Many people are familiar with the El Niño phenomenon of warming surface temperatures across the Pacific Ocean. Less known is a separate but related oceanographic feature that is quickly positioning itself as one of — if not the — major disruptive weather events of the season. Dubbed a “Kelvin wave,” researchers warn this large surge of warm ocean water could lead to intense meteorological destruction during a winter storm season already heightened by a particularly active El Niño.

‘Not like crashing waves at the beach’

Unlike a “typical wave” visible across the “surface of the water,” Kelvin waves occur when “bursts of westerly winds push warm water eastward,” said LiveNow from Fox. The eastern push then generates Kelvin waves that “travel beneath the water’s surface along the equator.”

Kelvin waves manifest when ocean trade winds that “usually” move from South America toward Asia “die down or reverse" in El Niño years, said The Guardian, setting off a “massive, slow-moving slosh of water.” But Kelvin waves are “not like crashing waves at the beach.”

Rather, they are “planetary in scale, spanning thousands of miles,” and carry with them an “untold amount of warm water that slowly moves from the western Pacific, along the equator, towards South, Central and North America,” said The Guardian. Unlike normal shoreline waves, Kelvin waves are a “propagating disturbance” that moves energy through the ocean, “shifting heat, pressure, and sea level” along the way, said the Desert Sun.

Lasting impact

This year’s wave has “added nearly a foot to tides in Southern California,” said The Atlantic. It’s also created conditions that “tend to drum up storm activity in the Pacific.”

Potential Kelvin wave damage “depends on the force of the swells and how high tides are,” said The Orange County Register. If the wave is “indeed arriving now” at California’s shoreline, it will dovetail with “6-foot tides” and hurricane conditions “already churning up the ocean’s force.” Though the exact timing of the wave’s impact on coastal California remains uncertain, said The Guardian, researchers predict the wave’s effects will “linger through the winter and into early next year.”

CROSSWORD - Oct. 9, 2026

SUDOKU - Oct. 9, 2026

Crossword - Oct. 9, 2026

SUDOKU - Oct. 9, 2026

This week’s question: A Manhattan nightclub is letting patrons skip the line if they turn up accompanied by a parent, and is holding weekly dance parties at 5pm for “people who want to go to bed early.” In seven or fewer words, come up with a headline for a tabloid article expressing outrage at how un-hip big-city nightlife has become.

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 “Cringe clubbing” in the subject line. Entries are due by noon, Eastern Time, Tuesday, Oct. 6. Winners will appear on the Puzzle Page of the Oct. 16 issue and at theweek.com/contest on Oct. 9. 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: Scratching salon

President Donald Trump was impeached twice during his first term. As the midterm elections inch closer, there is impeachment talk in the air again, but this time with a twist. Democrats are now talking about impeaching members of Trump’s Cabinet, and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth could be first on the list.

What did the commentators say?

Democrats “stumbled” onto the Cabinet-impeachment strategy thanks to Republican Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky, said MS NOW. Massie, who lost his primary election to a Trump-endorsed opponent, introduced articles of impeachment against Hegseth last month. This is a “highly underrated” strategy for forcing accountability on the administration, Massie said to the outlet.

Some party leaders are mum about the idea for now. Democrats “haven’t ruled anything out” if they win the midterms, said House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries to MS NOW. “And we haven’t ruled anything in.”

Impeaching members of Trump’s Cabinet would be an “effective accountability measure,” said David A. Graham at The Atlantic. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has “done serious damage to American public health,” Hegseth “waged an unauthorized war against Iran” and Attorney General Todd Blanche turned the Justice Department into a “partisan tool for persecuting Trump’s political adversaries.” Cabinet impeachments would focus on “actual administration actions and policy” and avoid a presidential impeachment likely to prove a “dead end.”

An impeachment push could “derail” Democrats’ affordability messaging in the midterms campaign, said Chad Pergram at Fox News. While the party’s “hard left” may demand impeachment “for someone,” this could prove “politically toxic” for scandal-weary voters.

What next?

Hegseth might be particularly vulnerable to an impeachment push, with even GOP members expressing “doubts about his leadership” amid a stalemated war in Iran, said The New York Times. The defense secretary has not “developed any productive relationships, even with Republican members,” said Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) to the outlet.

Impeachment is “not a fetish” for Democrats, said Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) to NBC’s “Meet the Press.” It is a “critical tool.” But the party’s higher priorities after November are “getting healthcare to the American people and ending the lawlessness.”

As details continue to emerge about the fraternity members who allegedly drugged and gang raped a student at Cornell University in 2024, many hope it could be a reckoning for colleges across the country. The ongoing civil lawsuit may also bring about systemic changes, even as some accuse Cornell of treating the seven defendants too lightly.

‘Safety’ is education’s ‘precondition’

The Cornell chapter of the Chi Phi fraternity house, where the alleged rape took place, has been barred from the school. But a “university’s obligation to the physical safety of its students is not one commitment among several, to be weighed against reputation or litigation exposure,” said the editorial board of The Cornell Daily Sun, Cornell’s student newspaper. Safety on campus is “not adjacent to the educational mission — safety is, in fact, its precondition.” After the allegations emerged, why were “these men allowed to ‘pursue their education in a secure and nourishing environment?’” said the Daily Sun, citing the university’s student conduct code.

The lawsuit also alleges that Cornell offered the accused an “opportunity to mitigate their punishment by writing an essay,” said Rita Omokha at Elle, which prompted widespread backlash. “We need to sit with that for a second because what does an essay actually repair, remedy or restore?” People “have become so accustomed to institutions failing women that we have started to process these failures the way we process bad weather.” But treating “sexual assault as an academic matter — complete with its charts and facts and figures — offers no respite to the victims who have undergone physical and mental abuse,” said The Cornell Daily Sun.

‘Full and thorough criminal investigation’

The case may prompt “universities to reconsider how they measure and communicate campus safety,” said Jeannine Chiang at The Nation. Rape is “not a personal or campus issue,” and “people need to realize this happens at their alma mater even if it’s not Cornell, and that it requires systemic change,” Ray Epstein, an organizer and sexual assault prevention advocate, told the outlet.

Barring the chapter of the frat is “hardly accountability,” said Maggie Young at The Vanderbilt Hustler, Vanderbilt University’s student newspaper. While the ongoing case is currently a civil matter, the “seven men accused in Jane Doe’s case should face a full and thorough criminal investigation, and if the evidence supports criminal charges, they should be charged and prosecuted accordingly.”

Following sold-out runs in New York and Los Angeles, “Table 17” – Douglas Lyons’ “heartfelt” and “hilarious” one-act play about a pair of ex-lovers reuniting for what might be a date – has arrived in the UK, said Isobel Lewis in Time Out.

Zipping back and forth in time to show us moments from the couple’s past relationship, this breezy piece constantly wrong foots the audience, flipping from “laugh-out-loud hilarity to genuine tragedy in minutes, changing costumes and switching timelines at equal pace”.

Directed by Tony-winner Zhailon Levingston, the production is a “stylish and exhilarating theatrical experience” that is driven by “powerful, emotive” performances. It also has a deft, confident humour that makes the play’s “emotional rug pulls all the more devastating”.

“As psychological enquiry, Lyons’ writing doesn’t cut particularly deep,” said Matt Wolf on London Theatre: his play sits on the “featherweight” end of the dramatic scale. What makes it work – here as in New York – is a top-flight cast “charging through the text’s cheesier moments”, and “roping the audience in from the start as ready participants in the fun”.

Musical theatre star Marisha Wallace turns in a typically “magnetic” performance as flight attendant Jada, said Arifa Akbar in The Guardian. Jamael Westman (London’s first Alexander Hamilton) makes her ex properly rounded by “sensitively balancing his ridiculousness with his depth of emotional injury”. And Michael Rishawn almost steals the show with his delicious comic turn as the restaurant host, as well as other ancillary characters.

For me the “real magic” lies in the way the Kiln Theatre’s small space has been transformed by Amy Jane Cook’s sleek, nightclub-meets-cabaret design, said Hang Yuen on What’s on Stage. A luminous tiled platform, a curved ribbed booth, and tiny amber table lamps put the audience inside an intimate late-night lounge, with a striking geometric ceiling, and excellent coloured lighting, completing the effect.

This is not a deep play, that is true, but it’s inventive and entertaining and also powerfully theatrical.

Kiln Theatre, London NW6. Until 24 October.

“Sometimes it feels as if all human life is contained in this deeply moving documentary from the veteran American filmmaker Ross McElwee,” said Kevin Maher in The Times. “Grief and loss, marriage and family, work, success, failure and fame are all embraced.”

McElwee started making the film in 2008 as a light-hearted personal piece about an attempt by Hollywood producers to turn his 1986 indie documentary “Sherman’s March” into a drama series for streaming.

That project stalled but, following the death of his 27-year-old son Adrian from a fentanyl overdose in 2016, he went back to the footage he had shot for it – and created this documentary. It also makes use of home-movie clips, previous documentaries that Adrian had appeared in, and Adrian’s own work as an aspiring filmmaker.

“Remake” serves as a eulogy for Adrian, but McElwee also asks whether, in constantly filming his son instead of interacting with him directly, he let him down as a parent.

