With hundreds of passengers on Emirates Flight 203 from Dubai to New York off the plane and evaluated, health officials will try to pinpoint the cause of the illness that sent 10 passengers to the hospital and left dozens of other passengers reportedly feeling sick.

The investigation of what went wrong will involve the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and state, local and airport officials. 

Officials will zero in on passengers on the Airbus A380 superjumbo jet who got sick as well as those who didn’t to try to determine the source of the illness, according to Dr. Robert Amler,  dean of New York Medical College’s School of Health Sciences and Practice and a former CDC chief medical officer and New York Regional Health Administrator.  

MORE: Emirates plane briefly quarantined at JFK airport after 19 passengers are deemed sick

“This is really medical detective work,” he said.

Among the questions that will be asked, Amler said:

• Were the passengers who went to the hospital seated in a particular section of the plane or spread throughout the plane? 
• What did the affected passengers eat on the plane?
• At what point in the long flight did they get sick? And did they all get sick at once or was it gradual?

“In a disease investigation of any kind, you begin with trying to say what is common on the sick and still was rare among the well?” Amler said.

IN PICTURES: Emirates flight quarantined at John F. Kennedy airport (story continues below)

 

The early signs point to flu symptoms, according to a spokesman for New York Mayor Bill de Blasio. The CDC reported that many passengers complained of cough and fever.

Investigators will pay special attention, of course, to test results from passengers who ended up in the hospital. The airline identified three passengers and seven crew members sick enough to be sent to the hospital. The mayor’s office said it identified 19 ill passengers, with nine refusing medical attention.

 

“The results of those tests can also be very, very helpful,” Amler said. “Is this some kind of infection? Is this some kind of toxic exposure to some chemical in the plane? Could this be some kind of mold exposure, or some other kind of food or water borne exposure?”

The good news, Amler said, is that officials are trained on how to investigate these situations. There are regular drills.

 “This kind of scenario is a well rehearsed one,” he said. “Every member of the team is going to know what their expectations are.”

Amler said the investigation is not likely to drag on.

“Typically after a few days they should be getting their arms around at least the most likely scenario,” he said.

After Flight 203 landed, the plane was taken to a  location away from the terminal at New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport, according to a statement from the CDC.  Medical personnel from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention  boarded the aircraft to evaluate the situation and provided immediate assistance before passengers deplaned and were processed by U.S. Customs and Border Patrol.

By early Wednesday afternoon, Emirates had its A380 back and announced a three-hour delay on the return flight to Dubai.

The CDC said it will provide updates as they become available.

IN PICTURES: The world’s Airbus A380 fleet 

 

 

 

Read or Share this story: https://usat.ly/2M0sHJi

Mark Chapman explains how the 32-team NFL is structured around conferences, divisions and play-offs that culminate in the Super Bowl, as the 2018/19 season prepares for kick-off.

You can watch the first NFL Show of the 2018/19 season on the BBC iPlayer.

READ MORE: NFL defensive player record broken again

Palestinians and right groups condemned a decision by an Israeli court that gave the green light for the military to demolish a Bedouin village in the occupied West Bank, forcibly evicting 180 residents there.

In a statement on Wednesday, the Ramallah-based Palestinian Authority said the decision to raze the Khan al-Ahmar village consolidates Israel’s “colonial project” of building “an arc of settlements” that effectively cut off occupied East Jerusalem from the rest of the West Bank.

“This illegal decision uncovers the colonial DNA of Israel’s institutions that work to confiscate Palestinian lands … effectively alienating it from the West Bank and killing any hopes for a future contiguous Palestinian state,” it said.

Khan al-Ahmar is situated a few kilometres from Jerusalem in the middle of two major illegal Israeli settlements, Maale Adumim and Kfar Adumim, which the Israeli government wants to expand. The removal of the Bedouin village enables the Israeli government to cut the West Bank in two.

The High Court rejected petitions against the demolition and said a temporary injunction that had put a hold on the move would lapse in a week.

Israeli Defence Minister Avigdor Lieberman praised the justices’ decision on Twitter calling it “brave”.

“Khan al-Ahmar will be evacuated. I congratulate the Supreme Court judges for their brave decision. Nobody [is] above law. Nobody can prevent us from consolidating our sovereignty,” Lieberman said.

