By ELÉONORE HUGHES and MAURICIO SAVARESE, Associated Press

BRASILIA, Brazil (AP) — A panel of Supreme Court justices is set to decide this week whether former President Jair Bolsonaro is guilty or not of plotting to overthrow Brazil’s democracy and hang onto power illegally after his 2022 electoral defeat.

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The panel’s chairman Cristiano Zanin opened Tuesday’s session at around 9.15 a.m. local time. The judicial panel began by reviewing final requests from the parties. Court sessions are scheduled every day through Friday.

Bolsonaro did not attend the court.

The far-right ex-president is facing five counts at trial for allegedly conspiring to stage a coup after his narrow loss to current President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, a leftist who first won the presidency two decades earlier.

If convicted by the five-judge panel in the verdict expected Thursday or Friday, Bolsonaro could be sentenced to decades behind bars.

Bolsonaro has always denied any wrongdoing, repeatedly calling the trial a politically motivated attack.

Trump interest in trial outcome

Dozens of Bolsonaro loyalists gathered Monday evening outside his Brasilia home. They prayed for him, criticized the Supreme Court justice overseeing the case — Alexandre de Moraes — and sought to exert pressure on lawmakers to approve some kind of amnesty for the embattled ex-leader.

Prosecutor-General Paulo Gonet said last week in court that Bolsonaro led a multipronged plot to cling to power illegally that included casting doubt over the country’s electronic voting system and encouraging a Jan. 8, 2023, riot Gonet described as intended to force an army takeover.

Prosecutors have pointed to evidence that Bolsonaro assembled top Cabinet and military officials to discuss issuing an emergency decree aimed at suspending the election outcome of October 2022 in order to investigate alleged voting fraud.

But defense lawyer Celso Vilardi vehemently noted the decree was never issued.

“The planning is not the execution. No matter how detailed the planning may be, it is the act of violence that actually consummates the crime,” Vilardi told the justices at the televised proceedings. “Bolsonaro ordered a transition.”

Bolsonaro ”did not act against the democratic rule of law,” he added.

Bolsonaro called himself the victim of a “witch hunt,” using the same expression as U.S. President Donald Trump in defending his right-wing ally. Trump has directly tied a 50% tariff on Brazilian goods to his ally’s judicial situation and is expected to be closely watching the trial outcome.

On Sunday, tens of thousands of Bolsonaro supporters took to the streets. In Sao Paulo, his wife Michelle Bolsonaro said in a speech that he loves the country.

Each of the five justices is to vote on Bolsonaro’s guilt or innocence, with a majority of three votes enough to convict. If one of the justices requests a longer review, the verdict could be delayed for up to 90 days, but court experts have said that’s unlikely.

Bolsonaro is charged with five counts: attempting to stage a coup, involvement in an armed criminal organization, attempted violent abolition of the democratic rule of law and two counts involving destruction of state property.

A guilty verdict on the coup plot charge alone carries a sentence of up to 12 years.

Remains under house arrest

In the event of a guilty verdict, each justice can recommend a sentence. If recommendations differ, a single justice chosen among the panel would determine an average of the prison time and possible fines.

Seven other close allies of Bolsonaro are being tried alongside the ex-president, including Walter Braga Netto, his former running mate and defense minister, and Paulo Sérgio Nogueira, another former defense minister.

Deemed a flight risk, Bolsonaro is wearing an ankle monitor and remains under house arrest. He did not appear in court last week due to ill health, Vilardi told journalists. The ex-president needs an unspecified medical procedure, Vilardi told the judge Monday, suggesting Bolsonaro might not attend court this week either.

The trial marks a historic moment in Brazil: For the first time, high-ranking military officers and a former president accused of plotting against democratic rule are standing trial.

‘Quite unpredictable’

Despite pressure from the White House, Brazil’s Supreme Court has kept the trial on track.

Observers said any U.S. sanctions against Brazilian authorities could be announced after the trial, further straining their fragile diplomatic relations.

Government officials or other Supreme Court justices could be sanctioned, like De Moraes already was late July, said Oliver Stuenkel, a professor of international relations at the Getulio Vargas Foundation, a think tank and university.

The reaction “could also involve broader visa restrictions for government officials, or more tariffs,” Stuenkel said. “It’s quite unpredictable.”

On Saturday night, Lula delivered a national message ahead of Sunday’s Independence Day celebrations saying Brazil “will not be anyone’s colony,” taking an indirect swipe at the Trump administration.

Dorgelina Souza Oliveira de Medeiros, 72, wants Trump to put even more pressure on Brazil to help free Bolsonaro. For more than a week she has joined other supporters of the former president close to his home despite the fact many of them believe he will be jailed anyway.

“His sentence was ready before this trial began. We want amnesty for all so those jailed can be released, those in exile can come back,” de Medeiros said. “We are suffering, but I trust God that things will change. I hope that even in this trial there could be a miracle.”

