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‘Squid Game’: New Games Introduced In Another Trailer For Netflix Hit - Deadline

As the leaves fall, the heat goes on, the temperatures drop and the sweaters and jackets are pulled from storage, it’s also a great time to think about making a pot of soup. Related Articles Restaurants Food and Drink | Recipes: How to make cornbread, trifle and other Southern staples Restaurants Food and Drink | A starry Thanksgiving: Recipes beloved by Donna Kelce, Eric Stonestreet, Taylor Swift Restaurants Food and Drink | Recipe: What are you planning to do with your leftover turkey? Try making this dish Restaurants Food and Drink | Recipe: Endive ‘boats’ are the perfect vessels for tasty appetizers Restaurants Food and Drink | Recipes: How to make a delicious herbed roast turkey for Thanksgiving Soup is one of the best comfort foods, perfect for those New England fall and winter days. Whether you fancy clam or corn chowder, a roasted butternut squash soup, a classic Italian sausage orzo or something unique like lasagna soup, there’s a special place in everyone’s heart for that big pot on the stove. We have found five recipes that are sure to make your mouth water. No matter what soup preference you may have, you’ll find something to cook for the whole family. This recipe is by Allrecipes.com . Ingredients Directions This recipe is by Allrecipes.com . Ingredients Directions This recipe is by Allrecipes.com . Ingredients Noodles: Soup Base: Cheese Mixture: Garnish: Directions This recipe is by juliasalbum.com . Ingredients Directions This recipe is by Allrecipes.com . Ingredients DirectionsLisa Simpson once said during an episode of “The Simpsons:” What could be more exciting than the savage ballet that is pro football? On Monday night, the entire Simpsons universe gets to experience it in a way not many could have imagined. The prime-time matchup between the Cincinnati Bengals and Dallas Cowboys will also take place at Springfield’s Atoms Stadium as part of “The Simpsons Funday Football” alternate broadcast. The altcast will be streamed on ESPN+, Disney+, and NFL+ (on mobile devices). ESPN and ABC have the main broadcast, while ESPN2 will carry the final “ManningCast” of the regular season. The replay will be available on Disney+ for 30 days. Globally, more than 145 countries will have access to either live or on replay. “We’re such huge football fans, and the Simpsons audience and the football audience, I feel, are like the same audience of just American families and football. And the Simpsons are so much a part of the DNA of the American family and culture that for us to, like, mush them together in this crazy video game, it’s so fun,” said Matt Selman, executive producer of “The Simpsons.” While the game is the focal point, the alternate broadcast, in some ways, will resemble a three-hour episode of “The Simpsons.” It starts with Homer eating too many hot dogs and having a dream while watching football. Homer joins the Cowboys in the dream while Bart teams up with the Bengals. Lisa and Marge will be sideline reporters. “That’s the beginning of the story, and the story continues through the entire game until Homer wakes up from his dream at the end of the game. It is like a complete story, and the NFL game will happen in between. It’s just going to be an amazing presentation with tons of surprises,” said Michael “Spike” Szykowny, ESPN’s VP of edit and animation. This is the second year ESPN has done an alternate broadcast for an NFL game. It used the characters from “Toy Story” for last year’s Sunday morning game from London between the Atlanta Falcons and Jacksonville Jaguars. “The Simpsons” has featured many sports-themed episodes during its 35 seasons. Even though “Homer at the Bat” remains the consensus favorite sports episode for many Simpsons fans, there have been football ones such as “Bart Star” and “Lisa The Greek.” There also was a Super Bowl-themed one after Fox’s broadcast of Super Bowl 33 between Denver and Atlanta in 1999. Even though “The Simpsons” remains a staple on Fox’s prime-time schedule, it is part of the Disney family after their acquisition of 20th Century Fox in 2019. All 35 seasons are on Disney+. The show’s creators have worked with ESPN and the NFL to make sure the look and sound is definitely Simpsonsesque. The theme song is a mash-up of “The Simpsons” opening and “Monday Night Football’s” iconic “Heavy Action.” There have also been pre-recorded skits and bits to use during the broadcast featuring Simpson’s legendary voices Hank Azaria, Nancy Cartwright, Dan Castellaneta, Julie Kavner, and Yeardley Smith. The telecast will be entirely animated, with the players’ movements in sync with what is happening in real-time