‘Biological War: A Scenario’ by Annie Jacobson

Annie Jacobsen’s new best seller “moves like a meteor,” said Dwight Garner in The New York Times. The investigative reporter who previously reignited worries worldwide about nuclear war has this time unfurled a terrifyingly plausible scenario in which weaponized pathogens quickly wipe out humanity. To paraphrase a classic bookjacket blurb, “I paused in my reading only to wipe off the sweat.” Though biological weapons are banned by international law, a handful of countries, including Russia, Syria, and North Korea, have developed and hoarded contagious pathogens. Jacobsen, after interrogating scientific and security experts around the world, has imagined an accident at a Siberian lab that launches a runaway outbreak. She gives her chapters headings such as “Day Two” or “Day Three.” Unfortunately, “Day Six is about as far as civilization gets.”

“The only recent book more disturbing than Jacobsen’s previous one is her new one,” said George F. Will in The Washington Post. In 2024, she made nuclear apocalypse feel trigger-close. The potential of annihilation by genetically engineered pathogen seems closer, in part because of scientific advances of the past 25 years. In this book’s scenario, an explosion at the Siberian lab sets loose a virus that has been designed to spread rapidly, deceive medical professionals, and produce a 100% fatality rate. A handful of people are infected, including a few who hop on planes. Soon, the horrifying virus is everywhere, and resulting scarcities of water, food, and medicine cause panic, which leads to false conspiracy theories, riots, and an utter collapse of social trust. The book is a “summons to seriousness” that should rattle any reader thinking we need to send more pyromaniacs to Washington. “Jacobsen’s message is: Cascading extinction-level events are possible, so sometimes government is a serious business.” My takeaway: “Vote accordingly.”

Though only a tiny fraction of the world’s population survives Jacobsen’s imagined Armageddon, said Gideon Lewis-Kraus in The New Yorker, the post-plague scene she sketches proves “strangely anticlimactic, almost consoling.” She pictures the U.S. largely emptied of people except for survivors in biohazard suits sequestered in fortress-like military facilities. Maybe, though, she has sold the catastrophe short, tying her speculations too closely to historical precedents because she knows many readers will be skeptical about her end-of-days warning. Many of us hear talk of plague and think that humanity, as ever, will manage to muddle through. At least Jacobsen’s book, because it takes account of how deadly a designer virus could be, is “a persuasive argument to the contrary.” If nothing else, “it should destabilize those of us who are quick to sneer at any talk of extinction risk as mere Book of Revelations cosplay.”

‘The Only Cure: Fraud and the Neuroscience of Mental Healing’ by Mark Solms

“Who today would dare attempt a rehabilitation of Sigmund Freud?” asked Scott Stossel in The Atlantic. The father of psycho-analysis has been persona non grata in psychiatric circles for decades. But the field’s subsequent focus on brain physiology and medicinal therapies has done little to reduce the toll of mental illness. Enter Mark Solms who, as a neuroscientist, practicing psychoanalyst, and seasoned Freud translator, represents “the Platonic ideal” of a 21st-century Freud champion. Solms’ goals in his new book are “astonishingly ambitious—and contentious.” While he believes that plenty of Freudian concepts, including penis envy, belong in permanent retirement, he argues that psychoanalysis is the only approach to curing emotional disorders that works.

“Freud can be safely credited with the concept of the unconscious. We’ll give him that,” said James McConnachie in The Times (U.K.). Solms also makes a credible claim that Freud was right in speaking about a subconscious drive to seek pleasure. But while it’s refreshing to see Freud given credit as a researcher, Solms “wants to rehabilitate Freud the clinician, too,” even his belief in the efficacy of dream interpretation, and “that is a much harder case to make.” He can, at times, “come across more like a disciple than a scientist.”

“The story Solms tells seems extremely encouraging—unless, like me, you are obsessional enough to read the research papers to which he refers,” said Raymond Tallis in The Guardian. He wants us to believe that psychoanalysis has been proved more effective than other therapies, particularly drugs, but he often misrepresents the studies he cites. Still, he’s “a wonderfully witty and lucid writer,” and he has filled this book with “deeply moving” case histories, including that of a patient of his who was suffering depression, seizures, and evidence of possible dementia before four years of psychoanalysis revealed that all the symptoms were tied either to prescribed medications or to resolvable emotional troubles rooted in childhood experiences. While “the jury is still out as to whether psychoanalysis is a cure, never mind the only cure,” Solms “has nudged the attitude of this skeptic from scorn to agnosticism.”

Whether the ’80s were “morning in America” or the beginning of the end for the post-war political consensus, there is no question that the decade produced its share of landmark cinematic achievements as well as seat-filling blockbusters. These nine memorable films include huge box office hits as well as gems known mostly to dedicated cinephiles.

‘The Shining’ (1980)

Novelist Stephen King famously despised director Stanley Kubrick’s take on his story of hard-drinking writer Jack Torrance (Jack Nicholson), who slowly loses his mind when he serves as the winter caretaker at the snowy Overlook Hotel with his wife, Wendy (Shelley Duvall), and son, Danny (Danny Lloyd). Beyond its now-iconic scenes, including Danny scribbling “murder” backwards on a door and Jack announcing “Wendy, I’m home!” as he chops his way through a door with an axe, Kubrick’s visionary film continues to lure in new generations of viewers with its mixture of technical wizardry and delirious performances. It’s a film that succeeds in “elevating horror to a different plane, removing its camp wiggeries and bogeymen to infuriate and bedazzle,” said Ian Nathan at Empire. (Prime Video)

‘Blade Runner’ (1982)

Harrison Ford, at the peak of his fame, plays Rick Deckard, one of the titular agents who hunt and retire rogue synthetic “replicants” in a bleak, polluted future Los Angeles set in 2019. Deckard is tasked with eliminating a band of rebellious replicants led by Roy (Rutger Hauer) who have returned to Earth to confront their creator, the CEO of the Tyrell Corporation.

In the process Deckard meets and falls in love with Rachael (Sean Young), a replicant programmed to believe that she is human. Director Ridley Scott’s sci-fi masterpiece raises still-relevant questions about the nature of synthetic consciousness, wrapped in a stylish noir casing. A “visionary” film that presents the “future as a black market, made up of scrambled sordid aspects of the past,” its unforgettable visual canvas gives it its “place in film history,” said Pauline Kael at The New Yorker. (YouTube)

‘Amadeus’ (1984)

A gripping biopic of Mozart (Tom Hulce), told from the perspective of the envious Antonio Salieri (F. Murray Abraham), “Amadeus” is one of director Milos Forman’s two masterpieces, along with “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.” Salieri plots to destroy the arrogant, often-unhinged Mozart, upend his relationship with Emperor Joseph II (Jeffrey Jones) and steal his final composition, “Requiem.” It gives us a “surprisingly true Mozart — young and tragically flawed, riddled with childlike tendencies whilst possessing the beautiful voice of God through his music” while “exploring themes of legacy, success, betrayal and the nature of talent,” said Victoria Vireikyte at Voice. (Prime Video)

‘Paris, Texas’ (1984)

Director Wim Wenders helms this slow, often surreal drama about a man, Travis (Harry Dean Stanton), who suddenly appears in the desert four years after going missing following the dissolution of his troubled marriage to Jane (Nastassja Kinski). His brother, Walt (Dean Stockwell), and his wife, Anne (Aurore Clément), have been raising Travis and Jane’s son, Hunter (Hunter Carson), in Los Angeles, and Travis decides he wants to try to find Jane in Houston. It’s a film that “shreds the emotions, leaving the viewer as raw and wounded as Travis,” while also being a “wholly American piece of storytelling in that the country’s ethos is rooted in self-discovery and redefinition,” said Brian Eggert at Deep Focus Review. (HBO Max)

‘Back to the Future’ (1985)

The ’80s were full of enjoyable pulp science fiction films, including E.T., but it is director Robert Zemeckis’ “Back to the Future” that left the most enduring mark on cinematic culture. Michael J. Fox is Marty McFly, a high school student whose mad scientist mentor, Emmett “Doc” Brown (Christopher Lloyd), accidentally sends him back in time to the 1950s in a DeLorean.

While there, Marty inadvertently interrupts the meet-cute that brought his parents together and threatens to snuff out his own existence if he can’t fix it. A movie that turned Fox into a superstar, it is the “modern era’s zippiest comedy about the collapse of the American dream” that might also be “Hollywood’s richest, cleverest blockbuster,” said Amy Nicholson at the Los Angeles Times. (Starz)

‘The Sacrifice’ (1986)

While certainly not the best-known 1980s film about nuclear war, celebrated Russian director Andrei Tarkovsky’s “The Sacrifice” remains one of his finest. Erland Josephson is Alexander, an actor and journalist celebrating his birthday at his family’s Swedish estate when he and his family get word that World War III has broken out, with much of the world likely already destroyed.

Desperate to avoid the coming nuclear holocaust, he agrees to a bargain with God — to give up all of his earthly loves and possessions if the disaster can be reversed. An “extraordinary and rich film with profound depths,” it represents a “bravely uneasy capstone to a titanic career,” said Tim Brayton at Alternate Ending. (Prime Video)

‘Full Metal Jacket’ (1987)

Hollywood’s belated reckoning with the disastrous Vietnam War reached its apotheosis in the late 1980s, with two classic films released within a year of one another, first “Platoon” in 1986 and then Stanley Kubrick’s “Full Metal Jacket” in 1987, which follows a platoon of Marines including razor-witted Private Davis (Matthew Modine) and much-ridiculed Private Lawrence (Vincent D’Onofrio) from basic training through the ordeal of combat in Southeast Asia. The first half of this “astonishingly assured piece of film-making” depicts the “steady dehumanization of Marine recruits” at the hands of the abusive Gunnery Sergeant Hartman (R. Lee Ermey) while the second half builds to a tragic climax that is a “mini-inferno of sniper fire and gushing bullet wounds, hard to live through but impossible to forget,” said John Patterson at The Guardian. (Prime Video)

‘Do the Right Thing’ (1989)

Writer-director Spike Lee’s groundbreaking film made him a household name, and Lee was only the second Black writer nominated for Best Original Screenplay at the Academy Awards. He stars as Mookie, a young father and delivery man at the eponymous neighborhood pizza joint run by Sal (Danny Aiello), a flashpoint for racial tensions between the largely black community and the restaurant’s racist owner. When Radio Raheem (Bill Nunn) is killed by police after a confrontation with Sal, the neighborhood erupts in violence. Lee’s seminal film is a “virtuoso act of creation, a movie at once realistic and symbolic, lighthearted and tragic, funny and savage,” said Roger Ebert at the time at The Criterion Collection. (YouTube)

‘When Harry Met Sally’ (1989)

The standard against which all modern romantic comedies are measured, director Rob Reiner’s “When Harry Met Sally” is more than the sum of its well-known vignettes, including Sally (Meg Ryan) publicly demonstrating to Harry (Billy Crystal) the ability to fake an orgasm, and Harry’s unforgettable riff about how men and women can’t be friends. Harry and Sally are thrown together for a car trip from Chicago to New York after they graduate from college and dance around one another for years into their 30s as friends before taking the plunge into a romantic relationship. A movie that “treasured its characters, atmosphere, and setting,” it is also a “collection of finely hewn set pieces — nearly all of which pivot around nothing more than a conversation,” said Sonia Saraiya at Vanity Fair. (Prime Video)

The Federal Communications Commission this month voted to repeal its 39% cap that limits how much of the national television market a single owner can legally own. In doing so, the FCC has supercharged an ongoing debate over media consolidation and monopolies in the Trump era.

Moving forward, the FCC said in a press release, station purchases will be adjudicated “with a granular, case-by-case review.” But concerns over increased monopolization and questions about the commission's authority in this case have some critics crying foul — and predicting a rocky legal road for FCC Chair Brendan Carr.

‘Shift from local to national ownership’

The FCC claims that its 39% ownership cap had “become outdated” and “hindered broadcasters’ ability to compete for viewers and advertising dollars” against digital services that “face no comparable restrictions,” said The Wall Street Journal. Removing the cap will “foster a competitive media market, enhance localism and promote investment in trusted sources,” said the FCC in its release.

But the change is a “big win” for media companies “aligned with President Donald Trump and the Republican Party,” said CNN. If allowed to stand, removing the cap means “big station group owners” will be able to “buy up more TV stations, furthering a shift from local to national ownership.” Companies including “Nexstar, Fox, CBS parent Paramount and E.W. Scripps” already sit “at or near the 39% ownership limit,” said the Journal. “Industry analysts” have similarly “identified Sinclair and Gray Media as potential acquirers” should the restrictions remain loosened.

Carr’s “rationale” for the change is to “balance the power between local broadcasters and networks,” said Anna Gomez, the FCC’s lone Democrat and sole “no” vote on removing the rule cap, per NPR. In practice, the FCC is “putting its thumb on the scale” on behalf of “content that this administration likes and against content that it dislikes.” The rule change comes as ABC and Disney have sued the FCC for allegedly violating their First Amendment rights as part of a broader ongoing fight between the broadcaster and the regulator.

‘Serious concerns’

The FCC’s new rule is “already facing legal challenges,” with experts warning of a “real chance the agency loses in court,” said Axios. Some observers, including a surprising array of conservative lawmakers, are skeptical of the FCC’s legal ability to make the changes in the first place.

Despite being a Republican who supports “deregulation and the Trump administration,” my “ultimate loyalty rests with the Constitution, which gives certain prerogatives to Congress,” said former GOP Majority Leader Tom DeLay, who helped set the 39% cap in 2004, at Daily Wire. Chair Carr “cannot defy or modify laws enacted by Congress” and should instead “ask Congress to pass a law giving him authority to do that.” Said Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) in a statement to Politico, “I’ve raised serious concerns that the commission lacks the authority to carry that out without congressional authorization.”

The 39% ownership cap was enacted by Congress to “protect localism, viewpoint diversity and consumer choice,” said Hunter Wilson, the spokesperson for the American Television Alliance lobbying group, to Variety. The FCC has “ignored Congressional intent” and “opened the door to unchecked ‘Big Broadcast’ consolidation that will drive up costs for viewers and reduce local news programming.”

‘I grew up watching Hayden Panettiere. Her death is a reckoning.’

Sara Pequeño at USA Today

The “late-night Aug. 16 notification that Hayden Panettiere died took my breath away,” says Sara Pequeño. Every “so often, a celebrity’s death will feel like an exposed nerve,” and “millennials and Gen Z are still getting used to that feeling.” In the “last years of her life, Panettiere was talking about serious topics that many young women can empathize with.” Hers is “not simply a cautionary tale — it is also a story about the importance of speaking your truth.”

Read more

‘By disparaging 2020 protests as “Woke 1,” liberals are following the right wing’s lead’

Andre Gee at The Guardian

This month has “brought us a referendum on ‘Woke 1’ — a term that reductively brands 2020’s social justice movement — as prominent liberal voices reflect on that time period with disappointing hindsight,” says Andre Gee. “Woke” has “long shifted from Black America’s prideful adjective to a mocking noun that has been weaponized to ridicule Black liberation movements.” Progressive liberals “now adopting that dismissive language while placing confines on the movement for Black lives is damning.”

