KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Ukraine came under heavy attack from the air and from cyberspace on Tuesday, local officials said, as nearly 600 Russian shells, rockets and other projectiles rained down on a southern region and unidentified hackers knocked out phone and internet services of the country’s biggest telecom provider.

Ukraine also claimed a successful hacker attack against Russia’s national tax system.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy arrived on Capitol Hill to press U.S. Congress for additional military help, as further U.S. funding is uncertain because of a domestic political dispute.

One person was killed and four others were wounded during 24 hours of Russian bombardment of Ukraine’s southern Kherson region, according to Oleksandr Prokudin, head of the regional military administration. The number of projectiles fired at Kherson was the highest in at least two weeks.

As winter sets in and hampers troop movements, allowing little change along the front line, air bombardment plays a growing role in the war.

Cyberattacks are also a busy battleground. Ukrainian telecom provider Kyivstar said it came under a “powerful” attack by hackers. The company serves more than 24 million mobile customers across the country.

“The war with Russia has many dimensions, and one of them is in cyberspace,” Kyivstar Director-General Oleksandr Komarov said in a statement.

The company didn’testimate when services might be restored. It said its specialists were working with law enforcement agencies and special state services on solving the problem.

Kyivstar’s traffic began dropping at 9 a.m. local time and was nearly at zero by noon, Doug Madory, an analyst at the network integrity firm Kentic Inc., said in a tweet.

“Traffic was slow decline instead of being abruptly cut all at once,” Madory told The Associated Press. He said that was similar to what happened in a March 2022 cyberattack on Ukrtelecom, the country’s legacy telecom, which was then seventh among Ukrainian providers in internet traffic volume.

Kyivstar is Ukraine’s largest destination for internet traffic, Madory said.

But the attack had more far-reaching consequences. It disrupted the air raid warning system in part of the Kyiv region, according to the head of the Kyiv regional administration, Ruslan Kravchenko. Similar disruptions were also reported in the Sumy region of northeastern Ukraine, while some ATMs of state-owned Oschadbank stopped working as a result of the Kyivstar attack, the bank’s press office told local news outlet Suspilne.

Also, a Ukrainian online bank said it fought off a massive distributed denial-of-service attack on Tuesday. A DDoS attack employs a network of distributed computers to direct junk traffic at the target site in an effort to render it unusable.

At the same time, Ukraine’s Main Directorate of Intelligence claimed to have conducted a successful hacker operation infesting Russia’s Federal Taxation Service servers with malware.

According to an intelligence agency statement, the operation infiltrated several central servers and more than 2,300 regional servers, resulting in disrupted communication within Russia’s taxation system and destroying its database and backups.

Moscow made no immediate comment about any attack, and the claim couldn’t be independently verified.

In other developments, Ukraine claimed to have captured a tactically important hill in the Donetsk region, where the front line has barely budged since 2014.

Zelenskyy announced on social media that his troops had taken the foothold, which provides a vantage point over the front line near Pivdenne, a mining town to the northwest of the Donetsk city of Horlivka.

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Hanna Arhirova in Kyiv, and Frank Bajak in Boston, contributed to this report.

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Follow AP’s coverage of the war in Ukraine at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine

The planned hearing is the first time oral arguments are being made in federal court in Tallahassee over Disney’s claim that DeSantis used state powers to punish the entertainment giant in violation of the First Amendment. The governor’s attorneys are arguing that the case should be dismissed, claiming DeSantis is immune since he doesn’t enforce any of the laws that removed supervision of the government from Disney supporters.

Any decision U.S. District Judge Allen Winsor makes could determine who controls the governing district that performs municipal services such as planning, mosquito control and firefighting in the roughly 40 square miles (100 square kilometers) in central Florida that make up Disney World. Winsor was appointed to the bench by President Donald Trump in 2019.

Disney and DeSantis appointees also are battling in a state court lawsuit in Orlando over control of the district.

DeSantis has argued that the federal lawsuit should be dismissed since Disney lacks standing to file it. Neither the governor nor the secretary of the Florida Department of Economic Opportunity, who is also named in the lawsuit, have the power to enforce the laws which were passed to revamp the Disney World government and shift control of the district’s board from Disney supporters to the governor’s appointees, according to DeSantis.

Also named in the federal lawsuit are the the district’s board members who DeSantis appointed earlier this year.

In asking the judge to deny DeSantis’ motion to dismiss, Disney has accused DeSantis and his appointees of using political institutions to punish disfavored viewpoints.

“That premise is not just legally unsupported, it is profoundly un-American,” Disney said in court papers.

