industry

Decades of Hollywood empire-building ended with a quake in 2017 when Australian media mogul Rupert Murdoch decided to sell much of his Fox entertainment holdings amid the rise of Netflix and other tech giants.

This week, another titan who has been instrumental in shaping American media and telecommunications began to unwind his Hollywood holdings.

Brian L. Roberts — who with his father built Comcast into a cable TV and internet colossus — announced his company would spin off its prestigious NBCUniversal unit into a separate publicly traded company sometime next year.

The move reverses Roberts’ purchase of NBCUniversal in 2011 — a bold bet that created a behemoth with popular programming and cable pipes to pump that content into consumer homes.

Comcast’s breakup marks the close of a Hollywood era, one dominated for 40 years by a class of maverick moguls: Murdoch, CNN founder Ted Turner, Viacom’s Sumner Redstone, cable titan John Malone and the Philadelphia-based Roberts family.

Now, a new crop of leaders has emerged, reflecting Silicon Valley’s vast influence over the film and and TV business, which has been upended by streaming and, now, artificial intelligence.

“There was a time that Murdoch, Malone and Brian were really industry leaders who could affect change,” said Bank of America managing director Jessica Reif Ehrlich in an interview. “That’s not true any longer.”

Analysts widely believe Monday’s announcement is a prelude to eventual sales of both Comcast and NBCUniversal, a theory that Comcast rejects.

Roberts, 67, told analysts he will remain involved in both NBCUniversal and Comcast after the separation. Still, he plans to relinquish his chief executive role after 25 years and a half century at Comcast. Roberts has picked trusted associates to run each firm, and his family will continue to hold controlling shares of both companies.

But the shift underscores a dramatic loss of clout by Comcast and other traditional media enterprises. Netflix, Apple, Amazon and Google’s YouTube have diminished the industry’s financial pillars — box office receipts and cable programming fees — and given consumers control over when and how they watch programming.

Murdoch was the first to flee. In 2014, he was rebuffed in his $80-billion bid to beef up his 21st Century Fox by buying HBO, CNN and other Time Warner assets. Murdoch’s defeat led to the Fox asset sale to Walt Disney Co.

Last fall, Comcast made a run for the same properties with a plan to unite NBCUniversal with Warner Bros.

Instead, 43-year-old tech scion David Ellison — with help from his billionaire father, Oracle software co-founder Larry Ellison — scooped up the prize for a staggering $111 billion.

The pending blockbuster merger of Ellison’s Paramount Skydance and Warner Bros. Discovery is expected to reshape the industry and leave NBCUniversal increasingly vulnerable to a takeover.

“It looks like Comcast’s NBCUniversal was left standing on the dance floor without a partner,” MoffettNathanson media analyst Robert Fishman wrote in a Tuesday note to investors.

Paramount’s play for Warner Bros. came a month after Ellison finalized his family’s purchase of cash-strapped Paramount from Shari Redstone. The one-two acquisition punch would propel the Ellison family to top-tier moguls with influence over CNN, CBS News, HBO, Turner Classic Movies and two historic Hollywood studios.

“It’s a flagging industry. … The industry will have to consolidate to survive,” said C. Kerry Fields, a USC Marshall School of Business economics professor. “Those who have content plus [streaming] distribution are going to be the winners.”

Roberts knows distribution. His father in 1963 bought his first cable TV system in Tupelo, Miss. It was a quirky bet for Ralph Roberts, who figured his belts and suspenders business would soon be toast as beltless polyester pants became the rage.

Brian Roberts joined Comcast as a high school intern, setting up supermarket promotions. In 1975, he became a trainee cable installer, climbing poles and stringing cables. He joined Comcast full time in 1981 after graduating the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.

For more than 30 years, he worked in tandem with his dad. With key associates, they built the nation’s foremost cable TV service — then the entertainment gateway — and grew stronger by offering internet, phone and then wireless service.

Analysts credit the 2011 purchase of NBCUniversal as a huge success; Comcast rescued a company that was on the ropes due to General Electric’s under-investment.

Over the years, Comcast rebuilt NBC and Spanish-language Telemundo, writing big checks for the best sports rights, including the FIFA World Cup, NFL, NBA and Major League Baseball.

Comcast also recognized value in theme parks and invested heavily, building Universal Studios as a formidable rival to Disney. NBC finished the season in first-place among traditional TV broadcasters and its L.A. film studio is an industry leader.

But the world has changed.

“One of the defining characteristics of this company has always been our willingness to look ahead, embrace change, and position ourselves for the future,” Roberts told analysts during a Monday call.

Reif Ehrlich, the Bank of America analyst, said Comcast needed to do something — or watch its stagnant stock sink farther.

Wall Street has punished the company amid steep losses in its cable TV and broadband internet units, and because NBCUniversal has historically generated its biggest profits from its cable channels.

In January, Comcast spun off those networks, including CNBC, MS NOW, USA Network and Golf Channel, to create a new entity called Versant.

But the move failed to boost Comcast’s battered stock, which dropped 3.3% on Wednesday to $23.73.

Five years ago, Comcast stock topped $50 a share.

“It was just a very challenged market on both sides, and it’s getting worse, not better,” Reif Ehrlich said.

Comcast faces competitors beyond traditional telecommunications firms, including AT&T and T-Mobile. SpaceX’s Starlink provides satellite internet service.

NBCUniversal must jockey alongside other well-capitalized players, including Amazon, Netflix and Disney. NBC’s streaming service, Peacock, has struggled to get traction. It counted 46 million paying subscribers as of the first quarter, a fraction of Netflix’s 325 million and the nearly 132 million subscribers of Disney+.

“It’s kind of a subscale player,” Reif Ehrlich said. “It’s just a real battle, and NBC has expensive sports rights.”

Roberts conceded the difficult landscape on the analyst call.

“The world is changing faster than ever,” Roberts said. “Technology, consumer behavior, competition, capital requirements are all evolving at an unprecedented pace … When we acquired NBCUniversal, more than 15 years ago, the industry looked very different.”

He will retain control for at least three years. The NBCUniversal spin-off is envisioned as a tax-free transaction for shareholders, providing a short-term buffer from deal-making to preserve that structure.

NBCUniversal could be up for grabs by 2029 — a pivotal year when the NFL is expected to open negotiations for a new round of broadcast rights. That auction is expected to draw heavy interest from Amazon and other streamers — not just veterans Fox, NBC, Disney’s ESPN and Paramount’s CBS.

“Brian Roberts has already proven his willingness to play the long game and with continued control should be the end decision maker,” Fishman said.

Much like Murdoch, who is now 95 and partially retired.

“Rupert was the smartest guy in Hollywood — he got out at the top,” Reif Ehrlich said.

He entrusted power to his 54-year-old son, Lachlan, who has been busy remaking Fox after the 2019 sale to Disney, which included Fox’s film and TV studios, streaming service Hulu and the FX and National Geographic channels. Fox also unloaded its regional cable sports networks — a savvy move before that business cratered.

The Murdochs kept Fox Sports, the Fox broadcast network, TV stations, Fox News Channel and the studio lot.

The company has been expanding. Lachlan Murdoch led Fox’s purchase of Tubi, which provides free TV channels and movies for smart televisions, keeping Fox in the streaming game. The company launched Fox News and weather products, and subscription service Fox One, which streams the company’s sports and news.

Earlier this month, Lachlan Murdoch stunned the industry by agreeing to pay $22 billion for Roku, a leading streaming platform that reaches 100 million viewers worldwide. Murdoch called the proposed purchase “a defining moment for Fox.”

Published on
02/07/2026 – 15:24 GMT+2

European car suppliers and manufacturers are divided over Brussels’ “Made in Europe” strategy, an effort to shield the EU market from Chinese competition.

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The EU car industry is facing fierce competition from China, threatening hundreds of thousands of jobs across the bloc. To address the issue, the EU is preparing the so-called Industrial Accelerator Act, which is designed to favour electric vehicles constructed mostly with European components in public procurement and public support schemes.

However, EU car suppliers and manufacturers disagree over the proposed law, currently under discussion by EU countries and the European Parliament, which sets a 70 percent local content threshold for electric vehicles.

According to the European Association of Automotive Suppliers (CLEPA), the Commission’s proposal is a step in the right direction. Based on a study commissioned from management consultancy Roland Berger that Euronews has seen, plug-in hybrid electric vehicles and battery-electric vehicles manufactured in Europe already contain between 80 percent and 90 percent made-in-Europe components.

Consequently, it considers the Commission’s 70 percent threshold to be achievable.

But the European Automobile Manufacturers’ Association (ACEA) is pushing for a different methodology, under which regulators would assess finished vehicles instead of the local content in vehicle components.

“A vehicle is far more than the sum of its parts. Its value also lies in the R&D, advanced engineering and highly skilled workforce behind it,” ACEA said in a position paper published on 1 July.

CLEPA responded that under this methodology, a finished vehicle would require only 50 percent EU-made parts and components, with the remaining 20 percent coming from R&D, design and other activities.

This 20 percentage-point dilution of the requirement for EU-made parts “could result in the loss of 350,000 jobs”, CLEPA warned, saying the Commission’s component-level approach would “safeguard the existing manufacturing base”.

“What we are looking at right now is significant competition from best-cost countries, and the dragon in the room is China,” CLEPA Secretary General Benjamin Krieger told Euronews.

