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The Vikings have prepared for the game against the Atlanta Falcons without veteran quarterback Stephon Gilmore this week, and on Friday he was officially ruled out ahead of the matchup on Sunday afternoon at U.S. Bank Stadium. The news isn’t surprising given the fact that Gilmore hasn’t practiced at all this week at TCO Performance Center. He’s been nursing a hamstring injury since last week when he left a victory over the Arizona Cardinals. Though the Vikings believe that Gilmore has avoided anything serious, they are clearly being cautious with him so not to make anything worse. The loss of Gilmore in the short term will thrust veteran cornerback Fabian Moreau into a bigger role on defense.“ Nightbitch ” spends way more time on the wildness of being a parent than the wildness of turning into a dog — however interlinked those two phenomena become for the film ’s protagonist ( Amy Adams ). Writer and director Marielle Heller wanted to take the experiences that resonated with her from the Rachel Yoder novel of the same name and find viscerally cinematic ways to represent them. But not so unlike motherhood itself, there’s a wealth of work that goes into the success of the simplest onscreen actions — from the punch of a hash brown hitting a frying pan to a toddler (played by twins Emmett Snowden and Arleigh Snowden) waving at a garbage truck right at the moment the camera needs them to. In fact, Heller found that a lot of fun and games were required to get her youngest actors to help the film’s project of centering the ways in which raising kids is never all fun and games. “It was a huge goal of mine to be able to capture a relationship between a mother and a child that felt authentic. Because for me, when I watch most movies or TV that have little kids, it feels like total bullshit. You know, it’s this perfect little actor kid doing actor-y things that don’t feel like a real kid. Or it’s parents responding in ways that don’t feel real,” Heller told IndieWire on the Filmmaker Toolkit podcast. To avoid that common pitfall, Heller’s nontraditional audition process for the film’s son involved a lot of just hanging out in the park and playing with kids. It also involved making sure they’d exude a sense of play and mischief but also follow directions when they needed to and not get too shy on a film set. It helped that almost every “ Nightbitch ” crew member was a parent or very familiar with little kids. “Everybody collectively decided we were going to make this a really fun place for these kids,” Heller said. “[Emmett and Arleigh] knew everybody on set. If somebody’s coming up with a microphone, they knew his name, and what he was doing, and why he was there, and how the microphone worked. A huge amount of work [went into] creating an environment where they felt really safe.” Heller herself put in a huge amount of work into getting her toddler actors to do exactly what each scene in the film required, from smashing a plate of spaghetti to toppling Amy Adams and covering her in paint. Heller calibrated simplified acting games for the kids but also used the kind of reverse psychology anybody can tempt a toddler with. “[I’d go] ‘Don’t bark, whatever you do, don’t bark right now’ or something and barking at them and seeing how they’d respond,” Heller said. “It was a little awkward when my two-year-old daughter visited [the set] and she saw these two little boys, like, in my lap. The look on her face was like, ‘What is happening here?’” Familial betrayal, however benign, is germane to the story and the themes “Nightbitch” explores. Heller uses all the cinematic tools at her disposal to show the mother’s struggles simply managing chunks of time, day after repetitive day. There’s an intriguing discomfort to Nate Heller’s score and how Marielle uses sound, plus a kind of percussive editing rhythm to make the film’s mundane events feel heavy and its surreal events feel sublime. In a childcare montage near the film’s beginning, for instance, Heller wanted to capture how jarring ordinary moments can be when you’re sleep-deprived and stuck with a toddler. And without making anything in the film ever feel like a jump scare. So she structured the actions and the shooting of that montage to turn normally pleasant sounds — food sizzling in a pan, swings squeaking in a park — into jarring, percussive elements. “[Editor Anne McCabe] and I had so much fun and she found little things that I hadn’t even planned on — a moment where the son says, ‘Seven, eight,’ and it sounds like he’s counting off the percussive elements,” Heller said. Throughout “Nightbitch,” a fair bit of the observational comedy is carried through the editing rhythm. So is the dramatic tension between the mother and her husband (Scoot McNairy). Heller scripted the dialogue and structured the coverage so that the film always emphasizes the emotional undercurrent of a relationship — whether things are about to erupt in anger or are slow and simmering, where what’s not being said is key. “I do lead with hearing things. I have rhythms in my head. I think it comes from being a theater actor,” Heller said. “Especially with dialogue, I really hear the rhythms of dialogue and the build of dialogue in my head. And then the visual elements kind of come second to me, which I don’t think is typical.” Heller marshals all the elements in “Nightbitch,” visual and sonic, to lean into the mother’s emotional experience, rather than the film’s flashier genre elements. That’s a pretty bold move in an environment, even awash in high-concept IP as we are, where there are fears about audiences ever having a moment of uncertainty. Heller felt she really had to protect the film from good-intentioned notes that would muddy the emotional throughline with too many magical mechanics. “It’s not like anybody is trying to mess up your movie. Everybody’s trying to help, but you have to learn how to interpret what’s going to be a helpful note and what’s not,” Heller said. “‘Like, maybe we should have a bell go off every time [the mother’s] in a fantasy so we all know it’s a fantasy moment.’ I had so much fun in the shooting of this moment playing with her experience and not knowing at times whether what she’s experiencing is real.” That uncertainty resonated with Heller’s own experience of the extreme fatigue and mental anguish that are just a natural part of parenthood and long-term relationships. The more truthful the experience, the more audiences can connect with it, too. “I tend to believe audiences are smart and can figure things out and lean in more when things leave a little bit to be figured out or interpreted. And I make movies for people who are smart,” Heller said. “Nightbitch” is now in theaters.r espineli 。

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ODU Confers Nearly 1,630 Degrees During its 141st Commencement CeremoniesLAHORE: The National Seed Policy is nearing its final stage and will soon be presented to cabinet for approval. The policy aims to address the challenges faced by seed technology companies and is designed to modernize the seed production system in the country, ultimately boosting the yields of cotton and other crops. “The private sector must play a crucial role in the development of Pakistan’s agricultural sector by providing high-quality seeds that have the potential to increase yields,” said Iftikhar Ali Sahoo, the Punjab Agriculture Secretary, during an informal meeting with agriculture reporters on Friday. “The Punjab government is in discussions with both multinational and local companies to stabilize the declining cotton production rather than taking it to past glory,” he added. Sahoo further emphasized that the national seed policy, along with efforts at both the federal and provincial levels, aims to bring a comprehensive system to Pakistan—spanning seed technology to cotton stewardship. He acknowledged that public sector research institutions have struggled to develop high-yielding varieties of crops, pointing out that the breakthroughs in maize and rice production were largely due to the introduction of hybrid seeds by the private sector. “We cannot rely solely on public sector research institutions. The private sector has a vital role to play in developing high-yielding seeds for the country. The government does not view the private sector as a competitor, but rather as a partner. We are ready to support them financially and in any other way necessary to strengthen the agricultural sector,” Sahoo stated. He also shared some of the Punjab government’s efforts to enhance the agricultural sector, noting that the province had successfully achieved its wheat sowing target of 16.5 million acres, despite numerous challenges. He commended the extension staff for their dedication, highlighting their success in meeting the target by the end of the wheat season on December 10. Sahoo revealed that negotiations were ongoing with an international firm to establish a bio-refinery in the province, which would use crop waste, especially rice straw, to produce biofuels. Addressing concerns about smog and its potential impact on crop yields, Sahoo acknowledged that the exact impact on yields had yet to be determined. However, he noted that the government had distributed 1,000 super seeders to rice farmers to prevent the practice of burning rice crop residue, which contributes to smog. He added that next year, the number of super seeders would increase to 5,000. Rice is grown on 6.5 million acres in Punjab, with 3 million acres in the Lahore and Gujranwala divisions alone. He said that mechanical and environmental friendly harvesting is another goal set by the provincial government. Dr Anjum Buttar, Project Director PESP, shared that the government was working on a national pulses project to promote the production of chickpeas (Channa) and mung beans (Mong) to meet growing domestic demand and reduce imports. In addition, the government is promoting off-season sowing of tomatoes and onions, with large areas along the Chenab River already dedicated to these crops. Earlier, the Secretary of Agriculture also discussed various projects such as CM Punjab Kissan Card, Green Tractor Scheme, CM Programme for Solarisation of tube wells, internship programme for agri graduations etc in detail. Copyright Business Recorder, 2024

