The ceasefire did not last long. Even as political leaders made noises about uniting a divided nation, America's "values warriors" lost no time in heading back to the front line of the culture wars.
Last week it was the familiar battleground of sex in the entertainment media. At the forefront was the runaway success of "Desperate Housewives," a sexy drama about four suburban women. The show's launch was the biggest ratings hit since "Friends" started in 1994.
The drama has upset a conservative lobby group, the American Family Association, which has rallied tens of thousands of supporters to bombard with protests the firms that advertise during the show. So far five companies, including Kelloggs, have withdrawn their ads, a trend that is expected to continue.
Emboldened by the re-election of President George W. Bush, the group is stepping up its policing of the airwaves. "The election has awakened a sleeping giant," said AFA president Tim Wildmon.
America is also braced for major protests over the release of "Kinsey," a film starring Liam Neeson about the pioneering sex researcher credited by many with starting the sexual revolution.
To some Alfred Kinsey is a hero, but one conservative group has likened him to a Nazi. "Instead of being lionized, Kinsey's proper place is with Nazi Dr. Josef Mengele or your average Hollywood horror-flick mad scientist," said Robert Knight, director of the Concerned Women of America's Culture and Family Institute.cast earlier this year.
The pitch is a classic: A young celebrity with no climbing experience spends a year in hard training and scales Mount Everest, succeeding against some — if not all — odds. French YouTuber Ines Benazzouz, known as Inoxtag, brought the story to life with a two-hour-plus documentary about his year preparing for the ultimate challenge. The film, titled Kaizen, proved a smash hit on its release last weekend. Young fans queued around the block to get into a preview screening in Paris, with Inoxtag’s management on Monday saying the film had smashed the box office record for a special cinema
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
‘DISAPPEARED COMPLETELY’: The melting of thousands of glaciers is a major threat to people in the landlocked region that already suffers from a water shortage Near a wooden hut high up in the Kyrgyz mountains, scientist Gulbara Omorova walked to a pile of gray rocks, reminiscing how the same spot was a glacier just a few years ago. At an altitude of 4,000m, the 35-year-old researcher is surrounded by the giant peaks of the towering Tian Shan range that also stretches into China, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. The area is home to thousands of glaciers that are melting at an alarming rate in Central Asia, already hard-hit by climate change. A glaciologist, Omarova is recording that process — worried about the future. She hiked six hours to get to
The number of people in Japan aged 100 or older has hit a record high of more than 95,000, almost 90 percent of whom are women, government data showed yesterday. The figures further highlight the slow-burning demographic crisis gripping the world’s fourth-biggest economy as its population ages and shrinks. As of Sept. 1, Japan had 95,119 centenarians, up 2,980 year-on-year, with 83,958 of them women and 11,161 men, the Japanese Ministry of Health said in a statement. On Sunday, separate government data showed that the number of over-65s has hit a record high of 36.25 million, accounting for 29.3 percent of