“A ‘Made in Europe’ threshold that ignores where the actual parts are built is a label that ignores the European worker,” he said.

European airlines and airports call for flexibility to suspend digital border system amid severe delays.

The European Union’s new digital border check system is causing severe disruption to travel, with passengers facing five-hour queues and departure gates closing with planes only half-full, industry representatives have warned.

In an open letter published online on Wednesday, the top representative bodies for Europe’s airports and airlines said that delays caused by the bloc’s recently-implemented Entry/Exit System (EES) had reached a “critical point”.

“The current implementation of the EES is creating severe operational consequences, disrupting passengers and putting border authorities, airports and airlines under unsustainable pressure,” Airports Council International Europe, Airlines for Europe, and the International Air Transport Association said in a joint letter addressed to European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.

“We therefore urge your immediate intervention before the situation deteriorates further during the peak summer travel season.”

With European airports expected to handle 40 million more passengers in July and August than the previous two months, EU leaders “must take stock of the reality of the current situation and of what our air transport system will face over the coming weeks”, the lobby groups said.

“Without additional flexibility, existing challenges will inevitably intensify,” they said.

“As representatives of Europe’s aviation sector, we have a responsibility to warn that this would result in a significant worsening of an already very difficult situation for passengers.”

Warning that the travel disruption was undermining the reputation of the EU and European tourism, the industry groups said it was crucial that the continent continued to be an “efficient, welcoming and competitive” destination.

“Reports already suggest that some international travellers are reconsidering trips to Europe because of the prospect of excessive border delays,” they said.

Until the stability of the EES is ensured and adequate staffing levels are in place, EU member states should be immediately granted the flexibility to “completely suspend” the new system whenever passenger numbers exceed the “operational capacity” of border facilities, the lobby groups said.

The World Travel and Tourism Council, the world’s largest representative body for tourism-related businesses, said on Wednesday that it endorsed the letter’s calls, warning that the delays could put up to 41 million arrivals and $45.4bn in visitor spending at risk.

“If lengthy delays become accepted practice, travellers will look elsewhere,” WTTC President and CEO Gloria Guevara said in a statement.

“Europe cannot afford to compromise its competitiveness or the experience it offers millions of visitors.”

The European Commission did not immediately respond to a request for comment sent by Al Jazeera outside of regular business hours.

The EU began rolling out the EES in October as a replacement for passport stamping.

The system records each traveller’s name, passport information, fingerprints and facial images, and his or her date and place of entry and exit.

The European Commission announced that the ESS was “fully operational” across the Schengen Area in April, but the system has been blamed for lengthy delays since its introduction, including cases of flights leaving before many of their passengers were able to board.

June 30 (Asia Today) — South Korea is seeking to connect the growth of its commercial space industry with stronger national security capabilities as emerging technologies blur the boundaries between the private and public sectors.

The expansion of security concerns into space, drones and artificial intelligence has increased the importance of the Korea AeroSpace Administration, which is responsible for developing the country’s aerospace industry.

The agency is working with the National Intelligence Service and other government organizations on satellite cybersecurity and broader aerospace security policies.

Hyunjoon Kwon, director general for aerospace policy at the agency, told Asia Today in an interview Friday that space is no longer solely a scientific field.

“Space has moved beyond science to become a domain that can affect both security and industry,” Kwon said. “We need a mutually reinforcing relationship between the market and the public sector.”

Asked how the global space security environment is changing, Kwon said competition is no longer limited to the number of satellites a country possesses.

“The key question is how reliably a country can use and protect satellite communications and satellite imagery,” he said.

Space-based services have been used directly in military operations and critical national infrastructure since the start of the Russia-Ukraine war, Kwon said.

Countries also face increasingly complex threats, including GPS jamming and spoofing, disruptions to satellite communications, cyberattacks and the collision or uncontrolled reentry of objects in space.

Kwon said the agency is developing a national space situational awareness system to strengthen South Korea’s ability to monitor and predict space-related risks.

It is also preparing a cybersecurity response framework to protect space-based services used by the private sector, government and military.

South Korea has rapidly accumulated capabilities in launch vehicles, satellite development and satellite data applications, Kwon said. Its military space capabilities have also expanded.

However, the country still needs to strengthen its domestic production of critical materials, components and software, he said.

Other areas requiring improvement include space situational awareness, satellite cybersecurity and the creation of a sustainable commercial market for space services.

“That is why the growth of private space companies and greater independence in core technologies are becoming even more important,” Kwon said.

Cooperation among the private sector, government and military has entered a stage of institutional development since the establishment of the Korea AeroSpace Administration, he said.

The cooperative channels include a future defense science and technology policy council with the Defense Ministry, an aerospace project memorandum with the Defense Acquisition Program Administration and a satellite cybersecurity consultative body with the National Intelligence Service.

Kwon said the cooperation now extends beyond individual projects to include policy, technology and security.

The agency is seeking to create a structure in which private-sector technology is connected to government and national security requirements, while public and defense demand supports the growth of commercial companies.

Kwon also discussed the government’s recently announced strategy to foster innovative companies in emerging security industries.

“Aerospace is a strategic field that influences both security and industry, extending beyond the boundaries of science and technology,” he said.

Satellite communications, satellite data, unmanned aircraft and space materials and components have significant commercial growth potential while also meeting direct security needs, Kwon said.

The agency plans to focus on establishing a cycle in which the creation of new industries strengthens national security capabilities and security demand encourages further technological innovation.

The plans include developing core technologies for a space data center under the K-Moonshot initiative and building a national platform that will make satellite information available for broader use.

The agency also plans to develop artificial intelligence-powered unmanned aircraft and electric or hybrid vertical takeoff and landing aircraft.

— Reported by Asia Today; translated by UPI

© Asia Today. Unauthorized reproduction or redistribution prohibited.

Original Korean report: https://www.asiatoday.co.kr/kn/view.php?key=20260629010010198

We made it. With just days left in Phase I voting, this week marks the last issue of The Envelope, and the last edition of this letter from the editor, until we return with a crop of newly minted Emmy nominees in August.

Until then, may you have a summer as magical as a German soccer fan’s road trip through the American South — and enjoy reading the below highlights from our coverage.

Cover story: ‘Industry’

(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)

How do “Industry” stars Myha’la and Marisa Abela want the series to end? Let’s just say they are as unsentimental about their characters as series creators Mickey Down and Konrad Kay.

“I want there to be a huge statue of Harper Stern in front of J.P. Morgan,” Myha’la says of her hard-charging trader. “And a bird s— on her arm.”

“In her mouth,” interjects Abela, who plays Harper’s No. 1 frenemy Yasmin Kara-Hanani.

After the laughter ringing through the room subsides, though, Abela does allow for a moment of reverence — for the HBO drama if not for the disreputable people who populate it. “I don’t know if I need Yasmin to be happy at the end of it,” the actor says, reflecting on her character’s emergence as a Ghislaine Maxwell type in the Season 4 finale. “I know I want it to feel worthy of everything that has come before… What I love about the show is that [the writers] don’t often backtrack. You commit to something and then you have to live with the f— fallout. Which is savage.”

Read more of our conversation in this week’s cover story.

Writers Roundtable

(Christina House / Los Angeles Times)

Though he joined The Envelope’s 2026 Emmy Writers Roundtable to discuss the return of another beloved comedy, “The Comeback,” we couldn’t resist asking Michael Patrick King about the intense fan reactions to his “Sex and the City” revival “And Just Like That…”

“What happened was, it was really well made, but it wasn’t their Carrie,” he said. “Even though you stand behind it, you go, ‘Wow, that’s a surprise. I thought that they would be interested in 57-year-old women who still hadn’t figured everything out. And instead they wanted them to be 35 and still allowed to be lost.’”

For more juicy tidbits from the minds of of TV’s top writers, be sure to check out the full conversation, which also included Megan Gallagher (“All Her Fault”), Jonathan Glatzer (“The Audacity”), Andrew Guest (“Wonder Man”), Bruce Miller (“The Testaments”) and Sonja Warfield (“The Gilded Age”).

How Connor Hines won over Ryan Murphy

Writer Connor Hines, who translated the real-life relationship between JFK Jr. and Carolyn Bessette into FX’s major hit “Love Story.”

(Evan Mulling / For The Times)

While our On Writing series of screenwriter essays are always revealing — about the inspiration behind a series, the process of adaptation or the making of a major plot turn, to name just a few — I don’t remember one as candid about the art of the pitch as Connor Hines’. In this week’s issue, the writer behind “Love Story: John F. Kennedy Jr. and Carolyn Bessette” explains how he prepared to present his vision for the new anthology’s first season to one of TV’s most powerful producers, Ryan Murphy. As it turns out, landing the meeting is not the (only) hard part.

“I spent roughly three months in the trenches with [producers] Brad [Simpson] and Nina [Jacobson], deepening and refining my presentation [to Murphy] — one that I’d recite in the shower, on runs, at Trader Joe’s, while I drove,” Hines writes. “It was a crash course in storytelling, producing, and understanding the alchemy that propelled so many of Ryan’s shows into the zeitgeist.”

More stories from our June 16 issue

The Directors Guild of America on Thursday night said it approved a four-year contract with the major studios.

The new contract will boost studio contributions to DGA’s healthcare plan, increase minimum salaries and offer AI protections. The DGA declined to say how many voted in favor of the contract, but in a memo to members, union President Christopher Nolan and National Executive Director Russell Hollander said members “voted overwhelmingly” to ratify it.