The feud between DeSantis and Disney started last year after the entertainment giant publicly opposed the state’s so-called don’t say gay law. The law was championed by DeSantis, who is running for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination. In retaliation, DeSantis and Republican legislators earlier this year passed legislation which took over the district Disney had controlled for more than five decades and installed five board members loyal to the governor.

Since the takeover, more than 10% of the district’s 370-employees have left their jobs, with many saying in exit interviews that the district has been politicized and is now permeated by cronyism.

“Our extensive deliberations affirm our confidence that President Gay is the right leader to help our community heal and to address the very serious societal issues we are facing,” the Harvard Corporation said in a statement following its meeting Monday.

Only months into her leadership, Gay came under intense scrutiny following the hearing in which she and two of her peers struggled to answer questions about campus antisemitism. Their academic responses provoked backlash from Republican opponents, along with alumni and donors who say the university leaders are failing to stand up for Jewish students on their campuses.

At issue was a line of questioning that asked whether calling for the genocide of Jews would violate the universities’ code of conduct. At the hearing, Gay said it depended on the context, adding that when “speech crosses into conduct, that violates our policies.”

Some lawmakers and donors to the the university had called for Gay to step down, following the resignation of Liz Magill as president of the University of Pennsylvania on Saturday.

The Harvard Crimson student newspaper first reported Tuesday that Gay, who became Harvard’s first Black president in July, would remain in office with the support of the Harvard Corporation following the conclusion of the board’s meeting. It cited an unnamed source familiar with the decision.

A petition signed by more than 600 faculty members had asked the school’s governing body to keep Gay in charge.

“So many people have suffered tremendous damage and pain because of Hamas’s brutal terrorist attack, and the university’s initial statement should have been an immediate, direct, and unequivocal condemnation,” the corporation’s statement said. “Calls for genocide are despicable and contrary to fundamental human values. President Gay has apologized for how she handled her congressional testimony and has committed to redoubling the university’s fight against antisemitism.”

In an interview with The Crimson last week, Gay said she got caught up in a heated exchange at the House committee hearing and failed to properly denounce threats of violence against Jewish students.

“What I should have had the presence of mind to do in that moment was return to my guiding truth, which is that calls for violence against our Jewish community — threats to our Jewish students — have no place at Harvard, and will never go unchallenged,” Gay said.

Testimony from Gay and Magill drew intense national backlash, as did similar responses from the president of MIT, who also testified before the Republican-led House Education and Workforce Committee.

U.S. Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-New York, a committee member who repeatedly asked the university presidents whether “calling for the genocide of Jews” would violate the schools’ rules, voiced her displeasure on X, the social media platform, about the decision supporting Gay.

“There have been absolutely no updates to (Harvard’s) code of conduct to condemn the calls for genocide of Jews and protect Jewish students on campus,” she said. “The only update to Harvard’s code of conduct is to allow plagiarists as president.”

The corporation addressed allegations of plagiarism against Gay, saying that Harvard became aware of them in late October regarding three articles she had written. It initiated an independent review at Gay’s request.

The corporation reviewed the results on Saturday, “which revealed a few instances of inadequate citation” and found no violation of Harvard’s standards for research misconduct, it said. Gay is proactively requesting four corrections in two articles to insert citations and quotation marks that were omitted from the original publications, the statement said.

When the U.S. Supreme Court undid the nationwide right to abortion last year, it did not remove the issue from the courts.

Instead, it opened a new frontier of litigation, with states passing their own restrictions and opponents challenging them in courts across the country.

This week, at least four state supreme courts are dealing with abortion cases, including a Texas ruling Monday that rejected a woman’s individual request for access to an abortion because of pregnancy complications.

Some things to know about the cases:

Most of the lawsuits that have been filed against bans and restrictions are seeking to secure general access to abortion.

But last week, a Texas woman experiencing serious pregnancy complications decided not to wait for those challenges to be resolved. Saying that her condition poses a risk to her health and future fertility, she asked a court for permission to obtain an abortion immediately.

A state district judge issued an order on Thursday allowing Kate Cox to receive an abortion. The state attorney general filed an appeal, arguing that Cox’s situation does not meet the criteria for an exception. He also warned that anyone providing the abortion could still face legal consequences. On Friday, the state’s Supreme Court put the lower-court ruling on hold.

On Monday, before the top court had issued a final ruling, her lawyers announced that she had gone to another state for an abortion. Later in the day, the Texas Supreme Court ruled against her.

Texas doctors had told the 31-year-old Cox that their hands were tied — despite the Texas law’s exception for when a woman’s life is at risk — and that she would have to wait for the fetus to die or carry the pregnancy to term.

