The 10th installment of the “Fast and Furious” franchise was off to the races this weekend, knocking “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3” out of first place and easily claiming the No. 1 spot at the box office. “Fast X” earned $67.5 million in ticket sales from 4,046 North American theaters, according to estimates from Universal Pictures on Sunday.

It’s on the lower end of openings for the series which peaked with “Furious 7’s” $142.2 million launch, the sole movie in the series to surpass $100 million out of the gates. “Fast X’s” domestic debut only ranks above the first three. The last movie, “F9,” opened to $70 million in 2021.

But this is also a series that has usually made the bulk of its money internationally, often over 70%. True to form, overseas it’s on turbo drive. “Fast X” opened in 84 markets internationally, playing in over 24,000 theaters, where it earned an estimated $251.4 million. The top market was China with $78.3 million, followed by Mexico with $16.7 million. And it adds up to a $319 million global debut — the third biggest of the franchise.

“It’s a global franchise with a very broad audience,” said Jim Orr, Universal’s head of domestic distribution. “The themes resonate across the world.”

Directed by Louis Leterrier (who took over from Justin Lin during production), “Fast X” brings back the familiar crew including Vin Diesel, Michelle Rodriguez, Tyrese Gibson and Jordana Brewster and adds several newcomers, like Brie Larson, Rita Moreno and a villain played by Jason Momoa. The ever-expanding cast includes Jason Statham, Charlize Theron, Scott Eastwood and Helen Mirren.

Reports say the movie cost $340 million to produce, not including marketing.

Reviews were mixed for “Fast X,” the beginning of the end for the $6 billion franchise, which currently has a 54% on Rotten Tomatoes. AP’s Mark Kennedy wrote in his review that, “It has become almost camp, as if it breathed in too much of its own fumes” and that it’s also “monstrously silly and stupidly entertaining.”

According to exit polls, audiences were 29% Caucasian, 29% Hispanic and 21% Black, and 58% were between the ages of 18 and 34. They gave the film a B+ CinemaScore.

In its third weekend, Disney and Marvel’s ” Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 ” made an estimated $32 million in North America to take second place. It’s now made $266.5 million domestically and $659.1 million globally.

Third place went to another Universal juggernaut, “The Super Mario Bros. Movie,” which is now in its seventh weekend and available to rent on VOD. Nevertheless, it earned an additional $9.8 million in North America, bringing its domestic total to $549.3 million.

“Book Club: The Next Chapter ” added $3 million in its second weekend to take fourth place, while “Evil Dead Rise” rounded out the top five in its fifth weekend with $2.4 million.

“Mario” and “Fast X” are just the latest success stories for Universal, following hits like “Cocaine Bear” and “M3GAN.” And later this summer, on July 21, they’ll release Christopher Nolan’s ” Oppenheimer.”

“Universal as a studio is just on a roll like no other by having this incredible slate of films from all different types of genres,” said Paul Dergarabedian, the senior media analyst for Comscore. “They’ve created a release strategy that’s really picture perfect so far.”

“Fast X” doesn’t have an entirely open runway though. Next weekend there will be sizable competition in Disney’s live-action “The Little Mermaid,” in addition to a slew of crowd-pleasers hoping to catch a Memorial Day weekend audience, including Julia Louis-Dreyfus in “You Hurt My Feelings” and the broad comedy “About My Father,” with Sebastian Maniscalco and Robert De Niro.

Estimated ticket sales for Friday through Sunday at U.S. and Canadian theaters, according to Comscore. Final domestic figures will be released Monday.

1. “Fast X,” $67.5 million.

2. “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3,” $32 million.

3. “The Super Mario Bros. Movie,” $9.8 million.

4. “Book Club: The Next Chapter,” $3 million.

5. “Evil Dead Rise,” $2.4 million.

6. “John Wick: Chapter 4,” $1.3 million.

7. “Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret,” $1.3 million.

8. “Hypnotic,” $825,000.

9. “MET Opera: Don Giovanni,” $701,025.

