A real Chinese blockade of Taiwan would be an act of war and have far-reaching consequences for international trade, Defense Minister Wellington Koo said on Wednesday after last week’s drills by China that practiced such a scenario. China, which views democratically governed Taiwan as its own territory, has over the past five years staged almost daily military activities around the island, including war games that have practiced blockades and attacks on ports. Taiwan’s government rejects Beijing’s sovereignty claims. China’s latest war games around the island, carried out last week, included simulating blockading key ports and areas, and assaulting maritime and ground targets, Beijing said. Speaking to reporters at parliament, Koo noted that while those “Joint Sword-2024B” delineated the exercise area, there were no no-flight or no-sail zones. “If you really want to carry out a so-called blockade, which according to international law is to prohibit all aircraft and ships entering the area, then, according to United Nations resolutions, it is regarded as a form of war,” he said. “I want to stress that drills and exercises are totally different from a blockade, as would be the impact on the international community.” Pointing to data that showed one-fifth of global freight passed through the Taiwan Strait, a blockade would have consequences beyond Taiwan, Koo said. “The international community could not sit by and just watch.” While those war games last only a day, Chinese military activity has continued. China has never renounced the use of force to bring Taiwan under its control. This screen grab from a video released by the Taiwan Coast Guard shows a China Coast Guard boat from a Taiwan Coast Guard boat as it passes near the coast of Matsu islands, Taiwan on Monday, Oct. 14, 2024. Taiwan Coast Guard/AP Carrier in the strait Taiwan’s Defense Ministry said earlier on Wednesday that a Chinese aircraft carrier group sailed through the Taiwan Strait, travelling in a northerly direction after passing through waters near the Taiwan-controlled Pratas islands. The ministry said the Chinese ships, led by Liaoning, the oldest of China’s three aircraft carriers, were spotted on Tuesday night, and its forces monitored the fleet. The Pratas are at the northern end of the South China Sea. Koo said the Liaoning was sailing to the western side of the strait’s median line, an unofficial barrier between the two sides China says it does not recognize. China’s Defense Ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The Liaoning was involved in those same Chinese war games last week near Taiwan. Taiwan said at the time that the Liaoning operated off the island’s southeast coast during those drills, launching aircraft off its deck. Japan said last month the same carrier had entered Japan’s contiguous waters for the first time. China has sailed its carriers through the strategic strait before, including in December shortly before Taiwan held elections. China says it alone has jurisdiction over the nearly 180-kilometer (110 miles) wide waterway that is a major passageway for international trade. Taiwan and the United States dispute that, saying the Taiwan Strait is an international waterway. The US Navy regularly sails through the strait to assert freedom of navigation rights. Other allied nations, like Canada, Germany and Britain have also carried out similar missions, to the anger of Beijing. Taiwan has also been worried about China’s use of its coast guard in recent war games, and is especially concerned Taiwanese civilian ships may be boarded and inspected as Beijing seeks to assert legal authority in the strait. Taiwan’s coast guard, in a report to parliament on Wednesday, said if that happened its ships would respond under the principle of “neither provoking nor backing down” and stop such acts “with all its strength.”

Donald Trump’s campaign has accused Britain’s governing party of “blatant foreign interference” in the US presidential election over a trip by its activists to help Vice President Kamala Harris’ bid, igniting a spat with one of Washington’s closest allies in the final stretches of the race. A lawyer for the former president filed a complaint on Tuesday to the Federal Election Commission (FEC) against both the UK’s Labour Party and the Harris campaign, after a Labour staffer wrote a LinkedIn post advertising a trip to the US on which “nearly 100 Labour Party staff” members would campaign for Harris in four key swing states. But the Trump campaign did not present any new evidence that rules were broken. Labour, and the party’s Prime Minister Keir Starmer, quickly denied that the party funded the trips, insisting the campaigners traveled in a personal capacity at their own expense. Under FEC rules, foreign nationals are allowed to campaign for a US electoral candidate as long as they remain “an uncompensated volunteer.” The spat has the potential to sour relations between Trump and Starmer, a center-left politician who has remained neutral on the upcoming election and repeatedly said his government would work with whichever candidate wins. Starmer told reporters on Wednesday that any Labour Party staffers involved in the trip were there in a personal capacity, adding: “They’re doing it in their spare time, they’re doing it as volunteers, they’re staying, I think, with other volunteers over there.” “That’s what they’ve done in previous elections, that’s what they’re doing in this election and that’s really straightforward,” Starmer said. But the Trump campaign elevated the dispute in heightened language on Wednesday. Its co-manager, Susie Wiles, said in a statement that “Americans will once again reject the oppression of big government that we rejected in 1776” and described the center-left Labour as a “far-left” party that has “inspired Kamala’s dangerously liberal policies.” Trump seeks to deflect election interference claims The Trump campaign’s complaint stems from a since-deleted LinkedIn post in which Sofia Patel, a Labour head of operations, wrote: “I have nearly 100 Labour Party staff (current and former) going to the US in the next few weeks heading to North Carolina, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Virginia,” four states that could decide the upcoming election. “I have 10 spots available for anyone available to head to the battleground state of North Carolina – we will sort your housing,” Patel’s post added. FEC rules state that an “individual who is a foreign national may participate in campaign activities as an uncompensated volunteer. In doing so, the volunteer must be careful not to participate in the decision-making process of the campaign.” The Trump campaign’s complaint does not contain any evidence that the individuals were compensated; instead it references the LinkedIn post and various media reporting, asking the FEC to investigate further. Supporters of Vice President Kamala Harris rally in Detroit, MI during an event featuring former President Barack Obama, Tuesday, Oct. 22, 2024. Related article Obama recalls Trump’s 2020 election chaos while campaigning for Harris in Michigan And Labour has insisted that it did not fund any aspects of the trip. A party spokesperson told CNN: “It is common practice for campaigners of all political persuasions from around the world to volunteer in US elections. Where Labour activists take part, they do so at their own expense, in accordance with the laws and rules.” The party also pushed back at the Trump complaint’s suggestion that two high-ranking Labour staffers, who attended the Democratic National Convention in August, were there to provide assistance to the Harris campaign. The Harris-Walz campaign declined to comment to CNN, as did the FEC. It is commonplace for Labour to send a delegation to the DNC, and members and staff for the Labour Party – a large political party with both a national office and hundreds of local offices – have historically traveled to the US to campaign in elections without attracting media attention. But British governments go to great lengths to avoid the suggestion that they would prefer to work with one US president over another, a convention that Starmer has sought to maintain despite his own political differences with Trump. Former British Prime Minister Liz Truss told CNN on Wednesday: “I think it’s incredibly arrogant of the Labour Party to think that they have anything to offer the American people” – though Truss herself, whose chaotic premiership lasted just seven weeks, has broken with precedent by endorsing Trump and criticizing President Joe Biden since leaving office. Trump has frequently attempted to deflect allegations that he has benefited from foreign electoral interference from countries including Russia. The US intelligence community said in a landmark report in 2021 that the Russian government meddled in the 2020 election with an influence campaign “denigrating” Joe Biden and “supporting” Trump. Starmer’s center-left Labour Party swept to power in Britain in a July general election, and has long held an informal but friendly relationship with the Democratic Party. But Starmer has repeatedly insisted his government will work with whoever wins November’s presidential contest, and met with Trump in New York during the United Nations General Assembly last month. “I spent time in New York with President Trump, had dinner with him, and my purpose in doing that was to make sure that between the two of us we established a good relationship, which we did, and I was very grateful to him for making the time,” Starmer said on Wednesday.

  With her portraits of red-lipped women painted like sculptures in resplendent jewel tones, the Polish painter Tamara de Lempicka has posthumously become an Art Deco icon. Her figures are sumptuous and moody, seemingly longing for something more as they pose in front of crowded skylines or behind the wheel of a car, scarves and draped gowns billowing in the wind. Though Lempicka never found sustained critical success during her lifetime (she died in 1980), she’s collected today by superstars including Barbra Streisand and Madonna — the latter who displayed some of Lempicka’s paintings onstage during her “Celebration” tour last year. Lempicka’s market has soared, with a painting of cabaret singer Marjorie Ferry setting her auction record at £16.3 million ($21.3 million) in 2020. A century after the height of her career, Lempicka’s life and work are fascinating the art world more than ever. Lempicka has never received a major museum retrospective in the US — until now. A new show at the de Young, a part of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, will showcase more than 150 works. “She captured optimism as Europe was rebuilding itself after the First World War,” explained curator Furio Rinaldi — who organized the show with art historian and Lempicka biographer Gioia Mori — in a video call with CNN. Preparatory drawings for this portrait of poet Ira Perrot show she was originally presented nude, but Lempicka eventually settled on a silky, fashionable white dress. Lempicka and the poet were romantically involved for years in Paris. 2024 Tamara de Lempicka Estate, LLC/ADAGP, Paris/ARS, NY/1969 Christie’s Images Limited The artist painted her first husband, the lawyer Tadeusz de Lempicki, in 1928. Georges Meguerditchian/Centre Pompidou/Orange Logic/RMP/2024 Tamara de Lempicka Estate, LLC/ADAGP, Paris/ARS, NY Digital Image/CNAC/MNAM, Dist. RMN-Grand Palais/Art Resource, NY “There was an electrifying sense of hope (for) a future and world where women had a new role; they entered the workforce in a massive way,” he said. “The fashion changed because they needed garments that allowed much more movement and freedom of expression and Lempicka really captured the essence of this new woman: liberated, sexually free, financially independent.” But Lempicka is often not given her due, Rinaldi explained, with her impact simplified. “She’s been perceived — mostly by art historians — as a phenomenon of the Art Deco period… of the world of decoration and fashion,” he said. “But actually she was much more than that. She’s an incredibly gifted and outstanding painter, possibly one of the best of her generation.” Lempicka was born at the end of the 19th century to a wealthy Polish family, though her exact place of birth is still unknown. She later settled in St. Petersburg, but was forced to flee the Russian Revolution and made her way to Paris in 1919. There, Lempicka blended a number of styles to make her own. Over her career, she took notes from the Russian avant-garde, the flat planes of cubism, the elegance of fashion illustration and advertising, and the composition and form of the Italian Renaissance and French Neoclassical painters. But she was an outlier of major art movements and wasn’t always taken seriously on account of her aristocratic background — she was bitingly nicknamed the “Baroness with a Brush” in print in 1941. The erotically charged “La Belle Rafaëla,” from 1927. Lempicka’s influences were both classical and distinctly modern. 2024 Tamara de Lempicka Estate, LLC/ADAGP, Paris/ARS, NY Banque d’Images, ADAGP/Art Resource, NY/Courtesy of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco Today, it’s difficult to stage a large showing of Lempicka’s work, Rinaldi explained, since her paintings and drawings are mostly in private collections, rather than in museums, and can change hands repeatedly. “That had a great impact on her critical appreciation, because she’s not represented in museums and she’s not really seen as part of the canon,” he said. An air of mystery In 2021, the de Young acquired a drawing by Lempicka — a study of a young girl with ringlets and arched eyebrows she composed in 1937. It made the institution the first in the country to purchase one of her works, Rinaldi said. But three years on, the de Young’s curators have organized a full show filled with rarely and never-before-seen works. They have also uncovered new information about the enigmatic artist, who often concealed or exaggerated details about her life and had a penchant for communicating through dramatic press releases. Streisand, who penned an opening essay for the show catalog, described Lempicka as a woman who “moved easily through the highest echelons of society — a cool, glamorous blonde with an air of mystery who had lovers of both sexes.” Ringlets, breezy fabrics, red lips and shadowy architectural backgrounds all make up Lempicka’s visual lexicon. Courtesy of Artis—Naples, The Baker Museum/2024 Tamara de Lempicka Estate, LLC/ADAGP, Paris/ARS, NY/RoseBudz Productions. Rinaldi pointed to her savvy sense of self-promotion. “She made great use of the media of the time,” he said. “She lied about some things. She introduced her daughter as her younger sister — sometimes silly things, sometimes more serious things. But certainly it shows a woman who’s fully in control of her life and her identity, who’s crafting her own persona.” Some of Lempicka’s exaggerations were meant to place her in key historical moments, such as her claim that she arrived in New York from Europe on the very day the stock market crashed in 1929, catapulting the country into the Great Depression (she had actually arrived several months earlier). But other misrepresentations were an armor of sorts, like her Polish Catholic identity, when evidence points to Moscow as her birthplace, and research has recently revealed her Jewish heritage. “Her grandparents are buried in the Jewish cemetery in Warsaw, but her parents converted to Christianity and baptized their children,” Streisand wrote. “It was safer not to be Jewish, and Lempicka clearly understood that. She painted her only daughter, Kizette, in her First Communion dress and made sure she was identified as Catholic.” New revelations In the show “Tamara de Lempicka,”

Abercrombie & Fitch has spent years trying to scrub the memory of longtime former CEO Mike Jeffries and the associated sexualized marketing campaigns with shirtless male models that he crafted. Since Jeffries exited as CEO in 2014 after more than two decades, Abercrombie ditched the perfume-drenched stores, models and logoed sweatshirts that defined the brand during his tenure. The brand made these moves to appeal to customers that had turned away from Abercrombie. “We are a positive, inclusive brand, with a nice sensibility, very different from what they encountered in the past,” Fran Horowitz, now Abercrombie’s CEO, said in 2016. Today, Abercrombie’s stores are lighter than they once were and its clothes are looser. The brand has become known for its (logo-less) basics, loungewear and jackets. Instead of trying to dress high schoolers for class, Abercrombie tries to outfit adults for everything from the gym to happy hour. The strategy to move away from Jeffries has worked. Abercrombie’s sales have grown and its stock has increased more than 400% since Jeffries stepped down as CEO. Abercrombie central to indictment Jeffries’ indictment Tuesday, along with his romantic partner and an associate for allegedly operating a sex trafficking ring while he led Abercrombie, shows how Jeffries’ shadow still hangs over the brand he built into a cult favorite of teens. But retail analysts say that Abercrombie’s brand won’t be hurt by the indictment because of how much separation Abercrombie has been able to create from its former CEO. Older Abercrombie customers who remember the brand’s sexualized marketing have accepted Abercrombie’s rebrand, while a new generation of customers are too young to remember the old era. Jeffries’ role at Abercrombie and the brand’s use of male models in advertising was central to the allegations. The indictment alleges that Jeffries and his associates recruited men for “sex events,” sometimes incorporating Abercrombie products, in which the victims performed sex acts. Many of the victims were aspiring models, and were led to believe that attending the parties would benefit their careers, prosecutors say. They were also told that not complying with certain requests for certain acts would harm their careers. “While Jeffries was the CEO of one of the most recognizable clothing retailers in the world, he was using his power, his wealth and his influence to traffic men for his own sexual pleasure and that of his romantic partner,” Breon Peace, U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York, said Tuesday at a press conference. Abercrombie did not respond to CNN’s request for comment. An attorney for Jeffries said he will respond to the allegations “in the courthouse – not the media.” Abercrombie’s shift Abercrombie became a staple of teen wardrobes during the 1990s and 2000s under Jeffries. Its sexualized advertising featuring young, shirtless male models turned the brand into a preppy status symbol for high schoolers. And it was proudly exclusionary, refusing to make size XL or XXL for years. (A documentary released in 2022 on Netflix documents its culture of racism and discrimination.) “We go after the cool kids. We go after the attractive all-American kid with a great attitude and a lot of friends,” Jeffries said in 2006. “Are we exclusionary? Absolutely.” An Abercrombie & Fitch store in 2005. The brand said in 2014 that it would stop “sexualized marketing.” WWD/Penske Media/Getty Images/File But the brand alienated customers. Fast-fashion stores like H&M emerged to win them over during and after the 2008 recession. Its sales slumped and, by the time Jeffries left as CEO in 2014, the brand had settled race and sex discrimination and harassment lawsuits. Abercrombie quickly tried to change its image from Jeffries era. Soon after he left, brand said it would stop “sexualized marketing.” It overhauled its marketing, stripped the old moose logo from its clothes and pulled back on the Fierce fragrance in its dimly lit stores. It also expanded its sizes. “Notwithstanding the terrible nature of the allegations, Mike Jeffries did build an incredible brand, and Fran and her team have done an outstanding job modernizing it,” said Marni Shapiro, an analyst at Retail Tracker. Rebranding after scandals Retail analysts do not expect Jeffries’ arrest and the allegations while he was at Abercrombie to deter current customers from shopping at the brand. “This is all about the Abercrombie of the past, and not of the present,” said Neil Saunders, an analyst at GlobalData Retail, told CNN. “There is sufficient distance between the Abercrombie of today and the brand of the past.” Other consumer companies have also successfully distanced their brand images from scandals involving former CEOs and founders, Shapiro said. Papa John’s redesigned its logo, stores and hired Shaq to move away from founder John Schnatter, who resigned his role as chairman in 2018 after news broke that he had used the N-word on a conference call. Following a massive recall of yoga pants, Lululemon founder Chip Wilson said in 2013 that “some women’s bodies don’t work for the pants.” The comments sparked backlash and Wilson resigned as chairman shortly after. Although Lululemon has been criticized for its lack of larger sizes, the brand has boomed over the past decade.

