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Intercontinental Exchange ICE has outperformed the market over the past 10 years by 2.15% on an annualized basis producing an average annual return of 13.93%. Currently, Intercontinental Exchange has a market capitalization of $90.96 billion. Buying $100 In ICE: If an investor had bought $100 of ICE stock 10 years ago, it would be worth $360.88 today based on a price of $158.41 for ICE at the time of writing. Intercontinental Exchange's Performance Over Last 10 Years Finally -- what's the point of all this? The key insight to take from this article is to note how much of a difference compounded returns can make in your cash growth over a period of time. This article was generated by Benzinga's automated content engine and reviewed by an editor. © 2024 Benzinga.com. Benzinga does not provide investment advice. All rights reserved.Mass. Gov. Maura Healey doesn’t think her summertime political flex on the Legislature was ‘pressure’

Rosen Law Firm Encourages Light & Wonder, Inc. Investors to Inquire About Securities Class Action Investigation - LNWLindsey Vonn takes another step in comeback at age 40, competes in a pair of downhills

MOREHEAD, Ky. (AP) — Isaiah Smith ran for a career-high 205 yards on 31 carries and scored a touchdown and San Diego beat Morehead State 37-14 in a season-ending contest for both teams on Saturday. Grant Sergent threw for 184 yards and two touchdowns for San Diego (8-3, 6-2 Pioneer Football League) which ended the season with a four-game win streak and winners of six of seven. The Toreros finished in sole possession of second place in the PFL behind Drake (7-1), which clinched the league outright with a 49-10 win over Stetson on Saturday. Drake beat San Diego 30-28 on a walk-off field goal on Sept. 28 in Des Moines, Iowa. Bryce Patterson threw for 133 yards and a touchdown and James Louis ran for a touchdown for the Eagles (7-5, 5-3). ___ Get poll alerts and updates on the AP Top 25 throughout the season. Sign up here . AP collegebasketball: https://apnews.com/hub/ap-top-25-college-basketball-poll and https://apnews.com/hub/college-basketball

Syrian rebels topple Assad, transforming nation and Middle EastFRISCO, Texas (AP) — Dallas Cowboys linebacker DeMarvion Overshown could miss the 2025 season recovering from the right knee injury sustained in a loss to Cincinnati, coach Mike McCarthy said Tuesday. McCarthy said Overshown has a “long road of rehab in front of him.” The second-year player tore multiple ligaments when a Bengals lineman crashed into his leg in the Cowboys' 27-20 loss Monday night. Overshown missed all of his rookie year in 2023 after tearing the ACL in his left knee in a preseason game. The latest injury came in his first game since a spectacular 23-yard interception return for a touchdown in a 27-20 victory over the New York Giants on Thanksgiving. “DeMarvion is getting ready to have a big surgery in front of him,” McCarthy said of the procedure planned this week. “His physical and football talent speaks for itself. He’s such a bright light. He’s got a great, infectious personality — a tough young man. He is definitely going to be missed.” The former Texas standout, drafted in the third round last year, was second on the team to star pass rusher Micah Parsons with five sacks when he went down. The December timing of Overshown's injury means rehab is likely to extend past training camp and into the regular season next year, after he turns 25. Parsons was emotional when asked about Overshown after the Cincinnati game. “I cried,” he said. “It’s like my little bro, bro. He doesn’t deserve that either. Just to understand what he’s going to go through and to be there for him physically, mentally. It’s just so challenging because of the year he was having. I really just don’t think that’s fair either.” The loss of Overshown comes with defensive end DeMarcus Lawrence close to return from a foot injury that has sidelined him since Week 4. But the Cowboys (5-8) are all but out of the playoffs as they prepare to visit Carolina (3-10) on Sunday. AP NFL: https://apnews.com/hub/nfl

A new Gold Rush is taking shape on a quiet stretch of Kansas prairie. There, a clutch of startups backed by the likes of Bill Gates are searching below the surface for naturally occurring hydrogen, a fuel that can generate power without adding to climate change. Finding it in vast quantities would revolutionize the energy transition. But the hunt is clean energy wildcatting, with a real possibility of failure — and the added risk of diverting limited climate venture capital at a time when the world needs proven emissions-cutting technologies. Kansas sits atop a geological quirk: The Midcontinent Rift is a subterranean scar a billion years old created when North America started to split down the middle and then stopped. Iron-rich rocks within the rift can produce hydrogen when exposed to water, pressure and heat. And records left over from several old oil exploration wells in the area decades ago show the gas is — or at least was — present. Other sites around the world also offer tantalizing hints of housing the lightest element in the universe, and the search is starting to attract money. One company, Koloma, has raised more than $300 million, including from Bill Gates’ Breakthrough Energy Ventures. Mining giant Fortescue Ltd. recently spent $22 million to buy a 40% stake in Australia-based HyTerra, one