10. “BlackBerry,” $525,000.
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Talks to prevent the U.S. defaulting on its debt continued Sunday, even as U.S. President Joe Biden made his way home after attending the G-7 summit in Japan. VOA’s Veronica Balderas Iglesias has a recap of where Democrats and Republicans currently stand on raising the debt limit.
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Stepping up a feud with Washington over technology and security, China’s government Sunday told users of computer equipment deemed sensitive to stop buying products from the biggest U.S. memory chipmaker, Micron Technology Inc. 

Micron products have unspecified “serious network security risks” that pose hazards to China’s information infrastructure and affect national security, the Cyberspace Administration of China said on its website. Its six-sentence statement gave no details. 

“Operators of critical information infrastructure in China should stop purchasing products from Micron Co.,” the agency said. 

The United States, Europe and Japan are reducing Chinese access to advanced chipmaking and other technology they say might be used in weapons at a time when President Xi Jinping’s government has threatened to attack Taiwan and is increasingly assertive toward Japan and other neighbors. 

Chinese officials have warned of unspecified consequences but appear to be struggling to find ways to retaliate without hurting China’s smartphone producers and other industries and efforts to develop its own processor chip suppliers. 

An official review of Micron under China’s increasingly stringent information security laws was announced April 4, hours after Japan joined Washington in imposing restrictions on Chinese access to technology to make processor chips on security grounds. 

Foreign companies have been rattled by police raids on two consulting firms, Bain & Co. and Capvision, and a due diligence firm, Mintz Group. Chinese authorities have declined to explain the raids but said foreign companies are obliged to obey the law. 

Business groups and the U.S. government have appealed to authorities to explain newly expanded legal restrictions on information and how they will be enforced. 

Sunday’s announcement appeared to try to reassure foreign companies. 

“China firmly promotes high-level opening up to the outside world and, as long as it complies with Chinese laws and regulations, welcomes enterprises and various platform products and services from various countries to enter the Chinese market,” the cyberspace agency said. 

Xi accused Washington in March of trying to block China’s development. He called on the public to “dare to fight.” 

Despite that, Beijing has been slow to retaliate, possibly to avoid disrupting Chinese industries that assemble most of the world’s smartphones, tablet computers and other consumer electronics. They import more than $300 billion worth of foreign chips every year. 

Beijing is pouring billions of dollars into trying to accelerate chip development and reduce the need for foreign technology. Chinese foundries can supply low-end chips used in autos and home appliances but can’t support smartphones, artificial intelligence and other advanced applications. 

The conflict has prompted warnings the world might decouple or split into separate spheres with incompatible technology standards that mean computers, smartphones and other products from one region wouldn’t work in others. That would raise costs and might slow innovation. 

U.S.-Chinese relations are at their lowest level in decades due to disputes over security, Beijing’s treatment of Hong Kong and Muslim ethnic minorities, territorial disputes and China’s multibillion-dollar trade surpluses. 
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Wrapping up a three-day summit with allies of the Group of Seven leading democracies, U.S. President Joe Biden sought to reassure China that conflict with the West is avoidable, even as the G7 ramps up pressure to push back against Beijing’s rising military and economic security threats.

“I don’t think there’s anything inevitable about the notion that there’s going to be this conflict” between the West and Beijing, Biden said during a Sunday news conference in Hiroshima, Japan, at the conclusion of the summit.

Biden, however, underscored that the G7 and other regional partners are aligned to push back against Beijing’s aggression, including its potential invasion of Taiwan. “I think we’re more united than we’ve ever been in the Pacific,” he said.

“We all agree we’re going to maintain the One China policy,” Biden said, referring to the policy under which the United States recognizes Beijing as representing China, and acknowledges Beijing’s view that it has sovereignty over Taiwan without endorsing it. Under the policy, Washington considers Taiwan’s status as unsettled.

Neither China nor Taiwan “can independently declare what they’re going to do, period,” Biden said, referring to the Taiwan’s status quo. “There has to be a mutually agreed new outcome.”

While Western allies “don’t expect Taiwan to independently declare independence,” Biden warned China against invading the self-governing island that Beijing considers a breakaway province.

“There is clear understanding among most of our allies, that in fact, if China were to act unilaterally, there would be a response,” he warned. “There would be a response.”