Emotional accounts from relatives of the victims and survivors of the partial collapse of a boat dock gangway on Georgia’s Sapelo Island and a newly released video of the frantic rescue efforts paint a dramatic picture of Saturday’s incident. Civil rights attorney Ben Crump, joined by some of the victims’ family members, as well as survivors who fell into the water when the aluminum gangway they were standing on collapsed, said Tuesday at Mount Sinai Missionary Baptist Church in Jacksonville, Florida, their deaths were “unnecessarily, unjustifiably and … certainly preventable.” Crump is representing the families of three victims. The seven victims were among the dozens of people who traveled to Sapelo Island last weekend to celebrate the Gullah-Geechee, a community of descendants of Africans who were enslaved on coastal plantations in the South. As some were ready to board a ferry returning to the mainland, a gangway collapsed on the visitor ferry dock and at least 20 people were plunged into the Duplin River, Georgia Department of Natural Resources officials said. “We want an investigation on every level, to get the answers to how this happened,” Crump said. “They were there for a celebration, and it turned into a tragedy because of malfeasance and inadequate infrastructure.” Crump alleges negligence led to the incident and is calling for a federal investigation. Natalie Jackson, an attorney with Crump’s team, said at Tuesday’s news conference they’re looking into the entities responsible for day-to-day operations and repairs as well as the manufacturing of materials and the gangway design. “We will get justice for the ‘Sapelo Seven,’” Crump said. Yvette Jackson, one of the seniors on a family trip visiting Sapelo Island, barely made it across the gangway before the collapse and said at Tuesday’s news conference, “It was the most horrific thing I have ever experienced.” A portion of the gangway that collapsed Saturday afternoon remains visible on Sapelo Island in McIntosh County, Georgia, on October 20, 2024. Lewis M. Levine/AP “We heard all the screaming and going on, and so I turned around, and when I turned around, I couldn’t believe what I saw,” Katrena Alexander, Jackson’s aunt, who also made it across the gangway, said through tears. “I just stood there, looking down in that water and saw all those people.” “And then it hit me, Regina, Regina, where’s Regina? Oh, my God, where’s my Regina,” Alexander said. Her daughter, Regina Brinson, was one of those who had fallen into the water but survived. Video footage of the aftermath shows people desperately clinging to a section of the walkway, which was hanging at a steep angle in the water. Brinson described attempting to help 93-year-old Carlotta McIntosh and her walker across the gangway, recruiting her uncle, Isaiah Thomas to help, before all three of them were plunged into the water. “I heard a crack, then I looked and all I remember is releasing the walker and Miss Carlotta just fell straight down in the water,” Brinson recalled. “All of us ended up in the water, and the currents just pushed probably about a good 10 of us away from the ferry. It just pushed us and pushed us. It pushed us.” Multiple people are seen on video bobbing in the water as life jackets are thrown at them from shore, and then seen further adrift from the incident site. Brinson said she spotted her uncle in the water and called out for him to grab her hand. “He grabbed my hand, but he grabbed my shirt too, and he kept pulling me and pulling me and pulling me under the water. And I kept saying to myself, ‘Oh my god, I’m going to die,’” she said. “I had to take his fingers, one by one, and peeled them off of my shirt, and I floated back up to the top, and I saw his face, and I was like, ‘Oh my God, what did I do? What did I do?’ And he floated by me,” Brinson said. Thomas did not survive. Catherine Sneed’s emotional reunion with Bertha McKnight. Courtesy Jenni Morris Catherine Sneed had an emotional reunion Monday with Bertha McKnight, the woman she helped rescue. They held each other’s hands and Sneed gave her a kiss on the forehead. “I checked on her Monday and she is much better than she was in the day of the incident, thank God,” her niece, Vanessa Jordan, said. Sneed said that she grabbed Bertha McKnight’s hand while she was in the water and held on to her until they were able to get a lifejacket on her. “As you can see, we’re in desperate need of mental health counseling for the PTSD,” Crump said Tuesday. “Nobody knows what it’s like to go under the water and let somebody help you out and bring you out. It’s a dream that you wish that you hadn’t had,” Pearl Davis, who also fell into the water, said. “To go back on the bus with the people and miss the people that you went with – it’s really, really, really hard.”

  A massive fire is ripping through a protected wetland in New Zealand, threatening its delicate ecosystem and the rare species that live there – some found nowhere else on Earth. The blaze at the Waikato wetland on the country’s North Island is 15 kilometers (nearly 10 miles) in perimeter and has burned more than 2,471 acres (1,000 hectares) since it began on Monday, authorities said, as they warned it could take days to bring under control. Experts have also warned of the potential damage to what is one of New Zealand’s largest carbon sinks – environments, such as oceans and forests, that remove more carbon dioxide from the atmosphere than they contribute, and are critical to slowing global warming and other impacts of the climate crisis. About 50 firefighters are working alongside helicopters and airplanes at the site south of Auckland, the country’s largest city, according to Fire and Emergency New Zealand (FENZ). There is no immediate danger to residents and businesses in the area, authorities said. “This is a large fire and it could take some days to bring it under control properly,” said Incident Controller Mark Tinworth in a news release on Wednesday. The presence of peat – the accumulation of dead and slowly decaying plant material common across bogs and wetland – had made the fire “particularly challenging,” as it can burn underground and can be hard to find and extinguish, he added. The fire began burning in the Waikato wetland on October 21, 2024. Fire and Emergency New Zealand The blaze poses a major risk to the wetland ecosystem, an important habitat that’s found in few other places, experts say. The wetland is a patchwork of swamps, bogs, marshes and open water surrounding two rivers – designated as one of three nationally significant sites in the government’s wetlands restoration program. Part of the Ramsar List, an international treaty that aims to protect important wetlands, it’s also a breeding site for threatened bird species. Niwha Jones, the Department of Conservation’s operations manager in Waikato, told CNN affiliate Radio New Zealand (RNZ) that those birds include the Australasian bittern, or the matuku-hūrepo in Māori; the spotless crake, or pūweto; and the North Island fernbird, or mātātā. The wetland is also home to various other rare fish and plants, he added, such as the endangered swamp helmet orchid – which isn’t found anywhere else in the world. Fragile ecosystem It’s not yet clear where or how the fire started, and investigators are on the scene to determine its origin. But even before the blaze, the Waikato wetland, like many other unique habitats in New Zealand, was at risk due to environmental degradation and the climate crisis. It has been “dramatically changed” over the years due to human land use, increased flooding, and the introduction of non-native species, according to the Department of Conservation – damaging the ecosystem’s health and its ability to perform crucial functions. The wetland is a type of raised peat bog – a “very rare habitat” and “one of the few remaining in the southern hemisphere,” Jones, from the department, told RNZ. Carbon sinks are critical to slowing global warming and other impacts of the climate crisis; for instance, the Amazon rainforest, long known as the “lungs” of the planet, holds the equivalent of 15 to 20 years of the entire world’s global carbon stores. But when these carbon sinks come under threat, that stored carbon can be released back into the environment. The Amazon is already beginning to collapse and is now releasing more carbon than it absorbs, mainly because of forest fires and logging. As the fire burns it’s too soon to assess the extent of its damage or impact on the ecosystem, Jones told RNZ. However, he added, “this fire will be releasing some of the stored carbon back into the environment.” There are other challenges too – authorities warned members of the public not to fly drones near the fire on Wednesday after the sighting of one forced firefighters to temporarily halt operations, due to the risk of a mid-air collision. “This is a really beautiful part of the country with considerable environmental value, and we’re doing our best to prevent it from being destroyed,” FENZ’s Tinworth said in a separate release on Tuesday.

  “La tasweer! La tasweer!” (“Don’t film! Don’t film!”) the general shouted, his eyes flashing with anger, his jaw clenched as he stormed towards us. A couple of fighters hopped off the back of the militia’s lead truck, fanning out around our vehicle, their rifles drawn. The second truck that had been following us, tan-colored and laden with a heavy machine gun abruptly pulled over to our side, hemming us in. There was a moment of panic — were they going to shoot us? We had come to Darfur to report on the world’s worst humanitarian crisis, never intending to become part of the story. But months of planning came apart in moments when we were detained by a militia led by the man everyone called the general. Cameraman Scott McWhinnie handed him the camera, assuring him, “We’re not filming, we’re not filming.” Producer Brent Swails quickly got out of our truck to try to defuse the situation. Abruptly, the general turned his back on us and grabbed a rifle from one of his soldiers, before taking aim across the tree-dotted savanna. I was relieved that the gun wasn’t pointed at us but still disturbed by his erratic behavior. I looked pleadingly at our driver. “What’s going on?” His face was ashen. “I don’t know,” he said. The general fired off a round. The target appeared to be a bird. He missed. We had arrived in North Darfur the previous day. The goal was to get to Tawila, a town under the control of SLM-AW, a faction of the Sudan Liberation Movement, led by Abdul Wahid al-Nur, a neutral party in Sudan’s bitter civil war. Tawila is just 32 miles (51 kilometers) southwest of the besieged city of El Fasher which is the frontline of the grisly fight for the Darfur region. As a result, it has become a refuge of sorts for the tens of thousands fleeing the city. The 18-month conflict in Sudan has been drastically overshadowed by the wars in Ukraine and Gaza but the UN fears it could become far deadlier: a cruel confluence of hunger, displacement, and disease with both the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), the two main warring parties in this conflict, accused of war crimes. According to the UN, more than 10 million people have been displaced in the violence, almost a quarter of Sudan’s population. More than 26 million people — over three times the population of New York City — face acute hunger. In particular, all eyes are on Darfur, where a genocide was perpetrated from 2003 to 2005 and where vicious war crimes have heightened fears that the worst could be realized again. In August, a famine was declared in the Zamzam displaced people’s camp in Darfur. And yet, only a handful of international journalists have been able to get in since the start of the war to report on what is happening. After many months of failing to get permission to visit Darfur from the SAF or the RSF, the invitation from the SLM-AW leadership to visit Tawila seemed the safest way to get in and tell the story. But when we reached the agreed meeting spot in the town of Abu Gamra, our hosts were nowhere to be found. Instead, a rival militia stood in their place. They had two Toyota Land Cruiser pickup trucks, weighed down with rocket propelled grenades and heavy machine guns. Our driver was led off in chains to the town jail. For three hours we were interrogated, one by one, in a small, windowless room. About eight men asked the questions. “Why are you here?” “Who sent you here?” “Who gave you permission to be here?” We answered their questions but got no information in return: who these men were or what they wanted with us. The militants’ trucks were armed with heavy machine guns and rocket propelled grenades. Scott McWhinnie/CNN When the driver returned later without the chains, there was a brief moment of optimism. Perhaps, we would be escorted to the border and simply instructed not to return. But the militants bundled us into our vehicle and ordered us to follow them. Our convoy quickly veered off onto a dirt track, heading deeper into Darfur. It was at this point that the general suddenly stopped his vehicle and started shouting at us, before shooting his gun. The goal, presumably, to scare us. It worked. We stopped again, maybe an hour later, by a dry riverbed lined with trees. The youngest fighters laid out a mat and brought out a flask of camel milk for the general and another older man known as the security chief, who wore a turban and sunglasses to hide a missing eye. Trembling, I took off my shoes and sat down in front of them. “Please, we are very frightened,” I told them in halting Arabic. “I am a mother. I have three little boys.” The general looked disinterested, but I could see the security chief’s face soften. “Don’t be frightened, don’t be frightened,” he assured me, “We are human beings.” The security chief asked us for our partners’ phone numbers, so that he could call them and assure them that we were OK. Grudgingly, I handed him my husband’s number — reluctant to put my family through any stress but conscious that it might also be a way for our captors to check my story. Later, we would find out that an English speaker had called my husband and Scott’s wife from the city of Port Sudan, thousands of miles away from where we were held, to say that we were safe and in good health but threatening that we would be imprisoned for many years if they spoke about it to anyone. For the next 48 hours, we were held under armed guard by the general, the security chief and roughly a dozen soldiers, some who looked no older than 14. Our detention was spent out in the open, underneath acacia trees. As the only woman, and with no

  From a warzone in Iraq to a Michelin-starred kitchen and a hit Netflix show, chef Sung Anh’s path to the top of Asia’s fine dining scene has been anything but ordinary. “Just like I did in the US Army, where I volunteered to go to the war, wanting to do something different — I decided to come here to Korea to try something different,” says the Korean-American chef and judge on hit reality cooking show “Culinary Class Wars,” which has just been green-lit for a second season. Sung, 42, is the head chef and owner of South Korea’s only three-Michelin-starred restaurant, Mosu Seoul. In recent weeks, he has gained a new legion of fans as the meticulous and straight-talking judge on the new Netflix series. It’s this passion and unwavering drive to forge his own path that’s helped reshape fine dining in his birth home. Born in Seoul, South Korea’s capital, Sung and his family emigrated to San Diego, California when he was 13. “We were just a family from Korea, seeking the American Dream,” he says. “As an immigrant family, we didn’t really know English.” As a teen growing up on the US West Coast, his mind couldn’t have been further from cooking. “I went to school, got into college, but decided to join the US Army because that’s the only way I thought I could travel,” says the chef. Over four years of service, he trained in bases across the country, before being deployed to his country of birth, South Korea and — following 9/11 — to the Middle East. Chef Sung Anh with his brother in the US Army (left) and with family in California (right). Courtesy Sung Anh “When I volunteered to go to Iraq during the war, people asked me, ‘Why did you do such a crazy thing?’” he recounts. “I heard all these stories from my grandfather, my father, uncles and family friends about the Korean War and the Vietnam War. I volunteered to go to Iraq because… I thought I had this one chance to go to war and experience it.” In late 2002, he was deployed to Baghdad for a year-long tour as a specialist with an artillery unit, “clearing out bombs and weapons” from Iraqi forces, including the bunker where Saddam Hussein was found in 2003. Sung describes his time in the army as “eye-opening.” “Being a soldier for four years was one of the greatest times in my life, it’s one of the most exciting,” he says. “There were people from Dakota, Idaho, Puerto Rico, Hawaii. I learned about their cultures and subcultures within the country.” A chance encounter After his service, Sung wanted to shift gears — literally. A petrolhead who loved racing cars under the cover of darkness as a teenager, his dream was to become a mechanic for Porsche. But two weeks before he was set to begin his training, a chance encounter with a group of chefs outside the now-closed American branch of famed cooking school Le Cordon Bleu in California changed the course of his life again. “They were all in white shirts and checkered pants. I had no idea what the school was,” he recalls. After speaking with the chefs and a rather influential school counselor, Sung was “hooked” and decided to put his mechanic dreams on hold. “I didn’t ever look back, I never regretted it. And now I drive a Porsche, so it’s okay,” he says with a laugh. “I think it was very spontaneous for me to choose this profession,” he admits. However, cooking was always in his blood. As a child, Sung was raised on his grandmother’s food. And in the US, he got his first taste of being in the kitchen helping out at his family’s Chinese restaurant after school. In 2015, chef Sung opened his own restaurant, Mosu San Francisco. Mosu Seoul After culinary school, he worked in some of the West Coast’s finest kitchens, from the Michelin-star draped French Laundry to Benu and Urasawa. “I’ve met some of the greatest chefs in the US. They’ve mentored me and I think they’ve refined the roughness that I had from the military,” he says, crediting them with teaching him about the importance of finesse in their profession. In 2015, Sung opened his own restaurant, Mosu San Francisco, combining American flavors with nods to his Korean heritage. It was a risk that paid off – within a year he was awarded his first Michelin star. “It didn’t satisfy me that much. I was very, very happy for my team, for myself. But I knew there’s more to do,” he says. “I wanted to come back to my country and utilize what I know and what I understand… use the indigenous ingredients, the Korean culture, the heritage.” So, after two decades in the US and a Michelin star to his name, it was time to bring Mosu home. The new face of Seoul food Mosu Seoul serves innovative dishes with “no boundaries.” Mosu Seoul In 2017, chef Sung opened Mosu Seoul in the heart of one of the world’s fastest-growing fine dining scenes. Here, his plan was simple: to innovate. Mosu was unlike anything Seoul had seen before. Sung took what he had created in San Francisco with fusion gastronomy and transformed the menu to celebrate Korean ingredients.   But this was no ordinary Korean fare. The Korean-American chef prides himself on doing things differently — not being bound by one particular style of cooking or cuisine. He melds his culinary inspiration from his heritage and cross-culture upbringing, all with meticulous detail. The result? Thoughtful and playful courses, such as Mosu’s signature abalone taco, which features subtle nods to flavors from both his home and memories of California. “At Mosu, I cook what I think is the best, no boundaries, no genre,” he says. In 2022, Mosu Seoul was awarded three Michelin stars, and with it, the recognition of being the modern face of the South Korean capital’s transforming gastronomic scene. A

An Italian surfer has died after being impaled in the chest by a sharp-billed fish while surfing off Indonesia’s West Sumatra coast. Giulia Manfrini, 36, had been surfing in the Mentawai Islands, a remote island chain when she suffered a “freak accident,” said her business partner James Colston. “Unfortunately, even with the brave efforts of her partner, local resort staff and doctors, Giulia couldn’t be saved,” Colston said Sunday in a statement on Instagram. “We believe she died doing what she loved, in a place that she loved.” Lahmudin Siregar, acting head of the Mentawai Islands disaster management agency, said Manfrini was struck in the chest by a swordfish while surfing off the southern part of Siberut Island around 9:30 a.m. local time, according to state-news agency Antara. According to a medical report, she suffered a stab wound to the upper left chest with a depth of about five centimeters, the agency said. Together Colston and Manfrini founded travel company AWAVE Travel, which organized trips to popular surfing destinations, including the Mentawai Islands. Hidden Bay Resort Mentawais said in an Instagram post that their “client and friend” had been “hit in the chest by a needlefish and died almost immediately.” Both needlefish and swordfish have long, sharp bills and can jump out of the water. While their physical features can be dangerous to humans, fatalities are incredibly rare. Two witnesses were nearby when the accident occurred and provided first aid. They rushed her to the Pei Pei Pasakiat Taileleu health center, but her life could not be saved, Antara reported citing Siberut police. The mayor of Venaria Reale, a town near Turin in northern Italy, where Manfrini’s family lives, expressed his condolences to those who knew her. “The news of her death has left us shocked and makes us feel powerless in front of the tragedy that took her life so prematurely,” Fabio Giulivi said in a statement. “To mum Chiara, dad Giorgio and all the people who loved her, a touched hug from me and the whole City.” According to the AWAVE Travel website, Manfrini was a former professional snowboarder who had a passion for surfing that “led her all over the world to chase waves.” “Giulia couldn’t travel without people falling in love with her smile, laugh and endless Stoke,” Colston, the agency’s co-founder, wrote. “We love you Giulia. I am so sorry to say goodbye.”

