Late winner takes Leeds top of English ChampionshipNEW YORK (AP) — Angelina Jolie never expected to hit all the notes. But finding the breath of Maria Callas was enough to bring things out of Jolie that she didn’t even know were in her. “All of us, we really don’t realize where things land in our body over a lifetime of different experiences and where we hold it to protect ourselves,” Jolie said in a recent interview. “We hold it in our stomachs. We hold it in our chest. We breathe from a different place when we’re nervous or we’re sad. “The first few weeks were the hardest because my body had to open and I had to breathe again,” she adds. “And that was a discovery of how much I wasn’t.” In Pablo Larraín’s “Maria,” which Netflix released in theaters Wednesday before it begins streaming on Dec. 11, Jolie gives, if not the performance of her career, then certainly of her last decade. Beginning with 2010’s “In the Land of Blood and Honey,” Jolie has spent recent years directing films while prioritizing raising her six children. “So my choices for quite a few years were whatever was smart financially and short. I worked very little the last eight years,” says Jolie. “And I was kind of drained. I couldn’t for a while.” But her youngest kids are now 16. And for the first time in years, Jolie is back in the spotlight, in full movie-star mode. Her commanding performance in “Maria” seems assured of bringing Jolie her third Oscar nomination. (She won supporting actress in 2000 for “Girl, Interrupted.”) For an actress whose filmography might lack a signature movie, “Maria” may be Jolie's defining role. Jolie's oldest children, Maddox and Pax, worked on the set of the film. There, they saw a version of their mother they hadn't seen before. “They had certainly seen me sad in my life. But I don’t cry in front of my children like that,” Jolie says of the emotion Callas dredged up in her. “That was a moment in realizing they were going to be with me, side by side, in this process of really understanding the depth of some of the pain I carry.” Jolie, who met a reporter earlier this fall at the Carlyle Hotel, didn't speak in any detail of that pain. But it was hard not to sense some it had to do with her lengthy and ongoing divorce from Brad Pitt, with whom she had six children. Just prior to meeting, a judge allowed Pitt’s remaining claim against Jolie, over the French winery Château Miraval, to proceed. On Monday, a judge ruled that Pitt must disclose documents Jolie’s legal team have sought that they allege include “communications concerning abuse.” Pitt has denied ever being abusive. The result of the U.S. presidential election was also just days old, though Jolie — special envoy for the United Nations Refugee Agency from 2012 to 2022 – wasn’t inclined to talk politics. Asked about Donald Trump’s win , she responded, “Global storytelling is essential,” before adding: “That’s what I’m focusing on. Listening. Listening to the voices of people in my country and around the world.” Balancing such things — reports concerning her private life, questions that accompany someone of her fame — is a big reason why Jolie is so suited to the part of Callas. The film takes place during the American-born soprano’s final days. (She died of a heart attack at 53 in 1977.) Spending much of her time in her grand Paris apartment, Callas hasn’t sung publicly in years; she’s lost her voice. Imprisoned by the myth she’s created, Callas is redefining herself and her voice. An instructor tells her he wants to hear “Callas, not Maria." The movie, of course, is more concerned with Maria. It’s Larrain’s third portrait of 20th century female icon, following “Jackie” (with Natalie Portman as Jacqueline Kennedy) and “Spencer” (with Kristen Stewart as Princess Diana). As Callas, Jolie is wonderfully regal — a self-possessed diva who deliciously, in lines penned by screenwriter Steven Knight, spouts lines like: “I took liberties all my life and the world took liberties with me.” Asked if she identified with that line, Jolie answered, “Yeah, yeah.” Then she took a long pause. “I’m sure people will read a lot into this and there’s probably a lot I could say but don’t want to feed into,” Jolie eventually continues. “I know she was a public person because she loved her work. And I’m a public person because I love my work, not because I like being public. I think some people are more comfortable with a public life, and I’ve never been fully comfortable with it.” When Larraín first approached Jolie about the role, he screened “Spencer” for her. That film, like “Jackie” and “Maria,” eschews a biopic approach to instead intimately focus on a specific moment of crisis. Larraín was convinced Jolie was meant for the role. “I felt she could have that magnetism,” Larraín says. “The enigmatic diva that’s come to a point in her life where she has to take control of her life again. But the weight of her experience, of her music, of her singing, everything, is on her back. And she carries that. It’s someone who’s already loaded with a life that’s been