US Business

New psychological horror film “Smile” has Paramount executives beaming after topping the North American box office with an estimated $22 million in weekend ticket sales, industry watcher Exhibitor Relations reported Sunday.

The film is the disturbing tale of a therapist (Sosie Bacon, daughter of actors Kevin Bacon and Kyra Sedgwick) whose grasp on reality begins to slip after she witnesses a shocking and gruesome event involving a patient.

“This is an excellent opening, the kind that launches a new horror series,” said analyst David A. Gross of Franchise Entertainment Research. Such horror films, he noted, tend to have low budgets but loyal audiences — two things studios love.

Indeed, another psychological horror film, Warner Bros.’ “Don’t Worry Darling,” placed second for the Friday-through-Sunday period, pulling in $7.3 million.

With Olivia Wilde acting and directing a cast that includes Florence Pugh, Chris Pine and pop icon Harry Styles, the film was last weekend’s Number One.

In third, also down one spot, was Sony’s history-inspired “The Woman King,” at $7 million. Oscar winner Viola Davis stars as the leader of an all-female army of African warriors.

Fourth place went to Universal’s new release “Bros,” at $4.8 million. Gross said reviews for the movie — a rare gay romantic comedy from a major Hollywood studio — were “outstanding” thanks to its “knowing and relatable” humor. Billy Eichner co-wrote and stars in the film.

And in fifth was the re-release of 20th Century’s 2009 blockbuster “Avatar,” at $4.7 million. The studio is hoping the original will help build interest in a high-budget ($250 million) sequel due in December, “Avatar: The Way of Water.” 

Rounding out the top 10 were:

“Ponniyin Selvan: Part One” ($4.1 million)

“Barbarian” ($2.8 million)

“Bullet Train” ($1.4 million)

“DC League of Super-Pets” ($1.3 million)

“Top Gun: Maverick” ($1.2 million)

Karen Pagliaro walks down Matlacha’s main street, dodging downed trees, debris and abandoned vehicles, unsure where to go in the small island town cut off after Hurricane Ian damaged bridges linking it to mainland Florida.  

“We feel kind of forgotten,” says the 50-year-old teacher, who lost her home to the storm. “We thought they’d send in help, water and supplies and things, and we were told no, just get off.”

Until Wednesday, Matlacha was a small paradise in southwest Florida.

The fishing village of 800 people across two islets was dotted with colorful wooden houses built around the wide street. It was a place to enjoy the sea, good weather, seafood restaurants and small art galleries. 

The hurricane changed everything. 

Three days after Ian hit, the Coast Guard, firefighters and citizens from nearby towns are still coming by boat to rescue the last residents who were trapped there after refusing to evacuate. 

Other residents, those who did leave the island, are making the journey in the opposite direction from the mainland to check on the damage to their homes. 

Christian Lopez watches the jetty as the emergency services evacuate people — but he has no intention of leaving, despite losing his home.  

“I’d rather stay here than go somewhere else and be on the street. Here at least we have a little roof and we are going to try to fix up the trailer where we live,” says the 25-year-old. 

– ‘I never want to come back’ –

At the other end of Matlacha, the main street is cut off by a huge crevasse that people have to cross thanks to a makeshift bridge made of a metal board.    

Dozens of stunned and weary people walk somberly about, taking in the devastation. Most of them share the same uncertainty of not knowing what to do or where to go. 

“I don’t have a plan,” says John Lynch, sounding resigned. The 59-year-old’s house is sinking into the sea and he is preparing to leave. 

“We’ve been here for 25 years… It’s heartbreaking because this is where we plan on living for the rest of our lives.”  

Karen Pagliaro doesn’t know what she is going to do either. She has nowhere to go. The school where she works is temporarily closed because of hurricane damage. 

What is clear to her is that she wants to return to live in Matlacha.  “It’s our beloved city and we love it here,” she says.  

Near the pier, Jim Bedra doesn’t share that sentiment. The septuagenarian is about to leave town with his wife, Kathy, and their dog, Luna, on a Coast Guard boat.   

Last week he wanted to evacuate the island with Kathy and their 31-year-old son, but the two convinced him to stay where they had lived since 2013.  