What do a sexy Hong Kong icon, a bankrupted entrepreneur and a failed military defense campaign have in common? They all contributed to the rise of bubble tea, the insanely popular Taiwanese drink that’s taken the world by storm in recent years. And now, it’s back in the spotlight thanks to recent comments by Marvel actor Simu Liu, accusing a Canadian drink business of cultural appropriation. It all went down on an episode of “Dragons’ Den,” a “Shark Tank”-style reality show produced by the CBC in Canada. During the program, two Quebec-based beverage brand owners described bubble tea as a trendy, sugary drink, noting that customers are “never quite sure about its contents.” Chinese-Canadian Liu, who was appearing as a guest star/potential investor, interjected, “Hang on, hang on. I am quite sure about its content,” letting them continue before proceeding to challenge them on their desire to “make it better.” But this isn’t the first time bubble tea has been at the center of controversy. In fact, it’s been the subject of great debate for decades. It all started with foam tea Invented in the 1980s, bubble tea (also called “black pearl tea” or “boba tea”) is a beloved Taiwan classic. Though there are dozens of different variations, at its core it’s a combination of tea, milk and the “bubbles” – which are essentially little balls made of anything from tapioca to fruit jelly. According to various recent studies, the bubble tea industry in 2024 is valued at around $2.4-3.6 billion globally and there is no sign of growth slowing down in the next decade. So where did it all begin? The roots of bubble tea can be traced back to the 1940s. After working as a mixologist in an izakaya in Taiwan under Japanese rule during WWII, in 1949 Chang Fan Shu opened a tea shop selling unique shou yao (hand-shaken) tea made with cocktail shakers. The result was a rich and silky iced tea with fine air bubbles on top – dubbed foam tea in Taiwan. Today, shou yao is an essential bubble tea element. No shou yao, no bubble tea. It was a revolutionary invention at that time – not only were cold drinks uncommon, but the idea of consuming food and beverages for pleasure had only begun to grow in post-war Taiwan. In the following years, the island’s passion for tasty cold beverages intensified. “The trend of tea beverages prospered together with the rise of the leisure food trend in the 1980s as Taiwan was experiencing rapid economic growth,” said Tseng Pin Tsang, a Taiwanese food historian. “In addition to the industrial pre-packaged tea products, there were more tea shops on the street and tea restaurants in the suburbs.” In 1986, the late Taiwanese artist and entrepreneur Tu Tsong He decided to kickstart a new business venture by riding on the tea shop trend. After his previous business failed – a hot pot restaurant that went bust – Tu was left with a TWD 4 million (about $124,000) debt and desperately needed an idea to set his tea shop apart from the masses. “I was visiting the Yamuliao wet market in Tainan when I saw fenyuan (tapioca balls), a traditional snack I loved from my childhood,” recalled Tu in an interview with CNN in 2020. Bubble tea is often hand-shaken to create a rich and silky iced beverage with fine air bubbles on top – dubbed foam tea in Taiwan. Hanlin Tea Room “I thought to myself ‘why don’t I add some fenyuan into my green tea.’ The white fenyuan looks almost translucent with a white center when brewed inside the golden green tea, much like my mother’s pearl necklace. “So I coined it ‘zhen zhu lu cha’ (pearl green tea).” Tu then experimented by adding bigger, black tapioca balls to milk tea for a richer taste and a chewier texture, which became the classic bubble milk tea most fans know and love today. “The black bubble tea balls were bigger than the straws the market had then,” said Tu. “Our customers had to use spoons to scoop out the tapioca balls. We had to work with a plastic factory to customize straws just for our tea.” His first bubble tea shop, Hanlin, opened its doors in October 1986. “Bubble tea soon became a hot-selling item in the market and the steady revenue of the tea shop has helped me clear my debt,” said the businessman. Hanlin now operates about 80 branches across Taiwan and has franchises everywhere from the United States and Canada to mainland China. But here’s where things get tricky. Tu wasn’t the only person who claimed to have invented bubble tea. Lin Hsiu Hui, product manager at bubble tea chain Chun Shui Tang, said she created the very first glass of bubble milk tea at a staff meeting in 1988. Just for fun, she poured the tapioca balls she brought with her into her Assam tea and drank it. The white fenyuan, tapioca balls, were first used to make bubble tea. The larger black balls appeared later. Hanlin Tea Room “Everyone at the meeting loved the drink and it quickly outsold all of our other iced teas within a couple of months,” Lin told CNN Travel in a previous interview. Chun Shui Tang staff also claimed the brand was the first to debut foam tea shaken up with a cocktail shaker. Over the years, the fight for bubble tea supremacy grew heated. A 10-year litigation kicked off in 2009. The fight was finally settled in 2019 with a disappointing but friendly ending. The court decided that bubble tea was a drink that any person or shop could make. It was, therefore, unnecessary to debate who created it. “We’re all old friends in the tea industry,” commented Tu in 2020. “The lawsuit with Chun Shui Tang is a must-fight battle for truth but nothing personal. We will let the people who drink our tea be the judge.” Though the battle for ownership has no winner, there is one undisputed fun fact concerning

Polio is once again spreading in Pakistan, where officials say more than 1 million children missed their vaccination doses last month, underscoring the challenges they face in eradicating one of the world’s most intractable diseases. Pakistani officials reported more than a dozen new polio cases in October, bringing the total number of infections this year to 39, compared to just six last year when the South Asian country appeared to be on the verge of eliminating the virus. Ayesha Raza, the Focal Person to the Pakistani Prime Minister on Polio Eradication, blamed the recent uptick in cases on low vaccine uptake. She said about 1 million children missed their polio vaccinations in September, compounding a pre-existing immunity gap that has been growing since Covid-19 disrupted immunization efforts. Polio is a highly infectious viral disease that mainly affects children under age 5. It attacks the nervous system and can cause paralysis, respiratory issues and even death. It spreads mainly through contaminated water or food and there is no cure. But it can be prevented with a vaccine: polio cases worldwide have been reduced by more than 99% since the 1980s thanks to immunization campaigns. Pakistan and neighboring Afghanistan are the only two countries where polio remains endemic, according to the World Health Organization (WHO), though the United Nations health agency has also recently warned of a resurgence of the deadly disease in Gaza following more than a year of Israeli bombardment of the Palestinian enclave. Vaccination programs in Pakistan, home to more than 240 million people, have struggled in part due to a historical distrust of foreign health care providers. Allegations that US intelligence officials used a fake immunization program in the Pakistani city of Abbottabad as part of efforts to capture Osama bin Laden in 2011 inflamed those concerns. Religious beliefs and a lack of awareness about the dangers of polio have also hindered public health efforts. International NGOs and Pakistani authorities have worked aggressively to dispel rumors and vaccinate children in recent years, but misinformation continues to spread. A health worker administers a polio vaccine to a child in a downtown area of Lahore, Pakistan, on September 9, 2024. A health worker administers a polio vaccine to a child in a downtown area of Lahore, Pakistan, on September 9, 2024. K.M. Chaudary/AP Most of the recent cases in Pakistan are clustered in southwestern Balochistan province, which borders Afghanistan, where local officials say parents are reluctant to vaccinate their children due to widespread misinformation and distrust of health care providers. Most of the children recently infected with the disease had been partially vaccinated but did not complete all four required doses, said Raza, the official. Reported cases will also likely rise further as Pakistan steps up its surveillance efforts, Raza said. “A lot of work is being done to fill the gaps that we’ve missed in the past,” she said. The uptick in polio cases in Pakistan also comes as violent attacks against vaccination clinics have ramped up, targeting police and security officials. Militants have targeted anti-polio campaigns in Pakistan for decades, with some claiming vaccines are a Western conspiracy used to sterilize children. There have been 27 attacks on polio workers in Pakistan’s northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province this year, according to a CNN tally, which was confirmed by a police source. In September, armed militants killed a police officer protecting a polio vaccination site in the northwest city of Bannu, prompting protests. A police officer and a polio worker were killed in another shooting that month in the northwest city of Bajaur. Aftab Kakar, a representative for the Emergency Operation Center in Balochistan, said protests, insecurity and community boycotts had disrupted vaccine campaigns, “leaving a cohort of missed children who could sustain virus transmission.” Health workers put a mark on a child’s finger to indicate if they’ve received the vaccine. But in some cases, children have been incorrectly marked as having been vaccinated when they haven’t, Kakar said. Despite the recent surge in cases, Pakistani authorities are optimistic they can stop the spread of the disease. The country is launching a new nationwide polio vaccination campaign on October 28 with the aim of inoculating 45 million children under age 5. “Polio eradication is Pakistan’s top priority,” Pakistan’s Polio Eradication Programme posted on social media. “A unified plan with provinces aims to stop polio transmission by 2025.”

Paddington Bear, probably fiction’s best-known Peruvian, has been granted a passport by authorities in his adoptive country of Britain. Rob Silva, co-producer of the upcoming film “Paddington in Peru,” revealed the existence of the British passport in an interview with Radio Times magazine published Monday. In the film, the third in the hit series, the little bear (voiced by Ben Whishaw) travels home to Peru to visit his Aunt Lucy. “We wrote to the Home Office, asking if we could get a replica, and they actually issued Paddington with an official passport – there’s only one of these,” Silva said, showing the passport, which has Paddington’s photo inside, to journalist Laura Rutkowski. “You wouldn’t think the Home Office would have a sense of humour, but under official observations, they’ve just listed him as Bear,” added Silva. The movie is inspired by the work of late children’s author Michael Bond, who created the character of Paddington Bear in 1958 book “A Bear Called Paddington,” which follows the adventures of a small orphaned bear as he travels from Peru to the British capital. He is found at Paddington Station wearing a tag saying “Please look after this bear. Thank you,” and is taken in by the Brown family. “Paddington in Peru” follows his return to his homeland to visit his Aunt Lucy (voiced by Imelda Staunton) after he is issued with a passport. But when he and his friends the Brown family get there, they find that his aunt has gone missing from the Home for Retired Bears, sparking a search that takes them deep into the Amazon rainforest. The third installment of the franchise, which follows 2014’s “Paddington” and 2017’s “Paddington 2,” is directed by Dougal Wilson, who revealed that he was “incredibly apprehensive” about taking on the project. “Paddington 2 is one of the greatest films of all time. I was very scared and very anxious,” he told the Radio Times. “I’m under no illusion of how difficult it is to follow up those first two films, and obviously a third film is always very challenging. I really hope we don’t let down the fans.” “Paddington in Peru” is scheduled for release in the United Kingdom on November 8, and on January 17, 2025 in the United States.

The matchup: Two doses of psilocybin, the active ingredient in “magic mushrooms,” against a six-week course of the popular antidepressant escitalopram, often sold as Lexapro or Cipralex. Escitalopram is one of a class of antidepressants called selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, or SSRIs. The projected winner: The drug that produces the best outcome at six months in the battle against depression, which affects more than 300 million people worldwide. The stakes are high for psilocybin clinical trials — there’s a pressing need for a more effective medical solution in the fight against depression, especially treatment-resistant depression. Of the nearly 9 million people with major depression in the United States who have tried pharmaceuticals, 2.8 million are estimated to be resistant to multiple antidepressants. “I am aware of a case of a person who tried 17 different drugs and nothing worked,” said psychobiologist Dr. Bertha Madras, director of the Laboratory of Addiction Neurobiology at Harvard Medical School’s McLean Hospital in Belmont, Massachusetts. “Even shock therapy failed,” Madras said. “It’s a terrible thing when you simply cannot help a person to get up out of bed and engage in life.” Antidepressant pros and cons For a good number of people antidepressants have been a blessing, at least at the beginning of treatment, said Dr. Charles Raison, a professor of psychiatry and human ecology at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health in Madison. “I always start by saying, ‘Thank God, we have them.’ Many people can say, ‘Wow, I was pulled out of a pretty deep hole,’“ said Raison, who is also the director of the Vail Health Behavioral Health Innovation Center in Colorado where psilocybin is studied. But for up to a third of depressed patients, antidepressants fail to work at all. Even for those who do find relief, “the benefits tend to fade in some fairly reasonable percentage of people over time,” Raison added. “Then there’s the side effects, many of which don’t get much better long term.” Initial reactions such as nausea or headaches often fade within a few weeks after starting an antidepressant, but sexual side effects such as reduced libido and difficulty with orgasm can last for months or even years. In rare cases, sexual dysfunction can persist even after stopping the antidepressant. That’s one problem that psilocybin doesn’t have, said psychedelics researcher David Nutt, director of the neuropsychopharmacology unit at Imperial College London’s division of brain sciences. “If you have just one trip and get better, there’s no drug in you day after day and no long-term sexual side effects,” Nutt said. Psilocybin also has the edge when it comes to emotional blunting, which is the tendency of antidepressants to diminish not only depression but also enjoyment in life. “This is such a consistent finding in studies, it’s become the theory of how antidepressants work — they suppress the brain’s supersensitive stress center and allow it to heal,” Nutt said. “However, the pleasure center of the brain can also be dampened, and we know that because when we put people on antidepressants in the brain scanner, they don’t respond as much as to happy faces,” he added. “Some people don’t like that. They say, ‘I don’t enjoy life as much. I’m not depressed anymore, but I’m not as happy.’” The top psychedelic contender In the search for a new alternative in treatment, psilocybin entered the ring as a fan favorite — arguably the most popular of a lineup of psychedelic drugs that last saw their heyday in the Timothy Leary era of the 1960s. In small clinical trials, synthetic versions of the psychedelic have shown benefits in tackling cluster headaches, anxiety, anorexia, obsessive-compulsive disorder and various forms of substance abuse. Still, psilocybin’s highest accolades have come from the drug’s apparent success in treating depression. Three versions of synthetic psilocybin have received the US Food and Drug Administration’s “breakthrough therapy” designation — in 2018 for treatment-resistant depression, which is diagnosed when people have tried and failed multiple antidepressants — and in 2019 and 2024 for clinical depression, diagnosed when a person is severely depressed most of the time. Breakthrough status is a designation that can fast-track the road to FDA approval and is given to drugs that “demonstrate substantial improvement over available therapy,” according to the agency. Another key contender, MDMA, or 3,4-Methyl​enedioxy​methamphetamine, commonly known as Molly or Ecstasy, shows promise in treating post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, but hasn’t been directly studied for depression. In 2024, lysergic acid diethylamide, better known as LSD, won FDA breakthrough status for treating anxiety. It’s also in clinical trials for depression. Smaller clinical trials for less well-known psychedelics are also underway. Not everyone in the field is convinced that psilocybin — or any other psychedelic — will survive FDA scrutiny. In August, the agency surprised researchers by rejecting MDMA as a treatment for PTSD, sending its maker back to conduct another clinical trial that could take years. “We have no idea how these drugs will fare in a much larger population of people,” said Harvard’s Madras. “To say that psilocybin is going to be the magic bullet that will solve the problems of depression, I think, is irresponsible at best and hazardous at worst.” A more open brain Psilocybin works on a different part of the brain than antidepressants, expert says. The psychedelic zeros in on the brain’s ruminative area, where thoughts run in a circular wheel of negativity many find hard to stop. Brain scans taken before, during and after people are tripping on psilocybin show the brain becomes desynchronized —disrupting those negative thoughts and allowing people to see themselves differently. “People begin to feel, understand and appreciate that their brain can change and they can escape from their depression,” Nutt said. “They can look through a door to a different way of thinking, and they can then walk through the door afterwards.” Integrating those new insights into daily behavior that lasts, however, is the key to long-term success in fighting depression, experts say. That’s why studies on psilocybin have used trained therapists during the hallucinogenic trip, along with therapy sessions before and after the experience. “The psychedelic experience opens up this sort of critical period where your brain is more open,