Biden’s comments came as G7 countries amplified their denunciation of China’s rising military and economic security threats.

In the summit’s communique, the group criticized China for its use of “economic coercion,” militarization of the South China Sea and “interference activities” aimed at undermining the safety of diplomats, the integrity of democratic institutions and economic prosperity.

Beijing swiftly hit back, accusing the G7 of using “issues concerning China to smear and attack China and brazenly interfere in China’s internal affairs.”

“Taiwan is China’s Taiwan,” said a Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson in a statement. “Resolving the Taiwan question is a matter for the Chinese, a matter that must be resolved by the Chinese.”

United on Ukraine

Biden said the G7 would remain united in its support for Ukraine. “We will not waver,” he said. “Putin will not break our resolve as he thought he would,” Biden added, referring to Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Later, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said the decisions taken at the G7 summit in Hiroshima “aim to contain both Russia and China.”

On Friday, Biden made a significant endorsement of Kyiv’s effort to boost its air power to fight Russian aggression, telling G7 leaders Friday that he now supports joint allied training programs for Ukrainian pilots on F-16 fighter jets.

For months Biden had refused requests for the aircrafts from his Ukrainian counterpart, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, partly due to concerns that such offensive weaponry would escalate the war.

“I have a flat assurance from the – from Zelenskyy that they will not, they will not use it to go on and move into Russian geographic territory,” he said.

Returning to Washington immediately following the news conference to deal with negotiations on raising the U.S. debt ceiling to avoid the country from going into default, Biden said, “There’s been very little discussion” at the G7 about the crisis.

“They all know what’s going on about whether or not we’re going to default on our debt,” he said, adding that he “can’t guarantee” that Republicans in Congress “wouldn’t force a default by doing something outrageous.”

Without an agreement to increase the debt ceiling, the U.S. Treasury Department said it can only pay the U.S. government’s bills through June 1.

Most economists agree a U.S. default would be catastrophic for financial systems globally.
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In a sign of warming relations between America’s two closest allies in Asia, U.S. President Joe Biden met Sunday with Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol, in a trilateral meeting on the sidelines of the Group of Seven advanced democracies’ summit in Hiroshima, Japan.

Topping the meeting’s agenda was the growing nuclear and missile threat from North Korea and China’s rising assertiveness, two regional threats that have aligned the three countries more closely.

In a statement, the White House said the leaders discussed “how to take their trilateral cooperation to new heights,” including with new coordination in the face of North Korea’s nuclear and missile threats, on economic security, and on their respective Indo-Pacific strategies.

“A big focus for our three countries is improving our interoperability militarily and improving our readiness and looking for ways in which we can better prepare ourselves to meet our individual and our collective national security commitments to each other and to the region,” a senior administration official said in a briefing to reporters Saturday.

China challenge

The leaders would also discuss the “economic challenges that they all face from the PRC when it comes to coercion,” the official added, referring to the People’s Republic of China’s use of punitive trade measures for its political goals.

The three leaders are largely aligned in their views of the regional threat posed by Beijing, National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby said in an interview with VOA Friday.

“Japan has put forward a new national security strategy which really gives them a stronger voice and presence here in the Indo-Pacific in terms of regional security,” Kirby said. “And President Yoon helped author a new Indo-Pacific strategy that the Republic of Korea put out that dovetails nicely with our national security strategy.”

Yoon has sought closer ties with Tokyo and Washington, a departure from his predecessor, former President Moon Jae-in, who worked to strengthen relations with Pyongyang.

Treaty allies

Japan and South Korea are both U.S. treaty allies. After Tokyo’s defeat in World War II, the United States occupied and pledged to defend Japan in exchange for maintaining a large military presence in the country. In 1953, in the aftermath of the 1950-53 war on the Korean Peninsula, the two sides signed the U.S.-Korea Mutual Defense Treaty which became the basis of U.S. continued military presence on the Korean Peninsula.

However, Japan-South Korea ties have long been strained by historical animosity following Tokyo’s brutal occupation of Korea from 1910 until Japan’s defeat at the end of World War II. Despite some domestic opposition, Yoon and Kishida have continued their rapprochement by expanding bilateral security and economic cooperation. The pair met earlier this month, their second meeting in less than two months.