“Throughout this process, our focus was clear: protect our members, strengthen the Guild, and address the challenges facing our industry during a period of profound change,” Nolan and Hollander wrote in a memo to members sent on Thursday. “… We have achieved critical wins that put the Guild in a position to further protect our members economic and creative rights now and into the future.”

The newly ratified contract provides some stability in Hollywood, about three years after a summer of strikes led by the Writers Guild of America and performers guild SAG-AFTRA. WGA approved a contract with major studios under the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers in April and SAG-AFTRA members ratified their contract in June. All the contracts extend the terms to four years instead of three years, which studios had sought out.

The AMPTP in a statement thanked DGA, WGA and SAG-AFTRA “for their thoughtful and collaborative approach to negotiations.”

“Together, we reached agreements that deliver substantial gains for guild members while supporting greater stability across the entertainment business,” the AMPTP said. “We are encouraged by the trust built throughout this cycle and look forward to building on that momentum to advance opportunity and shared success across our industry.”

The new DGA contract starts on July 1 and runs through June 30, 2030. Key aspects of the agreement include requiring the studios to increase their contribution to DGA’s health plan by 24.4% over four years. In return, the DGA would support “modest” increases to the eligibility threshold and annual premiums.

The contract also increases minimum salaries on many jobs by 2.5% in the first year and up 3% for each of the following years in the agreement.

It also adds more rules around the use of AI technology, including requiring that directors oversee any footage created by artificial intelligence.

When David Jacks published a biography of Peter Asher in 2022, the veteran record producer and manager expressed surprise that anyone would have deemed his life worthy of the treatment. Four years later, he’s no less baffled to have become the subject of a new documentary, “Peter Asher: Everywhere Man,” directed by the filmmakers Dan Geller and Dayna Goldfine.

“It just seemed to me,” he says, “that I wouldn’t be that fascinating.”

The movie, in theaters now, argues otherwise: A child actor alongside his two younger sisters, the bespectacled Asher became an unlikely pop star during the British invasion as half of the duo Peter & Gordon, whose debut single, “A World Without Love” — written by Paul McCartney — hit No. 1 on Billboard’s Hot 100 in 1964. (McCartney offered the song to Asher while the Beatle was dating Asher’s sister Jane.) In 1968, the Beatles made Asher head of A&R at Apple Records, where he signed James Taylor; the two soon moved to Los Angeles and turned Taylor into music’s biggest heartthrob folkie.

Asher went on to shepherd Linda Ronstadt to stardom and to produce records by Diana Ross, Cher, Bonnie Raitt, Randy Newman, Neil Diamond and 10,000 Maniacs, among many others. And at 82 he’s still at it: Last year he produced Barbra Streisand’s latest duets album — they’re due to start work on a new Streisand solo LP, he says — and he’ll perform a show of his own July 19 at the Grammy Museum. Asher, who broke his leg in a recent fall, spoke about it all the other morning at his home in Malibu, where he walked into the kitchen using a cane before sitting down at a table set with pastries and several of the day’s newspapers.

What unites the jobs of musician, producer, executive, manager? What’s the through line?
Love of music and admiration for the people who do it. They’re very different jobs, and I came at them from very different perspectives. Record production was something I set out to do once I understood what a record producer did. Hire musicians much better than yourself and tell them what to do? That’s a cool job — how do I get in on that racket? Whereas I never had any ambitions to be a manager. It’s just that when James and I decided to go out on our own and try to put a career together, we didn’t know who we trusted to do it, so I kind of went, I’ll do it.

What’d you discover about the job of management?
The ingredients are common sense, not being a crook and having a great client.

Which is the hardest of those three?
The last one. I got to induct the first managers inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame: Brian Epstein and Andrew Loog Oldham — the Beatles and the Stones. That’s the hard part. The only thing that would tempt me back into management would be lightning striking for a third time — to see James, to see Linda, then to see somebody comparably brilliant, which I occasionally do. But usually they have a manager already.

What’s the last new act that knocked you out?
Ed Sheeran.

Was that just because he looks like he could be your grandson?
That certainly crossed my mind.

As a producer, your records helped define the sound of rock in the ’70s.
The so-called California sound.

Then the zeitgeist shifted.
One became aware of that. Pop music got very electronic, which I loved.

Was there a place for you in that style?
I didn’t consciously try to make records in that style because I don’t think I could have — not as well as they were being made anyway.

What’s a record from the early ’80s that made you think that?
“Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This).” I couldn’t do that.

Back to the ’70s: The doc is filled with pictures of James looking —
Like a movie star. With the cover of “JT,” I finally went all the way and said, “We’re doing the the glamour shot.” Then we did “Flag,” which everyone hated.

With the maritime flag. A truly perverse album cover.
I loved it. James loved it. Everyone thought we were crazy.

How crucial do you think James’ good looks were to his whole proposition?
I don’t know.

Oh, come on.
I really don’t. I mean, how would you gauge that? There’s probably girls who fell in love with him without listening to the record.

I think you just gauged it.
If he was ugly, would he be as big a star? Probably not.

(Evan Mulling / For The Times)

Same applies to Linda, right?
When I first saw Linda, it was stages of realization. Someone said to me, “You’ve got to go down and see this girl at the Bitter End.” I walk in and she’s singing so well — unspeakably good. Then she looks incredibly great — barefoot, short-shorts. Oh, my God, my heart. Then you meet her, and it turns out she’s a remarkably brilliant woman — extremely well read. You just kind of go, “All these things together — how can it be?” It’s the same thing talking about the Beatles: If you cast it like the Spice Girls, you still couldn’t have gotten four to fit together so perfectly.

Did you like the Spice Girls?
Terrific. “Tell me what you want / What you really, really want” — it’s a smash. And yet none of them are particularly good singers, which is kind of the point.

I went to an event not long ago where Paul McCartney played his new album for a small group of fans. It was fascinating to see the spell McCartney casts over people.
He’s had to get used to it — to admit to himself that he can’t meet people who aren’t amazed that they’re meeting him. Even as someone who’s known him off and on for a long time, you still get the wave of: Holy s—.

You’re still amazed to be around him?
Of course. I get it less — I’m ready for it. But you can’t pretend he’s not Paul McCartney. And he’s gotta live with that his whole life.

You grew up a member of the upper crust, I think it’s fair to say.
I don’t think we were that crusty. But upper, probably, yes.

I wondered how that situated you to live and work among artistic types.
If anything, the upper crust have more time to be artistic — less preoccupied with getting a job and making a living. But my parents worked incredibly hard — we weren’t upper crust in the sense of inherited wealth. My father was a doctor, my mother was a professor of music. But I never struggled, to be honest. I had a comfortable allowance, and then I went to school and worked hard. Everyone talks about sharing a flat with a million people, living on borrowed sandwiches — I skipped that phase.

Did that shape you in any meaningful way?
I don’t know. But I think when people do struggle, it becomes a meaningful part of their lives to get away from it. With someone like James, the struggle was a struggle with drugs. Now he says the worst thing about drugs is they’re a complete waste of time — you waste time doing nothing except looking for drugs. And I think that made him anxious to succeed and to be taken seriously.

I’m sure you saw the New York Times’ list of the 30 greatest living American songwriters.
You knew it was gonna be silly. Randy Newman, for God’s sake — you just cannot not include him.

No Neil Diamond either.
Insane.

And no Billy Joel.
[Shrugs].

How’s your health?
High blood pressure, high cholesterol, need to work out more — old man stuff. Other than that and a broken leg, great.

You’re OK with the cane?
It’s a considerable upgrade from the wheelchair. I like the cane — it’s kind of elegant.

What seems scarier: the body going or the mind going?
The mind going. And it is, slightly. I had a stroke, and bits of my brain aren’t quite working right. But compared to other people I know, I’m fine.

We’re at a moment when a lot of foundational rock ’n’ roll figures —
Are dying. It’s all the rage.

What’s it feel like to see your friends and colleagues go?
Better them than me.

Couple more for you: You managed Courtney Love for a spell.
I met her here in Malibu. I also managed Pamela Anderson for a while because she was a neighbor and asked me to help.

What, you put a shingle out?
“Manager for hire.” I’m trying to remember how I first met Courtney — I think Merck Mercuriadis was talking to her about publishing and Kurt stuff. I liked her. Very smart. I like smart women.

She’s easy to work with? Hard to work with?
Impossible to work with.

What’s James Taylor’s best album?
“JT,” maybe.

What’s Linda Ronstadt’s best album?
“Heart Like a Wheel.” With Linda, it’s unfair because they’re so radically different. How do you compare that to a mariachi record and then to Nelson Riddle?

Working with Riddle on those albums must have been a thrill.
He told us all these incredible stories about Frank Sinatra, who he didn’t like although he admired him enormously. It was John David Souther who originally suggested Nelson. Linda had tried doing the album a different way — did some versions with Jerry Wexler and it didn’t work out. So we had a meeting with Nelson: Would he consider doing a couple of arrangements for us? He went, “No.” We said, “What?” He said, “I’ll do an album, though.”

“A World Without Love” was one of eight songs to top the chart in 1964 with “love” in the title. What’s that say about pop music in the mid-’60s?
Same thing it says about pop music of all time: It’s either “I love you” or “She loves you” or “Why don’t you love me?” Weird Al pointed out to me that when you’re looking for a parody of a song, any song that has “love” in the title, substitute “lunch” and it’s funny. “A World Without Lunch” — I mean, who would want to live in such a place?