Hughes reported from Rio de Janeiro.

By Todd Martens, Los Angeles Times

LOS ANGELES — Chuck E. Cheese is all grown-up. Sort of.

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Brea Mall is now home to a Chuck’s Arcade, the first location in California and 10th in the U.S. When the company unveiled the concept earlier this year, headlines branded it as an “adult” Chuck E. Cheese. There’s some truth in that, but it’s not the full story.

Combine the word “adult” and “arcade” and recognizable spaces — say, Dave & Buster’s — instantly come to mind. Here in SoCal, we also have Two Bit Circus in Santa Monica, which marries retro and modern games with beer and cocktails. Chuck’s Arcade isn’t all that similar to either.

But we were intrigued by its promise of retro gaming and its attempts to appeal to a less kid-focused audience. You won’t, for instance, encounter a pizza party full of 7-year-olds here.

So what will you find? And will it possess the vintage arcade vibes many of us are craving? With the company and its mouse mascot now a cool 48 years old, we weren’t sure what to expect. So we took a visit to Chuck’s Arcade seeking answers.

Where an adult can be a ‘kidult’

It’s not surprising to encounter a grown-up with fond memories of Chuck E. Cheese. For me, I was hooked by the stilted-yet-charming robotic performances from their once ubiquitous animatronic bands, in which tunes were delivered amid the clickety-clack of machinery. Yet a Chuck E. Cheese today is a fully-realized kid-focused video-game-inspired rec room, one where digital floors encourage a more active form of play. David McKillips, president and chief executive of the company, says the firm’s core locations heavily target those between the ages of 3 and 8.

And thus, Chuck’s Arcade, says McKillips, will fill a void. He’s hoping it taps into the marketing segment known as the “kidult” — grown-ups, perhaps, who were raised on games and still cherish the thought of crowding around a “Ms. Pac-Man” console. The kidult sector is booming, encompassing everyone from the so-called “Disney adult” to those who carry a Labubu doll as a fashion accessory. Think anyone who believes that a childlike openness to play and silliness doesn’t have to be eradicated by maturity.

So how does Chuck’s Arcade plan to reach the kidult? Its 3,600-square-foot space boasts 70 games, including a small — emphasis on small — retro section where one will find coin-op cabinets of “Tron,” “Centipede,” “Mortal Kombat” and a “Ms. Pac-Man” head-to-head arcade table. And while a modern Chuck E. Cheese is school-cafeteria bright, Chuck’s Arcade is dark, its black walls and low lighting recalling the arcades of the ’80s and ’90s.

McKillips says Chuck’s Arcade “is appealing to the collectible market,” betting large on grown-ups being drawn to its plethora of claw machines. There are also prize apparatuses dedicated largely to Funko’s plastic figurines.

It’s near the mall food court — which is part of the business strategy

The Chuck E. Cheese company has long had it eye on the Brea Mall.

In an era when malls are being refocused to cater to a more experience-based economy — see, for instance, the escape rooms of Westfield Century City, or Meow Wolf eventually taking over a portion of what is currently the Cinemark complex at Howard Hughes L.A. — Chuck E. Cheese saw an opportunity in Orange County.

“We’ve been trying to get in here for a year and a half,” says McKillips. “The foot traffic is phenomenal. The anchors are strong. They have a really solid food court.”

The food court was a massive selling point.

“That’s where teens are congregating,” he says. “That’s where parents and kids are together. They’ll have a bite to eat and come over and play some games.”

There’s no booze … or even pizza

Here’s one way to think about Chuck’s Arcade: Imagine a Chuck E. Cheese, but subtract the pizza and detract the drinks. In one corner of Chuck’s Arcade rests a giant Skittles machine, and there is more candy available at the front counter. But the company decided to go without a proper food and beverage program for Chuck’s Arcade, meaning those grown-up kidults won’t be sipping on booze or mocktails.

I told McKillips I was surprised. At home, I’m more than 40 hours into “Donkey Kong Bananza,” but I wind down by playing the game and enjoying a beer — one of the core benefits, I believe, of being a certified kidult.

McKillips argues this is actually an advantage for Chuck’s Arcade, allowing it to reach a grown-up audience but still feel family-friendly. Just one Chuck’s Arcade, he says, is equipped to serve beer, wings and pizza, and it’s in Kansas City, Mo.

“This is an arcade destination,” he adds. “We’re not hosting birthday parties. We don’t do [food & beverage] here. You’re going to come here and play games.”

Where’s the nostalgia?

I should be the audience for Chuck’s Arcade. I have fond memories of the brand.