“Since the recent Kishida-Yun summit has linked the Japan-Korea leg, it is important for Biden to capitalize on this trilateral momentum,” said Ken Jimbo, former adviser to Japan’s Defense Ministry who now teaches at Keio University.

“Whenever three heads of state are together, they must seize the opportunity to reiterate the importance of trilateral cooperation,” Jimbo told VOA. “They must wave a green light for deeper cooperation to navigate each domestic stakeholder.”

South Korea, which is not a G7 member, was invited by Kishida to Hiroshima as an observer, along with the leaders of Australia, Brazil, Comoros, Cook Islands, Indonesia, India, and Vietnam.

The city, now rebuilt from the devastation caused by the atomic bomb dropped by American forces that ended World War II, provided a poignant backdrop for the trilateral meeting amid increasing saber-rattling by Pyongyang. This year alone North Korea has launched at least 13 missiles this year, including three intercontinental ballistic missiles.

Extended deterrence

During the South Korean leader’s state visit to the White House in April, Yoon and Biden signed the Washington Declaration, whereby Seoul agreed not to pursue its own nuclear weapons program, in return for a greater decision-making role in U.S. contingency planning in the event of a North Korean nuclear attack and a more muscular U.S. presence in the region.

Yoon called the Washington Declaration “an unprecedented expansion and strengthening” of the extended deterrence strategy — a term also known as the American nuclear umbrella.

The trilateral meeting in Hiroshima is an opportunity for the leaders to discuss whether elements of U.S. extended deterrence can plausibly be applied to both South Korea and Japan, Ken Jimbo said.

“In that context, I think there will be a lot of chance that we will develop some kind of coordination mechanism together rather than one by one,” he added.

In April, senior officials from the three countries agreed to hold regular missile defense and anti-submarine exercises together.
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Jennifer Seeley was glued to her phone, safe at home but terrified nonetheless.

There was an active shooter at the Texas mall where she works as an assistant store manager. And she was searching desperately for information, praying. Was the gunman dead? Were her coworkers dead? What was happening?

So with law enforcement in the Dallas area town of Allen releasing information slowly on that horrible May 6 afternoon, she turned to social media for answers, stumbling across videos showing the bodies of some of the eight who were slain. Desperately she texted her coworkers.

“That’s where all of my information came from was what I saw on Twitter. And, you know, nobody was really releasing any information on what actually happened,” she says now, nearly two weeks later.

The shooting at the Allen Premium Outlets this month has law information public information officers from around the country talking. Social media, they say, has accelerated everything. Now everyone can post images from their phone. That means if police don’t talk, reporters and the public will simply go online, as happened in Allen.

And that presents a major problem, says Katie Nelson, social media and public relations coordinator for the Mountain View Police Department in northern California. Nelson teaches about crisis management and social media best practices. And these days, she says, when it comes to responding, “The luxury of time does not exist.”

Police approaches have evolved

Police began to harness social media a decade ago, most famously after the Boston Marathon bombing in 2013. The four-day manhunt ended with police tweeting: “CAPTURED!!! The hunt is over. The search is done. The terror is over. And justice has won. Suspect in custody.”

It was groundbreaking at the time, says Yael Bar Tur, a police communication consultant and former director of social media for the New York City police department. Now, she says, that it is the basic level expected of law enforcement.

“It’s not enough just to be on social media, you have to be good at it,” she says. “At the end of the day, you know, we have to use this tool because if you don’t, it is going to be used against you.”

In Allen, the mall shooting happened around 3:30 p.m. Allen police sent their first tweet around 4:20 p.m., announcing simply that police were at the mall and that an active investigation was underway. Seeley continued to fear that her coworkers at the Crocs store were hiding and the gunman was still on the loose.

At nearly 7 p.m., police in Allen said an officer had “neutralized the threat.” That meant he was dead. But the often-used term can be confusing to the public, says Julie Parker, a former broadcast journalist and law enforcement public information officer who now advises government agencies on how to respond to critical incidents.