This is “one of the most outstanding films of this year”, said Jonathan Romney in the Financial Times, and easily the “most unapologetically personal”. And while it seeks to celebrate Adrian’s life, it is desperately sad.

“Every shot of Adrian – a cute, chatty little kid, fishing off a pier, pretending to run a restaurant, and slowly getting older and bigger – becomes painfully charged,” said Leslie Felperin in The Guardian.

“It’s not just that the little kid is gone”; Adrian himself is gone. “Remake” slowly reveals what led to Adrian’s death. The result is a “profoundly moving work”, about parenting and about art, which “lingers in the mind long after the tears have dried”.

The price of diesel has hit £2 per litre – the most expensive it has ever been – at a third of UK petrol stations, said The Sun.

This is “uncharted territory”, financial analyst Kathleen Brooks told City A.M. Donald Trump has already sent markets into a “frenzy” by threatening to ban diesel exports from the US, said the same paper. Weakened infrastructure for refining diesel and lower reserves than European counterparts mean the UK could be uniquely “exposed” to any further “ripple effects”, including more price rises.

What did the commentators say?

President Trump is trying to bring diesel prices down for US consumers ahead of the midterm elections in November. If he does decide to ban exports of US diesel, it would “hurt the countries which heavily depend” on it, said the BBC, including the UK. But it might also have “unintended effects that could hurt US production” in the longer term.

Trump’s threats have “highlighted Britain’s over-reliance on the goodwill of other countries” for its diesel needs, said an editorial in The Times. Last year, the UK imported more than 50% of its diesel supply, around a sixth of that from the US.

Our infrastructure depends on it: around 10 million cars, a quarter of the country’s trains, 70% of buses, virtually all tractors and “almost 99% of HGVs” run on diesel. Yet the UK has enough reserves to last for only around six weeks, according to International Energy Forum data, compared to around six months for France, Italy, Spain and Germany.

Breaking the £2 threshold for a litre of diesel should “set alarm bells ringing in Downing Street”, said The Telegraph in an editorial. The government’s response so far has been to remove VAT from energy bills in an attempt to cushion the blow to consumers, but this “hardly addresses the fundamental issues”. As a nation, we have “failed to prepare”, allowing our refining capacity to “wither away” to leave us “dangerously exposed” to market fluctuations beyond our control.

The diesel crisis could “deepen” after the UK’s largest refinery shut down production for up to 10 weeks, said energy editor Jonathan Leake in The Telegraph. The Fawley refinery in Hampshire – which produces “one fifth of the fuel used on UK roads” – has closed for planned maintenance, a move that “will add to fears about another diesel price spike hurting drivers at the pumps”.

In the 1980s, the UK had 18 refineries, but that has dropped to just four. Two closures last year – in Grangemouth, Scotland and Lindsey in Lincolnshire – “slashed UK refinery output by about a third”. Now, any closures, planned or unplanned, temporary or permanent, have a “rapid impact on supplies”.

What next?

“Rising diesel costs aren’t just a problem for drivers generally but a wider inflation threat,” said Sky News. Diesel is the “engine of the UK economy” and shortages would heavily disrupt supply chains and lead to costs being passed on to consumers, particularly in the run-up to Christmas. This is the type of inflation that “worries” the Bank of England, which is “widely tipped” to raise interest rates in November.

Taxes on fuel – which account for “just over half of the cost of a litre” – are also set to rise. Hikes planned by former chancellor Rachel Reeves are set to come into effect in January, but her successor, John Healey, should “question the wisdom of raising prices at the pump at a time when they are clearly inflationary in nature”. As such, they are likely to be “scrapped or further delayed” at the upcoming Budget.

A Tennessee woman, convicted of murder, has survived attempts to execute her by lethal injection. She was rushed to hospital, still breathing, after receiving two doses of pentobarbital.

Christa Pike was scheduled for execution yesterday and, after a late stay was overturned, would have been the first woman put to death in Tennessee for more than 200 years. Now the 50-year-old’s botched capital punishment has drawn fresh attention to concerns about the fairness of her murder trial.

‘No precedent’

Early yesterday, Pike’s execution had been briefly paused by a federal appeals court on the grounds that more time was needed to consider her case. But, an hour before the midnight deadline for her execution was due to expire, the US Supreme Court overruled the stay, and prison officials went ahead with the process.

Pike, who was sentenced to death in 1995 for a murder she committed at the age of 18, had asked to be executed by an all-female firing squad, saying that being held down by a group of men would traumatise her. But execution by firing squad is not allowed in Tennessee, so lethal injection was used instead.

After the required syringe of pentobarbital was administered, Pike was given a second dose. Members of the media, who were at the execution as witnesses, described her as “somewhat alert”. They told The New York Times that, at one point, she could be heard singing with her spiritual adviser. Her legal team say she still had a heartbeat after being given the second dose, and had not lost consciousness.

As it became clear that the lethal injection had not worked, the execution was halted and Pike was transferred to hospital. She was apparently snoring loudly as she was taken to the ambulance. Her current condition is unknown, and it remains unclear what her fate will be if she recovers. State governor Bill Lee has suspended all further executions in Tennessee this year, pending an investigation into the incident.

“This event is the worst we’ve seen and unlike any other botched execution in the modern era,” said Robin Maher of the Death Penalty Information Center. “There is no precedent.” The Tennessee Department of Correction insisted that it had “followed every step of the state’s lawful, established execution protocol approved by the Attorney General’s Office”.

‘Uniquely compelling’

At her trial in 1995, Pike had confessed to the brutal murder of 19-year-old Colleen Sleemer, “a young woman she viewed as a romantic rival” when they met at a vocational camp for troubled teens, said Al Jazeera. With her then-boyfriend, Tadaryl Shipp, and a friend, Pike lured Slemmer into the woods, where they taunted her, beat her with asphalt rocks and slashed her with a knife.

Pike, who was described by the Daily Mail as a “Satanist killer”, kept a piece of Slemmer’s skull after the killing. Shipp said he had carved a pentagram into Slemmer’s chest. Both were convicted of first-degree murder. Shipp, who was 17, was sentenced to life with the possibility of parole; Pike, who, at 18, qualified for capital punishment, was sentenced to death.

Since her sentencing, her legal team have uncovered details about her childhood that they say the jury never had the chance to consider. She has a “documented history of childhood sexual abuse, abandonment and neglect”, said the BBC. She was physically and sexually abused by several of her mother’s husbands and boyfriends, and described being raped twice, at the age of 11 and 17. Her legal team also presented evidence that her mother drank heavily during pregnancy, impairing Pike’s brain development and her impulse control.

“It is mind-boggling” that her history of abuse and rape was not revealed to the jury, Sandra Babcock, an expert in gender and the death penalty at Cornell Law School, told the BBC. Her case is “uniquely compelling, not just because of her really incomprehensible history of sexual violence but the combination of that with her youth and her mental illness”.

Slemmer’s mother, May Martinez, said at the weekend that she had waited decades to see Pike’s death sentence carried out. A victim’s rights group had raised funds for her and her husband to travel from Florida to Tennessee to witness the execution. “There’s not a day goes by that I don’t think about Colleen or how she died,” she said. “I just want Christa down so I can end it.”

Chichester Festival Theatre has put an “ingenious spin” on “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” by transporting the action to John Major’s Britain, said Fiona Mountford in The Telegraph.

It’s the summer of 1994 and the “frolics in the Athenian forest” have been transformed into an illegal rave on the South Downs. As the Conservative government of the time “struggles to reassert the supremacy of law and order” by introducing legislation to criminalise raves, the countryside is turned into a “place of freedom and self-expression away from the constraints of city life”.

In this riotously fun production, Theseus (Tom Kanji) – now “Theseus Howard, Member of Parliament for Chichester” – is preparing to marry Hippolyta (Celeste Dodwell). The “tangled quartet of young lovers” has also been updated: Hermia (Angela Sant’Albano) chooses to run away with a “gender-switched” Lysanda (Ellie Larkin) so she can escape the clutches of Demetrius (Kieran Taylor-Ford), who in turn is the source of the “unrequited affections” of Helena (Freya Parks). But the South Downs are being used to host an “all-night rave” filled with “mind-altering substances”.

The term “love juice” appears twice in “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”, which Justin Audibert and Hannah Joss have used as “textual justification” for staging their “lovingly juiced up” play around a “narcotic, orgiastic woodland party”, said Mark Lawson in The Guardian. Comedian Munya Chawawa makes his theatrical debut as a “bewitchingly played” Nick Bottom. His physically energetic performance filled with “slapstick gymnastics” paused the show with “earned applause”.

Neon lights and “post-psychedelic imagery” provide the bright, funky rave-inspired backdrop, said Neil Norman in The Stage, and the sets are cleverly put together. This is a “punchy, techno delight to revel in for two and a half hours”, said Theatre and Tonic, with stand-out performances, choreography and costume design. “You would be an absolute fool to miss it.”

The government has unveiled a new housing support scheme to boost the property market.

Your First Home aims to “combat malaise” among housebuilders, said The Times, and “get young people on the housing ladder”.