He no longer has a home and his voice cracks at the thought. “We are going to stay in a shelter, I imagine,” says Bedra, who wants to return to his safely landlocked home state of Ohio. 

“I never want to come back here,” he says before boarding the boat for the mainland. 

“This is not the retirement we looked for.”

ma/st/bbk

Several thousand people marched in Montreal and other Canadian cities Saturday in solidarity with protests sparked by the death of Mahsa Amini in the custody of Iran’s notorious morality police.

A wave of street violence has rocked Iran since Amini, 22, died days after her arrest for allegedly failing to observe the Islamic republic’s strict dress code for women.

Protests were held across the country for a 15th consecutive night on Friday despite a bloody crackdown that rights groups said has left more than 75 people dead.

Tens of thousands have also come out for solidarity rallies in several Canadian cities, including Vancouver, Toronto and the capital Ottawa.

A protest also took place Saturday in the US capital Washington where hundreds of members of the Kurdish community, some bearing placards calling for regime change in Tehran, gathered outside the White House gates.

In Canada, public broadcaster CBC showed images from Toronto on Saturday of motorists honking their support for demonstrators lining a five-kilometer (three-mile) stretch of road, wearing “Justice for Mahsa Amini” t-shirts and waving Iranian flags on the end of hockey sticks.

In Montreal, several women cut their hair as a crowd of more than 10,000 waved placards that read “Justice” and “No to Islamic Republic,” while chanting “Say her name. Say her name.”

“It was for the Iranian women who are fighting for their freedom, for their lives in Iran,” a 30-year-old expatriate who only gave her name as Sin told AFP after chopping off her long dark locks.

She described cutting off her hair that flowed almost to the middle of her back as “nothing compared to” what women in Iran have endured. 

“This is the least we can do to support my country, my women, my people in Iran who are under repression,” she said.

March co-organizer Nima Machouf, 57, added it was important to “be a voice for people in Iran and carry their message” to the world.

Several demonstrators called for regime change in Tehran, and for Canada to increase sanctions.

Ottawa has already applied sanctions over Iran’s nuclear program and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced a new round Monday against dozens of Iranian officials.

Reza, 42, came with his family, including his little girl and echoed the sentiment. “If we remain silent, what will we say to other generations?” he commented.

Karen Pagliaro walks down Matlacha’s main street, dodging downed trees, debris and abandoned vehicles, unsure where to go in the small island town cut off after Hurricane Ian damaged bridges linking it to mainland Florida.  

“We feel kind of forgotten,” says the 50-year-old teacher, who lost her home to the storm. “We thought they’d send in help, water and supplies and things, and we were told no, just get off.”

Until Wednesday, Matlacha was a small paradise in southwest Florida.

The fishing village of 800 people across two islets was dotted with colorful wooden houses built around the wide street. It was a place to enjoy the sea, good weather, seafood restaurants and small art galleries. 

The hurricane changed everything. 

Three days after Ian hit, the Coast Guard, firefighters and citizens from nearby towns are still coming by boat to rescue the last residents who were trapped there after refusing to evacuate. 

Other residents, those who did leave the island, are making the journey in the opposite direction from the mainland to check on the damage to their homes. 

Christian Lopez watches the jetty as the emergency services evacuate people — but he has no intention of leaving, despite losing his home.  

“I’d rather stay here than go somewhere else and be on the street. Here at least we have a little roof and we are going to try to fix up the trailer where we live,” says the 25-year-old. 

– ‘I never want to come back’ –

At the other end of Matlacha, the main street is cut off by a huge crevasse that people have to cross thanks to a makeshift bridge made of a metal board.    

Dozens of stunned and weary people walk somberly about, taking in the devastation. Most of them share the same uncertainty of not knowing what to do or where to go. 

“I don’t have a plan,” says John Lynch, sounding resigned. The 59-year-old’s house is sinking into the sea and he is preparing to leave. 

“We’ve been here for 25 years… It’s heartbreaking because this is where we plan on living for the rest of our lives.”  

Karen Pagliaro doesn’t know what she is going to do either. She has nowhere to go. The school where she works is temporarily closed because of hurricane damage. 

What is clear to her is that she wants to return to live in Matlacha.  “It’s our beloved city and we love it here,” she says.  

