Mia Taylor | (TNS) TravelPulse

Globetrotters may soon be able to store their U.S. passport in a Google Wallet.

The tech giant has announced that it’s rolling out a variety of new Google Wallet updates aimed at travelers and commuters.

As part of that plan, Google is beta testing the ability to create a digital ID from a U.S. passport, according to a news release from Google. Once uploaded to a Wallet, the digital U.S. Passport ID could be used at select TSA checkpoints by those traveling within the United States.

Google expects that being able to store passports digitally in your Wallet will save “time and stress at the airport when traveling domestically.”

When the new digital passport feature becomes available to the public, users will be able to create their digital ID by selecting the “create an ID pass with your U.S. passport” function in the Google Wallet app.

After that, users will be required to scan the security chip located on the back of passports. The process also involves taking a selfie that will be used to verify identity.

From start-to-finish, creating a digital ID from a passport should take just a few minutes, per Google. The digitized version of one’s passport however, should not replace carrying your actual passport. Google has worked to stress this point.

The company has also underscored that your passport information will be safe when stored in a Wallet.

“ID passes are stored encrypted, meaning you must authenticate using your fingerprint, PIN or passcode before the ID pass is viewable or shareable,” Google said in a statement. “You’re in control of the information shared: before using your digital ID for identity verification, you can review what information is being requested.”

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The passport news is just a small part of Google’s plans when it comes to digitized identification. Last year, the tech company introduced the ability to save select state-issued digital IDs to Wallet.

Now, Google is in talks with partners to make digital IDs acceptable for a variety of additional travel uses, including when renting a car.

“While ID passes are accepted at select TSA checkpoints today, we’re working with partners so you can use digital IDs in even more situations — for example, in the future we believe you should be able to use digital ID for things like account recovery, identity verification and even car rentals,” the company said in a statement.

In the future, the Google wallet will automatically import transit tickets from Gmail booking confirmations. With this upcoming function, users will be able to view live train status updates from the ticket in the Google app.

And yet another feature in the works would provide Google Wallet users with notifications if there’s a change to an assigned seat associated with a boarding pass.

Since launching two years ago, people in more than 90 countries and territories have begun using Google Wallet to save and access everything from payment cards to train and event tickets.

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

The Demi Moore film “The Substance,” currently in theaters, has a doppelganger in its midst: a dark comedy likewise about an actor undergoing a radical exterior transformation while overlooking some nagging problems under the skin.

It’s called “A Different Man,” starring Sebastian Stan, and writer-director Aaron Schimberg explores ego, self-esteem, envy and desire in different and craftier ways than anything in “The Substance.” With a crucial performance from Adam Pearson to complement Stan’s fine work, the film is well worth seeing. It is, in fact, a serious joke about the act of seeing.

Edward, the gentle, forlorn aspiring actor played by Stan, lives in a New York City apartment building that conspires to drive him a little crazy. There’s a drip, drip, drip from the apartment above him, apparently from the bathroom. And there’s Ingrid, a sprightly but tough-to-read neighbor, played by Renate Reinsve, vividly unpredictable, of “The Worst Person in the World” and the recent series version of “Presumed Innocent.”

Sebastian Stan, Renate Reinsve and Adam Pearson in “A Different Man.” (Matt Infante/A24/TNS)

In a moment captured in a casual medium shot by the camera, Ingrid flinches at her first sight of Edward — he has neurofibromatosis, and the resulting facial tumors are a lot to process for this woman, in this miserably image-conscious culture. Soon enough, these neighbors become friendly. Edward is smitten. He presents Ingrid, a playwright, with the gift of an old typewriter, which Schimberg treats as an ongoing reminder of romantic gestures taken for granted.

Secretly, meanwhile, a medical breakthrough presents Edward with the opportunity to undergo an experimental treatment that will give him a whole new face. It works. Edward tells no one. He becomes a new person on the outside. On the inside, too; he’s more arrogant and career-driven. Unbeknownst to Ingrid, told by the new, unrecognizable Edward (now under a new identity) that Edward killed himself, the conventionally handsome newbie wins the leading role in playwright/director Ingrid’s off-Broadway play. Title? “Edward.”

From there, “A Different Man” turns into a twisty fable of malignant self-discovery. By chance, Oswald (Pearson) wanders into rehearsals one day, chatty, pleasant, curious. Like Ingrid’s fictionalized protagonist, only far more interesting, Oswald has lived with neurofibromatosis for most of his life. He has not, however, been defined or confined by it; he’s a great, game spirit, an ardent saxophonist and karaoke showoff, with many enthusiasms and a big social circle. The new Edward, struggling in rehearsals underneath a lifelike mask of his own former face, sees this interloper — Mr. Popularity —  as an indictment of his own desire to be someone else.

It’s part of the film’s sardonic joke that Oswald is continually bumping into his frenemy at weird junctures, so that he becomes Edward’s Quilty, straight out of Nabokov’s “Lolita.” Schimberg’s film eventually settles for a sustained, narratively justified comeuppance, which is too bad; it sputters a bit in the last 20 minutes. But the movie has wit and never goes soft. The central trio of performers couldn’t be better, especially Pearson. He has a clarinet of a speaking voice, mellifluous and warm; on screen (he was first seen widely in Jonathan Glazer’s “Under the Skin,” nude), his exuberance is truly infectious. I’m not sure if “A Different Man” is saying anything truly new about the truly old notions of inner vs. outer beauty, or beauty standards and abnormal norms that never helped anybody. But the sly comic tone keeps us on our toes, and makes those ideas feel new.