Similar to later versions of the popular but now defunct Help to Buy scheme, it will only be available to first-time buyers.

But the “devil will be in the detail” that is coming in next month’s Budget, said Property Week, especially to “avoid claims of unfairness” for those who have already put money aside in the government’s Lifetime Isa.

What does Your First Home involve?

Under the Your First Home scheme first-time buyers will be able to purchase a new-build property with a 2.5% deposit backed by a 20% government equity loan, which could “save hundreds of pounds per month compared to a 95% mortgage”, said the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government.

The deposit “eliminates one of the biggest challenges facing would-be homeowners”, said The Guardian, as many first-time buyers can find it hard to save while also covering other costs such as rent, household bills and, in some cases, childcare.

How will it work?

Full details will be revealed in the Budget, but the government has said first-time buyers will be able to purchase a new-build with a low deposit and an equity loan from developers signed up to the scheme.

The government-backed equity loan will be interest-free at the start and with a 2.5% deposit, the upfront costs “should work out considerably cheaper” than a larger loan-to-value mortgage, said The Sun. There will be a local property price cap and a household income cap “to stop wealthier buyers taking advantage of the scheme”.

The terms haven’t been confirmed, but the equity loan will be repayable, “meaning further costs down the line”, said The Independent.

There has been some criticism of the scheme, though. Will Bainbridge, founder of property investment firm Hawthorn Capital, told Money Age it is “irresponsible policymaking dressed up as aspiration”.

He cited the government’s own evaluation of Help to Buy, which estimated that new-build homes attracted a 5.5% premium, with properties purchased through the scheme carrying a further 0.9% over comparable new-builds.

Your First Home vs. Help to Buy

Commentators are describing Your First Home as a revived version of Help to Buy.

Later versions of Help to Buy had “a lot of similarities” to what we know so far about Your First Home, said The Guardian, including an equity loan, new-builds and price caps.

But the “ongoing row” about soaring student loan debts means there will be extra pressure to be “very clear” about how the equity loan interest will work.

Savers can also put up to £4,000 per year in a Lifetime Isa each year to save towards a property deposit, backed by a 25% government bonus.

Any scheme that "penalises those savers”, said Property Week, “would risk widespread criticism”.

A new study suggests a worrying link between frequent marijuana use and care-intensive seizures in people with ‘hard-to-treat’ epilepsy. While it’s too early to prove causation, researchers believe the connection warrants further study.

‘Unsettling trend’

Adults with “hard-to-treat epilepsy” who used cannabis most days had “more than twice as many convulsive seizures” per year and “more rapidly became resistant to antiseizure medications” compared with nonusers, according to new research from Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, published in the journal Epilepsia, a press release said.

The researchers reviewed the medical records of 64 adults with drug-resistant epilepsy who were admitted to an inpatient unit where “doctors monitored their seizures in real time,” said U.S. News & World Report. Twenty-two of them “reported using marijuana at least 20 days a month.” The difference between the two groups “was significant.” In total, “91% of frequent users experienced convulsive seizures compared with 57% of nonusers.”

An FDA-approved cannabis-derived epilepsy treatment exists, Epidiolex, but it is “only made from cannabidiol (CBD),” said Gizmodo. The team suspects THC, the other active compound in cannabis, “could be the primary culprit behind this unsettling trend.”

Next steps

The researchers emphasized that the “current data demonstrate an observational association rather than direct causation,” said Neuroscience News. Moving forward, the team is designing a “prospective, multisite study” incorporating blood tests rather than “self-reported usage.”

The primary takeaway is to “not ignore cannabis use in epilepsy or to assume it is beneficial,” said senior study author Aaron Struck to Gizmodo. It is worthwhile to “discuss with a treating physician” if “stopping or reducing THC may be beneficial to your care.”

Leaves are falling, and comedy clubs are calling. This autumn, there are plenty of comedians rounding the country, all primed to provide you with boundless laughs.

Lavell Crawford

While Lavell Crawford is known for his guest roles on television, it’s his unique brand of stand-up that has endeared him to fans. Now the funny man is back on the road at several comedy festivals for an ongoing tour.

Those who can’t see him live can still get a laugh from his 2024 stand-up special, in which Crawford “contemplates how ‘My 600 Pound Life’ could go for 15 seasons and he’s still underweight, the kind of racist you have to be to not take a free holiday and explosive consequences in a Taco Bell bathroom,” said Deadline. (through October)

Whitney Cummings

Whitney Cummings’ comedy is certainly not intended for young children, but you can catch her live on her ongoing “Big Baby” tour regardless. The tour lets people take in Cummings’ lively stories with her “signature sharp wit and fearless perspective on navigating the world as a single mom,” said the tour’s official press release.

Her material on the current tour “dives into the chaos of personal growth, the comedy of owning your mistakes and laugh-out-loud reflections on raising a son. Her stand-up continues to blend personal anecdotes with incisive cultural commentary,” said the release. (through January 2027)

Joe Dombrowski

Joe Dombrowski first rose to prominence in 2017 and since then has been entertaining audiences across the United States with his stand-up routines. Now he is out on yet another stand-up tour featuring his signature comedic style.

While Dombrowski first endeared himself to audiences with “comedy rooted in his life as an elementary school teacher,” he and his husband have since become parents. Dombrowski now “delivers big laughs while sneaking in something deeper: a perspective shaped in real time, somewhere between the classroom and the nursery,” said Pride Source. (through December)

Earthquake

His real name is Nathaniel Stroman, but it is fitting that the man with the stage name Earthquake can deliver Richter scale-level laughs. The performer who got his start in local Atlanta comedy clubs is currently crisscrossing the United States on tour.

But while many comedians go on to have wildly lucrative careers, that doesn’t seem to be Earthquake’s priority — making people laugh is. While others “may want an extravagant lifestyle,” he is “perfectly comfortable with something reliable that gets him where he needs to go,” the comedian told the Rickey Smiley Morning Show. (through January 2027)

Fortune Feimster

Since her debut on “Last Comic Standing” in 2010, Fortune Feimster has become one of the most popular stand-up comics in the country, and her “Takin’ Care of Biscuits” tour is on the road now. Feimster’s comedy comes from a variety of sources. “I was a huge Carol Burnett fan. My grandmother watched reruns of her show all the time,” Feimster told The Guardian.

And she is no slouch, as Feimster’s “tours are long and demanding, typically lasting about two years with roughly 150 shows in 100 cities,” said Lavender magazine. The comic casts a wide net for fans. (through November)

Kathy Griffin

Kathy Griffin has been traversing the country as a stand-up for more than 30 years, and her controversial brand of comedy has made her one of the most famous comics in the U.S. If you want to catch her live, there’s good news, as Griffin is currently touring in numerous cities.

Her routine has continued even after a widely criticized joke about President Donald Trump in 2017 largely ostracized Griffin from the industry. “It’s time that all public people with a platform grow some balls because I had to in 2017,” Griffin told Salon. (through March 2027)

D.L. Hughley and Don Lemon

Combining comedian D.L. Hughley with political commentator Don Lemon may seem like a strange combination, but the pair have teamed up to deliver a raunchy, politically charged comedy tour. That show, “Anything Goes,” is making its way across the country now.

“We’ve found that a trained career newsperson and a comedian-who-is-also-a-thought-leader is a great combination,” Lemon said to Boston.com. The show brings “laughter, maybe some tears, maybe some joy, maybe a little angst about where we are as a country,” and audiences “never know what you’re going to get with us.” (through December)

Paula Poundstone

After getting her start in HBO comedy specials during the 1980s, Paula Poundstone has been making audiences laugh for decades with her unique trademark of conversational comedy. Her ongoing tour gives fans a chance to catch up with the iconic — and sometimes controversial — performer and “Tonight Show” alumna, who was also the first woman to host the White House Correspondents’ Dinner. Her current tour is “largely autobiographical, talking about taking care of multiple animals, travel and growing up in Massachusetts,” said the Pittsburgh City Paper. (through April 2027)

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.

Guess the four-digit number in six tries. Choose your number and tap enter to submit. Each tile will change to green if the digit is correct and in the right position, or orange if it is correct but in the wrong position. A dark grey tile means the digit does not appear anywhere in the number. Come back here tomorrow for the next Guess the Number game.

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.

You have six tries to guess the five-letter word. Type in the letters and hit enter. After each guess, the colour of the tiles will change if you choose the correct letters. A green tile means the letter is in the correct spot. A peach tile means the letter is in the word but is in the wrong spot. The tile will not change colour if the letter is not in the word. This game will update daily.

A debate has broken out at the University of St Andrews after a former student accused the establishment of having a “culture of anti-Scottish classism”.

In a LinkedIn post three weeks ago, Sophie Rose Jenkins said that the culture she encountered at the elite university made working-class students like her “feel ashamed of their home life”.

Speaking to The National, she recalled a group chat where members exchanged recommendations for designer clothes, and tutorials in which fellow students “refused to include me in the conversation because apparently, they couldn’t understand my accent”. She claimed disparaging attitudes extended to staff: an adviser attempted to remove her from an elective course, telling her she was likely to fail, only for her to average more than 90%.