of the startups looking in Kansas. All told, approximately 50 geologic hydrogen companies are in operation, including explorers, equipment makers, and oil and gas conglomerates funding research, according to BNEF. Naturally occurring hydrogen holds the potential for what Wood Mackenzie analyst Richard Hood calls a “Spindletop moment,” referring to the 1901 Texas oil gusher that helped create the modern world. If it exists in commercial quantities, pumping hydrogen from the ground would be cheaper than stripping it from water using electricity and cleaner than making it from natural gas, the most common method. “No question, there’s risk,” said Bruce Nurse, co-founder of PureWave Hydrogen, which has leased sites in three Kansas counties for exploration. “But it’s an energy source we need to go after here in the U.S., because manufactured hydrogen is not going to cut it.” Recently, scientists have begun earnestly attempting to answer how much hydrogen is under the Earth’s surface. Geoffrey Ellis is at the forefront of that work. A research geologist for the United States Geological Survey (USGS), Ellis spent two decades researching petroleum geochemistry. About five years ago, Ellis pivoted to hydrogen when he heard about Mali. Mali is the great origin story of the quest for geologic hydrogen, which industry refers to as “white” and sometimes “gold.” In the late 1980s, residents of a village drilling for water in the West African country stumbled upon a pocket of gas. Not knowing what it was, they plugged it back up. Decades later, workers heard of this discovery and drilled a new well to uncover what they had hoped was natural gas, only to find nearly pure hydrogen. Ellis’s group has been modeling the subsurface globally, drawing on oil and gas industry tools and methods. His estimate is wide-ranging: anywhere from billions of tons on the conservative end to trillions of tons. Tapping even a fraction of the estimated hydrogen would meet hundreds of years of demand, Ellis said. He ascribes the several orders of magnitude of uncertainty to the nature of the model he and his team built, based on what is known about hydrogen and better-understood resources like petroleum. The question for him — and investors and companies — isn’t whether it exists, but how much of it is accessible and accumulated in large, pure quantities. The only way to know for sure is to start drilling. “You have to operate in uncertainty,” said Koloma’s Chief Business Officer Paul Harraka. To maximize their chances of success, prospectors are leaning on paper records in dusty archives and oil and gas documents that have mentioned accidental hydrogen discoveries. But they’re also using tech like sophisticated machine learning to identify what are known as “fairy circles” in satellite images. These circular depressions on the Earth’s surface sometimes emit hydrogen and could point to subsurface reservoirs. Viacheslav Zgonnik is the co-founder and former chief executive officer of Denver-based Natural Hydrogen Energy, which went prospecting in 2023 near Geneva, Nebraska. Drilling more than 11,000 feet into the ground, they found hydrogen, though Zgonnik declined to say how much. But he left the company this year to create a startup to provide software to companies looking for hydrogen deposits. “When there is a gold rush, you sell picks and shovels,” Zgonnik said. Most of the exploration happening today is in the U.S. and Australia, not just because there’s evidence hydrogen could exist underground but because of the two countries’ supportive regulatory environments. In the U.S., landowners have the rights to exploration permits rather than the state, a stark contrast to other countries where government-controlled licenses can result in long delays. As a result of all these factors, many wildcatters are concentrated in Kansas and other states along the Midcontinent Rift. “It's expensive, and you can't just go digging random holes in the ground,” said Mark Gudiksen, a managing partner at venture firm Piva Capital, which invested in Koloma. “So you have to be thoughtful about using all of the tricks of the trade.” Even if prospectors hit hydrogen, its commercial prospects are highly uncertain. The reason green hydrogen produced by renewable energy hasn’t taken off yet is because of its high cost. The Department of Energy has set a goal for hydrogen producers and prospectors to get costs down to $1 per kilogram. That would unlock a wave of demand critical to growing the hydrogen industry, which is currently lacking. The world currently uses about 94 million metric tons of hydrogen per year, according to BloombergNEF. The research firm forecasts that for the global economy to reach net-zero emissions by mid-century, hydrogen use will rise slowly, hitting 118 million metric tons in 2030, before entering a period of rapid growth. Worldwide use could reach 234 million metric tons in 2040 and 390 million metric tons in 2050, according to BNEF's New Energy Outlook 2024. “The market is really, really, really big if the unit economics work,” said Mark Daly, head of technology and innovation at BloombergNEF. But that’s a big “if.” One critical cost factor: purity. The well in Mali is nearly 100% pure hydrogen. But hydrogen is often co-located with other gasses, including helium. Australian company Gold Hydrogen, for example, said it found hydrogen as well as high levels of helium in initial drill tests conducted