“A Different Man” — 3.5 stars (out of 4)

MPA rating: R (for sexual content, graphic nudity, language and some violent content)

Running time: 1:52

How to watch: Premieres in theaters Sept. 27

Michael Phillips is a Tribune critic.

By PASCAL BASTIEN, BARBARA SURK and SYLVIA HUI

STRASBOURG, France (AP) — WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange said Tuesday that he was freed after years of incarceration because he “pled guilty to journalism.”

In his first public remarks since he was released from prison in June, Assange gave evidence of the impact of his detention and conviction to the legal affairs and human rights committee of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe in Strasbourg, France. The Parliamentary Assembly includes lawmakers from 46 European countries.

A group of supporters, holding a banner that said “Thank you, Julian” greeted Assange as he stepped out of a van smiling and raising his fist in defiance along with his wife, Stella, and WikiLeaks editor-in-chief, Kristinn Hrafnsson.

“Assange is free! We are here. The world is with you,” one supporter shouted before Assange entered the Council of Europe building early Tuesday.

“I am not free today because the system worked,” Assange said. “I am free today after years of incarceration because I pled guilty to journalism.”

He added: “I pled guilty to seeking information from a source. I pled guilty to obtaining information from a source. And I pled guilty to informing the public what that information was.”

Assange was released in June after five years in a British prison after he pleaded guilty to obtaining and publishing U.S. military secrets in a deal with Justice Department prosecutors that concluded a drawn-out legal saga. Prior to his time in prison, he had spent seven years in self-imposed exile in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, where he claimed asylum on the grounds of political persecution.

The transition from years in a maximum security prison to addressing the European parliamentarians has been a “profound and a surreal shift,” Assange said as he detailed the experience of isolation in a small cell.

“It strips away one’s sense of self, leaving only the raw essence of existence,” he said, his voice cracking while he offered an apology for his “faltering words” and an “unpolished presentation.”

“I’m not yet fully equipped to speak about what I have endured — the relentless struggle to stay alive, both physically and mentally,” Assange said.

The Australian internet publisher was accused of receiving and publishing hundreds of thousands of war logs and diplomatic cables that included details of U.S. military wrongdoing in Iraq and Afghanistan. His activities were celebrated by press freedom advocates, who heralded his role in bringing to light military conduct that might otherwise have been concealed.

Among the files published by WikiLeaks was a video of a 2007 Apache helicopter attack by American forces in Baghdad that killed 11 people, including two Reuters journalists.

Critics say his conduct put American national security and innocent lives — such as people who provided information to U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan — at risk, and strayed far beyond the bounds of traditional journalism duties.

The yearslong case ended with Assange entering his plea in a U.S. district court on the Northern Mariana Islands, an American commonwealth in the Pacific.

Assange pleaded guilty to an Espionage Act charge of conspiring to unlawfully obtain and disseminate classified national defense information. A judge sentenced him to the five years he had already spent behind bars in the U.K. fighting extradition to the United States.

Assange returned to Australia a free man in late June. At the time his wife, Stella, said he needed time to recuperate before speaking publicly.

His appearance on Tuesday comes after the Council of Europe’s Parliamentary Assembly published a report on Assange’s detention in a high-security U.K. prison for five years.

The assembly’s human rights committee said Assange qualified as a political prisoner and issued a draft resolution expressing deep concern at his harsh treatment.

Surk reported from Nice, France, and Hui reported from London.

By JUAN A. LOZANO

HOUSTON (AP) — An attorney said Tuesday he is representing 120 accusers who have come forward with sexual misconduct allegations against Sean “Diddy” Combs, the hip-hop mogul who is awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges.

Houston attorney Tony Buzbee said he expects lawsuits to be filed within the next month. Buzbee described the victims as 60 males and 60 females, and that 25 were minors at the time of the alleged misconduct.

Following the news conference in Texas, an attorney for Combs said the performer “cannot address every meritless allegation in what has become a reckless media circus.”

“That said, Mr. Combs emphatically and categorically denies as false and defamatory any claim that he sexually abused anyone, including minors,” attorney Erica Wolff said in a statement. “He looks forward to proving his innocence and vindicating himself in court if and when claims are filed and served, where the truth will be established based on evidence, not speculation.”

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Combs, 54, has been locked up at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn since pleading not guilty Sept. 17 to federal charges that he used his “power and prestige” to induce female victims into drugged-up, elaborately produced sexual performances with male sex workers in events dubbed “Freak Offs.”

Buzbee has also represented women who accused NFL quarterback Deshaun Watson of sexual assault.

Other alleged victims have already filed lawsuits against Combs that include allegations of sexual assault.

Combs has pleaded not guilty to racketeering conspiracy and sex trafficking. His attorney said he is innocent and will fight to clear his name.

Combs is one of the best-known music executives, producers and performers across hip-hop, having won three Grammys and worked with artists such as Notorious B.I.G., Mary J. Blige, Usher, Lil Kim, Faith Evans and 112. He founded Bad Boy Records in 1993, the influential fashion line Sean John, a vodka brand and the Revolt TV network. He sold off his stake in the latter company in June of this year.