A pregnant woman in Kentucky is also seeking immediate access to an abortion, but the claim she filed Friday does not cite exceptions to that state’s law; rather it argues that the ban on abortion at all stages of pregnancy violates the state constitution.

Before Arizona was a state, it had a ban on abortion that was overridden by the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, which established a nationwide right to abortion. Just before Roe was undone last year, lawmakers passed a separate ban on abortion after 15 weeks of pregnancy.

There’s been confusion and litigation over which law applies. Currently, abortions are available during the first 15 weeks of pregnancy, based on a court ruling last year that said doctors can’t be prosecuted for providing abortions during this time frame.

The Arizona Supreme Court is scheduled to hear arguments Tuesday on whether the pre-statehood ban of 1864 — which would prohibit abortions at any stage of pregnancy — should apply.

Meanwhile, Arizona abortion rights supporters are pushing to get a ballot question before voters next year that would undo both bans. Advocates in other states are attempting to put similar questions on the ballot following the success of such a measure in Ohio last month.

New Mexico is one of seven states that allows abortions to be obtained at all stages of pregnancy, and it’s become a major destination for people from states with bans, especially neighboring Texas.

That hasn’t stopped some conservative city and county governments in the blue state from passing local abortion bans.

The state’s Democratic attorney general is challenging those bans, saying they violate the state constitution’s provision prohibiting discrimination based on sex and pregnancy status.

Most of the local laws have been put on hold by the New Mexico Supreme Court while it considers the issue. The court will hear arguments on the challenge on Wednesday.

Two hearings before courts in Wyoming this week could shape litigation on the legality of abortion.

In July, Teton County District Court Judge Melissa Owens paused enforcement of a ban on abortion at all stages of pregnancy while she weighs whether to hold a trial on a challenge to the ban.

Owens is holding a hearing Thursday to choose between a trial or making a decision more quickly based on legal arguments put before her.

Prior to that, the state Supreme Court — whose five members were all appointed by Republican governors — will hear arguments Tuesday on whether to let two lawmakers and Right to Life of Wyoming intervene in the case. They contend that Republican state Attorney General Bridget Hill should defend the ban with evidence, not just legal arguments.

Hill said in a court filing that while she doesn’t object to parties being added, the case should be decided solely on the legal arguments.

The state has just one clinic that provides abortions with both medication and surgery. The Casper clinic opened in April, after a nearly yearlong delay because of damage from an arson attack. A second, in Jackson, which provides only medication abortion, has said it is closing this week because of high rent and other costs.

On Monday, Democratic Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer signed the last piece of a legislative package known as the Reproductive Health Act. The package aims to reinforce and safeguard abortion rights in Michigan after voters last year approved a ballot initiative enshrining the right in the state’s constitution.

The bill repeals a law that had banned insurance coverage for abortion without purchase of a separate rider. The law, coined “rape insurance” by opponents, was passed exactly 10 years ago by a state Legislature that was controlled by Republicans.

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Mulvihill reported from Cherry Hill, New Jersey. Associated Press reporter Joey Cappelletti in Lansing, Michigan, contributed to this report.

FORT CALHOUN, Neb. (AP) — The fatal stabbing of a Catholic priest inside the church rectory where he lived has rocked the eastern Nebraska community of Fort Calhoun, a one-stoplight town where people tend not to worry if they forget to lock their doors at night.

The Rev. Stephen Gutgsell, who served at St. John the Baptist church, was attacked during what authorities called a break-in early Sunday. The 65-year-old died despite being rushed to an Omaha hospital. Authorities with the Washington County Sheriff’s Office arrested a man, who was still in the church rectory when they arrived six minutes after the priest called 911.

“It’s a crazy world I guess. Anything can happen to anybody,” said longtime Fort Calhoun resident Stephen Green, who said he did not know Gutgsell personally, but has attended Lenten fish fries at the church and sent his kids to vacation Bible school there.

By Monday, the church nestled in a neighborhood a block away from the elementary school was clear of crime scene tape as it prepared to host a wake for one of its members, but the yellow plastic continued to encircle the rectory — the modest home next to the church.

A stack of church bulletins sat unused just outside the sanctuary — with a note from Gutgsell about how he had planned to preach about St. John the Baptist’s namesake on Sunday. On the way into town, the lighted sign along the highway welcoming visitors to Fort Calhoun asked for “prayers for our church and our community.”

Gutgsell was attacked just one day after the Christmas in Calhoun celebration, where many of the town’s residents celebrated with a full day of events including a Boy Scout pancake breakfast at St. John the Baptist. The small congregation of more than 250 families is an active one known for its fish fries during Lent and its vacation Bible school programs every summer.

