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By MICHELLE L. PRICE and ROB GILLIES NEW YORK (AP) — President-elect Donald Trump’s recent dinner with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his visit to Paris for the reopening of the Notre Dame Cathedral were not just exercises in policy and diplomacy. They were also prime trolling opportunities for Trump. Related Articles National Politics | Trump names Andrew Ferguson as head of Federal Trade Commission to replace Lina Khan National Politics | Biden says he was ‘stupid’ not to put his name on pandemic relief checks like Trump did National Politics | Biden issues veto threat on bill expanding federal judiciary as partisan split emerges National Politics | Trump lawyers and aide hit with 10 additional felony charges in Wisconsin over 2020 fake electors National Politics | After withdrawing as attorney general nominee, Matt Gaetz lands a talk show on OANN television Throughout his first term in the White House and during his campaign to return, Trump has spun out countless provocative, antagonizing and mocking statements. There were his belittling nicknames for political opponents, his impressions of other political figures and the plentiful memes he shared on social media. Now that’s he’s preparing to return to the Oval Office, Trump is back at it, and his trolling is attracting more attention — and eyerolls. On Sunday, Trump turned a photo of himself seated near a smiling first lady Jill Biden at the Notre Dame ceremony into a social media promo for his new perfume and cologne line, with the tag line, “A fragrance your enemies can’t resist!” The first lady’s office declined to comment. When Trudeau hastily flew to Florida to meet with Trump last month over the president-elect’s threat to impose a 25% tax on all Canadian products entering the U.S., the Republican tossed out the idea that Canada become the 51st U.S. state. The Canadians passed off the comment as a joke, but Trump has continued to play up the dig, including in a post Tuesday morning on his social media network referring to the prime minister as “Governor Justin Trudeau of the Great State of Canada.” After decades as an entertainer and tabloid fixture, Trump has a flair for the provocative that is aimed at attracting attention and, in his most recent incarnation as a politician, mobilizing fans. He has long relished poking at his opponents, both to demean and minimize them and to delight supporters who share his irreverent comments and posts widely online and cheer for them in person. Trump, to the joy of his fans, first publicly needled Canada on his social media network a week ago when he posted an AI-generated image that showed him standing on a mountain with a Canadian flag next to him and the caption “Oh Canada!” After his latest post, Canadian Immigration Minister Marc Miller said Tuesday: “It sounds like we’re living in a episode of South Park.” Trudeau said earlier this week that when it comes to Trump, “his approach will often be to challenge people, to destabilize a negotiating partner, to offer uncertainty and even sometimes a bit of chaos into the well established hallways of democracies and institutions and one of the most important things for us to do is not to freak out, not to panic.” Even Thanksgiving dinner isn’t a trolling-free zone for Trump’s adversaries. On Thanksgiving Day, Trump posted a movie clip from “National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation” with President Joe Biden and other Democrats’ faces superimposed on the characters in a spoof of the turkey-carving scene. The video shows Trump appearing to explode out of the turkey in a swirl of purple sparks, with the former president stiffly dancing to one of his favorite songs, Village People’s “Y.M.C.A.” In his most recent presidential campaign, Trump mocked Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, refusing to call his GOP primary opponent by his real name and instead dubbing him “Ron DeSanctimonious.” He added, for good measure, in a post on his Truth Social network: “I will never call Ron DeSanctimonious ‘Meatball’ Ron, as the Fake News is insisting I will.” As he campaigned against Biden, Trump taunted him in online posts and with comments and impressions at his rallies, deriding the president over his intellect, his walk, his golf game and even his beach body. After Vice President Kamala Harris took over Biden’s spot as the Democratic nominee, Trump repeatedly suggested she never worked at McDonalds while in college. Trump, true to form, turned his mocking into a spectacle by appearing at a Pennsylvania McDonalds in October, when he manned the fries station and held an impromptu news conference from the restaurant drive-thru. Trump’s team thinks people should get a sense of humor. “President Trump is a master at messaging and he’s always relatable to the average person, whereas many media members take themselves too seriously and have no concept of anything else other than suffering from Trump Derangement Syndrome,” said Steven Cheung, Trump’s communications director. “President Trump will Make America Great Again and we are getting back to a sense of optimism after a tumultuous four years.” Though both the Biden and Harris campaigns created and shared memes and launched other stunts to respond to Trump’s taunts, so far America’s neighbors to the north are not taking the bait. “I don’t think we should necessarily look on Truth Social for public policy,” Miller said. Gerald Butts, a former top adviser to Trudeau and a close friend, said Trump brought up the 51st state line to Trudeau repeatedly during Trump’s first term in office. “Oh God,” Butts said Tuesday, “At least a half dozen times.” “This is who he is and what he does. He’s trying to destabilize everybody and make people anxious,” Butts said. “He’s trying to get people on the defensive and anxious and therefore willing to do things they wouldn’t otherwise entertain if they had their wits about them. I don’t know why anybody is surprised by it.” Gillies reported from Toronto. Associated Press writer Darlene Superville contributed to this report.Marist Catholic finally gets its title with Class 4A state championship win over Henley