“Normal people who don’t work in law enforcement don’t know what the words neutralized means,” Parker says.

Adding to the situation, the initial news conferences were brief and infrequent. One lasted less than two minutes, and police took no questions.

Eventually she learned that her coworkers had survived, but a security guard she knew was among the dead. Twenty-year-old Christian LaCour had helped jump start a customer’s car just a few days earlier.

“Very anxiety-inducing,” Seeley said of the whole experience.

Making the best of social media

How to harness social media in the best ways — and quickly — was on everyone’s mind last week as public information officers gathered at a midyear conference of the International Association of Chiefs of Police.

“You had a little more time to get information out five or six years ago. The expectation wasn’t there that it would be immediate, and I think it is now,” says Sarah Boyd, who is on the executive board of the association’s group on public communication.

She says her colleagues often text each other to discuss how communications are handled after tragedies. The responsibility weighs on her; she is well aware that the messages police tweet in the midst of a mass shooting might be read by someone hiding from the shooter.

“All they’ve got is their phone, and that tweet is their lifeline,” says Boyd, a former newspaper reporter. She is now the public relations manager at the Clay County, Missouri, Sheriff’s Office in the Kansas City area.

This newest crop of public information officers, who like Boyd are much more likely to be former reporters themselves than in the past, also are demanding to have a seat at the table when officers are planning how to respond to mass casualty events and police shootings.

They note that the flow of information can go both ways, generating tips from the public, who might have cell phone or Ring doorbell video that could help investigators.

It can be challenging, though, with police nationally struggling to regain the public’s trust in the wake of George Floyd’s killing in 2020 and the protests that followed. Many factors — for example is the suspect still on the loose? — play a role in what can be released. And even if the suspect is killed, the investigation isn’t over; law enforcement still must determine whether the shooter acted alone, says Alex del Carmen, an associate dean of the school of criminology at Tarleton State University in Texas.

Missteps after the mass shooting at Uvalde, when law enforcement released shifting and at times contradictory information, show the importance of getting details right.

“People were just scratching their heads on the second or third day,” del Carmen says. He has sympathy, though, for the officers faced with communicating the unimaginable; entire careers can be defined by moments like these.

A model for quicker information

The bulk of the nation’s police forces are small, and there are vast differences in what each state allows them to release. In Missouri, for instance, 911 recordings are inaccessible to the public.

The public itself has no such restrictions, though.

After a man killed 10 people at a supermarket in Boulder, Colorado, in March 2021, an independent, part-time journalist began livestreaming on his YouTube channel before officers even arrived. The effect can be instantaneous — and, for authorities, quite dizzying.

“We’re putting out information quicker than I’ve ever seen before,” says Boulder police public information officer Dionne Waugh. Given the speed of social media, she says, there’s simply no choice.

Amid a crush of media, each victim’s family was assigned its own public information officer. All the while, what had happened was hitting Waugh personally; the victims included police Officer Eric Talley, a friend who died rushing into the store.

Though she described the experience as “life-changing” and “horrible,” she has led trainings in the years that have followed. She hopes that reliving it will help others.

Sadly, it wasn’t long after Nashville Police Department spokesperson Don Aaron asked her to speak that he faced his own mass shooting. In March, a shooter killed three children and three adults in March at a Christian school in his city before being gunned down by police.

The police tweets were fast. The very first one announced that the shooter was dead. Surveillance video was released before the 10 p.m. nightly newscast. Body camera footage came out the following morning, in line with the department’s policy of releasing such video quickly. The stream of information was fast, continual and generally accurate.

“As we have made decisions about releasing body cam in police-shooting situations, I have said to some of my colleagues across the country, especially when this first started, that I was flying a jet trying not to crash it,” says Aaron, a 32-year police veteran. “And so far, it hasn’t crashed.”
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Brittney Griner stood for the national anthem before her first regular-season WNBA game since being jailed in Russia.

Griner was outspoken for social justice in 2020 and didn’t take the court during the pregame anthem. But nearly a year behind bars in Russia changed her.

“I was literally in a cage and could not stand the way I wanted to,” she said. “Just being able to hear my national anthem and see my flag, I definitely want to stand.”