intense.” “There’s a loneliness that we both share,” Jolie says. “That’s not necessarily a bad thing. I think people can be alone and lonely sometimes, and that can be part of who they are.” Larraín, the Chilean filmmaker, grew up in Santiago going to the opera, and he has long yearned to bring its full power and majesty to a movie. In Callas, he heard something that transfixed him. “I hear something near perfection, but at the same time, it’s something that’s about to be destroyed,” Larraín says. “So it’s as fragile and as strong as possible. It lives in both extremes. That’s why it’s so moving. I hear a voice that’s about to be broken, but it doesn’t.” In Callas’ less perfect moments singing in the film, Larraín fuses archival recordings of Callas with Jolie’s own voice. Some mix of the two runs throughout “Maria.” “Early in the process,” Jolie says, “I discovered that you can’t fake-sing opera.” Jolie has said she never sang before, not even karaoke. But the experience has left her with a newfound appreciation of opera and its healing properties. “I wonder if it’s something you lean into as you get older,” Jolie says. “Maybe your depth of pain is bigger, your depth of loss is bigger, and that sound in opera meets that, the enormity of it.” If Larraín’s approach to “Maria” is predicated on an unknowingness, he's inclined to say something similar about his star. “Because of media and social media, some people might think that they know a lot about Angelina,” he says. “Maria, I read nine biographies of her. I saw everything. I read every interview. I made this movie. But I don’t think I would be capable of telling you who she was us. So if there’s an element in common, it’s that. They carry an enormous amount of mystery. Even if you think that you know them, you don’t.” Whether “Maria” means more acting in the future for Jolie, she's not sure. “There's not a clear map,” she says. Besides, Jolie isn't quite ready to shake Callas. “When you play a real person, you feel at some point that they become your friend,” says Jolie. “Right now, it’s still a little personal. It’s funny, I’ll be at a premiere or I’ll walk into a room and someone will start blaring her music for fun, but I have this crazy internal sense memory of dropping to my knees and crying.” Copyright 2024 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission. Get local news delivered to your inbox!
WASHINGTON >> Jimmy Carter, the earnest Georgia peanut farmer who as U.S. president struggled with a bad economy and the Iran hostage crisis but brokered peace between Israel and Egypt and later received the Nobel Peace Prize for his humanitarian work, died at his home in Plains, Georgia, on Sunday, the Carter Center said. He was 100. “My father was a hero, not only to me but to everyone who believes in peace, human rights, and unselfish love,” said Chip Carter, the former president’s son. “My brothers, sister, and I shared him with the rest of the world through these common beliefs. The world is our family because of the way he brought people together, and we thank you for honoring his memory by continuing to live these shared beliefs.” A Democrat, he served as president from January 1977 to January 1981 after defeating incumbent Republican President Gerald Ford in the 1976 U.S. election. Carter was swept from office four years later in an electoral landslide as voters embraced Republican challenger Ronald Reagan, the former actor and California governor. Carter lived longer after his term in office than any other U.S. president. Along the way, he earned a reputation as a better former president than he was a president — a status he readily acknowledged. His one-term presidency was marked by the highs of the 1978 Camp David accords between Israel and Egypt, bringing some stability to the Middle East. But it was dogged by an economy in recession, persistent unpopularity and the embarrassment of the Iran hostage crisis that consumed his final 444 days in office. In recent years, Carter had experienced several health issues including melanoma that spread to his liver and brain. Carter decided to receive hospice care in February 2023 instead of undergoing additional medical intervention. His wife, Rosalynn Carter, died on Nov. 19, 2023, at age 96. He looked frail when he attended her memorial service and funeral in a wheelchair. Carter left office profoundly unpopular but worked energetically for decades on humanitarian causes. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002 in recognition of his “untiring effort to find peaceful solutions to international conflicts, to advance democracy and human rights, and to promote economic and social development.” Carter had been a centrist as governor of Georgia with populist tendencies when he moved into the White House as the 39th U.S. president. He was a Washington outsider at a time when America was still reeling from the Watergate scandal that led Republican Richard Nixon to resign as president in 1974 and elevated Ford from vice president. “I’m Jimmy Carter and I’m running for president. I will never lie to you,” Carter promised with an ear-to-ear smile. Asked to assess his presidency, Carter said in a 1991 documentary: “The biggest failure we had was a political failure. I never was able to convince the American people that I was a forceful and strong leader.” Despite his difficulties in office, Carter had few rivals for accomplishments as a former president. He gained global acclaim as a tireless human rights advocate, a voice for the disenfranchised and a leader in the fight against hunger and poverty, winning the respect that eluded him in the White House. Carter won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002 for his efforts to promote human rights and resolve conflicts around the world, from Ethiopia and Eritrea to Bosnia and Haiti. His Carter Center in Atlanta sent international election-monitoring delegations to polls around the world. A Southern Baptist Sunday school teacher since his teens, Carter brought a strong sense of morality to the presidency, speaking openly about his religious faith. He also sought to take some pomp out of an increasingly imperial presidency – walking, rather than riding in a limousine, in his 1977 inauguration parade. The Middle East was the focus of Carter’s foreign policy. The 1979 Egypt-Israel peace treaty, based on the 1978 Camp David accords, ended a state of war between the two neighbors. Carter brought Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin to the Camp David presidential retreat in Maryland for talks. Later, as the accords seemed to be unraveling, Carter saved the day by flying to Cairo and Jerusalem for personal shuttle diplomacy. The treaty provided for Israeli withdrawal from Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula and establishment of diplomatic relations. Begin and Sadat each won a Nobel Peace Prize in 1978. By the 1980 election, the overriding issues were double-digit inflation, interest rates that exceeded 20% and soaring gas prices, as well as the Iran hostage crisis that brought humiliation to America. These issues marred Carter’s presidency and undermined his chances of winning a second term. HOSTAGE CRISIS On Nov. 4, 1979, revolutionaries devoted to Iran’s Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini had stormed the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, seized the Americans present and demanded the return of the ousted shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, who was backed by the United States and was being treated in a U.S. hospital. The American public initially rallied behind Carter. But his support faded in April 1980 when a commando raid failed to rescue the hostages, with eight U.S. soldiers killed in an aircraft accident in the Iranian desert. Carter’s final ignominy was that Iran held the 52 hostages until minutes after Reagan took his oath of office on Jan. 20, 1981, to replace Carter, then released the planes carrying them to freedom. In another crisis, Carter protested the former Soviet Union’s 1979 invasion of Afghanistan by boycotting the 1980 Olympics in Moscow. He also asked the U.S. Senate to defer consideration of a major nuclear arms accord with Moscow. Unswayed, the Soviets remained in Afghanistan for a decade. Carter won narrow Senate approval in 1978 of a treaty to transfer the Panama Canal to the control of Panama despite critics who argued the waterway was vital to American security. He also completed negotiations on full U.S. ties with China. Carter created two new U.S. Cabinet departments – education and energy. Amid high gas prices, he said America’s “energy crisis” was “the moral equivalent of war” and urged the country to embrace conservation. “Ours is the most wasteful nation on earth,” he told Americans in 1977. In 1979, Carter delivered what became known as his “malaise” speech to the nation, although he never used that word. “After listening to the American people I have been reminded again that all the legislation in the world can’t fix what’s wrong with America,” he said in his televised address. “The threat is nearly invisible in ordinary ways. It is a crisis of confidence. It is a crisis that strikes at the very heart and soul and spirit of our national will. The erosion of our confidence in the future is threatening to destroy the social and the political fabric of America.” As president, the strait-laced Carter was embarrassed by the behavior of his hard-drinking younger brother, Billy Carter, who had boasted: “I got a red neck, white socks, and Blue Ribbon beer.” ‘THERE YOU GO AGAIN’ Jimmy Carter withstood a challenge from Massachusetts Senator Edward Kennedy for the 1980 Democratic presidential nomination but was politically diminished heading into his general election battle against a vigorous Republican adversary. Reagan, the conservative who projected an image of strength, kept Carter off balance during their debates before the November 1980 election. Reagan dismissively told Carter, “There you go again,” when the Republican challenger felt the president had misrepresented Reagan’s