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Lisa 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
Tesla CEO Elon Musk is officially the richest he’s ever been (and the wealthiest person ever) with a net worth of $334.3 billion, according to Forbes. The planet’s richest person grew much richer as shares of the Musk-led publicly traded electric vehicle company Tesla soared after Donald Trump's win in the US election. Musk was the biggest supporter of Trump during the election campaign, even taking part in some of his rallies. Assembly Election Results Election Results 2024 Live Updates Maharashtra Assembly Election Results 2024 Live Updates Jharkhand Assembly Election Results 2024 Live Updates He has been appointed chair of the new “Department of Government Efficiency” (DOGE), where he will work alongside Vivek Ramaswamy. According to Forbes, the net worth of Elon Musk was a record $321.7 billion at market close Friday, November 22, getting a $7 billion boost as Tesla stock climbed 3.8% to a new 3.5-year closing high of $352.56 per share. That eclipses the previous high of $320.3 billion set on November 5, 2021 amid Tesla’s pandemic era surge. Musk's net worth is now more than $80 billion richer than the next wealthiest person, his friend and Oracle chairman Larry Ellison at $235 billion. Much of Musk's fortune comes from his 13% stake in Tesla worth $145 billion, with another 9% equity award in the company pending an appeal in Delaware court (Forbes discounts the value of the award by 50% in its valuation of Musk wealth). Elon Musk's net worth now $70 billion higher The substantial valuation of Musk's AI company xAI , valued at $50 billion, has further contributed to his wealth. SpaceX , valued at $210 billion, also plays a significant role in Musk's overall net worth. With this, Musk's fortune is now about $70 billion larger than it was on Election Day as Tesla shares surged 40% as Wall Street bought into what should be a more friendly regulatory environment under Trump for Tesla, especially for its self-driving vehicles, as per Forbes. How Elon Musk became the richest person again Elon Musk's close ties with president elect Donald Trump have fuelled investor confidence. Wall Street analysts view the incoming administration's anticipated deregulation efforts as a significant advantage for Tesla, particularly for its Full Self-Driving initiatives, which have faced regulatory scrutiny. The other primary source of Musk's fortune is his 42% stake in SpaceX, which was valued at $210 billion in a June tender offer, putting his stake in the private aerospace and satellite communications company at $88 billion. Speculation around SpaceX's upcoming funding round, which could value the company at $250 billion, suggests that Musk's net worth might climb even higher, potentially adding $18 billion to his fortune. There's still some more way to go However, despite this historic rise in fortune, there still may be some more way to go as Tesla shares still remain about 14 per cent below their all-time high from late 2021.
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Acclaimed Qatari artist Bouthayna al-Muftah highlighted the power of art in fostering dialogue and cultural exchange at the recently held Doha Forum, citing the transformative impact of artistic expression in connecting diverse audiences. Drawing from her collaborative experiences with Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art, al-Muftah noted that her first immersive installation, ‘Echoes’, debuted in the museum’s project space, saying: “It was a very nice exchange of knowledge between artist and curator,” she pointed out. “They learned about my work, and I learned from them, especially in creating my first immersive installation”. She said “Echoes”, which debuted at Mathaf in 2018, explores human interaction amidst rapid technological advancements. The international reach of al-Muftah’s work was further underscored by Echoes’ inclusion in the “Our World is Burning” exhibition at the Palais de Tokyo in Paris. This international exposure, she noted, allowed her to share a piece of Qatari culture with a global audience, fostering cross-cultural understanding. At the panel discussion “Promoting Dialogue and Diversity Through Art,” she discussed how partnerships with museums, especially with Mathaf, influenced her artistic vision and broadened her understanding of art’s impact. Echoes served as a main example, inviting viewers to step into the artwork and leave their own mark. The exhibition, deeply rooted in personal memories and family stories, incorporated Arabic script and mirrors, creating a reflective experience that blended personal narrative with shared cultural memory. Al-Muftah’s “Aubusson Tapestry” project, part of the Qatar – France Year of Culture 2020, saw her combining traditional Qatari textile traditions with the renowned French tapestry techniques of Aubusson. “This was the same with the ‘Aubusson Tapestry’ (project) that I spoke about before. It brings forgotten narratives from my art and combining it with traditional craftsmanship in the tapestry, it’s a really nice way of curating this cultural diplomacy,” she said. A graduate of Virginia Commonwealth University School of the Arts in Qatar, al-Muftah has developed a multidisciplinary approach that includes printmaking, typography, drawing, and bookbinding. Al-Muftah said her work often integrates Qatari oral traditions and collective memory, with Arabic script playing a central role but not always in the literal form. She added that her use of script evolves beyond calligraphy into typographic expressions, rooted in journaling and archival practices. Some of al-Muftah’s notable works like Um al Salasil Wil Thahab, a portrait series depicting life in Qatari neighbourhoods, and her bookbinding projects further showcase her dedication to preserving and reimagining cultural traditions (Source: Mathaf). Related Story Jaguar unveils Type 00 at Miami Art Week Qatari-Tajik joint labour committee convenes in Doha
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