains have tended to view their hourly workers as interchangeable cogs rather than resources worth investing in.

 That reputation has been particularly strong at Walmart.

 “I didn’t used to think this would be something I would want to do, to work at Walmart,” said Garrett Watts, a 22-year-old newly promoted customer service manager at a store in Fayetteville. “There’s a stigma with it. It used to be, if you worked at a Walmart, it was the equivalent of a fast-food restaurant.”

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 He had gone to college for two years, suspended his education and was working as a desk clerk at a hotel when he switched to Walmart this year, lured not by the starting wage but by what he had heard from a friend about the potential to rise within a giant company. He was soon promoted to department manager and runs customer services for the store. He was hired at $9 an hour and now makes $13.

 “I wanted something that wasn’t a stopgap, but could be a real career,” Mr. Watts said. He is starting to set his sights on one of those $48,000-a-year assistant store manager jobs.

 ‘Step in the Right Direction’

 Walmart’s announcement of what it refers to as “the investments,” made during the all-staff videoconference in 2015, became something of a Rorschach test. To macroeconomists, it suggested that a falling unemployment rate was finally creating the response that theory suggests it should: employers raising wages to attract the workers they need.

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 To labor activists, it was a sign that political campaigns to raise the minimum wage were paying off. To Wall Street analysts, it was the company owning up to the weaknesses long apparent in customer surveys and sales numbers.

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 And in the company’s own framing, it was about doing the right thing. “It’s clear to me that one of the highest priorities today must be an investment in you, our associates,” Mr. McMillon said in the video.

 It was all of these things, Ms. McKenna acknowledged.

 The improving economy made it harder for Walmart to get good workers without paying more. Political momentum toward a higher minimum wage meant that entry-level pay would soon be rising in many places anyway. And executives really had concluded that customer service woes and slumping sales were because of underinvestment in employees.

 To some critics, though, it still amounted to a half-measure, and one framed to maximize public attention. “In our minds this is certainly a step in the right direction, but it’s typical Walmart in that it’s minimal and there’s a lot of spin on top of what’s really happening,” said Daniel Schlademan, a founder of the labor group Our Walmart, which wants the company to have a starting wage of $15 an hour.

 In particular, new hires typically do not receive the $10 minimum wage until they finish a training program that is supposed to take six months but frequently stretches longer. And a promised increase in the predictability and flexibility of hourly workers’ schedules is being tested in only 650 smaller “neighborhood market” stores. It has not been rolled out to the full 4,500 Walmarts.

 “The economic reality is that they put a great deal of pressure on managers to keep labor costs and hours down,” Mr. Schlademan said.

 And the actions fall well short of what Zeynep Ton, an associate professor of operations at the Sloan School of Business at M.I.T., calls a “good jobs strategy,” in which a retailer builds its entire operating philosophy around better-compensated staff members who are empowered to make decisions. Companies like Costco and the grocer Wegman’s have a base pay closer to that of what the retail activists seek and are successful by many measures. (Costco pays entry-level workers at least $13 an hour, with hourly pay reaching up to $22.50).

 But while Walmart’s changes aren’t as extensive as advocates would prefer, the company has shifted, in relative terms, up the industry’s pay scale. In early 2014, Walmart’s self-reported average full-time pay was 3.7 percent higher than the average hourly earnings for nonmanagerial workers at general merchandise stores calculated by the Labor Department. Now, it is 13.7 percent higher.

 “It’s about being competitive in the market and making sure the talent pool of applicants was the right talent pool,” Ms. McKenna said.

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 That sounds an awful lot like a reference to the concept of an “efficiency wage.”

 Above the Market Rate

 The idea is that, sometimes, it is in an employer’s best interest to pay more than necessary to get a worker into a job. The 18th-century economic thinker Adam Smith described the need to pay a goldsmith particularly well to dissuade him from stealing from you. More recently, economists (including Janet L. Yellen, the Federal Reserve chairwoman, who worked on these topics as an academic economist in the 1980s) have found evidence that people are more productive when they are paid above the market rate.

 An employee making more than the market rate, after all, is likely to work harder and show greater loyalty. Workers who see opportunities to get promoted have an incentive not to mess up, compared with people who feel they are in a dead-end job. A person has more incentive to work hard, even when the boss isn’t watching, when the job pays better than what you could make down the street.