in 2023 on South Australia’s Yorke Peninsula and is now working to drill its first new wells. While helium is a valuable product, separating the two gasses adds expense. One of the biggest complications to bringing down costs is transport, which involves compressing the gas into a liquid and trucking it or moving it through underground pipelines. Both are expensive and in the case of pipelines, closer to fantasy than reality. At high pressure, hydrogen can react with steel pipes, causing them to become brittle and crack. There’s also the potential for hydrogen leakage, an issue that scientists and startups haven’t yet properly confronted. Hydrogen “is a very promiscuous gas. It diffuses all over the place,” said Douglas Wicks, a program director at the Energy Department’s Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA‐E) who’s in charge of two geologic hydrogen research programs. Transporting hydrogen makes sense economically within a 100-kilometer radius, said Daly. He pointed out that raising enough money to build a pipeline requires evidence that the resource it’s transporting will exist for 20 to 40 years. Many startups exploring in Kansas and Nebraska could overcome transportation issues by selling it locally. The states are two top agricultural producers, and companies see farmers as their biggest potential customers. Hydrogen discovered in the region could be converted to ammonia, which is widely used to make fertilizer. “There’s absolutely a chance we may lose all our money.” The myriad unknowns are not stopping wildcatters. They’re also not stopping venture capitalists and large corporate investors alike from placing big bets. One of the industry’s biggest boosters is also one of the most influential climate tech investors in Breakthrough Energy Ventures. “The discovery of geologic hydrogen could be one of the single most important events in our lifetimes, and perhaps the lifetimes of our children,” said the firm’s technical lead Eric Toone in a speech at the Breakthrough Energy Summit in London in June. “It offers the possibility of limitless zero-carbon reactive chemical energy.” That’s part of the reason the firm participated in Koloma’s $245 million Series B round, making it one of the biggest startups on the hydrogen frontier. Still, investors acknowledge that the territory still comes with many unanswered questions, enough to give many others pause. If Koloma succeeds, “that changes the cost structure of hydrogen,” said Gudiksen. But he also sounded a cautionary note: “There's absolutely a chance we may lose all our money.”

Cam Carter put LSU ahead for good with a jumper 1:08 into the third overtime and the Tigers came away with a wild 109-102 win over UCF on Sunday in the third-place game of the Greenbrier Tip-Off in White Sulphur Springs, W.Va. Carter's make sparked a 5-0 spurt for LSU (5-1), which mounted a ferocious second-half rally that began after Darius Johnson drilled a 3-pointer to put the Knights up 52-34 with 12:57 to play in regulation. Javascript is required for you to be able to read premium content. Please enable it in your browser settings.Alex Gibney was sitting in his New York office in early 2023 when a message from Israel caught his attention. The Oscar-winning filmmaker, regarded as one of the most prolific documentary creators in the United States, was immersed in multiple projects, including a series on tennis legend Boris Becker, a music documentary on Paul Simon and secretive endeavors on Elon Musk and Salman Rushdie. Despite his packed schedule, the mysterious message piqued his interest—it offered access to video recordings from the police interrogations of Benjamin Netanyahu. A year and a half later, The Bibi Files, a documentary directed by Alexis Bloom and produced by Gibney, premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival. “I got a leak—a message on Signal saying, ‘We have this interesting material. Would you be interested?’ Of course, I get these kinds of messages sometimes, and some turn out to be pranks. But I followed up, and this time it was real,” Gibney tells Ynet in an exclusive interview. "As a filmmaker, I always ask myself: Why should this be a movie? In this case, the leaked material was fascinating in itself and also told a compelling story—a story of corruption. I’m a student of corruption, and this was potent material." Gibney, 71, known for tackling corruption in films exposing the schemes of power-hungry politicians and businessmen, first delved into Netanyahu's actions in his 2016 film Zero Days. There, he linked Netanyahu to the spread of the Stuxnet malware, originally a joint U.S.