Fort Calhoun hosts only about 1,000 residents, located about 16 miles (26 kilometers) north of Omaha. The town is best known for being home to Fort Atkinson, the first U.S. military post west of the Missouri River, where volunteers dress up in clothes from the period as part of a living history program. It is about 75 miles (120 kilometers) south of Sioux City, Iowa, where authorities say the suspect in Gutgsell’s death was from.

But the priest’s stabbing was the second killing to happen this year in the small town.

“You know, there’s no murders forever and ever, and then all of a sudden, bam!” said Kevin Schultz, one of two pastors at the Cherry Hill church and ice cream shop on the main highway just a few blocks away from St. John the Baptist.

A day following the attack with little new details released, residents were left to speculate about Gutgsell’s killing. Prosecutors said they expect to file formal homicide and weapons charges on Tuesday against Kierre L. Williams, 43, who was arrested inside the rectory. He does not have a lawyer yet and likely won’t appear in court until Wednesday.

“It seems like there’s more to the story,” Schultz said.

Court records in Iowa show Williams is facing a misdemeanor assault charge; he is accused of punching someone at a soup kitchen in Sioux City after getting in an argument in July. The criminal charge against him in that case lists him as homeless.

Green, who has lived in Fort Calhoun since he was 5 years old, said he has always known the town to be safe and he remembers riding his bike all over town when he was young. But he said the killing of Gutgsell — and the August killing of 71-year-old Linda Childers — are eye opening.

In August, Childers was found dead in her rural home in Fort Calhoun in what authorities believe was a home invasion by a man she did not know. In that case, William P. Collins has been charged with first-degree murder and other counts.

“It shouldn’t happen in a small town like this,” said Andy Faucher, who owns the Longhorn Bar and Grill where people gathered to eat and talk about what happened. Faucher said the fact that this latest killing involved a priest only “intensifies the scariness of the situation.”

On Sunday evening, the congregation held a vigil at St. John the Baptist to remember Gutgsell, who served at several different parishes across the Archdiocese of Omaha during his 39 years as a priest. In addition to leading St. John the Baptist in Fort Calhoun, Gutgsell helped at St. Francis Borgia in Blair, where the archbishop held a special service after the stabbing Sunday and met with members of the congregation.

“We continue to pray that the Lord of mercy and love will welcome Father Gutgsell into his Heavenly kingdom,” Archbishop of Omaha George J. Lucas said in a statement. “May Our Blessed Mother intercede for us all as we grieve his death.”

The Archdiocese said Gutgsell was a native of Kansas City, Missouri, who graduated from the University of St. Thomas in 1980 and attended the St. Paul Seminary in Minnesota before joining the priesthood in 1984.

Funeral arrangements for Gutgsell are pending.

Kelly Tegels told KETV that she had just seen Gutgsell at Mass on Saturday night, so his death did not feel real yet.

“It’s going to be hard,” Tegels said at the vigil. “I’m bringing flowers tonight because he always had this altar decorated with flowers, and I know he would appreciate it.”

COSTA MESA, Calif. (AP) — Justin Herbert will visit two hand specialists on Monday after the Chargers quarterback fractured the index finger on his right hand during the second quarter of Los Angeles’ 24-7 loss to the Denver Broncos on Sunday.

Coach Brandon Staley said Monday morning that he would wait until those visits were completed before he made a decision on Herbert’s status for Thursday night’s game at the Las Vegas Raiders.

“There’s a lot of information that we’re gathering right now, but he’s as tough as they come. We’re gonna make sure that whatever it is, we’re going to do what’s best for Justin long term,” Staley said about the franchise quarterback, who signed a $252 million, five-year extension before the start of training camp.

Herbert, the sixth overall pick in the 2020 draft, has been durable in his career, with 62 consecutive regular-season starts. He has played through a broken finger on his non-throwing hand earlier this season and fractured rib cartilage last season. A broken finger on the throwing hand though would appear to be something that might be difficult to overcome.

CBS commentator Matt Ryan, the former quarterback who played 16 years in the league, said during Sunday’s game the index finger is the second-most important finger for a quarterback because it has so much to do with feel and accuracy.

“If there’s any chance to play, I’ll do everything I can to be out there. I’m going to do everything I can in the treatment room to get back to 100 percent,” said Herbert, who was 9 of 17 for 96 yards with an interception against the Broncos before getting injured during the second quarter.

The injury apparently happened while Herbert was taken down awkwardly by Denver’s Zach Allen after completing an 11-yard pass to Donald Parham. Herbert was in for four more plays, and was 1 of 3 passing for 14 yards.

The Chargers are 5-8 and have dropped four of their past five. If Herbert is unable to go, backup Easton Stick seems likely to become only the Chargers’ fourth starting quarterback since 2006.