Griner had 18 points, six rebounds and four blocked shots Friday night for the Phoenix Mercury in a 94-71 loss to the Los Angeles Sparks.

“Not good enough, didn’t get the dub,” said Griner, who nevertheless couldn’t be down in defeat.

“I appreciate everything a little bit more, all of the small moments, like, ‘Oh, I’m so tired I don’t want to go to practice today,’ that has changed, honestly,” she said. “Tomorrow is not guaranteed, you don’t know what it’s going to look like. I feel a lot older somehow, too.”

The 32-year-old center’s immediate goal is to play an entire game by the All-Star break in mid-July. She played for 25 minutes Friday.

“I hope to be exactly where I want to be,” Griner said. “Just getting back to how I was before all this happened.”

Griner made an immediate impact against the Sparks. She fired a pass to Moriah Jefferson, who hit a 3-pointer for Phoenix’s first basket. Griner grabbed a couple of rebounds and scored twice to help the Mercury to an early lead.

“How good did she just look? Unbelievable,” WNBA commissioner Cathy Engelbert told reporters at halftime.

For the first time since last season, Phoenix coach Vanessa Nygaard opened her pregame comments without announcing how many days Griner had been jailed. Griner has been free since December when she was part of a high-profile prisoner swap.

“Until the day we got the news in the morning that she was on her way home, no one thought that it was going to happen,” Nygaard said. “We did our jobs probably with less joy than professional athletes do. It was heavy every day.”

Not anymore.

“Today is a day of joy,” Nygaard said. “An amazing, amazing thing has happened.”

Griner and the Mercury were greeted with a standing ovation when they came on court for pregame warmups, although the biggest cheers were reserved for the Sparks.

“Just taking it in but staying focused because at the end of the day I’m at work,” Griner said. “Can’t get caught up in the moment. Kind of feel it, but put it to the side and feel it a little bit later.”

Griner hugged U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris and first gentleman Doug Emhoff as they left the court after Harris was presented with a No. 49 Sparks jersey. Earlier, Harris posed for photos in the Mercury’s locker room.

“It was nice to be able to see her face-to-face and thank her for everything,” Griner said.

She patted her heart and applauded in return during a brief video welcoming her back to the WNBA.

“It was nice to be back on the court for a real game,” she said. “The love from the fans when we came out was amazing. I definitely feel it.”

Griner scored 10 points in 17 minutes in an exhibition loss to the Sparks last week. It was her first game action since she was arrested at a Moscow airport in February 2022 after Russian authorities said a search of her luggage revealed vape cartridges containing cannabis oil.

“We brought back this Black, gay woman from a Russian jail and America did that because they valued her and she’s a female athlete and they valued her,” Nygaard said.

“Just to be part of a group that values people at that level, it makes me very proud to be an American. Maybe there’s other people that that doesn’t make them proud, but for me, I see BG and I see hope and I see the future and I have young children and it makes me really hopeful about our country,” the coach said.

Fans arriving early at Crypto.com Arena wore T-shirts with Griner’s name and jersey number on them. The 6-foot-9 Griner stopped to photo-bomb a group of young girls posing courtside before the game.

Billie Jean King and wife Ilana Kloss, who are part-owners of the Sparks, were on hand for the opener, as was Magic Johnson, Pau Gasol, Byron Scott, Robert Horry, Los Angeles Lakers coach Darvin Ham and South Carolina women’s coach Dawn Staley.

Since her release, Griner has used her platform to advocate for other Americans being detained abroad. She was already an LGBTQ+ activist since publicly coming out in 2013.

“She stands for so many people, so many different kinds of people who can be undervalued in our society,” Nygaard said. “She stands with pride and confidence and has never once, has shied away from who she is.”

Griner announced in April that she is working with Bring Our Families Home, a campaign formed last year by the family members of American hostages and wrongful detainees held overseas. She said her team has been in contact with the family of Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, who is being detained in Russia on espionage charges.

“She’s an amazing person on and off the court,” Phoenix teammate Jefferson said. “I think her energy just inspires everybody every single day to show up and be the best version of themselves.”
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