Day: September 13, 2023

When an episode from The Morning Show’s third season opens with an homage to Saturday Night Fever, it’s more than just an example of the Apple TV+ drama’s self-aware playfulness. In a tracking shot borrowed from the film’s iconic title sequence, two gleaming dress shoes emerge from a chauffeured car as the Bee Gees’ “Stayin’ Alive” blares. The camera pulls back, and we see it’s following Billy Crudup’s mercurial network president Cory Ellison as he struts into an upfront presentation, greeting the host, meeting performers, and thanking stars for debasing themselves in this annual ritual of begging brands for money. “You’re gonna have your work cut out for you,” he jokes to the hair and makeup team as they accost him with brushes. “Let ’er rip!”

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The key moment in the scene comes when Cory is finally alone backstage, after he’s reminded his protégée, stubbornly principled news division head Stella Bak (Greta Lee), that she needs to be courting advertisers hard. Staring into the mirror, he rehearses a spiel written to sound spontaneous, shoulders tense with the burden of saving an empire that’s bleeding cash. The new season, premiering Sept. 13, expands beyond the series’ eponymous Today clone to consider the plight of its fictional network, UBA. Like many real media companies flailing their way through the streaming wars’ current chaos era, the broadcaster is desperate for a savior. Which places unprecedented pressure on the inscrutable Cory—and promotes Crudup from an Emmy-winning supporting actor in a vast ensemble cast to the show’s most crucial role.

It’s the best of several smart choices The Morning Show makes in its third season, as new showrunner Charlotte Stoudt (taking over from Kerry Ehrin) leans into the strengths of an often-silly but always-fun prestige soap whose tone and ambition fall somewhere between And Just Like That and Succession. In another shrewd decision, the story jumps ahead two years after a Season 2 finale that had Jennifer Aniston’s narcissistic yet relatable veteran anchor Alex Levy rebounding from cancellation by documenting her COVID battle on the UBA+ streaming service. Now it’s March 2022; a mid-season flashback episode will spare us the prolonged slog through lockdown, the 2020 election, and Jan. 6. As Cory shovels funds into the money pit that is UBA+ and other departments grumble over austere budgets, employees’ private communications are held ransom in a data breach that calls to mind the 2014 Sony hack.

Vulnerable to an ouster and sick of being accountable to a stodgy board, Cory finds what he believes is a champion in Paul Marks, a devastatingly handsome tech billionaire played by a perfectly cast Jon Hamm. Like Jeff Bezos after a full course of charisma infusions, Paul is breaking ground in commercial space flight. His pal Cory has pulled strings to broadcast the maiden manned voyage of his Hyperion rocket, with Alex set to join the mogul onboard. The test flight will double as a test of UBA’s value to Paul, who’s looking into buying the company and, Cory hopes, giving its president the independence he craves. We first see the men together in a sauna, where Cory labors to endure the heat while making his pitch: “It would make a great press release: While everyone was doomscrolling under the covers during COVID, two guys, they crossed path at high tide in the Hamptons to forge the biggest media deal in a decade.”

Paul is, essentially, who Cory wants to be when he grows up. Cory is by most measures an incredibly powerful man. But Paul makes him, a new and relatively precarious member of the corporate ultra-elite, look like a peon. The ultimate alpha male, an adrenaline junkie with rocket ships and stories about almost dying on a mountain in Nepal, Paul is—physically and in terms of influence—the bigger, stronger, and more intimidating of the two. Cory tries to talk tough with him. But when Paul says “You need a miracle, and buddy, I’m it,” Cory is, for once, speechless.

What may stand in the way of him becoming the next Paul Marks is his conscience. There’s a lot of talk this season about how extreme wealth erodes empathy; how much of the latter Cory has ever possessed remains an open question. In Season 1 he was as an agent of chaos, giddily conspiring to overthrow his stiff predecessor, Fred (Tom Irwin), who covered up sexual misconduct on the part of Alex’s former co-anchor Mitch Kessler (Steve Carell). When Mitch’s victim Hannah (Gugu Mbatha-Raw) dies by suicide, Cory spends much of Season 2 trying to prevent her from being defamed.

So he’s generally on the side of equity and progress—and he gets a palpable jolt out of seeing upstarts like Stella and Alex’s sometimes co-anchor, nonpartisan truth teller Bradley Jackson (Reese Witherspoon), stick it to the Establishment. But it’s hard to tell whether his actions are a genuine reflection of his values or just another canny calculation at a time when it behooves white men in the public eye to be seen uplifting oppressed groups. Certainly, we’ve watched him commit some pretty catastrophic failures of allyship. The price of defending Hannah’s memory is outing Bradley and her female lover Laura Peterson (Julianna Margulies), and Cory pays it.