‘Anti-Scottish bias’

Jenkins' story has “resonated with hundreds” of other students and “touched on a growing tension at St Andrews”, said The Guardian. “My parents were worried about me coming here,” a Scottish fresher on a scholarship told the newspaper. “They didn’t want me to be left out.” Since arriving, “most of the people I have met are international students” who maybe “can be a bit ignorant to the cost of things”.

The “exclusivity of expensive, invite-only events rattled me,” said another former St Andrews student Carla Jenkins in The Times. “I too experienced anti-Scottish bias.” An American tutor “disagreed with everything that I ever said”, including marking me down for “using the word ‘Glaswegian’”, and in tutorials I was “asked to speak slower or change the words I used”.

The “debate around classism at Scottish universities is not new,” said The Guardian. In 2024, Edinburgh University offered guidance on how students should treat one another after rising claims of discrimination and classism. “Don’t be a snob!” it advised.

St Andrews vice-principal Niall Scott acknowledged in a statement that some students arrive with “immature, offensive, and classist views”, but claimed “they tend not to leave with them”. Universities have a “crucial role to play in challenging these attitudes by bringing together people from different backgrounds, cultures, and perspectives, encouraging understanding, respect, and inclusion”.

Manhattan microcosm

The feeling that Scotland’s most famous university is not a welcoming place for ordinary Scots is rooted in its unusually high international make-up. US students, many of them escaping even higher fees back home, represent around 20% of the total undergraduate body and are a particular source of friction. An article in student newspaper The Stand last year complained that “our beloved Scottish town is day by day turning into a microcosm of Manhattan’s elite world; complete with intrigue, privilege, and secrets that spread like wildfire”.

Scottish universities have a “capped number of places” each year for Scottish students, whose fees are paid by the devolved government. The issue is not as simple as Scots being “squeezed out” in favour of rich international students, said The Herald; the Scottish government has a limit on how many subsidised places it can fund. But in practice it means institutions may “continue to accept high fee-paying international students” while turning Scottish applicants away.

The international tuition fees are “significantly higher than what the government pays for a domestic student” so they’ve become “an essential, if increasingly volatile, source of income” for universities.

The Department of Education has formally rescinded the 2024 Title IX regulations, a Biden-era policy that extended the federal ban on sex discrimination in schools to also protect LGBTQ+ people. The change prompted pushback from advocates.

What has the Trump administration done instead?

In the regulations’ place, the department reinstated 2020 regulations from President Donald Trump’s first administration, which took immediate effect “without a notice-and-comment period,” said EducationWeek. Trump’s regulations outline “how schools must handle reports of sexual misconduct,” including setting a “stricter definition for what constitutes sexual harassment and giving more due process rights to those accused,” said The Washington Post.

The change formalizes how the Trump administration enforced Title IX since January 2025 and will “faithfully reflect court orders and congressional intent” while “reducing confusion for parents, students and educational institutions,” Education Secretary Linda McMahon said in a press release. The department will continue to “hold accountable any school or college that violates the rights, privacy or athletic opportunities of our women and girls.”

McMahon has “led the administration’s push to restrict civil rights protections based on gender identity,” said The New York Times. The Biden-era Title IX rule was “already struck down in the court system” after challenges from Republican states, said The Hill.

Who will the change affect?

Critics of the move say it will harm transgender athletes and weaken protections for sexual assault victims. Sexual harassment and assault “continue to be pervasive in schools,” Shiwali Patel, the senior director of education justice at the National Women’s Law Center, said in a statement. But McMahon and the Trump administration have “decided to ignore what survivors need,” instead “weaponizing Title IX to attack trans students.”

Title IX is supposed to be about protecting students and “ensuring that they are safe from abuse, harassment and discrimination while they pursue their education,” said Kelley Robinson, the president of the Human Rights Campaign, in a press release. But “Trump and his cronies aren’t interested in any of that.” Rather than “enforcing protections for students,” they’re “rescinding them.”

The Trump administration doesn’t care if “sexual harassment and assault go unaddressed,” Robinson said. We know who will be hurt: “women, girls and others who are vulnerable to sexual harassment, assault and abuse — including LGBTQ+ students.”

It is a bad year for U.S. farmers. President Donald Trump’s trade wars were already taking a toll, but the Iran war compounded problems by raising fuel and fertilizer costs. Rural regions reliably vote Republican, but Democrats hope for a midterm backlash.

‘Farmers voted for this’

The farm crisis that “threatens to wreck the agricultural heart” of Iowa also threatens to “hurt the fortunes” of Hawkeye State GOP candidates, said Axios. Trump’s policies have “caused such severe financial problems” for corn growers that a state Trump won by 13 points in 2024 now has toss-up races for governor and U.S. Senate. Iowa Republicans “should brace for losing everything," said a GOP consultant to the outlet.

“Farmers voted for this,” Kevin D. Williamson said at The Dispatch. U.S. farmers “rely on imports” for “fertilizer, chemicals, machinery” but they also “keep voting roughly two-to-one” for Trump and his trade wars. The pressing issue: “How much pain it is going to take” for them to change course.

Trump has gone to “surprising” lengths to “infuriate his backers,” Matt K. Lewis said at The Washington Sun. Farmers are an “integral part of his coalition.” His tariffs and stalemated war have created the possibility that voters in solidly red “heartland” states such as Iowa, Nebraska and Kansas “will vote blue this year.” It is “difficult to explain” why the president has gone this route.

‘Formula for revolt’

Democrats are trying to “make a play” for the farm vote, said MS NOW. Trump won 69% of rural voters during his last campaign. Now, 57% of those same voters “disapprove of Trump’s handling of the economy.”

“The Midwest is a trouble spot” for Republicans in the midterms because of Trump’s tariffs, Rich Lowry said at the National Review. Agricultural exports to China “fell by 66%,” as Beijing “cut its purchases of U.S. farm products in retaliation” for the president’s trade war. Add war-driven increases in fuel and fertilizer prices, and “it’s a formula for a revolt.”

Los Angeles, Calif.

In the Brentwood hills about 17 miles from downtown, this 1972 Tudor-inspired home opens to a diamond-checked floor, wood and iron staircase, and a vaulted great room with a bay window seat, a floor-to-ceiling fireplace with sidelights, wide-plank oak floors, and lime-washed walls.

The high-end kitchen has honed Breccia Capraia marble counters, plus a hidden catering kitchen and pantry. Outside are terraces, yards, and a new pool. $8,000,000. Claire O'Connor and Samantha O'Connor, Compass, (310) 909-6192

Norfolk, Conn.

The Bungalow, a 1908 Tudor Revival estate designed by Alfredo S.G. Taylor, has a stone and half-timber exterior. The six-bedroom features a wood-clad great room with decorative arches on 40-foot ceilings; a library; marble baths; and a new eat-in chef's kitchen.

Balconies and a wrap-around porch overlook the nearly 44-acre property that includes a two-bedroom guest house, barn, gardens, and a pond. $6,650,000. Florence de Dampierre Mathis, William Raveis Real Estate/Luxury Portfolio International, (917) 930-2951

Wheaton, Ill.

Architect Jarvis Hunt designed the 1897 House of Seven Gables, a Tudor Revival mansion that in 2017 was lifted and moved 500 feet to save it from demolition.

Now fully renovated, the seven-bedroom features new systems, geometric gothic wood paneling, beamed ceilings, French doors, a new kitchen with dining space, and a carved staircase. A covered deck and patio overlook a yard and mature trees. $1,750,000. Lisa Grimes and Jenny Ames, Engel & Völkers Chicago, (708) 205-9518

Salt Lake City

Built in 2023, this Tudor-style four-bedroom with symmetrical side gables is in a gated community. A double-height entry with a hand-painted mural connects to a formal dining room with layered crown molding.

The eat-in kitchen has checked floors, a L'Atelier Paris gas range and a butler's pantry with chef's appliances; downstairs is a theater. The more than 3-acre lot includes a pool, patio, and glass atrium. $6,950,000. Dorthy Androulidakis and Liz Slager, Summit Sotheby's International Realty, (801) 231-3023

Washington, D.C.

In the Spring Valley area, this 1935 half-timbered home with textured stone was renovated in 2012. The five-bedroom features a living room and library with beamed ceilings, a two-sided fireplace, built-ins, and stained glass.

It also features a kitchen with hammer beam trusses; a second kitchen; a lower level with a wet bar; and a gym connected to the garage. A terrace faces the nearly half-acre lot with yards and trees. $4,595,000. Daniel Heider, TTR Sotheby's International Realty, (703) 785-7820

Grosse Pointe, Mich.

This 1927, four-bedroom Tudor Revival condo is in an eight-unit community that is walking distance from shops and dining. The three-story home includes a living room with wood floors, built-in niche shelves, a fireplace with a decorative wood surround, and an arched doorway.

It also has a formal dining room with crown molding and a galley kitchen that opens to a driveway next to a leafy, landscaped brick patio. $425,000. Cathy Harber @properties Christie's International Real Estate, (313) 969-1996

To the average investor, the bond markets may seem like a concern better left to Wall Street bigwigs. But what happens in these markets can have major implications not only on the larger economy but also on household budgets.

