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The union representing Hollywood actors formally announced a strike on Thursday, expanding the standoff between Hollywood workers and studio executives over wages, AI technology, and how to divide the profits of the new digital streaming era.

The strike by the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (Sag-Aftra) marks the first time in 63 years Hollywood writers and actors are striking simultaneously.

Hollywood writers went on strike in early May. Now the 11,500 members of the Writers Guild of America (WGA) will be joined by some of Sag-Aftra’s 160,000 members.

The simultaneous strikes are expected to halt the majority of Hollywood’s film and TV production, and have major effects on the broader Los Angeles economy. With some of Hollywood’s biggest stars on strike, press junkets for summer and fall movie premieres will be cancelled, and the Emmy Awards will likely be postponed. Workers across LA are gearing up to survive for weeks or months without wages.

Members of both Sag-Aftra and WGA voted overwhelmingly to authorize a strike if needed, a sign of their growing frustrations with what actors and writers have described as shrinking compensation for their work as film and TV shows have increasingly moved to online streaming platforms, and rising fears of how the industry might try to replace creative workers of all kinds with AI technologies.

In recent weeks, Hollywood’s top acting talent had made it clear they were willing to strike. In late June, a letter from Hollywood A-listers, including Meryl Streep and Jennifer Lawrence, urged their union leaders not to settle for a mediocre deal in what they saw as a historically important contract negotiation.

and the studios had been negotiating for weeks, but failed to reach an agreement by the deadline of midnight on Wednesday. In a statement on Thusday, the actors’ union said its negotiating committee had voted unanimously to recommend a strike, and that its national board would decide on the matter on Thursday morning.

It said: “After more than four weeks of bargaining, the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) – the entity that represents major studios and streamers, including Amazon, Apple, Disney, NBCUniversal, Netflix, Paramount, Sony and Warner Bros. Discovery – remains unwilling to offer a fair deal on the key issues that are essential to Sag-Aftra members.”

The Sag-Aftra president, Fran Drescher, said: “The companies have refused to meaningfully engage on some topics and on others completely stonewalled us. Until they do negotiate in good faith, we cannot begin to reach a deal. We have no choice but to move forward in unity, and on behalf of our membership, with a strike recommendation to our national board. The board will discuss the issue this morning and will make its decision.”

A strike is expected to have an immediate impact on publicity efforts for the summer’s top films; the Thursday evening premiere of Oppenheimer in London has been moved to start an hour earlier so the cast can attend regardless of the outcome. Other major commercial films including Barbie and Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One have already hosted their world premieres, though their stars will be restricted from participating in further promotional events.

The strike might also delay the Emmy awards until late autumn, or even next year, industry publications reported.

Disney has announced that a 15 July premiere of its movie Haunted Mansion will still take place at Disneyland regardless of the strikes, though the film’s actors – including LaKeith Stanfield, Tiffany Haddish, and Jamie Lee Curtis – will not be present.

San Diego Comic-Con, scheduled to begin on 20 July, will be affected as well.

Hollywood writers have been on strike since 2 May. The beginning of that strike was marked by strong solidarity from Hollywood’s other unionised workforces, including the powerful Teamsters’ union, and Sag-Aftra members showed up in solidarity at Writers Guild of America picket lines, even before their own strike was called.

Anonymous industry sources told Deadline this week that studio executives did not plan to resume negotiations with the striking writers until late October.

“The endgame is to allow things to drag on until union members start losing their apartments and losing their houses,” an industry source was quoted as saying, with another saying the goal was to “break the WGA”. A spokesperson for the studios denied those anonymous claims, telling Deadline in a statement that the companies “are committed to reaching a deal”.

Iowa’s state legislature voted on Tuesday night to ban most abortions after around six weeks of pregnancy, a time before most people know they are pregnant. Republican lawmakers, which hold a majority in both the Iowa house and senate, passed the anti-abortion bill after governor Kim Reynolds called a special session to seek a vote on the ban.

Iowa’s ban will prohibit abortions after the first sign of cardiac activity, usually around six weeks, with some exceptions for cases of rape or incest. It will allow for abortions up until 20 weeks of pregnancy only under certain conditions of medical emergency. Abortions in the state were previously allowed up to 20 weeks.