A coalition of advocacy groups for artists, songwriters and managers is warning musicians about the growing risks of artificial intelligence music.

Recently, many major record labels have inked deals with AI music startups such as Suno, Udio and Klay. But the coalition, which includes organizations such as the Music Artists Coalition and the Songwriters of North America, argues in a new letter that “artists and songwriters whose works, voices, performances, likenesses and creative identities make those deals valuable are not being meaningfully consulted.”

The letter, released Monday, stated that many artists and songwriters in existing recording and publishing agreements are currently receiving letters from their labels and publishers claiming that they “will be opted in to AI-related uses by default, with little actual choice offered.” Even new artists are receiving agreements that include “AI rights clauses as a standard condition of signing.”

“We support innovation and recognise that AI can create new opportunities for music,” the coalition wrote in the letter. “However artists are not simply catalogue assets, and innovation cannot be used to override artists’ rights.”

The National Independent Talent Organization, a live entertainment advocacy group that signed the letter, said many of its members are coming to the organization with label contracts that include “non-negotiable AI usage clauses.”

“We can’t allow for contract language signed decades before this technology existed to be the standard bearer. These rights belong to the creators and they get the final say on usage,” said Nathaniel Marro, NITO’s executive director, in a statement to The Times.

“Music companies are leading the fight to protect artists’ and songwriters’ rights in the age of AI,” said a spokesperson for IFPI, the recording industry’s global trade body.

“While our members have taken different approaches, they share the same fundamental objectives: combating the unauthorized use of music and establishing licensing models that return revenue to artists and songwriters,” the IFPI spokesperson added.

The coalition is asking the industry to move forward on AI deals only under four conditions: that musicians directly consent to any agreement; that artists receive fair compensation; that there be transparency between the companies and the talent; and that companies make a public commitment to end contracts built on default AI opt-ins and forced AI clauses.

“Artists need a real seat in these conversations, clear terms on revenue share, and the ability to say no without losing their deal,” said Ron Gubitz, the Music Artists Coalition’s executive director, in a statement.

This letter comes at a time when policymakers are reviewing copyright rules in response to AI and when streaming platforms and social media platforms are overflowing with AI-generated music.

A little over two weeks ago, the American Federation of Musicians sued Universal Music Group and Warner Music Group. The complaint claims the major labels “received significant compensation” from the AI companies for past copyright violations and licensed “substantial” portions of their music catalogs to them, but haven’t shared that with the musicians.

Despite the confrontational tone of the letter, some signatories struck a more conciliatory note. Overall, the industry seems to be receptive to these AI changes, said Willie “Prophet” Stiggers of the Black Music Action Coalition, another signatory advocacy group. At this point in AI’s development, he added, everyone in the industry — from artists and labels to AI start-ups and policymakers — has a responsibility to establish effective guardrails.

“The companies building these technologies understand that trust is essential to long-term success, and trust begins with respecting creators’ rights,” Stiggers said in a statement to The Times. “There’s still important work ahead, but we’re encouraged that the conversation has shifted from whether protections are needed to how we build them together.”

“The structures being created now will shape the music ecosystem for years to come,” the coalition’s letter said. “The future of music must be built with artists, songwriters and their representatives, not imposed on them.”

Times staff writer Wendy Lee contributed to this report.

One day, when people say “they don’t make ’em like they used to,” they will be saying it about “Industry.”

First filmed before the pandemic and launched in its throes, a survivor of the era of streaming wars, corporate consolidation and Hollywood strikes, HBO’s addictively dissolute workplace drama remains as ambitious and authoritative as ever. Indeed, despite being divided from predecessors like “Mad Men,” “Succession” and “The Leftovers” by a series of epochal crises, it more closely resembles a vestigial tail of the medium’s past than most of its current counterparts: Out of place and out of time, “Industry” can best be understood as the last great drama of TV’s golden age.

Cast member and “Game of Thrones” alum Kit Harington, resident expert on series that reshaped the medium, agrees that “Industry” is a bit of a throwback in this respect.

“If you scroll back to ‘Game of Thrones’ in the first two seasons, it wasn’t a massive Goliath success, and it exploded after Season 3 with the Red Wedding. I think there’s a similar story going on here,” he says. “So often in TV at the moment, you’re given one season and everyone needs to pack in f— everything to get people hooked. But they’re burning through too much story. Season 2 is then done; the characters haven’t got anywhere to go. I think this is where this show has been successful, is that it was given that time to breathe.”

Earlier this spring, I convened “Industry’s” creators and cast in a conference room at The Times to walk me through its evolution into one of the best shows on television, and what to expect from its impending end.

Marisa Abela, left, Kit Harington and Myha’la.

(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)

‘What the f— are you thinking, guys?’

A trading-floor knife fight of hot, young strivers, or “grads,” competing for a permanent place at the fictional Pierpoint investment bank, the first season of “Industry,” filmed in 2019, premiered in the waning months of 2020 as a warped love letter to office culture. But for Konrad Kay and Mickey Down, the emerging writers at the helm, the voice of the series didn’t fully take shape until they’d found their main cast, including Myha’la, as hard-charging American Harper Stern, and Marisa Abela, as privileged publishing heiress Yasmin Kara-Hanani.

Kay: Season 1, me and Mickey were really green.

Down: We actually pitched HBO on the idea that it was going to be eight episodes, it was going to be in different months, and the big-bang dramatics were going to happen between the episodes. A bit like “Boyhood.” Huge things would happen in between episodes, and the episode would be about the reaction to those huge things. And they were like, “What the f— are you thinking, guys?” It was so antidramatic.

Abela: I had a lot of rounds of auditioning for Yasmin. They weren’t sure about me at all. I think part of it was because they were quite hellbent on her being vulnerable, on her being soft, and that was what I was playing in those first two, three episodes. … And what happens in any functional collaboration is you start to see what they really want from you — what it is that they need from your character. And in those moments of conflict, the moments of change, Yasmin has to stand up for herself at some point, otherwise it’s too wet.

Mickey Down.

(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)

Down: Yasmin was all vulnerability masked by Prada in script, and then you came in and you were very hard. [Laughs.]

Abela: There is one scene with [Yasmin’s abusive supervisor] Kenny [played by Conor MacNeill] in Season 2 where … Yasmin turns around to him and tells him to f— off, basically: “You don’t have a disease, you’re a narcissist, with a new excuse to lord it over people. You’re weak.” I think that’s the first time that Yasmin became a gangster. I was watching “Real Housewives of New Jersey” at the time, being completely honest. She can go really mob wife really quick.

Myha’la: I had almost the exact opposite experience in terms of finding or deciding who Harper was. When I read the scripts initially, I just thought, “There’s no way in hell that Harper can’t be steely and [on offense], because she’s clearly feeling out of her depth, and as a young woman of color going into a new space like this, you can’t show up like you’re vulnerable. You’re already expected to do poorly.” … On the page, Harper was an anxious person when I first met her in the pilot episode. She was sweaty and clammy and stammering. And I just thought, “Hell no!”

Down: Sometimes when we write the character, we focus on one thing, and then the actor comes in and then that one thing we thought the character was becomes the artifice that they have to play.

Harington: Great TV writers genuinely learn their actors as well as their characters, and they tie those things in as it goes through.

Abela: As much as they know how we speak now, we know how they speak. If Yasmin has a “F— off,” I know what they want with that. If she says “F— off,” it’s very different to “F— you.”

Down: It’s like playing the piano with the foot pedal, blindfolded.

Kay: When you get super-talented actors doing your writing, you sort of fall in love with them doing everything. There’s no story we can’t tell with them.

‘Am I being fired?’

The series’ second season, which opens with Pierpoint’s post-COVID return to office, found the grads established enough to become “active characters,” and the creators confident enough to begin breaking the mold they’d set for themselves in Season 1. From the nail-biting trade sequence with which Harper wins over hedge fund manager Jesse Bloom (Jay Duplass) to her firing from Pierpoint in the Season 2 finale, it marked the arrival of “Industry’s” distinctive, go-for-broke aesthetic.

Kay: [In] Season 2 we were still figuring out what the show was, and we had Jami O’Brien as our co-showrunner, who really professionalized me and Mickey towards the American system, towards how to be producers, curbed some of our more bombastic instincts, made us more professional in terms of some of the style of the writing we were doing, found a cleaner version of the show and a cleaner version of the story.

Konrad Kay.

(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)

Down: [The Bloom trade] was one of the first times in the show where we were like, “Wow, we’ve actually created something kind of singular,” in that we were able to create scenes of people trading, [using] financial jargon that no one understands, and make it feel like a car chase. The contrast between the Harper that’s on the trading floor being able to be in command of that with all the people looking at her, and then the Harper that’s in the loo afterwards in floods of tears, that for me was kind of the moment where we thought that we had a completely 3D, rounded character.

Myha’la: If you asked me to do the Jesse Bloom trade scene again, I’d piss myself. Because at least when I did it two seasons ago, I could have anxiety and fear percolating inside me. If I had to do it today, I’d have to do it confidently, and I would have to try really hard because so much of the language is truly blind memorization and being able to juggle particularly the f— phones. … You have to get the choreo[graphy] so good and you have to know the words so well so that you can do the important part, and that’s the subtext — communicating the feelings of the thing, which are not in the words. Which I love. It is so hard.

