Tech and media titans… as well as a small army of Fox News hosts descended on the White House Thursday evening to attend the state dinner honoring China’s president Xi Jinping.
President Trump and First Lady Melania Trump hosted the dinner, which was heavy on corporate bigwigs.
According to a guest list released by the White House, attendees included Paramount Skydance CEO David Ellison, just days after his company inked a settlement to clear its takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery… including CNN, which saw its reporters denied access to the state dinner even after a federal judge reinstated their press passes to the White House complex.
But it was mostly tech giants in attendance, with photos showing Tesla and SpaceX chief Elon Musk sitting at the head table with Trump and Xi, joined by Nvidia’s Jensen Huang and Apple’s Tim Cook.
Earlier this week, there were reports that Ellison may ask Musk to invest in Paramount as part of its WBD takeover.
Other attendees included OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, OpenAI president Greg Brockman, Google co-founder Sergey Brin and CEO Sundar Pichai, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, TikTok investor Jeff Yass, and LCMH CEO Bernard Arnault, along with a slew of other CEOs from finance, manufacturing and other industries.
And there was also a Fox News contingent, with hosts Jesse Watters and Laura Ingraham as well as anchor Bret Baier all making the cut too. Podcast hosts, including Katie Miller (the wife of White House aide Stephen Miller) and David Sacks (tech investor and All-In co-host) were on the list, as was Cheryl Hines, who was there with her husband RFK Jr.
The Singapore International Film Festival (SGIFF) will present its Screen Icon Award to Indian actor, director and producer Aamir Khan at its 37th edition, with a 25th-anniversary Special Presentation screening of “Lagaan: Once Upon a Time in India” alongside director Ashutosh Gowariker.
The festival opens with South Korean thriller “The Assassin(s),” directed by Hur Jin-ho and starring Yoo Hae-jin, Park Hae-il and Lee Min-ho. Hur and supporting cast members Shim Eun-kyung and Park Sung-hoon will attend the opening.
As previously announced, SGIFF will give its Cinema Honorary Award, the festival’s top prize for lasting contributions to Asian cinema, to Japanese filmmaker Kore-eda Hirokazu, with his film “Look Back” screening as part of the program.
SGIFF executive director Jeremy Chua said the edition brings some of the most respected talents and consequential work being made across Asia to Singapore. “Around it, we have also reconsidered how audiences encounter a festival with new presentation formats and points of entry, a ticketing platform that is markedly more intuitive, an industry programme expanded into a resource centre for artists, technicians and storytellers at every stage of practice, and a new free-to-attend section at the intersection of creativity and technology, attending to the forms storytelling will take next,” Chua said.
SGIFF’s “In Conversation With” dialogue series will also feature Shim Eun-kyung, filmmaker Peter Chan Ho-sun and Hong Kong actor Anthony Wong, who will take part in a post-screening dialogue tied to his first acting role in “My Name Ain’t Suzie.” Korean New Wave director Yim Soon-rye will serve as jury head of the Asian Feature Film Competition, while Fukada Koji, director of “Nagi Notes,” cinematographers Ashizawa Akiko and Tom Harari, and director Jacob Cheung will also take part in the festival.
The lineup spotlights more than 25 Singapore productions and co-productions that have earned recognition at festivals including Cannes, Sundance, Toronto, Venice and Melbourne. Among them, “Ah Girl” star Ong Xuan Jing won best actress at the Hong Kong International Film Festival’s Young Cinema Competition, while director Ang Geck Geck won the Youth Jury Award at the International Film Festival Rotterdam. Nelson Yeo’s “The House on the Moon” premiered in competition at Locarno, and Tan Si En of Momo Film Co. co-produced “Nagi Notes,” which premiered in competition at Cannes. Daniel Hui edited “Sleep No More” and “The Burning Giants,” which premiered at the Berlin and Venice film festivals, respectively. Anthony Chen of Giraffe Pictures co-produced “Four Seasons in Java,” and Lai Weijie of E&W Films co-produced “9 Temples to Heaven,” which premiered in the Directors’ Fortnight at Cannes.