Chuck E. Cheese, the character and the pizza chain, was the brainchild of Nolan Bushnell, best known as the founder of Atari. The franchise launched in 1977 in San José, first branded as Chuck E. Cheese Pizza Time Theatre. As Chuck E. Cheese flourished throughout the early ’80s, the original animatronic figures were a bit more bawdy (Chuck was a smoker). Bushnell envisioned the initial Chuck E. Cheese robotic characters as entertainment that appealed to the grown-ups while the kids played games in the neighboring room.

When I first heard of Chuck’s Arcade, I hoped the company was getting back a bit to its roots. And there’s a nostalgic touch here and there. Aside from the aforementioned selection of vintage games, there’s also a Mr. Munch figurine, who is displayed in a clear case and does not turn on. Munch, a friendly, purple-ish hairball of a creature, was once the anchor of Chuck E. Cheese’s Make Believe Band.

Seeing that one figure treated as a museum piece felt like a half-hearted wave to fans who grew up with Chuck. And while claw gizmos and plastic figurines aren’t my thing, I understand their popularity and wouldn’t mind their presence if there was a greater supply of old-school games, and perhaps some pinball machines.

With a digital key card for Chuck’s Arcade starting at $10, the buy-in to try out the space isn’t large, but this felt like a tentative step into adulthood. After all, Chuck is well beyond drinking age. The mouse deserves a cocktail.

©2025 Los Angeles Times. Visit at latimes.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

By PAUL WISEMAN, AP Economics Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. job market was much weaker in 2024 and early this year than originally reported, adding to concerns about the health of the nation’s economy.

Employers added 911,000 fewer jobs than originally reported in the year that ended in March 2025, the Labor Department reported Tuesday.

The department issues the so-called benchmark revisions every year. They are intended to better account for new businesses and ones that had gone out of business. The numbers issued Tuesday are preliminary. Final revisions will come out in February 2026.

The revision showed that leisure and hospitality firms — including hotels and restaurants — added 176,000 fewer jobs than originally reported, professional and business services companies 158,000 fewer and retailers 126,000 fewer.

The report comes after the department reported Friday that the economy generated just 22,000 jobs in August, adding to fears that President Donald Trump’s erratic economic policies, including massive and unpredictable taxes on imports, have created so much uncertainty that businesses are reluctant to hire.

Sal Guatieri, senior economist at BMO Capital Markets said the revisions painted “a much weaker portrait of the job market than initially thought. While the revision doesn’t say much about what has happened since March, it suggests the labor market had less momentum heading into the trade war. And, recent data suggest the market has downshifted further.″ Since March, monthly job creation has decelerated to an average 53,000.

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When the benchmark revisions last year showed 818,000 fewer jobs in the year ended March 2024, then-presidential candidate Trump declared the numbers had been rigged to conceal economic weakness and help Democrats in the 2024 election. However, he did not explain why the government would release the revised numbers two and a half months before voters went to the polls.

The revisions will likely increase pressure on the Federal Reserve to cut interest rates at its meeting later this month to give the economy a boost.

After the Labor Department issued a disappointing jobs report for July, Trump fired the economist in charge of compiling numbers and nominated a loyalist to replace her. He was especially enraged by revisions that took 258,000 jobs off May and June payrolls.

Government economists have been struggling with a dramatic drop in the number of employers that respond to their surveys. Still, most economists and financial analysts consider the official jobs numbers reliable.

By JAKE COYLE

TORONTO (AP) — The morning after Rian Johnson premiered his latest whodunit “Wake Up, Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery,” he and one of his stars, Glenn Close, were debating billing.

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Not among the main cast, which considering all the stars in “Wake Up, Dead Man” — Daniel Craig, Josh O’Connor, Josh Brolin, Mila Kunis, to name a few — would be a headache for any filmmaker to sort. But for an uncredited one: Close’s dog, Pip, who very briefly appears in the movie.

“And he’s got a pain in the butt for an agent,” chuckles Johnson.

In each “Knives Out” movie, Johnson has assembled some of his favorite actors and managed to give nearly all of them a moment to shine. “Wake Up, Dead Man” is no different; there are numerous standout performances. But one of them, most definitely, is Close’s, whose connections to Johnson’s film run deeper than her Havanese’s cameo.

“When Rian called, it was so thrilling,” Close says. “I had heard about what a good guy he was before I talked to him. And to be on set with him was really something. It’s such a delicate chemistry when you’re putting a cast together.”

In “Wake Up, Dead Man,” Johnson, drawing on G.K. Chesterton’s Father Brown mysteries, shifts from the Greek isles of “Glass Onion” to an upstate New York church. A young priest named Jud Duplenticy (O’Connor) has been sent to aid a flagging church led by Brolin’s monsignor, a charismatic but tyrannical figure. Much of the cast make up his loyal flock, with Close’s Martha Delacroix as his most devout follower.