The mood in the village, where residents attended a protest after the ruling, was despondent.

“We have gone through all the procedures in court, now we can do nothing more,” said Tawfiq Jabareen, a lawyer for the community. “If anything can prevent the demolition, it is the political process.”

‘Courts of occupiers’

The villagers are members of the Bedouin Jahalin tribe that was expelled from their lands in the Naqab (Negev) desert by the Israeli military in the 1950s. They were displaced twice more before they settled in Khan al-Ahmar, long before the illegal settlements around it existed.

The small community of 40 families live in tents and shacks on what is classified by the 1993 Oslo Accords as Area C, which accounts for 60 percent of the West Bank and is under total Israeli administrative and security control.

The court’s decision was largely based on the premise that the village was built without Israeli permission, which Palestinians say is impossible to obtain because of the expansion of illegal Jewish-only Israeli settlements there.

United Nations figures show Israeli authorities have approved just 1.5 percent of all permit requests by Palestinians between 2010 and 2014.

In early July, Israeli bulldozers destroyed a number of tents and other structures in Khan al-Ahmar, sparking confrontations with local residents.

Hagai El-Ad, director of Israeli rights group B’Tselem, told Al Jazeera the court’s ruling was “cowardly, immoral, and outrageous”.

“This decision only demonstrates the Israeli High Court is working not in the service of justice but is simply working in the service of the occupation,” he said, speaking from Jerusalem.

“This is yet another example where we can see that the occupied people cannot find justice in the courts of the occupiers.”

The Israeli government plans to relocate the residents to an area about 12km away, near the Palestinian village of Abu Dis.

But the new site is next to a landfill, and rights advocates say a forcible transfer of the residents would violate international law applying to occupied territory.

“Forcible transfer of protected people in occupied territory is a war crime, plain and simple,” El-Ad said. “And now we have even more High Court justices that are backing the implementation of a war crime.”

Appeal to international community

El-Ad said displacement and settlement expansion have been the policy of many Israeli governments but the current one “is acting with a glaring green light that it sees from Washington”.

In response to the court’s decision, the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) organised a demonstration in Khan al-Ahmar on Wednesday.

“We are holding this sit-in today to show solidarity with the people of Khan al-Ahmar and pressure Israel to reverse its decision,” Walid Assaf, head of the PLO’s commission on settlements, told reporters there.

“Israel continues to impose restrictions on the Palestinian people and expel them from their homes. We have exhausted all domestic legal channels, so we must resort to international law to safeguard our rights.”

El-Ad called on the international community to act, saying it has the responsibility “to safeguard human rights anywhere”.

“Especially in this reality where Palestinians have been living for more than half a century under a military occupation that desires to advance settlements and displace Palestinians – a process that is happening in broad daylight,” he said.

A coalition of groups opposing Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court nomination urged protesters to travel from throughout the U.S. to disrupt his Senate confirmation hearings this week, escalating the tension over President Donald Trump’s pick for the high court.

Capitol police arrested 70 people for outbursts and disruptions during Kavanaugh’s hearing Tuesday — and the protests continued during his testimony Wednesday.

The protests were so frequent at times that Wednesday’s hearing assumed a decidedly halting cadence, as Republican senators expressed frustration at the interruptions. On Wednesday, police temporarily closed off the hearing from additional spectators at one point, leaving some seats empty.

Protest organizers defended their intentionally disruptive strategy as vital to preserving civil rights and democracy. They described Kavanaugh’s views on women’s rights, LGBT issues and health care as extreme and decried Trump’s authority to nominate him.

“The protests are not normal, but these are not normal times,” said Jennifer Epps-Addison, network president and co-executive director of the Center for Popular Democracy Action, which helped coordinate the protests. “These women are standing up because they know that if they’re quiet now and they allow these rigged, shamed hearings to proceed, their lives are going to be impacted in the future.”

She acknowledged that “the tactic of direct and sustained protests hasn’t been seen in these types of hearings before.”

But she said the protesters are prepared to continue as long as the Kavanaugh hearings are happening, saying it’s a “travesty” to proceed after Trump was implicated as a “co-conspirator” in crimes with his former attorney, Michael Cohen.

