Nepal’s Stolen Gods Seek New Homes | Will Trump’s ‘grandstanding’ demand for TV broadcast of election trial sway the court? | Job applications at Allstate grew 26% after adopting flexible work policy | Hollywood Faces Its Post-Strike Future

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� � � � � � You Might Like � � � � � � � � � Nepal's Stolen Gods Seek New Homes - Foreign Policy    Mohammed bin Salman is touting debt relief and conflict mediation to spread Riyadh’s influence on the continent. Their meeting in San Francisco will reportedly lead to pledges on areas of mutual concern, as tensions remain high. An amnesty deal with Catalan separatists reveals a path back to power for the interim prime minister—but at a massive price. Continued here Will Trump’s ‘grandstanding’ demand for TV broadcast of election trial sway the court? - Reuters    Republican presidential candidate and former U.S. President Donald Trump gestures as he speaks during a campaign rally in Claremont, New Hampshire, U.S., November 11, 2023. REUTERS/Brian Snyder Acquire Licensing Rights Nov 13 (Reuters) - Former president Donald Trump formally registered his support on Friday for the live television broadcast of his upcoming federal trial on election subversion charges, in a filing that was short on legal analysis but long on outrage. Trump defense lawyers John Lauro and Todd Blanche called the case brought by Special Counsel Jack Smith a "travesty" and an illegitimate political "show trial" in which the former president and leading candidate for the Republican nomination in 2024 has been deprived of fundamental due process rights. Continued here Don't like ads? Go ad-free with TradeBriefs Premium Job applications at Allstate grew 26% after adopting flexible work policy - Fortune    While the majority of CEOs expect employees will return to the office full-time within three years, according to a recent KPMG survey, insurance giant Allstate is seemingly willing to break from the crowd. The company has embraced a flexible work strategy, allowing managers and their teams to determine their own work arrangements. As such, Allstate has slashed more than half of its real estate, selling its Northbrook, Ill., headquarters in 2022. Some 99% of its 54,000 employees work either remotely or hybrid near one of its now hub-like office configurations.  “I know there are all these articles about people thinking five days a week is coming back, and everyone’s going to the office—I don’t,” Bob Toohey, Allstate’s chief human resources officer, tells Fortune. “We don’t know what the new way is ultimately going to be. I think as long as we stay flexible, test, learn, move with it, and have a good partnership between the employer and employee, we’ll have a great outcome.” Continued here Hollywood Faces Its Post-Strike Future - The New Yorker    On Wednesday night, the actor Jeremy Allen White, of “The Bear,” was working his way down a red carpet in Dallas. It was the première of “The Iron Claw,” an A24 movie about the Von Erich clan of professional wrestlers. On the carpet, an “Entertainment Tonight” reporter informed White, “We just heard moments ago—the strike is over!” and stuck the mike in his face. “That’s amazing,” White said, seeming taken aback. Asked how he felt, he added, “I don’t know the details of the deal, but I’m sure that SAG got what we wanted.” Since mid-July, when the actors’ strike began, the sight of celebrities such as White and his co-star Zac Efron traipsing red carpets has been rare; actors were barred from promoting projects connected to major studios and streamers. White and Efron were in Dallas only because “The Iron Claw” received an “interim agreement”—an exception given to indie projects abiding by the guild’s proposed terms, and one of those bits of technical jargon that became Hollywood parlance over the tumultuous last few months. The SAG-AFTRA strike lasted a hundred and eighteen days, and overlapped with the Writers Guild of America’s strike, which began in May and lasted a hundred and forty-eight days—the first time both guilds had been on the picket lines simultaneously since 1960. Back then, the central issue was residual payments for movies replayed on television, a relatively new phenomenon for a relatively new medium. This time, a technological change once again upended how entertainment is consumed and, subsequently, how actors are paid. Instead of the birth of television, it was the birth of streaming. Actors who were used to living off residual payments from network roles between gigs had found themselves receiving paltry checks for equivalent work on streaming shows. In July, on the cusp of the strike, I spoke to cast members from “Orange Is the New Black,” who said that they had never truly shared in the wealth the series generated for Netflix, even as the show helped build the foundation of the streaming economy. Although the final deal still has to go through approval formalities at the guild, and the fine print has not yet been released, SAG’s hard-won agreement includes performance-based bonuses for actors on streaming shows that become big hits. For the studios represented by the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, or A.M.P.T.P., the concept was a non-starter before the strike. Now it’s Hollywood’s new reality. But the issue that unexpectedly came to the fore, as it did for the writers, was artificial intelligence. In August, as Hollywood was entering an end-of-summer malaise, I spoke to a professional background actor named Vincent Amaya, who appears in a lot of police procedurals. “I do not want to be scanned,” he said. “They can use my image and then always have me crossing in a cop station without paying me. That’s my livelihood.” A.I. is still a vast unknown, but both guilds saw it as an existential threat. In an interview this week on the industry podcast “The Town,” Duncan Crabtree-Ireland, the guild’s astoundingly named national executive director and chief negotiator, said that the final sticking point had been the use of “synthetic performers,” or what he termed “synthetic fakes”—essentially, nonexistent people remixed from real ones. (Perhaps you’ve seen footage online of normal-seeming extras who, on closer look, have eight fingers on one hand.) SAG wasn’t fighting to stop the A.I. revolution but for its members to receive “informed consent” and compensation when their images are used. Once again, a new technology preceded a labor upheaval. Continued here

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