Harington: When you first read the scripts, you can’t understand a lot of what’s on the page. … You look at it, you go, “This is f— impossible.”

Myha’la.

(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)

Myha’la: This is not spoon-feeding the audience. “I’m sorry that you’re hurting because I know last summer your mom died in a car crash.” They don’t do that.

Kay: Do you know who hates that about us? Network executives. [Laughs.]

Down: We had a kind of mantra the first season especially, and then going into the second, that we would never have a scene that didn’t have one of our four main leads in it. And then, just for the necessity of the storytelling, we said, “We have to pop out of that perspective.” I don’t think HBO realized what a big decision that was, because I don’t think they’d actually realized we’d kept this mantra that we were never going to go away from the perspective of the grads.

Kay: It’s also where we broke the rule of, “We’re not going to just tell the bottom-up story; we’re going to go to the top.” When we sold the show, we were like, “This is a bottom-up story,” and then by that point we were like, “Actually, we have these older characters who might have these really rich inner lives that we should also explore.”

Myha’la: We blew the s— up. [Harper’s firing] forced us all outside the bank, which was dangerous and scary for me and really exciting and was how we got to see all the other things that Mickey and Konrad are capable of doing. I think they didn’t tell me before, so I was like, “Am I being fired?” [Laughs.]

Down: We thought we were all being fired. The reason the show evolves so much is because we basically never know whether we’re coming back, so we just blow up everything. We try to leave the audience with a satisfying conclusion. And then we get renewed, and then we have to basically write ourselves out of a corner. So Harper getting fired could have ended the whole show.

‘Oh, poor Henry’

Given time to develop its characters, refine its style and grow its audience, “Industry” returned for Season 3 with all the trappings of a series that had finally arrived: effusive critical acclaim, proliferating fan accounts and buzzy arcs by Sarah Goldberg and Harington, as playboy and erstwhile green–energy executive Henry Muck. Had it premiered just a few years later, “Industry” may have ended up on the chopping block before finding its footing; instead, it was allowed to achieve “terminal velocity.”

Kay: What happened between Seasons 2 and 3 was, we got renewed. We didn’t think we were going to get renewed. We operated from the principle of, “We might never get to do this again.” And that was incredibly freeing for me and Mickey because it was just like, “We’re gonna get eight hours, let’s just do everything we possibly can within that eight hours. Let’s indulge every creative impulse we’ve ever had. Let’s take the stabilizers off the story. Let’s not necessarily keep it within Pierpoint.” What we felt like was a perfect marriage of creative latitude, trust in ourselves and the right point in our arc of writing the show and directing and producing. We reached terminal velocity, where we could actually do all of the stuff that we were pretending we could do in the first two seasons.

Kit Harington.

(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)

Harington: When I joined up in Season 3, I had a good handful of friends who watched the show. It may be bigger than you think it was from the inside. It’s been fascinating for me, joining when I did and seeing it grow again … We all want to do stuff that people actually watch. We’d be lying if we said we didn’t. We’ve all done jobs that we really love and no one’s f— seen. When there’s a focus in on something that you know is good and you love, that’s more rare than you think. I started in this job in “Game of Thrones” and just assumed, “That’s, like, how jobs go. You get invited to the Emmys every year and everyone frigging watches it.”

Kay: The softness in Henry was a function of Kit playing the character and us writing to that vulnerability. There’s a totally different version of that character which never unlocks that kind of thinking in me and [Mickey].

Harington: You know that moment where it’s all going to s— with Lumi and he just gets up and he’s like, “None of this is real” and he f— off? For me, that was it. Because it was like, “Wait a minute, he can’t just leave the f— room” — and he does. I think that kind of sums him up. I got a handle of him properly then, and that was quite an early one we shot.

Down: He has a sense of entitlement most of the other characters don’t have.

Myha’la: But you still manage to make me feel bad for you. I’m like, “Oh, poor Henry.” Do you know what I mean? Isn’t that psychotic?

Down: I said it to him in an email recently. Somehow he managed to make an ex-Tory minister who bankrupted his company twice and needed bailouts from the British public — [a] junkie, adulterer — the most vulnerable and probably most empathetic character on the show, in some respects.

Harington: He’s one of the few characters who is actually trying to do good. Even if it’s about him being perceived as doing good. … It’s also very smartly done in how you demarcate addiction and drug-taking. You’ve got most of the characters, who can kind of put it down, but then you’ve got Rishi [a Pierpoint trader played by Sagar Radia] and Henry, who are a different kettle of fish. And also how it creeps up.

Kay: As a sober person playing that stuff, is there a psychic trigger in your brain that sort of feels like it’s happening?

Harington: I was very worried about coming in and doing some of this stuff, but quite quickly realized I was A) sober enough for long enough to go back there safely; and B) it was a sort of muscle memory, a lot of it. I get to exorcise this stuff in my job. How many ex-addicts get to do that? It was a kind of cathartic thing.

Marisa Abela.

(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)

Abela: There’s a real freedom that comes with drugs, alcohol, whatever it is, for the character. Those are the moments when you can really open the lid on something.

Myha’la: When you’re f— up, you’re uninhibited, so you can do your own thing, but I think you’re also taking the other person at face value. I feel like it sort of takes the judgment away. It creates a kind of childlike innocence.

Down: If you’re in a situation like that, you can skip like five stages of relationship if there’s a big bag of drugs in front of you. That’s something we try to capture.

‘Where we leave the characters feels so perfect’

Earlier this year, HBO announced that “Industry” had been renewed for a fifth and final season. But it was Season 4 — which finds Harper and Yasmin’s friendship in tatters, Yasmin and Henry’s marriage at an end, and the structure of the show evolving yet again to draw on new characters and genre influences — that led Down and Kay to determine that the series’ time had come.

Kay: We did think to ourselves, “OK, so we’re going to do a Season 4, which means the show is a kind of success in and of itself, which means we can start to think about ending. If you get four seasons, you’re probably going to get five. So we felt that it created latitude there. What we thought to ourselves was, “We meet these two women in the pilot. If you’re going to spend five seasons of TV with them, what is the starkest contrast you can do between how you meet them and where they end up?” … When we started, the show was about not having power. Five seasons in, they have it. Then what do you do with it? The phrase me and Mickey have been talking about is this idea of “arrival fallacy.” You climb and climb, you’re at the top of the mountain. Is there another peak? Do I sit here and enjoy the view?

Down: We’re writing Season 5 right now, and without giving too much away, we’re approaching that season very differently in terms of how information’s parceled out.

Kay: It’s very dense, though, isn’t it? Honestly, it might be the densest season. There’s a lot of theology in it, actually.

Down: We talked about doing a sixth [season], and then quite honestly we thought that was going to be diminishing returns. … We would have been pulling our punches constantly. This has been one of the most creatively fulfilling versions of the show, because we are writing towards a conclusion that we know is the conclusion. We’re thinking of images for the last 10 minutes that we know are going to be what the audience is left with, and that’s really, really thrilling for us as writers. I’ve never once thought, “God, I wish we were doing a sixth one,” as much as I love writing and making the show. Where we leave the characters feels so perfect.

Western governments are pouring tens of billions of dollars into critical minerals projects as they attempt to reduce dependence on China for materials essential to clean energy, defence technology and advanced manufacturing.

But industry executives, analysts and investors are increasingly warning that poorly coordinated state-backed investment could create severe oversupply problems similar to past commodity booms that ended in market crashes.

The concerns come as countries including the United States, Australia, European Union and Japan accelerate efforts to build strategic reserves and expand production of rare earths and other critical minerals.

Governments Ramp Up Critical Minerals Spending

The United States has committed more than $20 billion toward critical minerals development through multiple financing programmes, including Project Vault, a strategic stockpiling initiative worth around $10 billion.

Australia has also allocated at least A$13 billion to support critical minerals projects and reserves through several government-backed programmes.

These investments are designed to secure supplies of metals used in electric vehicles, semiconductors, renewable energy systems, aerospace equipment and military technologies.

Particular attention has focused on rare earth elements, a group of 17 metals essential for producing powerful magnets used in advanced defence systems and high-tech manufacturing.

Although the global rare earths market was valued at only about $6.4 billion in 2024, combined Western financial commitments to rare earth projects have already exceeded that figure.

Fears Grow Over Potential Oversupply

Mining executives and analysts warn that aggressive subsidies and overlapping national strategies could eventually flood global markets with excess supply.

Brett Beatty of Resource Capital Funds said the biggest danger lies in governments pursuing independent strategies without coordination.

According to Beatty, simultaneous efforts to rapidly increase production could create volumes far beyond global demand, ultimately crushing prices and undermining the very industries governments are trying to build.

Analysts drew comparisons to historical commodity gluts, including Europe’s “butter mountains” of the 1980s, Russian aluminium oversupply and Australia’s wool crisis, where subsidies and state support distorted markets and triggered sharp price collapses.

Rare Earth Market Could Face Surplus Pressures

Consultancy Project Blue warned that several rare earth markets are already on track to move into surplus over the coming years due to expanding state-backed production.

However, analyst David Merriman said governments may still be able to avoid major imbalances if they carefully adjust subsidies, stockpiling programmes and guaranteed purchasing arrangements.

Industry leaders say current stockpiles remain relatively small, limiting immediate risks of market disruption.