More: Brett Kavanaugh: His views on key issues he could face as a Supreme Court justice

Brett Kavanaugh: Top takeaways from first day of Supreme Court confirmation hearings

Parkland victim’s father tries to shake Brett Kavanaugh’s hand during hearing

Soon after the Kavanaugh hearings were scheduled, the Center for Popular Democracy Action worked with other advocacy groups, including the Women’s March, Ultraviolet and NARAL, to urge supporters to flood the capital, Epps-Addison said.

“Once we knew the hearings were going to happen, we started putting out a call through our networks, and regular folks who know the impact this will have on their lives started raising their hands and saying, ‘I’m coming,’” Epps-Addison said. “We’ve had people carpooling and caravanning to get here.”

Rachel O’Leary Carmona, chief operating officer of the Women’s March, confirmed that her group had coordinated a plan to disrupt the hearings. That included offering lodging to traveling protestors and “jail and bail support,” if necessary.

“Folks realize we’re at an inflection point as a country,” she said. “The disruptions will continue all week and the escalated tactics, as it pertains to this hearing, are not an isolated incident.”

Republicans called Kavanaugh an experienced jurist, a reasonable person and a good man worthy of confirmation. They blasted the disruptive protests as inappropriate.

With protestors vocalizing their discontent in the background, Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, called the behavior “insolence” as he addressed Kavanaugh on Tuesday.

“Frankly, these people are so out of line they shouldn’t even be allowed in the doggone room,” he said.

Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, compared the slew of protestors to “mob rule,” describing it as “pandemonium” that’s “unlike anything I’ve seen before in a confirmation hearing.” 

Amanda Thayer, deputy national communications at NARAL, said her group “has not coordinated any of the arrests happening in the hearing room.”

But she said the protests reflect a “roomful of people unified under this understanding that the rights that we hold dear are under grave threat right now with this nomination.”

Epps-Addison of the Center for Popular Democracy Action was among the protesters dragged out of Tuesday’s hearing, which she called a “sham.”

“I was the second woman who stood up and spoke my peace,” she said. “I was very, very brief. I asked the senators to be heroes — to help save our democracy and to vote no on Kavanaugh before I was tackled to the ground by four officers.”

The protestors were given tickets but braced for worse, Epps-Addison said.

“Everybody who took an arrest yesterday was prepared to take a federal charge for disrupting a Senate hearing,” she said. “We knew the risks going in, but we knew that this was a moment that we had to stand up.”

Other groups have also garnered attention for their protests, including silent protests and other sensational rallies.

Liberal advocacy organization Demand Justice organized a group of women dressed as “handmaids” from the television show The Handmaid’s Tale to stand quietly in the hallway, signifying their belief that Kavanaugh would suppress women’s reproductive rights.

“Despite what the Trump administration would have us believe, this country does NOT want to turn back the clock on our basic freedoms,” Demand Justice said in a Facebook event notice coordinating another protest on the Capitol lawn. “We’re going to make sure our senators hear us.”

Follow USA TODAY reporter Nathan Bomey on Twitter @NathanBomey.

 

Read or Share this story: https://usat.ly/2MQwJcu

Italian actress and #MeToo leader Asia Argento now is saying through her new lawyer that a teen-age Jimmy Bennett “sexually attacked’ her in 2013 – instead of the other way around – but she chose at the time not to press charges against him out of sympathy for his “desperate” circumstances. 

Nevertheless, she wants to make sure that the former child actor Bennett, now 22, doesn’t receive the remaining $130,000 due to him from a $380,000 payout to him arranged by her late boyfriend , Anthony Bourdain, last year, says her new lawyer, Mark Jay Heller of New York. 

“She’s not using the word ‘rape,’ she’s saying he ‘sexually attacked’ her” in a hotel room near the Los Angeles airport in 2013, when Bennett was 17 and she was 37, Heller said in a phone interview with USA TODAY on Wednesday.

But what about the picture of the two of them in bed together, apparently naked, on the day of their encounter, which was published by TMZ last month and shows the pair looking happy and not as if either had endured an attack. 

“I am not clear on the picture, I’m looking into that myself,” Heller said. He added he believes Bennett sold the picture to TMZ.

Heller spoke after he published a three-page statement on his website in which he attempted to explain Argento’s changing story about her encounter with Bennett, which has undermined her status as a #MeToo movement leader as one of the first women to accuse fallen movie mogul Harvey Weinstein of sexual assault. 