Stick went 13 of 24 for 179 yards in Herbert’s place, and the Bolts scored on just one of their five drives in the second half while Denver pulled away.

Max Duggan, who was selected in the seventh round of April’s draft, would be called up from the practice squad if Stick gets the start.

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AP NFL: https://apnews.com/hub/nfl

Greta Gerwig’s “Barbie” dominated the Golden Globe Awards nominations with nine nods for the blockbuster film, including best picture musical or comedy as well as acting nominations for Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling and three of its original songs.

It was closely followed by its release date and meme companion “Oppenheimer,” which scored eight nominations, including best picture drama and for actors Cillian Murphy, Robert Downey Jr. and Emily Blunt.

The revamped group, now a for-profit endeavor with a larger and more diverse voting body, announced nominations Monday for its January awards show, after scandal and several troubled years, including one without a broadcast. Cedric the Entertainer and Wilmer Valderrama presided over the announcements from the Beverly Hilton Hotel, where the show will also take place on Jan. 7.

Films nominated for best motion picture drama included “Oppenheimer,” Martin Scorsese’s “Killers of the Flower Moon,” Bradley Cooper’s “Maestro,” Celine Song’s “Past Lives,” Justine Triet’s “Anatomy of a Fall” and Jonathan Glazer’s “The Zone of Interest.”

In the best motion picture musical or comedy category, “Barbie” was joined by “Air,” “American Fiction” “The Holdovers,” “May December” and “Poor Things.”

Yorgos Lanthimos’ “Poor Things” and Scorsese’s “Killers of the Flower Moon” both received seven nominations each. “Poor Things” saw nominations for Lanthimos, its actors Emma Stone, Mark Ruffalo, Willem Dafoe, Tony McNamara for screenplay and Jerskin Fendrix for score. “Killers of the Flower Moon” got nods for Scorsese, for direction and co-writing the screenplay with Eric Roth, and stars Leonardo DiCaprio, Lily Gladstone and Robert De Niro.

“Barbie” tied for second-most nominations in Globes history with “Cabaret,” from 1972. Robert Altman’s “Nashville” remains the record-holder with 11 nominations. It went into the morning as a favorite top, and got a big boost from its three original song nominations, including “I’m Just Ken,” and one of the year’s new categories, recognizing cinematic and box office achievement. One person who was not nominated was America Ferrera, who delivered the movie’s most memorable monologue.

“Succession” was the top-nominated television program, with nine nods including for series stars Brian Cox, Jeremy Strong, Sarah Snook and Kieran Culkin.

The box office achievement category nominated eight films, including “Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour,” “The Super Mario Bros. Movie,” “Oppenheimer,” “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse,” “Mission: Impossible -Dead Reckoning,” “John Wick: Chapter 4” and “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3.” Several years ago the Oscars attempted to add a similar “popular film” category, but it proved to be an immensely unpopular decision and was scuttled amid backlash.

As always there were some big surprises, like Jennifer Lawrence getting nominated for her bawdy R-rated comedy “No Hard Feelings” for best performance by a female actor in a musical or comedy. She was nominated alongside Robbie, Stone and Fantasia Barrino (“The Color Purple”), Natalie Portman (“May December”) and Alma Pöysti (“Fallen Leaves”).

“The Color Purple” was expected to do better with the Golden Globes. The adaption of the stage musical got only two nominations total for Barrino and Danielle Brooks for her supporting performance.

Cord Jefferson’s comedy “American Fiction” also came up with only two nods, best musical or comedy and for lead actor Jeffrey Wright.

Sofia Coppola’s widely acclaimed “Priscilla” got only one nomination, for actor Cailee Spaeny’s portrayal of Priscilla Presley. Her category mates in best female performance in a drama include Gladstone, Annette Bening for “Nyad,” Sandra Hüller for “Anatomy of a Fall,” Greta Lee for “Past Lives” and Carey Mulligan for “Maestro.”

The Globes won’t have to worry about anyone criticizing its “all male” directors this year, however. Gerwig was nominated as was Celine Song, for her romantic debut “Past Lives,” alongside Nolan, Scorsese, Cooper and Lanthimos.

Netflix got the most nominations overall, with 13 total for a slate which included “Maestro,” “May December” and “Rustin,” followed by Warner Bros., which made “Barbie,” “The Super Mario Bros. Movie” and “The Color Purple” with 12.

Ridley Scott’s “Napoleon” was not nominated at all. Instead, its star Joaquin Phoenix was recognized for “Beau is Afraid” in the lead actor comedy/musical category, with Wright, Matt Damon (“Air”), Nicolas Cage “Dream Scenario,” Timothée Chalamet (“Wonka”) and Paul Giamatti (“The Holdovers”). Michael Mann’s “Ferrari,” with Adam Driver, also got zero nominations.