  TGL, the high-tech indoor golf league spearheaded by Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy, is set to tee off at last on January 7, 2025, after a schedule was released Monday. Originally slated to begin in January 2023, the televised venture was delayed by two years after the inflatable dome of its custom-built Florida venue – the SoFi Center – collapsed due to a power failure last November. Six teams comprising 24 mic’d up stars of the PGA Tour will compete across a 15-match regular season at the 1,500-capacity arena in Palm Beach Gardens before the postseason begins, culminating in a best-of-three Finals Series showdown for the SoFi Cup on March 24. Televised on ESPN, the venture is the brainchild of TMRW Sports – a company co-founded by Woods and McIlroy – and is aiming to attract a younger audience to golf through its virtual course and stadium concept. McIlroy and Woods hope to bring the game to a new generation. Mike Ehrmann/Getty Images Golfers on each four-player team will hit tee and approach shots into a 64-by-53-foot simulator before moving to the GreenZone; a green that can be uniquely rotated and sloped on each hole thanks to a turntable and actuators under its surface. Tickets for single matches, which are contested over two sessions and 15 holes, start from $160 and will go on public sale from October 29. The makeup of the teams’ various ownership groups makes for a who’s who of sporting heavyweights, with tennis sisters Serena and Venus Williams, NBA stars Giannis Antetokounmpo and Steph Curry, as well as Liverpool football club owners Fenway Sports Group (FSG), among the backers. Who is playing? The January 7 curtain-raiser sees New York Golf Club, headlined by two-time major champion Xander Schauffele, take on The Bay Golf Club. Schauffele, who scooped both the PGA and Open Championships respectively in a golden 2024, will be joined by fellow Americans Rickie Fowler and Cameron Young, as well as England’s Matt Fitzpatrick, to face off against Sweden’s Ludvig Åberg, Australia’s Min Woo Lee, Ireland’s Shane Lowry and Wyndham Clark of the US. Woods will be the star attraction of the second match a week later, as his Jupiter Links Golf Club team debuts against the all-American quartet of Atlanta Drive GC: Justin Thomas, Patrick Cantlay, Billy Horschel and Lucas Glover. The 15-time major winner played all four majors for the first time since his 2021 car crash this season but has not competed since missing the cut at the Open Championship in July. After undergoing successful back surgery last month, 48-year-old Woods said he hoped to “get back to normal life activities, including golf.” Woods has not competed since the Open Championship in Scotland in July. Paul Ellis/AFP/Getty Images/File TMRW co-partner and world No. 3 McIlroy will first be in action on matchday four when his Boston Common Golf side competes against Woods’ team. The Northern Irishman and world No. 2 Schauffele represent the highest-ranked players in the competition, owing to the absence of runaway ranking leader Scottie Scheffler. Norway’s Viktor Hovland and American LIV Golf star Bryson DeChambeau are the other two members of the top-10 not present in the league. Spain’s Jon Rahm had been slated to compete but withdrew last November, and the following month joined LIV Golf – none of whom’s players feature in TGL. TGL teams Atlanta Drive GC Justin Thomas (USA), Patrick Cantlay (USA), Billy Horschel (USA), Lucas Glover (USA) Boston Common Golf Rory McIlroy (Northern Ireland), Hideki Matsuyama (Japan), Keegan Bradley (USA), Adam Scott (Australia) Jupiter Links Golf Club Tiger Woods (USA), Max Homa (USA), Tom Kim (South Korea), Kevin Kisner (USA) Los Angeles Golf Club Collin Morikawa (USA), Sahith Theegala (USA), Justin Rose (England), Tommy Fleetwood (England) New York Golf Club Matt Fitzpatrick (England), Rickie Fowler (USA), Xander Schauffele (USA), Cameron Young (USA) The Bay Golf Club Ludvig Åberg (Sweden), Wyndham Clark (USA), Min Woo Lee (Australia), Shane Lowry (Ireland) TGL schedule Regular season January 7: New York GC v The Bay GC January 14: Los Angeles GC v Jupiter Links GC January 21: New York GC v Atlanta Drive GC January 27: Jupiter Links GC v Boston Common GC February 4: Boston Common GC v Los Angeles GC February 17: Atlanta Drive GC v Los Angeles GC, Atlanta Drive GC v The Bay GC, The Bay GC v Boston Common GC February 18: Jupiter Links GC v New York GC February 24: Los Angeles GC v New York GC, Boston Common GC v Atlanta Drive GC February 25: The Bay GC v Jupiter Links GC March 3: The Bay GC v Los Angeles GC, New York GC v Boston Common GC March 4: Jupiter Links GC v Atlanta Drive GC Postseason Semifinals: March 17, March 18 Finals Series: March 24, March 25

Vietnam elected Luong Cuong, a military general, as its new president on Monday, the fourth official to fill the largely ceremonial role in 18 months. Cuong, 67, was elected by the National Assembly to replace To Lam, who remained president even after he was formally appointed as the general secretary of the ruling Communist Party in August. The role of the general secretary is the most powerful position in Vietnam while the presidency is mostly ceremonial and involves meeting foreign dignitaries. Cuong in a speech vowed to conduct foreign policies that sought independence and peace and to promote Vietnam “as a friend, a trusted partner, an active and responsible member of the international community.” Cuong, who has served in the Vietnamese army for over four decades, has been a Politburo member since 2021. His appointment took place after months of uncharacteristic tumult in Vietnam’s politics and the death of former party general secretary Nguyen Phu Trong, who had dominated the country’s leadership since 2011. Trong was an ideologue who viewed corruption as the single gravest threat in maintaining the party’s legitimacy and launched a sweeping anti-graft campaign known as the “blazing furnace.” It singled both business and political elites, including former presidents Nguyen Xuan Phuc and Vo Van Thuong and the former head of parliament, Vuong Dinh Hue. Vietnam’s Luong Cuong takes his oath as Vietnam’s President during the autumn opening session at the National Assembly in Hanoi on October 21, 2024. Dang Anh/AFP/Getty Images As Vietnam’s top security official at the time, Lam had led the campaign until May. When he became the new general secretary, he promised to maintain the anti-corruption fight. The campaign, albeit popular with many Vietnamese citizens, had spooked investors and made the bureaucracy more cautious, slowing down decision-making in the country. The appointment of Cuong as the new president was a “move to stabilize the system” after the period of turbulence, said Nguyen Khac Giang, a visiting fellow in the Vietnam Studies Program at Singapore’s ISEAS–Yusof Ishak Institute. “Luong Cuong’s appointment represents a deliberate attempt to restore balance between Vietnam’s military and security factions, particularly ahead of the 2026 Party Congress,” he said. “By ceding the presidency, To Lam shows his commitment to the collective leadership principle, while still retaining the decisive power in the system,” he said. Vietnam’s leaders are next due to convene a Communist Party Congress in early 2026. Critics said that Cuong’s appointment would expand repression in Vietnam. Ben Swanton of The 88 Project, a group that advocates for freedom of expression in Vietnam, said that Cuong would be a “reliable deputy” to Lam. “The installation of Luong Cuong as president is yet another example of the expansion of Vietnam’s police state,” he said.

  Investigators looking into the death of singer Liam Payne said they are not yet ready to release his body to his family, pending further toxicology reports, according to a statement from prosecutors in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Geoff Payne, father of the former One Direction singer, arrived in Buenos Aires on Friday. “The representative of the Public Prosecutor’s Office informed the father that the toxicological and histopathological studies complementary to the autopsy have not yet been completed, and that their results are necessary to decide on the release of the body,” a spokesperson for the Public Prosecutor’s Office told CNN in a statement Tuesday. “He also informed him that the prosecution is not aware to date of other studies or laboratory analyses and has not released any type of specific technical report outside the exclusive framework of the investigation and the judicial process corresponding to the case.” Final toxicology report findings are not expected to be released for some weeks, but the initial report “suggested evidence of exposure to cocaine,” according to an Associated Press report, citing an Argentinian official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to brief journalists. Related articleOne Direction was their childhood. Now, fans are grieving their youth “Due to the need to respect the memory of the victim, everything that arises in the context of the investigation will first be reported to the family,” the Public Prosecutor’s Office added in their statement. The circumstances surrounding the former One Direction star’s fatal fall from a third floor balcony at CasaSur Palermo Hotel in Buenos Aires last week remain under investigation by authorities. Ad Feedback “Everything indicates that the musician was alone when the fall occurred,” the public prosecutor’s office in Argentina said Thursday. Payne, 31, was previously open about his struggle with addiction and mental health. Payne’s former bandmates – Harry Styles, Niall Horan, Louis Tomlinson and Zayn Malik – released a statement last week honoring the man they called a “brother.” “The memories we shared with him will be treasured forever,” their joint statement said. The investigation On Wednesday, Buenos Aires police responded to the hotel after a staffer requested urgent police assistance via a 911 call to help with a hotel guest who was “overwhelmed with drugs and alcohol” and whose life they feared was “at risk,” according to the emergency call obtained by CNN’s local affiliate Todo Noticias. Marcelo Roma, the prosecutor in charge of the investigation, last week confirmed the preliminary autopsy report that determined Payne’s death was due to multiple serious injuries and “internal and external hemorrhage” as a result of his three-story fall. Officials investigating the incident also suspect he may not have been fully conscious at the time of his fall. “Due to the position in which the body was found and the injuries from the fall, it is presumed that Payne did not adopt a reflexive posture to protect himself and may have fallen in a state of semi or total unconsciousness,” the report read. A picture released by police in Buenos Aires on Wednesday showed a table in Payne’s hotel room with items scattered across it, including unidentified white powder, crumpled tinfoil and a lighter. Some charred marks are also visible on the table. Payne’s father, Geoff Payne, traveled to Buenos Aires on Friday, visiting the hotel where his son died. Visibly emotional, Geoff Payne thanked the fans gathered outside the hotel, expressing his gratitude for their overwhelming show of support. Over the weekend, One Direction supporters paid tribute to the singer in memorials held around the world. Payne is survived by a 7-year-old son named Bear, whom he shared with singer Cheryl Cole.

A massive space rock, estimated to be the size of four Mount Everests, slammed into Earth more than 3 billion years ago — and the impact could have been unexpectedly beneficial for the earliest forms of life on our planet, according to new research. Typically, when a large space rock crashes into Earth, the impacts are associated with catastrophic devastation, as in the case of the demise of the dinosaurs 66 million years ago, when a roughly 6.2-mile-wide (10-kilometer) asteroid crashed off the coast of the Yucatan Peninsula in what’s now Mexico. But Earth was young and a very different place when the S2 meteorite, estimated to have 50 to 200 times more mass than the dinosaur extinction-triggering Chicxulub asteroid, collided with the planet 3.26 billion years ago, according to Nadja Drabon, assistant professor of Earth and planetary sciences at Harvard University. She is also lead author of a new study describing the S2 impact and what followed in its aftermath that published Monday in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. “No complex life had formed yet, and only single-celled life was present in the form of bacteria and archaea,” Drabon wrote in an email. “The oceans likely contained some life, but not as much as today in part due to a lack of nutrients. Some people even describe the Archean oceans as ‘biological deserts.’ The Archean Earth was a water world with few islands sticking out. It would have been a curious sight, as the oceans were probably green in color from iron-rich deep waters.” When the S2 meteorite hit, global chaos ensued — but the impact also stirred up ingredients that might have enriched bacterial life, Drabon said. The new findings could change the way scientists understand how Earth and its fledgling life responded to bombardment from space rocks not long after the planet formed. Nadja Drabon, right, is pictured with students David Madrigal Trejo and Öykü Mete during fieldwork in South Africa. Nadja Drabon/Harvard University Uncovering ancient impacts Early in Earth’s history, space rocks frequently hit the young planet. It is estimated that “giant impactors,” greater than 6.2 miles (10 kilometers) across, pummeled the planet at least every 15 million years, according to the study authors, meaning that at least 16 giant meteorites hit Earth during the Archean Eon, which lasted from 4 billion to 2.5 billion years ago. But the fallout of those impact events isn’t well understood. And given Earth’s ever-changing geology, in which massive craters are covered over by volcanic activity and the movement of tectonic plates, the evidence of what happened millions of years ago is hard to find. Drabon is an early-Earth geologist intrigued by understanding what the planet was like before the first continents formed and how violent meteoritic impacts affected the evolution of life. “These impacts must have significantly affected the origin and the evolution of life on Earth. But how exactly remains a mystery,” Drabon said. “In my research, I wanted to examine actual ‘hard’ evidence — excuse the pun — of how giant impacts affected early life.” Drabon and her colleagues conducted fieldwork to search for clues in the rocks of the Barberton Makhonjwa Mountains of South Africa. There, geological evidence of eight impact events, which occurred between 3.6 billion and 3.2 billion years ago, can be found in the rocks and traced through tiny meteorite impact particles called spherules. The small, round particles, which can be glassy or crystalline, occur when large meteorites hit Earth, and they form sedimentary layers in rocks that are known as spherule beds. Spherules can be seen in this sample taken from another meteorite impact. Nadja Drabon/Harvard University The team collected a range of samples in South Africa and analyzed the rocks’ compositions and geochemistry. “Our days typically begin with a long hike into the mountains to reach our sampling locations,” Drabon said. “Sometimes we’re fortunate to have dirt roads that bring us closer. At the site, we study the structures in the rocks across the impact event layer in great detail and use sledgehammers to extract samples for later analysis in the lab.” The tightly sandwiched layers of rock preserved a mineral timeline that allowed the researchers to reconstruct what happened when the S2 meteorite hit. Waves of destruction The S2 meteorite was between 23 and 36 miles (37 and 58 kilometers) in diameter as it struck the planet. The effects were swift and ferocious, Drabon said. “Picture yourself standing off the coast of Cape Cod, in a shelf of shallow water,” Drabon said. “It’s a low-energy environment, without strong currents. Then all of a sudden, you have a giant tsunami, sweeping by and ripping up the seafloor.” This graphic shows the sequence of events following the S2 giant meteorite impact. James Zaccaria The tsunami swept across the globe, and heat from the impact was so intense that it boiled off the top layer of the ocean. When oceans boil and evaporate, they form salts such as those observed in the rocks directly after the impact, Drabon said. Dust injected into the atmosphere from the impact darkened the skies within hours, even on the opposite side of the planet. The atmosphere heated up, and the thick dust cloud prevented microbes from converting sunlight into energy. Any life on land or in shallow waters would have felt the adverse effects immediately, and those effects would have persisted from a few years to decades. Eventually, rain would have brought back the top layers of the ocean, and the dust settled. But the deep ocean environment was another story. The tsunami churned up elements such as iron and brought them to the surface. Meanwhile, erosion helped wash coastal debris into the sea and released phosphorus from the meteorite. The lab analysis showed a spike in the presence of single-celled organisms that feed off iron and phosphorus immediately after the impact. Life rapidly recovered, and then it thrived, Drabon said. “Before the impact, there was some, but not much, life in the oceans due to the

Beautiful beaches. Majestic mountains. Hollywood. One more thing Southern California is known for: earthquakes. Yet for a long time, and to the great relief of millions, the many active faults that claw and tear through the earth have been relatively quiet. That peace has been recently shaken by several quakes that jostled the region to attention, including a 4.4-magnitude under Pasadena in mid-August that sent a jolt across Los Angeles. It was no disaster, but strong enough to rattle nerves. Then came the 4.7-magnitude quake near Malibu exactly one month later. It was enough shaking to leave people wondering: Is a big one coming? “Under every hill and mountain we have here in Southern California, there’s an active fault that’s helping to produce that topography,” said Kate Scharer, a research geologist at the United States Geological Survey. While the San Andreas is the most famous, scientists know it’s not the only fault that can produce a powerful earthquake in Southern California. “Magnitude-7s are very possible in this region along the front of the San Gabriel Mountains,” said Robert de Groot, ShakeAlert operations team lead at the US Geological Survey. “Part of the reason those mountains are there is because there’s a really big fault there called the Sierra Madre fault.” All of these faults have clashed and scraped against each other through the decades — small shifts on the planetary scale, but massive movements have rocked Southern California. The worst in modern Los Angeles history was the 6.7-magnitude Northridge earthquake in 1994, the first to strike under a major metro area since the 1930s. Residents clean up in the Van Nuys neighborhood following the 1994 Northridge earthquake in Los Angeles on January 17, 1994.  Vinnie Zuffante/Getty Images Highway overpasses, office buildings and parking garages collapsed in the violent shaking that lasted a painful 10 to 20 seconds along a fault scientists didn’t even know existed. Thousands of people were injured and dozens of people were killed. At tens of billions of dollars, it was one of the costliest natural disasters in American history to that point. Nothing has compared to that quake since then, and in that time, the population of Los Angeles County has grown from around 9 million to more than 10 million people. Many newcomers have no idea the havoc a big earthquake can wreak, including young Angelinos who grew up in Southern California‘s quiet times. They’ve gotten a taste in the recent sequence of moderate quakes. Now the question is whether they mean a big one is coming. “When we look back at the catalog, from like the 1930s to the present, we can see this thing happens every once in a while,” Allen Husker, a research professor at the California Institute of Technology and the manager of the Southern California Seismic Network. “There’s never a definite sequence where it happens, like, 100% of the time, that we’re going to have a big earthquake (after the sequence of smaller quakes).” “We can be guaranteed that there’s always going to be a big one” in a cycle that’s gone on for ages, Husker told CNN. What we don’t know is when. “There will be another big one in California sometime in our lifetimes,” Husker said. Part of the reason earthquakes are difficult to study is proximity. “Next time you’re on a plane and they say, ‘we’re at 30,000 feet (above sea level)’ or ‘at cruising altitude,’ that’s about the elevation above the surface of the earth,” Scharer explained. “But earthquakes happen (that same distance) below the earth.” While it may be unnerving to not know when the next big one will happen, experts say residents should channel that anxiety into getting prepared. The most important items are water, food and medicine, Scharer says. The Centers for Disease Control recommends having an emergency supply of a gallon of water per person a day – as well as non-perishable food and extra medicine for at least three days. It may take some time for stores and pharmacies to reopen. The American Red Cross has guidelines on how to prepare for an earthquake as well. The covered body of Los Angeles Police Officer Clarence Wayne Dean lies near his motorcycle which plunged off the State Highway 14 overpass that collapsed onto Interstate 5 during the Northridge earthquake.  Douglas C. Pizac/AP They also suggest a shift in thinking: Don’t just prepare for yourself; prepare for and with your community. When all hell breaks loose, you’ll be in it together. “I would recommend that (residents) think about how to help their friends and family and their local community if there is an earthquake,” Scharer advised. “Start with yourself and your family and then connect with your neighborhood and try and think about how you’re going to respond.” A relatively new early warning system — ShakeAlert — covers 50 million people in California, Oregon and Washington. It detects ground motion as soon as shaking starts on the earth’s surface. An estimated size and location are quickly calculated and become the basis for emergency alerts straight to cell phones, municipalities and schools. The alert will tell you who is likely to feel the strongest shaking, giving people a precious few seconds of warning to get in a safe place before the earth begins to move. “We want people to think of it as something that you can add to your arsenal of things that you can use to be ready before the earthquake, during the earthquake, and of course, after the earthquake,” said de Groot, adding that people should remember to practice “drop, cover and hold on” when they feel an earthquake – even if their phone doesn’t send them an alert. October 17th is the Great ShakeOut – a day for people around the world to practice earthquake safety drills. “We need to be prepared, because we could have an earthquake that’s pretty big at any time,” Husker said. “It’s easy to get lax.”