Read more

‘You cannot rebuild a country with people who are shattered’

Lilia Yapparova at The Boston Globe

“Stigma around mental health care still runs deep in Ukraine,” says Lilia Yapparova. This happens “even though the scale of trauma in Ukraine is extraordinary.” If the nation’s “mental health crisis goes untreated, overlooked grief and loss could become indelible parts of Ukraine’s social fabric, with cascading effects on future generations.” It is “not only soldiers who continue to live in a nightmare of ongoing trauma,” but there is “no systematic, streamlined approach to mental health support in Ukraine.”

Read more

‘Pilots and flight attendants face a real cancer risk. Frequent fliers shouldn’t panic.’

Vishal R. Patel, Christopher M. Worsham and Anupam Jena at Time

There’s a “particular unease that comes from seeing that an ordinary part of life has been linked to cancer,” as “pilots and flight attendants die of radiation-related cancers at higher rates than workers in over 500 occupations,” say Vishal R. Patel, Christopher M. Worsham and Anupam Jena. The “next time a flight attendant hands you a coffee at 30,000 feet, there’s no need to fret over the tiny radiation dose,” but “do consider the doses they take on, day after day.”

Read more

The United Nations’ 17th Conference of the Parties in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, has once again brought together an array of countries to battle climate change. But this COP edition is focused on a unique element of the shifting environment: desertification. As more fertile land degrades into dry, barren desert, the meeting is workshopping climate solutions using its key anti-desertification treaty, the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD).

What did the commentators say?

While the U.N. is working on a cohesive plan to fight desertification, the main goal of the Mongolia conference is to “put pledges made two years ago into action through projects in the developing world,” said The Guardian. A plan like this will involve “allocating more than $12 billion to vulnerable countries to help them deal with drought and land degradation,” specifically in countries that don’t have many resources to fight climate change.

The “biannual talks on desertification have taken on far greater importance in the wake of recent heatwaves and wildfires in the Northern Hemisphere, Europe and Asia,” said French radio broadcaster RFI. The $12 billion pledge is also “small compared to the needs — about $2.6 trillion by 2030,” which would be required to “repair degraded land, halt desertification, protect against drought and restore soils.” There’s also a push to focus more on the UNCCD, which has been “garnering the least attention” of three environmental treaties signed in the 1990s, said The Guardian.

The need for additional funding appears dire, as “up to 40% of the world’s land is currently degraded,” said the U.N. regional information center’s site. Beyond desertification causing environmental damage, it can also “reduce food production and water availability, undermine livelihoods and increase economic and social vulnerability.” The “choice of Mongolia as host for COP17 brings particular significance to this year’s conference,” as the U.N. estimates that at least 77% of the country’s land is degraded, making “sustainable management a pressing national concern.”

Solutions are being worked on in Mongolia as countries around the world are “bracing for food price rises as a result of damage to harvests from record heat and lack of water,” said The Guardian. The U.N.’s World Food Programme also “predicts that 50 million more people could be pushed into hunger by the ‘super El Niño’ weather system currently developing.” Better implementation of anti-desertification funds will be needed, as “initiatives to restore land and prevent drought have up to now been poorly funded and badly managed.”

What next?

Many are hoping that the conference will help propel the UNCCD more into the foreground. It is currently the only one of three U.N. environmental treaties from the 1990s in which the U.S. “remains a full party” and is “one of the last multilateral arenas for environmental diplomacy,” said Jean-Daniel Cesaro, a member of the French Scientific Committee on Desertification, to Le Monde. It is “crucial to keep it alive and maintain dialogue and reflection on these issues, which are essential to our future.”

COP17 is slated to run until Aug. 28. Major funding announcements are “generally made at climate COPs, even when they are closely linked to land management,” said Cesaro. The rest of the conference should be used to “remind everyone that science remains, above all, a space for dialogue in a world that more than ever needs healthy land and living ecosystems to face climate change.”

This week’s question: Dissatisfied with the limited effectiveness of its Do Not Call list, France has banned spam calls outright and will levy fines of up to $578,000 for calls made without the recipient’s consent. If Congress were to consider legislation that drastic to combat the scourge of telemarketers, what should the bill be titled?

How to enter: Submissions should be emailed to contest@theweek.com. Please include your name, address, and daytime telephone number for verification; this week, please type "Spam bill” in the subject line. Entries are due by noon, Eastern Time, Tuesday, Aug. 25. Winners will appear on the Puzzle Page of the Sept. 4 issue and at theweek.com/contest by Aug. 28. In the case of identical or similar entries, the first one received gets credit. All entries become property of The Week.

The winner gets a one-year subscription to The Week.

Click or tap here to see the winner of last week's contest: Shrub cop

Lisbon, Portugal’s beautiful capital by the sea, mixes pastel buildings and pretty tiled churches with incredible restaurants and quick access to beaches and mountains. Andaz Lisbon is the newest addition to the city’s hotel scene. Located right in the heart of central Lisbon, staying here is like being blasted with a rush of dopamine – its quirky and fun design choices make it a must-visit for style-conscious travellers.

Why stay here?

Andaz Lisbon is a maximalist’s colour-drenched fantasy bursting into life. Housed in a former bank – with the original doors intact – there’s nothing staid or corporate about this glamorous new hotel. If you’re a fan of Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama, you’ll love the hotel’s pick ’n’ mix clash of colours and patterns that are emblazoned on every corner.

When you first walk in you’re greeted by the original marble staircase decorated with Joan Miro-esque vases. The hotel’s design delights in making everything big and bold with giant murals as feature walls in public spaces like the hallways.

Rooms are warm and inviting. A bright orange velvet armchair, pale blue-grey sofa and abstract 3D art on the walls provide pops of colour. There’s open shelving for your clothes with a floor-length mirror. The decor is a modern take on mid-century cool. There’s also a small mini bar with snacks – the first round is complimentary, which is a nice touch.

The bathroom is sleekly decorated with burgundy tiles and matching walls, beige marble, and bronze fittings, with Byredo Eleventh Hour toiletries on offer.

Eating and drinking

With its views out to São Jorge’s castle, an abundance of plants and a patchwork of clashing patterns, rooftop restaurant Luzzi is achingly stylish and brightens up your day instantly – and that’s before you even get to the food. For breakfast, it offers a well-curated buffet with crispy artisan bacon, homemade hash browns, a selection of cold cuts and cheeses, a mini salad station, and coconut pastries and plump doughnuts in their sweet corner. There’s also an à la carte menu where you can order fluffy pancakes or eggs however you like them.

Andaz Lounge downstairs pays homage to the kiosks you find dotted around Portugal offering casual light bites. It’s the perfect spot for lunch – try the cod and sweet potato fritters and the smash burger with port-caramelised onions. Then sink into one of the squidgy bouclé sofas with a tipple – all of the wines offered by the glass there are made by female winemakers.

At night, Luzzi is the perfect spot for a romantic dinner or group party – chef Bruno Alves has created a menu with nods to Portuguese heritage so there are Brazilian chicken coxinha, a doughy snack, and Peking glazed duck rice, which pays tribute to former Portuguese colony Macau. The standout dish is lobster acorda, juicy chunks of charcoal-roasted lobster served with a soup made of bread, garlic and olive oil, infused with a rich seafood flavour – and it’s a hearty enough portion for two. For dessert, try serrasura, made from cream and crushed biscuits. Luzzi’s heavenly version is layered with almond, fig, honey and bavaroise.

There’s also a bar with colourful checked walls, comfy low chairs decorated with geometric cushions, and little outdoor terraces – be sure to bag the one closest to the view of Rua Augusta Arch. With its marble tables and dedicated DJ booth, it’s like an upscale club without the sticky floors. Make sure to check out the loo at Luzzi – there’s red (yes, red) toilet paper, which somehow works with the rest of the decor.

The staff are uniformly kind and attentive – at breakfast one day I mention I won’t be staying long as I have to rush off for a day trip and someone brings me a takeaway box and cutlery, with a bag to carry it all in, so I can pack a lunch from the buffet.

Things to do

The hotel’s location right in the heart of Lisbon makes sightseeing a breeze. The iconic – and enormous – square, Praça do Comércio, and the riverside are just metres away. Take a walk around Baixa Chiado, marvel at the Santa Justa outdoor lift connecting the lower areas of the Baixa with the higher Carmo Square, and head to the ruins of an old church at Carmo Archaeological Museum. Don’t forget to grab a pastel de nata – egg custard tart – from the famous pastry shop, Manteigaria.

The verdict

Andaz Lisbon makes a welcome change from the stark minimalism that seems to be the default decor of many luxury hotels. It’s bold, loud and proud, catering to guests who care about good style, and offers an avant-garde twist and fine dining in a trendy new space. Don’t be surprised if it starts popping up on your Instagram feed very soon.

Ann was a guest of Andaz Lisbon

What happened

A federal judge in Boston on Tuesday lifted his order blocking the Trump administration from ending Temporary Protected Status for about 5,000 Ethiopians living in the U.S. The Supreme Court in June “curtailed the ability of judges” to review the administration’s efforts to “end TPS designations ⁠for 13 countries,” Reuters said, and U.S. District Judge Brian Murphy’s new order “lifted the last judicial block.”

Who said what

“All TPS terminations are in effect!” Homeland Security Department General Counsel James Percival said on social media after the ruling. The “crisis in Ethiopia is still ongoing,” said Diana Konaté at African Communities Together, one of the plaintiffs, “and this decision puts the lives of thousands” of TPS holders “at severe risk.”

Between Haitians, Somalis, Venezuelans and other groups, Trump’s DHS has moved to end TPS “for an estimated million-plus” people, “straining industries” like home care, nursing care and construction, Axios said. TPS expiration dates are also “looming for thousands of others,” including “some 170,000 people from El Salvador and 101,000 from Ukraine.”

What next?

Murphy ruled that the Supreme Court had rendered most of the plaintiffs’ objections moot, but he allowed them to “continue to litigate over whether ⁠DHS’s action ​was motivated by racial or national origin animus,” Reuters said.

It is “the most sought-after weapon in the world”, said CNN. But the US-made Patriot interceptor, capable of shooting down ballistic missiles, is “the focus of a global supply crunch”, caused by “liberal use in the Gulf”, often just to counter Iranian drone attacks. Ukraine, which is being “savaged” by Russia’s “near-nightly surge” of ballistic-missile attacks, has “pretty much run out”.

What makes Patriot so special?

Patriot (Phased Array Tracking Radar for Intercept on Target) is a mobile surface-to-air missile defence system, and “considered one of the most advanced” in “the US arsenal”, said The Independent. Nineteen other countries buy and operate the system, and its interceptors protect cities and military bases across Europe, the Middle East and Asia. Combined with other defences, Patriot has this year intercepted more than 90% of Iran’s missiles and drones, according to the US Congressional Research Service. It is also “the only weapon capable of shooting down Russian ballistic missiles fired at Ukraine”, said the Financial Times.

Countering tactical ballistic missiles is “not a simple or cheap activity”, said The Guardian. To intercept them, a defensive system “needs to be remarkably sophisticated”, and building it involves “a huge amount of research and development”. Most Nato nations “have been happy for Washington to invest over decades to make the Patriot up to the job”.

The US “tightly guards the technical blueprints required to manufacture it”, said The Telegraph. So far, only Germany and Japan are licensed to make their own. Donald Trump has talked of letting Ukraine produce them but seems lately to have backtracked; Volodymyr Zelenskyy is “desperate for the technology”.

What is the stockpile situation?

Even before the US attack on Iran, Western allies “were nervous about depleting their own stocks by giving Patriot missiles to Ukraine”, said The Guardian. But the Iran war has now “created an acute global shortage”.

The US and its Gulf allies fired 943 rounds of Patriot batteries in the first 96 hours of the conflict, according to the Foreign Policy Research Institute. For context, US manufacturer Lockheed Martin only makes 620 interceptors a year.

Ukraine’s Patriot supplies been exhausted, said The Guardian. Ballistic-missile intercepts “have gone from more than 70% to none”; Russia now strikes “with impunity”. In one recent bombardment of Kyiv, Ukraine’s defences failed to intercept a single missile; 17 people were killed.

The situation is “so acute” that Kyiv has stopped disclosing the number of missiles Russia fires, to “avoid revealing how many it fails to intercept”, and “preserve public morale", said the Financial Times. Zelenskyy has “pleaded with” the US and European countries “to share more” of their stockpile with Ukraine. But such is the current depleted state of those stockpiles, they could take “months or years to be replenished”.

What does it mean for the world?

Almost all the countries that operate the Patriot system are “reliant on US production and supply chains, meaning any shortage in the US effectively becomes a global shortage”, said The Telegraph.

And such a shortage raises “urgent” questions about whether the US and its allies can “keep up in a new arms race with Russia, Iran, China and North Korea”. With those nations “ramping up production” of ballistic missiles, “the defence side is falling behind”.

The US, Germany and Japan can produce about 840 Patriot interceptors a year, said The Guardian. Russia produces about 750 Iskander ballistic missiles a year and “is looking to increase” that total. It can often take two to three interceptors – or more – to defeat an incoming missile. “And Iran has many more missiles in storage.”

Some analysts see America’s “ongoing strikes and conclude that stockpile concerns are overblown”, said the Foreign Policy Research Institute. “That is the wrong inference.” US-led forces can keep striking Iran because their stocks of bombs are “plentiful”. But “the strategic constraint” is the number of interceptors that “hold enemy launchers” at bay and “keep bases alive”. Bombs “let you keep fighting the war you are in”; interceptors decide if you can “afford to fight the next one”. The war in Iran is “creating a strategic illusion”: bombing continues but US readiness for a “larger, second-theatre conflict quietly bleeds out”.

What happened

President Donald Trump on Tuesday night announced a three-day pause on 50% tariffs he had threatened to impose on $20 billion of Canadian imports. “Canada and the U.S.A., subject to the finalization of documents, have a DEAL!” he said on social media, about 90 minutes before the midnight deadline. Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said the two sides had made “substantial progress,” but there’s “important work still to be done.”

Who said what

Trump’s tariffs “would have risked escalation into a trade war between the North American neighbors,” The Wall Street Journal said. But the “political impact would likely have been bigger than the economic one,” The Associated Press said. Canada had “threatened to retaliate” with “levies of its own,” and Trump would be “taking a risk by imposing a hefty new tariff” on consumer goods ahead of midterm elections, with U.S. voters “already frustrated with the high cost of living.”

What next?

Trump has “previously announced deals with other countries, only to have them fall through,” The New York Times said. But the U.S. and Canada both have “reason to step back from the brink,” the AP said. Long-term government borrowing costs “hit their highest in decades” on Tuesday, Reuters said, as “Trump’s policies — from tariffs to war — upend the global order.”

What happened

Tuesday’s primaries in Florida, Wyoming and Alaska delivered another surprise win for democratic socialists, another loss for a House incumbent and a mixed bag for candidates endorsed by President Donald Trump. His pick for Florida governor, Rep. Byron Donalds, won the Republican primary and will face Democrat David Jolly, a former GOP member. But in Wyoming’s GOP gubernatorial contest, Trump-backed Megan Degenfelder lost to state Sen. Eric Barlow.

Trump’s candidate to replace Donalds in the House, Catalina Lauf, was defeated by conservative talk radio station owner Jim Schwartzel in a crowded GOP primary. And Rep. Cory Mills (R-Fla.), who previously had Trump’s backing, became the “fourth House Republican to lose his primary this year,” Semafor said, “solving a problem for colleagues who wanted him and his scandals” gone.

