VENICE, Italy (AP) - Restricted travel, quarantine and positive COVID-19 tests meant that Majid Majidi's appearance at the Venice Film Festival for Iranian drama "Sun Children" (Khorshid) was an achievement in itself. The film follows the story of Ali and his three friends on the streets of Tehran, as they try to find hidden treasure, digging a tunnel underneath a local charity school for street kids and child laborers. "It was difficult to come here," the director told Associated Press on Monday. "This was a whole new experience, like a new life." For 14-year-old lead Rouhollah Zamanisaghselou, in his first ever acting role, the coronavirus put a stop to his moment in the spotlight, after he tested positive and was unable to travel to Italy as planned. "I told him when he was working hard digging in that tunnel that this film will become famous in the world and you will forget the pains. Then (when he tested positive for the virus) he told me: 'Mr. Majidi what should I do?' I was left behind with the pain." Zamanisaghselou and many of the cast members were child laborers themselves when they were interviewed for the movie. Majidi explains that the casting process was extremely difficult but rich with talent. "I actually interviewed two to three thousand kids and there was a lot of intelligence and potential kids in those groups," he said, adding that their backgrounds meant they had a lot of depth. "Because of the tough times they have been through, they are much more receptive and kind of older than their age and that's why they learn faster and better," Majidi said. "This was a huge encouragement and inspiration for them to become artists and actors, they couldn't even dream of such a thing before. This made them focus very closely and...

Asian shares declined on Wednesday after a sell-off of big technology stocks on Wall Street pulled U.S. benchmarks lower. Crude oil prices and Treasury yields also weakened. Australia's benchmark led regional declines on Wednesday, losing more than 2%. Japan's Nikkei 225 fell 1.6%. Troubles with Astra-Zeneca's coronavirus vaccine trial and simmering China-U.S. tensions also have rattled investors. "At a minimum, the optimism balloon floated by vaccine hopes has sprung a sizable leak," Stephen Innes of AxiCorp. said in a commentary. Talk by President Donald Trump of "decoupling" the U.S. economy from China, as the presidential campaign heats up has ramped up uncertainty as Washington seeks to limit use of U.S. technology by Chinese companies, citing national security concerns. The relationship between the world's two largest economies has been on edge for years, and the antagonism threatens to further undermine global growth at a time when the coronavirus pandemic has pushed many countries into recession. Tokyo's Nikkei 225 lost 1.6% to 22,904.31 and the Hang Seng in Hong Kong dropped 1% to 24,390.21. Australia's S&P/ASX 200 tumbled 2.3% to 5,872.10 and the Shanghai Composite index shed 1.4% to 3,271.79. South Korea's Kospi fell 0.7% to 2,834.59. Among big losers in the technology sector were SoftBank Group Corp., which fell 5.%, Alibaba Group Holding, whose shares fell 2.5% in Hong Kong and semiconductor maker SMIC. which lost 2.7%. Shares also fell in Taiwan and most of Southeast Asia. Overnight, the S&P 500 fell 2.8% to 3,331.84, clinching its first three-day losing streak in nearly three months. Nearly 90% of all shares were lower. Apple, Microsoft and Amazon were among the Big Tech stocks to sink more than 4%, torpedoing broad market...

Wall Street's summer-long party fueled by investors' appetite for some of the world's best-known technology companies has come to an abrupt, if not entirely unexpected, halt. The sharp sell-off that began last Thursday has wiped out nearly 7.1% from the S&P 500 as of Tuesday, its first three-day skid in nearly three months. The Nasdaq composite, home to Apple, Amazon, Zoom, Tesla and many other tech stocks that led the market's remarkable five-month comeback from its lows in March, has lost more than 10% after setting an all-time high just four days ago - a decline known in the market as a correction. Call the last three trading sessions a reality check after what many analysts say was an overdone push by traders into technology companies, especially in August. "The bottom line is that this correction was long overdue and likely has more downside over the next few weeks (and) months as these positions are cleared out," Morgan Stanley analysts wrote in a research note Tuesday, noting technology stocks had a "parabolic move" last month. Tech stocks jumped 11.8% in August, the sector's best month since a 13.7% surge in April. Investors' craving for technology companies was fueled by low interest rates, customers stuck at home while the pandemic raged, and efforts by the U.S. government to support out-of-work Americans. An improving outlook for corporate profits has also kept traders in a buying mood. Wall Street also got a big boost from the Federal Reserve, which has taken unprecedented actions to keep markets running smoothly and also encourage borrowing by keeping interest rates extremely low. Meanwhile, a surge in trading in options contracts, which give investors the right to buy or sell hundreds of thousands of shares of stock at a time,...

