US Business

Coach Cheryl Reeve admitted Wednesday the fate of “gentle soul” Brittney Griner was weighing heavily on the USA team at the basketball World Cup in Sydney and the jailed star’s number 15 jersey would not be worn at the tournament.

Griner, a standout when they won gold at the Tokyo Olympics last year, would normally be with the squad as they attempt to claim a fourth straight title and 11th overall, starting Thursday against Belgium.

But the 31-year-old is instead in a Russian prison, sentenced to nine years in a penal colony after being arrested at a Moscow airport in February for possessing vape cartridges with a small amount of cannabis oil.

Reeve said Griner would be “top of mind” throughout the 10-day tournament, and revealed players had been in touch with her to send messages of support.

“The mindset is just trying to stay strong for her and doing what we can,” Reeve said, describing Griner as “a gentle soul, just full of love”.

She added that players had been able to communicate with their teammate via email, sending “messages of love and support and strength”.

“It’s on their minds every day. It’s heavy, it is really, really heavy especially as we participate in this USA basketball competition,” she added. 

“She’s such a big part of many of our lives, so it’s challenging.”

No USA team member will don Griner’s number 15 jersey in Sydney.

“To keep Brittney top of mind, no one will wear the number 15. That will be the first way to honour her and keep her in our thoughts,” said Reeve.

– Release talks –

US President Joe Biden met Griner’s wife, Cherelle Griner, last week as top officials work to bring the player home, with Moscow saying last month it was ready to discuss a prisoner swap.

A White House statement released afterwards did not include details about the status of talks with Russia, but National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said “discussions are ongoing” to secure Griner’s release.

“People are hard at work and I think the biggest thing is that we know it’s top of mind for many, many people that are a part of this process and they’re working very, very hard to try and get Brittney home,” said Reeve.

When she was arrested, the two-time Olympic gold medallist and Women’s NBA champion had been in Russia to play for the professional Yekaterinburg team, during her off-season from the Phoenix Mercury.

She pleaded guilty to the charges, but said she did not intend to break the law or use the banned substance in Russia.

Griner had testified that she had permission from a US doctor to use medicinal cannabis to relieve pain from her many injuries, and had never failed a drug test. The use of medical marijuana is not allowed in Russia.

Breanna Stewart, the Most Valuable Player at the last World Cup, said that winning another title would be the best way to honour Griner and keep her in the conversation.

“While we’re waiting for her to come home, one of the biggest things we can do is win a gold medal for her while we’re here and keep her at the forefront of everything we do,” said the Seattle Storm star on the same call.

“It’s more than what’s just happening in these 10 days, it’s continuing the momentum that we have to always make sure she is in the spotlight until she’s home. We miss her.”

Moscow-held regions of Ukraine will urgently vote on annexation by Russia, separatist officials said Tuesday, as Kyiv’s troops wrest back territory captured by the Kremlin’s forces.

Pro-Russia authorities in the eastern Donetsk and Lugansk regions, as well as in the southern Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions, said they would hold the vote over five days beginning Friday this week.

The regions are on the frontlines of a sweeping Ukrainian counter-offensive that has seen Kyiv’s forces retake hundreds of towns and villages that had been controlled by Russia for months.

Their integration into Russia would represent a major escalation of the conflict as Moscow could try to say it was defending its own territory from Ukrainian forces.

Washington, Berlin and Paris denounced the ballots and said the international community would never recognise the results while NATO said the votes marked a “further escalation” of the war.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky hailed his western allies for their condemnation of the Russian move. 

“I thank all the friends and partners of Ukraine for their massive and firm condemnation of Russia’s intentions to organise yet more pseudo-referendums,” said Zelensky, who will speak to the UN General Assembly by video-link on Wednesday.

He said he will address “new facts of Russian atrocities” that are being recorded, noting that locals in territories recaptured by Ukrainian forces have been showing “where the occupiers had torture rooms, where they hid the bodies of the murdered, testify about collaborators.”

Kyiv said the “sham” referendums were meaningless and vowed to “eliminate” threats posed by Russia, saying its forces would keep retaking territory regardless of what Moscow or its proxies announced.

Denis Miroshnichenko, a separatist leader in the Lugansk region, said pro-Moscow lawmakers had voted to hold the vote from September 23 to 27.

Shortly afterwards, a news portal associated with separatist authorities in Donetsk said the region would hold a ballot over the same dates.

Large parts of the industrial Donbas area — made up of Donetsk and Lugansk — have been controlled by Moscow-backed separatists since 2014, after nationwide demonstrations ousted a Kremlin-friendly Ukrainian president.

– ‘Restore historical justice’ –

Russia at the time annexed the Crimean peninsula on the Black Sea from Ukraine with a vote that was criticised by Kyiv and the West, which imposed sanctions in response.

Authorities in the southern Kherson region of Ukraine also announced Tuesday they would hold a vote over the same dates.