SGIFF program director Thong Kay Wee said, “Singapore’s film industry is enjoying its hard-earned recognition on the world stage. This year’s selection of Singapore films and co-productions reflects an increasingly diverse creative ecosystem that is producing internationally competitive work. We are proud to share that many of these filmmakers found their first mentorships through SGIFF, so sharing their stories and work on Singapore screens this year is, in that sense, a homecoming.”
The SGIFF Film Fund also returns after a hiatus. The Tan Ean Kiam Foundation, previously a backer of the Southeast Asian Documentary Grant, will now also support the Southeast Asian Short Film Grant, with both programs falling under the Tan Ean Kiam Foundation-SGIFF banner as SEA-Doc and SEA-Shorts. SEA-Doc shifts this cycle to backing feature documentaries in late edit or finishing stages, while SEA-Shorts continues supporting emerging Southeast Asian filmmakers. The open call for both grants runs Nov. 5 to Dec. 5.
The festival will introduce a Junior Explorers section with sensory-friendly screenings for younger audiences, opening with stop-motion feature “Brave Cat.” Its Undercurrent section will open with three live performances: Taiwanese puppetry piece “Corporeal Forms: Four Stories,” live video gaming work “The Compression Zone” and analog film and music performance “Imagination + The Rest Is My Ghost.” SGIFF Pro, the festival’s industry arm, adds three new programs this year: Parallax, a free public program on filmmaking and immersive technology; Off Campus, a student initiative connecting classroom training with industry exposure; and the Pitching Forum, aimed at co-production between Singapore and international partners.
The festival, supported by the Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA), runs Oct. 21 to Nov. 1.
Hannah Einbinder is speaking out after being arrested earlier Thursday while protesting an appearance by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
The “Hacks” star, who was protesting alongside Sarah Sherman, Susan Sarandon and others, posted on her Instagram story asking her followers to focus on “the devastating genocidal war Israel is waging against the people of Palestine and Southern Lebanon,” and not to “mistake the spectacle for the story.” About 100 protestors were arrested, according to the New York Times.
“If the pictures of my friends and me getting arrested in protest of Netanyahu’s shameful visit to New York draw attention to anything, let it be to the devastating genocidal war Israel is waging against the people of Palestine and Southern Lebanon — to the settler attacks, the home demolitions, the bombing of people as they sleep; to the crimes that happen every SINGLE day but garner almost no international press coverage,” Einbinder wrote.
“The US government has the power to bring an end to all of this killing, pillaging, and land theft, yet instead it chooses to welcome the butcher of Gaza with open arms,” Einbinder continued, “The fact that the orchestrator of all this bloodshed is roaming freely in our cities is an indictment of BOTH REPUBLICANS AND DEMOCRATS who enable and protect architects of genocide like Netanyahu. Let us not mistake the spectacle for the story: genocide is the headline, and it is time for it to end.”
Netanyahu spoke at the U.N. General Assembly in New York and called the demonstrators “phony human rights protestors” as he asked where they were when Iranian security forces killed thousands in January.
“Did you organize mass rallies, hunger strikes?” Netanyahu asked in his speech. “Did you protest outside the Iranian mission to the U.N.?
Rafa Nadal couldn’t stay away. The Spanish tennis icon has been retired for the past couple of years, spending time doing the things he didn’t have time for. Still, he’s picking his racket back up for a special occasion, and is joined by one of his most emblematic rivals: Andy Murray.
In a video shared on Instagram, Nadal revealed that he would be returning to the tennis court to celebrate 10 years of his academy, the Rafa Nadal Tennis Academy. The match will be celebrated on October 3rd, in his hometown of Mallorca, Spain, and will likely feature more surprises for tennis fans.
The video shows Nadal sending Murray a voice note, inviting him to the event. He talks for a couple of minutes, sharing how he didn’t want to interrupt Murray’s golf match and telling him some details about the event.