Of course, he may be acting out of authentic pain in that case. Always the most dynamic figure in the room, thanks to Crudup’s unctuous but affable Type A energy—the most fascinating performance in a show carried by its acting—Cory comes closest to letting his guard down around Bradley. He simply can’t hide that he’s in love with her, or that it’s her righteousness and courage that draw him to her; amid all the grandstanding, Crudup allows us brief glimpses of vulnerability. This tortured connection with Bradley, which is tested again in Season 3, is the most compelling sign we have that there’s a decent soul hidden beneath Cory’s bespoke suits.

As much as it’s improved since Season 1, The Morning Show is always going to be a little goofy. The new episodes continue to portray a world of absurd coincidences, where the same two dozen characters, not all of them famous or influential, keep resurfacing in connection with every conceivable news story. This can be especially frustrating when it comes to Bradley, whose story lines always circle back to her family in West Virginia, generic avatars for rural, white misery who get into exactly the sort of trouble between 2020 and 2022 that you’d expect.

But the show is really onto something with Cory. Through him, it offers an insight that ties together the network’s talent and its leadership: that a businessperson is just as much a performer as a news anchor. Like Tony Manero peacocking through Brooklyn, he feigns unshakable confidence to hide fears that he’s not good enough. The question of whether he has the ego to become another Paul or ideals that make him more like Bradley, whether beyond the chaos-mongering he’s motivated by power or integrity, yields The Morning Show’s most fruitful character arc to date. It’s especially poignant that he doesn’t seem to understand himself any better than a mother who’s convinced he’s irredeemably selfish, or even an onlooker who describes him as “oddly compelling in a Patrick-Bateman-in-a-vinyl-raincoat kind of way.” 

At worst a mere blip between the chauvinistic Freds (or Les Moonveses) of 20th-century broadcasting and the arrogant Pauls of 21st-century tech, but at best a man capable of revitalizing the news and entertainment industries for the next generation, Cory is a new boss with a chance to do better than the old boss. The future of media depends on whether he’s capable of taking it.

LONDON — A storm that has killed thousands of people and left thousands more missing in Libya is the latest blow to a country that has been gutted by years of chaos and division.

The floods are the most fatal environmental disaster in the country’s modern history. Years of war and lack of a central government have left it with crumbling infrastructure that was vulnerable to the intense rains. Libya is currently the only country yet to develop a climate strategy, according to the United Nations.

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The north African country has been divided between rival administrations and beset by militia conflict since NATO-backed Arab Spring uprising toppled autocratic ruler Moammar Gadhafi in 2011.

The city of Derna in the country’s east saw the most destruction, as large swaths of riverside buildings vanished, washed away after two dams burst.

Read More: How to Help Flood Victims in Libya

Videos of the aftermath show water gushing through the port city’s remaining tower blocks and overturned cars, and later, bodies lined up on sidewalks covered with blankets, collected for burial. Residents say the only indication of danger was the loud sound of the dams cracking, with no warning system or evacuation plan.

Here’s a look at why the storm was so destructive and what obstacles stand in the way of getting aid to those who need it most:

Two Governments, Two Prime Ministers

Since 2014. Libya has been split between two rival governments, each backed by international patrons and numerous armed militias on the ground.

In Tripoli, Prime Minister Abdul Hamid Dbeibah heads Libya’s internationally recognized government. In Benghazi, the rival prime minister, Ossama Hamad, heads the eastern administration, which is backed by powerful military commander Khalifa Hiftar.

Both governments and the eastern commander have separately pledged to help the rescue efforts in the flood-affected areas, but they have no record of successful cooperation.

Rival parliaments have for years failed to unify despite international pressure, including planned elections in 2021 that were never held.

As recent as 2020, the two sides were in an all-out war. Hifter’s forces besieged Tripoli in a year-long failed military campaign to try to capture the capital, killing thousands. Then in 2022, former eastern leader Fathi Basagah tried to seat his government in Tripoli before clashes between rival militias forced him to withdraw.