BY MELISSA GOLDIN Social media users are misrepresenting a Vermont Supreme Court ruling , claiming that it gives schools permission to vaccinate children even if their parents do not consent. The ruling addressed a lawsuit filed by Dario and Shujen Politella against Windham Southeast School District and state officials over the mistaken vaccination of their child against COVID-19 in 2021, when he was 6 years old. A lower court had dismissed the original complaint, as well as an amended version. An appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court was filed on Nov. 19. But the ruling by Vermont’s high court is not as far-reaching as some online have claimed. In reality, it concluded that anyone protected under the Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness Act, or PREP, Act is immune to state lawsuits. Here’s a closer look at the facts. CLAIM: The Vermont Supreme Court ruled that schools can vaccinate children against their parents’ wishes. THE FACTS: The claim stems from a July 26 ruling by the Vermont Supreme Court, which found that anyone protected by the PREP Act is immune to state lawsuits, including the officials named in the Politella’s suit. The ruling does not authorize schools to vaccinate children at their discretion. According to the lawsuit, the Politella’s son — referred to as L.P. — was given one dose of the Pfizer BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine at a vaccination clinic held at Academy School in Brattleboro even though his father, Dario, told the school’s assistant principal a few days before that his son was not to receive a vaccination. In what officials described as a mistake, L.P. was removed from class and had a “handwritten label” put on his shirt with the name and date of birth of another student, L.K., who had already been vaccinated that day. L.P. was then vaccinated. Ultimately, the Vermont Supreme Court ruled that officials involved in the case could not be sued. “We conclude that the PREP Act immunizes every defendant in this case and this fact alone is enough to dismiss the case,” the Vermont Supreme Court’s ruling reads. “We conclude that when the federal PREP Act immunizes a defendant, the PREP Act bars all state-law claims against that defendant as a matter of law.” The PREP Act , enacted by Congress in 2005, authorizes the secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services to issue a declaration in the event of a public health emergency providing immunity from liability for activities related to medical countermeasures, such as the administration of a vaccine, except in cases of “willful misconduct” that result in “death or serious physical injury.” A declaration against COVID-19 was issued on March 17, 2020. It is set to expire on Dec. 31. Federals suits claiming willful misconduct are filed in Washington. Social media users described the Vermont Supreme Court’s ruling as having consequences beyond what it actually says. “The Vermont Supreme Court has ruled that schools can force-vaccinate children for Covid against the wishes of their parents,” reads one X post that had been liked and shared approximately 16,600 times as of Tuesday. “The high court ruled on a case involving a 6-year-old boy who was forced to take a Covid mRNA injection by his school. However, his family had explicitly stated that they didn’t want their child to receive the ‘vaccines.’” Other users alleged that the ruling gives schools permission to give students any vaccine without parental consent, not just ones for COVID-19. Rod Smolla, president of the Vermont Law and Graduate School and an expert on constitutional law, told The Associated Press that the ruling “merely holds that the federal statute at issue, the PREP Act, preempts state lawsuits in cases in which officials mistakenly administer a vaccination without consent.” “Nothing in the Vermont Supreme Court opinion states that school officials can vaccinate a child against the instructions of the parent,” he wrote in an email. Related Articles National News | Eminem’s mother Debbie Nelson, whose rocky relationship fueled the rapper’s lyrics, dies at age 69 National News | Founder of failed crypto lending platform Celsius Network pleads guilty to fraud charges National News | Judge weighs whether to order Fani Willis to comply with lawmakers’ subpoenas over Trump case National News | Are you a former SmileDirectClub customer? You might be eligible for a refund National News | Justice Department announces sweeping reforms to curb suicides in federal prisons and jails Asked whether the claims spreading online have any merit, Ronald Ferrara, an attorney representing the Politellas, told the AP that although the ruling doesn’t say schools can vaccinate students regardless of parental consent, officials could interpret it to mean that they could get away with doing so under the PREP Act, at least when it comes to COVID-19 vaccines. He explained that the U.S. Supreme Court appeal seeks to clarify whether the Vermont Supreme Court interpreted the PREP Act beyond what Congress intended. “The Politella’s fundamental liberty interest to decide whether their son should receive elective medical treatment was denied by agents of the State and School,” he wrote in an email to the AP. “The Vermont Court misconstrues the scope of PREP Act immunity (which is conditioned upon informed consent for medical treatments unapproved by FDA), to cover this denial of rights and its underlying battery.” Ferrara added that he was not aware of the claims spreading online, but that he “can understand how lay people may conflate the court’s mistaken grant of immunity for misconduct as tantamount to blessing such misconduct.”