Near the pier, Jim Bedra doesn’t share that sentiment. The septuagenarian is about to leave town with his wife, Kathy, and their dog, Luna, on a Coast Guard boat.   

Last week he wanted to evacuate the island with Kathy and their 31-year-old son, but the two convinced him to stay where they had lived since 2013.  

He no longer has a home and his voice cracks at the thought. “We are going to stay in a shelter, I imagine,” says Bedra, who wants to return to his safely landlocked home state of Ohio. 

“I never want to come back here,” he says before boarding the boat for the mainland. 

“This is not the retirement we looked for.”ma/st/bbk

Caracas on Saturday freed seven detained Americans — including five oil executives — in exchange for the release of two nephews of Venezuela’s first lady who were jailed in the United States for drug trafficking.

President Joe Biden issued the announcement that the Americans were on their way home — and a senior official in his administration confirmed shortly afterward that the US leader had made the “painful decision” to greenlight the prisoner swap to secure their freedom.

“Today, after years of being wrongfully detained in Venezuela, we are bringing home Jorge Toledo, Tomeu Vadell, Alirio Zambrano, Jose Luis Zambrano, Jose Pereira, Matthew Heath, and Osman Khan,” Biden said in a statement.

The negotiated release of “two young Venezuelans” held in the United States was confirmed in a near-simultaneous statement by Caracas — whose relations with Washington have been severely strained for years.

While Venezuelan authorities did not name the pair, they were identified by the senior US official as Francisco Flores de Freitas and his cousin Efrain Antonio Campos Flores — both nephews of President Nicolas Maduro’s wife, Cilia Flores.

“As a result of various conversations held since March 5 with representatives of the government of the United States, the release of two young Venezuelans unjustly imprisoned in that country has been achieved,” said the communique from Caracas.

Arrested in 2015 in a US sting operation in Haiti, the cousins were sentenced two years later to 18 years in prison for plotting to smuggle 800 kilos (1,760 pounds) of cocaine into the United States. 

The Venezuelan government says they were framed.

It became clear in negotiations that the release of the two Venezuelans, “sometimes referred to as the ‘narco nephews’ due to their relationship with Nicolas Maduro’s wife, was essential to securing the release of these Americans,” a senior US administration official told reporters.

“The president made a tough decision, a painful decision, to offer something the Venezuelans have actively sought” in the months-long swap negotiations, the official added.

However Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido, who the United States recognizes as interim president of Venezuela, said the prisoner exchange was only further “proof” that “a criminal regime operates in Venezuela, linked to drug trafficking.”

– Oil executives freed –

Five of the seven freed Americans were executives of the Citgo oil corporation, detained in 2017 while on a business trip to the South American country and accused of corruption.

Citgo is the US subsidiary of Venezuela’s state oil company PDVSA.

The Citgo employees — former company president Pereira, along with Vadell, Toledo, and the Zambrano’s — each had been sentenced to more than 13 years in prison.

The other two Americans freed — Heath and Khan — were arrested separately.

“All seven of these Americans are in stable health,” and Biden has spoken with each of them, the administration official said.

They said the exchange took place Saturday “in a country between Venezuela and the United States.”

“A plane landed from our side, carrying those two — and a plane landed that departed from Venezuela carrying the seven Americans,” the official said.

“And then the passengers departed on different planes from the ones they came in on.”

Biden in his statement vowed his “unflinching commitment to keep faith with Americans held hostage and wrongfully detained all around the world.”

The United States had long contended that its seven nationals were held on spurious charges. State Department spokesman Ned Price referred to them a year ago as “political pawns.”

Relations between Washington and Caracas have been at rock bottom for years. The United States is one of around 60 countries that refused to recognize Maduro as the legally elected president after a widely disputed 2018 election.

But Russia’s invasion of Ukraine — and the pressure it placed on global energy supplies — brought behind-the-scenes efforts to engineer at least a minimal warming with Venezuela, a major oil producer.

A high-level US delegation traveled to Caracas in March to meet with Maduro in talks some analysts saw as a possible turning point, and which Maduro described as “respectful, cordial and diplomatic.”

Following that meeting, Caracas had previously freed two Citgo employees.

On Saturday, the senior administration official said “tough negotiations” led to the Americans’ release. “We’ve been raising their cases with Venezuelans for months now.”