Read More: Our Hearts Are Dead.’ After 9 Years of Civil War, Libyans Are Tired of Being Pawns in a Geopolitical Game of Chess

The support of regional and world powers has further entrenched the divisions. Hifter’s forces are backed by Egypt, Russia, Jordan and the United Arab Emirates, while the west Libya administration is backed by Turkey, Qatar and Italy.

The UAE, Egypt and Turkey are all helping rescue efforts on the ground. But as of Tuesday, rescue operations were struggling to reach Derna.

Claudia Gazzini, a senior Libya analyst at International Crisis Group, says the problem is partially logistical with many of the roads entering the port city having been severed by the storm. But political strife also plays a role.

“International efforts to send rescue teams have to go through the Tripoli-based government,” said Gazzini. That means permissions to allow aid inside the most affected areas have to be approved by rival authorities.

She was skeptical the Benghazi government could manage the problem alone, she said.

Growing Unrest and Discontent

The flooding follows a long line of problems born from the country’s lawlessness.

Last month, protests broke out across Libya after news broke of a secret meeting between the Libyan and Israeli foreign ministers. The demonstrations turned into a movement calling for Debibah to resign.

Earlier in August, sporadic fighting broke out between two rival militia forces in the capital, killing at least 45 people, a reminder of the influence rogue armed groups wield across Libya.

Libya has become a major transit point for Middle Eastern and African migrants fleeing conflict and poverty to seek a better life in Europe. Militias and human traffickers have benefited from the instability in Libya, smuggling migrants across borders from six nations, including Egypt, Algeria and Sudan.

Meanwhile, Libya’s rich oil reserves have done little to help its population. The production of crude oil, Libya’s most valued export, has at times slowed to a trickle due to blockades and security threats to companies. Allocation of oil revenues has become a key point of disagreement.

Tale of a Neglected City

Much of Derna was constructed when Libya was under Italian occupation in the first half of the 20th century. It became famous for its scenic white beachfront houses and palm gardens.

But in the aftermath of Gaddafi’s ouster in 2011, it disintegrated into a hub for Islamist extremist groups, was bombarded by Egyptian airstrikes and later besieged by forces loyal to Hiftar. The city was taken by Hiftar’s forces in 2019.

Like other cities in the east of the country, it has not seen much rebuilding or investment since the revolution. Most of its modern infrastructure was constructed during the Gaddafi era, including the toppled Wadi Derna dam, built by a Yugoslav company in the mid-1970s.

According to Jalel Harchaoui, an associate fellow specializing in Libya at the London-based Royal United Services Institute for Defence and Security Studies, Hiftar views the city and its population with suspicion, and has been reluctant to allow it too much independence. Last year, for instance, a massive reconstruction plan for the city was led by outsiders from Benghazi and elsewhere, not natives of Derna.

“Tragically, this mistrust might prove calamitous during the upcoming post-disaster period,” Harchaoui said.

—Associated Press writer Cara Anna contributed to this report from Nairobi, Kenya.

The leaders of Russia and North Korea met at a remote Siberian rocket launch facility for a summit that underscores how the two leaders’ interests are aligning in the face of their separate, intensifying confrontations with the United States.

The two men began their meeting with a tour of a Soyuz-2 space rocket launch facility, at which North Korean leader Kim Jong Un peppered a Russian space official with questions about the rockets.

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The meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin came hours after North Korea fired two ballistic missiles toward the sea, extending a highly provocative run in North Korean weapons testing since the start of 2022, as Kim used the distraction caused by Putin’s war on Ukraine to accelerate his weapons development.

Read More: North Korea Keeps Launching Missile Tests. How Worried Should We Be?

South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff didn’t immediately say how far the North Korean missiles flew. Japan’s Coast Guard, citing Tokyo’s Defense Ministry, said the missiles have likely already landed but still urged vessels to watch for falling objects.

The decision to meet at Vostochny Cosmodrome, Russia’s most important domestic satellite launch facility, suggests that Kim is seeking Russian technical assistance for his efforts to develop military reconnaissance satellites, which he has described as crucial in enhancing the threat of his nuclear-capable missiles. In recent months, North Korea has repeatedly failed to put its first military spy satellite into orbit.

Official photos showed that Kim was accompanied by Pak Thae Song, chairman of North Korea’s space science and technology committee, and navy Adm. Kim Myong Sik, who are linked with North Korean efforts to acquire spy satellites and nuclear-capable ballistic missile submarines, according to South Korea’s Unification Ministry.