The message on Tuesday night in Brooklyn was simple: after a six-year hiatus, the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show is back, and the lingerie brand’s future is being shaped by women. The presence of the female gaze was felt throughout the evening with a production that featured an all-women musical lineup, and a diverse cast of models wearing more sophisticated — and in some cases, more comfortable-looking lingerie, including leggings and sheer coverups Lisa from K-pop supergroup Blackpink kicked off the event with an opening performance, and Gigi Hadid rose from the stage floor on a catwalk that looked like the love child of the “Barbie” movie set and an ’80s video game. Hadid, along with other models, wore the brand’s signature angel wings (this year, faux feather versions were PETA-approved). There appeared to be more Brown and Black faces on the runway than at any time in the show’s history, many of whom wore natural hairstyles, as well as some plus-sized and older models walking. Kate Moss, 50, makes her Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show debut. Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images The crowd screamed as Adriana Lima — one of the original Victoria’s Secret “Angels” — charged down the runway alongside some of fashion’s most in-demand models: Bella Hadid, Alex Consani and Paloma Elsesser. Kate Moss, who turned 50 in January, made her Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show debut, with her daughter Lila also modeling. Then there was Cher, the undisputed highlight of the evening, who delivered a show-stealing performance of “Believe” and “Strong Enough.” Fashion journalist Roxanne Robinson told CNN: “the models could have been naked, and no one would have noticed.” Cher performs during the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show 2024. Evan Agostini/Invision/AP ‘Work in progress’ For decades, Victoria’s Secret was the self-proclaimed arbiter of sexy, becoming ubiquitous in American malls in the 1990s with popular products like the “Miracle” pushup bra. The brand defined femininity with barely covered supermodels in catalogs and campaigns as well as on its annual catwalk. First streamed online in 1999, then televised in 2001, the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show became a sex-charged spectacle of lingerie watched by millions in 200 countries at its peak, with performances by Destiny’s Child, Justin Timberlake and Kanye West. But its time-worn playbook — of largely White, rail-thin models — lost its luster in the late 2010s. The brand found itself fending off accusations of sexism, ageism and a refusal to cater to women of all shapes and sizes, particularly following inflammatory comments about transgender and plus-size models made by a marketing executive at its then-parent company, L Brands, in 2018. By that year, the fashion show’s viewership had already plummeted, from 9.7 million in 2013 to 3.3 million. At the same time, new brands like Rihanna’s Savage X Fenty, took bites out of Victoria’s Secret’s market domination by offering inclusive sizing and more diverse casting in its campaigns and events. Barbara Palvin, Yasmin Wijnaldum, Winnie Harlow, Gigi Hadid, Kendall Jenner, and Alexina Graham at the 2018 Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show, the last before it returned in 2024. Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images In 2019, L Brands, canceled the show indefinitely, but last year, Victoria’s Secret (now a publicly traded company) attempted to revive the format through the documentary “Victoria’s Secret: The Tour,” which spotlit four collections by independent designers and artists from Lagos, Bogotá, London and Tokyo. Narrated by Gigi Hadid, the film features models such as Naomi Campbell, Quannah Chasinghorse and Winnie Harlow. Two years earlier, the brand tried trading “angels” for “ambassadors,” giving the new roles to soccer player Megan Rapinoe and actor Priyanka Chopra Jonas. “I think the last couple years have been marked by a bunch of different attempts of throwing things at the wall, seeing what sticks, and as a result the messaging is a bit muddled,” said fashion and beauty journalist Chantal Fernandez, who charted the rise and unraveling of the lingerie giant in the new book “Selling Sexy” with co-author Lauren Sherman. For a company known for its upbeat and glamorous visual language and tone, “suddenly, their imagery looked like any other mall brand… and I think part of it was not having a clear idea of how to modernize this idea of what is sexy now, which is a really tricky question today,” she added in a video interview with CNN. Paloma Elsesser walks the runway for the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show 2024. Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images Tuesday’s multi-racial, -size and -generational cast is Victoria’s Secret’s latest pitch at a rebrand, while bringing back some of the kitsch and camp of the once iconic show, now streamed live on its social media platforms instead of heavily edited as a television special. Sarah Sylvester, Victoria’s Secret executive vice president of marketing, called it an acknowledgement of “the parts of our DNA that we love and that are important to us, and realizing that we also are able to evolve and be more modern and more inclusive,” she told CNN in a video call ahead of the show. Critics have accused the brand’s efforts to project an image of inclusion as being inauthentic. When asked whether the show was a way to address the negative headlines since 2019, its chief design and creative officer, Janie Schaffer, replied: “Yes, in short, absolutely.” Liu Wen walks the runway during the 2024 Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show. Taylor Hill/WireImage/Getty Images She said that Victoria’s Secret was listening to their customers, who wanted the show to return. “Our customer is crying out for the show,” she said, adding that they are well-placed to deliver it with Victoria’s Secret’s “group of really experienced, strong women in the business that can really get the balance of the brand right.” But did Victoria’s Secret gambit work? It may be too soon to tell, but early indications suggest the show hit the right tone. Seeing Tyra Banks was “very nostalgic for me,” said celebrity stylist Law Roach. Banks, who closed the show, wore a formfitting bodice and leggings and silver cape. “I think it is a work in progress, right?” he said of the company’s attempted rebrand, before

Researchers have discovered a distant disc galaxy that has surprisingly similar characteristics to our own Milky Way, and it could change our understanding of how galaxies form. The galaxy, which has been named REBELS-25, is far more orderly than the existing science suggests it should be for its age, according to research led by astronomers from Leiden University in the Netherlands. REBELS-25 is much younger than our galaxy, but it already shares its rotation and structure, rather than appearing clumpy and chaotic like other early galaxies, the researchers said in a statement published October 7. The Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) project in northern Chile Alberto Pena/AFP/Getty Images “According to our understanding of galaxy formation, we expect most early galaxies to be small and messy looking,” Jacqueline Hodge, an astronomer at Leiden University and co-author of the study, said in the statement. Early galaxies tend to join together and develop smoother shapes incredibly slowly, with our Milky Way taking billions of years to develop tidy structures, the researchers said. The light reaching Earth from REBELS-25 was emitted just 700 million years after the universe was formed 13.8 billion years ago, a surprisingly short amount of time for it to have become so orderly, they said. “Seeing a galaxy with such similarities to our own Milky Way, that is strongly rotation-dominated, challenges our understanding of how quickly galaxies in the early Universe evolve into the orderly galaxies of today’s cosmos,” Lucie Rowland, a doctoral student at Leiden University and first author of the study, said in the statement. The rotation and structure of the galaxy were observed using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) telescope in northern Chile. The team also found data that hinted at even more developed features, such as spiral arms, and they plan to carry out more observations to confirm whether they in fact exist. “Finding further evidence of more evolved structures would be an exciting discovery, as it would be the most distant galaxy with such structures observed to date,” Rowland said. Andrew Blain, a professor of astrophysics at the University of Leicester, who was not involved in the paper, said REBELS-25 is “a bit unusual,” but “it’s not a revolution.” Blain highlighted the role of ALMA in finding a real example of a kind of galaxy that had previously only been produced in simulations “Without ALMA there’s been no ability to identify an example – both because individual examples would have been too faint to detect in a reasonable time, and a large enough sample of candidates could not be searched,” he told CNN. “ALMA also reveals details finer than earlier telescopes.” Blain said more research is needed before scientists change their understanding of galaxy formation. “A question would be are they very rare, or does every galaxy go through a phase like this,” he said. “If they’re common, then models will have to be tweaked.” Dave Clements, a reader in astrophysics at Imperial College London, who was not involved in the paper, said it “is quite a surprise” to find a galaxy like REBELS-25. “The universe back then is thought to be a lot more chaotic, with galaxy interactions and mergers expected to disrupt the relatively fragile structure of a disk. And yet that’s what REBELS-25 looks like,” he told CNN. ”Is it just a very unusual galaxy, that’s led an unexpectedly quiet life up to when we see it, or are these observations telling us that the early stages of galaxy formation don’t work the way we think? At this point we don’t know.” The research, which is available as a preprint (a scientific paper that has not gone through the peer-review process), has been accepted for publication in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

 Elisabeth Finch, a former writer and consulting producer on the hit ABC series “Grey’s Anatomy” and subject of a new documentary series, has admitted in an Instagram post that she “lied about so much.” The Peacock docuseries, “Anatomy of Lies,” is based on a Vanity Fair story published in May 2022 that alleged she lied about her health and personal life while working on “Grey’s Anatomy,” including that she had a rare form of bone cancer called chondrosarcoma. On Tuesday, the day the docuseries was released, Finch issued a statement on Instagram acknowledging that she has given “no one any reason to believe a word I say,” and that she lied about “things so many people have been devastated by in real life.” “When you love somebody, you’ll ignore red flags ‘til they’re hitting you in the head,” Jennifer Beyer (right) said about her relationship with Finch (left). Jennifer Beyer/Peacock “‘I’m sorry’ feels like the smallest words compared to what I’ve done, yet they are the truest. I trapped myself in the addiction of lies, betraying, and traumatizing my closest family, friends, and colleagues,” she wrote. “I’m making amends and expressing my genuine remorse as best I can when people are ready. And I’ve accepted the fact that some may never be.” Finch added that she has been receiving mental health treatment for nearly three years. Jennifer Beyer, Finch’s former wife, appears in a trailer for the series, expressing remorse for letting Finch into her home and her children’s lives. “When you love somebody, you’ll ignore red flags ‘til they’re hitting you in the head,” she said. Finch addressed her marriage in the Instagram post, saying she “fell deeply, truly in love,” and came to love Beyer’s kids “as my own … and still do to this day.” “The biggest mistake of my life (alongside lying about cancer in the first place) was saying ‘yes’ to Jennifer’s proposal before I was honest with her,” she added. “The truth is, there is no excuse, no justification – nothing will ever make my lies to anyone okay. Nothing erases the trauma I caused – the fear, the pain, the anger, the tears, the time,” the post continued. “And nothing matters more to me than holding myself accountable in every way. I will continue to repair whatever damage I can and ensure I am not the worst things I’ve done. I recognize all of this will take time for people to believe.” Finch first admitted to lying about her cancer diagnosis and about losing a kidney and part of her leg in an interview with website The Ankler in December 2022, seven months after the Vanity Fair story came out. “She taped a dummy catheter to her arm and shaved her hair to feign that she was undergoing chemotherapy,” The Ankler reported, describing how Finch would behave while working on the medical drama. Finch also lied to colleagues in 2019 by telling them her brother had died of suicide, when he was actually alive and living in Florida, according to the outlet. She told The Ankler that she began telling lies during the 2007 writers’ strike, after she hurt her knee during a hike. People were “so supportive” when she required knee-replacement surgery, and then they went “dead quiet” once she healed. “I had no support and went back to my old maladaptive coping mechanism – I lied and made something up because I needed support and attention and that’s the way I went after it,” she said. Finch resigned from her position on “Grey’s Anatomy” and sought in-patient treatment before an investigation by the show began, according to the report.

After spending several years building a life he loved in San Francisco, Jason Bennett, originally from the Bay Area, had every intention of remaining in the Californian city for good. The senior marketing executive, who previously worked for Gap Inc., says his main goal was “to continue climbing the corporate ladder” and he couldn’t really envision being anywhere else. But in 2018, Bennett packed up and moved to the South American country of Colombia permanently after “falling hard” for Medellín, once one of the most notorious cities in the world. He now works for himself, running two companies, from his “adopted home.” “Life surprises you,” Bennett tells CNN Travel. So how did he end up ditching the US and moving to a destination he hadn’t even visited until two years earlier? Big decision Bennett poses with his mom during one of his family’s visits to Medellín. Bennett poses with his mom during one of his family’s visits to Medellín. Courtesy Jason Bennett Bennett, who first moved to San Francisco in 2006, explains that he had begun to feel disconnected from his job, as well as the city, and questioned whether he really wanted to spend the rest of his life “in an office working for other people.” “I wouldn’t quite call it an existential crisis, if you will, but I was getting a lot less fulfillment out of what was in my bank account,” he says. “And I was getting very frustrated with San Francisco, and these things were not adding up anymore.” After almost a decade in the city, Bennett, who says he’d been “saving religiously” for years, had been able to travel to far-flung destinations such as Lebanon, India, Estonia and Argentina to see music artists with his friends, and his perspective on life was shifting. “I was feeling just optimism and positivity in the air in these cities, that I found, frankly, missing when I would go back,” he says. “And it started to create that kind of trigger and thought in my mind, ‘Maybe there’s something else out there.” Feeling disillusioned by the life he’d thought he wanted, Bennett resigned from his job and started up his own marketing company, True Star Consulting, in 2015. “You’ve got to jump sometime in life to know if you can do it or not,” he says. Bennett also decided to take a break from the US and spend a few months traveling the world, while working remotely. ‘Never a boring moment:’ The couple who left Canada to live in former Soviet Central Asia Later that year, he visited Lisbon, Portugal, before moving on to Cartagena, Colombia. “I knew after a week that I would never return to my old life,” he admits. “But I didn’t think I would ever permanently settle somewhere else.” While he wasn’t that enthralled by Cartagena, Bennett felt something change inside him in April 2016 when he arrived in Medellín, nicknamed the City of the Eternal Spring. “There was an energy I had never felt before,” he says. “The food and weather were awesome, the metro astoundingly pristine.” He planned another visit, and found that he experienced the same surge of energy when he returned in 2018. “But above all, I was especially taken and inspired by the happy and friendly people, who I found completely remarkable given what they had gone through.” Leaving Medellín to continue his travels, Bennett was hit with an overwhelming sense of sadness and longing. “It was then that I started to say, ‘Do you really need to leave?’” Bennett says. At the same time, he realized that he was mostly returning to San Francisco because he felt that was what was expected of him. “Well I don’t want to do that anymore,” he thought to himself. “And my happiness levels are off the charts when I’m in Medellín.” Bennett ultimately decided to “cut ties” with his life in San Francisco, and went on to sell his one-bedroom apartment there, and buy a two-bedroom property in the neighborhood of Castropol in Medellín’s El Poblado district. “As luck, or karma, would have it, I accepted an offer on my San Francisco apartment the very same weekend my offer was accepted on my Medellín apartment,” he says, before explaining that he subsequently had “a 45-day clock to unwind” his life in the US. According to Bennett, his new apartment was “roughly 80% cheaper per square foot” than his Californian abode at that time. After selling his furniture, shipping over some of his possessions to Colombia via Miami and filling two suitcases with clothes, some artifacts and his beloved coffee maker, Bennett set off to begin his new life in January 2018. “I really remember turning and locking that door,” he recalls. “And emotionally, I was done. There was no lingering. Like, ‘Is this the right thing to do?’” Adopted home Bennett, pictured with his sister Jen, says he feels much healthier since relocating to Colombia. Bennett, pictured with his sister Jen, says he feels much healthier since relocating to Colombia. Courtesy Jason Bennett Bennett says he immediately felt at home in Medellín, recalling how the “warmth and kindness” of its people pulled him in. “I always have felt a draw to the Colombian people,” he says. “And specifically those from Medellín. For anyone who’s not been here, the warmth and kindness is off the charts.” Bennett says he was particularly impressed by the lengths locals were prepared to go to help others. “It’s that much more remarkable given that this city, 20 or 30 years ago, was so feared by so many,” he says, reflecting on Medellín’s controversial past. The city, the second largest in Colombia, was once home to the Medellín Cartel which, led by drug lord Pablo Escobar, terrorized the country for decades. As a result, Medellín was synonymous with cocaine and murder up until the early 2000s. “That they have chosen to create a culture and a community of love, respect and connectivity, rather than one of hate,