on the field. That is done through player-tracking data enabled by the NFL’s Next Gen Stats system and Sony’s Beyond Sports Technology. While Next Gen Stats tracks where players are on the field with a tracking chip in the shoulder pads, there is skeletal data tracking and limb tracking data — which uses 29 points per player — to get closer to the player’s movements. The other data tracking will allow Beyond Sports and Disney to add special characters to the game. For example, there might be a play where Lisa catches the ball and goes 30 yards instead of Cincinnati’s Tee Higgins. “Lisa is much smaller than the rest of the players. So, in real life, the ball would go over her head, but now, with data processing, we can take the ball and make it go exactly into her hands. So for the viewer, it still looks believable, and it all makes sense,” said Beyond Sports co-founder Nicolaas Westerhof. The other major challenge is making “The Simpsons” two-dimensional cartoon characters into 3-D simulations. Szykowny and his team worked to make that a reality over the past couple of months. “That’s a big leap of faith for them to say, hey, we trust you to make our characters 3-D and work with it. Our ESPN creative studio team has done a wonderful job,” Szykowny said. Lisa, Krusty, Nelson, Milhouse and Ralph will be with Bart and the Bengals; while Carl, Barney, Lenny and Moe join up with with Homer and the Cowboys. The broadcast will also feature ESPN personalities Stephen A. Smith, Peyton Manning and Eli Manning. ESPN’s Drew Carter, Mina Kimes and Dan Orlovsky will call the game from Bristol, Connecticut, and also be animated. They will wear Meta Quest Pro headsets to experience the game from Springfield using VR technology. For Kimes, being part of the broadcast and being an animated Simpsons character is a dream come true. She is a massive fan of the show and has a framed photo of Lisa Simpson — who she said is a personal hero and icon — as part of her backdrop when she makes appearances on ESPN NFL shows from her home in Los Angeles. “I didn’t have any input, and I didn’t see anything beforehand, so I wasn’t sure if it would look like me, but it kind of does, which is very funny,” said Kimes, who drew Simpsons characters when she was a kid. “To see the actual staff turn me into one was a dream.” Even though the Bengals (4-8) and Cowboys (5-7) have struggled this season, Selman thinks both teams have personalities that appeal to “The Simpsons” universe. “We were just so lucky also that the Cowboys are sort of like a Homer Simpson-type team, American team, and Mike McCarthy might be a Homer-type guy, one might imagine,” he said. ”And then you have Joe Burrow on the other side who is a cool young, spiky-haired, blonde bad boy -- he’s like Bart. And that fits our character archetypes so perfectly. “If Homer is mad at Bart and has a hot dog dream while watching ’Monday Night Football’, and then it’s basically McCarthy versus Burrow, Homer versus Bart, and that’s the simple father versus son strangling — Homer strangling Bart dynamic that has been part of the show for 35 years. I don’t know if that would have worked as well if it was like Titans versus Jacksonville. We would have found something. We would have made it work.” ___ AP NFL: https://apnews.com/hub/nfl Joe Reedy, The Associated PressDowning throws for 2 TDs, runs for another, Elon tops North Carolina A&T 31-21

Imperial Oil Ltd. stock rises Friday, still underperforms marketDow, stocks close week higher as bitcoin rallies near $100K

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David Sacks, President-elect Donald Trump’s surprise pick to guide policy on artificial intelligence and cryptocurrency, doesn’t have deep ties to either industry or an extensive track record of investing in them. What he does have, though, is even more important in the eyes of technology investors — a tech-friendly worldview and a long history of skepticism about government regulation. “He will ensure the United States is at the cutting edge of innovation,” said Keith Rabois, who celebrated with Sacks at a private home in Miami Thursday night. Sacks will keep the country from falling behind China, and will protect “newly emerging tech from left-wing censorship and bias,” Rabois said. The appointment of Sacks, a major Trump fundraiser, was not widely anticipated in Silicon Valley. The VC has only made a handful of crypto investments, and isn’t seen as a key player in the industry. He’s also made relatively few AI bets, though he’s a backer of xAI, the startup helmed by Elon Musk that has raised more than $10 billion this year. But Sacks has long been critical of too much government involvement in the affairs of private companies. The 52-year-old