“Keeping an eye on the nearly $32 trillion market for U.S. government bonds, called the Treasury market, is important because it offers a clear signal of where the economy may be headed,” said The New York Times. It can “affect everything from student loans to the housing market.”

Lately, what is happening with bonds has been setting experts on edge. Here’s a breakdown of what to know to make sense of it all.

How do bond markets work?

Bonds work similarly to loans, wherein someone — in the case of bonds, the government, a company or a municipality — borrows money. When investors purchase a bond, they are effectively funding that loan. They will then earn interest on the loan, known as bond yield, in addition to receiving repayment after a certain period of time.

But “bonds can fluctuate in value,” and typically, “bond prices and yields move in opposite directions from each other,” said NPR. So “if bond prices fall — like they are now — investors demand to be paid more in interest as additional compensation,” whereas “if bond prices are rising, investors are fine getting less in interest since they are holding bonds that are appreciating in value.”

What impact do bond yields have on consumers?

In short: They impact interest rates, which translates to how much people pay to borrow. Mortgages are impacted, given that the “10-year Treasury yield serves as an important guide for mortgage rates as it generally moves in tandem ‌with mortgage-backed securities,” said Yahoo Finance. In addition, “rates on new auto loans and other fixed-rate consumer debt ⁠also tend to drift higher as market rates and lenders’ funding costs rise, though the pass-through is not immediate or exact.”

Do the bond market and the stock market affect each other?

Generally speaking, “bond investors and stock investors tend to see things differently,” said NPR, due to the nature of the investment itself. While “bond investors care, primarily, about whether they’ll get paid back,” stock investors “tend to make a more straight-up bet on corporate profits.” That can explain why as of this month, the stock market is soaring but the bond market is sounding the alarm.

This divergence will likely only hold true to a certain point, however. Ultimately, “yields matter for investors’ assessment of stocks’ value,” and a “sharp rise in yields or intense volatility in the bond market can irk the stock market,” said CNN Business. Further, said NPR, if “signs emerge showing that inflation or rising borrowing costs are starting to tamp down economic growth,” then the stock market could very well start showing signs of concern too.

Fall is when a new batch of shows take to the road. This year, you can live forever, see the future, island hop to Cuba or rewrite the 19th American century through guffaws. It’s going to be a good theatrical autumn.

‘Buena Vista Social Club’

A tale of four intertwined lives as much as it is a partial story of Cuban history from the 1950s through the 1990s, “Buena Vista Social Club” sings, strums and sways. The “interconnections between musicians, songs and a society have rarely been evoked as vividly, and as lovingly,” said The New York Times. The talent present is staggering: actors, singers and musicians, of course — many times all at once. But dancers take the stage too because when Cubans play music, there will assuredly be dancing. (through Sept. 12, 2027)

‘Death Becomes Her’

Yes, this musical adaptation is based on the 1992 movie. No, it aims not to mimic that cult classic, other than with a whole lot of how’d-they-do-it stage magic. This “Death Becomes Her” is a self-aware beast, mocking both itself and our culture’s obsession with staying forever young. You are guaranteed big production numbers and side-splitting comedy. (through Sept. 5, 2027)

‘Maybe Happy Ending’

“Maybe Happy Ending,” equal parts technical marvel and emotional heart-render, is a touch difficult to explain. It goes something like this: soon-to-be obsolete humanoid robot model of the future meets a newer humanoid robot model and the two embark on a transformative road trip. The musical is intimate, delicate, futuristic and profound. (through Aug. 29, 2027)

‘Oh, Mary!’

There are surprise hits, and then there is “Oh, Mary!.” The frazzled, smutty and extremely queer brainchild of Cole Escola began its life far from Broadway in 2024 and was an instant, titanic hit with in-the-know culture fiends. It moved to Broadway a few months later — and has been running since. A newly launched tour brings the very historically inaccurate tale of an alcoholic, wannabe cabaret-singer Mary Todd Lincoln to the nation’s theaters. Bring tissues for the guaranteed tears of laughter; do not, however, bring your children. (through May 16, 2027)

As the Israel-Hamas war nears its three-year mark, an outbreak of algae throughout Israel’s desalination plants is threatening the country’s water supplies, which could affect the sewage systems in Gaza. Experts say the ongoing war is likely to exacerbate the problem.

What did the commentators say?

The issue began after a microalgae bloom in the Mediterranean Sea forced five out of six desalination plants on the Israeli coast to shut down, according to Israel’s national water company Mekorot, per CNN. These plants remove salt from seawater, and their closures caused a ripple effect due to the “country’s heavy dependence on desalination for drinking water,” said the outlet. Israel is “arid and has neither big rivers nor abundant rainfall, but its mastery of this technology has made it a water superpower.”

While Israel itself is unlikely to see a shortage of water, it could lead to a compounding crisis in Gaza, which has already seen “many of its pipelines and water infrastructure destroyed during the devastating war with Israel,” said NBC News. The algae currently attacking Israel’s water supplies may actually be caused by the situation in Gaza.

The “discharge of untreated sewage from the Gaza Strip into the sea is contributing to the worsening crisis affecting the Israeli desalination facilities,” the Zalul Environmental Association, an Israeli environmental NGO, told The Guardian. The wastewater “contains nutrients such as nitrogen and phosphorus, which feed microalgae.”

Scientists are “trying to assess possible environmental fallout from Gaza’s destroyed wastewater infrastructure” and determine how much of a role it may have played in the algae bloom, said Middle East Eye. Regardless of the cause, it is a “reminder of the dire humanitarian conditions facing 2 million Gazans,” said The Washington Post. Gazans have “faced severe water shortages and have often resorted to using makeshift latrines.”

What next?

This kind of event will probably keep happening thanks to the steadily warming planet. It’s a “fair estimation that this will not be a once-in-a-lifetime” thing, Edo Bar-Zeev, an associate professor in water research at Israel’s Ben-Gurion University, said to CNN. People “can assume that this will occur more and more through climate change.”

Argentina is subjecting the Falklands to “economic warfare”, the leader of the British overseas territory’s government has said.

As the country ramps up political pressure on its claim of sovereignty over the territory, restrictions are making life more difficult for the residents of the remote Atlantic islands, Andrea Clausen told the Financial Times. And at the centre of the power struggle with Britain is the Falklands’ first oil project: Sea Lion, a joint UK-Israeli venture.

What is life like on the islands?

The Falklands are home to about 3,500 people, most of whom live in the capital, Stanley, with the remainder spread across the sprawling archipelago roughly half the size of Wales. “People are always amazed by the scale when they visit,” one resident told the Metro.

Leaving the islands “isn’t simple – or cheap”. There are two 18-hour direct flights a week to the UK, on a military plane, or one commercial flight a week to Chile. A monthly flight from a small city in southern Argentina is considered a domestic flight by Buenos Aires, although not by the Falklands’ authorities.

Because of the limited connections, imported goods can cost more than double their price in the UK. There’s currently only one shipping link, to Uruguay, which sometimes leads to shortages of cheese and other food staples, said the FT. Most international suppliers “refuse to serve Falklands’ businesses” out of fear of angering Argentina. Officials are preparing a second shipping link to Chile, scheduled to open between November and December. But some islanders worry that Buenos Aires “could try to disrupt those efforts”.

What resources do the Falklands have?

There is a “huge capital programme” underway to boost the islands’ infrastructure, said resident Traighana Smith in The Independent, including a new power station and port, and “a hydrocarbon industry is also on the horizon”.

There are “vast energy reserves” just 136 miles north of the islands, said The Telegraph. Surveys suggest the Sea Lion oilfield contains up to 1.7 billion barrels of oil: “larger than anything remaining in British North Sea waters”.

Two oil companies, Britain’s Rockhopper Exploration and Israel’s Navitas Petroleum, are due to begin a joint project extracting from the oilfield within two years. The $2.2 billion venture, the Falklands’ first commercial oil project, aims to produce 50,000 barrels per day. It could be “economically transformative for the islands”, said the FT. It could “triple GDP” and reduce dependence on the inconsistent fishing industry.

“We never want to rely on handouts from the UK,” said Stirling Harcus, a director at the islands’ Chamber of Commerce. “We’re already a growing self-sufficient economy, but oil would supercharge that process.”

What is Argentina doing?

At the start of September, President Javier Milei announced restrictions on companies involved in oil extraction, along with additional military funding. His new sanctions regime “appears to target both oil and fishing”, said the FT, which is responsible for more than half of the islands’ GDP.

And on Monday, Milei warned that his government would request an emergency order to stop development of the Sea Lion oilfield if drilling is not halted within two weeks. If the “illegitimate exploitation” does not stop, his statement said, Argentina will ask the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea, a Hamburg-based maritime court, to order a temporary halt to the project. Argentinian officials argue the project is “an inflection point”, said the FT, because it violates a UN resolution banning “unilateral” changes to the status quo on the islands.

“Time will tell” if Milei follows through on his threats, said Smith in The Independent. But in the meantime, the Falklands will “continue to grow its industries and care for its people”.

Andy Burnham has promised to “undertake the most ambitious review of Brexit since Britain left the EU”, said Jon Stone in Politico. And, “for now at least, he’s keeping all his options open”.