As soon as he sends the note, Murray sends a text back. “Hi Rafa! I’m in,” he wrote. You can check out the video in full below.
The event was announced back in September, with a statement published on the Academy’s official website. It revealed that Nadal would be playing various exhibition matches at the school, starting at 5 PM. The release teased more figures involved in the project, sharing that Nadal would be playing alongside some of the “biggest names in the sport.”
This marks the first time Nadal will be playing in front of an audience since his retirement in November 2024 at the Davis Cup in Malaga.
“The Rafa Nadal Academy Slam will be broadcast live on Movistar Plus, which will provide extensive coverage to ensure fans do not miss Rafa Nadal’s return to the court,” explains the website.
Novak Djokovic, Roger Federer, Nadal, and Andy Murray at the 2025 Roland Garros
Nadal and Murray’s friendship and rivalry
Nadal was a part of an exciting generation of tennis players, developing many exciting rivalries that formed into long-term friendships. Andy Murray, from the UK, was a key figure in his career, with the two playing against each other 24 times.
Nadal has the most wins of their encounters, leading 17 – 7. Their last official match against each other was at the Mutua Madrid Open in 2016. Murray won the match 7–5, 6–4. They both retired in 2024.
The new MS NOW streaming “Membership” comes with perks.
The Versant-backed news outlet will give subscribers to its recently-launched subscription app a chance to win tickets to attend the first Power to the People Festival at Merriweather Post Pavilion in Columbia, Md., on Saturday, Oct. 3.
People interested in taking part can enter by answering the prompt: “What song from the past feels newly meaningful in America today, and why?” at ms.now/power-to-the-people-contest. Terms and conditions apply. The contest opens Thursday, Sept. 24, and closes at 11:59 p.m. eastern on Saturday, Sept. 26. Winners will be announced Monday, Sept. 28, on “The Beat with Ari Melber,” which airs at 6 p.m. eastern on MS NOW, ms.now, or on the MS NOW app.
The sold-out festival is curated by Rock & Roll Hall of Fame guitarist and songwriter Tom Morello. Among those slated to perform are: Foo Fighters, Dave Matthews, Joan Baez, Public Enemy, Brittany Howard, Killer Mike, Cypress Hill, The Linda Lindas, Dropkick Murphys, Serj Tankian, Jack Black, Darryl “DMC” McDaniels, Taylor Momsen, Matt Cameron and Bruce Springsteen.
Other streaming services offer off-screen benefits, including Disney’s Disney+, which on occasion makes available access to products and services tied to its broader entertainment portfolio.
MS NOW will serve as the exclusive livestream destination for Power to the People. The event will stream live on MS NOW’s YouTube channel. The livestream will be produced by Tenth Planet Productions and directed by Joel Gallen.
Ari Melber will be on the grounds of the festival throughout the day, connecting audiences with the artists across MS NOW’s television, digital and social platforms.
MS NOW will also host its new Members Lounge at Merriweather Post Pavilion. Members can use the pop-up as place to meet others and connect, as well as recharge between performances. The Lounge recently debuted alongside a live telecast of the MS NOW program “The Weeknight” in Dallas.
Tribeca Festival and AT&T have opened submissions for the 10th anniversary of AT&T Untold Stories, the filmmaker development program that awards one emerging director $1.2 million to produce a feature film.
The production prize, which increased from $1 million to $1.2 million in 2026, is billed by Tribeca and AT&T as the largest unrestricted film production award of its kind in the world. Submissions for the upcoming edition are open through Jan. 18.
Each year, five filmmaking teams are selected to pitch their projects live at the Tribeca Festival, with one winner receiving full production funding, year-round mentorship and support from Tribeca Studios. The winning film is also guaranteed a premiere at the following year’s festival.
The next recipient will be selected at the 2027 Tribeca Festival and will receive $1.2 million toward production ahead of a guaranteed premiere at the 2028 edition.