founder of VC firm Craft Ventures and member of the so-called PayPal Mafia has been one of the loudest right-leaning voices in the industry for years. The pick is seen as a boon to the startup world, where AI and crypto executives view government intervention as a potential existential threat. US action against crypto companies has driven many startups overseas. And AI leaders have worried that overly burdensome regulations could stifle the fledgling industry in the name of safety. Crypto supporters celebrated the selection, which Trump said would give startups regulatory clarity. “Crypto and AI are two of the United States’ most pressing strategic priorities right now, and David Sacks is one of the only people in the world that is uniquely qualified to lead in this pivotal role,” said Kyle Samani, a managing partner at Multicoin Capital, where Sacks is an investor. Sacks will be an “invaluable asset in shaping the nation’s future,” Samani said. Startup competition Trump has signaled that he’ll take a friendly approach to both crypto and AI. Bitcoin has hit all-time highs since his election, and he has vowed to repeal President Biden’s 2023 AI executive order that requires developers to safety-test new models. AI is also a focus for Musk, a key Trump ally and a longtime friend of Sacks. Investor Marc Andreessen, whose firm invests heavily in both industries, was ebullient at Sacks’ pick. “From the Wright Brothers to Starship With Chopsticks, in just a single election,” Andreessen wrote on X on Thursday night, referencing SpaceX’s latest achievement of landing re-usable starships. OpenAI Chief Executive Officer Sam Altman also struck a celebratory note, writing on X, “congrats to czar @DavidSacks!” But there’s been some trepidation over Sacks’ allegiances in the AI world. Sacks’ Craft Ventures is an investor in Musk’s xAI, and Sacks’ ties to Musk have raised questions about how he would treat rival companies in the fiercely competitive industry. Sacks has previously spoken critically of OpenAI, a key xAI competitor. In a now-deleted post on X, Sacks said, “I’m all in favor of accelerating technological progress, but there is something unsettling about the way OpenAI explicitly declares its mission to be the creation of AGI.” AGI, or artificial general intelligence, refers to AI technology that can perform most tasks better than humans. Sacks did not respond to a request for comment on the post. Sacks and Trump allies say that involvement in the industry is a prerequisite for understanding it, and that some perceptions of conflict of interest will be inevitable. “I think we should take people at their word,” said Shaun Maguire, an investor at the prestigious Sequoia Capital, which has backed both xAI and OpenAI. Sacks “won’t harm any competitors,” he said. Sacks’ other bets include BitGo and Bitwise in the crypto world. In AI, Sacks co-founded a startup called Glue that makes chat software for companies, and he’s invested in developer startup Replit Inc. and AI writing tool CopyAI Inc. Sacks will not leave Craft, a spokeswoman said, and the new czar position will function as an advisory role, rather than a full-time government job. The appointment won’t require Sacks to divest or publicly disclose his assets. Like Musk, Sacks will be a special government employee. He can serve a maximum of 130 days per year, with or without compensation. However, conflict of interest rules apply to special government employees, and Sacks would be required to recuse himself from matters that could impact his holdings. Tech-Friendly There’s a long history of technology officials taking advisory roles to the government, said Silicon Valley historian Margaret O’Mara. But the roles don’t always have a clear mandate. “You can have a title, but if you don’t actually have a budget or people reporting to you, it’s something more ambiguous,” O’Mara said, pointing out that Sacks would not be a White House staff member. “Sometimes it does morph into something that has some power to it.” Some industry observers would have preferred the crypto and AI czar positions to be separate — a move that might have telegraphed the importance of each, and reflected the different risks and rewards of both technologies. “While I am very encouraged by the new administration’s crypto-friendly focus, I would have preferred separate crypto and AI czars,” said Campbell Harvey, finance professor at Duke University. “Both need urgent, dedicated attention,” he said. Sacks has forged a more wide-ranging career, rather than focusing on just AI or crypto. He first made a name for himself at PayPal, the payments company whose founders in the late 1990s included Musk and billionaire investor Peter Thiel. During a stint in Hollywood, he produced