On the Democratic side, Florida state Rep. Angie Nixon, a new member of the Democratic Socialists of America, beat the better-funded Alexander Vindman to face Sen. Ashley Moody (R) in November. Nixon’s win was a “stunner,” CNN said. But the “progressive insurgency fell short in two other closely watched” Florida races, as Reps. Debbie Wasserman Schultz and Rep. Jared Moskowitz prevailed in newly drawn districts.

Who said what

Tuesday’s results were the “latest indication that Trump’s endorsement — the most coveted asset in Republican campaigns — is no guarantee of victory,” CNN said. They were also another “lesson in why not to write national narratives out of every race,” Semafor said.

What next?

“Very few” of the contested seats “will be competitive in November,” Semafor said. In an exception, former Rep. Mary Peltola (D) and Sen. Dan Sullivan (R) will face each other — and likely another Dan Sullivan — in Alaska’s four-way ranked-choice Senate election.

Following his reforms in Manchester, Andy Burnham “enters No. 10 understanding what drives the crisis” of rough sleeping, said Jennifer Williams in the Financial Times.

To fund his A Bed Every Night scheme – 600 new beds across shelters in each of Greater Manchester’s 10 boroughs, open 365 days a year – he donated 15% of his own salary, and used the media to draw attention to the issue. And in the region, rough sleeping numbers are 25% below where they were in 2017.

But crucially “in the almost-decade Burnham was mayor he never ended rough sleeping in Greater Manchester”, said email newspaper The Mill. And that’s why there remains a healthy dose of scepticism about his pledge that every person sleeping on England’s streets is to be offered somewhere to stay this winter. “Ever an optimist” it could be that Burnham “feels that with the power afforded to him as prime minister he can finally make good on the promise”, said The Mill. But regardless, “it is still an incredibly bold one to make”.

What did the commentators say?

He may have failed to meet the Manchester target, said the FT, but he “galvanised a fragmented local system to focus on the crisis, while experimenting with a series of local policies, some of them successful”. But a growing group of long-term rough sleepers are now emerging from the asylum system.

This policy raises “all sorts of political questions” when it comes to homelessness, said Britain editor Anoosh Chakelian in The New Statesman. Primarily, “regarding ‘no recourse to public funds’”, which bans migrants without settled status claiming most benefits. This condition is a “significant cause of hardship and rough sleeping”, and is only getting worse through the “closure of asylum hotels” which is “contributing to more visible destitution on Britain’s streets”.

Burnham’s pledge to end rough sleeping by Christmas echoes the success of the Everyone In scheme undertaken during the Covid pandemic, said the BBC, which saw “thousands of rough sleepers housed in hotels and temporary accommodation”. In total, around “37,000 people were helped by that scheme”. But currently, according to government data, an estimated 4,793 people were sleeping rough on a single night in autumn last year, which is a 96% increase since 2021.

“The Christmas pledge is a major test for Burnham’s key day-one promise to tackle homelessness,” said Vicky Spratt, housing and society correspondent in The i Paper. And “it is possible that not all councils will welcome being asked to work towards this goal”. Currently in England, more than 1.3 million households are “languishing on local councils’ social housing waiting lists”, and addressing this issue with local authorities is “non-negotiable” for Burnham and Minister for Housing Angela Rayner.

This is one of the “hardest-to-achieve” pledges in office, said Caroline Hug in Politico. His announcement of an additional £102 million gives his “big rough-sleeping pledge some meat”, but it is light on detail. “It still doesn’t set out a route to zero or say when the government actually expects to get there.” And while highly effective efforts during the Covid-19 pandemic show a solution is possible, it is “harder to make that solution stick”. This policy will test Burnham’s resolve on devolution, as he “has not given his government control over all the levers to achieve it”. And it could backfire: “if shop doorways empty over Christmas but fill again in spring, who will the public decide is responsible?”

What next?

The issue is not whether ending rough sleeping is “desirable or achievable”, it is figuring out why “previous attempts have collapsed”, said Jo Richardson, professor of housing and social inclusion at Nottingham Trent University, on The Conversation. Even if enough homes were built, the “biggest fear” for rough sleepers is not being able to provide rent, it is “being alone behind a locked door”. “Any serious homelessness strategy needs to fund social connection as deliberately as it funds bricks and mortar.” This requires a dedicated support workforce, and integrated partnerships across health and social care: a “bigger, more specific commitment than five years of funding alone can achieve”.

There are many stretches from Anthony Bourdain’s “gritty” and “well-chronicled” life that could work for a biopic, said Tim Robey in The Telegraph. But in “Tony”, Matt Johnson sticks with “just one summer” in 1975, when the celebrity chef was 19 – long before he found fame and fortune.

Based on the opening chapters of Bourdain’s bestselling memoir, “Kitchen Confidential”, the film opens as Tony – Dominic Sessa, the “deeply talented” young actor from “The Holdovers” – leaves home after failing to get a prestigious summer writing fellowship. He follows the “girl he fancies”, Nancy, to Cape Cod and gets “self-pityingly drunk” when he finds out she has a boyfriend.

After being thrown out of an oyster shack, a kindly chef (Antonio Banderas) gives him a job washing dishes and Tony finds himself in the “cramped, all-male milieu of flying expletives and cruel practical jokes”.

Johnson effortlessly mixes the “toxic camaraderie” of these scenes with montages of Bourdain’s slow-but-steady daily improvements. “It plays like ‘Rocky’ with kitchen knives”.

Gradually, Tony’s “insufferability” is “hosed away”, said Danny Leigh in the Financial Times, and Sessa dazzles in the “contradictory” role of the “charismatic sad-sack”. Johnson has made a “funny, sun-kissed biopic” that is “spry” and “enjoyable” despite the “complicated brief”. “Tony” is aimed at those who know that the chef’s life story will lead to both “glory and tragedy” (Bourdain died by suicide in 2018). The film “isn’t the whole story”. But that’s “probably fitting” – the chef was “nothing if not a spinner of yarns”.

I found it a bit “strange”, said Peter Bradshaw in The Guardian. “Tony” is an “entertaining” watch but the “feelgood trajectory is compromised by what we know” about Bourdain’s troubled life and death. A scene in which Banderas tells Tony about a chef to Louis XIV who “killed himself in shame when the key ingredients didn’t arrive for a banquet” is “presumably there tacitly to acknowledge Bourdain’s heartbreaking fate. It sits oddly.”

Mostly, though, it’s a “rollicking, surprisingly sunny coming-of-age tale”, said Larushka Ivan-Zadeh in The Times. “Picture ‘The Bear’ with less angst and more innocence.” Johnson manages to capture the “blistering, sizzling energy” of Bourdain’s memoir and Leo Woodall is “succulently charismatic” as Tony’s “cocksure, coke-snorting” co-worker, Sal.

But the real star is Sessa who “nails Bourdain’s annoying young Turk braggadocio” while giving us a peek at the “unformed vulnerability beneath”. In all, it’s a portrait of the fiery young chef that’s “spicy, salty, and just sweet enough. I’d happily have second helpings.”

France has taken a major step to crack down on telemarketers with the passage of a new law. It may make French people happy, but at least one country across the Mediterranean Sea is concerned about the move. Moroccans worry the new French law, which bans unsolicited cold calls, could have a negative impact on Morocco’s job market.

What is the new French law?

The law means that French companies are no longer “allowed to advertise goods and services through such calls unless consumers previously gave their consent or if the calls are about a preexisting contract,” said The New York Times. While many countries have attempted to enact no-contact lists for telemarketers, the law represents a new, much more proactive approach in France. Violators of the law will be subject to fines of up to $86,000.

Previously, French people who “wanted to avoid marketing calls had to register their number with a government-run service, but consumer groups said some call centers ignored the list,” said The Associated Press. Officials hope the law will fix what has been a persistent issue in France; at least 97% of French people “are annoyed by telemarketing calls,” according to a 2025 report from France’s National Assembly, while 72% say they are contacted by telemarketers “at least once a week.”

Why are Moroccans up in arms?

Despite the joy in France, the feeling in Morocco is different. Given the nations’ close proximity, Morocco “represents a major market for telemarketing companies” contacting French customers, said the Times. Moroccan officials “indicated that between 40,000 and 50,000 jobs could be at risk of disappearing” because of the new law, according to Moroccan newspaper Le Matin. France represents the majority of the Moroccan industry; Morocco’s call center business “makes 80% of its revenue from phoning French customers,” said Semafor.

Small- and medium-sized telemarketing ventures are particularly vulnerable because they “represent more than 60% of the call center network in Morocco,” said Le Matin. Despite the controversial nature of telemarketers, the centers they operate generated nearly “1.3 billion dirhams [$140 million] in investment in 2023 and generate between 10 and 12 billion dirhams [$1.1 billion and $1.2 billion] in added value annually.” Morocco’s “low labor costs, a large French-speaking workforce and relatively weak unions” make the country an “attractive outsourcing destination,” said the AP.

Some in France are also lambasting the effects of the new law. The leader of France’s direct-selling trade association, Frédéric Billon, has “criticized the reforms for adding what he said were administrative burdens for businesses,” said BBC News. Telemarketing companies will “have to obtain written consent from your customer, and you'll also have to keep proof of that consent,” Billon told BBC News. Despite some of the pushback, polls show most French people favor the law, leading Morocco to explore other avenues.

Moroccan officials are currently “rolling out a plan to ease the impact of the French law and support the sector,” said Moroccan news outlet Hespress. The plan starts by “encouraging companies to expand into new markets in Europe, including Germany, Spain and Italy, as well as in Africa and Latin America.” Officials are also urging companies to “shift from traditional telemarketing to higher-value services, including technical support, digital logistics, consulting and market research.”

A methamphetamine known as the “crazy pill” is wreaking havoc in Bangladesh and fuelling an addiction crisis. The authorities have struggled for some time to crack down on yaba, which is also known as “Nazi speed”. Their efforts are bearing some fruit but tackling the widespread use of the drug remains an uphill battle.

Black market

Yaba is a street name for pills containing methamphetamine, a powerful, highly addictive stimulant. Users generally crush and smoke the pills, although some swallow them whole. They increase alertness and energy, and raise the heart rate and blood pressure of users. Heavy use can bring on a range of problems, including paranoia, psychosis, seizures, cardiovascular problems, and even death.

Yaba, which means “crazy pill” in Thai, is “pushing thousands into addiction” in Bangladesh, said The Telegraph. The tablets, which are a blend of the stimulant with caffeine and other adulterants, are particularly common in South and Southeast Asia.

Bangladesh has become a leading destination and market for yaba because of its geographic proximity to Myanmar, where production of the drug is particularly concentrated. Rebel militias there are increasingly using yaba and crystal meth as “partial payment for smuggled Bangladeshi goods”, said the Dhaka-based newspaper The Daily Star.

The drug is trafficked westward from Myanmar into Bangladesh, through border areas that are difficult to control. Fishing boats transport Bangladeshi goods to Myanmar and “return with narcotics”. Although most of the drugs are consumed in Bangladesh, some packages are flown on to Oman, Saudi Arabia and Dubai.

Daily drudgery

Since 2006, yaba has been a common for the poor and the realities of the “daily drudgery, which makes life so hard for so many of Bangladesh’s 178 million people”, means there is “little to dull the allure” of the drug, said The Telegraph.

“The reason yaba has become so prevalent here is that it is so easy to transport and far cheaper to buy than other drugs,” government social worker Adnan Zobayer told the newspaper. “People get an easy buzz and quickly become dependent.”

Authorities in Bangladesh have been fighting for years to stamp out trade in the stimulant. In 2018, the government passed a law which makes possession of yaba punishable by death. They are having some success: enforcement agencies seized 43,562,811 amphetamine-type stimulant tablets, including yaba, last year, up 90.58 % from 22,857,751 in 2024. However, drug lords are still able to “churn out” millions of yaba pills from camps in the jungle borderlands of Myanmar at a “relentless” rate, said The Telegraph.

A Detroit-style pizza hits all the right notes — a thick crunchy crust, caramelized brick-cheese edge called the frico and rich red sauce spooned over the toppings. Find the real deal at these seven Motor City institutions, including the spot where the glory began.

Buddy’s Pizza

This is the birthplace of Detroit-style pizza, so it’s “no surprise its pies rank among the best,” said Detroit Metro Times. Back in 1946, Italian immigrant Gus Guerra borrowed forged-steel pans from an auto plant and made his first square pizza, its interior “soft” and bottom crust “crispy.”

The rest is history, with countless other pizza places putting their own spin on the style. Buddy’s dough is “light and airy” and the “gooey, flavorful” cheese “caramelizes into crispy perfection,” said Detroit Metro Times. There are multiple locations; the flagship is at 17125 Conant St.

Cloverleaf Bar & Restaurant

Gus Guerra didn’t just leave his mark at Buddy’s. After selling the pizzeria (and his recipe) in 1953, he went on to establish the beloved Cloverleaf Bar & Restaurant in Eastpointe, which his family still operates today.

The menu features a build-your-own pizza option, alongside more adventurous specialties like the BLT with bacon, lettuce, tomato and mayonnaise and the Mexican Pizza covered in ground beef, banana peppers, green peppers and cheddar cheese and served with sour cream and salsa.

Grandma Bob’s

Grandma Bob’s “creative” flavors bring traditional Detroit-style pizza into a “new age,” said Bon Appétit. Take the Lobster Roll Pizza. It’s a classic, crispy square pizza topped with lobster, “herbaceous” crème fraîche, crushed kettle chips and chives, with drawn butter and lemon on the side for your “dipping and drizzling pleasure.” Vegans can also get in on the fun combinations; the Big Mack is loaded with Impossible Burger, vegan mozzarella and Thousand Island dressing, pickles, white onion, iceberg lettuce and sesame seeds.

Loui’s Pizza

This “iconic” pizzeria “stands in a league of its own,” said the Detroit Metro Times. Loui’s pies start with crusts that are the “ideal mix of crunch and fluff,” and only get better as a “bold and tangy” sauce is “generously ladled” over an “abundance of cheese.” The atmosphere inside the restaurant is “just as inviting as its pizza,” with wine bottles hanging over the tables covered in checkered cloths.

Michigan & Trumbull Pizza

There’s always a new pizza to try at Michigan & Trumbull. The menu is “guided by Detroit’s seasons,” with monthly specials featuring locally grown ingredients, said Bon Appétit. While Detroit-style pizza is known for its “racing stripes of red sauce,” Michigan & Trumbull has a robust selection of white pizzas, like the Cadieux e Pepe, which “reimagines” cacio e pepe, and the Bagley Chorizo with pickled red onion and cilantro ranch. For the “staunch traditionalists,” you can build your own pie with red sauce, mozzarella, parmesan and whatever toppings you’d like.

Shield’s

Open since 1937, Shield’s is a “real old-school pizza restaurant,” and you can savor history in every bite, said Tasting Table. Pies are cooked in pans that have been used for years, and it’s almost like the flavors from the past are “infused into every new pizza made.”

For all of its “fantastic” pies, said Tasting Table, Shield’s uses the customary brick cheese, which melts all over the crust. There are nearly a dozen specialty pizzas to choose from, with the spicy Gold Medal, featuring Italian banana peppers and sweet red bell peppers, an award winner.