 Economists have found evidence of this in practice in many real-world settings. Higher pay at New Jersey police departments, for example, led to better rates of clearing cases. At the San Francisco airport, higher pay led to shorter lines for passengers. Among British home care providers, higher pay meant less oversight was needed.

 What is interesting about this is that, if you look at what’s ailing the broader United States economy, it looks a lot like what you would expect if employers were, en masse, failing to understand the possibility of efficiency wages.

 Employers have succeeded at holding down labor costs. The “labor share” of national income — the portion of the national economic pie that goes to workers’ pay, as opposed to corporate profits and elsewhere — has fallen. And average pay for nonmanagerial workers has grown more slowly than the overall economy.

 This has coincided with disappointing results for the economy. Worker productivity has been rising slowly for the last decade, and prime working-age Americans are staying out of the work force in droves. This implies that plenty of people don’t see jobs out there that offer sufficient pay or opportunity to make the jobs worth doing.

 Individually, employers may think they are making rational decisions to pay people as little as possible. But that may be collectively shortsighted, if the unintended result is less demand for the goods and services they are all trying to sell to these same people.

 Just maybe, in other words, employers across the country are pushing down labor costs like Walmart, circa 2014 — and this is one of the major culprits behind disappointing economic results since the start of the 21st century.

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 “The management philosophy that became popular in the 1980s that led companies to cut pay for low-wage workers, fight unions and contract out work may have been profitable for the companies that practiced it in the short run,” said Alan Krueger, a Princeton economist and leading scholar of labor markets. “But in the long run it has raised inequality, reduced aggregate consumption and hurt overall business profitability.”

 Customer Surveys Improve

 If you buy that theory — and, to be clear, it is more theory than settled fact — it means that the results of the Walmart experiment matter a great deal. That implies that if large companies were to spend more to pay and train their workers, it could create gains for the economy as a whole. And it would ultimately be better for those same businesses.

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 So, 19 months in, what is Walmart finding?

 Those customer surveys that were so terrible at the start of 2015 have improved, with “clean, fast, friendly scores” rising for 90 consecutive weeks. Surveys by outside groups, like the investment banker Cowen & Company, point to more satisfied customers as well.

 That seems to have done the trick in reversing the sales slump. At stores open at least a year, sales were up 1.6 percent over a year earlier in the most recent quarter. That’s better than it sounds. Overall sales at general merchandise retailers are down 0.4 percent this year compared with last, according to census data.

 The profit landscape is less sunny. Operating income for Walmart’s United States stores was down 6 percent in the most recent quarter, reflecting higher labor costs and other new investments. The company’s stock has underperformed the overall United States stock market and an index of major retailers since the program was announced, suggesting investors are not convinced that these investments will pay a lucrative return anytime soon.

 Walmart Stock Has Lagged The retailer’s share price has underperformed the market since announcing investments in worker pay and training. Percent change from Feb. 18, 2015 % +20 +0 -20 -40 Walmart S&P 500 S&P Retail Index Apr '15 Jul '15 Oct '15 Jan '16 Apr '16 Jul '16 Oct '16 Percent change from Feb. 18, 2015 % +20 +0 -20 -40 Walmart S&P 500 S&P Retail Index Apr '15 Jul '15 Oct '15 Jan '16 Apr '16 Jul '16 Oct '16 Percent change from Feb. 18, 2015 % +20 +0 -20 -40 Walmart S&P 500 S&P Retail Index Apr '15 Jul '15 Oct '15 Jan '16 Apr '16 Jul '16 Oct '16

 But at the store level, managers describe a big shift in the kind of workers they can bring in by offering $10 an hour with a solid path to $15 an hour. “We’re attracting a different type of associate,” said Tina Budnaitis, the manager of Walmart No. 5260 in Rogers. “We get more people coming in who want a career instead of a job.”

 Senior executives speak in the language you might expect from a manager worried about paying an efficiency wage. “Our associates are an asset,” said Ms. McKenna, the chief operating officer. “You don’t try to have the very lowest cost of an asset. You try to have the right asset. So rather than thinking about the lowest cost, the question is how do you get the best productivity.”

 The question for Walmart, and perhaps the economy as a whole, is whether these changes turn out to be one-off, or part of a shifting philosophy of how work and compensation should work in a 21st-century megacorporation.