-Israel cyber effort to thwart Iran’s nuclear program. In The Bibi Files, Gibney and Bloom take a closer look at Netanyahu, his family and his inner circle, offering an exclusive glimpse into leaked interrogation footage. The documentary alleges that Netanyahu’s and his wife Sara’s greed entangled them with the law, motivated his judicial overhaul initiative and influenced his decision-making in the war with Hamas. "I received it early in 2023, well before October 7. What stood out to me was how Netanyahu occupies such a central position in a geopolitical flashpoint—one that is now threatening to engulf the world," he says. 7 View gallery Alex Gibney ( Photo: GettyImages ) Bloom, who previously collaborated with Gibney on Divide and Conquer: The Story of Roger Ailes and We Steal Secrets: The Story of WikiLeaks, was tapped to direct the project. Initially, she questioned whether the story, which is mostly well-known among Israeli audiences, would interest an international audience. "He’s Israel’s longest-serving prime minister, so it’s a stretch to say he’s marginal. We never thought of him that way. Unfortunately for Israel, they’ve made themselves such a central story, especially with the proposed Supreme Court overhaul. The unprecedented demonstrations drew a lot of interest—people wanted to know why,” she explains. Unfiltered and unafraid Set for release on December 11 on the alternative streaming platform Jolt, which Gibney co-founded, the documentary faced hurdles securing distribution through major U.S. content companies. Legal restrictions in Israel, barring the broadcast of interrogation footage without the subject’s consent, prevent the film’s release there—ironically, the same reason the footage found its way to Gibney. "The quality of vigorous journalism in Israel is very high, and there's a lot of open debate there—debate that people might hesitate to confront elsewhere. Some may feel uncomfortable addressing certain topics or question whether they should even be discussed," he says. "There was a legal issue with the footage. It couldn’t be officially distributed in Israel. That created an opportunity for it to be part of a film produced outside of Israel, which could potentially reach back into the country indirectly—whether through information circulating or leaks. "The source understood that I might be in a better position legally to handle the material in ways they couldn’t. There are still legal protections in the United States, at least for now, that allow for this kind of work. In that sense, it made it possible to bring this story to light." What can the film contribute to understanding Netanyahu’s character for the Israeli audience? “He grew up, in part, in Philadelphia, so he has a kind of American origin story. But I think what really drew me in was the idea of an important story about corruption—personal corruption and, ultimately, political corruption. People in Israel already know this, but they don’t know it as much abroad. Netanyahu’s reputation as a great statesman outside Israel gave him a lot of currency inside Israel, especially through his relationship with the United States. That connection allowed him to maintain power and influence. So how he’s perceived internationally turns out to be incredibly important. 7 View gallery As a filmmaker, what struck me was how different it is to see these things in the flesh. You get an up-close view of Netanyahu, Sara and [Arnon] Milchan. You can feel the sweat of corruption in these videotapes in a way that just doesn’t come through in transcripts. That’s what made me feel this story was both important and worth making into a film.” For Israeli audiences, the most striking revelations lie in the unfiltered portrayal of Netanyahu, his wife Sara and their son Yair during police interrogations. Unlike controlled public appearances or media interviews, the Netanyahus have no command over the conversation in these settings. The film’s most dramatic moments showcase Sara and Yair’s anger and arrogance as they lash out at investigators. "They’re not scared. They’re not intimidated. They walk into the room with this sense of entitlement, like, ‘How dare you bring me in here.’ What’s worse is there’s a kind of contempt for the state and the rule of law in what they have to say. It’s like they’re saying, ‘We’re the only thing that matters, and you are bugs.’ When you start calling the police ‘the Stasi’ or ‘the Gestapo’ and they clump everyone together—the public, the media, the police—'everyone is involved in this conspiracy,’ doesn't that give you pause that It might honestly be you," says Gibney. Unlike Sara and Yair Netanyahu and other filmed subjects of the investigation—such as Arnon Milchan, media mogul Shaul Elovitch, and state witness Nir Hefetz, who were summoned to police stations—Netanyahu's questioning takes place in his office. He maintains his composure most of the time, frequently resorting to his characteristic "I don't remember" responses and occasionally giving his interrogators lessons in leadership. However, there are moments when he is seen slamming his hands on the table and shouting in reaction to evidence presented to him regarding the cigars and champagne case, as well as his relationship with Elovitch. “Alex and I had this discussion back and forth,” Bloom says. “How aware is he of the cameras? It's a consumer camera that's set up in his office, pointed at him, so he doesn't forget it's there. Sara is a much more unfiltered presence in the film and people criticize her with valid reason, but there is something more honest about her. She has a feeling and she expresses it, and he is kind of the master of masks. But every so often it slips. If you're sitting there for four hours, it'll slip at some point. It's not as if he can get away with it like when a journalist on the runway asks him a few questions. There's a sort of psychological quality to the material.” 