Sicily’s Pizzeria & Subs

Sicily’s, known for its sourdough crust, has been feeding Detroit since 1989. Fans appreciate this twist on the traditional approach, along with Sicily’s dedication to using locally produced ingredients. Other menu items that set the place apart include the Tomato Pie, which eliminates the mozzarella, and the East Coast White Pie that’s heavy on the garlic and multiple cheeses.

Google is hoping that an “organizational revolution” will put it back in the AI race, said Parmy Olson in Bloomberg. The search giant’s parent Alphabet last week “shocked Silicon Valley with news of a management shake-up.” Veteran DeepMind engineer Jeff Dean is leaving “to launch a startup with several top researchers,” introducing yet another competitor to the crowded AI scene. But the bigger news was that Demis Hassabis, who led Google DeepMind, would move on from his “day-to-day managerial role to become the chief scientist” of Alphabet. It’s not clear what happened, but people close to London-based DeepMind “suspect a fallout between the top brass.” Hassabis was always a scientist at heart. For him, the company and its vast resources were mostly “a means to achieving a bigger dream” of building intelligent machines “that could solve intractable scientific problems.” But in an industry where execs “are notorious for feigning interest in science, he never seemed to escape the sense that he was a scientist paying lip service to the commercial imperative.”

Dean’s departure is also significant, said Cade Metz in The New York Times. He’s been with Google since 1999—he was the company’s 30th employee—and “played a key role in creating the global computer network powering its search business” as well as being “one of the company’s early leaders in AI.” But like many prominent AI researchers, he was lured away “by a deep pool of venture funding and the chance to run his own company.” It seems Dean and the other researchers left on good terms—Alphabet has funded the company’s undisclosed seed round—but it raises questions about Google’s talent exodus. Dean was also “one of the few Silicon Valley executives to speak out” against the government’s immigration agenda, even as “Google has begun to work more closely with the Trump administration.”

Google needs to buckle down on business, said Arjun Kharpal in CNBC.com. The company “is planning to spend $205 billion this year at a time when investors are scrutinizing Big Tech’s capital expenditure.” It is also trying to secure an edge against “OpenAI, Anthropic, hyperscalers, and Chinese players.” Google remains “supportive of DeepMind’s scientific endeavors,” but the C-suite shuffle suggests it’s placing “more of a focus on commercialization and monetization of AI” and diverting attention away from moon shots. The situation is “less dire than it may seem,” said M.G. Siegler in Spyglass.org. DeepMind senior vice president Koray Kavukcuoglu has already taken over day-to-day operations from Hassabis. Making the shift official removes some corporate infighting and bureaucracy—which may be the reason Google has so many “half-baked” chat apps and coding projects. There were “too many cooks in the kitchen.” On his own, Kavukcuoglu can “get the meal prepped and plated.”

Betye Saar could make the humblest of objects sing and shout. The Los Angeles–based artist, an early leader in the Black Arts Movement, repurposed trash, heirlooms, and flea market finds into provocative sculptures and dioramas that exploded stereotypes of Black women. Many have a searching, mystical quality, informed by her mixed African American, Irish, and Choctaw ancestry and her trips to Africa and Haiti. Her work is now featured in at least 80 museums worldwide, but the best known may be her landmark 1972 assemblage The Liberation of Aunt Jemima. It featured a plastic, thick-lipped, “mammy” figurine hold ing a broom in one hand and a rifle in the other. “I wanted to put a rifle and a grenade under her skirts,” Saar said in 2016. “I wanted to empower her. I wanted to make her a warrior.”

Born in L.A., Betye Irene Brown grew up in Pasadena, where the family moved after her insurance salesman father died. “Art was in the air” throughout her childhood, said the Los Angeles Times. Her seamstress mother encouraged her in crafting projects, and she graduated from UCLA with a design degree. Brown became an interior decorator, marrying ceramicist Richard Saar and bringing up three children in Laurel Canyon, “a hotbed of hippiedom.” Inspired by the radical politics around her, she started making prints and sculptures. “One of her most important” early works was a decorated windowpane called Black Girl’s Window, said The New York Times. In it the silhouette of a girl with her palms pressed against the window shares space with celestial bodies, astrological symbols, and a daguerreotype of her grandmother—a scene of “ancestral yearning.” She gained a measure of early recognition, winning a 1974 grant from the National Endowment for the Arts.

But it wasn’t until the 2010s, when she was in her 90s, that her fame reached “an international scale,” said ArtNews. Scholarly attention focused on overlooked Black artists, and in 2019 Saar had simultaneous retrospectives at New York City’s MoMA and the L.A. County Museum of Art. The artist was thrilled both by the new attention and by Quaker Oats’ decision to scrap the Aunt Jemima logo in 2020. “She’s liberated!” Saar posted online. She continued working until her death, days short of her 100th birthday. “Not everyone has a reason to get out of bed, something they love to do and that gives their life meaning,” she said. “I am so lucky that I have that.”

From girl math to loud budgeting, social media has gone through its fair share of financial trends. The latest one, however, may have some staying power.

Known as moneymaxxing, this new fad focuses on making the most of, well, your money. “While the tactics can vary, the underlying goal is simple: Make sure every dollar is doing as much as it reasonably can, so you’re able to put your money where it really matters,” said Northwestern Mutual. Here’s what to know.

What is moneymaxxing?

In short, moneymaxxing “encourages people to maximize their budgets by trimming recurring expenses, redeeming rewards points — a related trend known as ‘pointsmaxxing’ — and stashing extra cash in a high‑yield savings account,” said CNBC. Other actions aligned with the movement might include evaluating how you are allocating your money and setting clear financial goals.

Admittedly, the concepts that moneymaxxing espouses are not really new, though social media has given it a fresh spin and name. “It’s kind of like the FIRE movement — financial independence, retire early — but gamified. It makes saving feel like something you can do without going the normal route,” said certified public accountant and financial planner Felicia Greenwald to Parade.

Why is moneymaxxing getting popular right now?

The rise of moneymaxxing may have something to do with the financial reality many Americans are currently facing. “Largely because of rising costs, young adults are having a hard time making it on their own,” said CNBC, with many still relying on their parents and viewing financial independence as a far-off prospect.

Moneymaxxing “helps close these gaps by encouraging people to pay more attention to their finances,” said Northwestern Mutual. From there, they can start to make more meaningful, intentional decisions, whether that means focusing on paying off debt, building an emergency fund or saving enough for a rental deposit.

The social aspect of the trend can also be motivating. “When those numbers are real, and people are talking about real figures, it’s easy for people to understand and not feel so alone in their own financial struggles,” said Greenwald.

How can you start moneymaxxing?

Moneymaxxing is a trend — but it can also be a smart way to maximize the funds you have, making the most of your financial situation no matter what it looks like. A great first step into moneymaxxing is to get a handle on how much money you have going in compared to how much is going out, and where specifically that money is going. You can then use that information to identify what is and isn’t working as efficiently as it could be.

The next step is to determine your financial priorities. “Whether the objective is to reduce debt or build a savings cushion, having a clear milestone can help you stay motivated,” said Jack Howard, the head of money wellness and behavioral finance expert at Ally Bank, to CNBC.

Finally, there is the task of figuring out how to actually achieve your financial aspirations. You might consider breaking down intimidatingly lofty goals — like building an emergency fund with six months of expenses — into smaller, more manageable chunks, like aiming to set aside a small amount each month. Financial tools can also help offload some of the work, whether that is choosing a budgeting app to help you stay on track or using automation to ensure consistent transfers to savings.

‘LinkedIn users are rewriting the past to land their next jobs’

Beth Kowitt at Bloomberg

LinkedIn “has inadvertently become a treasure trove for economists studying the modern labor market,” says Beth Kowitt. New research “has uncovered a problem with treating LinkedIn as a historical record: users keep mucking up the data.” People “have been polishing their resumes for as long as resumes have existed,” but “today when workers rewrite their own career histories, they’re also altering the public record and our understanding of the labor market.” The “result is a kind of arms race.”

Read more

‘Debbie Wasserman Schultz running in a Black district is brought to you by the Supreme Court — and the GOP’

Andra Gillespie at MS NOW

After the Supreme Court “gave Florida Republicans permission to redraw district lines to benefit their party, the biggest news is the decision by Democratic Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, a white woman, to run in the state’s only plurality-Black district,” says Andra Gillespie. Her “candidacy there highlights the tensions between descriptive and substantive representation and the strategic risks that emerge when a large field of candidates run for the same seat.” But “she could still win with a plurality.”

Read more

‘The age of big-spending Republicans is here’

Merrill Matthews at The Hill

It “may be hard for the Gen Z crowd to accept, but there was a time when Republicans in Congress believed in fiscal responsibility — restraining government spending,” says Merrill Matthews. Now “all most Gen Zers have ever known is big-spending Republicans.” The GOP “used to be serious about controlling federal spending, but that was before Trump.” These party members “may soon find voters and the economy demanding they return to their conservative roots.”

Read more

‘What my dad’s generation of engineers can teach the AI industry’

Len Khodorkovsky at Newsweek

“Half of companies rolled out an AI agent that passed internal testing but still failed once real customers began using it,” and the “gap isn’t a failure of engineering. It’s a permanent feature of it,” says Len Khodorkovsky. It’s the “everyday cost of manufacturing at scale.” A “model that aces its benchmarks but fails in the real world is like a tolerance that only looks good on paper,” and “every factory learned a long time ago that reality humbles perfect designs.”

Read more

Could Tennessee become America’s movie capital? That scenario is on the table. Paramount chief David Ellison is threatening to move the studio’s headquarters out of California, a bid to force the state and its partners to end their lawsuit challenging Paramount’s planned merger with Warner Bros. Discovery.

What did the commentators say?

The vow to abandon Hollywood is “obvious brinksmanship” but also “not that far-fetched,” said The Hollywood Reporter. Paramount really could leave the “entertainment capital of the world” for Tennessee, Texas or Georgia. Still, Ellison is in the “talent business,” and a critical mass of creative TV and movie talent is “largely based in Los Angeles and New York.” Ellison’s threat is an “attempt to blackmail the regulators,” California Attorney General Rob Bonta said at a Politico event.

The antimerger lawsuit led by Bonta and a dozen other Democratic attorneys general could “make California’s Hollywood exit even worse,” Tosin Akintola said at Reason. An already-weakened Hollywood TV and movie production system “stands to lose the most should the merger collapse.” If it happens, the state could “lose $500 million annually in corporate tax revenue” as well as “thousands” of Paramount jobs. Bonta is working against the “economic interests” of his state in order to “bolster his bona fides as an antitrust crusader.”

“No one really wants to move from Beverly Hills to Nashville,” Sharon Waxman said at The New York Times. But the move would perhaps fulfill a “dream from the right to create an alternative to left-leaning Hollywood.” Tennessee, after all, is already home to the country music industry and has long been seen as a potential “Hollywood for conservatives.” Business needs might win out over ideology, however, and a lawsuit settlement may come before a dramatic departure. “Certainly no one wants this chaos.”

Ellison’s ultimatum is “more a temper tantrum than a master plan,” Brian Lowry said at Talking Points Memo. The son of billionaire Oracle chief Larry Ellison appears to be a “guy who wanted to become a movie mogul” and now finds his ambitions complicated. His legacy could end up being the “wreckage that the studio’s wild ride leaves in its wake.”

What next?

A big deadline looms. Paramount must pay a $7 million per day “ticking fee” to Warner Bros. shareholders if the deal is not complete by Oct. 1, said Deadline. The “better path” would be a settlement to resolve the case before the antitrust trial, the studio said in a public statement.

Ellison is upping the stakes. Paramount this week asked a court to order California and the other plaintiffs in the antitrust suit to “cover the costs of the delay created by their lawsuit” with a $1.88 billion bond, said The New York Times. Delaying the “merger carries substantial and quantifiable financial consequences,” Paramount said in a statement.

CROSSWORD - Aug. 28, 2026

SUDOKU - Aug. 28, 2026

CROSSWORD - Aug. 28, 2026

SUDOKU - Aug. 28, 2026

What happened

The Supreme Court on Monday rejected President Donald Trump’s second request to throw out a jury’s $5 million civil judgment that he assaulted and defamed writer E. Jean Carroll. Trump paid Carroll the $5 million plus interest last month, a “few days after the court initially turned away” his appeal, The New York Times said. The court on Monday “formally declined” his “long-shot request to the justices that they reconsider.” There was no stated reasoning and no noted dissents.

Who said what

Trump’s legal team said in a statement that the American people “demand an immediate end to all of the witch hunts, including the Democrat-funded travesty of the Carroll hoaxes.” Trump, they added, will “keep winning against liberal lawfare.” The “jury’s unanimous verdict that Donald Trump sexually assaulted and then defamed E. Jean Carroll is now final and cannot be challenged in any court,” Carroll’s lawyer Roberta Kaplan said after the ruling.

What next?

Trump’s appeal of a separate $83 million judgment for Carroll is “pending at the Supreme Court,” said CNN. The “justices are on summer recess,” the Times said, and “not expected to consider whether to take up that case until late September at the earliest.”

What happened

A federal judge in Maryland on Monday blocked President Donald Trump’s plan to keep the FBI headquartered in Washington, D.C., saying the decision illegally discarded the General Services Administration’s congressionally approved 2023 decision to build a new complex in Maryland. The administration said last year that the FBI would move from its longtime headquarters in the J. Edgar Hoover Building to the Ronald Reagan Building a few blocks away, the previous home of the U.S. Agency for International Development.

Who said what

Congress, through a pair of laws, required the GSA to pick a site for the FBI headquarters “from ​among three suburban ⁠locations outside of Washington,” Reuters said. The Biden administration picked Greenbelt, Maryland, ending “almost 15 years” of debate on where to base the law enforcement agency. Maryland sued after Trump tried to reverse course, and U.S. District Judge Theodore Chuang agreed, barring the administration from moving the FBI to the Reagan Building or diverting about $1 billion in funding approved for the Greenbelt campus.

What next?

Chuang’s ruling is “almost certainly not the end of the lengthy dispute,” The New York Times said. “In the meantime, the FBI continues to operate from its old headquarters, an aging colossus veiled in netting to keep concrete from falling on passers-by.”

What happened

The Trump administration on Monday said it was temporarily halting construction on a contentious border project in Texas’ Big Bend National Park. In a video on social media, Customs and Border Protection chief Rodney Scott said he had “put a pause on all activity in that park, as far as construction goes, until I can get down there” to West Texas to “do a personal evaluation” and “talk to some stakeholders.”

Who said what

Scott’s announcement “comes amid massive outcry from local residents, businesses and law enforcement officials,” The Texas Tribune said, and “bipartisan frustration” over CBP’s shifting accounts of its plans for the treasured national park. CBP earlier this year “backed off plans to build a 30-foot-tall bollard wall” through Big Bend, The Associated Press said. But it is “still moving forward with other border protection measures such as a new road, lights” and vehicle barriers.

The deployment of bulldozers last week drew “national attention and bipartisan criticism” from across Texas over the project’s “speed” and “seeming disregard for a prized piece of untrammeled wilderness,” The New York Times said. Local sheriffs argue the project is “costly and unnecessary in a desolate and undeveloped area where few migrants have ever crossed.” The CBP’s Big Bend Sector “covers a quarter of the U.S.-Mexico border,” CNN said, but “sees only about 1% of border apprehensions.”