A federal judge has handed Microsoft a major victory by declining to block its looming $69 billion takeover of video game company Activision Blizzard. Regulators are seeking to ax the deal because they say it will hurt competition.

U.S. District Judge Jacqueline Scott Corley said in a ruling that the “FTC has not shown a likelihood it will prevail on its claim this particular vertical merger in this specific industry may substantially lessen competition. To the contrary, the record evidence points to more consumer access to Call of Duty and other Activision content.”

Microsoft appeared to have the upper hand in a 5-day San Francisco court hearing that ended late last month. The proceeding showcased testimony by Microsoft Chief Executive Officer Satya Nadella and longtime Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick, who both pledged to keep Activision’s blockbuster game Call of Duty available to people who play it on consoles — particularly Sony's PlayStation — that compete with Microsoft’s Xbox.

“Our merger will benefit consumers and workers. It will enable competition rather than allow entrenched market leaders to continue to dominate our rapidly growing industry,” said Activision CEO Bobby Kotick in a written statement.

Shares of Activision Blizzard Inc. jumped 5% on the ruling.

The Federal Trade Commission, which enforces antitrust laws, had asked Corley to issue an injunction temporarily blocking Microsoft and Activision from closing the deal before the FTC’s in-house judge can review it in an August trial.

Both companies suggested that such a delay would effectively force them to abandon the takeover agreement they signed nearly 18 months ago. Microsoft has promised to pay Activision a $3 billion breakup fee if the deal doesn’t close by July 18.

The case is an important test for the FTC’s heightened scrutiny of the technology industry under Chairperson Lina Khan, who was installed by President Joe Biden in 2021 because of her tough stance on what she sees as monopolistic behavior by tech giants such as Amazon, Google and Facebook parent Meta.

Another judge rebuffed the FTC's attempt earlier this year to stop Meta from taking over the virtual reality fitness company Within Unlimited.

Corley, herself a Biden nominee, expressed skepticism about the FTC’s case during the proceedings, particularly about the hypothetical harms caused if Microsoft were to remove Call of Duty from rival platforms or offer a subpar experience on competing consoles.

“It all comes down again to Call of Duty,” she said. “We're here because of Call of Duty.”

Near the close of the hearing, Corley said the FTC had already achieved a victory for consumers because of promises Microsoft made to some rivals as it sought to clear a path for the Activision Blizzard deal to go through.

As antitrust investigations and legal challenges mounted in the U.S. and around the world, Microsoft pledged that Call of Duty would appear on Nintendo's Switch console, Nvidia's cloud gaming service and other platforms for at least a decade.

“In many ways you won,” Corley told the FTC's lead trial attorney on the case, James Weingarten.

“I don't think we won,” Weingarten responded, saying there was no evidence that the “hastily agreed to” contracts would sufficiently protect the market.

A number of other countries and the European Union have approved the Activision Blizzard takeover, but it still faces opposition from the U.K.’s Competition and Markets Authority. Microsoft is appealing the British regulator's move to block the deal and a tribunal hearing on that is set to begin later this month.

Canadian regulators are also investigating the transaction and have concluded it is “likely to result” in preventing or lessening competition on gaming consoles, subscription services and cloud-based gaming, according to a letter to Microsoft filed in the U.S. case late last month.

When Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas headlined a 2017 program at McLennan Community College in Texas, his hosts had more than a speech in mind. Working with the prominent conservative lawyer Ken Starr, school officials crafted a guest list for a dinner at the home of a wealthy Texas businessman, hoping an audience with Thomas would be a reward for school patrons -– and an inducement to prospective donors.

Before Justice Elena Kagan visited the University of Colorado’s law school in 2019, one official in Boulder suggested a “larger donor to staff ratio” for a dinner with her. After Justice Sonia Sotomayor confirmed she would attend a 2017 question-and-answer session at Clemson University and a private luncheon, officials there made sure to invite $1 million-plus donors to the South Carolina college.

The Associated Press obtained tens of thousands of pages of emails and other documents that reveal the extent to which public colleges and universities have seen visits by justices as opportunities to generate donations -– regularly putting justices in the room with influential donors, including some whose industries have had interests before the court.

Israel’s military has launched air raids on the Jenin refugee camp in the northern occupied West Bank, carrying out an ongoing large-scale attack that involved a missile and the killing of at least four Palestinians, according to residents and officials.

Picture taken by me in June 2023.