In his statement, Heller maintained Argento’s innocence, predicting “… it will ultimately be determined that Asia never initiated (any) inappropriate contact with a minor, but rather she was attacked by Bennett…”

Heller argued in his statement that two seemingly contrary things Argento has said in recent weeks are both true. He says her denial that she had sex with Bennett was “completely accurate,” and her texts where she admitted that she did have sex with him also were accurate but misconstrued. 

Argento issued a statement “strongly” denying she had sex with Bennett after The New York Times published a story based on leaked documents last month showing she agreed to a $380,000 payout to Bennett when he threatened to sue her over their encounter in November 2017.

Heller said that what Argento meant was “she never had a sexual relationship with Bennett” and that their relationship over the years (they met when he was hired at age 7 for a role in a 2004 movie she directed and starred in) was merely one of friendship. 

But then texts from Argento to a friend were leaked to TMZ showing that she admitted she had sex with Bennett because “the horny kid jumped me,” and that the experience felt “weird.”

“Everyone assumed (from the texts) that the sex was initiated by her, it was not her who initiated it, he was the perpetrator,” Heller said. “She decided at that time, because of what she perceived to be his troubled circumstances, that she was not going to prosecute him.”

Heller also claimed, without providing any proof, that Bennett himself was “alleged to have been charged in 2014 at the Los Angeles Police Department with ‘unlawful sex with a minor,’ ‘stalking’ and ‘child pornography’ and ‘child exploitation.’…” 

USA TODAY has reached out to LAPD and the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office about the supposed charges involving Bennett but did not immediately receive a response. Bennett’s lawyer also did not return a message from USA TODAY.

Heller himself was vague about the details, claiming he learned of the alleged charges against Bennett from an 80-page investigative report on Bennett that Bourdain commissioned before he agreed to the $380,000 settlement with Bennett. Bourdain  died in June of suicide. 

Heller also insisted that Argento has the power to block the remaining payment to Bennett, who has already received $250,000 of the settlement. He said the money from Bourdain was placed in an escrow account controlled by Carrie Goldberg, Argento’s and Bourdain’s previous attorney. 

Bourdain’s estate is now controlled by his estranged widow on behalf of their teen daughter. 

“Asia recognizes that this may very well inspire Bennett to make further false allegations against her and attempt to besmirch her reputation and diminish her credibility in her accusations against Harvey Weinstein.” (Argento claims the disgraced filmmaker forcibly performed oral sex on her.)

Heller said the payments to Bennett have been misconstrued as hush money, leaving the wrong impression that Argento was responsible for the encounter with Bennett. 

This has “apparently created a public perception that falsely conveyed the impression that Asia initiated and engaged in intercourse with Bennett and was trying to avoid detection by making a $380,000 payment,” Heller’s statement said. “In fact, the payment agreement did not preclude Bennett from making any statements about the event or preclude him from filing a criminal complaint against Asia.”

Argento shock:  Could #MeToo be damaged by statutory rape allegation against her?

More: Rain Dove, partner of Rose McGowan breaks silence on Asia Argento, leaked text messages

More: Rose McGowan takes Jimmy Bennett’s side against #MeToo pal Asia Argento

Heller also reiterated what Argento previously said, that it was Bourdain’s idea to pay Bennett.

“Bourdain chose to protect Asia’s and his reputation and to pay Bennett and allowed Bennett to extract payments from him. Asia was completely against this approach because she had done nothing wrong and especially since the incident was initiated and perpetrated by Bennett against her.”

Heller said Argento wants to launch “Phase Two” of the #MeToo movement by using the controversy over Bennett and her shifting explanations as a way to encourage anyone with a #MeToo story to come forward, regardless of whether their pasts are entirely blameless. 

Heller said Bennett should not be kept from making allegations against Argento.

“Asia believes that in Phase Two of the #metoo movement, everyone should come forward (and) tell their story regardless of their past.”

 

Read or Share this story: https://usat.ly/2NioZiR

Naomi Osaka reached her first Grand Slam semi-final with a dominant victory over Ukrainian Lesia Tsurenko at the US Open.

The 20-year-old dropped just two games winning 6-1 6-1 against her unseeded opponent in 58 minutes.

She becomes the first Japanese woman to reach a Grand Slam semi-final since Kimiko Date at Wimbledon in 1996.