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka (AP) - Fresh fires that erupted on a large oil tanker drifting off Sri Lanka are under control again, the country's navy said Wednesday. A new blaze broke out Monday on the MT New Diamond, which was carrying nearly 2 million barrels of crude oil, and reached the magnitude of last week's fire, only a day after it was extinguished. Officials have warned of massive environmental damage to Sri Lanka's coast if the ship leaks or explodes. "The fire has now been brought under control and the ship is being towed by a tugboat to out to sea," said navy spokesperson Indika de Silva. "There are no flames or smoke to be noticed as of now," he said, adding that the navy's specially trained firefighting and disaster management team will join with firefighting experts from India's coast guard and specialists sent by the ship's owner on Wednesday to assess the situation. Ten British and Dutch professionals, including rescue operation specialists, disaster evaluators and legal consultants, reached the scene on Monday and are waiting to board the tanker to begin the mission of salvaging it. The experts were sent by New Shipping Ltd., the commercial owner of the New Diamond in Athens, Greece. The tanker is about 30 nautical miles (55 kilometers) off the coast and the plan is to position it is at 40 nautical miles to facilitate salvaging work, de Silva said. The tanker was transporting crude oil from the port of Mina Al Ahmadi in Kuwait to the Indian port of Paradip, where the state-owned Indian Oil Corp. has a refinery. High winds, extreme temperatures on the ship and sparks reignited the fresh fires, the navy said, adding that so far there is no risk of an oil leak or of the fire spreading into the oil storage area. The navy said the initial fire began...

By Jenny Erpenbeck New Directions. 212 pp. $16.95 - - - "Not a Novel," the latest from Jenny Erpenbeck, bears the subtitle "A Memoir in Pieces," and yet it does not include much memoir, strictly speaking. Though this author's 2017 novel, "Go, Went, Gone," was greeted with acclaim, for the new selection of essays her American editors preferred a shorter selection than appeared in the original German. Thus the author's recollections of growing up in the Communist East, and of the upheavals that followed the Wall coming down - the memoir material, in other words - are confined to a brief opening section. That section is titled "Life," and indeed, the reminiscences have a crackling vitality. In one, the adult Erpenbeck at last gets to open her "Stasi file," the record kept by the now-defunct secret police, and there discovers middle-school love letters. In another her dead mother's old pressure cooker proves full of surprises. Both memories are expressed with masterful touches of repetition, achieving a telegraphic poetry. Nevertheless, the section comes to no more than a handful of pieces, a number of them only a couple of pages. Meatier by far is the group that follows, "Literature and Music." These investigations into Erpenbeck's joint calling (she directs opera, as well as writing novels) bristle with erudite allusion, not to mention sheer smarts. Repetition remains a hallmark of her style, but here it turns canny, yielding aphoristic gems: "Both literature and music are closely connected to ... silence, in their essence they are nothing but interpretations of ... silence, at least insofar as they aim to arrive at something like truth." She meditates on forebears from the Brothers Grimm to the late W.G. Sebald, and in the process illuminates fresh parallels between...

Facebook software engineer Ashok Chandwaney has watched with growing unease as the platform has become a haven for hate. Tuesday morning, it came time to take a stand. "I'm quitting because I can no longer stomach contributing to an organization that is profiting off hate in the US and globally," wrote Chandwaney in a letter posted on Facebook's internal employee network shortly after 8 a.m. Pacific. The nearly 1,300-word document was detailed, bristling with links to bolster its claims and scathing in its conclusions. "We don't benefit from hate," Facebook spokeswoman Liz Bourgeois said. "We invest billions of dollars each year to keep our community safe and are in deep partnership with outside experts to review and update our policies. This summer we launched an industry leading policy to go after QAnon, grew our fact-checking program, and removed millions of posts tied to hate organizations - over 96% of which we found before anyone reported them to us." Tuesday's resignation made Chandwaney the latest Facebook employee to quit amid rising discontent within a company that, just a few years ago, was seen as an ideal employer - exciting, deep-pocketed and, as Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg frequently said, animated by the seemingly benevolent mission of connecting the world together. Worker frustration with Facebook's policies on hate and racist speech has risen as protests against racial injustice have swept the country, with thousands of employees demanding that Zuckerberg, who controls a majority of Facebook's voting shares, change his stances. While Facebook does not disclose the number of engineers it employs, engineers are some of the most sought-after employees and command some of the highest salaries at the company, according to people familiar with Facebook. Chandwaney, 28, who is gender non-binary and...