What next?

CBP did not say how long it would pause construction. If Scott “doesn’t alter the trajectory after visiting,” Jeff Leach, the owner of Big Bend’s Basecamp Terlingua hotel, told CNN, “this place is going to go nuts and the national pressure will only increase.”

Brazilian president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has fired the starting gun on the next presidential election, and it’s shaping up to be the country’s closest and most consequential political contest in decades.

The left-wing leader, commonly known as Lula, has launched his campaign for a historic fourth term, vowing not to let the “shameless” right wing return to power. His chief rival will be Flávio Bolsonaro, the eldest son of far-right former president Jair Bolsonaro, who is serving a 27-year prison sentence for attempting a coup after losing office in 2022.

But the “two-man race” between Lula and Bolsonaro has “increasingly become a three-way fight” involving Donald Trump, said The Wall Street Journal. Lula has accused the US president of trying to interfere in the October election on behalf of Bolsonaro, while “tit-for-tat visa disputes and US tariffs” have plunged US-Brazilian relations to “their lowest point in years”.

Who are the main contenders?

Lula, whose first two terms spanned 2003 to 2011 and was elected again in 2023, is seeking re-election for the centre-left Workers’ Party. If the 80-year-old wins, Brazil would be the only left-wing major economy left in South America. Flávio Bolsonaro, a 45-year-old senator, “is running as the political heir to his father”, said The Wall Street Journal. There are several other conservative and right-wing candidates but all are currently polling in the single digits.

If no one wins more than 50% of the votes on 4 October, the two frontrunners will progress to a second-round runoff on 25 October. A BTG Pactual/Nexus ​poll reported this week by Reuters suggests that a runoff would see Lula receive 47%, with Bolsonaro on 44%.

What is the likely outcome?

Lula’s approval ratings are high: certainly at “levels at which incumbents can expect to win”, said The Economist. And Bolsonaro’s campaign “took a mighty blow in May”, when leaked recordings revealed he had asked for money from a “disgraced banker at the heart of Brazil’s largest-ever bank fraud”.

But “there could still be an upset”: Lula is “seen as weak” on corruption and crime – both top voter concerns. He also spent 19 months in prison for corruption himself before his conviction was overturned on a technicality in 2021. “Many voters have never forgiven him.”

It’s possible that disillusioned voters, “unenthusiastic” about either Lula or Bolsonaro, could boost the prospects of the currently low-polling Renan Santos, leader of the Missão party. A former entrepreneur, the “firebrand outsider”, who “models himself” on Argentina’s Javier Milei and El Salvador’s Nayib Bukele, criticises both Bolsonaro and Lula in “slick videos posted to millions of followers”.

What is Trump up to?

Trump has already interfered in several Latin American elections since he returned to the White House, said The Economist. And “right-wing lookalikes” have won the past seven. Experts say the Brazilian vote will “serve as a test case of how far Trump and an increasingly co-ordinated global right are willing to go to reshape Latin America’s political landscape”, said The Wall Street Journal.

The US president has recently “turned up the heat on Brazil”, said The Guardian. He has proscribed Brazil’s two biggest criminal groups as terrorist organisations, a move that some observers fear could be laying the groundwork for “a US military intervention”. Trump has also revoked the visa of Brazil’s ambassador to Washington, after Brasilia withheld approval of Trump’s own ambassadorial nominee, and denied entry to several US diplomats it accused of planning to meddle in the election.

“This reflects a dangerous convergence between Washington’s long-standing interventionist instincts in Latin America” and “the interests of Brazil’s far right”, said Brazilian journalist Raphael Tsavkko Garcia on Al Jazeera.

Reform UK’s plans to cut £50 billion per year from the welfare bill – unveiled yesterday by Robert Jenrick – are “extremely ambitious”, but also a “political risk”, said Ben Chu on BBC Verify.

Nigel Farage has said the party will not cut pensions, meaning roughly £207 billion of the overall £353 billion welfare budget is up for grabs, and Jenrick aims to cut around 25% of that.

Under the plans, long-term welfare claimants who are fit to work would be forced to do 20 hours of community work a week, and foreign nationals would be banned from claiming benefits altogether. Personal Independence Payments (Pip) to disabled claimants would be scrapped and replaced with a “health security allowance” with more stringent eligibility criteria that could exclude up to two-thirds of current recipients.

These proposals may fit Reform’s “current ideological appeal”, pollster Sir John Curtice told The Independent. But this has limitations to their wider appeal, and has the potential to significantly backfire with their base.

What did the commentators say?

The “centrepiece” of the policy is to exclude foreign nationals from claiming most UK benefits, said an editorial in The Times, including European Union citizens with ­settled status in the UK.

This is just another “calculated bang on the populist drum”: the majority of foreign nationals “don’t qualify in the first place”. UK visas stipulate a clause of “no recourse to public funds”. Not only would stripping entitlement from the 4.3 million EU citizens who have been in the UK for many years antagonise relationships with the bloc, it would be “pointless”; many of those with indefinite leave to remain would have a “near-certain chance of being granted British ­citizenship should they apply”.

But for the Reform base, a more pressing issue is the “proposed abolition of Pip”, said journalist Fraser Nelson on his Substack newsletter. “Every Reform MP sits on more Pip claimants than the majority that elected them.”

In Jenrick’s seat of Newark, where he was elected as a Conservative with a majority of 3,572, there are 6,011 residents who claim Pip. And almost all of Reform’s target seats are “heavily welfare dependent”. Jenrick risks going into the next election as “the Pip-snatcher, the grim reaper of welfare”. “The Labour attack lines write themselves.”

There’s no doubt that the welfare state “needs reform – but not Reform”, said The Independent’s editorial board. Not only would the proposed cuts impose “much misery on the most vulnerable in society”, but they would also “substantially weaken” the British economy.

Employers with more than five staff would “take on the role of the state in social insurance and health care”, carrying a “significant increase” in cost, risk and pastoral responsibilities. Afforded only “tiny tax breaks” in return, employers would be “even less willing to take on people with long-term conditions, or who they perceive as liable to develop them”.

There may be “flaws” in the Reform approach, but the ambitious scale of the reforms is “laudable”, said an editorial in The Telegraph. Jenrick is seeking to “revive” the “something-for-something contributory principle” of William Beveridge, “founder of the welfare state”, but is up against a system that is growing at an “unsustainable” pace.

What next?

Reform has been overtaken in the polls by Labour “for the first time in more than a year”, because of the “bounce” under Andy Burnham’s leadership, said the Financial Times. The government has said that it was “already reforming welfare by narrowing the gap between standard and health universal credit rates”, by reintroducing face-to-face assessments and “investing £3.5 billion in employment support”.

Burnham’s willingness to get to grips with the expanding welfare state is “likely to emerge as the key dividing line over the coming months”, said Rupert Yorke, former deputy chief of staff to Rishi Sunak, in The i Paper. “It remains to be seen whether he prioritises this issue with his backbenchers over his ambitious plans for regional devolution or social care”.

Katendrecht was “once at the heart of the world’s busiest port” and home to a “lively sailors’ quarter”, said Pat Riddell in The Guardian. But this “thin peninsula” on the south bank of the Nieuwe Maas River in central Rotterdam has undergone a dramatic transformation.

The regeneration of historic warehouses has seen the former red-light district turn into one of the city’s “most vibrant” spots, with craft breweries, boutique shops and galleries popping up everywhere. Last year, the opening of the Fenix museum of migration gave a boost to the “formerly downtrodden” neighbourhood’s “lively cultural and arts scene”.

Set within a “century-old warehouse”, this “showstopper” of a museum uses art to portray migration “not as an abstraction or headline, but as a shared human experience”, said Karen Bershtein in Time magazine. Inside, a “mirrored, double-helix steel staircase” winds up to “sprawling views of the River Maas” and the city. Contemporary works include the “Suitcase Labyrinth”: a striking installation “assembled from thousands of donated pieces of luggage”. And “don’t miss the Nederlands Fotomuseum” where you can see a vast collection of Dutch photography, said Derek Robertson in Time Out.

Evenings are easy to fill at the Theatre Walhalla: an intimate venue that hosts an eclectic programme of over 300 performances each year. It’s also worth checking to see whether you can catch a family-friendly show at the youth circus school, Circus Rotjeknor.

When it comes to food and drink, Delistraat is “buzzing from morning to night”, said Riddell in The Guardian. Here you’ll find “flaky pastries” at Jordy’s Bakery, a “huge range of whiskeys” at Café de Ouwehoer, and the “small but perfectly formed fine dining establishment”, De Matroos en Het Meisje, which offers a daily changing menu of four to six courses.

Consider booking a room at Hotel New York where you’ll find luxurious suites in the “former offices of the Holland-America Line’s directors”, or check in at the “permanently moored” former cruise ship, SS Rotterdam, which has been turned into a 254-room hotel. With much of its original decor preserved, it feels like “stepping back in time”.

Many in the artificial intelligence industry say the most influential person at AI powerhouse Anthropic may not be its CEO, Dario Amodei, but his wife, Camilla “Cami” Clark. Despite Clark having no official job with the company, recent reports indicate that she plays an outsize role as an adviser for Anthropic. She also has previous ties to disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein.

‘Scant details about Clark online’

Despite her apparently significant role within Anthropic, there are “scant details about Clark online,” and “efforts have been made to remove references to her,” said The Wall Street Journal. Even Anthropic’s own AI chatbot, Claude, cannot provide much intel. It is known that Clark was born in 1979 and “was an entrepreneur and often interacted with the rich and powerful, as well as up-and-comers in Silicon Valley.”

In the early 2010s, Clark started a number of her own businesses, which include a “self-described ‘free luxury porn’ company that catered to women and a ‘social dieting app,’” said Forbes. It was via this porn company, Eddice, that Clark first interacted with Epstein in an attempt to get him to invest in the business. Clark “asked Epstein in a March 2012 email exchange about whether he’d be interested in investing in her and a colleague’s businesses,” though there is “no indication in the Epstein files that the financier made any investment.”

‘The most consequential person’

Clark married Amodei in 2022, and she has quickly become a “key behind-the-scenes player at Anthropic as the company has shot to prominence over the past year,” said The Information. Clark accompanies her husband on global trips in support of Anthropic and has recently been called AI’s “first lady.” Several people “who know the couple describe Clark as Amodei’s emotional ballast, someone he has sought counsel from during the turbulence of Anthropic’s growth and clashes with Washington over the future of AI.”

She “may well be the most consequential person within Anthropic’s orbit who doesn’t have a formal role at the startup,” said The Information. While Amodei himself is more introverted, according to reports, Clark is a “consummate networker” who has become friends with President Donald Trump’s daughter Ivanka “even as Amodei and Anthropic have at times faced an existential struggle with her father’s administration.” Clark is also a member of a WhatsApp group that “includes other prominent women in the tech industry.”

As the AI sphere continues to grow in influence, many believe that Clark will continue to play a large part. She recently “told people involved in politics that the company sees its mission as protecting America and isn’t as ‘woke’ as its detractors might think it is,” said the Journal. Her friendship with Ivanka Trump means she may have also been used as an intermediary when Anthropic “drew the ire of the Trump administration earlier this year after Amodei refused to drop restrictions on how Claude could be used by the Pentagon.”

Previous business dealings will likely come up; Clark’s “ties to Epstein will be heavily scrutinized as Anthropic heads toward a potentially multi-trillion-dollar IPO,” said Futurism, especially given that Clark has been “steering Amodei’s decisions and helping him liaise with politicians and investors with her charm.” Still, Clark doesn’t have widespread name recognition and has “largely flown under the radar,” said The Information, which is a “stark contrast to some other prominent couples that bask in the social media limelight.”

Abdul El-Sayed has issued a “call for Democratic unity,” said Toluse Olorunnipa and Elaine Godfrey in The Atlantic. That’s a new message for Michigan’s Democratic Senate nominee, a charismatic left-wing populist who earlier this month edged the establishment-backed Haley Stevens in a bitterly contested primary. During the campaign, El-Sayed—a former public health official who’s aligned with Sen. Bernie Sanders—denounced the Democratic Party’s brand as “so bullshit.” Since then, he’s started making amends, and Stevens has endorsed him. El-Sayed will need moderate votes to defeat the Republican nominee, former Rep. Mike Rogers, in a crucial November race that could determine if Democrats gain control of the Senate. El-Sayed, who beat Stevens by only a point, advocates Medicare for all, ending unconditional military aid to Israel, and getting “money out of politics.” He hasn’t shown any signs of moderating his stances, even though his primary support in a purple state came mainly from highly educated whites and college students, not the working class or Black voters.

Republicans have already chosen their campaign strategy—“anti-Muslim bigotry,” said Paul Waldman in Public Notice. Republicans all refer to El-Sayed by his full name, Abdulrahman Mohamed El-Sayed, as a way to make him “sound alien and threatening.” President Trump calls El-Sayed “a jihadist” and posted a photo of himself with Melania and El-Sayed with his wife, American-born psychiatrist Dr. Sarah Jukaku, to call attention to her hijab. It’s unwise for Republicans to focus so heavily on El-Sayed’s religion or to call him a radical socialist, said Abe Greenwald in Commentary. “When a candidate makes his opponent’s unfitness the central message of his campaign, he also makes the race all about his opponent.” Rogers needs to make a case for himself.

El-Sayed will do plenty of self-damage, said Dace Potas in USA Today. He still “holds the same arrogant attitude” he did during the primary, and he won’t ditch his pal Hasan Piker, an “antisemitic Twitch streamer” and far-left bomb thrower. El-Sayed won’t reach for “an ideological middle ground,” said Michelle Goldberg in The New York Times, because he doesn’t believe any reasonable person can disagree with his positions. He’s absolutely certain that “there’s a hidden reservoir of voters hungry for progressive populist policies” among the working class. In November, El-Sayed and other left-wing populists “may get a hard lesson on the necessity of pragmatism.”

“Is Ariana Grande’s body any of our business?” asked Monica Hesse in The Washington Post. Facing a deluge of commentary about her apparent weight loss, the 33-year-old pop star and actress recently announced that she’s stepping away from public life after her current tour concludes. Her “emaciated” appearance in a new music video for her song “Petal” escalated years of speculation that she has an eating disorder. The camera shows sunken cheeks, a protruding clavicle, arms that look like “sinew on bone,” and spindly legs. A former child actress and superstar, she has “defined beauty standards” for young women for years. But Grande has experienced trauma even beyond the pressure cooker of youthful stardom: A suicide bomber killed 22 fans at one of her concerts in 2017. Should we explain to kids and teens that “this is a body born of deprivation?” Do we tell them that “most women’s bodies will not naturally look like this unless something is very wrong?”

“The images of Grande really are alarming,” said Emma Camp in The Wall Street Journal, but “all this concern starts to feel like rubbernecking.” Grande’s early celebrity and her various “romantic entanglements” have made her a hate object for some online critics, and her skeletal frame enables them to portray her as a bad role model while enjoying “the thrill of watching someone self-immolate.” But “sharing another scary screenshot” of her bony body “won’t stop others from starving themselves”—and indeed, the public attention “might encourage those with eating disorders to keep going.”