“I was freaking out inside,” Osaka said. “My entire body was shaking, so I’m glad I was able to play well.”

Both Osaka and Tsurenko were competing in their first Slam quarter-final but the Ukrainian failed to settle and looked physically drained on Arthur Ashe Stadium.

Osaka, who is regarded as one of the best young players in the game, broke in Tsurenko’s first service game and powered to the first set in 26 minutes before racing into a 4-0 lead in the second set.

Tsurenko then held serve and brought up three break points in the following game but failed to convert and double-faulted twice in the final game to hand Osaka victory.

Osaka will play American Madison Keys or Spain’s Carla Suarez Navarro in the last four.

Superheroes typically rule the summer, but now that we’re fading into the fall season, it’s important to remember that there’s much more to the comic-book medium. This month’s best offerings, for example, barely feature superheroes at all. That doesn’t mean the stories are any less engaging, of course. For one thing, these comics feature plenty of monsters, from the Aztec demons of Border Town to the real-life Nazis of The Faithful Spy. On the other side of the emotional spectrum, there’s romance, from the assorted love stories of Twisted Romance to the end of Alan Moore’s decades-long affair with superhero comics.

Below, check out EW’s list of five comics to check out this September.

Man-eaters #1 (Image)
Chelsea Cain (writer), Kate Niemczyk (artist)

Cain and Niemcyzk made waves with their 2016 Marvel comic Mockingbird, a brightly colored feminist spy story built like a series of interlocked puzzle cubes. That series faced an ignominious end after only eight issues, when a cover image featuring the protagonist wearing a “Ask Me About My Feminist Agenda” t-shirt inspired angry male fans to deluge Cain with hate messages until she was forced off Twitter for a time. But as Cain recently told EW: “Yeah! Of course I have a feminist agenda. I’ll see your outrage and raise you a Tampon Woman. What do you got, internet?”

Her newest comic with Niemczyk, Man-eaters, is an even more inspired feminist fable than Mockingbird. In this world, menstruation sometimes transforms teen girls into violent cat monsters, leading them to be arrested and persecuted as a result. It feels particularly relevant at a time when the Supreme Court might soon be in a position to change abortion law and women’s control over their own bodies. As Cain says, “this whole monster allegory felt like a very apt way to explore our fear of female sexuality and women in general.”

Pre-order Man-eaters #1 here.

Border Town #1 (DC/Vertigo)
Eric M. Esquivel (writer), Ramon  Villalobos (artist)

Events escalate quickly in this extremely relevant fairy tale. Young Frank Dominguez assumes the biggest challenges of moving to Devil’s Fork, Ariz. will be making new friends and trying to avoid neo-Nazi gangs…and then the monsters start showing up. See, this town isn’t just located on the border between the United States and Mexico, but also on the border between the mortal realm and the mythical Aztec underworld. Esquivel and Villalobos do a great job in this first issue of introducing readers to an entire cast of characters, and the latter’s Frank Quitely-like art perfectly balances the contemporary political allegory with some really colorful fantasy elements.

Buy Border Town #1 here.

League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: The Tempest #2 (Top Shelf)
Alan Moore (writer), Kevin O’Neill (artist)

Alan Moore is one of the most famous names in comics, the kind of star even amateur readers could point to. His classic stories like Watchmen, From Hell, and more have reshaped the medium over the last few decades. All good things must come to an end, but at least Moore is finishing up his comics career with one last League of Extraordinary Gentlemen story alongside constant companion Kevin O’Neill. What started as a thought experiment for a Victorian-era Justice League has become a referendum on almost all popular fiction of the last two centuries. Now, Moore and O’Neill finally bring the League sensibility face-to-face with superheroes, while also revealing how and why James Bond was the ultimate villain of this story all along. This series should not be missed, and the second issue is as good a time to jump on as any, considering its promise of finally revealing the modern-day version of Captain Nemo.

Pre-order League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: The Tempest #2 here.

