25 Nov 2024

Raw milk from a California dairy is recalled after routine testing detected the bird flu virus

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SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — The bird flu virus was detected in a retail sample of raw milk from a dairy in Fresno, California, state health officials said.

The sample obtained at a store tested positive Nov. 21 during routine screening by Santa Clara County health officers, the state Department of Public Health said Sunday.

The dairy, Raw Farm, issued a voluntary recall for one batch of cream top, whole raw milk with a best buy date of Nov. 27.

“Consumers should immediately return any remaining product to the store where it was purchased,” the state health department said in a statement.

Pasteurized milk remains safe to drink, the department said.

On Friday, health officials confirmed bird flu in a California child — the first reported case in a U.S. minor.

SAN ANSELMO, CALIFORNIA – NOVEMBER 25: Raw Farm raw milk containers are displayed on a shelf at a grocery store on November 25, 2024, in San Anselmo, California. Fresno County dairy Raw Farm has recalled its cream top raw milk after bird flu virus was found in a retail sample of the raw milk product over the weekend. Consumers should avoid milk consumption and are encouraged to return the product to the store where it was purchased. (Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

The child had mild symptoms, was treated with antiviral medication and is recovering, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said.

There have been at least 55 U.S. bird flu cases this year, including 29 in California, the CDC said. Most were farmworkers who tested positive with mild symptoms.

H5N1 bird flu has been spreading widely in the U.S. among wild birds, poultry and a number of other animals over the last few years.

It began spreading in U.S. dairy cattle in March. California has become the center of that outbreak, with 402 infected herds detected there since August.

25 Nov 2024

Volunteers join a search for a woman from Hawaii missing in LA for weeks as her father is found dead

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LOS ANGELES (AP) — Volunteers have joined a search in Los Angeles for Hannah Kobayashi, a 30-year-old woman from Hawaii who went missing more than two weeks ago after not making a connecting flight to New York. Kobayashi’s father, Ryan Kobayashi, who had been in the search party, was found dead Sunday in a parking lot near LA International Airport by apparent suicide, police and her family said.

Here are the latest developments in the case:

What happened?

Hannah Kobayashi, a budding photographer from Maui, was heading to New York City on Nov. 8 for a new job and to visit relatives. During a stop at Los Angeles International Airport, she missed her connecting flight and told her family she would sleep in the airport that night.

Family members assumed she was on standby for another flight, according to her aunt, Larie Pidgeon. The next day, Hannah texted them to say she was sightseeing in Los Angeles, planning to visit The Grove shopping mall and downtown LA, Pidgeon said.

On Nov. 11, the family received “strange and cryptic, just alarming” text messages from her phone that referenced her being “intercepted” as she got on a Metro train and being scared that someone might be stealing her identity, her aunt said.

“Once the family started pressing, she went dark,” Pidgeon told The Associated Press on Saturday. After the texts on Nov. 11, her phone “just went dead,” according to Pidgeon.

Pidgeon wouldn’t elaborate further about the texts or describe surveillance footage of Hannah that she said police are reviewing, citing the ongoing investigation.

What are authorities saying?

The Los Angeles Police Department said it’s investigating, but officials haven’t released many details.

The family came from Hawaii and held a news conference last week, after which “it seems that the LAPD is finally taking the case seriously,” Pidgeon said. Detectives told the family they are retracing Hannah’s steps and requesting additional surveillance footage, according to the aunt.

Police officials didn’t immediately respond Monday to emails and voicemails seeking further details.

What’s going on with the search?

Family members and friends are searching for Hannah in Los Angeles, and over the weekend they were joined by local volunteers.

Pidgeon said the effort has been focused in the downtown area. Searchers have also fanned out around the airport and The Grove, a few miles (kilometers) west of downtown.

“It’s completely out of character for her” to not be in touch with loved ones, Pidgeon said of Hannah.

What happened to her father?

Hannah’s father, Ryan Kobayashi, was among those who flew in from Hawaii to help in the search. He was found dead early Sunday in a parking lot near LA International Airport, according to the county medical examiner.

Police said officers responded to reports of a body about 4 a.m. and discovered someone dead.

Kobayashi’s family confirmed Ryan’s death in a Sunday statement, saying they “endured a devastating tragedy” and that he died by suicide.

“After tirelessly searching throughout Los Angeles for 13 days, Hannah’s father, Ryan Kobayashi, tragically took his own life,” according to the statement. “This loss has compounded the family’s suffering immeasurably.”