With different figures within his party arguing in favour of joining the single market, joining the customs union or rejoining the EU altogether, the prime minister is keeping his powder dry, saying only that he hopes to “find consensus” around one option at the UK-EU summit later this year. With nothing yet ruled in or out, there’s “plenty of space for interpretation” about the direction he might take.

What did the commentators say?

Burnham’s pledge undoubtedly marks a “turning point in the story of Brexit”, said Denis Staunton in The Irish Times. He’s signalling a “readiness to rip up Keir Starmer’s red lines on Europe”, which included no return to the single market or the customs union and no unrestricted freedom of movement.

Burnham’s “dramatic shift on Brexit” comes after EU leaders warned him to “tone down British demands to be included in the bloc’s Made in Europe policy”, said Arj Singh, The i Paper’s deputy political editor. The UK’s push for inclusion, in exchange for lower tuition fees for European students, “sparked anger in Brussels” and “underlined the limits” of Labour’s red lines. Days later, Burnham has “used his conference speech to say he was now prepared to drop” them.

The prime minister risks “reopening the bitter division” that followed the 2016 referendum, said Reuters. His “desire to find a consensus will test his political skill in a nation still scarred by the tumult” of Brexit. But the timing makes sense: Donald Trump’s geopolitics are “reshaping alliances around the globe”, and the “threat of war in Europe” adds weight to an argument for a closer UK-EU relationship.

A commitment to stronger ties with the EU is “vital” for the Labour’s chances at the next general election, said Tom Brufatto of campaign group Best For Britain, on Politics Home. Voters would “resoundingly reward” any parties “who take the plunge”, increasing support by 7%, according to a Best For Britain/YouGov poll.

Rejoining the EU would first require another referendum and then “potentially years of de-Brexit negotiations”, said The Guardian. And Brussels would want “cast-iron guarantees that the UK wouldn’t just walk out again”.

It would create a “decade of trading chaos”, said Matthew Lynn in The Spectator. Any discussions will “take a long time”, and require Burnham to win at least one election while they are ongoing, and the EU would almost certainly demand “tough terms”, including signing up to the Euro. Then, in all likelihood, “all our other trade agreements will have to be cancelled”. The last thing that the British economy needs is a “decade of wrangling over the issue all over again”.

What next?

It’s obvious that none of this can be “rushed,” said The Independent’s editorial board. Even in the Labour Party, most recognise that “rejoining is no simple matter”.

There have been calls for Burnham to make reversing Brexit his top policy pledge at the next election but it would not be “right or sensible to try to fight an election on a single issue”. Labour’s next manifesto needs “imaginative solutions” and “now is the time to open up the debate” and “start clearing the way forward from Brexit”.

The sight of a disabled octogenarian being removed from her home on a stretcher has reignited public anger about Spain’s housing crisis. Tens of thousands of Spaniards took to the streets last weekend, protesting at the eviction of Madrid pensioner María del Carmen Abascal, known as Maricarmen, and demanding “stronger protection for tenants in the face of a housing shortage and soaring rents”, said the BBC.

‘You are not alone‘

Abascal has lived in her flat in Madrid’s El Retiro neighbourhood for more than 70 years, and was paying rent of around €500 per month when the building was bought by investment company Urbagestión in 2018. The company increased the rent to €2,650 a month, “later reduced to €1,650”, but still well above Abascal’s monthly pension of €1,350, said Euronews.

The company moved to evict her. They had three attempts blocked by the courts, so Abascal‘s successful eviction last week “shocked many”, said CNN. Police used tear gas to clear a path between protesters who had “waited outside her home since the previous night trying to prevent” her removal. Abascal was brought out on a stretcher while the crowd chanted: “You are not alone.” She was taken to hospital, suffering from anxiety and extreme exhaustion.

A few days after her very public eviction came the “welcome news” that Abascal would be able to return to her home. Her lawyers said her landlord has agreed to let her pay a rent “similar to the one she had previously”, under a new eight-year contract. But we need things to improve for everyone, protestor Jacob Patiño told the BBC: “There are lots and lots of other people who are being evicted.”

‘Global symbol‘

Nearly 10,000 people gathered in Madrid in the afternoon after Abascal’s eviction, both to protest at what had happened to her and to express a wider “frustration over the growing difficulties in finding housing”, said CNN. There was also “a huge wave of spontaneous solidarity” protests in Barcelona, Seville, and Valencia.

As Spain’s population continues to grow, “housing construction remains far below the levels recorded before the financial crisis”, said Euronews. The imbalance of supply and demand is “particularly concentrated in Madrid, Barcelona, the islands, much of the Mediterranean coast and other major urban and tourist centres”, where rents have spiralled in recent years.

Under pressure from the widespread protests, Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez has brought forward a long-delayed housing reform bill. “Crafting legislation” that his minority government could hope to get through the Spanish parliament was “tricky”, said Politico. The draft bill had to be “moderate enough” for the Catalan separatist Junts party, “which is conservative on landowners’ rights”, but not so “lenient” that it would alienate Sánchez’s left-wing allies. As it currently stands, the bill bans evictions of vulnerable tenants until 2030, limits rent hikes for two years and prohibits investment funds purchasing houses for two years. It now has a month to be approved by parliament.

Abascal’s case has resonated far beyond Spain; she has become a “global symbol for housing activists”, said El Pais. “What is happening here is a signal for all of Europe,” political analyst Federico Tomasone told the paper. “This transcends borders. There are many Maricarmens everywhere.”

Forget “muddy trenches”, said Belen Edwards on Mashable. In Sky’s new legal drama, “War”, battles are fought in “elegant wood-panelled rooms or glassy offices perched high above London’s streets”.

But the “polished” setting doesn’t mean the fighting is clean – far from it. The lawyers at the rival firms locking horns in this high-profile divorce case are “itching to get absolutely filthy”.

The combative couple at the centre of the series are film star Carla Duval (Sienna Miller) and tech mogul Morgan Henderson (Dominic West). In the first of many “underhanded” chess moves, Carla enlists her friend to “honeytrap” her husband so she can kick-start divorce proceedings. It’s a “tantalisingly bitter amuse-bouche for all the delicious drama to come”.

Miller and West are “perfectly cast” in this “tasty divorce drama”, said Anita Singh in The Telegraph. Writer George Kay provides a “snappy script” that charts the couple’s descent into “rancour” and a “battle over Morgan’s fortune”. Carla’s team is led by a “plucky husband-and-wife team” played by James McArdle and Phoebe Fox, while Morgan opts for the “Machiavellian” St John Smallwood (“a classy Pip Torrens”).

Add to the mix a supporting cast that includes Celia Imrie, Nick Mohammed and “actor-of-the-moment” Aran Murphy (the “lookalike son” of Cillian), and the show has “a lot going for it”. But after the first “irresistible” episode, you do start longing for “fewer backroom legal meetings” and more scenes with the warring couple.

And while the “scheming” and betrayal can be “thrilling”, said Judy Berman in Time magazine, despite the persuasive acting, some of the characters feel “underdeveloped”. Kay invokes “big, timely issues” from “extreme wealth” to the dark side of social media “without finding much to say about them”.

Mostly, though, “War” is a “triumph”, said Gareth McLean in Radio Times. “Glossy, smart, very high-end and thoroughly entertaining”, it’s the kind of show that makes you “want to be a lawyer when you grow up – even if the way they operate is pretty appalling”.

Who wants to see the new, nearly four-hour documentary about Elon Musk? Not Musk.

The former trillionaire is threatening a defamation lawsuit over explosive claims in Alex Gibney’s film “Musk.” Social media companies are hesitant to allow promotion on their platforms, and Hollywood is whispering that the tech mogul’s power might keep the public from opportunities to see the film.

What did the commentators say?

“So much for free speech,” said The Hollywood Reporter. Social media platforms YouTube, TikTok and Meta’s Instagram and Facebook all initially declined to run the trailer for “Musk,” though YouTube and Meta later backtracked. (Musk-owned X is not accepting ads for the movie.) A hesitance to provide publicity is a problem for the film because “traction on social media is key” to the success of most modern documentaries.

The social media freeze-out comes amid “concerns” that “political considerations are influencing the rollout” of the film, said The New York Times. “Musk” is set for an Oct. 9 release in the United States, but Universal “has yet to announce any release dates” overseas. The studio counters that it “simply needs more time” to schedule foreign markets.

Audiences at this month’s Venice Film Festival “loved” the documentary that depicts Musk as a “plutocrat with questionable judgment and unchecked power,” Lorraine Ali said at the Los Angeles Times. There was a time when Musk would have been featured as a forward-thinking entrepreneur. Now audiences want to see depictions of the “dark side of wealth, fame and alleged genius.”

What next?

“Musk” is scheduled to stream on HBO Max after its theatrical run. But Gibney is nervous the streamer “may not be inclined to back the film” following the merger of Paramount with HBO parent company Warner Bros. Discovery, said The Atlantic.

Paramount is reportedly seeking funding from Musk to help complete the merger. The tech mogul, meanwhile, is making his feelings clear about the film and its future. “Musk” is a “hit piece that misses,” he said on X. The documentary is guilty of the “fatal sin of being boring for four hours.”