The Faithful Spy: Dietrich Bonhoeffer and the Plot to Kill Hitler (Amulet Books)
John Hendrix (writer/artist)

This is quite a time to be looking back at Nazis. A year after President Donald Trump defended Charlottesville protesters carrying swastikas, a staffer in the Department of Homeland Security resigned last month after his ties to white nationalist organizations were exposed. Whether or not this is the ‘30s all over again, Adolf Hitler seems to be on people’s tongues, making this a great time for John Hendrix’s deep look at a real-life German theologian who refused to let his conception of Christianity become an accessory to genocide against minorities. Hendrix’s beautiful blue-and-red layouts position the evolution of Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s religious convictions against the historical tapestry of the Nazis’ rise. It would be a vivid read at any time, but feels especially relevant now.

Pre-order The Faithful Spy here.

Twisted Romance (Image)
Alex de Campi (writer), various artists

Romance sometimes gets overlooked as a comic genre, but this modern-day anthology is here to set the record straight. The four issues collected here, originally published in February for Valentine’s Day, include stories about the commoditization of breakups, mismatched romance between a famous guy and terribly shy girl, forbidden love in space, and the dangers of nostalgia for one’s childhood through the eyes of a princess who doesn’t want to grow up. The comic stories are written by de Campi, while Magen Cubed and Vita Ayala contribute prose stories.

Buy Twisted Romance here.

This fall is going to be a very good season for television.  

Thomas Magnum is back. So are the Charmed Ones, Murphy Brown and Sabrina Spellman. Jennifer Garner has a new series, as do Penn Badgley, Leighton Meester, Brad Garrett, Taran Killam, Maya Rudolph and Fred Armisen. Movie stars Julia Roberts, Michael Douglas, Benicio del Toro, Emma Stone, Jonah Hill, Sean Penn and Jim Carrey are joining the small-screen ranks.

Dozens of new shows with A-List cast members and familiar characters are fighting for your attention, not to mention returning favorites like “This Is Us.” It can be overwhelming. But we’re here to help you sort through the clutter of gritty dramas, peppy sitcoms and miniseries. Here are 10 shows (listed chronologically) that are absolutely worth your time.

More: Fall TV: Premiere dates for new shows and all your returning favorites

‘You’ (Lifetime)

Sept. 9 (Sundays, 10 EDT/PDT)

Lifetime’s forays into scripted series have been a mixed bag, from the flameout of “UnREAL” to the off-kilter “Mary Kills People,” but with “You” the network might have found a story that fits perfectly into its lineup. An expanded version of a Saturday night thriller, “You” follows a disturbed bookstore clerk (Penn Badgley, building on his “Gossip Girl” character’s creepiness) who stalks (in person and online) a woman he meets (Elizabeth Lail), subtly worming his way into her life. Badgley deftly walks the line between charming and terrifying, and his performance anchors the series, a gripping mystery where you already know most of the answers.

‘Maniac’ (Netflix) 

Sept. 21

“Superbad” co-stars Emma Stone and Jonah Hill reunite 11 years later. Both are bigger stars, but they still have great chemistry and capitalize on it in  one of Netflix’s weirdest series yet. Developed and directed by Cary Fukunaga (“True Detective”), “Maniac” is set in an alternate world with 1980s technology but modern clothing and hairstyles. The trippy miniseries follows Annie (Stone) and Owen (Hill), two damaged young adults who are looking for answers (or just a fix) from a pharmaceutical drug trial led by an eccentric researcher (Justin Theroux) that promises to cure any mental ailment. As you can imagine, things don’t go according to plan.

‘Manifest’ (NBC) 

Sept. 24 (Mondays, 10 EDT/PDT)

This series opens with a plane that mysteriously disappears one night, only to show up unscathed at its destination five years later. For the passengers, it was an uneventful flight in which no time passed, but their friends and family have aged, grieved and moved on with their lives. The subtle supernatural powers and connections between the passengers aren’t helping their re-entry. The high-concept drama may seem like broadcast TV’s umpteenth attempt to recapture the magic of “Lost”, but “Manifest” has enough charisma to seem like more than a knockoff.

‘A Million Little Things’ (ABC) 

Sept. 26 (Wednesdays, 10 EDT/PDT) 

An alternate title for this new drama might be “This Is Thirtysomething,” and that’s not necessarily a bad thing. With the emotional heft of NBC’s “This Is Us” family and the problems and friendships of ABC’s own late 80s series, “Million” follows a group of friends (James Roday, David Giuntoli and Romany Malco), their wives and partners as they reel from the suicide of their de facto leader (Ron Livingston). Like “Us,” “Million” mixes deep emotion with intrigue and mystery as the group tries to figure out why their friend took his life. 