The family asked for privacy as it grieves Ryan’s death and urged the public to “maintain focus on the search for her. Hannah IS still actively missing and is believed to be in imminent danger. It is crucial for everyone to remain vigilant in their efforts to locate Hannah.”

This story includes discussion of suicide. If you or someone you know needs help, the national suicide and crisis lifeline in the U.S. is available by calling or texting 988. There is also an online chat at 988lifeline.org.

25 Nov 2024

Is the world more dangerous than ever for travelers? A global risk expert weighs in

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By TravelPulse (TNS)

While 2024 was a year that brought about significant, continued post-pandemic recovery for the travel industry, it was also a period of time marked by instability in some locations around the world.

From attacks on the rail lines during the Paris Olympics to the ongoing conflicts in the Middle East, not to mention the war in Ukraine, the global travel realm in 2024 was fraught with challenges.

It is against this backdrop that the international security and medical services provider Global Guardian recently released its 2025 Global Risk Map.

Published annually, the map is meant to help travelers better understand the current global risk landscape. In order to develop its guidance, experts at Global Guardian assess a long list of country-specific security risk factors and indicators, including crime, health, natural disasters, infrastructure, political stability, civil unrest and terrorism.

For 2025, Global Guardian’s assessment results underscore the reality that disruption globally and domestically continues to increase, and now more than ever travelers need to be prepared when exploring the world.

As part of the latest assessment, Global Guardian highlighted a handful of specific global regions that are at particular risk of destabilization over the next year and beyond.

Here’s a closer look at those regions, along with insights from Global Guardian CEO Dale Buckner, who recently spoke with TravelPulse at length about the risks travelers may face in 2025.

Here are the regions at risk of destabilization in 2025:

Middle East/North Africa

Israel’s existential battle against Iran is set to continue into 2025, says the Global Guardian report.

“In July 2024, Israel assassinated Hamas’ political leader, Ismail Haniyeh, in an Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) safehouse in Tehran, and Iran has pledged revenge,” the report explains.

“This comes as Iran and its web of regional proxies took their war on Israel out of the shadows and into the open following October 7, 2023, with seven live fronts.”

Global Guardian also predicts that Israel’s regional war will shift from Gaza to the West Bank and Lebanon in the year ahead, heightening tensions with Hezbollah, while Houthi attacks on commercial shipping in the Red Sea and Indian Ocean will persist.

The report adds that as “we enter 2025, Israel may assess that its strategic window to prevent a nuclear Iran is rapidly closing and choose to act.”

The ongoing civil war in Sudan between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), is also of concern, according to Global Guardian’s risk analysis. The conflict “has created a dire humanitarian situation with ethnically motivated violence on the rise,” says the report.

Latin America

Some of the areas of concern in the Latin American region include Venezuela and Mexico, according to Global Guardian.

The risk in Venezuela is tied to the country’s long-standing territorial dispute with neighboring Guyana, says the report.

“Since 2019, the U.S. Department of State withdrew all diplomatic personnel from U.S. Embassy Caracas and suspended all operations,” explains Buckner. “Violent crimes, such as homicide, armed robbery, kidnapping, and carjacking, are common in Venezuela. Shortages of gasoline, electricity, water, medicine, and medical supplies continue throughout much of Venezuela. Simply put, Venezuela is one of the most dangerous countries in the world for Western travelers and should be avoided.”

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In Mexico, meanwhile, the problems include drug cartel-related violence and theft, among other issues, says the report.

Mexico recently inaugurated its first female president, Claudia Sheinbaum, and like her predecessors she will face challenges “reining in cartel violence, corruption, extortion, theft and kidnapping,” says the report.

“As such, security continues to be a top concern in Mexico’ ” says the report, which categorizes Mexico as “high risk” when it comes to travel for 2025.

Countries classified as high risk experience regular conflict, criminal activity or civil unrest — and have not effectively managed those risks.

The Global Guardian report also suggests there may be heightened risks in Mexico now that Donald Trump has been reelected U.S. president.

“Bilateral relations between the U.S. and Mexico could dramatically deteriorate. Trump has promised a mass deportation operation, which could sour relations between the U.S. and Mexico, increasing risks to businesses operating in Mexico,” the report adds.

Asked to comment on Mexico’s high-risk designation, Buckner stressed that the situation in the country is extremely nuanced, adding that it’s a vast oversimplification to call the entire country high risk.

“There are pockets of Mexico that are wildly safe and wonderful to visit and people shouldn’t hesitate to go,” Buckner told TravelPulse. “And there are also pockets that are unsafe and dangerous.”