Asked whether Russia will help North Korea build satellites, Putin was quoted by Russian state media as saying “that’s why we have come here. The DPRK leader shows keen interest in rocket technology. They’re trying to develop space, too,” using the abbreviation for North Korea’s formal name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. Asked about military cooperation, Putin said “we will talk about all issues without a rush. There is time.”

Read More: Why China, Russia, and North Korea Joining Forces in the Indo-Pacific Isn’t a Prelude to War

Putin welcomed Kim’s limousine, brought from Pyongyang in the North Korean leader’s special armored train, at the entrance to the launch facility with a handshake that lasted around 40 seconds. Putin said he was “very glad to see” Kim. Kim’s translator thanked Putin for the warm welcome, “despite being busy.”

The two leaders will sit down for talks after the tour of the cosmodrome, Russian state media reported.

For Putin, the meeting with Kim is an opportunity to refill ammunition stores that the 18-month-old war has drained. North Korea may have tens of millions of aging artillery shells and rockets based on Soviet designs that could give a huge boost to the Russian army in Ukraine, analysts say.

Read More: Why Kim Jong Un’s Russia Trip Is a Sign of Putin’s Weakness

Kim also brought Jo Chun Ryong, a ruling party official in charge of munitions policies who joined him on recent tours of factories producing artillery shells and missile, according to South Korea.

Kim said his decision to visit Russia four years after his previous visit showed how Pyongyang is “prioritizing the strategic importance” of its relations with Moscow, North Korea’s official news agency said Wednesday.

Kim is expected to seek economic aid as well as military technology. Deputy Foreign Minister Andrei Rudenko said Russia may discuss humanitarian aid with the North Korean delegation, according to Russian news agencies.

An arms deal would violate international sanctions that Russia supported in the past.

Lim Soo-suk, South Korea’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson, said Seoul was maintaining communication with Moscow while closely monitoring Kim’s visit.

“No U.N. member state should violate Security Council sanctions against North Korea by engaging in an illegal trade of arms, and must certainly not engage in military cooperation with North Korea that undermines the peace and stability of the international community,” Lim said at a briefing.

The United States has accused North Korea of providing Russia with arms, including selling artillery shells to the Russian mercenary group Wagner. Both Russian and North Korean officials denied such claims.

Speculation about their military cooperation grew after Shoigu, the Russian defense minister, visited North Korea in July. Kim subsequently toured his weapons factories, which experts said had the dual goal of encouraging the modernization of North Korean weaponry and examining artillery and other supplies that could be exported to Russia.

—Litvinova reported from Tallinn, Estonia. Associated Press journalists Jim Heintz in Tallinn, Estonia; Aamer Madhani and Matthew Lee in Washington; Edith M. Lederer at the United Nations, Dake Kang and Ng Han Guan in Fangchuan, China; Haruka Nuga and Mari Yamaguchi in Tokyo; and Jon Gambrell in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, contributed.

North Korea fired two ballistic missiles into the sea off its east coast, South Korea said on Wednesday. 

The latest launches came as North Korean leader Kim Jong Un is in Russia for talks with President Vladimir Putin.

South Korea’s military said it detected two short-range ballistic missiles launched from the Sunan area into the East Sea around 11:43 to 11:53 on Wednesday morning.

“Our military will closely monitor North Korea’s activities in preparation for further provocations, in close cooperation with the United States, while maintaining a firm readiness posture based on the ability to respond overwhelmingly to any provocation,” said South Korea’s National Security Council.

The council added that North Korea’s repeated missile launches are “a significant provocation that harms peace and prosperity” on the Korean peninsula and in the international community.

Wednesday’s launches were the first to occur while Kim was on a rare trip abroad.

They are the latest in a series of missile tests and military exercises conducted by North Korea in recent weeks.  Pyongyang launched several cruise missiles toward the Yellow Sea on September 2, following its firing of a pair of short-range ballistic missiles from the Sunan area toward waters east of the peninsula on August 30.

In Tokyo, Japan’s Chief Cabinet Secretary, Hirokazu Matsuno, told reporters at a news conference that Japan had lodged a formal protest with North Korea through Japan’s embassy in Beijing.

Japan’s Prime Minister Fumio Kishida also instructed related ministries to gather information and ensure the safety of aircraft and ships.

United Nations Security Council resolutions ban all North Korea’s ballistic missile and nuclear weapons activities.  Officials in Seoul and in Tokyo said they strongly condemn Pyongyang’s missile launches and urged North Korea to stop them immediately.

Lee Juhyun contributed to this report.

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