views during one debate. Carter lost the 1980 election to Reagan, who won 44 of the 50 states and amassed an Electoral College landslide. James Earl Carter Jr. was born on Oct. 1, 1924, in Plains, Georgia, one of four children of a farmer and shopkeeper. He graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy in 1946, served in the nuclear submarine program and left to manage the family peanut farming business. He married his wife, Rosalynn, in 1946, a union he called “the most important thing in my life.” They had three sons and a daughter. Carter became a millionaire, a Georgia state legislator and Georgia’s governor from 1971 to 1975. He mounted an underdog bid for the 1976 Democratic presidential nomination, and out-hustled his rivals for the right to face Ford in the general election. With Walter Mondale as his vice presidential running mate, Carter was given a boost by a major Ford gaffe during one of their debates. Ford said that “there is no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe and there never will be under a Ford administration,” despite decades of just such domination. Carter edged Ford in the election, even though Ford actually won more states – 27 to Carter’s 23. Not all of Carter’s post-presidential work was appreciated. Former President George W. Bush and his father, former President George H.W. Bush, both Republicans, were said to have been displeased by Carter’s freelance diplomacy in Iraq and elsewhere. In 2004, Carter called the Iraq war launched in 2003 by the younger Bush one of the most “gross and damaging mistakes our nation ever made.” He called George W. Bush’s administration “the worst in history” and said Vice President Dick Cheney was “a disaster for our country.” In 2019, Carter questioned Republican Donald Trump’s legitimacy as president, saying “he was put into office because the Russians interfered on his behalf.” Trump responded by calling Carter “a terrible president.” Carter also made trips to communist North Korea. A 1994 visit defused a nuclear crisis, as President Kim Il Sung agreed to freeze his nuclear program in exchange for resumed dialogue with the United States. That led to a deal in which North Korea, in return for aid, promised not to restart its nuclear reactor or reprocess the plant’s spent fuel. But Carter irked Democratic President Bill Clinton’s administration by announcing the deal with North Korea’s leader without first checking with Washington. In 2010, Carter won the release of an American sentenced to eight years hard labor for illegally entering North Korea. Carter wrote more than two dozen books, ranging from a presidential memoir to a children’s book and poetry, as well as works about religious faith and diplomacy. His book “Faith: A Journey for All,” was published in 2018.Lithium-Ion Battery Market to Grow by USD 448.8 Billion (2024-2028) as Consumer Electronics Drive Demand, Report with AI Impact on Market Trends - Technavio
At a campaign event in Winston-Salem on the eve of the 1976 North Carolina Democratic primary, a voter asked then-candidate Jimmy Carter whether he was a “born again” Christian. Carter, a Southern Baptist Sunday-school teacher, replied that, yes, he was “born again,” thereby sending a legion of journalists from outside the Bible belt to their Rolodexes to figure out what in the world he was talking about. Carter sought throughout his life to act on the principles of his faith, which was defined in part by the extraordinary activism of 19th century evangelical Christians who worked assiduously on behalf of those Jesus called “the least of these.” They were involved in peace crusades and helped to organize public schools so that the children of those less affluent could become upwardly mobile. Northern evangelicals worked for the abolition of slavery. They supported prison reform and women’s suffrage. Carter’s progressive evangelicalism was very much in that tradition. He was sensitive to racial inequalities from a young age and tried to address them — as school board member, as governor and as president. He supported women’s equality, including the proposed Equal Rights Amendment. As president, Carter tried to nudge American foreign policy away from its reflexive Cold War dualism toward an emphasis on human rights. He recognized that if the United States were to have any meaningful relationship with Latin America, we needed to attenuate our colonialism, so he pushed through the ratification of the Panama Canal treaties. He advanced peace in the Middle East farther than any of his predecessors (or successors), and he appointed more women and people of color to federal office than any previous president. Many environmentalists consider him the best president ever for their cause. Carter’s failure to win reelection in 1980 devastated him. He departed Washington for Plains, Ga., at 56, the youngest president to leave office since William Howard Taft. Rosalynn was especially embittered by the election loss. In one of our interviews decades after the 1980 election, Carter told me that in the