Major hockey tournaments, holiday shoppers bring big business to OttawaQatar tribune Agencies President-elect Donald Trump asked the Supreme Court on Friday to pause the potential TikTok ban from going into effect until his administration can pursue a “political resolution” to the issue. The request came as TikTok and the Biden administration filed opposing briefs to the court, in which the company argued the court should strike down a law that could ban the platform by Jan. 19 while the government emphasized its position that the statute is needed to eliminate a national security risk. “President Trump takes no position on the underlying merits of this dispute. Instead, he respectfully requests that the Court consider staying the Act’s deadline for divestment of January 19, 2025, while it considers the merits of this case,” said Trump’s amicus brief, which supported neither party in the case and was written by D. John Sauer, Trump’s choice for solicitor general. The argument submitted to the court is the latest example of Trump inserting himself in national issues before he takes office. The Republican president-elect has already begun negotiating with other countries over his plans to impose tariffs, and he intervened earlier this month in a plan to fund the federal government, calling for a bipartisan plan to be rejected and sending Republicans back to the negotiating table. He has been holding meetings with foreign leaders and business officials at his Mar-a-Lago club in Florida while he assembles his administration, including a meeting last week with TikTok CEO Shou Chew. Trump has reversed his position on the popular app, having tried to ban it during his first term in office over national security concerns. He joined the TikTok during his 2024 presidential campaign and his team used it to connect with younger voters, especially male voters, by pushing content that was often macho and aimed at going viral. He said earlier this year that he still believed there were national security risks with TikTok, but that he opposed banning it. The filings Friday come ahead of oral arguments scheduled for Jan. 10 on whether the law, which requires TikTok to divest from its China-based parent company or face a ban, unlawfully restricts speech in violation of the First Amendment. The law was was signed by President Joe Biden in April after it passed Congress with broad bipartisan support. TikTok and ByteDance filed a legal challenge afterwards. Earlier this month, a panel of three federal judges on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit unanimously upheld the statute, leading TikTok to appeal the case to the Supreme Court. The brief from Trump said he opposes banning TikTok at this junction and “seeks the ability to resolve the issues at hand through political means once he takes office.” In their brief to the Supreme Court on Friday, attorneys for TikTok and its parent company ByteDance argued the federal appeals court erred in its ruling and based its decision on “alleged ‘risks’ that China could exercise control” over TikTok’s U.S. platform by pressuring its foreign affiliates. The Biden administration has argued in court that TikTok poses a national security risk due to its connections to China. Officials say Chinese authorities can compel ByteDance to hand over information on TikTok’s U.S. patrons or use the platform to spread or suppress information. But the government “concedes that it has no evidence China has ever attempted to do so,” TikTok’s legal filing said, adding that the U.S. fears are predicated on future risks. In its filing Friday, the Biden administration said because TikTok “is integrated with ByteDance and relies on its propriety engine developed and maintained in China,” its corporate structure carries with it risk. Copy 29/12/2024 10

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Syrian government forces have lost control of Daraa city, a war monitor said, in another stunning blow for President Bashar al-Assad's rule after rebels wrested other key cities from his grip. Daraa was dubbed "the cradle of the revolution" early in Syria's civil war, after activists accused the government of detaining and torturing a group of boys for scribbling anti-Assad graffiti on their school walls in 2011. While Aleppo and Hama, the two other main cities taken from government control in recent days, fell to an Islamist-led rebel alliance, Daraa fell to local armed groups, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. "Local factions have taken control of more areas in Daraa province, including Daraa city... they now control more than 90 percent of the province, as regime forces successively pulled out," the Britain-based Observatory said late Friday, which relies on a network of sources around Syria. Daraa province borders Jordan. Despite a truce brokered by Assad ally Russia, it