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 “Out of the gate, they’ve seen some improvement, but I think that’s because they were doing Retail 101 so poorly,” said Brian Yarbrough, a retail analyst at Edward Jones & Company. “The better question is what happens next year and the following year. The low-hanging fruit has been harvested.”

 Ms. McKenna declined to be specific about what might come next. And of course in a volatile corporate world, an unexpected recession or management change, or rise of a new competitor, could upend any plans. But she suggests that the company’s changes should not be viewed as a one-time event.

 “This is a journey,” she said.

 In the short term, the Walmart experiment shows pretty clearly that paying people better improves both the work force and the shoppers’ experience, but not profitability, at least not yet.

 Still, here is one other nugget the company has found. The extra wages it is paying its workers don’t all go out the door on payday, executives said. Spending at the stores by employees has risen — offering a possible metaphor for what those efficiency-wage economists argue might happen across the economy, if wages were to climb. ||||| So far, higher pay is hurting the retailer's profits. Something's gonna give.

 So far, higher pay is hurting the retailer's profits. Something's gonna give.

 Of course she likes more money.

 Over the past few years, I have had a brisk, if intermittent, correspondence with a professor of my acquaintance. Our subject: Wal-Mart. Specifically, wages at Wal-Mart, and whether (and then why) they could go up. |||||

– The New York Times has a deep dive on how Walmart bet big on its business by investing in its employees. In 2015 the retailer quietly implemented a new focus on employee welfare, increasing pay across the board and developing programs to make the management track more accessible to employees. Although the program hasn't helped Walmart's struggling stock price, it has allowed Walmart to increase sales, increase employee satisfaction, and claw back some trust and loyalty from consumers. According to its official fact sheet, Walmart pledged $2.7 billion over two years to increasing employee pay and benefits. The NYT reports that so far, the initiative has raised the average pay for a full-time non-managerial employee to $13.69 an hour, a 16% increase since 2014 and above average pay for retail employees. However, some business leaders and analysts remain skeptical. Writing for Bloomberg, columnist Megan McArdle notes that for a large, publicly held company like Walmart, profitability looms above all. If the company's renewed focus on worker welfare doesn't start paying real, quantifiable dividends, shareholders will push for it to return to a cheaper business model, even if that means relying on fewer workers.


Sales of pop icon Whitney Houston's records have soared since it was announced that the singer was found dead in a bathtub at Los Angeles' Beverly Hilton Hotel.

 Seven of Houston's records are currently in the top 10 on Amazon.com's best sellers in music list, and the legendary singer who died at the age of 48 was only edged out of the top spot by singer Adele, who took home six Grammy awards Sunday night. Houston's compilation "Whitney Houston - The Greatest Hits" comes in at number two.

 Fans instantly drove Houston to number one the iTunes charts as well, with her cover of Dolly Parton's "I Will Always Love You" shooting to the top of the site's charts and becoming the number one download. Her 1980s classic "I Wanna Dance With Somebody" is also in the top 10, and a number of the singer's other singles quickly re-entered the iTunes top 100.

 Apple has been accused of cashing in on Houston's unexpected death by hiking the price of the download since the news of her death broke. Houston's 2007 Ultimate Collection increased by £3 to £7.99 in the space of just 30 minutes, according to the website Digital Spy.

 It is expected that mourning fans will keep the singer's albums and singles at the top of the charts over the next few weeks. ||||| Sony Music has come under fire after it increased the price of a Whitney Houston album on Apple's iTunes Store hours after the singer was found dead.

 The music giant is understood to have lifted the wholesale price of Houston's greatest hits album, The Ultimate Collection, at about 4am California time on Sunday. This meant that the iTunes retail price of the album automatically increased from £4.99 to £7.99.

 Houston's The Ultimate Collection, originally released in 1997, was the second top-selling album on iTunes on Monday morning. Apple returned the album to its original price late on Sunday.

 Music fans described the move as a cynical attempt to capitalise on Houston's in-demand greatest hits records. The price hike came as tributes flooded in for the singer, whose catalogue includes hits such as I Wanna Dance With Somebody and I Will Always Love You. Houston was found dead in her Los Angeles hotel room on Saturday afternoon, local time, at the age of 48.

 The change happened when Sony Music, which owns the rights to much of Houston's back catalogue, increased the wholesale price of The Ultimate Collection. This automatically boosted the retail price of the popular album, although Apple is responsible setting the price paid by music fans.