On October 4, 1883, the legendary Orient Express departed Gare de l’Est in Paris for the very first time, slowly winding through Europe on its way to Constantinople, as Istanbul was then known. During a seven-day round trip, the service’s 40 passengers — including several prominent writers and dignitaries — lived in mahogany-paneled comfort, whiling away the hours in smoking compartments and armchairs upholstered in soft Spanish leather. The most luxurious experience of them all, however, could be found in the dining car. With a menu spanning oysters, chicken chasseur, turbot with green sauce and much else besides, the offering was so extravagant that part of a baggage car had to be repurposed to make space for an extra icebox containing food and alcohol. Served by impeccably dressed waiters, guests sipped from crystal goblets and ate from fine porcelain using silver cutlery. The restaurant’s interior was decorated with silk draperies, while artworks hung in the spaces between windows. As newspaper correspondent Henri Opper de Blowitz, one of the maiden journey’s passengers, wrote: “The bright-white tablecloths and napkins, artistically and coquettishly folded by the sommeliers, the glittering glasses, the ruby red and topaz white wine, the crystal-clear water decanters and the silver capsules of the Champagne bottles — they blind the eyes of the public both inside and outside.” A restored Orient Express dining car pictured at a European Heritage Day event in Paris in 2018 Francois Guillot/AFP/Getty Images The Orient Express’ opulent passenger experience was later immortalized in popular culture by authors like Graham Greene and Agatha Christie. But dining on the move was very much a triumph of logistics and engineering. Just four decades earlier, the very idea of preparing and serving hot meals aboard a train would have been almost unthinkable. In the early days of rail travel, passengers would either bring their own food or, if scheduled stops permitted, eat at station cafes. In Britain, for instance, meals were served in so-called railway refreshment rooms from the 1840s, though the quality was often questionable. Charles Dickens, a frequent traveler on the UK’s railroads, recounted a visit to one such establishment, where he purchased a pork pie comprising “glutinous lumps of gristle and grease” that he “extort(ed) from an iron-bound quarry, with a fork, as if I were farming an inhospitable soil.” A new era The British may have pioneered rail engineering in the 19th century, but the dining car’s story begins in America. In 1865, engineer and industrialist George Pullman ushered in a new era of comfort with his Pullman sleepers, or “palace cars,” and then launching a “hotel on wheels,” called the President, two years later. The latter was the first train car to offer on-board meals, including regional specialties like gumbo, which were prepared in a 3-foot-by-6 foot kitchen. Pullman followed his hugely successful President with the first ever dining-only car, the Delmonico, which was named after the New York restaurant considered to be America’s first fine dining establishment. By the 1870s, dining cars could be found on sleeper trains across North America. But it was Belgian civil engineer and businessman Georges Nagelmackers who brought the idea to Europe and elevated the experience to new heights. He saw the potential for luxury sleepers in Europe and set about transforming rail travel on the continent with the Compagnie Internationale des Wagons-Lits (CIWL, or just Wagons-Lits), founded in 1872. People wait on the platform in front of Le Train Bleu, a luxury sleeper train operated by Wagons Lits from 1886 to 2003 AFP/Getty Images The firm quickly began producing the world’s most glamorous dining and saloon cars — not only for its famous Orient Express but also the Nord Express (from Paris to Saint Petersburg), Sud Express (from Paris to Lisbon) and dozens of other services, as the company came to dominate luxury rail travel in mainland Europe by the turn of the 20th century. Wagons-Lits also operated grand hotels along its routes, though the on-board dining remained central to the romantic appeal of train travel. Meals were served at set times and were supervised by a maître d’hotel. And from the table service to the decor, the carriages embodied the French art of living, according to Arthur Mettetal, who recently curated an exhibition about the history of Wagon-Lits’ dining cars at the Les Rencontres d’Arles photography festival in France. Related articleInside the Waldorf Astoria’s $1 billion makeover “With the different menus, it was the same as (what) you could have at a really nice Parisian restaurant,” he told CNN on a video call. “Also, the tableware, the silverware, the decoration — everything combined was what was considered luxury at this time.” Golden age The 1920s are considered a “golden age” for rail travel in the West. As Europe emerged from the ravages of World War I, business travelers and adventurous vacationers began taking advantage of smoother, quieter and faster steam trains. As Wagons-Lits’ routes reached into North Africa and the Middle East, state-of-the-art metal cars replaced the old wooden ones. Celebrated artists and designers were meanwhile commissioned to decorate the cars, including the palatial dining ones. A 1927 poster advertising the Compagnie Internationale des Wagons-Lits’ service between London and Vichy, France. Fine Art Images/Heritage Images/Getty Images By the end of the next decade, the company was operating over 700 dining cars — yet, an even greater on-board luxury had emerged by then: eating in one’s seat. Known as the Pullman lounges (the American industrialist’s name had, by that point, become a byword for luxury train travel), Wagons-Lits’ new car was introduced on various daytime services. Rather than waiting for lunchtime or dinner slots, passengers were served food directly to huge, winged chairs with comfortable headrests. The cars proved “revolutionary,” said Mettetal, describing them as “the most luxurious carriages ever created.” Wagons-Lits turned to decorator René Prou and master glassmaker René Lalique to design the Orient Express’ new Pullman cars. They featured elegant marquetry and molded glass panels, and even the luggage racks “were transformed into gems of Art Deco,”

Khloe Kardashian continues to open up about her health journey after dealing with skin cancer, revealing recently that she used facial injections to fill a cheek “indentation” that she was left with after surgery. Kardashian underwent surgery to remove a cancerous tumor from her face in 2022. The surgery left Kardashian with an indent on her cheek, photos of which she recently shared on her Snapchat page in since-expired posts, according to E! News. “As a result of the surgery, and the tumor my incredible doctor removed, I ended up with an indentation in the side of my face,” Kardashian wrote. Kardashian showcased undated photos of her face that highlighted the indent prior to getting the injections, as well as photos of what her face looked like afterward. She added that she waited nine months after her 2022 surgery to get the indentation filled, saying she wanted her doctor’s approval before doing so. The Good American founder has been open about her health journey. She previously started that she’d decided to go get a “small bump” on her face checked by a doctor after realizing it hadn’t gone away after several months. She was later advised by her dermatologists to “have an immediate operation” to remove the tumor, which she was told was “incredibly rare for someone my age.” “I was lucky and all I have is a scar to tell a story with,” she said. “Most people aren’t as lucky as me and I am forever thankful.” She wrote at the time that she is sharing her story so that she “can remind everyone to get checked, and frequently.”

More than 800 years after her birth, Joan of Arc — a patron saint of France — remains an object of not just historical, but cultural fascination. Over the summer, we’ve witnessed Chappell Roan’s armor-clad performance at the VMAs, a space-age Joan of Arc figure clothed by fashion designer Jeanne Friott and leather artisan Robert Mercier at the Olympics opening ceremony, not to mention Baz Luhrmann’s announcement last month that Joan of Arc will be the subject of his next film. Her pop culture inspiration has lasted across the decades. In 1997, a now-iconic photoshoot featuring Fiona Apple captured by Joe McNally shows the indie pop artist riding the subway in a medieval knight suit and sword. “The pictures,” McNally wrote on Instagram, “have been played endlessly on Twitter for reasons unapparent to me.” Ten years later, Chloe Sevigny donned a choppy peroxide wig, a partial suit of armor and a white muslin peasant dress for her Joan of Arc Halloween costume. Most recently in 2018, Disney star turned fashion luminary Zendaya arrived at the Met Gala dressed as Joan in full chain mail and a bluntly cropped auburn bob for the “Heavenly Bodies” theme. But what is Joan’s story, and why does her iconography appeal to the young starlets of today? Humble beginnings One of five children in a peasant family in Domrémy, in north-eastern France, Joan was born in the year 1412. Experiencing visions from a young age, Joan believed she was guided by God to save France from English invasion. Despite not being born with a fortune or aristocratic birthright, she was granted a rare audience with the Dauphin of France, the future King Charles VII, in February of 1429. Joan, captured here in a painting by J. D. Ingres, was born in 1412 to a peasant family in Domrémy. Hulton Archive/Getty Images “How does one come from a village and find oneself in the highest echelons of French society? Where you’re rubbing elbows with dukes, and where you’re in conversation with the Dauphin — how does that even occur?” pondered Katherine J. Chen author of the 2022 historical fiction novel, “Joan”. This unlikely beginning is partly what fuels Joan’s mystique. French artist Jules Bastien-Lepage, who grew up in similar circumstances, used her start in life as the focus of his 1879 painting of Joan. It shows her with dirty hands and feet having abandoned her spinning wheel and with eyes cast towards the heavens as she contemplates ghostly visions behind her. The late Alexander McQueen too (who spoke about how, in his early career, he felt like a working-class imposter in the world of high fashion), used Joan of Arc as the inspiration for his Fall-Winter collection of 1998, drawing on her death as a martyr and her courage as a heroine. Becoming Joan of Arc In 1429, at around the age of 17, Joan asked the Dauphin to send her, and an army, to the siege of Orléans, a French city in the Loire valley which was at the time was under English occupation. Eventually persuaded by Joan’s religious conviction, the future king of France agreed. After being gifted a set of armor, she was sent to Orléans. Joan’s presence motivated the beleaguered French soldiers, and within nine days of her arrival the city was liberated. Actor Ingrid Bergman starred as Joan in the 1948 film directed by Victor Fleming. Loomis Dean/The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock Dr Eleanor Jackson, curator of the upcoming Medieval Women exhibition at the British Library, determined that Joan: “Must have had an enormous amount of personal charisma, and an incredible sense of conviction,” to be given permission to go. “It was pretty exceptional for a woman to be on the battlefield, to take on that military role, to try to influence military tactics, and be actively involved in politics, especially coming from a low birth,” Jackson explained. The Amazonian image of Joan of Arc in armor is perhaps the most recurrent one in popular culture, inspiring thousands, if not hundreds and thousands, of similar depictions. Painters Rubens, Ingres and Rossetti all depicted Joan with flowing auburn hair and heavy full plated armor. More recent depictions have ditched the locks but kept the armor, with both Ingrid Bergman (1948) and Milla Jovovich (1999) embodying a more boyish image of Joan on film. A patron saint of female power? Following success in the Loire Valley, Joan saw Charles crowned as King of France at Reims, but after a defeat at the siege of Compiegne, she was captured and sold to the English. Joan was tried by a pro-English court for heresy in 1431, where she was found guilty. At approximately the age of 19, was burnt at the stake, convicted of heresy. Milla Jovovich also had a turn at embodying the canonized female figure in “The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc” (1999) directed by Luc Besson. Gaumont/Kobal/Shutterstock The transcript of Joan’s trial, which details the acts of cruelty at the hands of her captors and her remarkable resilience, remains one of two critical documents concerning Joan’s life. It also provided the inspiration for Carl Theodore Dreyer’s silent film The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928) starring Renée Jeanne Falconetti. Falconetti’s mesmerizing depiction of Joan after her imprisonment remains a major landmark in modern cinema. First glorified then crucified,  Joan’s mythologized fate encapsulates the precarious role of women in society — particularly those in the limelight. In 2022, culture writer Rayne Fisher-Quann suggested the pendulum swing of public perception was such a distinctly female experience, she coined the term “woman’d.” Chappell Roan performed in full chain mail during the MTV Video Music Awards on September 11, 2024. Mike Coppola/Getty Images “Like wild animals and recycled plastic, women in the public eye have a lifecycle that most of us know by heart,” Fisher-Quann wrote for British youth culture magazine i-D. “Sometimes, she simply receives too much praise… Most often, the public seems to just get tired of her… It’s a perpetual cycle of ritualistic idolization, degradation and

Cash-starved Boeing, contending with massive financial losses from a crippling strike and years of operational and safety problems, is turning to major banks and Wall Street to raise tens of billions of dollars in cash. In a regulatory filing early Tuesday, the company announced plans to borrow $10 billion from a consortium of banks. It also separately announced plans to raise $25 billion by selling stock and debt. The $10 billion borrowing plans would be included in the $25 billion that Boeing filed to raise. The company’s debt surged in the last six years as Boeing reported core operating losses of more than $33 billion. Its commercial airplane production has ground to a near halt by a month-long strike by 33,000 members of the International Association of Machinists. Talks between Boeing and IAM broke down last week with no new negotiations planned. On Friday, Boeing’s new CEO Kelly Ortberg announced plans to cut 10% of its worldwide staff of 171,000 workers. Boeing’s credit rating has plunged to the lowest investment-grade level – just above “junk bond” status – and major credit rating agencies have warned Boeing is in danger of being downgraded to junk. That would raise its cost of borrowing. Boeing’s long-term debt has climbed to $53 billion at the end of June from $10.7 billion at the end of March 2019, when a second fatal crash of the 737 Max led to a 20-month grounding of that plane, the company’s best-selling aircraft. Escalating crises Over the last six years, Boeing has been buffeted by one problem after another, ranging from embarrassing to tragic. Two 737 Max crashes killed 346 people, a tragedy for which the company agreed to plead guilty to deceiving the Federal Aviation Administration during the certification process for the plane. A federal judge is considering whether or not to accept its plea agreement that would include up to $487 million in fines and require it to operate under the supervision of a court-appointed monitor. Attorneys for families of the crash victims argued in court that the penalty is not severe enough. Whistleblowers have testified before Congress that Boeing’s production process put profits ahead of safety and quality, violating the company’s own rules. That was driven home in January when a door plug blew off the side of a 737 Max flown by Alaska Airlines, leaving a gaping hole in the plane shortly after takeoff. While none of the crew members or passengers were severely injured, the incident prompted numerous federal investigations, including one that found the plane had left a Boeing factory without the four bolts needed to keep the door plug in place. The strike by the IAM is just the latest blow. Last month, the company and union leadership agreed to a tentative deal that would have given union members a 25% raise over the four-year life of the contract, only to have the rank-and-file vote nearly unanimously to reject the deal and go on strike. Boeing’s offer to increase the raises to 30% over the life of the deal was also rejected by union negotiators. Despite all of its problems, Boeing is able to borrow money from the consortium of banks and likely will be able to sell the stock and debt issues it needs on Wall Street because of the unique market position in which it operates. Boeing and European rival Airbus are essentially the only companies that make the full-size jets that the global airline industry needs. Its place as part of a duopoly essentially ensures its survival. Both have backlogs of orders stretching for years into the future. And Airbus doesn’t have the capacity to take on Boeing’s orders. Should an airline cancel its orders for Boeing jets and place orders with Airbus instead, it would have to wait as many as five years for deliveries to start for those planes. And it would take years for another competitor to win approval for its own aircraft should it try to enter the market. So while Boeing has lost market share to Airbus in recent years, it isn’t going anywhere. But the halt in production of its 737 Max, as well as its 767 and 777 freighters caused by the strike will create more cash flow problems for Boeing in the near-term, since it gets most of the money from the sale of a plane at the time of delivery. In addition, the company announced Friday that its already long-delayed 777X, the next generation of that widebody passenger jet, will be delayed further due to problems discovered during test flights. It is now not due to start deliveries until 2026. This story has been updated with additional reporting and context.

Aryna Sabalenka secured her third straight Wuhan Open title with a hard-fought victory over Zheng Qinwen on Sunday. In a rematch of this year’s Australian Open final, the world No. 2 defeated home favorite Zheng 6-3, 5-7, 6-3 to pick up her second WTA 1000 title of the season and the seventh of her career. Sabalenka, the first player to win the Wuhan Open three times, extends her unbeaten run at the tournament to 17-0 while improving to 4-0 in her head-to-head against Zheng. “I felt like I just lost a little bit of focus and I let her come back in the match,” Sabalenka said, per the WTA. “I got a little bit frustrated there. “It became a three-set match. Balls are getting heavier, it’s the third set, a bit emotional.” Sabalenka has now won four titles in 2024, including the Australian Open and US Open, and five of her 17 career titles have come in China – an Open Era record, per the WTA. Sabalenka said Wuhan “definitely feels like home.” Zheng, the Paris 2024 gold medalist, was bidding to become just the second Chinese player to win a WTA 1000 event following Li Na’s success in Cincinnati back in 2012. Despite the defeat, Zheng is the first Chinese player ever to make a WTA 1000 final on home soil and the 22-year-old was buoyed by taking a set off Sabalenka for the first time. “She forced me to see some of the weaknesses in my tactics,” Zheng said, per the WTA. “I really look forward to training. I look forward to the next match against her. “After this loss, I’m feeling excited because I am doing better each time. There’s more room for improvement. I hope that I can close the gap and also can overcome this challenge.” Zheng is the first Chinese player to reach the final of a WTA 1000 event on home soil. VCG/AP Zheng’s run to the final in Wuhan pushes her up to world No. 7, with the top seven automatically qualifying for the year-ending WTA Finals in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Sabalenka, meanwhile, will be hoping to overtake Iga Świątek and secure the year-end world No. 1 spot, with only 69 ranking points separating the top two players in the women’s game.