Lynas Rare Earths CEO Amanda Lacaze recently said rare earth stockpiles around the world remain modest and are not yet large enough to destabilise markets.

Australian Resources Minister Madeleine King also argued that today’s critical minerals policies differ significantly from past commodity intervention failures because they are more targeted and linked to long-term industrial supply chains.

Global Coordination Emerging Among Western Allies

Concerns about duplication and oversupply are pushing Western governments toward greater policy coordination.

The Group of Seven is reportedly discussing the creation of a permanent secretariat focused on coordinating critical mineral strategies and ensuring continuity between rotating national presidencies.

Industry experts say such coordination could help prevent destructive competition between allied nations while supporting more stable investment planning.

Lessons From Congo and Indonesia

Governments outside the West have already experimented with aggressive intervention in mineral markets.

The Democratic Republic of the Congo boosted cobalt prices by introducing export quotas and stockpiling measures designed to increase mining revenues.

While the policy initially lifted prices, analysts warn prolonged restrictions could encourage manufacturers to seek alternative materials or suppliers.

Similarly, Indonesia dramatically expanded its dominance in nickel production after banning exports of raw nickel ore in 2020 to force domestic processing investment.

Indonesia’s production surged within just a few years, but authorities have since struggled with falling prices and oversupply, forcing Jakarta to tighten mining quotas and centralise export controls.

These examples highlight the difficulty governments face in balancing national industrial ambitions with long-term market stability.

Analysis

The global race for critical minerals is increasingly becoming a strategic contest shaped as much by geopolitics as by economics.

Western governments view supply chain independence as essential after years of relying heavily on China for processing capacity and rare earth production. The push is not simply about commercial competition — it is tied directly to national security, technological leadership and energy transition goals.

However, the very scale of state intervention now unfolding raises the risk of creating distorted markets. If multiple governments simultaneously subsidise production, guarantee prices and build stockpiles without coordination, supply could rapidly outpace actual industrial demand.

That scenario would likely trigger sharp price declines, weaken private investment and potentially create another boom-and-bust cycle in the mining sector.

At the same time, the market dynamics of critical minerals differ from traditional commodities. Many of these materials are essential for emerging technologies, and demand is expected to rise significantly over the next two decades as countries expand renewable energy infrastructure, battery production and semiconductor manufacturing.

This means governments are not only competing to secure supply today but also positioning themselves for future industrial dominance.

Another key challenge is that refining and processing capabilities remain heavily concentrated in China. Even if Western countries succeed in expanding mining output, they may still depend on Chinese infrastructure unless domestic processing networks are developed alongside extraction projects.

The growing emphasis on “friend-shoring” and allied supply chains reflects an attempt to address this vulnerability.

Industry experts also point to a more sustainable model emerging through byproduct extraction. Instead of building entirely new mines based purely on high prices, companies are increasingly looking to recover critical minerals from existing industrial operations, reducing the risk of uncontrolled supply growth.

Projects involving Alcoa, Sojitz and Trafigura illustrate how governments and corporations are experimenting with lower-risk approaches to expanding supply.

Ultimately, the success of Western critical minerals strategies may depend less on how much money governments spend and more on whether they can coordinate policies, manage supply carefully and build integrated processing ecosystems capable of competing with China over the long term.

With information from Reuters.

The travel industry is on edge after Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin reiterated his threat to withdraw U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers from airports in so-called sanctuary cities in a move that could jeopardize international flights.

The U.S. Travel Assn. said that Mullin confirmed he is considering withdrawing the officers in a meeting where the trade group was pressing its concerns about other proposals the Trump administration is considering that could hamper travel. The travel association and major airlines quickly condemned the idea, and even Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said it doesn’t make sense to him.

“U.S. Travel believes such a move would have devastating consequences for the travel industry and communities that depend on international visitation,” the industry group said Friday in a statement.

Details of the meeting were first reported by the Atlantic.

Duffy said at a congressional hearing this week that he wasn’t familiar with Mullin’s remarks, and he’d like to learn more about the context and maybe ask Mullin a question about what he meant. But Duffy said it would be a bad idea to start restricting travel based on political views. After all, he acknowledged, at some point Democrats will be in charge and “you will all switch spots at one point — hopefully not too soon, Mr. Chairman.”

“We have people from around the world and around the country that need to be able to fly into all different kinds of places. We shouldn’t shut down air travel in a state that doesn’t agree with our politics,” Duffy said.

So it’s not clear how much support this idea has within the administration, though President Trump has previously threatened to withhold funding from sanctuary cities.

There is no strict definition for sanctuary policies or sanctuary cities, but the terms generally refer to jurisdictions that limit cooperation with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. And courts have rejected the idea of pulling funding from them in the past.

In Trump’s first term in office, in 2017, courts struck down his effort to cut funding to the cities.

It’s not clear exactly which cities and airports Mullin might target, but the Justice Department last year published a list of three dozen states, cities and counties that it considers to be sanctuary jurisdictions. They include California, Los Angeles, San Francisco and San Diego County.

The Airlines for America trade group was quick to say the idea would hurt the economy and disrupt travel.

“Reducing CBP staffing at major airports would have a devastating effect on the airline and tourism industries, causing a significant operational disruption to carriers, travelers and the flow of international cargo.”

Funk and Yamat write for the Associated Press.

Published on
22/05/2026 – 18:31 GMT+2

EU Industry Commissioner Stéphane Séjourné called for EU businesses to diversify their suppliers on Friday as trade tensions with China ramp up.

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The comments come as Beijing has made repeated threats towards the EU in recent weeks, while Brussels seeks to strengthen its legislation against its Asian rival.

Last year, China restricted exports of rare earths and chips, strategic for the EU’s green technologies, defence and automotive industries.

“Do not make 100% of your supplies in one country,” Séjourné told EU businesses after a meeting with the EU’s 27 trade ministers in Brussels. He added: “The global geopolitical situation shows that your ability to provide yourself abroad must also depend on other types of countries and also on European production.”

The European Commission has so far issued guidance to EU companies and Séjourné signalled that if they did not move, the EU executive would “perhaps have to move to the next step.”

Measures force car producers to diversify

Internally, the Commission is already working on a proposal to force car producers to source chips from multiple suppliers, Euronews has revealed.

Last year, a spat between the Dutch government and the Chinese chip company Nexperia, based in the Netherlands, caused shortages of chips for EU industries after Beijing blocked exports in retaliation.

EU Trade Chief Maroš Šefčovič told Euronews at the time that China was “weaponising” critical supplies for EU industry.

Brussels and Beijing have been at loggerheads since the EU presented several proposals restricting China’s access to the EU single market.

The so-called “Industrial Accelerator Act” aims to favour EU companies in public procurement and impose strict conditions on Chinese investments in the bloc. Meanwhile, a Cybersecurity Act could exclude Chinese telecoms companies from the EU market.

Beijing has directly threatened the EU with retaliation if it moves forward with those proposals. China repeated the threats after media reports about potential EU measures against cheap Chinese imports flooding the EU market.

An orientation debate is set to take place in Brussels between EU commissioners on 29 May to decide on the EU’s strategy as its trade deficit with China becomes more critical month after month.

Ted Turner, the brash media mogul who created CNN and revolutionized how Americans watched television, and who wielded his media empire and wealth to pursue liberal global causes and land conservation, has died. He was 87.

Turner died Wednesday, according to his family.

In 2018, he revealed he had been diagnosed with Lewy body dementia, a neurodegenerative disease, which had been progressing in recent years.

Turner’s outsized public persona — some called him the “Mouth from the South” for his free-wheeling trash talk — matched the Georgian’s influence on news, politics, sports and entertainment in the late 20th century. Turner repeatedly shook up established industries by invading quickly and expanding options for consumers, while railing against monolithic competitors who were less daring or nimble than his maverick Turner Broadcasting System.

Turner created the cable stations TBS and Turner Classic Movies; he owned the Atlanta Braves baseball team, the Atlanta Hawks basketball team and revitalized professional wrestling with World Championship Wrestling.

Turner was one of the first adopters of cable and satellite broadcasting technology, and for many rural Americans living beyond the tower signals of major cities, he was the first person to bring them interesting TV.

The media baron constantly generated headlines. He had a Clark Gable pencil mustache, raced sailboats, cavorted with the late communist leader Fidel Castro in Cuba, and at one point married Academy Award-winning actress and activist Jane Fonda. His wealth enabled him to become one of the largest private landowners and wealthiest philanthropists in the U.S.

July 1990 image of Ted Turner with Jane Fonda.

(Tony Duffy/Getty Images)

His crowning cultural achievement was the creation of the Cable News Network in 1980, which created the model for today’s cable news titans. The 24-hour news channel was not widely expected to be a success. All-night broadcasting had not been proven as a business model in an industry dominated nationally by corporate monoliths like ABC, NBC and CBS, where news programming was something that happened on a set schedule. And CNN’s headquarters weren’t in media centers like New York or Los Angeles, but Atlanta.

But Turner believed that “over-the-air networks would decline as audiences turned to videos and other outlets for entertainment on demand,” wrote the late journalist Daniel Schorr in a 2001 memoir.

“The network future belonged to whoever would deliver what was happening now — live news and live sports. That was why he wanted to be the first to deliver all news, all sports, all the time,” wrote Schorr, whom Turner courted to join CNN.