 It is understood that the change occurred after Sony Music reviewed Houston's iTunes catalogue after the singer was pronounced dead.

 One insider close to the situation said the price hike was not a "cynical" move – but that the wholesale price of Houston's The Ultimate Collection was wrong. The change in wholesale price boosted the album's retail price on iTunes.

 Houston's The Ultimate Collection and Whitney – The Greatest Hits were in the top three albums on iTunes at noon on Monday.

 Apple and Sony Music declined to comment. |||||

Write a summary.

– On Saturday, a Whitney Houston greatest-hits album cost about $8 in the UK iTunes store; but shortly after the singer was found dead, it had jumped to a little more than $12.50. The changed sparked a customer uproar. "It is just a case of iTunes cashing in on the singer's death, which in my opinion is totally parasitic," said one, according to DigitalSpy. But the Guardian reports that it was Sony, not iTunes, that was responsible for the change—which has now been reversed. Sony boosted the wholesale price of Houston's 1997 Ultimate Collection, which iTunes currently says isn't available in its US store. It was the second-bestselling album as of this morning, the Guardian notes. Sony's change wasn't "cynical," said an insider: Sony reviewed Houston's catalog after her death, and found that the wholesale price was simply wrong. Regardless of the controversy, Houston's sales are soaring since her death, ABC News notes, with seven of her records in Amazon's music top 10. (Click to read about an eerie twist in Houston's death, involving her daughter.)


Article:
'Get Out': A Terrifically Topical — And Terrifying — Satire

 Enlarge this image toggle caption Justin Lubin/Universal Pictures Justin Lubin/Universal Pictures

 Horror parodies are seldom as funny, and never as scary, as fright-flicks that play their scares, er, straight. Jordan Peele — the shorter half of the 21st century's funniest sketch-comedy duo — understands this, and that's why Get Out, his debut feature as writer and director, is so truly, madly, mercilessly entertaining, even when it makes you want to jump out of your skin. It is small-c catholic in its tastes, liberally sampling elements of Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, Rosemary's Baby and Invasion of the Body Snatchers before morphing into the most potent racial revenge fantasy since Django Unchained. But a parody it's not: It's as gnarly as Green Room, 2016's nerviest thriller, whose villains wore their bigotry on their tattooed arms. What makes Get Out stand out is that its social critique — usually present in the horror-survival genre as subtext — is very much its text.

 That's a writing trick Peele and his creative partner, Keegan-Michael Key, used over and over again through five seasons of their marvelous Comedy Central series, one that boasted production values that stood head and shoulders above anything else in sketch TV. Key & Peele's movie sendups looked like real movies, and now we have a good idea why: Peele is a world-class filmmaker. (Nearly all Key & Peele episodes were directed by Peter Atencio, who also directed the two comics in last year's Keanu. That was a funny movie, but it had nothing like the invention, the intensity or the shimmering, righteous anger that Get Out possesses.) His movie is as much a triumph of craft as of inspiration.

 Get Out's cautionary tale concerns Chris (Daniel Kaluuya), a 26-year-old photographer, whose white girlfriend, Rose Armitage (Allison Williams from HBO's Girls, though her carbon-fiber jawline makes you wonder how she hasn't shown up in an Alien sequel yet), takes him home to meet her affluent parents. She hasn't told them the man she is dating is black, but she assures Chris their liberal credentials are in good standing and that he'll be welcomed unconditionally. Chris is wary, but he loves Rose and trusts her, so he overrules his better judgment — and the warnings of his TSA agent best pal, Rod (LilRel Howery, marvelous in a comic supporting role) — and they drive upstate. When a cop demands Chris's ID after a minor accident even though Rose was the one driving, Rose calls out the cop for profiling even though Chris is eager to comply. In Rose, it seems, Chris has found a true and constant ally.

 The less I tell you about what happens once she introduces Chris to her folks — Catherine Keener and Bradley Whitford, perfectly cast as a smug psychiatrist and a smug neurosurgeon, respectively — the better. Let it suffice to say that Allison's louche med-student brother (Caleb Landry Jones) can't refrain from commenting admiringly on Chris's "genetic makeup" and that the Armitages are weirdly insistent Chris meet every one of their neighbors, one of whom cheerfully observes that "black is in fashion again." Green Room's gaptoothed skinheads had nothing on these cardigan-wearing, tea-sipping Clinton voters. Even more unsettling is the fact that the Armitages' black housekeeper (Betty Gabriel) and their black gardener/handyman (Marcus Henderson) evince a Stepford-like servility when they're around company and behave even more strangely when they think they're alone.