As someone who suffered from an eating disorder, said Emma Madden in The Guardian, I can tell you “there’s no right answer” about how to respond to Grande’s worrisome weight loss. The body positivity movement preached “don’t comment on women’s bodies” in reaction to “misogynistic tabloid treatment of celebrities in the aughts,” but perhaps that was “an overcorrection.” Eating disorders “thrive in secrecy and denial,” so we shouldn’t ignore “visible suffering.” Grande maintains she’s healthy, said Scaachi Koul in Slate, but it’s hard to avoid comparisons to Karen Carpenter, the 1970s pop singer who died of anorexia at 32. In this Ozempic/Wegovy era, our culture is strongly pushing women “toward winnowing,” and Grande is “seemingly suggesting the same” by example. We’re left with “an unsavory choice”: “the complicity of silence or the complicity of judgment.”

The man whose “best-known culinary accomplishment is maintaining ‘a freezer full’ of roadkill” wants to teach you to cook, said Emily Heil in The Washington Post. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. recently debuted The Real Food Show, a government-funded YouTube series intended to help Americans “make healthful meals at home on a modest budget.” In the first episode, Kennedy and celebrity chef Andrew Gruel whip up crispy salmon cakes with a white bean, apple, and arugula salad. I followed the recipe and the dish was “quite good.” But actual cooking is not the main focus of the show. Kennedy and Gruel spend far more time ranting about the evils of seed oils and the Biden administration’s “war” on saturated fats than providing “meaningful culinary instruction.” Under Kennedy’s “grim glare,” making a meal becomes “an exercise in airing grievances against the government and a food system hell-bent on keeping people addicted to processed foods.” When he finally samples the finished meal, all he can muster is a muttered “amazing,” a politician’s thumbs-up, and a “pained grimace.”

Kennedy’s fish cakes are supposed to be budget-friendly, said River Page in The Free Press, but it’s clear he has no idea “what it is like to go grocery shopping as a broke person.” I spent nearly $100 buying the ingredients for four servings—including such luxuries as avocado mayo and nutritional yeast—that RFK Jr. claimed would cost a mere $20. This show is less concerned with delivering affordable meals than advancing conservative ideology, said Ashlie D. Stevens in Salon. Underpinning everything is the idea that “if Americans can be taught to eat correctly, perhaps they will require less care”—freeing the government to cut the safety net. Republicans already did that last year, slashing projected federal spending on Medicaid over the next decade by nearly $1 trillion and food benefits by $187 billion.

Of all the terrible things Kennedy is doing, hosting this show is “probably the least offensive,” said Arwa Mahdawi in The Guardian. But shouldn’t he be busy tackling the nation’s more pressing health problems, like the more than 22,000 cases of explosive diarrhea caused by the parasite cyclospora? RFK Jr. is supposed to be heading the response to that lettuce-linked outbreak. Or perhaps he could focus on the raging measles crisis— this is the worst year for the disease in the U.S. since 1991—which he has fueled as the country’s top anti-vaxxer. But that would mean doing the hard work of being a government official. He’d rather just “play one on TV.”

How widespread is AI use in publishing? 

It’s almost impossible to gauge how many authors are using tools like ChatGPT. But it appears that generative AI, which can churn out a novel-length work with a few simple prompts, is driving a boom in book publishing. More than 4 million books were released in the U.S. in 2025, up a whopping 33% from the previous year. That jump was largely due to a spike in new self-published works, which rocketed 39% year on year to 3.5 million. While it is easier than ever to self-publish, research suggests many of those books were not written by humans. A National Bureau of Economic Research study found that about half the books published in 2025 and sold on Amazon contained AI-generated text, up from 23% in 2023. (ChatGPT was released in late 2022.) AI writing is most common in popular genres such as romance fiction, which tends toward formulaic plots, and in nonfiction, where major news events can trigger a flood of AI books within hours. Online influencers “have been spreading the word for some time: Use AI to write a book. If it sells, it’s free money,” said tech journalist Kashmir Hill, who recently discovered an AI-generated, error-riddled biography of herself on Amazon. The “author” of Hill’s biography published nine other books the same week. But AI writing is not just confined to the self-publishing world: In recent months, at least two major publishing houses have withdrawn books over suspicions of AI use.

Which books were pulled? 

Most recently, the hotly anticipated debut novel from Nigerian-born Jerry Falade. Fourteen publishers bid for the U.S. rights to Call Me, I’ll Hide the Body; Falade, a grad student at Southern Methodist University, signed with a Macmillan imprint for more than $2 million. But the deal collapsed last month after Falade’s agents told the publisher they could no longer support the “stunningly good” crime novel because of AI concerns. Falade says he used AI only for research “and not for writing the book itself” and argues the deal’s cancellation was racially motivated. A few months earlier, Hachette nixed the U.S. release of Mia Ballard’s horror novel Shy Girl over suspicions it was largely AI-generated. After the book was published in the U.K., readers pointed to linguistic tells of AI, including word repetition (“sharp” or “sharply” appears 159 times in 247 pages); the grouping of adjectives, phrases, and ideas into threes; and the frequency of “something x, something y” sentence construction, such as, “In his hands is a cake, gleaming, its pink frosting too smooth, like plastic dipped in sugar, like something that belongs on a screen.” Ballard claims that an acquaintance who edited the book used AI, not her. “Everyone liked” the book, one publishing exec told the Financial Times. “After Shy Girl, every editor is nervous.”

Are publishers trying to weed out AI? 

Most publishers require writers to affirm that their work is “original,” which is increasingly being interpreted as a ban on AI-created text and images. That’s a sensible safeguard because AI-generated works are not protected by copyright, the foundation of the $140 billion global publishing industry. But publishing houses are loath to entirely bar authors from using AI, because there are other ways it can usefully be deployed, such as to check grammar and conduct research—although there are risks in handing that latter job to a chatbot.

What kind of risks? 

Media entrepreneur Steven Rosenbaum used AI tools to research and organize The Future of Truth, a nonfiction book about how AI reshapes reality. In May, The New York Times revealed the book contained numerous fabricated and misattributed quotations dreamed up by AI. Rosenbaum said that if the episode “serves as a warning about the risks of AI-assisted research and verification, that is why I wrote the book.” To avoid such embarrassments, a growing number of publishers are turning to AI detectors: software that promises to scan a text and accurately reveal how much of it was likely AI-generated.

Does the technology work? 

That depends on whom you ask. One popular detector, GPTZero, claims to be 99% accurate. Pangram, another favored detector, claims a false positive rate of only 1 in 10,000. But critics argue that AI detectors are deeply flawed. After his sci-fi manuscript was rejected by numerous publishers, Antonio Bricio, an engineering consultant and aspiring author, ran the text through the AI detector Originality.ai. The program was 100% certain he’d used AI, but when he deleted just a few sentences, it declared the manuscript to be 100% human. “What if publishers or agents start running these AI tools on everybody?” asks Bricio. Thriller writer Andrea Bartz— a lead plaintiff in a copyright lawsuit against Anthropic that secured a $1.5 billion settlement for authors over the firm’s use of pirated books to train its models—was enraged when a detector labeled her writing as 82% AI-generated. “I guess that’s what happens when your books were stolen to program AI,” said fellow novelist Rene Denfeld, whose own work was also flagged as AI.

What do readers think of AI books? 

Most want books “to come from the author’s brain and heart and not a computer that’s robbed the writer’s brain,” said author Laura Taylor Namey. And that argument is supported by the fact that book charts are still dominated by human authors. But the flood of AI works is making it harder for flesh-and-blood writers like Jess Michaels to grab attention and make a living in an increasingly crowded market. A historical romance author, Michaels has released 117 novels since 1999— most of them self-published—and has notched 10 USA Today best sellers. But she has recently seen sales drop so drastically, and the number of AI-powered imitators rise so rapidly, that she’s considering giving up publishing. “You’re talking about directly pirating my work, putting it into an engine so that you can produce a ‘Jess Michaels–type book,’ and then glutting the market with it,” she said. “I cannot tell you how soul-crushing it is.”

What happened

President Trump signed a nonbinding executive order this week recommending a radical overhaul of the U.S. childhood vaccine schedule, a policy proposal that health experts warned will only sow more mistrust and confusion about lifesaving immunizations. The order proposes reducing the number of recommended childhood vaccines from 18 to 11, downgrading vaccines for diseases such as Covid, hepatitis A and B, and RSV to optional for most children. It directs government health officials to plan for separating the doses in the measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine, which has been administered as a combined injection for 55 years. The order also authorizes the Justice Department to challenge state vaccine regulations deemed insufficiently respectful of parental objections. Trump claimed without evidence that the combined MMR vaccine can be “quite lethal” if given at once.

With Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. by his side, Trump made several other false claims. He said children were being pumped with “vats” of vaccine—the MMR shot is actually a fraction of a teaspoon—and revived the debunked theory that vaccines cause autism. Pediatricians were aghast. “As measles cases reach a 35-year high in the U.S.,” said American Academy of Pediatrics president Dr. Andrew Racine, Trump’s executive order is “not only disheartening but dangerous.” Several states, including New York and Illinois, declared they would keep current childhood immunization rules in place. “We will continue to be guided by the science,” said New York state Health Commissioner James McDonald.

What the columnists said

Trump claimed “nothing bad can happen from what we’re doing,” said Jonathan Cohn in The Bulwark. But “bad things are happening already.” Nearly 2,500 people have contracted measles this year as anti-vax rhetoric has pushed MMR vaccination rates below the community protection threshold. At least two children have died from the disease. And now many more parents will wrongly believe that a proven protection is unsafe, all because “they heard it from the president.”

Trump insists he isn’t promoting “vaccine skepticism,” said The Wall Street Journal in an editorial. He claims he’s merely aligning the U.S. with other “peer, developed nations” such as Denmark. But governments with “socialized health systems” have fewer vaccine recommendations because they don’t want to pay to cover rarer diseases, such as meningitis, and because problems like mother-to-child transmission of hepatitis B are “less common” there.

“Almost nothing Trump called for is practical or possible today,” said Michael Hiltzik in the Los Angeles Times. No American company even manufactures the individual components for separate measles, mumps, and rubella vaccines. Successive shots would leave kids vulnerable to the diseases for longer. But Trump and Kennedy “have been beating the anti-vaccination drum for years.” They long for the “good old days” before “excessive” immunizations. “They would expose millions of children to severe disease and death” in the name of misguided nostalgia. “In heaven’s name, why?”

What happened

President Trump’s former personal lawyer Todd Blanche was sworn in as U.S. attorney general last week, after a contentious confirmation fight focused on whether he would exert independence as the nation’s top law officer or serve at the whim of a president who regards the Justice Department as a tool of political vengeance. Blanche—who has led the DOJ in an acting capacity since Trump’s April firing of AG Pam Bondi—was approved by the Senate 50 to 49, with two Republicans, Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, joining all Democrats in opposition. “The country needs an attorney general who will check the worst impulses of this administration,” said Murkowski. But Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.), who cast a decisive yes vote after expressing doubts about Blanche, said the choice was “not between perfection and Mr. Blanche,” but between Blanche and another acting AG “who may not run the department effectively.”

Blanche faced particular scrutiny over his role in settling a lawsuit Trump brought against the IRS. Settlement terms included the creation of a $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization” fund—widely derided as a slush fund for Trump allies, including pardoned Jan. 6 rioters—and an agreement giving Trump and family members immunity from tax audits. Two GOP senators, John Cornyn of Texas and Thom Tillis of North Carolina, held up Blanche’s advancement in the Judiciary Committee over those measures, but voted yes after Blanche provided written assurances that the fund was “rescinded” and that tax immunity would not apply to future audits. Democrats excoriated their colleagues for approving Blanche. “We’re surrendering any shred of integrity left,” said Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.).

What the columnists said

Senate Republicans’ rubber-stamping of Blanche is “shameful,” said Ruth Marcus in The New Yorker. Sure, Trump could have kept him on as acting attorney general, “but the symbolism matters.” Under Blanche’s leadership, the DOJ has pursued “flimsy prosecutions of Trump’s political adversaries” and purged its workforce of perceived enemies. Missteps and misstatements have cause numerous cases to flop in court, damaging the department’s credibility with judges, and its botched handling of the Epstein files has even alienated members of the MAGA base. It’s all “on Blanche,” and a yes vote “represents a ratification” of his malfeasance.

Cornyn and Tillis were “played for fools,” said Chris Brennan in USA Today. Blanche’s written assurances on the weaponization fund and audits have “zero value” as legal documents—legal settlements can’t be amended by one party. Trump clearly wants to resurrect his slush fund, and you can bet Blanche will do his bidding. Indeed, Blanche wasted no time showing his true colors, said Edith Olmsted in The New Republic. Just hours after he was sworn in, the DOJ’s office of legal counsel argued Trump could claim executive privilege over his communications with “private advisers”—essentially anyone he’s ever talked with—which could limit Democrats if they retake the House and start investigating the president’s corruption spree.

Blanche will soon take aim at abortion rights, said Rachel Rebouché in The Nation. In a recent call with religious leaders, he vowed to ensure that the 2022 Dobbs decision that overturned Roe v. Wade “becomes permanent in every single state.” His apparent goal is to use the “archaic” 1873 Comstock Act to “impose a blanket ban on mailing abortion medications”—drugs that today account for the majority of abortions in the U.S.

Blanche has a daunting job ahead, said Jeremy Roebuck in The Washington Post. In Trump’s second term the DOJ has “been ravaged by firings, departures, and low morale.” And he’ll face “competing pressures” from congressional critics, “an attorney general’s obligations to the rule of law,” and “a president intent on seeing his enemies put on trial.” Charging decisions loom in a number of “sensitive cases,” including a months-long investigation into former Obama- and Biden-era officials, among them former CIA director John Brennan, who Trump allies claim violated Trump’s civil rights by conspiring to undermine his presidency.

Blanche’s confirmation drives home just how much Trump has “dismantled” long-standing norms, said Julian E. Zelizer in Foreign Policy. When President Nixon weaponized the Justice Department during Watergate, Americans woke up to the perils of “allowing the nation’s chief law enforcement officer to serve as an agent of the president.” A “firewall” has held since then, but with loyalist Blanche in charge, the DOJ is once again “a presidential instrument, wielded to target opponents and reward supporters.” It’s “a dangerous moment for a democracy that depends on the rule of law.”

Economists have argued the U.S. is experiencing a K-shaped economy in which the rich get richer while working Americans increasingly fall behind. Now the Trump administration is pushing back. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent is “sick of hearing about this K-shaped economy,” he said on CNBC this month, insisting that lower-wage workers are seeing improvements under GOP policies.

Is the gap narrowing?

The U.S. wealth gap “appears to be narrowing,” David Goldman and Rachel Siegel said at CNN. Wages and spending for the rich outpace “growth in paychecks and expenses for the poor” in a K-shaped economy, but recent reporting suggests “those lines seem to be getting closer together.” One June report found the gap in spending growth between high- and low-wage earners is the “narrowest it has been in three years.” The remaining disparity is “not getting wider in absolute terms,” PNC economist Brian LeBlanc said to the outlet.

The K-shaped economy was “increasingly reliant” on the spending of wealthy Americans on goods and services, said Axios. That made the U.S. economy vulnerable to a “wealth shock” if the rich were forced to curtail their spending due to a falling stock market or another crisis. But “lower- and middle-income Americans are catching up” and putting U.S. consumer spending “on a more resilient footing.” One indicator: After-tax wages among lower-income workers “rose 5.2% in July from the same period a year ago.”