“Knives Out” has forged its own community. When “Wake Up, Dead Man” premiered over the weekend at the Toronto International Film Festival, it was the third of the three movies to launch here, and the most eagerly anticipated film of the festival. The movie, which Netflix will release in theaters Nov. 26 before it streams two weeks later, has plenty of the comic elements of the first two “Knives Out” films. But it’s less satirical when it comes to questions of faith and belief.

“For me, that’s where this whole thing came from,” Johnson says. “I grew up Protestant and what we’d now term evangelical. I was very Christian growing up and not just my parents dragging me to church. Through my early 20s, I really was entirely in it and framed the world around through my relationship with Christ. It was a big, big part of my life. And it’s not anymore. But anyone who is a lapsed Christian, you still carry so much with you.”

And it’s this backdrop of sincere reckoning with religion that makes “Wake Up, Dead Man” more than a simple part for the 78-year-old Close. When Close was 7, her parents moved from Greenwich, Connecticut, to join with Moral Re-Armament, a religious movement Close has called a cult. For years, it dictated much of her life, including what she wore and said. Close later joined with an outgrowth of that movement, the conservative performance troupe Up With People, before quitting at age 22. Acting, she has said, saved her.

Glenn Close arrives on the red carpet to promote the film “Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery” at the Toronto International Film Festival, in Toronto, Saturday, Sept. 6, 2025. (Chris Young/The Canadian Press via AP)

“I just think religion has been responsible for most of the horrible things human beings have done to each other,” Close says. “It’s very hard for me not to look at religion as a way of controlling people. It’s more political for me. I do think there’s something in the human psyche that we don’t know who we are, where we came from and where we’re going. I think we’re tribal creatures and the comfort you can get from a community, whether religious or not, is palpable.”

When Johnson decided to reach out to Close for the role, he was aware of her history. But his reasons were simpler. He hoped to cast Close, he says, because “she’s one of the best actors of our generation.”

“The truth is, it’s a part that calls for somebody who can both have fun with a certain degree of archness with it but ultimately can land the real emotional truth,” says Johnson. “And that’s a very, very tall order.”

The less said, the better is generally the case with the narratives of the “Knives Out” movies. But it’s fair to say that Close, after making an impeccably timed entrance, fills Martha with an uncommon amount of depth in a performance ranging from comic to tragic.

“I love characters that have this crazy belief that others can look from the outside and say, ‘Whoa, that’s over the top.’ But it’s real,” says Close, whose celebrated career has included films like “Dangerous Liaisons” and “Fatal Attraction.”

From the first “Knives Out,” Johnson set out to draw Agatha Christie-style mysteries — usually quaint period pieces — into the present day. Though “Wake Up, Dead Man” doesn’t sharpen its knives for Christianity quite the way the previous films did for MAGA hat-wearers in “Knives Out” or tech bros in “Glass Onion,” it doesn’t ignore political connections, either. There’s a DOGE mention, among other references.

“When you talk about Christianity in America today, it’s hard not to talk about politics,” says Johnson. “For me, growing up in the evangelical church, right into the rise of Reaganism, it was kind of the crucible of the Christian right. I obviously have a lot of thoughts about that, but I also grew up with a very personal relationship with Christ. I also have a deep feeling about the stuff I took from Christianity that’s positive, which is largely just the stuff Jesus actually said, is exactly what the world most needs right now. And that’s the irony of it.”

Johnson adds: “You’re trying to thread the needle in terms of having an actual conversation about this, instead of just wagging your finger and saying ‘How could you think this, or how can you think that?’ on both sides.”

Murder mysteries ultimately deal in justice and meting out moral determinations. But “Wake Up, Dead Man” makes room, also, for understanding and grace in a way that, in many ways, goes against whodunit conventions.

“I really believe the hardest thing for a human being to do is to forgive,” Close says. “And I’m not even talking in a religious context. Especially now. It goes so against our basest instincts. When you forgive, you stop the circle.”

Now that “Knives Out” has become a trilogy, or, rather, a trinity, it’s natural to wonder if “Wake Up, Dead Man” is also closing a loop for Johnson. The writer-director has begun writing something original outside of the series, but, he says, that doesn’t mean he’s moving on.

Daniel Craig attends the premiere of “Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery” at the Princess of Wales Theatre during the Toronto International Film Festival on Saturday, Sept. 6, 2025, in Toronto. (AP Photo/Chris Pizzello)

“Three is the smallest number where you can establish and then break a pattern. For me, it was largely about showing how these movies can be anything,” Johnson says. “It’s not so much the closing of a chapter, so much as the promise, hopefully, that as long as Daniel and I can keep getting ourselves excited about these things, we can keep making them.”

“Wake Up, Dead Man,” of course, also brings some parts of Close’s life full circle. When Martha’s big moment comes in a dramatic scene inside the church, Close says, “the thing that was kind of a surprise was how real it became.”

“To go into new territory, that’s what it’s all about for me,” says Close. “And Martha is certainly new territory. New old territory.”