The good news, added Buckner, is that Mexico’s new president is focusing a great deal of effort and energy on addressing the problems surrounding drug cartels, which are the source of a great deal of the risk.

Buckner was quick to add however, that as long as there’s demand for drugs, the drug cartel situation is likely to remain problematic.

“The U.S. is driving the drug demand — we consume more drugs then the rest of the world,” explained Buckner. “It’s really overly simplified to paint Mexico as the bad guy, because if there wasn’t demand, we wouldn’t need the supply. But the demand is real and violence comes with that.”

Representatives for Global Nexus, a government and public affairs consultancy that advises travel and tourism companies and interests in Southern Mexico, told TravelPulse that while drug-related violence has been known to occur, it involves members of the drug cartel targeting each other, they’re not targeting tourists.

“There is an ongoing battle between small drug vendors who use the beach to sell product to tourists hanging out on the beach,” explained Ruben Olmos, Global Nexus president and CEO, in reference to the Quintana Roo region, which is popular with tourists. “There have been cases where gunfire has been exchanged between these groups. They are targeting themselves. They are fighting over ‘This is my beach’ and they initiate a shootout.”

However, added Olmos, that the U.S. State Department’s risk categorization for Quintana Roo (which is separate from the Global Guardian risk assessment) has not changed.

Located on the State Department’s Mexico page, the risk assessment for Quintana Roo remains in the “Exercise Increased Caution” category, which is below the top risk categories of “Do Not Travel” and “Reconsider Travel.”

The Exercise Increased Caution designation means “Be aware of heightened risks to safety and security,” explains the State Department’s website.

Olmos also pointed out that Mexico is the only country that has a map on the U.S. State Department website that covers every single state in the country, providing details for travelers about which states are safest.

Sub-Saharan Africa

In June 2024, thousands of young people took to the streets in Kenya to protest a controversial tax bill. The protesters were met with heavy-handed policing, including the use of live fire and mass arrests, says the Global Guardian risk report.

Despite the local security response, protests continued. The success and tenacity of the Kenyan movement has triggered similar protests or dissent in other countries including Uganda, Tanzania, South Africa, and Nigeria, says Global Guardian.

That is just a portion of the risk Global Guardian sees for Sub-Saharan Africa over the course of 2025.

“With multiple conflicts escalating across the continent, aging leaders leaving behind unclear successions, and entrenched regimes with dissipating legitimacy, Sub-Saharan Africa now looks much like the North African and Arab world in the early 2010s,” says the report. “While the dynamic unfolding in Africa might not yet merit the label of “African Spring,” a significant change to the continent’s political status quo is coming.”

A complete list of extreme and high-risk designations

Several countries received an extreme or high-risk designation on the new Global Guardian risk map for 2025, including more than a few that are popular with leisure travelers or tourists.

Extreme risk countries are those that Global Guardian says are “actively engaged in conflict, while also experiencing severe criminal activity and civil unrest.These countries are insecure; state institutions are too weak to manage militant groups or large-scale disasters.” They include Afghanistan, Burkina Faso, Central African Republic, Lebanon, Mali, Niger, Somalia, Ukraine, West Bank, Gaza and Yemen.

The current list of high-risk countries, which are countries that experience regular conflict, criminal activity or civil unrest and have not effectively managed those risks, includes Bangladesh, Cameroon, Democratic Republic of Congo, Ecuador, Ethiopia, Guatemala, Honduras, Iraq, Israel, Jamaica, Kenya, Libya, Mexico, Mozambique, Myanmar, Nigeria, Pakistan, Papua New Guinea, South Sudan, Uganda, Venezuela

Officials from the Jamaica Tourist Board provided a statement to TravelPulse in response to Global Guardian’s designation of the country.

“Last month, Global Guardian, a private security provider, released its 2025 Global Risk Map, which included Jamaica, amongst other destinations,” said the Tourist Board. “It is important to note that the crime rate against visitors is notably low at 0.01% and the majority of Jamaica’s tourism product remains unaffected.”

The country’s tourism officials added that Jamaica has welcomed 3 million visitors this year and boasts a high repeat visitor rate of 42%.

“The island is consistently ranked among the top destinations for international travel and visitors continue to come with confidence to enjoy all that Jamaica has to offer,” the statement adds.

When it comes to Jamaica, Buckner offered similar comments to those of Mexico, noting that the situation is impacted by drug-related violence and the experience on the ground is nuanced and cannot be painted with a broad brush.

“In the same vein as Mexico — Jamaica can be a wonderful place to visit,” says Buckner. “There are pockets of beauty and low crime and as long as you are careful, it’s a very low threat.”