‘Murphy Brown’ (CBS) 

Sept. 27 (Thursdays, 9:30 EDT/PDT) 

Murphy Brown (Candice Bergen) can’t escape the world of fake news any more than you can. The legendary broadcaster is back in CBS’s revival of the hit 1988-98 series, and the media and culture have changed drastically since we last saw her. Now the host of a morning show, Murphy tries to be the voice of reason in a chaotic climate with the help of her original team: Corky Sherwood (Faith Ford), Frank Fontana (Joe Regalbuto) and Miles Silverberg (Grant Shaud). They’re joined by Phyllis (Tyne Daly), the sister of former barkeep Phil, who now runs his bar, Pat Patel (Nik Dodani), a social media expert trying to keep Murphy relevant, and Murphy’s son Avery (Jake McDorman), now all grown up and a journalist at a rival network. 

‘Charmed’ (CW) 

Oct. 14 (Sundays, 9 EDT/PDT)

The power of three will set you free all over again. Sort of. CW’s reboot of the 1998-2006 witchy series still calls its central sisters the “Charmed Ones,” and they still fight demons with the help of a mentor “whitelighter” and the magic “Book of Shadows” encyclopedia, but the similarities mostly end there. Gone are the rhyming couplets, the Halliwell surname and the mechanics of the sisters’ powers. It may be tough for longtime fans of the original to stomach the changes, but the new version of the show, from “Jane the Virgin” creator Jennie Snyder Urman, has its own, well, charming story to tell, even if it looks and sounds a bit different. 

‘Camping’ (HBO) 

Oct. 14 (Sundays, 10 EDT/PDT) 

Jennifer Garner returns to TV in this sunny and delightful HBO comedy, but she’s playing a woman who’s quite different from “Alias” hero Sydney Bristow. Based on a British series, “Camping” follows a group on a weekend birthday retreat for Walt (David Tennant), set up my his extreme Type-A wife, Kathryn (Garner), where the delicate balance of personalities is always on the brink of collapse. The cringe comedy was created by Jenni Konner and Lena Dunham (“Girls”) and also stars Juliette Lewis and Brett Gelman. The series gets close to being too cringey, particularly with Garner’s character, whom you’ll soon love to hate, but it’s smart enough not to go too far. 

‘Chilling Adventures of Sabrina’ (Netflix) 

Oct. 26 

The new incarnation of the Archie Comics favorite has no talking cats or cheesy puns but takes the supernatural tale back to its pulpy horror roots. Kiernan Shipka (“Mad Men”) takes on the role of the famous teenage witch, with a cast that includes Lucy Davis (U.K.’s “The Office) and Miranda Otto (“The Lord of the Rings”). Netflix’s adaptation doesn’t look much like ABC’s Melissa Joan Hart version, but what it lacks in kitschy comedy it makes up for in a commitment to the creepy. Sabrina faces mythic challenges at the same time she deals with the same thing all teens do, whether they have magic powers or not: a search for identity. 

‘Escape at Dannemora’ (Showtime) 

Nov. 18 (Sundays, 10 EDT/PDT) 

This ripped-from-the-headlines miniseries chronicles the 2015 prison break by two inmates in upstate New York. Ben Stiller directs the propulsive project, which stars Benicio del Toro and Paul Dano as the escapees and a nearly unrecognizable Patricia Arquette as Tilly, the prison employee who had sex with both men and helped them escape. The first-rate series shows new perspectives on a story that will be familiar to many viewers, making the most of its stranger-than-fiction source material. 

‘The Little Drummer Girl’ (AMC) 

Nov. 19-21 (Monday-Wednesday, 9 EDT/PDT) 

If you enjoyed AMC’s adaptation of John le Carre’s “The Night Manager,” the network has another of the author’s spy-filled treats for you. Like “Manager,” “Drummer Girl” follows a civilian, this time a young British actress recruited by Israeli intelligence officers to help infiltrate a Palestinian terrorist group in the late 1970s. Alexander Skarsgard, Michael Sheen and Florence Pugh star in the slick adaptation, which has all the outrageous costumes, classic rock and wavering loyalties you’d expect. 

 

Read or Share this story: https://usat.ly/2Ng4Cml