has been plagued by unrest in recent years, with frequent attacks, clashes and assassinations. Syria's civil war, which began with Assad's crackdown on democracy protests, has killed more than 500,000 people and forced more than half the population to flee their homes. Never in the war had Assad's forces lost control of so many key cities in such a short space of time. Since a rebel alliance led by the Islamist Hayat Tahrir al-Sham launched its offensive on November 27, the government has lost second city Aleppo and subsequently Hama in central Syria. The rebels were on Friday at the gates of Homs, Syria's third city, as the government pulled out its troops from Deir Ezzor in the east to redeploy towards to the centre. In an interview published on Friday, the leader of HTS, Abu Mohammed al-Jolani, said the aim of the offensive was to overthrow Assad. "When we talk about objectives, the goal of the revolution remains the overthrow of this regime. It is our right to use all available means to achieve that goal," Jolani told CNN. HTS is rooted in the Syrian branch of Al-Qaeda. Proscribed as a terrorist organisation by Western governments, it has sought to soften its image in recent years. According to Fabrice Balanche, a lecturer at France's Lumiere Lyon 2 university, HTS now controls 20,000 square kilometres (more than 7,700 square miles) of territory, nearly seven times as much as it did before the offensive started. As the army and its Iran-backed militia allies pulled out of Deir Ezzor in eastern Syria, Kurdish-led forces said they crossed the Euphrates and took control of the territory that had been vacated. The Observatory said government troops and their allies withdrew "suddenly" from the east and headed towards the oasis town of Palmyra on the desert road to Homs. The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, who are backed by the United States, expressed readiness for dialogue with both Turkey and the rebels, saying the offensive heralded a "new" political reality for Syria. The rebels launched their offensive the same day a ceasefire took effect in neighbouring Lebanon in the war between Israel and Hezbollah. The Lebanese militant group has been an important Assad ally, alongside Russia and Iran. Turkey, which has backed the opposition, said it would hold talks with Russia and Iran in Qatar this weekend. Ahead of the talks, the top diplomats of Iran, Iraq and Syria met in Baghdad, where Syria's Bassam al-Sabbagh accused the government's enemies of seeking to "redraw the political map". Iran's Abbas Araghchi pledged to provide Assad's government with "whatever (support) is needed". In Homs, scene of some of the war's deadliest violence, tens of thousands of members of Assad's Alawite minority were fleeing, fearing the rebels' advance, residents and the Britain-based Observatory said. Syrians who were forced out of the country years ago by the initial crackdown on the revolt were glued to their phones as they watched current developments unfold. "We've been dreaming of this for more than a decade," said Yazan, a 39-year-old former activist who now lives in France. Asked whether he was worried about HTS's Islamist agenda, he said: "It doesn't matter to me who is conducting this. The devil himself could be behind it. What people care about is who is going to liberate the country." On the other side of the sectarian divide, Haidar, 37, who lives in an Alawite-majority neighbourhood, told AFP by telephone that "fear is the umbrella that covers Homs now". The army shelled the advancing rebels as Syrian and Russian aircraft struck from the skies. At least 20 civilians, including five children, were killed in the bombardment, the war monitor added. At least 826 people, mostly combatants but also including 111 civilians, have been killed since the offensive began last week, according to the Observatory's figures, while the United Nations said the violence has displaced 280,000 people. Many of the scenes witnessed in recent days would have been unimaginable earlier in the war. In Hama, an AFP photographer saw residents set fire to a giant poster of Assad on the facade of city hall. "Our joy is indescribable, and we wish this for every honourable Syrian to experience these happy moments that we have been deprived of since birth," said Hama resident Ghiath Suleiman. Online footage verified by AFP showed residents toppling a statue of Assad's father Hafez, under whose brutal rule the army carried out a massacre in the city in the 1980s. Aron Lund, a fellow of the Century International think tank, called the loss of Hama "a massive, massive blow to the Syrian government". Should Assad lose Homs, it wouldn't mean the end of his rule, Lund said, but "with no secure route from Damascus to the coast, I'd say it's over as a credible state entity". bur-ser/rsc

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