7 View gallery Benjamin Netanyahu ( Photo: Courtesy of TIFF ) In addition to the filmed interrogations offering an unfiltered glimpse into the Netanyahu family's character traits, testimony from other subjects sheds light on their fondness for gifts and ties to cronyism. Among the allegations are claims that Sara Netanyahu has a penchant for expensive jewelry at others’ expense and a particular taste for fine champagne. Alongside the jaw-dropping footage from the interrogation rooms, the documentary features interviews with journalist Raviv Drucker (also involved as a producer), former prime minister Ehud Olmert, former household manager Meni Naftali and Netanyahu's childhood friend, Uzi Beller. These accounts detail behind-the-scenes events and paint a picture of the Netanyahu family's indulgent lifestyle and interpersonal dynamics, emphasizing Sara Netanyahu's influence over both her husband and the state. As Sheldon Adelson, the late billionaire and staunch Netanyahu supporter, remarked during an investigation: "It’s better if she keeps her nose out of it." “When talking to people, they’d share how terrible things were,” Bloom says. “Some stories couldn’t even make it into the film—like Bibi calling them in the middle of the night, putting them on speakerphone with Sara listening. It’s absurd but it’s also serious.” ‘Mr. Security’ who failed to protect Gibney’s cinematic approach to social and political issues has shone through in films like Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room (2005), Taxi to the Dark Side (2007)—which won him an Oscar, The Armstrong Lie (2014) and Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief (2015), which contributed to the decline of the Church of Scientology. The Bibi Files joins this body of work, framing Netanyahu as part of a global group of authoritarian leaders—including Vladimir Putin, Viktor Orbán, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Donald Trump (as well as former leaders like Jair Bolsonaro and Rodrigo Duterte)—who use their political power to fulfill personal greed and amass unchecked authority, all while undermining the rule of law and institutional frameworks. Gibney argues that Netanyahu’s strategies toward Israel’s judiciary, media and police mirror tactics from the authoritarian playbook. These methods are again on display as Netanyahu confronts Shin Bet investigators probing leaks from his office and navigates restrictions imposed by Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara on his political powers. 7 View gallery Donald Trump ( Photo: AP ) “I think that Americans recognize this behavior as very Trumpian. Trump’s putting Matt Gaetz in charge of the Department of Justice now because he felt that he was badly handled. So now the Department of Justice will become just sort of a grudge fulfillment apparatus. Just an instrument of brute power, rather than something that's attentive to the rule of law,” says Gibney, who is currently rewriting the third act of his film on Elon Musk due to Musk's recent alignment with Trump's inner circle as a financial and political supporter. “It starts with a kind of personal corruption and contempt for the rule of law and ultimately develops into kind of messianic behavior, where you believe that because you are good and because you care so much about the nation that you're increasingly entitled to more and more and more for yourself. But really, it springs from your own personal greed and venality. What you see on display is human behavior, but the worst side of human behavior and how it can overcome some people. Get the Ynetnews app on your smartphone: Google Play : https://bit.ly/4eJ37pE | Apple App Store : https://bit.ly/3ZL7iNv "Some of these other characters have a sort of an actor's talent. You can see that in the interrogation videos with Netanyahu, he's a good actor. So is Trump. And some of these other players, like [Hamas leader Yahya] Sinwar. They know how to motivate the crowd. That turns out to be their secret superpower, and that allows them then to mask their personal corruption and venality. "Sadly, I’d say that Netanyahu, with the rising body count, is reaching an extraordinary level in terms of the number of people that he’s responsible for killing. It’s a staggering thought.” Another hallmark of the strongman strategy, according to Gibney, is the use of political crises and wars to maintain power by portraying themselves as "strong leaders" defending the nation from external and internal enemies. In Citizen K, Gibney highlighted how Putin leveraged the Chechen war to cement his Kremlin ascendancy. In The Bibi Files, the filmmakers allege that the October 7 Hamas attack provided Netanyahu with an opportunity to channel public anger and rally support, bolstering his fragile leadership even as his "Mr. Security" image was shattered on that fateful day. “One parallel with Putin is this willingness to utilize a failure. Look at the hostage situation. Getting the hostages back requires a certain amount of statesmanship, compromise and thinking about a longer game rather than your own political survival,“ Gibney says and mentions the October 2002 Moscow theater terrorist attack, where 132 hostages and 40 Chechen terrorists were killed due to lethal gas pumped into the building. 