“Tribeca is incredibly proud of our decade-long collaboration with AT&T and the success of the filmmakers who have come through Untold Stories,” said Bryce Norbitz, VP of Tribeca Studios and artist development. “We’ve watched pioneering storytellers take bold new ideas from concept to screen, garner the support of major distributors, and reach the audiences their stories deserve.”
Norbitz added that the program’s continued growth is “a testament to the power of investing in emerging voices, especially at a time when independent filmmaking has never been tougher.”
Launched in 2017, Untold Stories has awarded more than $9.2 million in funding, supported more than 45 projects and produced eight feature films. Recent winners include David Fortune’s “Color Book,” Lilian T. Mehrel’s “Honeyjoon” and Liz Sargent’s “Take Me Home,” all of which secured theatrical releases in 2026. Other past recipients include Faraday Okoro’s “Nigerian Prince,” Sasie Sealy’s “Lucky Grandma,” Kate Tsang’s “Marvelous and the Black Hole,” Nardeep Khurmi’s “Land of Gold,” So Young Shelly Yo’s “Smoking Tigers” and Sid Gopinath’s 2026 winner “Minnesota Goodbye.”
Filmmakers can submit projects through Jan. 18 at Tribeca’s Untold Stories website.
Everyone knows Jeff Koons or Marina Abramović, but the art world has been hiding another celebrity: star auctioneer and former Sotheby’s chairman Simon de Pury.
“He’s in the shadows but also in the spotlight. It’s precisely this contrast that fascinates me and makes him a good character for a film: someone who’s reserved and almost shy at times but then becomes the ‘Mick Jagger of auctions.’ This nickname suits him well,” says “The Hammer” director Simon Wallon.
His documentary, world-premiering at Zurich Film Festival, was produced by Kiss & Kill, AIG, Formapro Films, On a Whim Films, Lazy Mike Gallery and Black Square Magazine.
It debuts an exclusive clip here:
Wallon – also behind “Bonnie,” about casting director Bonnie Timmermann – was immediately drawn to de Pury’s “magnetism, knowledge of art and larger-than-life personality.” Not to mention his exuberant style when conducting auctions.
“When we come from the outside, we often assume that what he does could hurt artistry or art in general. But within the art world, it’s not perceived that way at all,” he notes.
In the doc, which delves into his past – and past auctions, including the one in Moscow, which felt “like a historical event where communism and capitalism collided,” says Wallon – artists like Chloe Wise, Lou Zhenggang, Koons and Abramović also sing his praises.
And as for Simon de Pury himself? He doesn’t mind these Jagger comparisons at all.
“Decades ago, [writer] Bob Colacello introduced me this way. Other monikers mentioned ‘Leonard Bernstein or [conductor] Herbert von Karajan of the auction world,’ but it’s the Mick Jagger one that stuck,” he recalls.
“As an unconditional admirer of the Rolling Stones, I have, of course, done nothing to dissuade anyone from saying it.”
Still, he doesn’t expect apprentice auctioneers to do the same.
“Whenever I train young auctioneers, I tell them: ‘Don’t try to imitate anyone – be yourself.’ The style of the auctioneer I’ve most admired, Peter Wilson [the chairman of Sotheby’s from 1958 to 1980], could not have been more different from mine.”
He still gets nervous picking up the gavel, though.
“I have extreme stage fright before every single auction,” he admits.
“The responsibility of any auctioneer is to obtain the highest possible price. At Sotheby’s or Phillips, an important part of their yearly [revenue] can be decided within an hour during the big evening sales. For a charity, their yearly budget can depend on it.”
He adds: “For me, every auction I conduct is the most important one I’ve ever done. Being good at the last one doesn’t mean you’ll automatically be good at the next one. It requires maximum mental and physical concentration.”
According to de Pury, Wallon’s film opens up a window to a world that isn’t easily accessible.
“It also demonstrates that passion and curiosity for art ultimately bring everyone in the art world together,” he says.
That’s what Wallon saw in him, too.