Here are a selection of other nominees:

Animated film: “The Boy and the Heron”; “Elemental”; “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse”; “The Super Mario Bros. Movie”; “Suzume”; “Wish.”

Non-English language film: “Anatomy of a Fall”; “Fallen Leaves”; “Io Capitano”; “Past Lives”; “Society of the Snow”; “The Zone of Interest.”

Best actor in a television drama: Brian Cox, “Succession”; Kieran Culkin, “Succession”; Gary Oldman, “Slow Horses”; Pedro Pascal, “The Last of Us”; Jeremy Strong, “Succession”; Dominic West, “The Crown.”

Female actor in a television comedy: Rachel Brosnahan, “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel”; Quinta Brunson, “Abbott Elementary”; Ayo Edebiri, “The Bear”; Elle Fanning, “The Great”; Selena Gomez, “Only Murders in the Building”; Natasha Lyonne, “Poker Face.”

Male actor in a television comedy: Bill Hader, “Barry”; Steve Martin, “Only Murders in the Building”; Jason Segel, “Shrinking”; Martin Short, “Only Murders in the Building”; Jason Sudeikis, “Ted Lasso”; Jeremy Allen White, “The Bear.”

Screenplay: “Anatomy of a Fall”; “Barbie”; “Poor Things”; “Killers of the Flower Moon”; “Oppenheimer”; “Past Lives.”

Best stand-up comedy television special: Ricky Gervais, “Armageddon”; Trevor Noah, “Where Was I”; Chris Rock, “Selective Outrage”; Amy Schumer, “Emergency Contact”; Sarah Silverman, “Someone You Love”; Wanda Sykes, “I’m an Entertainer.”

The 81st Golden Globe Awards will be the first major broadcast of awards season, with a new home on CBS. And while to audiences it might look similar on the surface, it’s been tumultuous few years behind the scenes following a bombshell report in the Los Angeles Times. The 2021 report found that there were no Black members in the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, which votes on the awards.

Stars and studios boycotted the Globes and NBC refused to air it in 2022 as a result. After the group added journalists of color to its ranks and instituted other reforms to address ethical concerns, the show came back in January 2023 in a one-year probationary agreement with NBC. The network did not opt to renew.

In June, billionaire Todd Boehly was granted approval to dissolve the HFPA and reinvent the Golden Globes as a for-profit organization. Its assets were acquired by Boehly’s Eldridge Industries, along with Dick Clark Productions, a group that is owned by Penske Media whose assets also include Variety, Deadline, The Hollywood Reporter, Rolling Stone and Billboard. In mid-November, CBS announced that it would air the ceremony on the network on Jan. 7. It will also stream on Paramount+.

The Golden Globe Awards had long been one of the highest-profile awards season broadcasts, second only to the Oscars.

The show was touted as a boozy, A-list party, whose hosts often took a more irreverent tone than their academy counterparts. It also only honored the flashiest filmmaking categories — picture, director, actors among them — meaning no long speeches from visual effects supervisors or directors of shorts no one has heard of.

But the voting body was a small group of around 87 members who wielded incredible influence in the industry and often accepted lavish gifts and travel from studios and awards publicists eager to court favor and win votes.

Some years, the HFPA were pilloried for nominating poorly reviewed films with big name talent with hopes of getting them to the show, the most infamous being “The Tourist,” with Angelina Jolie and Johnny Depp. In the past decade, they’ve more often overlapped with the Oscars. The show also recognizes television.

Before the expose and public relations crisis though, no one in the industry took much umbrage with who was voting on the awards. The show had become an important part of the Hollywood awards ecosystem, a platform for Oscar hopefuls and was, until recently, a reliable ratings draw. As of 2019, it was still pulling in nearly 19 million viewers to the broadcast. This year, NBC’s Tuesday night broadcast got its smallest audience ever for a traditional broadcast, with 6.3 million viewers.

The group nominating and voting for the awards is now made up of a more diverse group of over 300 people from around the world.

At a small rural Missouri high school, two English teachers shared a secret: Both were posting adult content on OnlyFans, the subscription-based website known for sexually explicit content.

The site and others like it provide an opportunity for those willing to dabble in pornography to earn extra money — sometimes lots of it. The money is handy, especially in relatively low-paying fields like teaching, and many post the content anonymously while trying to maintain their day jobs.

But some outed teachers, as well as people in other prominent fields such as law, have lost their jobs, raising questions about personal freedoms and how far employers can go to avoid stigma related to their employees’ after-hour activities.

