Media News

  • Hasbro is selling its eOne television and movie business to Lionsgate in an approximately $500 million deal, after having paid $4 billion for the company four years ago. Hasbro said Thursday that the agreement with Lionsgate includes $375 million in cash and the assumption of production financing loans. The acquisition will give Lionsgate access to eOne’s library of almost 6,500 titles, including “Grey’s Anatomy,” “Yellowjackets” and “The Woman King.” Lionsgate will also receive film development rights to Hasbro’s Monopoly, based on the popular board game.

    August 03, 2023
  • Iran will close all government offices, banks and schools on Wednesday and Thursday over high temperatures. The official IRNA news agency said Tuesday the decision came after health ministry warned about a possible increase in heat exhaustion cases. Over the past days many cities and towns in Iran saw temperatures around 100 degrees Fahrenheit. The capital, Tehran, experienced 100.4 F temps Tuesday. The metrological office predicted that Tehran would see even hotter temperatures over the next three days. Ahvaz, the capital of an oil-rich province in the country's southwest, hit 122 F on Tuesday.

    August 01, 2023
  • North Korean state media say leader Kim Jong Un has met with Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu for discussions on military issues and the regional security environment. The report Thursday came as the country celebrated the 70th anniversary of an armistice that halted fighting in the 1950-53 Korean War. The North’s official Korean Central News Agency says Kim and Shoigu talked Wednesday in the capital, Pyongyang, and reached a consensus on unspecified “matters of mutual concern in the field of national defense and security and on the regional and international security environment.” KCNA says Kim also took Shoigu to an arms exhibition showcasing some of North Korea’s newest weapons.

    July 27, 2023
  • Here’s a look at how AP’s general news coverage is shaping up for select stories. For up-to-the minute information on AP’s complete coverage of North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia, Maryland and Delaware, and the rest…

    July 25, 2023
  • Protesters angered by an Iraqi man in Sweden who threatened to burn a copy of the Quran stormed the Swedish Embassy in Baghdad. They overran the diplomatic compound early Thursday and started a fire. Hours later, Iraq’s prime minister cut diplomatic ties with Sweden in protest over the desecration of the Islamic holy book. Protesters occupied the diplomatic post for several hours. They waved flags and signs showing the influential Iraqi Shiite cleric and political leader Muqtada al-Sadr. The embassy staff was evacuated a day earlier.

    July 20, 2023
  • North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has vowed to bolster his country’s nuclear fighting capabilities as he supervised the second test-flight of a new intercontinental ballistic missile designed to strike the mainland United States. North Korea's state media reported Kim’s comments a day after the launch of the Hwasong-18 missile. Kim was quoted as saying deepening U.S. and South Korean hostilities require "more intense efforts to implement the line of bolstering nuclear war deterrent.” The Hwasong-18 is made for road mobility and has built-in solid propellant, making it more difficult to detect than liquid-fuel models before launch.

    July 13, 2023
  • At least a dozen men have come forward this year to say they were sexually assaulted as teenagers by Johnny Kitagawa, a boy band impresario who was one of the most powerful people in Japanese entertainment for decades. Similar allegations were ignored by most Japanese media in the early 2000s. The talent agency Kitagawa founded has promised to investigate, but accuser Kazuya Nakamura told The Associated Press that it, and Japanese society, have still not fully acknowledged what happened to him.

    July 13, 2023
  • The mayor of a city on the Oregon coast has apologized and resigned over offensive content he posted in a private Facebook group for current and retired police officers. Oregon Public Broadcasting reports that Newport Mayor Dean Sawyer apologized and resigned Monday, days after the media outlet revealed he had been posting content mocking and denigrating women, immigrants, non-English speakers and the LGBTQ+ community in the Facebook group with 39,000 members since 2016. Sawyer said Monday that he now realizes some of his actions and words have hurt people he loves and cares about. The police chief in the central coast city of about 10,000 and the Lincoln County sheriff condemned Sawyer’s posts.

    July 10, 2023
  • Chicago’s police oversight agency says it's investigating sexual misconduct allegations against officers involving a migrant who was living in a police station after arriving in the city. The Chicago Tribune reports that the Chicago Police Department said in an email sent late Thursday that its internal affairs bureau and the civilian accountability agency had opened an investigation into the allegations. The Civilian Office of Police Accountability said Friday that it began the investigation Thursday after learning of a sexual misconduct allegation involving officers and “a migrant temporarily housed at the police station.” Chicago is among the U.S. cities struggling to provide shelter and other help to hundreds arriving from the southern border.

    July 07, 2023
  • Authorities say a single-engine plane carrying five people has crashed in the South Carolina coastal resort community of North Myrtle Beach, killing at least one person. The Federal Aviation Administration says the Piper PA-32 went down shortly after 11 a.m. northwest of the city’s Grand Stand Airport. An FAA statement confirmed five people were aboard, and a police spokesman initially told a local newspaper that there was at least one person dead and another person taken to a hospital. A North Myrtle Beach police dispatcher told The Associated Press later Sunday she had no further information and a spokesperson was not available for further updates.

    July 02, 2023
  • The Russian media watchdog has blacklisted at least five media outlets affiliated with Wagner mercenary chief Yevgeny Prigozhin and blocked their websites in Russia. The move came a week after Wagner fighters took control of a Russian military headquarters and advanced on Moscow in what appears to have been an attempted insurrection. As of Saturday, websites of the RIA FAN news agency and four online news portals controlled by Prigozhin's Patriot media holding company appeared on the communications watchdog's online register of blacklisted sites. Unconfirmed reports in Russian news outlets Friday claimed that Prigozhin himself had ordered Patriot to shut down. He and his fighters escaped prosecution and were offered refuge in Belarus last week.

    July 01, 2023
  • Three Florida men have been charged with making $22 million through illegal insider trading before the public announcement that an acquisition firm was going to take former President Donald Trump's media company public. The charges were outlined Thursday in papers unsealed in federal court in New York and do not implicate Trump or the Trump Media & Technology Group. That's the parent company of Trump's Truth Social platform. Prosecutors say the men were given confidential information about a merger deal. Lawyers for all three declined to comment. The three were freed on bond after a court hearing in Miami.

    June 29, 2023
  • Russian authorities have declared a news outlet critical of the Kremlin an “undesirable” organization, effectively banning it from operating in Russia as part of a continued crackdown on dissent. Novaya Gazeta Europe is an offshoot of the prominent independent Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta that was stripped of its media license last year. Prosecutor General’s office accused the outlet of “creating and disseminating materials to the detriment of the interests” of Russia. Labeling the publication “undesirable” outlaws its operation in Russia and exposes its journalists, others working with it and its donors to criminal charges.

    June 28, 2023
  • A Canadian bill that will require Google and Meta to pay media outlets for news content that they share or otherwise repurpose on their platforms is set to become law. The Senate passed the bill Thursday amid a standoff between Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government and Silicon Valley tech giants. Ottawa has said the law creates a level playing field between online advertising giants and the shrinking news industry. Meta confirmed Thursday that it plans to comply with the bill by ending news availability on Facebook and Instagram for its Canadian users, as it had previously suggested. Meta would not offer details about the timeline for that move.

    June 22, 2023