“In the film, Simon says that he never stops dreaming, just like when he was a kid. And that the minute you stop dreaming, it’s the end. I couldn’t agree more,” he notes. After all, de Pury is also an artist, photographer – and a DJ known as The Swiss Crocodile.
“Dreaming gives you that energy – dreaming in the sense of wanting to achieve things and believing it’s possible. The difficulty lies in keeping that up for as long as possible, and Simon has managed to keep that little flame lit through the years,” says the director.
“I think that’s what gives him all that energy. He genuinely marvels at the things he sees.”
Cathie Wood’s $ARK Invest is putting its venture fund on blockchain rails, bringing a portfolio that includes stakes in OpenAI, Anthropic, Stripe and Databricks onto blockchain rails.
The $ARK Venture Fund (ARKVX) will issue tokenized interests using infrastructure from Securitize (SECZ), with the tokenization firm handling onchain issuance and the investor experience.
ARKVX will be first available on Ethereum
ETH$2,648.01
with other networks potentially following, the firms said.
“Making the $ARK Venture Fund available onchain is a natural extension of our mission to democratize access to technologically enabled disruptive innovation,” Wood, $ARK‘s founder, CEO and chief investment officer, said in a statement.
For Securitize CEO Carlos Domingo, one draw is giving investors diversified exposure to sought-after private technology companies.
“If you don’t know whether OpenAI or Anthropic are gonna win the AI race, here you get both of them in a diversified pool,” Domingo told CoinDesk TV.
The Solana Foundation has appointed former Binance executive Rachel Conlan as its new chief strategy officer, adding a high-profile crypto industry veteran as the Solana (SOL) blockchain makes a bigger push into institutional finance and tokenized assets.
Conlan will lead strategy across institutional partnerships, ecosystem growth and efforts to bring more companies onto Solana, the foundation said Thursday. She spent previously three years at Binance, most recently as global chief marketing officer, before leaving the crypto exchange in June.
The foundation also hired Jamal Raees as general manager for payments. Raees joins from Polygon Labs, the development organization behind the Polygon network (POL), and previously worked at stablecoin infrastructure firm Bridge (now part of Stripe) and crypto payments firm Wyre. He will focus on getting payments companies and other businesses to use Solana for moving money.
The appointments come as Solana increasingly courts traditional financial firms and positions its network as infrastructure for more than crypto trading. Stablecoin payments, tokenized funds and equities have become a bigger part of that pitch as financial institutions experiment with moving assets and settlement onto public blockchains.
Solana has reached a significant milestone by surpassing the 1 million mark in the number of tokenized stock holders. This achievement is considered a science fiction feat just two years ago. Solana holds approximately 95% market share in on-chain tokenized stock trading and continues to outperform its competitors in this area.
Solana’s Rise in Numbers
The supply of tokenized shares on Solana reached a record high of $684 million in mid-September, representing a 47% increase in just three weeks. During the same period, the 30-day real-world asset trading volume reached $3.3 billion. Among Solana’s tokenized shares, NVDAx, a tokenized representation of NVIDIA shares, leads in holder numbers. New listings like Nike have accelerated this trend, moving beyond technology-heavy portfolios. Furthermore, integration with platforms like Pump.fun has attracted users who previously lacked access to tokenized shares.
The Meaning of Tokenized Shares
Tokenized shares, as blockchain-based tokens, represent ownership or exposure to traditional shares. These tokens are traded on-chain, exchanged almost instantly, and are accessible 24/7. On Solana, primary issuers like xStocks distribute them through networks like Backpack Securities.
Points to Consider
While the figure of 1 million seems impressive, this number measures wallet addresses, not verified unique individuals. A person may have multiple wallets, and incentive programs can inflate these numbers. As of the end of September, the verified number was recorded as 900,000. Furthermore, the composition of these wallets is also important.
If the majority of growth is driven by users holding almost insignificant positions, the headline figure might appear more impressive than the underlying economic activity warrants. However, supply and volume figures tell a more solid story; a total supply of $684 million and a monthly volume of $3.3 billion reflect the true flows of capital.