At St. Clair High School southwest of St. Louis, it all came crashing down this fall for 28-year-old Brianna Coppage and 31-year-old Megan Gaither.

“You’re tainted and seen as a liability,” Gaither lamented on Facebook after she was suspended. Coppage resigned.

The industry has seen a boom since the COVID-19 pandemic, and it is now believed 2 million to 3 million people produce content for subscriptions sites such as OnlyFans, Just for Fans and Clips4Sale, said Mike Stabile, spokesman for the Free Speech Coalition, a trade association for the adult entertainment industry.

“I think that there was a time prior to the pandemic where the idea that someone might become a porn star was akin to saying that someone might be abducted by aliens,” Stabile said. “I think that what the pandemic and the sort of explosion of fan content showed was that a lot of people were open to doing it.”

It frequently proves risky, though. A recent report from the trade association found 3 in 5 adult entertainment performers have experienced employment discrimination. The report, based on a survey of more than 600 people in the industry, said 64% of adult creators have no other significant source of income, while there were no details on the occupations of those who did.

In St. Clair, Coppage was the first to be outed after someone posted a link to her OnlyFans account on a community Facebook group. Superintendent Kyle Kruse said Coppage was not asked to resign, but she did anyway.

“I do not regret joining OnlyFans,” Coppage told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch in September. “I know it can be taboo, or some people may believe that it is shameful, but I don’t think sex work has to be shameful. I do just wish things just happened in a different way.”

Gaither, who also coached cheerleading, said she used her account to pay off student loans. She also was outed, although she wrote that she had an alias and did not show her face.

Neither teacher responded to phone or email messages from The Associated Press seeking comment. But both women told other news outlets that their OnlyFans earnings soared from the publicity.

The district said little, but parents and even some students voiced concerns.

“As a society, if we’ve come to it to think that it’s OK for children to be seeing their teacher having sex, that’s outrageous,” said Kurt Moritz, the father of a 7-year-old boy in the district. “We shouldn’t be giving children an extra reason to fantasize over their teachers.”

Moritz and a former student said they were particularly alarmed when Coppage did a YouTube interview with an adult content creator and said she would be willing to film with former students. Moritz said the remark went too far, and 17-year-old Claire Howard, who moved out of the district midway through last school-year, agreed.

“That’s something that shouldn’t be sexualized,” Howard said.

Whether fired adult content creators have a legal recourse is unclear. Employers have wide latitude to terminate employees. The question is whether firing people moonlighting in the adult entertainment industry has a disproportionate effect on women and LGBTQ+ people, said attorney Derek Demeri, an employment law expert in New Jersey.

Both groups are protected, and data from the Free Speech Coalition shows they are the ones who overwhelming produce adult content, he noted.

“If you have a policy that on its face is not about discrimination but ends up having a disparate impact on a protected community, now you’re crossing into territory that may be unlawful,” Demeri said, adding that this applies even in cases where the day job involves working with children.

Attorney Gregory Locke, who was fired in March as a New York City administrative law judge after city officials learned about his OnlyFans account, was contacted by a handful of adult content creators who were terminated from their day jobs. He hasn’t yet sued but said he agrees with Demeri’s legal reasoning.

Locke’s termination followed an online spat over drag queen story hours in which he used a profane remark in response to a councilmember who opposed the events. Locke, who is gay, said people need to stop treating sex work like such a big problem.

“We’re a gig economy now and millennials have more student debt than we know what to do with,” he said. “There’s all sorts of reasons why people would reach out for outside income like sex work, like OnlyFans.”

At least one lawsuit has been filed in a similar situation. Victoria Triece sued Orange County Public Schools in January, alleging she was banned from volunteering at her son’s Florida elementary school because she posts on OnlyFans.

“When you start getting the moral police involved in it, where does it stop? At what point does the school have the right to intervene in one’s private life?” asked her attorney, Mark NeJame.

In South Bend, Indiana, 42-year-old Sarah Seales said she was fired last year from her job teaching science to elementary school children through a Department of Defense youth program called STARBASE after she began posting on OnlyFans to make more money to support her twins.

A Department of Defense spokesperson said it was inappropriate to comment on matters of pending litigation.

Attorney Mark Nicholson, who specializes in revenge porn cases, interviewed Seales and hired her to work on his firm’s podcast. They ultimately decided against suing the blogger who drew attention to Seales’ side gig, he said.

“If we pay our teachers as much as we pay athletes,” Nicholson said, “maybe she wouldn’t have had to open up an OnlyFans.”

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Hollingsworth reported from Mission, Kansas. Associated Press writer Jim Salter contributed from O’Fallon, Missouri.