“The incorporation of the Kherson region into the Russian Federation will secure our territory and restore historical justice,” said the Moscow-installed head of that region, Vladimir Saldo.

He echoed a phrase used earlier in the day by Russia’s former president and prime minister Dmitry Medvedev, who invoked correcting historical wrongs but also said the votes would bolster Russian forces.

“Encroachment into Russian territory is a crime and if it is committed, that allows you to use all possible force in self-defence,” Medvedev, now the deputy chairman of Russia’s security council, said on social media. 

Pro-Moscow authorities in Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia region — home to Europe’s largest nuclear power plant — also announced they would hold a vote on the region’s “territorial allegiance”.

– ‘Sham’ votes –

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz denounced the “sham” votes and said they must be rejected by the international community. 

French President Emmanuel Macron called them a “travesty”, saying Russia’s invasion harked back “to the age of imperialism and colonies”.

White House National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan said the referendums were “an affront to the principles of sovereignty and territorial integrity”.

“The United States will never recognize Russia’s claims to any purportedly annexed parts of Ukraine,” he said.

The votes come at a decisive moment.

Ukraine’s forces in the east are now pushing towards the village of Bilogorivka whose capture by Russia in May decimated Moscow’s forces as they crossed the Siverskyi Donets river nearby.

Political analyst Tatiana Stanovaya said the vote announcements were a direct result of the success of Ukraine’s eastern counter-offensive.

Putin, she said, wants to threaten the full use of Russia’s military, including nuclear weapons, in defending Russian territory, including newly annexed regions.

“Putin does not want to win this war on the battlefield. Putin wants to force Kyiv to surrender without a fight,” she said.

The head of Russian state-media group, RT, Margarita Simonyan said the announcements marked either “the eve of our imminent victory or the eve of nuclear war”.

Speaking with newly appointed foreign ambassadors in Moscow on Tuesday ahead of the opening of the UN General Assembly, Putin said Russia would pursue its “sovereign course.” 

Dire warnings of the consequences of the conflict on global food security prompted world powers to convene at the assembly, with the United States, the European Union, the African Union and Spain meeting at ministerial level on food prices.

Russia and Ukraine are major grain producers and the war has severely disrupted exports, sending prices skyrocketing and hitting developing nations especially hard.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said “profound food insecurity” affected more than 200 million people worldwide.

Four out of five pregnancy-related deaths in the United States could be avoided, a new report by the nation’s top public health agency says, as mothers in the country face a comparatively high mortality rate, especially among Black women.

The study analyzed the cases of around 1,000 women who died between 2017 and 2019 due to pregnancy or related complications, up to a year after childbirth, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said.

“The report paints a much clearer picture of pregnancy-related deaths in this country,” said Wanda Barfield, director of the CDC’s reproductive health division.

Some 22 percent of deaths occurred during pregnancy, 25 percent on the day of delivery or in the following week, and 53 percent up to a year later.

The leading cause identified, in 23 percent of cases, was mental health problems, including suicide or drug overdoses, followed by hemorrhage (14 percent), and heart problems (13 percent). 

The deaths were analyzed by local-level expert committees, including gynecologists and mental health professionals, which were tasked with formulating recommendations. 

These committees had “access to a diversity of information to fully understand the circumstances surrounding each death and determine whether there was a causal association with pregnancy,” the CDC’s David Goodman told AFP. 

Pregnancy and its consequences can, for example, aggravate a mental illness, make access to psychiatric treatment difficult, or even cause pain leading to substance abuse or self-harm. 

A death was considered avoidable if there was “at least a chance” that it could be avoided by “one or more reasonable changes” within the health care system, or on the part of the patient or her community.

Among the measures recommended to address the problem were furthering access to health insurance, improving pre- and post-natal care, as well as better transportation options to be able to access care.

The maternal death rate has been increasing in the United States for years, and ranks as one of the worst among industrialized nations. 

In 2020, it stood at 23.8 deaths per 100,000 births, according to data published in February.

But underneath that figure lies stark inequalities: the death rate per 100,000 births was 55.3 among Black mothers, versus 19.1 for white women.

Perhaps more than any other French director, Jean-Jacques Annaud has always felt at home making films in Hollywood, with the American movie capital’s flair for the epic and the spectacular.

Now, the 78-year-old Oscar-winner behind “The Name of the Rose,” “Seven Years in Tibet” and “Enemy at the Gates” is returning to Tinseltown with his latest film, “Notre-Dame On Fire” (“Notre-Dame Brule”) — a thriller about the real-life blaze at the beloved cathedral in Paris.

Annaud spoke to AFP via phone from France’s capital as organizers of next month’s The American French Film Festival (TAFFF) announced Tuesday that his movie will be their opening night Los Angeles gala premiere.

“I’m close to Notre-Dame now and far away from Los Angeles. But part of my heart remains in Los Angeles,” said Annaud.

The story of the inferno that engulfed Paris’ 12th-century Gothic landmark in 2019 was “a great drama that only a crazy Hollywood screenplay writer could imagine,” he said.