Given the significant concerns over the safety of artificial intelligence, the chipmaking behemoth Nvidia has unveiled a new security apparatus that it hopes will stop AI bots from running amok. But many still worry about the implications.

‘Isolation, monitoring and behavior detection’

Known as the Open Agent Safety Platform, Nvidia’s new safety tool is part of an effort to ensure that all AI agents “operate in a zero-trust environment out of the box,” the company said in a press release. AI agents require “isolation, monitoring and behavior detection” to minimize “drift,” or what Nvidia describes as an AI bot performing “actions that depart from the intended task or operating constraints.” The company says Open Agent can “control what AI agents can access in real time and shut them down when they break the rules,” said Bloomberg.

The new software lets users “formally verify an agent has enough authority to do its job and no more” and can “quarantine a suspicious agent in milliseconds,” Nvidia’s Vice President of Enterprise AI Justin Boitano told The Associated Press. Nvidia also believes its new platform could have prevented a “recent incident involving a swarm of OpenAI agents that autonomously hacked into AI company Hugging Face,” a “high-profile breach that inflamed the safety concerns about AI.” OpenAI has paused development on its models since that incident.

‘Get the company under control’

Issues with AI safety, specifically AI going rogue, have led to a “rare display of unity from the likes of Sam Altman, Dario Amodei and Elon Musk in calling for a slowdown in development before AI advances beyond human control,” said The Wall Street Journal, referencing the respective CEOs of brands OpenAI, Anthropic and Grok. These AI executives have “repeatedly called for international regulations to constrain the systems, and some researchers have warned that AI may even present a threat to human life,” said CNN.

But Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has downplayed these concerns. If companies like OpenAI “believe their company is out of control, then get the company under control,” Huang told CNN. The same day the safety platform was announced, Nvidia also revealed it would “buy back an additional $150 billion worth of its shares,” said CNN, in addition to $85 billion already in transit, representing the “largest single corporate share repurchase ever.”

The midterm elections are looming as a milestone in the Iran war. President Donald Trump declined a ceasefire proposal from Tehran last week, reportedly because he expects to restart U.S. attacks after the vote. And Iran’s leaders may be betting that election pressure can force the White House to make concessions.

‘Midterm election problem’

The president expects to start a new round of bombing “after the November midterms,” said The Wall Street Journal. Trump on Friday rejected a proposed ceasefire that would reopen the Strait of Hormuz in exchange for lifting the U.S. blockade of Iranian ports.

Iranian leaders, however, say they want to make a deal “before Americans head to the polls this November,” said NBC News. “We don’t want it to get to the midterm elections,” Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian said to reporters at last week’s United Nations assembly, per NBC.

It is “highly unusual” for U.S. elections to “affect a war,” David Shribman said at The Globe and Mail. The “only precedent” for electoral considerations influencing war strategy so directly came in 1968, when President Lyndon B. Johnson halted bombing in North Vietnam “to help his vice-president, Hubert Humphrey,” in the presidential election. Humphrey lost.

Trump has a “midterm election problem” with the war, said Al Jazeera. Voters who were “promised easy victory” appear poised to punish Republicans in November, which affects strategic considerations. Iran “faces no such countdown,” given that it is “ruled by an unelected Supreme Leader.”

‘Potentially endless’ war

If the elections are affecting war strategy, the war is also affecting elections. U.S. voters are “angry” at the president and his party, Stephen Collinson said at CNN. Just 26% of voters “approve of his handling of the war.” Trump’s “odd” strategy is to give them the “opposite of what they want,” as he refuses to “listen to their fears.”

This is “hardly a recipe for success” in elections, said Collinson. A “potentially endless” war against Iran might be a mistake that gets the GOP’s most devoted voters to “finally ditch Trump,” David Wallace-Wells said at The New York Times.

My idea of Sweden was based entirely on Scandi-noir dramas, all bleak landscapes, depressed people and woolly jumpers. Driving from the airport in early December the grey skies and vast landscape of fallow fields and red farm buildings confirmed that impression, especially as the sun started to set at around 4pm. But alongside those dark skies and empty spaces there was already a feeling of calm as we whizzed along in our rental car, which was of course a Volvo.

At almost twice the size of the UK but with a population density 90% lower, Sweden is a land of open landscapes and wild coastline. We were touring a small part of West Sweden made up of three provinces: Bohuslän, Dalsland, Västergötland. Lakes, mountains, forests and the endless islands are all within a few hours of Gothenburg so even without a car everything is accessible using the excellent trains, buses and ferries.

A charming seaside village

We started in Lyckorna, a historic seaside resort founded in 1877 by Robert MacFie, the son of William Andrew MacFie (credited with introducing curling to Sweden in 1846) who established a spa and bathing resort on this forested ridge. Now a charming village, with its traditional church with prominent spire overlooking the town and the old clock tower converted into a wonderful mussel and fish restaurant.

We arrived in time for Lucia Day, an annual Christian festival celebrated throughout Sweden and as iconic as the midsummer crayfish parties. There was a procession to the church of white clad handmaidens (tärnor), star boys (stjärngossar) and gingerbread men (pepparkaksgubbar) with candle wreaths on the maidens’ heads – now battery powered rather than actual flames.

We were staying just up the hill at Villa Sjötorp, a classic summer house completed in 1901 by Carl Emil Haeger. The white clapboard exterior topped with typical Norse dragon heads was taken back into the family in 1995 by Haeger’s great great granddaughter Ellika Modenfelt, who painstakingly restored it to its former glory with the help of local craftsmen. The minute we entered we were greeted by glorious colour, festive winter decorations and happy people. Our bedroom overlooked the sea with a large ceramic-tiled chimney and a classic cast-iron bed. Here we found the genius Swedish invention of single duvets on the double bed. At first we were bemused by it but as we snuggled under our individual goose feather duvets we had a blissful night’s sleep without having to fight for the covers.

The living areas featured elegant rooms with gilded wooden carved ceilings, a welcome fireplace and a popular restaurant serving delicious food from local sustainable and organic producers. As we were there in December we got to experience a traditional Julbord, a magnificent spread with a heavy focus on pickled herring. Ellika talked us through how to approach a frankly intimidating volume of food starting with 10 varieties of pickled herring served alongside wholemeal crackers and dark bread, washed down with brännvin, the Swedish schnapps which comes with its own song. Next up was a variety of fish and salads before we moved onto the cured meats and, finally, the hot food including baked ham, meatballs, sausages and a potato and salt-fish casserole. We finished off with more cheese and bread, and a selection of sweets and desserts. The highlight was the herring of which the Swedish are rightly proud, and obsessed with. You can eat it fresh and it’s delicious simply grilled.

It was hard to crawl out of our comfy bed early but we were booked to go kayaking along the coast. Our lovely hosts had prepared a breakfast of breads, fruit, coffee and boiled eggs with tubes of Kalles Kaviar Original, a smoked cod’s roe paste that’s almost as much of a national obsession as the herring.

Ancient oyster beds and rocky islands

Perhaps the best way to experience West Sweden is on the water. Ingela and Marcus run Skärgårdsidyllen Kayak & Outdoor activities in the magnificent archipelago of Grönemad, Grebbestad. It had been many decades since I’d been kayaking so Ingela kindly offered to go in a tandem kayak with me as, despite the comprehensive safety instruction and dry suit, I didn’t fancy falling into the North Sea in winter. Under grey and sleeting skies we paddled out onto the water where we passed ancient oyster beds and rocky islands with traditional fisherman’s huts. Eider ducks and black guillemots kept us company as Marcus and Ingela talked about the history of the area including pointing out their house overlooking the sea. They also run guided kayaking tours in the national marine park of Kosterhavet, hiking, paddle boarding and yoga, fishing and food tours throughout the year. You couldn’t wish for better guides and their glowing good health is testament to the benefits of outdoor life.

If you have time it’s well worth exploring Grebbestad, a popular seaside town with excellent seafood options, but we had a boat to catch. About nine miles off the coast of Bohuslän you can find Väderöarnas Värdshus, an inn with 22 rooms. This rugged island has cliff paths leading to the old pilot lookout, and sheltered coves. Set within the Väderöarna marine nature reserve, in season you can fish for lobster and crayfish but in December the best thing to do was have a wood-fired sauna and hot tub, complete with cold plunges into the dark winter sea.

But the highlight was the warm, friendly people who are proud of their country. They were keen to explain the best ways to enjoy the visit, from the choice of drinks to have in the hot tub, to sauna etiquette and braving that night-time dip. The sea didn’t exactly look inviting but cheered on by the Swedes I made like the locals and took the plunge, although – full disclosure – it was teeth-achingly cold so I stayed in for just enough time to defend national pride before jumping back into the hot tub. At dinner our enthusiasm for herring shocked them as they were sure all English people hated them. When we assured them we thought they were delicious it sparked a discussion from all the guests over the best places to eat Julbord. No one could agree where that was but when I asked what made a great Julbord the geneßral consensus was the more herring the better. As we sat outside wrapped against the cold and stared up at the star-filled sky, only the gentle lapping of the sea and the happy sound of the drinking songs disturbed the silence of the wilderness. Those Scandi dramas might have depicted the landscape, but they failed to prepare us for the warmth of the people.