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — A federal court jury has decided that Google’s Android app store has been protected by anticompetitive barriers that have damaged smartphone consumers and software developers, dealing a blow to a major pillar of a technology empire.

The unanimous verdict reached Monday came after just three hours of deliberation following a four-week trial revolving around a lucrative payment system within Google’s Play Store. The store is the main place where hundreds of millions of people around the world download and install apps that work on smartphones powered by Google’s Android software.

Epic Games, the maker of the popular Fortnite video game, filed a lawsuit against Google three years ago, alleging that the internet search giant has been abusing its power to shield its Play Store from competition in order to protect a gold mine that makes billions of dollars annually. Just as Apple does for its iPhone app store, Google collects a commission ranging from 15% to 30% on digital transactions completed within apps.

Apple prevailed in a similar case that Epic brought against the iPhone app store. But that 2021 trial was decided by a federal judge in a ruling that is under appeal at the U.S. Supreme Court.

The nine-person jury in the Play Store case apparently saw things through a different lens, even though Google technically allows Android apps to be downloaded from different stores — an option that Apple prohibits on the iPhone.

Just before the Play Store trial started, Google sought to avoid having a jury determine the outcome, only to have its request rejected by U.S. District Judge James Donato. Now it will be up to Donato to determine what steps Google will have to take to unwind its illegal behavior in the Play Store. The judge indicated he will hold hearings on the issue during the second week of January.

Epic CEO Tim Sweeney broke into a wide grin after the verdict was read and slapped his lawyers on the back and also shook the hand of a Google attorney, whom he thanked for his professional attitude during the proceedings.

“Victory over Google!” Sweeney wrote in a post on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter. In a company post, Epic hailed the verdict as “a win for all app developers and consumers around the world.”

Google plans to appeal the verdict, according to a statement from Wilson White, the company’s vice president of government affairs and public policy.

“Android and Google Play provide more choice and openness than any other major mobile platform,” White said.

Depending on how the judge enforces the jury’s verdict, Google could lose billions of dollars in annual profit generated from its Play Store commissions. The company’s main source of revenue — digital advertising tied mostly to its search engine, Gmail and other services — won’t be directly affected by the trial’s outcome.

The jury reached its decision after listening to two hours of closing arguments from the lawyers on the opposing sides of the case.

Epic lawyer Gary Bornstein depicted Google as a ruthless bully that deploys a “bribe and block” strategy to discourage competition against its Play Store for Android apps. Google lawyer Jonathan Kravis attacked Epic as a self-interested game maker trying to use the courts to save itself money while undermining an ecosystem that has spawned billions of Android smartphones to compete against Apple and its iPhone.

Much of the lawyers’ dueling arguments touched upon the testimony from a litany of witnesses who came to court during the trial.

The key witnesses included Google CEO Sundar Pichai, who sometimes seemed like a professor explaining complex topics while standing behind a lectern because of a health issue, and Sweeney, who painted himself as a video game lover on a mission to take down a greedy tech titan.

In his closing argument for Epic, Bornstein railed against Google for exploiting its power over the Android software in a way that “has led to higher prices for developers and consumers, as well as less innovation and quality.”

Google has staunchly defended the commissions as a way to help recoup the more than $40 billion that it has poured into building into the Android software that it has been giving away since 2007 to manufacturers to compete against the iPhone.

“Android phones cannot compete against the iPhone without a great app store on them,” Kravis asserted in his closing argument. “The competition between the app stores is tied to the competition between the phones.”

But Bornstein ridiculed the notion of Google and Android competing against Apple and its incompatible iPhone software system. “Apple is not the ‘get out of jail for free’ card that Google wants it to be,” Bornstein told the jury.

Google also pointed to rival Android app stores such as the one that Samsung installs on its popular smartphones as evidence of a free market. Combined with the rival app stores pre-installed on devices made by other companies, more than 60% of Android phones offer alternative outlets for Android apps.

Epic, though, presented evidence asserting the notion that Google welcomes competition as a pretense, citing the hundreds of billions of dollars it has doled out to companies, such as game maker Activision Blizzard, to discourage them from opening rival app stores. Besides making these payments, Bornstein also urged the jury to consider the Google “scare screens” that pop up, warning consumers of potential security threats when they try to download Android apps from some of the alternatives to the Play Store.

“These are classic anticompetitive strategies used by dominant firms to protect their monopolies,” Bornstein said.

Google’s empire could be further undermined by another major antitrust trial in Washington that will be decided by a federal judge after hearing final arguments in May. That trial has cast a spotlight on Google’s cozy relationship with Apple in online search, the technology that turned Google into a household word a few years after two former Stanford University graduate students started the company in a Silicon Valley garage in 1998.