 But it takes a long time for the microaggressions Chris experiences at the hands of the Armitages and their confederates to harden into something more directly threatening — long enough for Chris, and for us, to wonder if he's just being paranoid. Rose listens to him airing these concerns with saintly patience, but Peele's handheld camera in these scenes keeps the anxiety high. It's rare to find a first-time director so fully in command of his tone. But if 90 percent of directing is casting (an adage that's been variously ascribed to John Ford, Elia Kazan and many others) then Peele started at 90: His actors are top-to-bottom great, but Kaluuya (whose expressive face you may recall from "15 Million Merits," perhaps the most upsetting of all Black Mirror episodes) is especially magnetic, letting us see the grinding gearworks behind his eyes without speaking a word.

 That other 10 percent we have to give to Peele. He opens the picture with a long steadicam shot of a young black man's attempt to locate an address in a suburban, presumably majority-white neighborhood after dark, while a car creeps along too slowly beside him. We're primed to expect a Trayvon Martin-esque killing, and the way the scene resolves is the first of Peele's many rug-pulls. It's a powerful sequence, but Get Out might've been even stronger without it. This prologue seems inserted to pre-empt complaints that Get Out takes too long to Get Going. It doesn't. Its pace, like everything else about it, is just right.

 And righteous. ||||| A memorable horror flick if ever there was one, “Get Out” starts with a great title and a promising idea—a black man’s fear as he walks at night down a street in an affluent white suburb. Then it delivers on that promise with explosive brilliance. Jordan Peele’s debut feature scrupulously honors the genre’s conventions. It’s creepy, funny and scary—truly scary. What makes it so special, despite some obvious flaws, is its prime location at the intersection of horror and race. No preachments are preached, no parables are dwelled on. This film never strays from the path of entertainment, yet the horrors of racism lurk in... ||||| Published on Oct 5, 2016

 A young African American man visits his Caucasian girlfriend's cursed family estate...

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 A young African-American man visits his white girlfriend’s family estate, he becomes ensnared in a more sinister real reason for the invitation.

 Now that Chris and his girlfriend, Rose have reached the meet-the-parents milestone of dating, she invites him for a weekend getaway upstate with Missy and Dean.

 At first, Chris reads the family’s overly accommodating behavior as nervous attempts to deal with their daughter’s interracial relationship, but as the weekend progresses, a series of increasingly disturbing discoveries lead him to a truth that he could have never imagined.

 GET OUT Trailer

 A Movie directed by Jordan Peele

 Cast : Daniel Kaluuya, Bradley Whitford, Allison Williams, Betty Gabriel

 Release Date : 24 February 2017 (USA)

 Genre : Horror

 GET OUT Trailer

 © 2016 - Universal Pictures ||||| Justin Lubin © 2016 Universal Pictures

 You need no more than a passing knowledge of horror movie tropes to immediately recognize the opening scene of writer-director Jordan Peele’s horror satire Get Out. And you need no more than a passing awareness of the past five years’ news cycle—or what it’s like to inhabit a black body in America—to immediately recognize the way in which Peele cleverly repurposes those tropes. A young black man (perennial scene-stealer Lakeith Stanfield) walks down the dimly lit sidewalk of a quiet suburban street, fumbling around on his cellphone for directions to his destination. A white car suddenly appears and begins to creep alongside him, gently playing the 1939 novelty song “Run, Rabbit, Run” by English comedy duo Flanagan and Allen. Instantly, his defenses are triggered. “Nope. Not today,” he mutters anxiously to himself, turning back the other way. “You know how they like to do motherfuckers out here.” But, not unlike the black teen whose name became a rallying cry for the Black Lives Matter movement, he can’t avoid trouble. A masked individual exits the vehicle, attacks, and drags him toward the car.

