ROME (AP) - Rome fashion house Fendi announced Wednesday that Kim Jones is succeeding the late Karl Lagerfeld as creative director of haute couture, ready-to-wear and fur collections for women. Jones will take on the Fendi duties while staying on as artistic director of Dior Homme, another house in the Paris-based luxury goods empire of LVMH chief Bernard Arnault. He joins the third-generation Silvia Venturini Fendi, who will continue in charge of creating Fendi accessories and menswear collections. The British-born Jones fills the void left by the 2019 death of Lagerfeld, who had joined Fendi in 1965 and had been its womenswear design chief since 1977. Jones' first Fendi collection will be ready-to-wear shown during the fall-winter 2021-2022 fashion week in February. It's the second major fashion partnership announced in recent months, after news that Raf Simons would join Miuccia Prada as co-creative director of Prada. Their first joint women's spring-summer 2021 collection will be shown in Milan later this month. Arnault, chief executive of Fendi parent company LVMH, praised Jones for having proven he could "adapt to the codes and heritage of the LVMH houses while revisiting them with great modernity and audacity." Jones, who joined Louis Vuitton in 2011 and moved to Dior Homme seven years later, said working at Fendi and Dior together was a "huge privilege." Fendi said she was looking forward to taking the Rome house "to the next level with him."

CANBERRA, Australia (AP) - Australian regulators have ruled out prosecuting TikTok over an apparent suicide video under tough new laws prohibiting some forms of violent online images, but the prime minister urged social media companies on Wednesday to take more responsibility for offensive content. The Chinese-owned social media platform says it is working to remove videos of a man apparently taking his own life with a gun and banning users who keep trying to spread the clips through the app. It's the latest example of the ongoing struggle by big tech companies to police their platforms for harmful content amid increasing pressure from regulators. Prime Minister Scott Morrison said eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant, Australia's online watchdog, is taking "strong action" against what he described as a "disgraceful video." "Those who run these organizations have a responsibility to those who are watching and particularly when it comes to children," Morrison said in a video released by his office. "My message to those social media companies is, yes, your products are changing the world, but with that comes a great responsibility and you need to be accountable and you need to be responsible for making sure that your product does not harm Australians, and my government will be making sure that we do everything to hold you to account for that," he said. Australia last year took extraordinary legislative steps to remove violent content from internet platforms. Social media executives can be imprisoned if their platforms stream real violence under the new laws. The legislation was a response to an Australian gunman who used a helmet-mounted camera to broadcast live on Facebook as he murdered 51 worshippers in two mosques in the New Zealand city of...

BERLIN (AP) - Germany's top security official criticized the country's independent press watchdog Wednesday for ruling that a left-wing newspaper's column disparaging the police was covered by freedom of speech. Interior Minister Horst Seehofer said in a statement that the verdict was "intolerable" because it played down what he considered libelous comments about the police. The German Press Council ruled Tuesday that the column in the Tageszeitung daily, headlined "All cops are unfit for work," had addressed structural problems within the police force, such as far-right extremism, violence and racism, in a satirical way. The columnist had suggested that police officers would be better off working on garbage dumps. Seehofer had initially threatened to file a criminal complaint against the column's author after it appeared in June, but then backed off after Chancellor Angela Merkel intervened in the matter. The newspaper's editor in chief, Barbara Junge, welcomed the Press Council's ruling. Germany was ranked 11th in the World Press Freedom Index compiled annually by Reporters without Borders. The group noted that "solid constitutional guarantees and an independent judiciary ensure a favorable environment for journalists" in Germany, but warned of threats and physical attacks against journalists by extremists and hostile demonstrators.