Analysts believe the “shrinking gap largely reflects an improving labor market” in which “more lower-income households are working and collecting paychecks,” said Axios. That signifies there is not “much there in terms of support for the K-shape narrative,” JPMorgan Chase’s Jeremy Barnum said to investors last month.

There are skeptics. The K-shaped economy “remains firmly intact,” Moody Analytics’ Mark Zandi said in a July post at LinkedIn. Households with incomes above $200,000 “are powering overall spending,” with the top 20% of earners accounting for an “astonishing nearly 60% of personal outlays.” Spending by the bottom 80% of the country, meanwhile, remains “unchanged after inflation.” It is a gap that has “persisted since the pandemic,” and the numbers show “no sign that the trend line will reverse soon.”

‘Slightly softer prongs’

It is “tempting to conclude that the K-shaped recovery is behind us,” former JPMorgan Chase economist Anthony Chan said at The People’s Economist. The U.S. does “seem to be making progress,” but more evidence is necessary to determine that the trends have changed. “We may need more than one calendar quarter of good news to fully eliminate the K-shaped economy designation.”

For now, the U.S. economy might best be described as K-shaped but with “slightly softer prongs,” Juliana Kaplan said at Business Insider. Lower earners are “seeing slightly more stability” even if higher earners are still propelling consumer spending. “Trying to describe the economy with a letter shape might just be alphabet soup.”

Sticking to your budget can be hard enough without inflation. But when prices on everything from gas to groceries are steadily creeping upward, sticking to your plans for spending can feel like a losing battle.

When your money is not stretching as far as it used to, creating a budget — and sticking to it — becomes more important than ever. And while you may not be able to push the price of gas back under $3 a gallon, there are still steps you can take to better stay on track financially amid inflation.

1. Get a handle on your current spending habits

Sure, inflation can play a role in you going over budget. But whether or not you would like to admit it, your own spending habits matter just as much. “If you haven’t already, track your purchases for a month,” then “consider whether increased expenses are due to inflation, habit creep or a little of both,” said NerdWallet.

Equipped with this information, you can make informed adjustments accordingly. Maybe you see an area where you tend to overspend, and you can commit to cutting back there. For example, perhaps you’re underestimating the actual cost of groceries each month; in this case, you could allocate more to that line item and away from others, or you might instead look for ways to get creative with meal planning and work with less.

2. Reevaluate debt

Paying down debt should not fall to the wayside entirely, even when your budget feels tight. The longer you stretch out repayment, the more you may pay in interest and the more time you will have that burden hanging over your head. You can, however, explore ways to make your debt payments take up a smaller chunk of your budget.

Taking advantage of options like a credit card balance transfer or debt consolidation loan could allow you to repay your loan at a lower interest rate. So could refinancing, a possibility for both student loans and mortgages. Just make sure you understand the drawbacks, alongside the benefits, before committing.

3. Take advantage of automation

Budgeting admittedly takes work. But using budgeting apps and automated features can help offload some of it. Not only can automation “simplify saving money and paying bills” through options like automated bill pay and automatic account transfers, but “money that goes automatically into your savings also means it’s not sitting elsewhere — like in your checking account, where you’re more likely to spend it,” said Bankrate.

Especially when prices are uncertain and trending upward, a bit of cushion in your savings can come in handy. “If possible, keep a few hundred dollars extra in your spending plan to account for costs that are higher than expected,” said NerdWallet. “That way, you can handle it when factors outside of your control put you over budget.”

4. Check in regularly

Even if you employ some tools to handle tasks automatically, your finances should never become a set-it-and-forget-it situation. That is especially true when economic conditions are shifting rapidly. A “budget loses a great deal of its value if you don’t check to see if you're sticking to it,” said TD Bank.

Plan check-ins at a regular cadence, perhaps monthly, and use that time to “review all your spending and savings to see if you're hitting your targets,” said TD Bank. If you are not, this is the time to make changes proactively — rather than reactively.

When you make a purchase using links on our site, The Week may earn a commission. All reviews are written independently by our editorial team.

Cold, al dente truth: What we generally know about Italian food in the U.S. is a mere snapshot of the country’s grand diversity. These cookbooks unveil that scope. Some include full-kitchen immersions in foodstuffs like balsamic vinegar and prosciutto, while one laser-focuses on a northern Italian region less-known in America. Together, the books expand the mind and guide the hands in the myriad delicious ways Italian cooking exists.

‘Cooking by Hand’ by Paul Bertolli

The right obsessive is destined to write a cookbook that will “wake up the imagination and capture a cuisine in both recipes and prose,” said Serious Eats. “Cooking by Hand” is that book, a personal homage and textbook from a man entrenched in a lifelong fascination with Italian cooking.

Bertolli, once a chef at a number of legendary San Francisco Bay Area restaurants before debuting his salumi company, Fra’ Mani, devotes 14 pages to his fondness for true balsamic vinegar and 12 ways to think about cooking with tomatoes. It is that kind of book, one that commemorates the “heart and soul of Italian cooking as much as its technical execution,” said Serious Eats. The recipes and instructions are built for a cook to “marvel at” because Bertolli’s “enthusiasm for the result is infectious,” said Publishers Weekly. ($40, Clarkson Potter, Amazon)

‘Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking’ by Marcella Hazan

No cuisine is a monolith. Even traditional recipes from one city can be interpreted immeasurable ways by various families. “Essentials of Italian Cooking,” however, purports to be the one true path to true Italian cooking. In truth, it is a vision of Italian food seen through the strong-willed lens of its author, Marcella Hazan, who had opinions and “was not afraid to share them,” said Aimee Levitt at Eater.

A strong point of view is a boon for kitchen literacy. You learn Hazan’s way as you cook through this “foundational text,” said Serious Eats, that aims to “enlighten, instruct and offer key cultural insights in one fell swoop.” Then, in time, you excavate your own path so that you too might be full of righteous opinions about the proper way to cook Italian food. ($45, Knopf, Amazon)

‘Pasta e Verdure: 140 Vegetable Sauces for Spaghetti, Fusilli, Rigatoni, and All Other Noodles’ by Jack Bishop

Cook with pasta and vegetables for an extended period of time, and you learn that the repertoire expands with possibility every time you shake your dinner from skillet to serving bowl. “Pasta e Verdura” is like an infinity mirror: a collection of more than 100 sauces organized alphabetically by vegetable base. Flavor and variations that go on and on.

These are “simple recipes that combine common ingredients into gourmet vegetarian meals,” said Teri Bickmore at Midland Daily News, including asparagus with mushrooms and shallots, leeks with white wine and parmesan, spinach with melting gorgonzola, and butternut squash with sage. “Pasta e Verdure” might soon be one of a “very few indispensable cookbooks” in your kitchen. ($27, ThriftBooks, Amazon)

‘The Silver Spoon’ [NO AUTHOR]

There are tomes, and then there is “The Silver Spoon.” At almost 1,500 pages, the most magnum of Italian magnum opuses was first printed in 1950. “No matter where you turn” in the beloved cookbook, you’ll be faced with the “sight of something delicious,” said Serious Eats.

“The Silver Spoon” leans toward recipes that are forthright, ones that combine a “few ingredients to make simple dishes with rustic appeal,” said Serious Eats. The allure of these recipes’ “simplicity is that many can be combined or tweaked at will.”

Still, it is too large of a book to be perfect. Sometimes the recipes are so terse, they confuse. But as a source for creative thinking in the kitchen, for expanding one’s resourcefulness in the kitchen, “The Silver Spoon” is an expansive gift. ($55, Phaidon, Amazon)

‘The Talisman of Happiness’ by Ada Boni

An almost century-long journey brought one of Italy’s most beloved cookbooks to the United States. The book’s author, Ada Boni, published “The Talisman of Happiness” in 1929, and its more than 1,500 recipes aimed to capture the breadth of Italian cooking, the cuisine of a country that was still rather new when the book was written. Boni, said the book’s publisher, Michael Szczerban, to NPR, is the “most important forgotten culinary icon in Italian cooking history.”

As of 2025, “The Talisman of Happiness” is available in English. “Regional home cooking was essential to maintaining Italy’s national culture, and the book evolved along with the cuisine,” said Kim Severson at The New York Times. Cook through “The Talisman of Happiness,” and you learn that a national cuisine is, in truth, a compendium of how home cooks across various topographies and miles feed their people with what is available nearby. ($60, Voracious, Amazon)

‘La Terra Fortunata: The Splendid Food and Wine of Friuli Venezia-Giulia, Italy's Great Undiscovered Region’ by Fred Plotkin

So much of what we consider Italian food in the U.S. is, predictably, a product of migration patterns. We know well the red-sauce extravagances of southern Italian cooking. A culinary blind spot for most Americans is the cooking of the far north of Italy, which has more in common with Italy’s neighbors, Slovenia, Croatia and Austria, than it does with a tomato.

Plotkin’s essential book, “La Terra Fortunata,” captures the food and wine culture of Friuli-Venezia Giulia, the northeasternmost region of Italy. It is a locale where gnocchi are stuffed with plums, and penne with cinnamon and ricotta sauce turns the “palate upside down,” said Amanda Hesser at The New York Times. You will also learn an ensnaring new way with cheese: the frico, in which shredded Montasio cheese melts then hardens into a “crisp, golden cheese snack,” said New York Daily News. ($35, ThriftBooks, Amazon)

‘Subtraction isn’t the way out of the Colorado River crisis’

Jim Madaffer at The Washington Post

The Colorado River Compact of 1922 is “designed to divide a fixed supply of water, but there’s a problem: The river no longer offers one,” says Jim Madaffer. The “21st century must create water for the region,” but the “existing policies, designed as they were for another era, don’t create anything,” so “commercialization of water innovation is the path to giving Lower Basin states and their residents stable and full water supplies.”

Read more

‘Black Americans are reviving an ancient Nigerian apprenticeship model to build wealth’

Ibe Imo at The Philadelphia Inquirer

There is a “growing, informal network” of apprentice programs using the Nigerian “Nwa Boy model’s core promise: a credentialed path from labor to ownership, built on relationships and trust rather than credit scores or venture capital,” says Ibe Imo. As “race-conscious funding efforts designed to level the playing field for African Americans are dismantled, that promise is drawing new attention from investors, workforce officials and Black entrepreneurs looking for an alternative route to generational wealth.”

Read more

‘Why Gov. Newsom should commute every death sentence in California before he leaves office’

Nadia Daar at the San Francisco Chronicle

“Shockingly, 25% of those on death row in the U.S. are sitting in California prisons,” and Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) “should seize a historic opportunity to move California closer to ending the death penalty by commuting all of the death sentences in the state,” says Nadia Daar. Newsom’s “promise to pause executions is only good until he leaves office in 2027.” What he “does next will determine whether California merely delayed executions or truly ended them.”

Read more

‘Colleges shouldn’t give up on letter grades’

The Dallas Morning News editorial board

Some colleges are “experimenting with ‘ungrading,’ where students agree to contractual terms for a particular letter grade or are evaluated in more qualitative ways,” says The Dallas Morning News editorial board. These “experiments show a genuine effort on the part of colleges to grapple with a broken grading system, but dropping letter grades altogether is not the answer.” A “transcript filled with broad pass marks can’t communicate whether a student produced exceptional work or just barely got by.”

Read more

The USS Abraham Lincoln has been at sea for over 260 days, marking a record deployment for a modern aircraft carrier. And there are now allegations of grim conditions aboard the 5,600-person vessel. Things on the ship reportedly got so bad that multiple sailors attempted to jump overboard rather than remain on the carrier. But the Defense Department is denying these reports, even as it moves to replace the ship.

What are conditions on the USS Abraham Lincoln like?

There have been widespread reports of “deteriorating living conditions and worsening mental health during the ship’s record-breaking deployment,” said CNN. Many of these reports have indicated a dearth of basic supplies and food on the ship, which has been deployed since November 2025, starting on a path for the South China Sea before being rerouted to the Middle East at the outbreak of the Iran war. There have also been accounts of limited toiletries and moldy showers.

The USS Abraham Lincoln has seen “water contamination, plumbing issues, deck safety concerns, and disruptions in the mail system, which have caused many care packages en route to the ship to be lost in transit for months,” Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) said in a letter. These issues, particularly regarding mental health, are corroborated by family members of the ship’s sailors, who met with officials in a “combative face-to-face confrontation” where they “expressed concerns directly to Navy leaders about the well-being and safety of their loved ones,” said MS NOW.

As the poor conditions continue, at least two sailors tried to jump overboard in an attempt to die by suicide, according to two military news outlets, the Military Times and Stars and Stripes. In one of the incidents, a sailor “on watch saw a shipmate preparing to go overboard, and he intervened,” said the Times. And in the other, sailors were informed of the attempted jump “during a ship-wide announcement,” said Stars and Stripes. In a separate third incident, a sailor actually did go overboard while “wearing a life vest and was not injured,” said CNN.

What is the Pentagon doing?

The Pentagon has denied all accusations of poor conditions on the USS Abraham Lincoln. “We ​make sure every ship, every crew, every captain has everything we can provide ​them at every single moment,” Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told reporters. Reports of problems on the ship are “completely misrepresented.” The White House is also standing behind the Pentagon’s assessment. The Trump administration is committed to ensuring ships are “equipped ​with the resources necessary to counter any threat” to the U.S., White House spokesperson Olivia Wales told Reuters.

As the controversy grows, reports have confirmed that the military is planning to “replace the USS Abraham Lincoln with the USS George Washington as part of a scheduled Middle East deployment,” said The Wall Street Journal, with the Washington currently on its way to the region. However, President Donald Trump seems to think the replacement is unnecessary. It was “not nearly long enough,” he told reporters of the ship’s stationing.

As the USS Abraham Lincoln prepares to be replaced, Democrats are still pressing for answers about what happened. “These reports warrant immediate attention, but they also raise a broader question: whether the Navy can sustain the operational tempo now being demanded of its carrier force,” said Blumenthal in his letter, “particularly as this administration repeatedly commits U.S. forces to conflicts of its own choosing and increasingly relies on aircraft carriers to sustain those operations.”

What happened

Jared Kushner, President Donald Trump’s Middle East envoy and son-in-law, reportedly met Sunday with Hamas political leader Khalil al-Hayya in Egypt as the White House and regional allies attempt to revive the Trump-backed proposal for peace in Gaza. Representatives from Egypt, Turkey, Qatar and Trump’s Board of Peace also attended the meeting.

Who said what

Trump said last month that Hamas had agreed to his Gaza road map, but the plan “​​appeared to hit a dead end” when Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu publicly rejected it, The New York Times said. Hamas leaders on Sunday “reaffirmed their commitment to disarm and demilitarize” as Israel withdraws from Gaza, Axios said. Kushner “used the rare direct meeting to press Hamas for tangible steps,” warning that “Israel doesn’t trust the group to follow through.”

Hamas told mediators it was waiting for Israel to agree to the plan so they could “work out a timetable for implementation,” The Associated Press said. Instead, Israel “has resumed airstrikes in the past few days,” Reuters said.

What next?