Within two years, CNN had more than 9 million subscribers. By the 2000s, Turner’s once far-flung idea for an around-the-clock news service had become so successful that it had attracted imitators like MSNBC (now called MS NOW) and Fox News.

“We not only became profitable, but also changed the nature of news — from watching something that happened to watching it as it happened,” Turner said of CNN in 2004. “If we needed more money for [broadcasting from] Kosovo or Baghdad, we’d find it. If we had to bust the budget, we busted the budget. We put journalism first, and that’s how we built CNN into something the world wanted to watch.”

Fox Corp. Chairman Emeritus Rupert Murdoch, who was both a rival and friend of Turner, said his “vision for 24-hour cable news transformed the media industry and gave viewers everywhere a front seat to witness history unfold. His impact as a trailblazer has left an indelible mark on our cultural landscape.”

Turner recognized the value of global distribution long before his rivals, launching CNN’s international business in the mid-1980s. He bought his first western property, The Bar-None Ranch in Montana, and would eventually become one of the nation’s largest individual landowners with nearly 2 million acres, which provide habitat for threatened species and his beloved American bison.

“Ted’s entrepreneurial spirit, creative ambition and willingness to take risks changed the media industry forever,” David Zaslav, chief executive of Warner Bros. Discovery, which owns CNN, said Wednesday in a note to employees. “He believed deeply in the power of ideas, in doing things differently and in building platforms that could inform, inspire and connect people around the world.”

Robert Edward Turner III was born in Cincinnati on Nov. 19, 1938, and raised in Georgia. A mischievous child — who later became a mischievous adult despite attending the Georgia Military Academy — he had a tough childhood at the hands of his alcoholic father, Ed.

“Ninety percent of the arguments I had with Ed were over his beating Ted too hard,” Ted’s mother, Florence Turner, recalled later.

“My dad ran an old-fashioned household and he insisted that pretty much everything had to be his way,” Ted Turner said in a 2008 memoir. “My father and I had a complex relationship but I loved him.”

The younger Turner attended Brown University but dropped out before graduating. His savings had run out, his father had stopped financially supporting his tuition, and in his final days on campus, he was suspended for bringing a woman to his dorm room, according to his memoir.

He soon joined his father’s expanding billboard advertising company, Turner Advertising, where he had been working off and on for years since childhood.

He inherited the business at the age of 24 after his father died by suicide. By then, Turner had already had years of experience , and he worked furiously to reverse his father’s recent sale of part of the company to a competitor and paid down its daunting debt, an act that presaged the empire-building to come.

While growing the business, Turner also pursued his passion for competitive sailing, which is how he met his first wife, Judy Nye, in college. It’s also how their marriage ended. Turner intentionally hit his wife’s boat during a 1963 race to keep her from passing him, and the pair, who had two children, split immediately afterward.

It was to be the first of three divorces. . “My problem is I love every woman I meet,” Turner has said. He would go on to win the America’s Cup in 1977 while expanding his father’s company into a modern multimedia conglomerate.

Leveraging the billboard business, Turner started buying local radio stations across the South in the late 1960s. In 1970, he bought the Channel 17 television station in Atlanta, competing with local network affiliates by airing old movies whose rights were affordable and picking up programming dropped by the less nimble competition. He didn’t like putting news on prime time back then — too negative — and soon picked up broadcast rights for the Braves, Hawks and other local sports.

Oct. 1998 photo of former President Jimmy Carter, right, and Atlanta Braves team owner Ted Turner, during Game 6 of the National League Championship Series in Atlanta.

(PAT SULLIVAN/AP)

The Braves were a ratings hit, and when the team flailed and went up for sale, Turner’s company became its owner in 1976. The team continued to flail but Turner boosted its profile with gimmicks such as sewing “Channel 17” on the back of a pitcher’s jersey and dressing up as the team’s batboy and manager, to the league’s disdain. Turner bought the Hawks shortly after.

Facing entrenched local network affiliates, Turner expanded his independent station’s reach across the South and then the U.S. by embracing the new technologies of cable and satellite broadcasting. Channel 17 became nationally known as the “SuperStation,” with call letters WTBS, later shortened to TBS.

The quirky Atlanta station’s local broadcasts of old movies and sports games had become national broadcasts.

Still hungry for more, Turner finally turned his attention to news programming. He launched CNN in 1980 in a desperate bid to create a national 24-hour news channel before the broadcast titans ABC, NBC and CBS — and their gargantuan budgets — could beat him to it.

“The 24/7 genre started with Ted Turner,” veteran CNN journalist Christiane Amanpour said Wednesday on CNN. “He was the original, and he made us all proud, and he made us all hopeful, and he made us all strive for his vision of a better world.”

There were some lean early years. But the nascent channel fended off an attempt by ABC to create a competitor, and critics could see the value of an ever-present news channel, even if quality was a little thin at times.

“Non-viewers of CNN are missing a lot. There are so many reasons to watch,” Los Angeles Times critic Howard Rosenberg wrote in 1986, hailing the 6-year-old channel as an “institution.” “It’s not always good, but it’s always there.”

In 1986, CNN was the only broadcaster running live coverage when the Challenger shuttle liftoff ended in disaster. In 1991, the network gave Americans a live and uninterrupted look at the invasion of Iraq. American officials held news conferences knowing that Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein was watching them on CNN.

Americans had seen images of war before, but not broadcast nonstop into their homes.

“CNN seeks to be a stethoscope attached to the hypothetical heart of the war, and to present us with its hypothetical pulse,” the French theorist Jean Baudrillard wrote, critiquing the conflict as a media spectacle. Media scholars began to wonder whether a “CNN effect” was influencing government policy. Officials found that they now had to respond much more quickly to crises unfolding on live television.

Turner was not adversarial to communist countries of the era and even tried his own version of the Olympics, called the Goodwill Games, a bit of private-sector peace-craft that brought the Soviet Union and the U.S. out of their respective Olympic boycotts and back into direct competition in the 1989s. All on television, of course.

Turner also saw professional wrestling as part of his sports portfolio, at one point trying to pit his World Championship Wrestling program against competitor Vince McMahon’s wrestling empire, then called the World Wrestling Federation. Turner similarly tried to take a bite out of MTV with the Cable Music Channel, with a promise “to stay away from the excessive, violent or degrading clips to women that MTV is so fond of putting on.”

Moralism was a Turner hallmark. Turner had started his life as a conservative — Turner had met his second wife, Jane Smith, at a 1964 fundraiser for Republican presidential candidate Barry Goldwater — and turned toward more liberal-leaning causes, such as world peace, nuclear nonproliferation and fighting climate change, later in life.

At the 1990 American Humanist Assn.’s annual convention, Turner presented his “Ten Voluntary Initiatives” — his atheistic version of the Ten Commandments — which included pledges to world peace, environmentalism, nonviolence and “to have no more than two children, or no more than my nation suggests.” He would become a major private donor to the United Nations, pledging $1 billion and launching the United Nations Foundation nonprofit.

In 1991, a year marked by the collapse of the Soviet Union, the first U.S. war against Iraq and the confirmation hearings of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, Time magazine named Turner its “Man of the Year” for his “visionary” creation of CNN, which covered those events live. He also married Fonda that year (the ceremony was reported by CNN) and his Braves narrowly lost the World Series.

Time’s honorific was also a nice bit of corporate synergy. The magazine’s parent company, Time Warner, owned about 20% of Turner Broadcasting System stock.

Turner launched the Cartoon Network in 1992, which helped introduce his then-newly acquired Hanna-Barbera characters — including Fred Flintstone, Yogi Bear and Scooby-Doo — to a new generation of viewers.

Adversaries thought that Turner’s ventures could be reckless and impulsive. Far-seeing accomplishments in national broadcasting and the creation of CNN were also paired with several expensive misadventures, including a failed attempt to buy CBS.

Turner had to unwind a purchase of the MGM film studio less than a year after buying it, though he held onto one valuable asset: The studio’s film library, which became the foundation of the Turner Classic Movies channel and, later, jewels in the Burbank-based Warner Bros. studio vault.

In 1996, Turner Broadcasting merged with Time Warner to form the world’s largest media company, marking the beginning of the end of Turner’s apex in corporate media. Time Warner’s 2000 merger with budding internet giant AOL, then the largest-ever corporate merger, ended in disaster. Turner, who had not been a key player in the negotiations and had made no secret of his disdain for that deal, was fired as an executive.

“Ted Turner was one of the rare leaders who truly changed the trajectory of an industry,” Versant Media Chief Executive Mark Lazarus, a former Turner underling, said in a statement. “I saw firsthand his willingness to take risks and his belief that media could be something bigger and more impactful.”

CNN Worldwide Chairman Mark Thompson added: “He was and always will be the presiding spirit of CNN. Ted is the giant on whose shoulders we stand.”

Turner resigned from the AOL Time Warner board in 2003, and in 2007, announced he had sold his company shares. In his later days, one of his best-known ventures was his Ted’s Montana Grill restaurant chain. His philanthropy and land conservation efforts and protection of the American bison became guide posts during his retirement years.

While CNN maintains influence in the U.S. and abroad, its TV ratings have declined in recent years — a casualty of changing consumer behavior, the rise of social media, derision from President Trump — and several ownership changes.

During the past decade, CNN has had three different corporate owners. The company is poised to be sold again, this time to billionaire David Ellison’s Paramount Skydance. That proposed merger would bring CNN under the same roof as CBS News.