7 View gallery Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Vladimir Putin ( Photo: Alexander Zemlianichenko / POOL / AFP ) “If you look at some of what Putin did in terms of literally allowing hostages to be sacrificed, murdered in effect by their own security forces so that he could make a grand statement about how he was protecting the Russian nation. He had no regard at all for the victims. We know the FSB may have manufactured bombings in and around Moscow, so he could blame it on Cheches, so this is part of the old dictator's playbook,” Gibney explains. “What happened on October 7 was horrific. But what is ongoing now in Gaza, let's be honest, is not what you would call a war. Where is the Hamas air force? Is there an air force that goes out to meet the Israeli Air Force every day? No, there isn't. One of the interview subjects in the film says, ‘What is the goal of this war?' Is it to keep bombing and killing until you get the last terrorist in a tunnel many years from now? Many more terrorists are going to be made and encouraged because of the carnage that Netanyahu is causing.” It may not be an equal war, but Israel still faces military and political threats in the Middle East. Bloom: “It's a genuine war and the chaos that it causes is keeping him in power. He's a politician who's made his career on the statement, ‘I will protect you, I am the king of security,’ so I think that he's also made his career on the implicit invocation of fear and danger. He campaigns that terror is just around the corner and he’s the only person who can save you. “With October 7, that became true. Terror was there and he didn't save them spectacularly. You can think about the accuracy of his campaign statements, he's made his career on that he is ‘Mr. Security’ and Israel should always be afraid. There's no other way for it to be in his Matrix. He got that from his father, and he's run Israel along those lines.” Gibney: “Sinwar did to Netanyahu what Osama Bin Laden did to the Bush administration. 9/11 was a terrorist act intended to provoke an overreaction which now he is gleefully providing because it's good for his own political survival, but nothing else. “Sinwar played Netanyahu like a fiddle. He knew exactly what Netanyahu was going to do and that was going to derail the Saudi-Israeli agreement. It was going to make Israel a pariah state. In that sense, the future of Israel, I would argue, should be looked through the lens of the idea that actually Netanyahu is executing Sinwar's plan.” Netanyahu’s last red line Toward its conclusion, The Bibi Files portrays Netanyahu’s political alliance with far-right figures Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich as his final breach, sacrificing Israeli democracy and the rule of law for political survival. This alliance, the filmmakers argue, has plunged the state into corruption while giving these politicians a global stage to be exposed as agents of chaos. “They seem to be important figures in the storytelling because they're keeping Netanyahu in power. Netanyahu likes to present it as the new normal, but it's not. It's an extraordinary alliance and terrifying,” Bloom says. 7 View gallery Alexis Bloom ( Photo: Shane Anthony Sinclair/Getty Images for BFI ) “It signals the bottom falling out. What lengths will he go to in order to stay in power? Some may present them as his puppet masters, and in a sense, they are right because they know how much he needs them. But he's a willing participant in all of this. It's not like they've kidnapped him. He identified them as coalition partners, went after them and on a daily basis has to keep them happy." Gibney references a photograph included in the film, showing Netanyahu alongside Smotrich with an expression of disdain and embarrassment on his face. "That moment is really powerful because it's full of such ambiguity in his expression. The actor wasn't playing the part. ‘Oh my God, I've had to play ball with this outrageous terrorist in order to save myself from being prosecuted for champagne and cigars.’ It's really a chilling moment because you can see the weakness in Netanyahu in addition to his so-called strength. He masquerades as a strongman. Another great victory of the film is that it shows the weakness of the bully—the person who's bullied by his own wife, who's bullied by Smotrich and Ben-Gvir. He's a weak man, and what weak men sometimes do is punish others when they have the opportunity.” Following screenings at the Toronto, Woodstock and Doc NYC film festivals, The Bibi Files is set for wider distribution in the United States and internationally, with an Oscar campaign in the works. However, the film will not be released in Israel due to legal restrictions on broadcasting interrogation footage without the subject’s consent. Despite these barriers, the filmmakers hope the documentary will eventually reach Israeli audiences. Netanyahu and his allies reportedly sought to cancel its Toronto premiere but failed. Gibney and Bloom report no further resistance or personal threats but express concern for their co-producer, investigative journalist Raviv Drucker, who could face repercussions. 7 View gallery Netanyahu and Itamar Ben-Gvir ( Photo: GPO ) “Raviv Drucker has gotten some blowback," Bloom says. "It can't be pleasant for him, and in this current climate, that is worse than ever before, where people are really fired, and their livelihoods are easily affected. To his credit, he carries on doing what he's doing. I don't know if I'd be that brave if I were living there and trying to support kids and a family.” The reality depicted in The Bibi Files, both before and after October 7, is deeply painful and infuriating. Yet the filmmakers are careful to distinguish between Netanyahu, his political allies and the broader Israeli public. The inclusion of mass protests against judicial overhaul and for the release of hostages, alongside interviews with figures like Drucker, former prime minister Ehud Olmert and ex-security officials Ami Ayalon and Nimrod Novik, presents Israeli society as a hostage to its leadership’s failures. “Israel is divided. I don't feel like we fabricated anything. It is the other way around—you actually show the reality that the world doesn't see,” Bloom says. “Of course, it's intentional to show that Israelis are not a monolith, that there's a plurality of views and a plurality of feelings. When people come out with statements saying, ‘Israelis are X,’ you want to say, ‘Well, which Israelis?’ It's about as useful as saying, ‘Well, Americans are Y,’ and you're like, ‘Well, which Americans?’ because there's a big divide in America.” Gibney adds: “The concern is that Netanyahu, step by step, is destroying Israel as a liberal democracy. The voices that are highlighted in the film are voices who are saying, ‘We're not going to let him do that.’ I think showing that conflict was very important.” Are you concerned about Israel's future? Bloom: “When you're there, you can't help but feel the hollowing out of Israel and it's sometimes not obvious. At first, the educational system is completely corrupted at the moment. Israel used to have a great public school educational system. It seems terribly underfunded now. More and more money goes to the Orthodox who don't teach things like science and math. They teach the Talmud and that's that. It seems like there are so many possible consequences in this direction. People are being appointed who have no qualifications because he demands loyalty and it's become like a tournament of hunchbacks in power. People who take pride in not reading books. The totally banal emptiness of the people who he's putting in power and I find that terrifying.” Can the situation improve without Netanyahu in power? Bloom: “Israel is in a very difficult situation. Its population is very divided and there are a lot of competing interests. If you look at Brothers and Sisters in Arms versus the Orthodox, I don't know how they go forward to common ground. You do know that they deserve better than a prime minister who is steeped in his own personal travails and that he has a monkey on his back at all times. It is obvious that he's not a leader who has the best interests of the nation at the forefront of his mind. There are alternatives and it's time for an alternative.” >WASHINGTON (AP) — President-elect Donald Trump is promising expedited federal permits for energy projects and other construction worth more than $1 billion. But like other Trump plans, the idea is likely to run into regulatory and legislative hurdles, including a landmark law that requires federal agencies to consider the environmental impact before deciding on major projects. In a post on his Truth Social site Tuesday, Trump said anyone making a $1 billion investment in the United States “will receive fully expedited approvals and permits, including, but in no way limited to, all Environmental approvals.” Javascript is required for you to be able to read premium content. Please enable it in your browser settings. Get updates and player profiles ahead of Friday's high school games, plus a recap Saturday with stories, photos, video Frequency: Seasonal Twice a week

Insurgents reach gates of Syria’s capital, threatening to upend decades of Assad rule BEIRUT (AP) — A Syrian opposition war monitor and a pro-government media outlet say government forces have withdrawn from much of the central city of Homs. The pro-government Sham FM reported that government forces took positions outside Syria’s third-largest city, without elaborating. Rami Abdurrahman who heads the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said Syrian troops and members of different security agencies have withdrawn from the city, adding that rebels have entered parts of it. Losing Homs is a potentially crippling blow for Syria’s embattled leader, Bashar Assad. An archbishop's knock formally restores Notre Dame to life as winds howl and heads of state look on PARIS (AP) — France’s iconic Notre Dame Cathedral has formally reopened its doors for the first time since a devastating fire nearly destroyed the 861-year-old landmark in 2019. The five-year restoration is widely seen as a boost for French President Emmanuel Macron, who championed the ambitious timeline, and brings a welcome respite from his domestic political woes. World leaders, dignitaries, and worshippers gathered on Saturday evening for the celebrations under the cathedral's soaring arches. The celebration was attended by 1,500 dignitaries, including President-elect Donald Trump, Britain’s Prince William, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. For Catholics, Notre Dame’s rector said the cathedral “carries the enveloping presence of the Virgin Mary, a maternal and embracing presence.