 This is the essence of Get Out, which only grows more darkly relevant as the main story gets going, masterfully unfurling all of the real-life anxieties of Existing While Black while simultaneously mining that situation for all its twisted absurdity. Rising English actor Daniel Kaluuya stars as Chris, a photographer who is about to embark on a weekend trip in upstate New York to meet his white girlfriend’s family for the first time. This girlfriend, Rose, is played by Girls’ Allison Williams, whose on-screen persona as one of the foremost basic Beckys of the millennial generation has never before been put to such pitch-perfect use. And so it’s no surprise that Chris is a bit worried that she hasn’t mentioned to her parents that her boyfriend is black, or that she’s utterly oblivious to his concerns, insisting that “they are not racist.” (After all, she explains, her dad would have voted for Barack Obama a third time if he could have.)

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 If you’ve seen Rosemary’s Baby, The Stepford Wives, or Night of the Living Dead—all touchstones that Peele has cited as influences on his screenplay—you probably have a good idea of where things go from here. When Chris and Rose arrive, her parents’ estate is a mansion-size symbol of white affluence buried deep in the woods, while their zombielike black groundskeeper and maid seem to be possessed by the spirit of Uncle Tom. Peele puts the audience directly into Chris’ shoes as he navigates this new world that is at once utterly strange and all too familiar to him. He’s accustomed to the kind of casual racism tossed off by every white person he meets that weekend, whether it’s from Rose’s family or the prying guests that stop by for the family’s (initially) mysterious annual gathering. (“Is it true? Is it … better?” an older lady asks Rose immediately after fondling Chris’ biceps.) Yet he’s bewildered by the uncanny subservience of the only other black people he encounters. “It’s like they missed the movement,” Chris confides over the phone to his best friend Rod, a TSA agent, when he is able to slip away from the crowd. (As Rod, The Carmichael Show star Lil Rel Howery expertly serves as both comic relief and a surrogate for black audience members, warning Chris about the dangers of being around too many white people in an unfamiliar environment.)

 Conspiracy Thrillers Movie Club Join Slate’s Sam Adams and leading culture critics as they watch and review some of the best conspiracy thrillers of the past decades, from The Manchurian Candidate to Get Out.

 Peele also draws inspiration from Stanley Kubrick, most obviously when the man in the opening scene compares the suburban streets to “a fucking hedge maze,” but also in the hallucinatory scenes in which Chris is placed under hypnosis by Rose’s psychiatrist mother (Catherine Keener), which feature images of Chris tumbling off into space that are soundtracked by micropolyphonic chanting reminiscent of the Györgi Ligety music Kubrick used in 2001: A Space Odyssey. But for all its nods to its horror forebears, Get Out, above all, wants to ensure that you walk away knowing that the black experience can still teeter on the precipice of being a nightmare, even in 2017. That even surface-level “admiration” for black culture on the part of white people can give way to insidious interactions that are, at best, a persistent annoyance black people must learn to laugh off, and, at worst, the kind of fetishization that only conceals deadlier preconceptions.

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– A young black man ventures to white suburbia to meet his girlfriend's parents but soon realizes he better Get Out in the first feature film from director Jordan Peele of comedic duo Key & Peele. (He also wrote the script.) The satirical horror film with its fair share of funny moments currently has a rare 100% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Critics explain why: It takes "a promising idea—a black man's fear as he walks at night down a street in an affluent white suburb" and "delivers on that promise with explosive brilliance," writes Joe Morgenstern at the Wall Street Journal. "It's creepy, funny and scary—truly scary" and "the horrors of racism lurk in every gleefully lurid frame," adds Morgenstern, who was left wondering how Peele showed "such confident technique" in his directing debut. The main character, Chris, played by Daniel Kaluuya, comes to recognize the "uncanny subservience of the only other black people he encounters" during his weekend away in this "instant comedy-horror classic about the hilarious nightmare that is existing while black," Aisha Harris writes at Slate. She won't give too much away but says the film, with inspiration from The Stepford Wives and Night of the Living Dead, is "darkly relevant." It's just "so truly, madly, mercilessly entertaining, even when it makes you want to jump out of your skin," Chris Klimek writes at NPR. He agrees "it's rare to find a first-time director so fully in command of his tone," but he also commends a "top-to-bottom great" cast. Kaluuya is "especially magnetic, letting us see the grinding gearworks behind his eyes without speaking a word." Peele said he wanted to make a movie he'd never seen before. "Mission accomplished," writes Peter Travers at Rolling Stone. "For a first-time director, working from his own script, Peele comes up aces … juggling horror and laughs to skewer the hypocrisies of race in America," he writes. He adds Allison Williams is "dynamite," but Kaluuya "is a star in the making."