“I’ve often considered and joked about what I might want written on my tombstone,” Turner said in a 2008 memoir. “At one point, when I felt like I could get out of the way of the press, ‘You Can’t Interview Me Here’ was a leading candidate. … These days, I’m leaning toward, ‘I Have Nothing More to Say.’”

Turner is survived by his five children — Laura Turner Seydel (Rutherford), Robert Edward “Teddy” Turner IV (Blair), Rhett Turner, Beau Turner, Jennie Turner Garlington (Peek) — 14 grandchildren and a great granddaughter. The family plans a private and public service at a later date.

Pearce is a former Times reporter. Times Staff Writer Stephen Battaglio contributed to this report.

May 2 (Asia Today) — China has begun tightening regulations on its fast-growing drone industry, prompting concerns that the government may be undermining one of its most competitive global sectors.

Recent reports from Chinese media outlets, including the New Beijing News, indicate that China holds a commanding position in the global drone market, with an estimated market share of at least 70%. Industry leader DJI dominates both domestic and international markets, facing limited competition even as Taiwan makes inroads in Europe.

Despite this strong position, new regulations took effect Thursday in Beijing, effectively designating much of the capital as a no-drone zone. Under the new municipal ordinance on unmanned aerial vehicle management, the transport, sale, rental and operation of drones within the city have been broadly restricted.

The measures have already led to store closures. DJI flagship outlets in areas such as the 798 Art District in Beijing’s Chaoyang district have shut down, in some cases under pressure from authorities.

Officials say the move reflects growing concerns over national security and public safety, as drones are increasingly viewed as potential threats in sensitive areas. Beijing has previously imposed temporary flight bans on low, slow and small aerial objects during major political events, a policy that now appears to be expanding into a more permanent framework.

Analysts say the Beijing regulations could serve as a model for broader nationwide controls. If expanded, such measures may significantly weaken China’s dominance in the global drone industry and could even erode its competitive edge.

Industry insiders have expressed concern that excessive regulation could harm a key growth sector, with some privately warning that China risks damaging its own technological leadership.

— Reported by Asia Today; translated by UPI

© Asia Today. Unauthorized reproduction or redistribution prohibited.

Original Korean report: https://www.asiatoday.co.kr/kn/view.php?key=20260502010000045

SEOUL, May 1 (UPI) — South Korean entertainment giant CJ ENM premiered its AI-hybrid feature film The House this week, presenting the low-budget occult thriller as a test case for how artificial intelligence could help revive a struggling film industry.

The 60-minute film, unveiled Thursday at CGV Yongsan I’Park Mall in Seoul, follows a young woman who can see dead souls after moving into a decrepit apartment building. It is scheduled to be released Friday on CJ ENM’s streaming platform TVING.

Taken on its own merits, The House is far from innovative. It scans as a fairly forgettable horror flick, leaning heavily on gloomy atmospherics, digital gore and jump scares in service of a paper-thin story.

But behind the scenes, the film represents a cutting-edge use of fast-evolving technology that dramatically reduces both costs and production time.

CJ ENM said the actors’ performances were filmed entirely indoors on a green-screen stage, while every background and visual effect was created with AI, using Google tools including Imagen, Nano Banana and Veo.

“We have expanded the production paradigm,” Jeong Chang-ik, head of CJ ENM’s AI Studio and lead producer of The House, said at a panel discussion after the premiere Thursday.

The film cost about $337,000 to produce — at least five times less than a comparable conventional production, Jeong said.

He added that the efficiency gains could be especially significant for genre films, disaster movies and other effects-heavy productions.

“From our perspective, there isn’t much difference in production costs between making a scene where a main character drinks coffee at a cafe and making a scene where that main character defeats a monster,” he said. “In reality, there is a huge difference, but in terms of AI, the difference is not much.”

Actor Kim Shin-yong, who plays a security guard in the film, said the process differed sharply from traditional chroma-key filming, where performers must imagine effects that are added later.

“I could perform while seeing the completed backgrounds in real time, which made immersion much better,” Kim said, adding that the entire shoot took just four days.

The rapid adoption of AI has raised alarm across the global entertainment industry, helping fuel strikes in Hollywood in 2023 amid concerns over job losses and creative control. But the technology is already being widely integrated across production pipelines.

The team behind The House said the goal is not to replace actors or creators, but to integrate AI into existing production workflows.

Ahn Sung-min, director of customer engineering at Google Cloud Korea, said AI is being used not to “take the place of creation,” but to help realize creators’ intent within the filmmaking process.

CJ ENM executives also pushed back on the idea that AI could replace human performers.

“We are actually certain that AI cannot replace the acting of actors,” Baek Hyun-jung, head of content innovation, said. “That’s why we designed this hybrid approach — to preserve the actor’s unique expressiveness while using AI for backgrounds and effects.”

The experiment comes as South Korea’s film industry faces mounting pressure from rising production costs, reduced investment and competition from streaming platforms.

Korean Film Council data showed theater admissions fell 13.8% in 2025 from a year earlier, while revenue from domestic films plunged 39.4%.

Despite the global popularity of Korean content, Culture, Sports and Tourism Minister Chae Hwi-young said in September that the reality facing the country’s creative industries is one of “despair.”

He singled out the film sector as the most vulnerable, noting the number of commercial Korean productions has dropped from around 60 per year to about 20 in 2025.

“Investment has stopped, and the film production scene has run out of money,” Chae said. “The ecosystem of the film industry is collapsing to the point where filmmakers can’t make a living.”

Some A-list filmmakers have responded with dramatic measures such as “microbudget” productions. Train to Busan director Yeon Sang-ho’s 2025 film The Ugly was made for around $150,000 and performed respectably, drawing more than 1 million theatrical viewers before landing on Netflix.

Against that backdrop, AI is increasingly being seen as a potential lifeline for the industry.

For CJ ENM, The House builds on a growing slate of AI-driven projects, including the animated series Cat Biggie, released online last year.

The new film is less a finished template than a proof of concept. Its visual seams remain visible, and panelists acknowledged that AI tools still struggle with consistency, particularly in longer narrative works.

Still, executives said AI will likely become inseparable from mainstream filmmaking.

“I think AI will be the next generation after CGI,” Baek said. “The era in which the boundaries between regular movies and AI movies disappear will surely come quickly.”

In an interview with Euronews, EU Trade Commissioner Maroš Šefčovič issued a firm warning that the European Union will not hesitate to defend its industries after Beijing signaled possible retaliation over new EU plans to bolster its industrial base.

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China this week up the pressure on Brussels, threatening countermeasures unless the EU softens core elements of its “Made in Europe” proposal—designed to tighten market access for foreign companies—and its Cybersecurity Act, which could ultimately restrict Chinese telecom firms’ presence across the bloc.

Asked about China’s reaction to what the EU describes as much-needed measures to reinforce its sovereignty and restore a level playing field, Šefčovič told Euronews the EU will “always” defend the interests of its companies.

“We will fight tooth and nail for every European job, for every European company, for every open sector, if we see they are treated unfairly,” said Šefčovič in comments to Euronews in an exclusive interview Friday.

Ballooning trade deficit in detriment to EU

Relations between Brussels and Beijing have deteriorated sharply over the past year, with China tightening export controls on rare earths vital to Europe’s clean-tech and defence industries, as well as restricting chips essential to the automotive sector, intensifying pressure on already fragile supply chains across the bloc.

In response, the EU has pushed for legislative proposals in the domain of cybersecurity and single market rules for companies, prompting a sharp reaction from China which has accused the EU of unfair practices. Earlier this week, Beijing said the EU should not underestimate China’s “firm resolve” to safeguard its interests.

Šefčovič rejected the suggestion that recent developments signal a looming trade war but stressed that the EU does not operate under pressure and expects to be treated with respect. “We never threaten our partners, and we certainly don’t do it through the media,” he said. “What we need is strategic patience and a great deal of courage.”

He said a “war” is often easy to start, but difficult to exit. A Chinese official told Euronews Beijing does not wish for a trade spat to escalate, but said China is serious about what it considers discriminatory practices. The EU disputes discrimination.

The EU’s trade chief pointed to a ballooning trade deficit between the two sides as a cause for concern. The bloc’s trade gap with China surged to €359.3 billion in 2025, a level Šefčovič called “simply unsustainable” that does not show signs of improvement.

He also said policymakers, the European parliament and economic actors in the EU have delivered “a very strong economic and political reaction” to tackle the trade deficit.

So far, Brussels has failed to secure meaningful commitments from Beijing to rebalance trade relations. At the same time, EU officials are growing increasingly concerned that Chinese exports—shut out of the US market by higher tariffs—are being redirected towards Europe. Brussels also points to China’s overcapacity as a source of concern.

The EU is now pressing Beijing to enter serious negotiations and deliver concrete results.

“I invited the Chinese foreign minister to visit Brussels because I think we need a very thorough assessment of the current situation,” Šefčovič told Euronews. “What I want is constructive engagement.”

Faced with a surge in low-cost Chinese imports, the EU is relying on trade defence instruments to counter what it sees as dumped and heavily subsidised goods, while also monitoring efforts by Chinese firms to bypass restrictions by shifting production outside China. Šefčovič made clear the EU will not be pushed into retreat from those issues.

“There are very strong industrial policies in China. You have the same in the US, in Canada, in Japan and in Korea. So, nobody should be surprised if the European Union responds in kind—especially when it comes to public money and public funds.”