The death toll from Hurricane Ian, one of the most powerful storms ever to hit the United States, soared above 40 Saturday, as President Joe Biden heads to Florida later in the week to survey the devastation.

Shocked Florida communities were only just beginning to face the full scale of the destruction, with rescuers still searching for survivors in submerged neighborhoods and along the state’s southwest coast.

Homes, restaurants and businesses were ripped apart when Ian roared ashore as a powerful Category 4 hurricane on Wednesday.

The confirmed number of storm-related deaths rose to 44 statewide, the Florida Medical Examiners Commission said late Saturday, but reports of additional fatalities were still emerging county by county -– pointing to a far higher final toll.

Hard-hit Lee County alone recorded 35 deaths, according to its sheriff, while US media including NBC and CBS tallied more than 70 deaths either directly or indirectly related to the storm.

In the coastal state of North Carolina, the governor’s office confirmed four deaths related to Ian there.

Biden and his wife, Jill, will visit Florida on Wednesday, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre tweeted, but the couple will first head to Puerto Rico on Monday to survey the destruction from a different storm, Hurricane Fiona, which struck the US territory last month.

In Florida’s Lee County on Saturday, rescuers and ordinary citizens in boats were still saving the last trapped inhabitants of the small island of Matlacha. Debris, abandoned vehicles and downed trees littered the pummeled hamlet’s main street and surroundings that are dotted by colorful wooden houses with corrugated roofs.

The community, home to about 800 people, was cut off from the mainland following damage to two bridges, and those who fled early were only just beginning to return home to survey the destruction.

Sitting in the shadow of a deserted Matlacha house, Chip Farrar told AFP that “nobody’s telling us what to do, nobody’s telling us where to go.”

“The evacuation orders came in very late,” the 43-year-old said. “But most people that are still here wouldn’t have left anyway. It’s a very blue-collar place. And most people don’t have anywhere to go, which is the biggest issue.”

Sixteen migrants were missing from a boat that sank during the hurricane, according to the US Coast Guard. Two people were found dead and nine others rescued, including four Cubans who swam to shore in the Florida Keys.

More than 900,000 customers remained without power in Florida Saturday night, hampering efforts by those who evacuated to return to their homes to take stock of what they lost. 

In Fort Myers Beach, a town on the Gulf of Mexico coast which took the brunt of the storm, Pete Belinda said his home was “just flipped upside down, soaking wet, full of mud.”

Ian barreled over Florida and into the Atlantic Ocean before making US landfall again, this time on the South Carolina coast Friday as a Category 1 hurricane, with maximum sustained winds of 85 miles (140 kilometers) per hour.

It was later downgraded to a post-tropical cyclone, and it was dissipating over Virginia late Saturday.

More than 45,000 people remained without power across North Carolina and Virginia, tracking website poweroutage.us said Saturday.

CoreLogic, a firm that specializes in property analysis, said wind-related losses for residential and commercial properties in Florida could cost insurers up to $32 billion, while flooding losses could reach $15 billion.

“This is the costliest Florida storm since Hurricane Andrew made landfall in 1992,” CoreLogic’s Tom Larsen said.

– Rescues continue – 

As of Saturday morning, Governor Ron DeSantis’s office said more than 1,100 rescues had been made across Florida.

DeSantis reported that hundreds of rescue personnel were going door-to-door “up and down the coastline.”

Many Floridians evacuated ahead of the storm, but thousands chose to shelter in place and ride it out.

Two hard-hit barrier islands near Fort Myers — Pine Island and Sanibel Island — were cut off after the storm damaged causeways to the mainland.

Aerial photos and video show breathtaking destruction in Sanibel and elsewhere.

A handful of restaurants and bars reopened in Fort Myers, giving an illusion of normalcy amid downed trees and shattered storefronts.

Before pummeling Florida, Ian plunged all of Cuba into darkness after downing the island’s power network.

Electricity was gradually returning, mainly in Havana, but many homes remain without power.

A new storm in the Pacific, Hurricane Orlene, intensified to Category 2 strength off the Mexican coast, where it was forecast to make landfall in the coming days.

Human-induced climate change is resulting in more severe weather events across the globe, scientists say.