Humans haven’t traveled to the moon since NASA’s Apollo program ended in 1972, but the Artemis program will soon return humans to the lunar surface, with the first crewed landing currently slated for 2026. Artemis astronauts will aspire to do things humans haven’t done before, like building a habitable base to allow for long-term visits and exploring the heavily cratered lunar south pole. Innovators across the world are working on solutions to help them achieve their goals, and to keep them safe. That includes researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), who are developing a set of wearable robotic limbs to help astronauts recover from falls. The so-called “SuperLimbs” are designed to extend from a backpack containing the astronauts’ life support system. When the wearer falls over, an extra pair of limbs can extend out to provide leverage to help them stand, conserving energy for other tasks. That could come in handy. The moon’s partial gravity makes maintaining balance tricky. The 12 astronauts who moonwalked on Apollo missions fell 27 times and had another 21 near misses, according to a University of Michigan study. When astronaut Charlie Duke toppled over on the moon in 1972, while performing tests on lunar soil, it took him three attempts to get up. The study found that falls were more common when, like Duke, astronauts were collecting samples or using tools – tasks that Artemis astronauts are likely to undertake. The seven men wearing spacesuits in this portrait made up the first group of astronauts announced by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). They were selected in April of 1959 for the Mercury Program. In the front row, from left, are Walter M. Schirra Jr., Donald K. Slayton, John H. Glenn Jr., and M. Scott Carpenter. Standing in the back row, from left, are Alan B. Shepard Jr., Virgil I. Grissom and L. Gordon Cooper Jr. NASA A visual history of the spacesuit 1 of 12 PrevNext Enter SuperLimbs SuperLimbs were developed about a decade ago by Harry Asada, a professor at MIT, and they’ve already been put to the test by aircraft manufacturing and shipbuilding workers. Now they’re being adapted for astronauts. Erik Ballesteros, a doctoral student at MIT, spent the summer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab working on SuperLimbs as part of a NASA fellowship. The system needs a bit more work, Ballesteros said, but he hopes that it will be ready for a demonstration by January – when it will help a mannequin to stand up from a prone position. He believes that within a year or two, it’ll be ready for a human demo, but there’s a lot the team needs to figure out first in terms of safety, he told CNN. “We can’t just duct tape and throw things together; we have to be very precise and very careful,” he said. There could be other challenges. Dr. Jonathan Clark, an adjunct clinical professor of Neurology and Space Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine, who acted as the crew surgeon for six NASA shuttle missions and is a consultant for commercial space firms, told CNN that the extreme environment of space – from temperatures, to contaminant particles like dust, to electromagnetic radiation – can mean it’s expensive and time-consuming to get technology approved for use off planet Earth. But, he added, the rate of innovation in space technology is astonishing. “For science fiction to go to science fact, it used to take centuries or decades,” he said. “Now it’s years.” Ballesteros understands the stakes. He has work experience in mission control at NASA’s Johnson Space Center, where his team maintained the life support systems within the International Space Station (ISS). Ana Diaz Artiles, an assistant professor of aerospace engineering at Texas A&M, who is not involved in the research, told CNN that the limbs could help reduce the metabolic cost of getting up. The tradeoff is that the limbs might add some weight and require more power, she said. She added that moon dust is “super toxic” so it could be harmful for an astronaut to roll around the lunar surface as they struggle to get up – a problem SuperLimbs could help eliminate. The robotic limbs are “really cool and really useful,” she said. “The new paradigm for astronauts” Humans haven’t had much of an opportunity to work on the moon yet. Apollo 17 astronauts hold the record for the longest moonwalk, at seven hours and 37 minutes. By contrast, Artemis mission participants – which will eventually include astronauts from countries like Japan too – will spend up to a week on the moon, learning to live and work away from Earth, in preparation for human expeditions to Mars. China has its own plans to get to the moon by 2030, where it will build a research station. Ballesteros plans to spend the next few years of his PhD using a “Swiss Army Knife technique” to turn SuperLimbs into a system for astronauts that can “address different important use cases, but all be one unified design.” SuperLimbs could help astronauts recover from falls, move efficiently, and do work. Kalind Carpenter/Preston Rogers/Mirza Samnani Next up, he plans to work on getting the limbs to function as an extra pair of legs. “So, it allows you to go from point A to B a lot quicker and without using as much energy,” he said. “And if they start to lose their footing a little bit, it can help stabilize them.” After that, he’s going to turn his attention to figuring out how the limbs can leverage tools to help with tasks like excavation, sample handling, and construction. “I want it to become almost like a natural extension of their bodies … so the astronaut almost feels awkward not having them,” he said. In the future, he hopes the extra limbs will become the new normal. “My goal is to make these arms become almost like the new paradigm for astronauts,” he said.

It’s almost impossible to know what to say to someone in the throes of grief. We all want to say something comforting. Very few of us know what that is. I’ve learned this the hard way. My beloved husband of 23 years died at the end of July, two years after being diagnosed with stage IV pancreatic cancer. Since then, I’ve seen friends and neighbors struggle for the right words, and I’ve been surprised by how even the kindest questions can set me off. There’s no one right answer, of course. What is helpful for me may not work for someone else, and words that I find off-putting may be the perfect balm for another person. Still, trading notes with a few grieving people, including my own children, I’ve found some helpful do’s and five unexpected don’ts. No. 1: ‘How are you?’ You’d be surprised how loaded this basic question can feel. A caring friend wants to know how you’re doing. What could possibly be wrong with that? The problem, my kids and I realized, is that it’s a near-impossible question to answer. Our feelings of grief change by the hour, sometimes by the minute, so there’s no answer that will stand the test of time. Do you mean how am I this very second?  I can answer that, but my answer might change a second later.  Do you mean how are we coping in life?  The answer is, we don’t know yet. We find it easier to answer less overarching questions, such as, how was college drop-off? How was the first day of school? How was dinner last night? Specific questions are less challenging than existential ones. No. 2: ‘How can I help?’ I’ve had to dig deep to figure out why this generous question from well-meaning friends doesn’t sit right. I think it’s because it puts the onus on the griever to help the helper. The helper wants to figure something out – but those of us who are grieving are in no position to help. We often can’t articulate, and might not even know, what we want or need. Here’s something that worked really well: neighbors who, without asking, dropped off a tray of lasagna or cookies or flowers or fill-in-the-blank. They didn’t ring the doorbell. They didn’t call to find out if we liked lasagna or if we’d be home. They simply left something on the doorstep. One helpful friend showed up at my house and immediately rolled up her sleeves and started doing my sink full of dishes. She didn’t ask. She just dived in. One recent morning, as I struggled to summon the energy to open the fridge and figure out breakfast for the kids and me, I watched a delivery truck back into our driveway.  Out came bags of bagels, platters of cream cheese, smoked salmon, fresh fruit and a carton of hot coffee sent by my colleagues. That morning, I did not have the forethought to say, “You know, I could really go for a bagel and coffee right now,” but it turns out that’s exactly what we needed. No. 3: ‘I can’t imagine what you must be going through’ One of my teenage daughters, a theater kid, explained to me why this phrase really rubs her the wrong way: It reveals a curious lack of creativity. Here’s what she wanted to ask her friends who said this: Really? You’ve never imagined losing a parent? Have you ever seen a movie about loss or death? “The Fault in Our Stars,” perhaps? How ‘bout “The Lion King”? Were you dry-eyed when Mufasa died, or did you cry and feel Simba’s pain? My daughter’s hunch is that you can, in fact, imagine a devastating loss, but you don’t want to imagine it for yourself or have to think of how sad this is for us. That’s understandable. We want to protect you from our pain, too. But the statement has the unintended effect of isolating us on a grief island, as though loss was somehow singularly ours. So instead of putting our feelings in an unimaginable silo, try relating to us. Say something like, “I remember when I lost my X and I felt X”. Or maybe share a specific memory like “I really enjoyed watching your dad coach you in soccer. I’m going to miss that.” A statement like that lets us know we’re not alone. No. 4: ‘This is so unfair’ I was surprised when friends, particularly friends my age, said this. I’m in the news business, so I think my notion of life “being fair” vanished somewhere in the middle of covering yet another senseless school shooting. I’ve long since stopped thinking of life as being neatly organized into fair and unfair categories. Instead of trying to untangle grief from injustice, I’ve started the practice of radical acceptance. This concept was introduced to my husband and me by our grief counselor immediately after his diagnosis. It goes something like this: Some things in life are glorious, and some things suck. Try to accept life on its own terms and deal with the hand you’re dealt. Radical acceptance has been a game-changer for me and how I tackle the tough stuff. Instead of asking, “Why me?” or “How can life be so unfair?” I say, “This is what I’m dealing with. What’s the best way forward?” No. 5: ‘I want to come give you a hug’ Before I was thrust into grief, I would not have understood how a loving gesture from a friend could ever feel uncomfortable. Now I do. Those of us grieving need to pace ourselves. It’s draining to grieve for too long on any given day, so we titrate the pain. I find myself carefully carving out chunks of time to read condolence cards and respond to sympathy emails because I need to conserve energy to attend to the stuff of life: my kids’ needs, my work schedule, unpaid bills, returning my husband’s leased car. Being wrapped in grief does not allow me to function the way I need to. Friends who arrived at my door teary-eyed forced the unintended

Lilly Ledbetter, whose gender pay equity legal fight was the inspiration for the Fair Pay Act of 2009, has died at age 86, according to the team making a film about her life. Ledbetter died of respiratory failure, her family told AL.com. In the 1990s, after 19 years of working for Goodyear, Ledbetter learned she had been making thousands of dollars less each month that other – male – managers. Ledbetter sued Goodyear in 1999 for gender discrimination. She initially won in federal court in 2003 and was awarded $3.8 million in backpay and damages. The decision was later overturned after the tire giant appealed. The case eventually made its way to the Supreme Court in 2007, which upheld the lower court’s ruling. In a 5-4 decision, the justices ruled Ledbetter should have filed suit within 180 days of the very first time Goodyear paid her less than her peers. Having missed that window, Ledbetter had no grounds to sue, according to the court. In retirement Ledbetter became an activist and advocate for gender equity. When Barack Obama became president the first bill he signed into law was the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act. “That was the most awesome emotion I think that I have ever had,” she told CNN in 2018. “I’ll put it behind having a son and a daughter.” Obama lauded her on social media. “Lilly did what so many Americans before her have done: setting her sights high for herself and even higher for her children and grandchildren,” he said on X. “Michelle and I are grateful for her advocacy and her friendship, and we send our love and prayers to her family and everyone who is continuing the fight that she began.” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer also paid tribute on social media to Ledbetter’s fight for pay equality. “My heart is with Lilly Ledbetter and her loved ones as they mourn her passing,” he said. “May she rest in peace.” The AFL-CIO – The American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations – described her as a hero. “Lilly Ledbetter simply wanted to be paid the same as her male Goodyear coworkers – and her fight took her to the Supreme Court, Congress, and the White House to sign the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act. She was a true hero, and we send our deepest condolences to her family.” Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff said on social media that Ledbetter’s simple phrase “equal pay for equal work” had changed his understanding. “It’s shocking that, as a CEO, I witnessed firsthand how wide the pay disparities were – not just in my own company, but across so many others we acquired. Lilly taught me the fight for equality starts with pay equity. There can be no true equality without it. My heart goes out to Lilly’s family,” Benioff wrote. Ledbetter kept advocating for equal pay, writing a 2019 op-ed for CNN as Congress was once again set to debate the Paycheck Fairness Act, which did not and has not passed. “(The wage gap) is the reality I feel the responsibility to share with the young women I meet across the country. While I was in their shoes decades ago, the reality of pay discrimination hasn’t disappeared,” she wrote. “One reason for that is our laws just aren’t good enough.” Paying his respects on X, Rep. Chuy Garcia reiterated that the battle for pay equality was ongoing. “Lilly Ledbetter fought tirelessly for equal pay for men and women. We mourn her loss and continue her fight. As long as Latinas and Black women earn from 51 to 66 cents for every dollar a white man earns, Lilly’s fight is not over,” Garcia wrote. As of 2024, for every dollar a man earns, a woman is paid 84 cents, according to the National Committee on Pay Equity and the Equal Pay Today campaign. That’s based on earnings data for full-time, year-round workers from the US Census in 2022, which was the most recent full-year data set available. If part-time workers and those not employed year-round are included, the gender pay gap is worse, at 78 cents on the dollar, said Deborah Vagins, national campaign director of Equal Rights Advocates and director of Equal Pay Today, CNN reported in March. According to IMDB, “Lilly,” a film about her life, is set to come out this year.

“We have your location. We will share it for the highest bidder,” one wrote to her. “I will cut your head off.” “Where do you want me to rape you?” another message read. More than 5,000 calls and messages bombarded Marzieh Hamidi’s phone in the days after the Afghan Taekwondo champion dared to suggest that her home country’s men’s cricket team didn’t represent her – an athlete forced into exile by the Taliban’s ban on women’s sport. “Taekwondo gives me more identity as a woman,” she told CNN, “to feel more powerful in society.” Hounded by death threats in Paris, where the 21-year-old refugee now lives under police protection, Hamidi has become a champion for equal rights for Afghan women. It’s a campaign waged disproportionately by the country’s female athletes. “In Afghanistan, women are not allowed to be women,” she added. “They do not exist.” Her countrywoman Manizha Talash was disqualified from this year’s Paris Olympics after unveiling a cape with the message “Free Afghan Women” during the breakdancing events. She was removed from the competition for making a “political protest.” Hamidi has been bombarded with death threats since criticizing Afghanistan’s men’s cricket team. Li-Lian Ahlskog Hou/CNN “With these three words I spoke with all the world and asked them, please, let’s do some practical action for Afghan women. We don’t want anything special from this world. We just want fundamental human rights,” Manizha told CNN. Sprinter Kimia Yousofi, the country’s flagbearer for the Tokyo Games in 2021, escaped a similar ban after unveiling a hand-scrawled note after a sprint heat: “Education, Sport, Our Rights.” While Afghan men’s teams are largely free to compete internationally, the country’s women are barred from sport, forced to compete without official backing or into exile to represent refugee teams. Treated like a foreigner Hamidi told CNN how she came face to face with the Afghan men’s team while competing as a refugee at the Taekwondo world championships in Azerbaijan last year. Banned from representing her home country, she said she was treated like a foreigner by her former teammates. “They are the Taliban team for me, not the Afghan team,” she said, a similar accusation she has leveled against the Afghan cricket team, calling for Afghan sports teams to be banned from the Olympics, following bans on South Africa during the apartheid era. “At the same time they are coming (to international competitions), the Taliban are killing many women in Afghanistan,” she said. CNN has reached out to the Afghanistan Cricket Board and the country’s Taekwondo federation for comment. Afghanistan’s men’s team leave the field at this year’s T20 Cricket World Cup. Robert Cianflone/Getty Images It comes as the Taliban “eviscerated the rights of women and girls in the name of Islam,” according to Richard Bennett, UN Special Rapporteur for human rights in Afghanistan. “They have removed or, created a situation where women and girls, are unable to participate as full human beings in the society,” he said, while a recent law, “institutionalized this state of discrimination, segregation, exclusion, and denial of human dignity for women and girls.” It was this stark gulf in women’s rights – what Hamidi and others refer to as gender apartheid – that pushed her to call attention to the suffering of her countrywomen with the hashtag #LetUsExist. An apartheid is a crime against humanity but currently only on the grounds of race, not on the basis of sex and gender, Bennett said. The term gender apartheid was first used by Afghan women in the late 1990s during the first Taliban regime. Just not cricket Despite the horrific situation for women in Afghanistan, Afghan male teams, like the hugely popular cricket side, are able to compete on the international stage. Cricket is widely followed in Afghanistan, and the country’s national team – whose emblem still displays the tricolor flag of the government ousted by the Taliban – has been a source of national pride for many, even though the Taliban has barred women from playing cricket. Hamidi told CNN the Afghan men’s cricket team is “not representing the women of Afghanistan.” In an interview this summer, it was comments like these, accusing Afghanistan’s male cricketers of “normalizing” the Taliban, which sparked a pyre of online hate. Hamidi was Afghanistan’s flagbearer at the Tokyo Olympics. Li-Lian Ahlskog Hou/CNN Female sporting stars have been easy targets for Taliban sympathizers, especially for those among the country’s diaspora. Aside from her political opinions, “they are criticizing Marzieh Hamidi for being a woman, for speaking in public and for dressing in a, let’s say, Western way,” Hamidi’s lawyer Ines Davau told CNN. The threat has evolved since the Taliban’s repression against women in the 1990s. “The Taliban, who are now in power in Afghanistan, are very tech savvy, much more media savvy,” the UN’s Bennett said. After arriving in France following the fall of the Afghan government in 2021, she’s had to build a new life, shadowed by fears for her family and Taliban reprisals for her defiance against their chokehold on the rights of Afghan women. On Instagram, and in person, she radiates a defiant thirst for life and her dreams of becoming an Olympian. But relentlessly harassed by threats of murder and rape, Hamidi now lives under constant police protection. Taliban sympathizers have stolen any semblance of a normal life from her. “They have quite a sophisticated public relations and possibly surveillance system that could penetrate countries abroad as well,” the UN’s Bennett added. “If there are no consequences, if there is no pushback on this, misogynists everywhere will take note.” Ongoing hate Weeks after the first threats, Hamidi still receives terrifying messages. One in early October came from an Instagram user: “I only have 3 months left until my money is ready, then I can go directly to Paris and there I will cut your head off.” The calls and messages Hamidi has received have come from numbers across Europe, with many written in English. Davau, Hamidi’s lawyer, is looking to show the coordination behind this campaign of hate. The Paris prosecutor’s office confirmed to CNN that an investigation has been launched into

Kenya’s Ruth Chepngetich obliterated the women’s marathon world record in Chicago on Sunday as she completed the course in 2:09:56, becoming the first ever woman to break the 2:10 barrier. Chepngetich shaved almost two minutes off the previous world record of 2:11:53, which was set by Ethiopia’s Tigist Assefa in September 2023, and secured her third ever race win in Chicago. Her new world record is still subject to the usual ratification procedure, according to World Athletics. “I feel so great. I’m very proud of myself. This is my dream,” she said afterwards, per World Athletics. “I fought a lot, thinking about the world record. The world record has come back to Kenya, and I dedicate this world record to Kelvin Kiptum,” she added, referencing her compatriot who set the men’s world record in Chicago last year and died in a road accident aged 24 in February. Afterwards, Chepngetich posed for photos, held the Kenyan flag aloft and ran back down the finishing straight, soaking in the applause of the crowd. She has come close to claiming the world record beforehand, missing out by just 14 seconds in 2022 in Chicago, but dispelled memories of that disappointment with a time this year so quick that only nine athletes in the men’s race ran faster. Ruth Chepngetich dedicated her win to her compatriot Kelvin Kiptum. Michael Reaves/Getty Images By the 10 kilometer mark, Chepngetich had already streaked ahead of all her competitors with only Ethiopia’s Sutume Asefa Kebede able to remain within touching distance. In the end, Kebede finished in second place, recording a time of 2:17:32, almost eight minutes behind Chepngetich. Kenya’s Irine Cheptai rounded out the podium in third another 20 seconds back. In the men’s race, Kenya’s John Koriri took victory, completing the course in 2:02:43 which is the second-fastest ever time in Chicago, behind Kiptum’s world record of 2:00:35 last year. Ethiopia’s Huseydin Mohamed Esa finished in second, just over two minutes behind Koriri, and Kenya’s Amos Kipruto took third place with a time of 2:04:50. Meanwhile, Switzerland’s Marcel Hug won the defended his men’s wheelchair title in 1:25:54 after a dramatic sprint finish, and his compatriot Catherine Debrunner set a new course record of 1:36:21 as she dominated the women’s race.