course of his frequent reassurances to his wife that they still had productive years ahead of them, he began to believe his own rhetoric. He also conceded that if he had been president for four more years, that second term would not have been nearly so fruitful as the alternative turned out to be. Carter’s post-presidency began with a middle-of-the-night idea. In addition to a presidential library, Jimmy told Rosalynn, “We can start an adjacent institution, something like Camp David, where people can come who are involved in a war. I can offer to serve as a mediator, in Atlanta or perhaps in their countries. We might also teach how to resolve or prevent conflict.” This would be an entirely new model for out-of-office presidents — a privately funded nonprofit center to advance his goals and allow him to address issues he would have pursued if he’d stayed in the White House. In a list of basic principles for the center, Carter stipulated that it would be nonpartisan and that it would not duplicate the programs of other institutions, such as the United Nations. Most important, Carter wanted an “action agency,” an institution devoted to change rather than simply “theoretical or academic analysis.” The Jimmy Carter Presidential Library and Museum, along with the Carter Center, was dedicated in Atlanta on Oct. 1, 1986, Carter’s 62nd birthday. His faith undeniably informed every effort at the center. Carter told an interviewer in 1988 that the life of Jesus had always been his guide. “I don’t see any disharmony in this life between evangelistic effort on the one hand and benevolent care of people who suffer or who are in need on the other,” he said. “I think they are intimately tied together.” Carter understood problems afflicting the world as spiritual challenges in part, noting that industrialized Western society had failed to adopt Christian principles of concern and caring. He believed that people of privilege, and especially people of faith, bore a special responsibility for those less fortunate, for those who suffer and are deprived. “That’s where Jesus spent all his ministry,” Carter said. Piety alone wasn’t sufficient; followers of Jesus must live out their convictions with acts of charity. Early on, Carter identified access to healthcare, including mental healthcare (one of Rosalynn’s concerns), as a fundamental human right, noting at one point that 40,000 children die every day from preventable diseases. Using education and simple, low-cost methods, the Carter Center’s health initiatives addressed “neglected tropical diseases”: lymphatic filariasis, trachoma, schistosomiasis and malaria. Other programs targeted guinea worm and river blindness (onchocerciasis), extraordinary initiatives that have achieved near eradication of those diseases in regions where the Carter Center has been active. Peace and conflict resolution, the second focus of the Carter Center, built on Carter’s success in negotiating the Camp David accords. “We need to deal with other people with mutual respect,” Carter told an audience at Messiah College in 1988, “and through that kind of approach there can be peaceful resolution of differences through the use of diplomacy and negotiation, not through the use of military power.” The center conducted programs on democracy and human rights and monitored elections in dozens of countries. Carter leveraged his relationships with world leaders to mediate various disputes, including those in Guyana, Ethiopia and Serbia. In 1994, Carter convinced Kim Il Sung to open North Korea’s nuclear reactors to inspectors. In Haiti the following year, U.S. military planes were headed toward the island when Carter, together with Colin Powell and Georgia Sen. Sam Nunn, persuaded the military junta to abandon power. Carter’s persistent efforts at conflict resolution, dating back to the Camp David accords of 1978, were recognized with the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002. Jimmy and Rosalynn, who died in November 2023, extended their public service beyond the Carter Center, too — most notably with Habitat for Humanity, which Carter once described as “the most practical, tangible way I’ve ever seen to put Christian principles into action.” During one of our conversations, Carter choked up when he told of completing a house for a woman and her family who had been living in an abandoned septic tank. Carter’s alternative “second term” lasted for more than four decades. Out of the ashes of political annihilation, he became not just an elder statesman and world-renowned humanitarian but arguably the most consequential of modern former presidents. James Laney, former president of Emory University, partner of the Carter Center, offered the best and most succinct characterization of the man from Plains. Carter, Laney remarked, was “the first president to use the White House as a stepping stone.” Randall Balmer, the John Phillips Professor in Religion at Dartmouth College, is the author of “Redeemer: The Life of Jimmy Carter.”
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