Kushner and Board of Peace members Nickolay Mladenov and Tony Blair are set to meet with Netanyahu on Monday. The Israeli leader “faces a challenging election on Oct. 27” with a “coalition that includes ministers taking a harsh line on Gaza,” the AP said, and it’s “not clear whether he will take decisive steps on the ceasefire before then.”

What happened

A week of relentless storms caused widespread destruction in the Midwest and killed at least seven people in Indiana and another one in Ohio, officials said Sunday. President Donald Trump approved Indiana GOP Gov. Mike Braun’s disaster emergency declaration for the entire state. Across the country in Hawaii, Hurricane Lala grazed the state over the weekend, battering the islands with heavy rains and winds, but did not make landfall.

Who said what

Lala “continued to punish” Hawaii over the weekend with “strong gusts and pounding rain, reaching a total of nearly three feet” in places, The Associated Press said. The Ka’u District on the southeastern side of the Big Island “appeared to suffer the worst damage,” The New York Times said. There were no confirmed deaths, Gov. Josh Green (D) said, though officials are still investigating. “But boy, a lot of work ahead.”

Days of heavy rains in Indiana “caused significant flooding along the White River,” including in Indianapolis, The Wall Street Journal said. The National Weather Service in Indianapolis “had never issued a flash flood emergency — its most dire flood alert — until Wednesday,” the Times said. “It issued the warning three times that day.”

What next?

As the Midwest shifts to recovery efforts, the “heavy rainfall has moved eastward” to the central Appalachians, the Journal said, bringing the “threat of flash flooding to West Virginia” on Monday.

What happened

President Donald Trump said on social media Sunday night he had instructed the Pentagon to “substantially reduce” America’s annual joint military exercises with South Korea, citing their cost, his own “very good relationship” with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and Seoul’s disinclination to join the U.S. in the Iran war. The defensive drills, which began this week, are “totally inappropriate and hostile,” he said, as North Korea “has been unthreatening and respectful” while he is president.

Who said what

This is the “latest example” of Trump “appearing to turn against an ally in favor of a leader that previous administrations have cast as an adversary,” The Associated Press said. North Korea has been “pushing hard to enlarge its nuclear and missile arsenals since Kim’s high-stakes diplomacy with Trump collapsed in 2019.” Trump may intend this as “part of a larger effort to create a diplomatic opportunity” with Kim, Jenny Town at the Stimson Center think tank told Reuters, but the “haphazard nature of this move is unlikely to make much of an impression in Pyongyang.”

The Pentagon was “taken aback” by Trump’s “convoluted social media post,” The New York Times said, citing a senior U.S. military official. “We need South Korea as an ally more than ever to maintain deterrence on the Korean Peninsula and to reinforce our industrial base in critical sectors like shipbuilding and semiconductors,” Hudson Institute Asian security expert Patrick Cronin told The Wall Street Journal. “We should not punish Seoul for our lack of a strategy in the Middle East.”

What next?

The annual Ulchi Freedom Shield exercises are scheduled to last until Aug. 27.

“It’s pretty worrying, the state of men’s tennis, especially right now,” said British star Jack Draper, announcing his withdrawal from Wimbledon this year due to injury. “The amount of injuries, especially young players.” Draper thinks “the tour and the calendar have to adapt if any of us are gonna achieve some sort of longevity”.

The unrelenting schedule of the ATP Tour has meant Draper’s world ranking has dropped from no. 4 to no. 147, and he faces the prospect of having to qualify for this year’s US Open, where he was a semi-finalist two years ago. He has missed most of the last year with the injury to his serving arm.

Players on both the men’s ATP and women’s WTA tours have long complained of the hectic playing schedule and called for reforms to ease the workload. But calendar alterations are just one of the many challenges players are facing.

Injuries ‘steadily increasing’

“It is difficult to remember a time when each tournament’s build-up was not punctuated” with withdrawals like that of men’s world no. 1 Jannik Sinner from this week’s Cincinnati Open, said The Telegraph.

The calendar is to blame. Of the nine Masters 1000 events – one step below Grand Slams in prestige and usually lasting seven days – seven of them have “expanded to a 12-day format”. And punishments for opting out of the “gruelling” schedule don’t help players. Barring injury, they must play a minimum of eight such tournaments or “have their bonus pool reduced for each subsequent tournament missed”.

Optimists would argue that top players’ absences give opportunities to younger and lower-ranked players, but fans have started to “raise concerns” about their favourites “regularly missing events”. Clearly, the ATP Tour has “its own interests at heart”, attempting to “squeeze out every revenue source possible”.

This has impacted player health. “Survival of the fittest has become an apt metaphor for life on the tennis circuit in recent months,” said The Times. Injuries are “inevitable” in any sporting arena, but at the top level of tennis they are “steadily increasing”. University of Barcelona data from 2024 found that match retirements had increased by at least 25% and 50% on the ATP and WTA Tours respectively since 1999, while the Professional Tennis Players’ Association found that the average distance covered by players on court has increased “by more than 50 per cent since 2015”.

Players must contend with a “lack of recovery time and accumulated stress between matches”. In training, they can record performance “to the nth degree” with trackers and advanced technology, but these are banned in Grand Slam tournaments. However, “the stress of real competition is far greater”

Counterintuitively, players’ improved athleticism is also causing issues, said El Pais. In both men’s and women’s competitions, the physicality has “evolved exponentially compared with two or three decades ago”, meaning players can hit the ball harder, and have better equipment with which to do so. This places even greater strain when on the receiving end, and the rules are not adapting to accommodate this.

‘Highly vulnerable to match-fixing’

Environmental changes are also overlooked too, said the Financial Times. “Extreme heat is affecting tennis tournaments globally”, particularly at the French Open in May, and different organisations follow different rules to combat it. Until this year, the decision to suspend ATP matches due to weather conditions was “at the discretion of tournament supervisors”. Now a new “heat rule” is applied.

In addition to the playing schedule and more common heatwave conditions, tennis is “highly vulnerable to match-fixing”, said The Athletic. Top players may earn “more than $20 million in prize money each season”, but the majority of lower-ranked players “live a hand-to-mouth existence” on tour. “Fixers thrive on this inconsistency.”

The scoring system means players “can be convinced to corrupt matches whilst still winning them”: they can throw the opening set, or a particular service game, before “returning to playing at their best”. In December, French player Quentin Folliot was “suspended for 20 years on fixing charges, while Chinese player Pang Renlong was “barred for 12 years for separate offences”.

Like in other sports, change in tennis “takes time”, said The Independent. But unlike in others, tennis essentially has “seven governing bodies”, with the ATP, WTA, World Tennis and the four historic Grand Slam events all claiming certain jurisdiction. “Getting everyone around the same table is challenging enough”, let alone them agreeing on reforms to the game.

Donald Trump has ordered the Pentagon to scale back annual joint military exercises with South Korea after the country stayed out of the war with Iran.

Writing on Truth Social, the US president said the exercises “send a signal that is totally inappropriate and hostile” to North Korea, which “has been unthreatening and respectful” during his second term. He also noted that South Korea had recently declined to join the US in the “denuclearisation” of Iran.

What did the commentators say?

The US is losing the Iran conflict, so Trump has “taken the logical next step” of “punishing” a “loyal American friend”, said Tom Nichols on The Atlantic.

In fact, “scaling back the exercise” is an “insane” decision but in “Trump’s world, every loss, every defeat, is a personal insult”, and “when things go wrong, someone must be held responsible” and, of course, “that someone is never Donald Trump”.

So the world is “witnessing a public exhibition of narcissistic rage” because Trump “embarked on a war for personal glory”, but “what he got instead was ongoing humiliation”.

The Chinese, Russians and North Koreans will “draw the appropriate lessons from this deranged policy”, and notice that “when Trump fails, he hurts those he feels safe hurting”.

It is the “latest example” of Trump “appearing to turn against an ally in favour of a leader that previous administrations have cast as an adversary”, wrote Konstantin Toropin and Alanna Durkin Richer on The Associated Press. It’s a particularly “sharp turnaround” from how his administration has viewed South Korea recently.

The announcement could be “part of an effort to divert attention” from the war in Iran, which has “left energy costs high”. This has become a “sensitive economic issue” ahead of the US midterm elections, said The Korea Times.

It could “trigger a debate over whether the scaling down of joint exercises could affect the allies’ deterrence” against North Korea as the “recalcitrant regime has been doubling down on its nuclear and ballistic missile programs”.

The “sudden” announcement “risks renewing concerns” that “US forces are too stretched to support crucial Western allies or maintain deterrence against autocracies that threaten them”, said Brad Lendon on CNN. It’s also a “gift” to Kim Jong Un at a time when he has “ramped up his own nation’s threat to global stability and offered no concessions in return”.

What next?

Experts told the BBC that the “walking back” of these joint military exercises could “carry a high cost with relatively little benefit”.

They are “essential for military forces to be ready and capable of doing their jobs”, Leif-Eric Easley, a professor at Ewha University in Seoul, told the broadcaster.

“Scaling them back” could “damage alliance coordination”, as well as “slow the process of South Korea taking on greater responsibility for its own defence, and weaken deterrence against possible conflicts in Asia”.

In a statement, South Korea’s presidential Blue House said it was reviewing Trump’s comments and added that it hoped a favourable relationship between Washington and Pyongyang could lead to meaningful talks.

Fill the grid with numbers one to nine so that each row, column and square contains every digit exactly once. This game will update daily.

Fill the grid with numbers one to nine so that each row, column and square contains every digit exactly once. This game will update daily.

This is the way to enjoy the British summertime. Battered fish and salt-and-vinegar-seasoned chips have been a staple for hundreds of years, best paired with stinging seaside winds and spray. Wherever you are in the UK, there will always be a handful of chippies vying for your order. Here are some of the best seaside establishments, giving you decades-crafted favourites, and some newer twists on tradition.

Anstruther Fish Bar – Fife, Scotland

“My heart belongs to Anstruther Fish Bar,” said Gordon Thomson in The Telegraph. Edinburgh has “salt and sauce”, a “piquant brown-sauce-and-vinegar combo”, and in Glasgow, the “mighty ‘fish supper’ reigns”, but fish on the east coast of Scotland is something else. Once you’ve navigated the queue under the “watchful eye of the mannequin fisherman”, you settle down into an “old-school caff table”. Last time I was there, I had haddock, with the “most incredible chips – perfectly crisp and yet fluffy inside – and mushy peas, all washed down with white wine and a craft beer”. Truly “award-winning fare”.
anstrutherfishbar.co.uk

Aldeburgh Fish & Chips – Aldeburgh, Suffolk

“The Cooney family and their faithful tribe of fryers have been frying in beef dripping on Aldeburgh High Street since 1967,” said Chris Haslam in The Times. There are actually two spots on the high street to pick up your supper, and you’ll get the “same shatteringly crispy battered fish” at both. Above the second location, the Golden Galleon, there’s a small dining space, but Aldeburgh’s “windswept sand and shingle beach is an unbeatable picnic spot”. I’ve even known a seal to have “bobbed along to say hello”.
aldeburghfishandchips.co.uk

Whelan’s Fish and Chips – Lytham St Annes, Lancashire

Whelan’s has been visited by some esteemed figures in the culinary world – such as Gordon Ramsay and Rick Stein – and yet it primarily “remains a favourite with the locals”, said Delicious. It was established in 1937, and “since it started, not much has changed and for all the right reasons”. They source fish from “sustainable stocks, they use local produce (wherever possible)” and you are always looked after by “welcoming” staff. Of course, you can’t go wrong with something traditional, but keep your eyes peeled for one of the “gourmet fishcakes which often feature as a daily special”.
whelansfishandchips.co.uk

Ainsworth’s – Bridge Street, Caernarfon, Gwynedd

Now this is a “treasure trove of a place”, said Joanna Whitehead in The i Paper. Naturally, “no two chippies are the same”, and each place is “dazzling with individuality”: a “gratifying phenomenon in a homogenised world of chain eateries”. It is hard to beat cradling a “box of their glowing offering under your arm” and heading “to the waterfront to eat between bay and castle”.
ainsworthscaernarfon.co.uk

The Rockfish – Dartmouth, Devon

If you need convincing, look no further than celebrated chef Mitch Tonks’ “65 awards”, said Food and Travel Magazine. “Set overlooking the bucolic River Dart with its fishing boats meandering up and down with the ebb and flow of the tide, you can almost taste how good The Rockfish’s wares are going to be before they arrive.” In winter, the restaurant’s log burner is the perfect antidote to “long yomps across the moors”. There are a few West Country change-ups from your classic chippy menu: the “South Coast calamari with aïoli” and a “South Devon crab roll, served with pickled cucumber, Marie Rose sauce and lashings of sweet white crab meat” are fan-favourites.
therockfish.co.uk

There’s trouble brewing in the water. The ongoing war with Iran has stranded more than 1,500 ships in the Strait of Hormuz, a waterway connecting the Persian Gulf to the Gulf of Oman, since February. While closure of the strait has led to severe economic consequences, there is also a burgeoning ecological crisis. Invasive species growing on the hulls of the trapped ships could soon voyage across the globe.

Ships, wrecked

There is a “high likelihood” that the idle ships in the Strait of Hormuz will “facilitate the extensive spread of economically and ecologically damaging invasive species as they reenter the global shipping network,” said a study published in the journal Biological Invasions. The stagnant ships’ hulls are “becoming encrusted with marine life,” from “microbes and algae to barnacles and other invertebrates,” a phenomenon called biofouling, said The Guardian. These organisms can “hitchhike to ports around the world” when trade resumes.

The “Persian/Arabian Gulf is home to more than 50 marine nonnative species, and many species native to the region have already been introduced across the globe,” said four of the authors of the study in The Conversation. The circumstances, however, are different this time.

Ships “normally only remain at anchor in a harbor for one to three days, limiting the growth of organisms on their submerged surfaces,” said The Guardian. In the case of the current block of the Strait of Hormuz, many vessels have “remained stationary for months, allowing dense marine communities to establish themselves.” The marine organisms of the Middle East “can withstand extremes,” Mario Tamburri, a professor at the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science and the study’s lead author, said to USA Today. They are “tolerant organisms, which makes them good candidates for invasions when they go to a new location.”

New waters

Marine invasive species “have profound ecological and economic impacts on coastlines across the globe” and are “extremely difficult, if not impossible, to eradicate once they become established,” Carolyn Tepolt, a biologist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and co-author of the study, said in a statement.

Invasive species can outcompete local species, fundamentally altering the ecosystem. They can also perpetuate the spread of “parasites and diseases that are either entrained within ship ballast tanks or associated with organisms attached to ship hulls,” April Blakeslee, an associate professor of biology at East Carolina University and co-author of the study, said to Live Science (a sister site of The Week).

The organisms can “cause millions of dollars’ worth of damage” as well, Tamburri said to ABC News. Biofouling can “lead ships to have more drag as they move through the water, burning extra fuel and increasing exhaust emissions,” said USA Today. Invasive species can also disrupt fisheries and aquaculture, requiring extra money to manage.

The Strait of Hormuz may be the current invasive species risk, but climate change and warming temperatures have been increasing the level of global spread. “Current ship biofouling management and regulatory frameworks are insufficient to mitigate the impacts of large-scale, unplanned vessel lay-up events,” said the study. “While the human and economic consequences of events like the war in the Middle East will always remain the highest priority, ecological impacts cannot be overlooked.”