the 2005 satire Thank You for Smoking. At Craft, his venture firm with stakes in Musk-owned businesses including SpaceX, he has invested widely as well as serving as a host of the All-In podcast. His comments about crypto on the podcast have not been universally positive, but he has discouraged attempts to penalize or control industry players. “The fact of the matter is you’ve got a lot of brilliant young entrepreneurs, computer scientists building this financial infrastructure of the future with crypto,” he said in a podcast episode in 2021. “We don’t necessarily want to interfere with that to the point where we break it.” He’s also made significant money on crypto. Craft Ventures invested in Samani’s Multicoin Capital in 2018, which in turn was an early investor in the Solana cryptocurrency. The token was worth less than a dollar when it launched in 2020, but notched a peak price of around $250 in late 2021. “It will end up being about $1 billion of Solana for us in terms of returns,” Sacks said at the time. More recently, in a November episode of the podcast after Trump’s election, Sacks took aim at the Securities and Exchange Commission’s aggressive positions on crypto under its chair, Gary Gensler. “The days of Gensler terrifying crypto companies — those days are about to be over.” With assistance from Shirin Ghaffary, Olga Kharif, Katie Roof and Jackie Davalos. This article was generated from an automated news agency feed without modifications to text.

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DALLAS (AP) — More than 60 years after President John F. Kennedy was assassinated , conspiracy theories still swirl and any new glimpse into the fateful day of Nov. 22, 1963, in Dallas continues to fascinate . President-elect Donald Trump promised during his reelection campaign that he would declassify all of the remaining government records surrounding the assassination if he returned to office. He made a similar pledge during his first term, but ultimately bended to appeals from the CIA and FBI to keep some documents withheld. At this point, only a few thousand of the millions of governmental records related to the assassination have yet to be fully released, and those who have studied the records released so far say that even if the remaining files are declassified, the public shouldn't anticipate any earth-shattering revelations. “Anybody waiting for a smoking gun that’s going to turn this case upside down will be sorely disappointed,” said Gerald Posner, author of “Case Closed,” which concludes that assassin Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone. Friday's 61st anniversary is expected to be marked with a moment of silence at 12:30 p.m. in Dealey Plaza, where Kennedy's motorcade was passing through when he was fatally shot. And throughout this week there have been events marking the anniversary. When Air Force One carrying Kennedy and first lady Jacqueline Kennedy touched down in Dallas , they were greeted by a clear sky and enthusiastic crowds. With a reelection campaign on the horizon the next year, they had gone to Texas on political fence-mending trip. But as the motorcade was finishing its parade route downtown, shots rang out from the Texas School Book Depository building. Police arrested 24-year-old Oswald and, two days later, nightclub owner Jack Ruby fatally shot Oswald during a jail transfer. A year after the assassination, the Warren Commission, which President Lyndon B. Johnson established to investigate the assassination, concluded that Oswald acted alone and there was no evidence of a conspiracy. But that hasn't quelled a web of alternative theories over the decades. In the early 1990s, the federal government mandated that all assassination-related documents be housed in a single collection in the National Archives and Records Administration. The collection of over 5 million records was required to be opened by 2017, barring any exemptions designated by the president. Trump, who took office for his first term in 2017, had boasted that he'd allow the release of all of the remaining records but ended up holding some back because of what he called the potential harm to national security. And while files have continued to be released during President Joe Biden's administration, some still remain unseen. The documents released over the last few years offer details on the way intelligence services operated at the time, and include CIA cables and memos discussing visits by Oswald to the Soviet and Cuban embassies during a trip to Mexico City just weeks before the assassination. The former Marine had previously defected to the Soviet Union before returning home to Texas. Mark S. Zaid, a national security attorney in Washington, said what's