The annual New York City marathon is over for another year, but Occupy Wall Street will continue the Big Apple's marathon fest with one of their own.
Protesters have planned an 11 mile march from upper Manhattan neighborhood Washington Heights all the way to Occupy's homebase Zuccotti Park, according to New York One news.
The march, intended to be lead by community leaders, elected officials and grassroots organizers, will look to connect all of Manhattan's communities to the demonstrations.
Cult film director Quentin Tarantino said on Wednesday he has finished the script for what will be his "last" movie.
The US director of hit films including "Kill Bill", "Inglourious Basterds" and "Pulp Fiction" said he expected shooting to start on his 10th film later in the year.
"I have finished the script of what will end up being my last movie," the 60-year-old said while being questioned by Thierry Fremaux, director of the Cannes Film Festival, at the launch of his new book in Paris.
"I imagine we'll probably shoot it I guess in the fall," Tarantino said.
Tarantino has repeatedly said that he wants to retire after 10 films -- counting the two lengthy episodes of "Kill Bill" as one.
The film, which will be called "The Movie Critic", will be set in 1977, he added.
He denied rumors that it was a biopic of Pauline Kael -- the New Yorker film critic who died in 2001 -- and said it was not devoted to any specific film critic.
Tarantino's directorial debut came with "Reservoir Dogs" in 1992, a low-budget, brutal crime caper that became a cult smash and turned him into one of the industry's most influential filmmakers.
© 2023 AFP
It is still almost 300 days until the first ballot is cast but the fog is already lifting in the battle for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination -- leaving two men standing.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has emerged as the only genuine threat so far to frontrunner Donald Trump, with the primary contest narrowing to a bitter head-to-head over character and the ability to win elections.
A number of lower-profile hopefuls have been bystanders as the 76-year-old political brawler with a peerless aptitude for sniffing out weakness among his enemies has concentrated his fire on the young pretender, 32 years his junior.
Trump is making his third run for the White House after losing his re-election bid to Democrat Joe Biden in 2020, while DeSantis, who is yet to officially announce his candidacy, is untested on the national stage.
The similarities are unmistakable -- from the populist style honed in their respective fiefdoms at opposite ends of Florida to their love of showmanship, culture wars and a good old-fashioned dust-up with the media.
But their success in persuading Republicans to give them a shot at the White House in 2024 may well turn on their ability to play to their differences.
The pair weren't always foes. Trump endorsed DeSantis in his first run for governor in 2018, before distancing himself from his protege after the 44-year-old's landslide re-election victory last year.
The combative governor's crusade against the "woke" left-wing ideology he sees as infecting schools and other public institutions has made him a major player in American conservatism and, in many respects, a Trump "mini-me."
- 'No daily drama' -
Meanwhile, the de facto Republican leader has been rolling out his rhetorical artillery, labeling DeSantis a "mediocre governor," scoffing at his claims to have kept Florida open during the pandemic and painting him as a threat to the welfare safety net.
The Florida governor responded with his most direct shots yet at his adversary, drawing a distinction between his own "no daily drama" leadership style and the stubborn whiff of scandal and constant chaos around Trump.
As with the stragglers among the Republican White House hopefuls, DeSantis has not diverged meaningfully from Trump's stated positions or governing record, reducing the contest to a question of style over substance.
"On a policy front, they're probably very similar. They share some of the same basic America First kind of policies," says Saul Anuzis, a political consultant and former chairman of the Michigan Republican Party.
"But their style, their way of governance, that's where the big difference comes in."
DeSantis, the progeny of working-class parents, a war veteran and a Harvard and Yale graduate, is from different stock than the former president, heir to a real estate empire built up by his father.
"DeSantis seems to be less bombastic, more deliberate, while at the same time willing to take on the media," Anuzis notes.
"He is not afraid of a fight but he does it in a softer, kinder way."
Trump, on the other hand, is a "larger-than-life populist," according to Matthew Continetti, a researcher at the American Enterprise Institute think tank and author of a history of the US conservative movement.
"He is someone whose personality overwhelms everything else," he said.