WASHINGTON - President Donald Trump's reelection campaign is paying to replace sod on the White House South Lawn and in the Rose Garden after damage to the greenery late last month from large crowds and heavy equipment used for Republican National Convention festivities, White House and campaign officials said Tuesday. Trump's unprecedented decision to stage overtly political events on public property - which drew complaints that the Trumps were using "the people's house" for personal gain - continues to reverberate nearly two weeks later as work crews re-sod the lawn and make other repairs. On Aug. 27, Trump delivered his address formally accepting the Republican nomination on the South Lawn before an estimated 1,500 supporters seated on chairs. The president spoke from an enormous stage built in front of the South Portico of the White House. It was flanked by massive television screens and illuminated by scores of hulking spotlights - all particularly heavy equipment to position on grass. Two nights earlier, first lady Melania Trump delivered her convention address in the newly reconstructed Rose Garden, with dozens of supporters seated in chairs. Turf was laid atop the grass as a protective measure, according to one White House official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because aides were not authorized to discuss some details. "The sod is being replaced at no cost to taxpayers," said White House spokesman Judd Deere. "Additionally, there has been other planned infrastructure work taking place on the south grounds." A Trump campaign official confirmed that the sod replacement was being paid for with campaign funds. Katie Liming, a spokeswoman for the National Park Service Capital Region, confirmed that the repairs are being paid for with political funds, as required under the convention's agreement for...

He almost didn't make it ashore. Cpl. Waverly Woodson, an Army medic in the only African American combat unit to storm the beaches of Normandy on D-Day, was bleeding from his thigh and backside, writhing from the burning shrapnel that hailed down on him and his battalion. His landing craft came under heavy German fire and hit a mine as it approached Omaha Beach on June 6, 1944. Despite his critical wounds, Woodson sprinted onto the sand once his boat crashed ashore and set up a medical station, according to an account of his actions in the book "Forgotten: The Untold Story of D-Day's Black Heroes, at Home and at War," by Linda Hervieux. For the next 30 hours, Woodson extracted bullets from fellow soldiers, cleaned their wounds, rescued four Brits from drowning and amputated one soldier's foot, before collapsing from his own injuries. "Dozens, if not hundreds, of lives of his fellow soldiers were saved" because of his "outstanding courage and bravery," said Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., who is leading a push in Congress to award Woodson a posthumous Medal of Honor, the nation's most prestigious military decoration for acts of valor. On Tuesday, Van Hollen and other members of Congress were joined by Woodson's widow, Joann Woodson, as they unveiled bipartisan legislation to authorize the president to award the medal 15 years after Woodson's death. The White House said in a statement that President Donald Trump is inclined to support the bill. Woodson is one of an untold number of Black service members passed over for the Medal of Honor whose cases have received renewed attention decades later, as their families and historians try to correct a historical record in which the contributions of Black service members are often left out. Of hundreds of thousands of Black...

DOUGLASVILLE, Ga. (AP) - A Georgia sheriff's deputy delivering civil papers returned to her patrol vehicle to find an eager - and hungry - new driver. The Douglas County deputy was serving the documents near Douglasville last week when she heard something in her patrol car and was met by a goat climbing into the open driver's side. The animal clamored around, munched on some paperwork and knocked over a drink before managing to bump the deputy to the ground. The sheriff's office explained in a Facebook post on Friday that the deputy often leaves the door open on such calls in case she has to make a quick escape from aggressive dogs - but she never considered having to retreat from an agitated goat. Officials said the deputy was not physically harmed during the encounter - and she managed to retrieve the soggy paperwork before the animal scampered off.

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) - Belarusian authorities on Wednesday detained one of the last leading members of an opposition council who remained free, moving methodically to end a month of protests against authoritarian President Alexander Lukashenko. Lawyer Maxim Znak, a member of the Coordination Council created by the opposition to facilitate talks with the country's leader of 26 years on a transition of power, was taken out of the council's office by unidentified people in ski masks, his associate Gleb German said. He said Znak only had time to text message "masks" before they took the phone away from him. Unidentified people were also trying to enter the apartment of the last member of the council's executive presidium who remained free, Svetlana Alexievich, who won the 2015 Nobel Prize in literature. Last month, Alexievich was questioned by Belarusian investigators, who have opened a criminal investigation into members of the Coordination Council, accusing them of undermining national security by calling for a transfer of power. Several council members were arrested and others were forcibly expelled from the country. Maria Kolesnikova, a leading member of the council, was detained Monday in the capital of Minsk along with two other council members and then driven early Tuesday to the border, where authorities told them to cross into Ukraine. When they arrived in a no-man's land between the countries, Kolesnikova ripped her passport into small pieces to make it impossible for the authorities to expel her. She remained in custody on the Belarusian side of the border after the incident, but her whereabouts were unclear. Lukashenko has dismissed the opposition as Western stooges and rejected demands from the U.S. and the European Union to engage in a dialogue with...