Gobble, gobble, grab your turkey baster, it’s Thanksgiving. Canadian Thanksgiving, that is. Though the US version takes place on the fourth Thursday of November, Canada celebrates on the second Monday of October, which this year falls on October 14. For more insights into this annual great feast, we reached out to Andrew McIntosh, senior subject editor with the Canadian Encyclopedia. Naturally, we first had to address a question often asked by Americans – why does Canada celebrate Thanksgiving in October instead of November? Historically, he says, Thanksgiving in Canada has generally been about celebrating the fall harvest and giving thanks for the food it provides before the cold season sets in. “Winter comes a lot earlier in Canada, so our fall harvest happens earlier, too,” he says. “Canadian Thanksgiving was set as the second Monday in October, when the weather is still amenable to outdoor activities, in 1957.” But the country was celebrating long before that. The first official Thanksgiving holiday took place in 1879, and in the following years, it didn’t always happen in October. “The exact date for each year was determined annually by Parliament, which also assigned a unifying theme each year — it often centered around celebrating the monarchy,” says McIntosh. Interestingly, he notes the holiday occurred as late in the year as December 6 and even coincided with American Thanksgiving a few times. As for the present day, some Canadians — including this writer’s extended family — opt to host their Thanksgiving meal the day before the official Monday holiday, allowing those who drove or flew in for the long weekend time to journey back home and not have to take an extra day off work. Traditional Canadian Thanksgiving foods So what do Canadians traditionally eat for Thanksgiving? On the surface, foods might not appear to be that different from those that will grace America’s tables on November 28. That’s because the US had a heavy influence on what Canadians eat, says McIntosh. “Canadians very much appropriated the traditional Thanksgiving dinner from America,” he adds. “The conventional spread of turkey, gravy, potatoes, squash and rolls, with cranberry sauce on the side and pumpkin pie for dessert, is very typical across Canada.” In the province of Newfoundland, many eat a traditional Jiggs dinner on Thanksgiving. cpjanes/iStockphoto/Getty Images That said, he notes there are some regional differences. After all, Canada is a huge country made up of dozens of cultures with their own culinary influences. “In Newfoundland, Jigg’s dinner (a salt meat stew similar to corned beef and derived from Ireland), is often preferred over turkey, scalloped potatoes are preferred over mashed, and cranberry sauce is used instead of gravy,” he says. Meanwhile, in Western Canada, he says some prefer to eat ham and include Brussels sprouts as a side dish. “Many ethnic groups will often include some of their traditional dishes,” adds McIntosh. “For example, Indigenous people will typically serve a side of bannock (a kind of fry bread), while perogies and cabbage rolls are Thanksgiving staples for many Ukrainian Canadians.” It’s all about dessert Pumpkin pie is often served for dessert at the end of a Thanksgiving dinner in Canada. But apple pie has been known to make an appearance, too. GMVozd/E+/Getty Images The real regional differences around Thanksgiving in Canada tend to concern the sweet treats served at the end of the meal. “The pie of choice is often accompanied by different desserts in different regions – because what is Thanksgiving if not an excuse to eat as much as possible?” asks McIntosh. Like in the US, pumpkin pie is still a staple in most of the country. But he notes those who celebrate Thanksgiving in Quebec and Atlantic Canada tend to prefer apple pie or apple crisp. “Ontarians love their butter tarts – they’re like mini pecan pies, what’s not to love! – while people out west favor Nanaimo bars, sometimes called smog bars or prayer bars in the US,” he adds. As for the province of Quebec, where French is the predominant language, McIntosh lets us in on a fun fact: Most Quebeckers don’t even celebrate Thanksgiving. “In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Thanksgiving in Canada was mainly a Protestant endeavor and was often used as an excuse to give thanks for the British monarchy – factors that alienated Catholic French Canadians,” he says. “Anglo Quebeckers (a minority in the province) do celebrate Thanksgiving, but immigrant communities in Quebec tend to conform to the French Canadian standard. As a Chinese Canadian colleague from Montreal told me, ‘We had Thanksgiving as a day off from school and never really understood why.’” Fall is a beautiful time to be in Canada, as seen here at Quebec’s Mont Tremblant resort. Vladone/iStockphoto/Getty Images McIntosh notes that while some Indigenous groups in the US view Thanksgiving as a National Day of Mourning, Canada’s Indigenous peoples “generally tend to experience Thanksgiving more along the same lines as English Canadians: as an opportunity to enjoy good food and leisure time with family.” He adds: “Some tensions around Thanksgiving do still exist in Canada, as they exist around anything that is in some way associated with the violent displacement and disenfranchisement of Indigenous peoples.” That said, he notes that Indigenous people in Canada also see Thanksgiving as a celebration of Indigenous foods that predate colonial settlement, “including turkey, squash, corn and cranberries.” ‘Winter is coming’ In the Alberta town of Smoky Lake, the annual Great White North Pumpkin Festival includes an epic Pumpkin Weigh-Off contest. Last year’s winner reportedly weighed in at 2,037.5 pounds. Artur Widak/NurPhoto/Shutterstock In the US, one major highlight of the holiday is of course the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade in New York City. Canada doesn’t put on anything of this scale to celebrate, however, there are some harvest festivals and Thanksgiving-adjacent events to mark the season, a time when the leaves are changing and cooler temperatures have set in. For example, on Prince Edward Island, Canada’s smallest province, the annual Fall Flavours event in late September/early October is a three-week celebration of the island’s best local food and drink. Out

For the past month TikTok users have been commenting on Nutter Butter’s account. “You good?” asked one. “Nutter Butter are you paying for my therapy or?” asked another. Some users have posted complete video responses trying to understand what was going on, tagging their posts “#weird.” The posts from the 55-year-old cookie company are part of a social media strategy that’s been anything but cookie cutter. Instead, the brand has sought to stand out in a crowded market with the kinds of head-scratching posts many of its competitors would find anathema. Weird, in other words – and it’s gone viral. For example, one post shows grainy photographs of Nutter Butter cookies in a dollhouse with peanut butter smeared everywhere, set to a spooky soundtrack. It looks like a peanut butter crime scene. But 7.6 million people have viewed the post. Another video shows a psychedelic style Mr. Nutter Butter in technicolor with a Nutter Butter cookie being shoved into a baby croc sandal in the background; that got 1.1 million views. Nutter Butter’s TikTok following has more than doubled since September 11, when one of their hard-to-explain videos went viral. In it, Mr. Nutter Butter chases a character named Aiden (a real fan who has commented on every post) who is in turn chasing a Nutter Butter cookie. The video now has 12.5 million views. Since then, the account has gone from 400,000 followers to 1.1 million, according to the team behind the content. Zach Poczekaj, a senior social media manager at Dentsu Creative, Nutter Butter’s creative partner; Caitlin Bolmarcich, the brand manager for Nutter Butter; and Kelly Amatangelo, the digital and social lead for Mondelez, which owns Nutter Butter, run the cookie’s social media accounts. This interview has been edited for length and clarity. This is absurd and out there. Are you doing it on purpose? Zach Poczekaj: Yes, we do it because our followers ask for it. That’s what they find entertaining. The crazier the better? Poczekaj: Yeah, we want to leave room for interpretation because that’s what causes people to ask questions and come up with theories. And then we pull from those theories, and we say, that could be a part of this whole storyline that we’re going after. Caitlin Bolmarcich: We’re seeing millions of views on videos that we launched a long time ago, and you can tell it’s just people that are scrolling back in the feed to try to understand and put it all together, which has been fun to see as part of this viral moment. How would you describe the type of content you are putting out there? Poczekai: Our followers love when we don’t follow the norms of other brand social media accounts. It’s what draws them to the account. It’s like a rabbit hole that they can kind of fall into and they see these surreal posts. So yeah, it’s on purpose. Has there been a direct correlation with increased followers to sales? Bolmarcich: It’s a very live situation. It’s kind of happening as we speak, so it’s hard to measure the exact impact at this point. We’re obviously monitoring it very closely and expect that to continue. But what I will say is all the comments that we’re seeing are like, ‘I bought Nutter Butter today. I haven’t bought one in 30 years.’ Are you tapping into a new demo or a new age group with this type of content that you maybe hadn’t seen before? Kelly Amatangelo: it’s really spreading across a lot of generations from Gen Z to Millennial and Gen X, which we love to see as a brand on organic social. I think with this content strategy right here, and really using humor to kind of drive engagement, it helps drive being top of mind. Are these marketing videos or are they purely for fun videos? Bolmarcich: I think that it’s really hard to sell to people on social media nowadays. People don’t want to be sold sterile posts, and things like that don’t resonate well. Last year, for April Fool’s Day, we started to post recipe content, which is what a lot of other brands do seriously. And the pushback that we got from our followers being really upset and being like, ‘oh no, they went normal.’ We thought it was hilarious on our side. We laughed for two weeks straight after that. But it just shows what we’re doing is working. Do you feel like because you have a bigger platform and a more established brand, you could take a risk with the content?  Bolmarcich: I kind of argue the opposite. With some of the brands being around for such a long time, it’s harder for us to get into relevant conversations. A lot of the brands in our portfolio are tried and true and have been around for a long time. And I think smaller brands have more places to be able to carve out what they want. So what’s next? Poczekai: The point is we’re always trying to evolve with our audience. While it does kind of seem like a moment right now, we’re just going to keep rolling with the punches and see what it is that they (followers) want, because we want them to be entertained at the end of the day and think of the cookie. Of course.

Aid to several communities impacted by Hurricane Helene was temporarily paused in parts of North Carolina over the weekend due to reports of threats against Federal Emergency Management Agency responders, amid a backdrop of misinformation about responses to recent storms. Some FEMA teams helping disaster survivors apply for assistance in rural North Carolina are currently working at secure disaster recovery centers in counties where federal workers are receiving threats, a FEMA spokesperson told CNN on Monday. “For the safety of our dedicated staff and the disaster survivors we are helping, FEMA has made some operational adjustments,” the spokesperson said in a statement. “Disaster Recovery Centers will continue to be open as scheduled, survivors continue to register for assistance, and we continue to help the people of North Carolina with their recovery.” FEMA workers attend claims by a local residents after being affected by floods following the passing of Hurricane Helene, in Marion, North Carolina, on October 5. Related article How to apply for FEMA aid after Hurricanes Helene and Milton On Saturday, FEMA workers had to halt their work in Rutherford County due to reports that National Guard troops saw “armed militia” threatening the workers, according to the Washington Post, which cited an email to federal agencies helping with the response, verified by unnamed federal officials. It’s not clear if the threat was credible. Rutherford County is southeast of the hard-hit Asheville area, and part of the mountainous region that was slammed by deadly flooding and landslides as Helene carved a path of destruction through the Southeast after making landfall in Florida last month. More than 100 people were killed in North Carolina and thousands of others were left grappling with catastrophic damage. Some FEMA operations were also paused Sunday in Ashe County, near the borders of Tennessee and Virginia, out of an abundance of caution, Sheriff B. Phil Howell said on Facebook. This included in-person applications for aid in at least two locations “due to threats occurring in some counties,” according to the county’s emergency management office. Those locations reopened Monday, the sheriff and emergency management office announced. Howell urged residents to “stay calm and steady during our recovery, help folks and please don’t stir the pot.” FEMA continues to assess potential threats to its staff in impacted areas and the agency is coordinating with local officials on the safety of its employees and will make future adjustments as needed, the spokesperson said. There were more than 1,200 FEMA staff providing support in North Carolina as of Saturday, according to an update from the agency. More than 250 Urban Search and Rescue personnel remained in the field and had rescued or supported more than 3,200 survivors, the update said. Misinformation ‘unlike anything we’ve seen before’ Misinformation circulating about the federal response to Hurricanes Helene and Milton has hampered response efforts to the storms, CNN previously reported. President Joe Biden requested information last week on the federal government’s digital response, including how officials were remediating misinformation, an administration official said. A FEMA worker attends claims by local residents after being affected by floods following the passing of Hurricane Helene, in Marion, North Carolina, on October 5. Related article Inside the White House’s desperate scramble to swat down hurricane misinformation “The contours of this misinformation are unlike anything we’ve seen before,” a senior Biden administration official told CNN. FEMA officials have received threats before, but the difference is the magnitude of threats received in the wake of Helene’s devastation in North Carolina, the FEMA spokesperson told CNN. Senior US officials have instructed public affairs teams at federal agencies to ramp up social media posts from government accounts with photos that illustrate how federal workers are clearing debris and dispensing aid, a US official familiar with the effort said. Earlier this month, the public information officer for Rutherford County, Kerry Giles, told CNN that debunking the rumors “did consume resources that could have been more effectively utilized in the recovery efforts.” Rutherford and surrounding counties have been posting photos and information about aid efforts to combat the misinformation.

Janice Small Combs is defending her superstar son, Sean “Diddy” Combs. The musician and producer is currently in federal custody as he awaits trial for his indictment in the Southern District of New York on counts of racketeering conspiracy, sex trafficking and transportation to engage in prostitution. He has pleaded not guilty. Combs is also facing multiple civil lawsuits accusing him of a range of sexual misconduct and other illegal activity. Janice Combs released a statement on Sunday through her attorney, which was shared on social media. “I come to you today as a mother that is devastated and profoundly saddened by the allegations made against my son, Sean Combs,” her statement began. “It is heartbreaking to see my son judged not for the truth, but for a narrative created out of lies,” she wrote. “To bear witness what seems like a public lynching of my son before he’s had the opportunity to prove his innocence is a pain too unbearable to put into words.” The case has put a spotlight on the music mogul’s alleged lifestyle away from public view. In their indictment, federal prosecutors cited alleged “Freak Offs,” Sean Combs’ name for elaborate sex performances in which he is accused of drugging and coercing victims into performing extended sex acts with male sex workers, beginning around 2009. Janice Combs also addressed a surveillance video obtained by CNN that showed Sean Combs assaulting his then-girlfriend, singer Cassie Ventura, in 2016 in a Los Angeles hotel. “My son may not have been entirely truthful about certain things, such as denying he has ever gotten violent with an ex-girlfriend when the hotel’s surveillance showed otherwise,” she wrote in her statement. “Sometimes, the truth and a lie become so closely intertwined that it becomes terrifying to admit one part of the story, especially when that truth is outside the norm or is too complicated to be believed.” Sean Combs initially denied allegations of abusing Ventura, which were included in a lawsuit she filed before the video was made public. Following the release of the video, he apologized. “I was disgusted then when I did it. I’m disgusted now. I went and I sought out professional help. I got into going to therapy, going to rehab,” Combs said in a video shared on social media days after the video was broadcast. “I had to ask God for his mercy and grace. I’m so sorry. But I’m committed to be a better man each and every day. I’m not asking for forgiveness. I’m truly sorry.” His mother wrote that she believes her son’s “civil legal team opted to settle the ex-girlfriend’s lawsuit instead of contesting it until the end, resulting in a ricochet effect as the federal government used this decision against my son by interpreting it as an admission of guilt.” “It is important to recognize that none of us, regardless of our status, are immune to fear or mistakes,” she wrote. “Not being entirely straightforward about one issue does not mean my son is guilty of the repulsive allegations and the grave charges leveled against him.” Last week Houston-based attorney Tony Buzbee, along with the AVA Law Group, announced they had been retained by at least 120 additional men and women “to pursue cases in civil court” against Combs. CNN has reached out to attorneys for Combs for comment about his mother’s statement.