- 'Remarkably unpopular' -
For this expert, DeSantis has better odds than Trump for defeating the 2024 Democratic candidate, which will almost certainly be Biden.
"(Trump) is very popular among his base supporters, but two-thirds of the country don't want to see him (as) president again," Continetti says.
Another reason to think DeSantis might play better in the general election: he isn't facing criminal investigation in multiple jurisdictions and isn't seen as a one-man crime wave by much of Middle America -- the 30 percent of voters that decide elections.
Trump's controversies have not dampened his enthusiasm for swatting away rivals with puerile smears and DeSantis will be expected to hit back with alacrity.
But he will also need to contend with Trump's secret sauce -- the enormous leeway his supporters give him compared with the much higher standards to which other politicians are held.
The DeSantis campaign, for example, took a big hit from both parties when he downplayed Russia's brutal invasion of Ukraine as a "territorial dispute" -- while Trump's nakedly pro-Putin rhetoric barely raises an eyebrow.
"I don't think there's any benefit for DeSantis or anybody to really attack Trump at this stage of the game," Azunis told AFP.
"DeSantis has set his own timetable," he added. "He has been very disciplined so far, and I think that discipline has served him well."
Vernon Hollingsworth grew up in Florida among his family's orange trees, recently ravaged by a double whammy of disease and a hurricane that have sent juice prices spiraling and left farmers blinking in disbelief.
On a recent March morning, the fifth-generation farmer drove a pickup truck through the rows in his grove, pointing out the damage from Hurricane Ian last fall such as uprooted trees.
"I lost 95 to 97 percent of my crop," the 62-year-old told AFP, adding "we're going to have to rebuild, and we need help to do that."
But the hurricane is only the latest blow.
In Florida, the world's second largest producer of orange juice after Brazil, groves have been suffering from a citrus tree disease called Huanglongbing (HLB) for the last 17 years.
A bacteria spread by an insect, the Asian psyllid, causes the disease, which makes trees produce a green, bitter fruit that is unsuitable to sell, before dying within a few years.
The double crises of Ian and HLB have wreaked havoc on the industry, which is so integral to Florida's identity that the orange is even on the state license plate.
Orange production in Florida is down 60.7 percent from last season, one of the lowest figures since the 1930s, according to US Department of Agriculture estimates.
The hurricane alone caused the state's citrus sector losses of $247.1 million, among $1.03 billion to the overall agricultural economy, according to estimates from the University of Florida.
The situation is particularly painful for Hollingsworth, because the season was looking promising before Ian struck his 4,200 acres (1,700 hectares).
For the first time, he had begun injecting his orange trees with two bactericide treatments recently approved by US authorities for fighting HLB, which is also known as citrus greening disease.
"With the new medications I saw (the orange trees) could blossom and get bigger as it once was... This hurricane could not happen at a worse time for Florida's citrus," Hollingsworth said.
Now his groves, which employ about 50 full-time staff plus seasonal workers, are facing a dire stretch of months.
Profits from one harvest are what make it possible to produce the next, but this year Hollingsworth has almost no income: Insurance hasn't paid enough to cover the damage and each replanted tree will take four years to bear fruit, he explained.
"It's really difficult. I'm trying to do my best. But if we could get some help, it would be remarkable," he said, in reference to the state of Florida or federal government.
"We are really in a very bad need right now."
Marisa Zansler of the Florida Department of Citrus, which regulates the industry, said state officials are striving to help growers plant trees.
The push is key to shoring up the citrus industry, which accounts for $6.9 billion of Florida's economy and more than 32,500 jobs, said Zansler, the agency's director of economic and market outreach.
Meanwhile the price of orange juice has skyrocketed in US supermarkets and Brazil is taking advantage of the situation. The South American giant has exported 240,000 tons to the United States this season, 82 percent more than the previous season, according to official data.
In Arcadia, Hollingsworth says he is not losing hope. He is convinced that if he overcomes this slump, the future will be bright, especially given the new treatments against HLB.
It is, he says, the only option.
"I'm going to stick with this," he told AFP. "I don't know how to do anything else."
© Agence France-Presse
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