Bottom line on travel risks for 2025

Buckner, a retired Army colonel, maintains that the world is indeed a more risky place heading into 2025. The challenges in the Middle East and Ukraine are at the forefront of the instability, but are hardly the only cause for concern.

“Israel has now gone to Gaza and cleaned out Hamas, they’re now moving north into Lebanon, and we are convinced Israel will strike Iran,” Buckner said during an interview that took place prior to Israel’s strike on Iran. “If that occurs you are going to see violence across the Middle East.”

“But there are over 100 conflicts across the globe,” continues Buckner. When you combine that reality with other challenges the world is currently grappling with, including the destabilizing influences of climate change, there are plenty of risks for travelers to bear in mind when planning a journey for the coming year.

He wraps up by offering a few tips for travelers, a check-list of sorts, to work through when planning or considering travel to a specific country in 2025:

— If you don’t know who to call or how you are going to negotiate if someone is kidnapped, you shouldn’t go there.

— Consumers need to read the fine print on travel insurance because it does not cover war zones, terrorism or natural disasters, says Buckner. And travelers are often surprised and find out too late that these types of events are not covered.

— If you get stuck or stranded, if you don’t know who you are going to call to get you out of that situation, know what organizations locally or internationally are available to help you.

©2024 Northstar Travel Media, LLC. Visit at travelpulse.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

25 Nov 2024

Column: Brady Corbet’s epic movie ‘The Brutalist’ came close to crashing down more than once

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One night last month, near the end of the Chicago International Film Festival, a particularly long line of moviegoers snaked down Southport Avenue by the Music Box Theatre. The hot ticket? This fall’s hottest ticket, in fact, all over the international festival circuit?

Well, it’s a 215-minute drama about a fictional Hungarian Jewish architect who emigrates to America in 1947 after surviving the Holocaust. The film’s title, “The Brutalist,” references several things, firstly a post-World War II design imperative made of stern concrete, steel, and a collision of poetry and functionality.

Director and co-writer Brady Corbet, who wrote “The Brutalist” with his filmmaker wife, Mona Fastvold, explores brutalism in other forms as well, including love, envy, capitalist economics and how the promise of America eludes someone like the visionary architect László Tóth, played by Adrien Brody. Corbet, now 36 and a good bet for Oscar nominations this coming January, says his unfashionable sprawl of a picture, being distributed by A24, is also about the “strange relationship between artist and patron, and art and commerce.”

It co-stars Felicity Jones as the visionary architect’s wife, Erzsébet, trapped in Eastern Europe after the war with their niece for an agonizingly long time. Guy Pearce portrays the imperious Philadelphia blueblood who hires Tóth, a near-invisible figure in his adopted country, to design a monumental public building known as the Institute in rural Pennsylvania. The project becomes an obsession, then a breaking point and then something else.

Corbet’s project, which took the better part of a decade to come together after falling apart more than once, felt like that, too.

Spanning five decades and filmed in Hungary and Italy, “The Brutalist” looks like a well-spent $50 million project. In actuality, it was made for a mere $10 million, with Corbet and cinematographer Lol Crawley shooting on film, largely in the VistaVision process.

The filmmaker said at the Chicago festival screening: “Who woulda thunk that for screening after screening over the last couple of months, people stood in line around the block to get into a three-and-a-half-hour movie about a mid-century designer?”

He lives in Brooklyn, New York, with Fastvold and their daughter. Our conversation has been edited for clarity and length.

Q: Putting together an independent movie, keeping it on track, getting it made: not easy, as you told the Music Box audience last night. Money is inevitably going to be part of the story of “The Brutalist,” since you had only so much to make a far-flung historical epic.

A: Yeah, that’s right. In relation to my earlier features, “The Childhood of a Leader” had a $3 million budget. The budget for “Vox Lux” was right around $10 million, same as “The Brutalist,” although the actual production budget for “Vox Lux” was about $4.5 million. Which is to say: All the money on top of that was going to all the wrong places.

For a lot of reasons, when my wife and I finished the screenplay for “The Brutalist,” we ruled out scouting locations in Philadelphia or anywhere in the northeastern United States. We needed to (film) somewhere with a lot less red tape. My wife’s previous film, “The World to Come,” she made in Romania; we shot “Childhood of a Leader” in Hungary. For “The Brutalist” we initially landed on Poland, but this was early on in COVID and Poland shut its borders the week our crew was arriving for pre-production. When we finally got things up and running again with a different iteration of the cast (the original ensemble was to star Joel Edgerton, Marion Cotillard and Mark Rylance), after nine months, the movie fell apart again because Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. We couldn’t get any of the banks to cash-flow the tax credit (for location shooting in Poland). It’s completely stable now, but at that time the banks were nervous about whether the war would be contained to Ukraine or not.