been released so far has contributed to the understanding of the time period, giving “a great picture” of what was happening during the Cold War and the activities of the CIA. Posner estimates that there are still about 3,000 to 4,000 documents in the collection that haven’t yet been fully released. Of those documents, some are still completely redacted while others just have small redactions, like someone's Social Security number. There are about 500 documents where all the information is redacted, Posner said, and those include Oswald's and Ruby’s tax returns. “If you have been following it, as I have and others have, you sort of are zeroed in on the pages you think might provide some additional information for history,” Posner said. Trump's transition team hasn’t responded to questions this week about his plans when he takes office. From the start, there were those who believed there had to be more to the story than just Oswald acting alone, said Stephen Fagin, curator of the Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza, which tells the story of the assassination from the building where Oswald made his sniper's perch. “People want to make sense of this and they want to find the solution that fits the crime," said Fagin, who said that while there are lingering questions, law enforcement made “a pretty compelling case” against Oswald. Larry J. Sabato, director of the University of Virginia Center for Politics, said his interest in the assassination dates back to the event itself, when he was a child. “It just seemed so fantastical that one very disturbed individual could end up pulling off the crime of the century," Sabato said. “But the more I studied it, the more I realized that is a very possible, maybe even probable in my view, hypothesis.”

BEIRUT (AP) — Insurgents' stunning march across Syria accelerated Saturday with news that they had reached the gates of the capital and that government forces had abandoned the central city of Homs. The government was forced to deny rumors that President Bashar Assad had fled the country. The loss of Homs is a potentially crippling blow for Assad. It stands at an important intersection between Damascus and Syria’s coastal provinces of Latakia and Tartus — the Syrian leader’s base of support and home to a Russian strategic naval base. The pro-government Sham FM reported that government forces took positions outside Syria’s third-largest city, without elaborating. Rami Abdurrahman who heads the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said Syrian troops and members of different security agencies have withdrawn from the city, adding that rebels have entered parts of it. The capture of Homs is a major victory for insurgents, who have already seized the cities of Aleppo and Hama , as well as large parts of the south, in a lightning offensive that began Nov. 27. Analysts said Homs falling into rebel hands would be a game-changer. The rebels' moves around Damascus, reported by the monitor and a rebel commander, came after the Syrian army withdrew from much of southern part of the country, leaving more areas, including several provincial capitals, under the control of opposition fighters. For the first time in the country’s long-running civil war, the government now has control of only three of 14 provincial capitals: Damascus, Latakia and Tartus. The advances in the past week were among the largest in recent years by opposition factions, led by a group that has its origins in al-Qaida and is considered a terrorist organization by the U.S. and the United Nations. In their push to overthrow Assad's government, the insurgents, led by the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham group, or HTS, have met little resistance from the Syrian army. The rapid rebel gains, coupled with the lack of support from Assad's erstwhile allies, posed the most serious threat to his rule since the start of the war. The U.N.’s special envoy for Syria, Geir Pedersen, on Saturday called for urgent talks in Geneva to ensure an “orderly political transition.” Speaking to reporters at the annual Doha Forum in Qatar, he said the situation in Syria was changing by the minute. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, whose country is Assad's chief international backer, said he feels “sorry for the Syrian people.” In Damascus, people rushed to stock up on supplies. Thousands went to Syria's border with Lebanon, trying to leave the country. Many shops in the capital were shuttered, a resident told The Associated Press, and those still open ran out of staples such as sugar. Some were selling items at three times the normal price. “The situation is very strange. We are not used to that,” the resident said, insisting on anonymity, fearing retributions. “People are worried whether there will be a battle (in Damascus) or not.” It was the first time that opposition forces reached the outskirts of Damascus since 2018, when Syrian troops recaptured the area following a yearslong siege. The U.N. said it was moving noncritical staff outside the country as a precaution. Assad's status Syria’s state media denied social media rumors that Assad left the country, saying he is performing his duties in Damascus. He has had little, if any, help from his allies. Russia, is busy with its war in Ukraine . Lebanon’s Hezbollah, which at one point sent thousands of fighters to shore up Assad's forces, has been weakened by a yearlong conflict with Israel. Iran has seen its proxies across the region degraded by regular Israeli airstrikes. U.S. President-elect Donald Trump on Saturday posted on social media that that the United States should avoid engaging militarily in Syria. Pedersen said a date for talks in Geneva on the implementation a U.N. resolution, adopted in 2015, and calling for a Syrian-led political process, would be announced later. The resolution calls for the establishment of a transitional governing body, followed by the drafting of a new constitution and ending with U.N.-supervised elections. Later Saturday, foreign ministers and senior diplomats from eight key countries, including Saudi Arabia, Russia, Egypt, Turkey and Iran, along with Pederson, gathered on the sidelines of the Doha Summit to discuss the situation in Syria. In a statement issued late Saturday, the participants affirmed their support for a political solution to the Syrian crisis “that would lead to the end of military activity and protect civilians.” They also agreed on the importance of strengthening international efforts to increase aid to the Syrian people. The insurgents' march Rami Abdurrahman, who heads the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an opposition war monitor, said insurgents were in the Damascus suburbs of Maadamiyah, Jaramana and Daraya. Opposition fighters were marching toward the Damascus suburb of Harasta, he added. A commander with the insurgents, Hassan Abdul-Ghani, posted on the Telegram messaging app that opposition forces had begun the “final stage” of their offensive by encircling Damascus. HTS controls much of northwest Syria and in 2017 set up a “salvation government” to run day-to-day affairs in the region. In recent years, HTS leader Abu Mohammed al-Golani has sought to remake the group’s image, cutting ties with al-Qaida, ditching hard-line officials and vowing to embrace pluralism and religious tolerance. The shock offensive began Nov. 27, during which gunmen captured the northern city of Aleppo, Syria’s largest, and the central city of Hama , the country’s fourth largest city. Opposition activists said Saturday that a day earlier, insurgents entered Palmyra, which is home to invaluable archaeological sites had been in government hands since being taken from the Islamic State group in 2017. To the south, Syrian troops left much of the province of Quneitra including the main Baath City, activists said. Syrian Observatory said government troops have withdrawn from much of the two southern provinces. The Syrian army said in a statement that it carried out redeployment and repositioning in Sweida and Daraa after its checkpoints came under attack by “terrorists." The army said it was setting up a “strong and coherent defensive and security belt in the area,” apparently to defend Damascus from the south. The Syrian government has referred to opposition gunmen as terrorists since conflict broke out in March 2011. Diplomacy in Doha The foreign ministers of Iran, Russia and Turkey, meeting in Qatar, called for an end to the hostilities. Turkey is a main backer of the rebels. Qatar's top diplomat, Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, criticized Assad for failing to take advantage of the lull in fighting in recent years to address the country’s underlying problems. “Assad didn’t seize this opportunity to start engaging and restoring his relationship with his people,” he said. Sheikh Mohammed said he was surprised by how quickly the rebels have advanced and said there is a real threat to Syria’s “territorial integrity.” He said the war could “damage and destroy what is left if there is no sense of urgency” to start a political process. ____ Karam reported from London. Associated Press writers Albert Aji in Damascus, Syria; Qassim Abdul-Zahra in Baghdad; and Josef Federman and Victoria Eastwood in Doha, Qatar, contributed to this report. Bassem Mroue And Zeina Karam, The Associated PressMeet world's richest woman, daughter of billionaire, not Nita Ambani, Priti Adani or Radhika Merchant, she is...