“Notre-Dame on Fire” dramatizes the story of firefighters who risked their lives to extinguish flames before the entire cathedral was destroyed — and the mistakes and misfortunes that delayed the initial response.

The movie merges real archive footage of the fire with scenes shot by Annaud recreating the disaster.

It follows a security guard who accidentally checked the wrong cathedral attic for flames when the first alarm sounded, the fire engines stuck in Paris traffic and the supervisor who couldn’t get his self-service “Velib” bicycle to work as he rushed to the scene.

“I had the feeling when I was writing the screenplay that I had a goldmine… it was so bizarre, so incredible,” said Annaud.

Released in Europe earlier this year, the film shows how millions around the world watched in horror as the cathedral’s famous spire collapsed and much of its ancient roof was destroyed.

Notre-Dame cathedral typically welcomed nearly 12 million global visitors a year and Americans have been prolific contributors to an international fundraising drive to rebuild the landmark.

“Everywhere around the world, this cathedral was far more than a symbol of Paris, or France, or even Catholicism or Christianity,” said Annaud. 

“It was far above that. It was, in a way, sort of the fear, the metaphor of the collapse of Western culture… it was a symbol of permanence.”

– ‘Spectacular’ –

Next month’s festival appearance continues Annaud’s love affair with Hollywood, which he said often diverges from French film traditions in scale and budget.

“In America, I realized that the investment is to try to make the best thing you can and the most spectacular, the more appealing, the more attractive,” he said.

Unlike the French New Wave movement, which emerged in the 1950s from theater and novels and emphasized dialogue, American filmmaking focuses more on movement and the visual, said Annaud.

“The art of cinema is to tell exciting stories visually. If not, it’s a televised radio show, it’s another game, it’s something else,” he said.

“If we have the privilege to be seen on the big screen, it is to fill up this big screen and not to have only people who talk like on the television shows,” he added.

“I would not have done the movies that I’ve done without the full support and friendship of American production companies and major studios.”

– ‘Final Cut’ – 

Among other films playing this year at TAFFF, which runs October 10-16, will be “Final Cut” (“Coupez!”) from Michel Hazanavicius, the Oscar-winning director of “The Artist.”

Also on show will be two films recently named on a shortlist of French movies for submission to next year’s Oscars — “The Worst Ones” (“Les Pires”) and “Full Time” (“A Plein Temps”).

Amazon Prime’s “Hawa” from Maimouna Doucoure, whose previous movie “Cuties” was released by Netflix and stirred international controversy over allegations of hypersexualizing young girls, will also feature.  

The festival closes with Dominik Moll’s “The Night of the 12th” (“La Nuit du 12”) and a theatrical screening of HBO French-American miniseries “Irma Vep,” created by Olivier Assayas and based on his 1996 film of the same name.

US senators on Tuesday condemned threats of violence against the FBI, blaming former president Donald Trump for a barrage of abuse against federal agents in the month since a raid at his south Florida beach club.

The resolution came a month after agents found thousands of pages of documents, including dozens marked “secret” or “top secret,” at Mar a Lago, where Trump has lived since leaving office in 2020. 

Trump, who has accused the FBI of bias against him since early in his presidency, has railed against the “illegal” raid, which was approved by a magistrate who agreed there was likely evidence of law-breaking at the resort involving mishandling of White House documents.

“I have repeatedly made clear that violence against law enforcement is never — never — acceptable, no matter what ideology motivates it,” said Dick Durbin, the Democratic chairman of the powerful judiciary committee.

“But here is the reality: in the past month, following the FBI’s execution of a search warrant at Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort, the FBI has faced a flood of threats against its employees and its facilities — and these threats have been egged on by the former president and his allies.”

The FBI and the Department of Homeland Security last month detailed an increase in threats and acts of violence against federal law enforcement officials following the August 8 search. 

Durbin said he was unable to share specifics from a briefing the agencies gave senators behind closed doors last week but he told colleagues on the Senate floor the escalation was “shocking.”

The Senate passed a resolution condemning the threats and noting statements from Republican members of Congress to “defund” the FBI and likening the Florida raid to “the actions of the Nazi Gestapo.”

It also called out “repeated attacks from the former president, who has called FBI officials, among other insults, ‘vicious monsters.'”

The resolution described some of the intimidation attempts aimed at federal agents, which it said included a pledge to place a “dirty bomb” outside of FBI headquarters and calls for “civil war” and “armed rebellion.”

It recalled a widely-reported incident in which a man armed with an AR15 rifle and nail gun attempted to get into the FBI’s Cincinnati field office on August 11.

The resolution also noted that a man was indicted five days later for “threatening to murder everyone at the FBI, from the director, to agents, to the custodial staff” and that another man jumped a fence and threw rocks at the agency’s Chicago field office on August 25.

The resolution passed by unanimous consent, meaning no member on either side objected.

Trump’s office did not respond immediately to a request for comment.