And then we finally got it up and running in Budapest, Hungary.

Q: That’s a long time.

A: Every filmmaker I know suffers from some form of post-traumatic stress (laughs). It sounds funny but it’s true. At every level. On the level of independent cinema, you’re just so damn poor. You’re not making any money, and yet from nose to tail, at minimum, a movie always takes a couple of years. With bigger projects, you might have a little more personal security but a lot less creative security with so many more cooks in the kitchen. Either route you choose, it can be an arduous and painful one.

Moviegoers wait in line for the Chicago International Film Festival screening of “The Brutalist” at the Music Box Theatre on Oct. 24 2024. (E. Jason Wambsgans/Chicago Tribune)
Director and co-writer Brady Corbet introduces the Chicago International Film Festival screening of his film “The Brutalist” at the Music Box Theatre. (E. Jason Wambsgans/Chicago Tribune)

Whether you’re making a movie for a million dollars, or $10 million, or $100 million, it’s still “millions of dollars.” And if you’re concerned about the lives and livelihoods of the people working with you, it’s especially stressful. People are constantly calling you: “Is it happening? Are we starting? Should I take this other job or not?” And you have 250 people who need that answer from you. Every iteration of the project, I always thought we were really about to start in a week, two weeks. It’s just very challenging interpersonally. It’s an imposition for everyone in your life. And then there’s the imposition of screening a movie that’s three-and-a-half-hours long for film festivals, where it’s difficult to find that kind of real estate on the schedule. So essentially, making a movie means constantly apologizing.

Q: At what point in your acting career did you take a strong interest in what was going on behind the camera?

A: I was making short films when I was 11, 12 years old. The first thing I ever made more properly, I guess, was a short film I made when I was 18, “Protect You + Me,” shot by (cinematographer) Darius Khondji. It was supposed to be part of a triptych of films, and I went to Paris for the two films that followed it. And then all the financing fell through. But that first one screened at the London film festival, and won a prize at Sundance, and I was making music videos and other stuff by then.

Q: You’ve written a lot of screenplays with your wife. How many?

A: Probably 25. We work a lot for other people, too. I think we’ve done six together for our own projects. Sometimes I’ll start something at night and my wife will finish in the morning. Sometimes we work very closely together, talking and typing together. It’s always different. Right now I’m writing a lot on the road, and my wife is editing her film, which is a musical we wrote, “Ann Lee,” about the founder of the Shakers.

I’m working on my next movie now, which spans a lot of time, like “The Brutalist,” with a lot of locations. And I need to make sure we can do it for not a lot of money, because it’s just not possible to have a lot of money and total autonomy. For me making a movie is like cooking. If everyone starts coming in and throwing a dash of this or that in the pot, it won’t work out.

A sold-out Chicago International Film Festival screening of “The Brutalist” at the Music Box Theatre. (E. Jason Wambsgans/Chicago Tribune)

A continuity of vision is what I look for when I read a novel. Same with watching a film. A lot of stuff out there today, appropriately referred to as “content,” has more in common with a pair of Nikes than it does with narrative cinema.

Q: Yeah, I can’t imagine a lot of Hollywood executives who’d sign off on “The Brutalist.” 

A: Well, even with our terrific producing team, I mean, everyone was up for a three-hour movie but we were sort of pushing it with three-and-a-half (laughs). I figured, worst-case scenario, it opens on a streamer. Not what I had in mind, but people watch stuff that’s eight, 12 hours long all the time. They get a cold, they watch four seasons of “Succession.” (A24 is releasing the film in theaters, gradually.)

It was important for all of us to try to capture an entire century’s worth of thinking about design with “The Brutalist.” For me, making something means expressing a feeling I have about our history. I’ve described my films as poetic films about politics, that go to places politics alone cannot reach. It’s one thing to say something like “history repeats itself.” It’s another thing to make people see that, and feel it. I really want viewers to engage with the past, and the trauma of that history can be uncomfortable, or dusty, or dry. But if you can make it something vital, and tangible, the way great professors can do for their students, that’s my definition of success.

“The Brutalist” opens in New York and Los Angeles on Dec. 20. The Chicago release is Jan. 10, 2025.

Michael Phillips is a Tribune critic.