Indie filmmaker Jeff Baena, Aubrey Plaza's husband, found dead at Los Angeles home

ENT

Indie filmmaker Jeff Baena, Aubrey Plaza's husband, found dead at Los Angeles home

2025-01-06 02:49 Last Updated At：02:51

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Writer-director Jeff Baena, whose darkly comedic independent films included “The Little Hours” and who was married to his frequent creative collaborator Aubrey Plaza, has died. He was 47.

Baena was found dead Friday morning at a Los Angeles home, according to the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner's Office. His death was ruled a suicide.

Baena co-wrote David O. Russell's 2004 film “I Heart Huckabees” and wrote and directed five of his own films, four of which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival.

He had been dating Plaza for three years before she starred in his 2014 directorial debut, the zombie comedy “Life After Beth." His next film, 2016's “Joshy,” featured Thomas Middleditch as a man who gets together with friends months after his fiancee commits suicide.

The son of an attorney and teacher, Baena grew up in Miami and attended film school at New York University. He told podcaster Marc Maron in a 2017 interview that his interest in cinema was sparked after watching Stanley Kubrick's “A Clockwork Orange” and Federico Fellini's “8 1/2” as a child.

“I was always drawn to left-of-center things,” he told Jim Alexander two years ago in an interview for the Reel Talker YouTube channel.

Baena said in the same interview that it was “amazing” to work with Plaza, who appeared in four of his five films. The 40-year-old actor and producer rose to fame playing April Ludgate on the television series “Parks and Recreation” and was nominated for an Emmy for her role on “The White Lotus.” The couple married in 2021.

“The opportunities to create together, to do something creative where we're both fulfilled, it's like, how rare is that? She's down and she's so talented, so I'm really lucky," Baena said.

Stock market today: Nvidia and other tech stocks drive Wall Street higher

2025-01-07 02:47 Last Updated At：02:51

NEW YORK (AP) — U.S. stock indexes are rising Monday to recover more of the holiday-season slide that bridged the new year.

The S&P 500 was 0.8% higher in afternoon trading and on track for a second straight jump following five straight losses, its longest losing streak since April. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 106 points, or 0.3%, as of 1:42 p.m. Eastern time, and the Nasdaq composite was 1.3% higher.

Tech stocks again led the way, including those swept up in the frenzy around artificial-intelligence technology. Nvidia climbed 4.8% ahead of a speech by CEO Jensen Huang at the annual CES convention in Las Vegas after trading ends for the day.

Nvidia and other AI stocks keep climbing even as criticism rises that their stock prices have already shot too high, too fast. Despite worries about a potential bubble, the industry keeps talking up its potential.

Microsoft Vice Chair Brad Smith said on late Friday the company is on track to invest about $80 billion to build out AI-enabled datacenters to train AI models this fiscal year. Smith said AI is the biggest opportunity “to harness new technology to invigorate the nation’s economy” since the invention of electricity. Microsoft rose 0.8%.

Uber drove 3.2% higher after the ride-hailing app said it would accelerate $1.5 billion in purchases of its own stock, part of a previously announced $7 billion buyback program. Uber’s chief financial officer, Prashanth Mahendra-Rajah, said it’s making the move because its stock price looks cheap compared with the strength of its business.

In the old economy, U.S. Steel climbed 4.9% after it and Japan’s Nippon Steel filed a federal lawsuit challenging President Joe Biden’s decision to block a proposed nearly $15 billion deal for Nippon to buy its Pittsburgh-based rival.

The suit, filed in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, alleges that it was a political decision and violated the companies’ due process. Japanese leaders have also said there is scant evidence that the merger would create a security concern for the U.S.

This upcoming week will have one fewer day of trading than usual. The New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq will close their stock and options markets on Thursday in observance of a National Day of Mourning for former President Jimmy Carter.

But the calendar is nevertheless packed with potentially market-moving events. Tuesday will deliver the latest updates on monthly job openings advertised by U.S. employers and on the health of businesses in the services industries. On Wednesday, the Federal Reserve will release the minutes from its last policy meeting, where it cut its main interest rate for a third straight time but hinted fewer reductions may come in 2025.

Friday will bring the week’s headliner: the monthly jobs report, along with an update on how U.S. consumers are feeling.

So far, the economy has remained remarkably resilient despite high interest rates the Fed instituted in recent years to stifle inflation. A report on Monday said business confidence also has improved since the presidential election, and a measure of activity for services businesses hit its highest level in nearly three years.

“Business activity in the vast services economy surged higher in the closing month of 2024 on fuller order books and rising optimism about prospects for the year ahead,” according to Chris Williamson, chief business economist at S&P Global Market Intelligence.

The Fed has also been trying to give the economy an easier time, and it began cutting interest rates in September after inflation pulled nearly all the way down to its 2% target. But getting the last percentage point of improvement from inflation may prove more difficult. Worries are also rising that tariffs and other policies coming from President-elect Donald Trump could put upward pressure on inflation.

Treasury yields have climbed in the bond market as a result. That can hurt stock prices because higher-paying bonds can peel away investors who otherwise might buy stocks.

At Morgan Stanley, strategist Michael Wilson says the sweet spot for U.S. stocks is likely a yield of between 4.00% and 4.50% for the 10-year Treasury. It drove above that level in mid-December and has remained there. It’s up to 4.63%, up from 4.60% late Friday.

In stock markets abroad, indexes were mixed across Europe and Asia.

AP Writers Matt Ott, Zimo Zhong and Mari Yamaguchi contributed.