′′ Trump is welcomed by Macron to Paris with presidential pomp and joined by Zelenskyy for their talks PARIS (AP) — French President Emmanuel Macron has welcomed Donald Trump to Paris with a full dose of presidential pomp. And they held a hastily arranged meeting with Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskyy on a day that's mixing pageantry with attention to pressing global problems. The president-elect's visit to France is part of a global a celebration of the reopening of Notre Dame Cathedral five years after a devastating fire. Macron and other European leaders are trying to win Trump’s favor and persuade him to maintain support for Ukraine in its defense against Russia’s invasion. Trump isn't back in office but he's already pushing his agenda and negotiating with world leaders NEW YORK (AP) — Donald Trump is making threats, traveling abroad, and negotiating with world leaders. He has more than a month-and-a-half to go before he’s sworn in for a second term. But the president-elect is already moving aggressively to not only fill his Cabinet and outline policy goals, but also to try to achieve his priorities. In recent days, Trump has threatened to impose a 25% tariff on goods from Canada and Mexico, two of the country’s largest trading partners. That led to emergency calls and a visit. And he's warned of “ALL HELL TO PAY” if Hamas doesn't release the hostages still being held captive in Gaza. South Korea's president avoids an impeachment attempt over short-lived martial law SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — South Korea’s embattled President Yoon Suk Yeol has avoided an opposition-led attempt to impeach him over his short-lived imposition of martial law. Most of Yoon's ruling party lawmakers boycotted a parliamentary vote Saturday to deny a two-thirds majority needed to suspend his presidential powers. The scrapping of the motion is expected to intensify protests calling for Yoon’s ouster and deepen political chaos in South Korea. A survey suggests a majority of South Koreans support the president’s impeachment. Yoon’s martial law declaration drew criticism from his own ruling conservative People Power Party. But the party also apparently fears losing the presidency to liberals. Days after gunman killed UnitedHealthcare's CEO, police push to ID him and FBI offers reward NEW YORK (AP) — Nearly four days after the shooting of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, police still do not know the gunman’s name or whereabouts or have a motive for the killing. But they have made some progress in their investigation into Wednesday's killing of the leader of the largest U.S. health insurer, including that the gunman likely left New York City on a bus soon after fleeing the scene. The also found that the gunman left something behind: a backpack that was discovered in Central Park. Police are working with the FBI, which on Friday night announced a $50,000 reward for information leading to an arrest and conviction. UnitedHealthcare CEO's shooting opens a door for many to vent frustrations over insurance The fatal shooting of UnitedHealthcare's CEO has opened the door for many people to vent their frustrations and anger over the insurance industry. The feelings of exasperation, anger, resentment, and helplessness toward insurers aren’t new. But the shooting and the headlines around it have unleashed a new wave of patients sharing such sentiments and personal stories of interactions with insurance companies. Conversations at dinner tables, office water coolers, social gatherings and on social media have pivoted to the topic. Many say they hope the new amplified voices can bring about change for companies often accused of valuing profits over people. 2 Pearl Harbor survivors, ages 104 and 102, return to Hawaii to honor those killed in 1941 attack PEARL HARBOR, Hawaii (AP) — The bombing of Pearl Harbor 83 years ago launched the United States into World War II. Two survivors have returned to the Hawaii military base for a remembrance ceremony on the attack's anniversary. Both are over 100 years old. They joined active-duty troops, veterans and members of the public for an observance hosted by the Navy and the National Park Service. A third survivor was planning to join them but had to cancel due to health issues. The bombing killed more than 2,300 U.S. servicemen. An explosion destroys an apartment block in a Dutch city, killing at least 3 and injuring others THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) — An explosion and fire has rocked a neighborhood in the Dutch city of The Hague, killing three people and injuring other people and destroying several apartments. The cause of the disaster is unclear. Emergency authorities said four people were rescued from the rubble and taken to the hospital. The mayor said rescuers were no longer looking for survivors but for eventual bodies, but could not specify how many people might still be unaccounted for. Residents of the northeastern neighborhood of Mariahoeve in The Hague heard a huge bang and screams before dawn. Dutch authorities have deployed a specialized urban search and rescue team to find victims. How 'Mufasa' rose with Aaron Pierre and Blue Ivy's voices along with new Lin-Manuel Miranda music SAN DIEGO (AP) — When Aaron Pierre was cast as Mufasa, the weight of following in the late James Earl Jones’ legendary footsteps was enough to rattle any actor. But instead of letting the pressure roar too loudly, he harnessed his nerves to breathe fresh life into his young lion character. Pierre found parallels between himself and his character while filming his leading role in “Mufasa: The Lion King,” which opens in theaters Dec. 20. He took the reigns as the new voice of Mufasa after Jones played the iconic King Mufasa in both the 1994 and 2019 versions of Disney’s “The Lion King.” The prequel offers a fresh exploration into Mufasa’s origin story.Smith's career-high 205 yards rushing carries San Diego past Morehead State 37-14