In an historic move, the Oscars are raising the inclusion bar for best picture nominees starting with the 96th Academy Awards in 2024. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences on Tuesday laid out sweeping eligibility reforms to the best picture category intended to encourage diversity and equitable representation on screen and off, addressing gender, sexual orientation, race, ethnicity and disability. The film academy has established four broad representation categories: On screen; among the crew; at the studio; and in opportunities for training and advancement in other aspects of the film's development and release. Each standard has detailed subcategories as well. To meet the on-screen representation standard, a film must either have at least one lead character or a significant supporting character be from an underrepresented racial or ethnic group, at least 30% of secondary roles must be from two underrepresented groups or the main storyline, theme or narrative must be focused on an underrepresented group. According to the academy, underrepresented groups include women, people of color, people who identify as LGBTQ+ or people with disabilities The best picture award, which is handed out to the producers of a film, is the one category which every film academy member can vote for. Earlier this year, the South Korean film "Parasite" became the first non-English language film to win the award. All other categories will be held to their current eligibility requirements. "The aperture must widen to reflect our diverse global population in both the creation of motion pictures and in the audiences who connect with them," said Academy President David Rubin and CEO Dawn Hudson in a written statement. "We believe these inclusion standards will be a catalyst for long-lasting, essential change in our...

LOS ANGELES (AP) - Who do we keep up with now? After more than a decade, "Keeping Up With the Kardashians" will be ending its run next year. "It is with heavy hearts that we say goodbye" to the reality show, Kim Kardashian West and other members of the extended Kardashian-Jenner family said in a statement Tuesday. "We've decided as a family to end this very special journey," said their social media statement, without further explanation about the move. The series became a pop culture sensation and gave rise to a new kind of fame born of reality TV. It also was the launch pad for several family members' fashion and beauty business empires and led to Kardashian West's surprising reinvention as a social justice crusader and aspiring lawyer. "We are beyond grateful to all of you who've watched us for all of these years -through the good times, the bad times, the happiness, the tears, and the many relationships and children," the family said. Besides Kardashian West, others names attached to the statement were Kris, Kendall and Kylie Jenner; Kourtney, Khloe and Rob Kardashian, and Scott Disick. The announcement comes as Kanye West pursues an independent run for the U.S. presidency, representing what he said is the Birthday Party. Kardashian West's husband has faced questions about his emotional state after a rocky campaign kickoff event in South Carolina. The show's home, the E! network, said it's a delayed farewell. The new season begins Sept. 17, with the final season to air in 2021. The series, which debuted in October 2007, begat 12 spin-offs, including "Kourtney and Khloe Take Miami" and "Revenge Body with Khloe Kardashian." At the show's start, the name Kardashian was familiar to few. Some young people knew Kim Kardashian as the sidekick of...

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) - Disney is under fire for filming part of its live-action reboot "Mulan" in Xinjiang, the region in China where the government has been accused of human rights abuses against Uighurs and other predominantly Muslim minorities. The final credits in the film, which was released on Disney Plus last week and is being rolled out in several countries this month, thank propaganda departments in Xinjiang and the public security bureau of Turpan, a Uighur-majority city in the region. Human rights activists and some China experts have taken to social media to condemn Disney for turning a blind eye to alleged abuses in Xinjiang. They accuse the American enterprise of kowtowing to China for access to its lucrative movie market, the second-largest in the world. Amnesty International tweeted a link to a media report on the controversy and asked Disney, "Can you show us your human rights due diligence report?" A Washington Post opinion contributor called the movie a scandal, and one widely shared tweet suggested the Mulan crew would have seen "reeducation camps" for Uighurs en route to filming locations. Uighurs and other predominantly Muslim minorities in the remote Xinjiang region have been locked up in camps as part of a government assimilation campaign launched in response to decades of sometimes violent struggle against Chinese rule. Some have been subjected to forced sterilization and abortion, and in recent months, ordered to drink traditional Chinese medicines to combat the coronavirus outbreak. Chinese authorities defend the camps as job training centers, though former detainees describe them as prison-like facilities where they were humiliated, beaten and deprived of food. "There is no so-called reeducation camp in Xinjiang," foreign ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian said when...

Hess Corp. on Tuesday said it made another oil discovery off the coast of Guyana.

Oil fell to its lowest intraday level since June as signs of faltering demand continue to depress prices and a slump in equities soured market sentiment.

West Texas Intermediate for October delivery fell $3.09 to $36.68 a barrel in early trading Tuesday. Crude in London also tumbled below $40 a barrel for the first time since late June in the wake of faltering demand and weaker equities dampening market sentiment.

The Greenwood football team will look to refocus this week after suffering a disappointing road loss to Brownwood on Friday.