Natasha was a guest of Visit West Sweden; westsweden.com

An “extraordinary diplomatic row” has erupted between South Korea and Ukraine over the fate of two North Korean prisoners of war, said the Financial Times.

At the UN General Assembly last week, Volodymyr Zelenskyy revealed that Ukraine had transferred the men, who were captured while fighting for Russia, to South Korea. Seoul has since demanded an official apology, accusing the Ukrainian president of violating a secrecy agreement about the transfer, which was arranged to ensure the prisoners’ safety from reprisals.

But Kyiv has denied that such a confidentiality agreement existed, creating both an international and domestic drama for President Lee Jae-myung.

The prisoners of war

The two men, who were reportedly wounded and captured in Russia’s Kursk region in early 2025, are among tens of thousands of North Korean soldiers sent to fight for Russia against Ukraine. So far, they are the only known surviving prisoners. One of the men, when he realised he was going to be taken prisoner, “tried to kill himself and he was shocked that fate didn’t let him die”, Zelenskyy added in his speech. “This is how they raise people in the North.”

The two prisoners told local media that they “wanted to be sent to South Korea”, said BBC News. South Korea “legally regards the North as part of its territory”, said The Associated Press. Its policy is to accept and support defectors from North Korea; more than 34,000 have arrived since the end of the Korean War. The majority are female civilians from the “poorer northern regions”; defections by soldiers are “uncommon”.

After negotiations between Seoul and Kyiv, the soldiers reportedly arrived in South Korea via a third country this month. Seoul claims Ukraine requested secrecy to avoid domestic criticism for passing up the opportunity to exchange the North Koreans for Ukrainian prisoners held in Russia. South Korea agreed, President Lee claims, partly to protect the soldiers and their families from reprisals by the North Korean regime.

In North Korea, the families of defectors can face “collective punishment such as internment or forced labour”, said the Financial Times. Ukraine has “done a lot of damage to the welfare of these soldiers and their families”, said Peter Ward at the Sejong Institute. “The South Korean media should probably never have been granted access to them. Ideally, their capture should have been kept permanently secret.”

Diplomatic headache

After Zelenskyy revealed the transfer at the UN, Lee said on X that Ukraine had broken a “non-disclosure agreement”. But Dmytro Lytvyn, Zelenskyy’s communications adviser, denied the accusation, writing on Facebook that “there was no such agreement”.

The row has “prompted questions over why Seoul placed such importance on keeping the transfer quiet”, said The Korean Herald. South Korea might have “wanted to minimise potential friction” with the North, as Seoul hopes to “reopen dialogue” between Washington and Pyongyang.

The row also highlights South Korea’s ambiguous position on Ukraine: South Korea was once one of Russia’s foremost trading partners, and has worked to “deepen trade and diplomatic relations with Russia, which borders North Korea”, said the BBC.

After Russia launched its full-scale invasion, Seoul condemned Moscow and joined Western sanctions against Russia. In July, it announced a $100 million support package for Kyiv. But it has “kept the war at arm’s length”, said The Guardian. It has refused to send much-needed weapons, citing its policy of only providing humanitarian aid, rather than lethal weapons, to active war zones.

The situation has created a headache for Lee, whose government is “keen to improve relations” with North Korea. The row has turned “cautious support for Kyiv into open criticism” of aid.

To create the illusion of “movie magic”, cinema has always relied on “smoke, mirrors and sleight of hand”, said Evelyn Richards in National Geographic. With the help of cutting-edge technology and behind-the-scenes brilliance, “monsters tower over cities, broomsticks take flight and hand-drawn sketches become fantastical worlds”. The film industry spans all continents, which means there are many fascinating museums where you can learn all about what it takes to “make the impossible look real”. Here are some of the best.

Lumière Museum, Lyon, France

If you want to understand cinema, it “helps to visit where it all began”, said Richards in National Geographic. The Lumière family’s photographic plate factory is aptly located on the Rue du Premier-Film. This was the setting for “Workers Leaving the Lumière Factory”, filmed in 1895 by Louis Lumière, and “considered one of the world’s first real motion pictures”. In the “ornate art nouveau” Lumière family home, you can look at early cameras, objects and archive material that chart the moving-picture experiments the Lumière brothers conducted. And the “Hangar du Premier-Film, where that pioneering footage was filmed, fittingly houses a cinema today”.
institut-lumiere.org

Museo Nazionale del Cinema, Turin, Italy

The “vertical museum” in northern Italy “takes visitors on an elevator ride through cinema history”, said Chonx Tibajia in Tatler Asia. It is housed in the “striking” Mole Antonelliana, once the tallest masonry building in Europe. One of the museum’s main draws is its variety: “expect vintage cameras, interactive installations and rare stills, from Italian neorealism to spaghetti westerns”. And, once you’ve climbed 500ft to the top, you can sit back and enjoy an extraordinary, panoramic view – a “real-life establishing shot of the city”.
museocinema.it

Museum of Narrative Art, Los Angeles, US

This new museum, created by Star Wars filmmaker George Lucas, gets “five out of five (death) stars from me”, said Kinvara Balfour in The Telegraph. Its “sleek and spaceship-like” design is “comfortable and spacious” both outside and in: “rather like an Apple headquarters on Mars, with a big garden and some Yoda statues on plinths”. There are more than 40,000 exhibits, including a digital Sistine Chapel, silent films, archive material and, of course, plenty of Star Wars and Indiana Jones costumes, props and vehicles. You can also venture beyond film to see art from Banksy, Norman Rockwell and Diego Rivera. It’s a “once-in-a-century kind of a public offering”.
lucasmuseum.org

Sound of Music Museum, Salzburg, Austria

For fans of the cult 1965 film who wish to “start at the very beginning”, this new Austrian museum “could be a very good place to start”, said Joshua Thurston in The Times. The exhibitions celebrate both the singalong classic and the story of the real-life Von Trapp family, who fled the Nazis in 1938. In the 17th-century Hellbrunn Palace, “where many scenes from the film were shot”, you can see “nearly 450 objects, including props, costumes and recordings of the music”. The highlight is a replica of the pavilion used as a backdrop when Liesl von Trapp and her suitor Rolf Gruber sing “Sixteen Going on Seventeen”.
salzburg.info

Ghibli Museum, Tokyo, Japan

Even if you haven’t seen “My Neighbour Totoro” or “Spirited Away”, a tour of this museum dedicated to Studio Ghibli’s work will leave you “mesmerised”, said Gregory Wakeman in Smithsonian Magazine. It’s a “children’s, technology and fine arts museum all rolled into one”, and a love letter to animation. The space is designed by Hayao Miyazaki, the studio’s co-founder, so that both adults and kids “can aimlessly walk around and get lost”. The architecture is “gorgeous”, with bridges, balconies, buildings and a rooftop garden. Superfans can also take a trip to Ghibli Park, four hours south of Tokyo, which “brings to life” many of the settings of Ghibli movies, including Mononoke Village from “Princess Mononoke” (1997) and Howl’s Castle from “Howl’s Moving Castle” (2004).
ghibli-museum.jp

A cow’s urgent mooooo pierced the stillness of the Irish countryside – and my daydream. I was standing in a field at Rigney’s Farm in County Limerick, imagining what it would be like to say goodbye to the city and move thousands of miles to start a new, simpler life on the other side of the Atlantic.

I wasn’t alone. This late morning visit to the farm was a stop on Abercrombie & Kent’s small group journey Ireland: Legends of the Emerald Island, and I was accompanied by eight other travellers and our expert guide, Barbara Hunter. We were almost at the end of our adventure, having started in Dublin, and my affection for the country only deepened as we made our way through lush green landscapes, explored tiny villages – and their pubs – and met traditional Irish musicians and storytellers who perfected the art of good craic (fun times and friendly conversation).

Exploring Ireland, one village at a time

This was my first visit to Ireland, and the nine-day itinerary was a flawless introduction to all things Éire. There were the sights and pursuits listed in the tour books –taking in the rugged coastline during a drive on the Ring of Kerry, standing on the windswept Cliffs of Moher, riding a horse-drawn jaunting car through Killarney National Park, viewing the ancient Book of Kells – along with activities in small villages that connected you with locals.

Those were the experiences I’ll never forget. Our first stop outside Dublin was at Malzard’s Pub in Stoneyford, County Kilkenny. Fifth-generation owner Fred Malzard greeted us with a smile and offer of any drink we’d like, and within minutes I was in a booth sipping a Rockshore cider, listening to a traditional Gaelic storyteller, or seanchaí, spin a yarn. He was accompanied by a nattily dressed musician who before long had us singing folk songs at the top of our lungs.

After a bowl of delicious lamb stew, we headed outside for a quick hurling lesson. Hurling is one of Ireland’s national sports, and involves moving a ball down the field, either by hitting it or carrying it for up to four steps. Fred showed us how to smack the ball with the hurley stick, and, spoiler alert: I don’t have a future in the game. I did walk away with a souvenir ball and newfound appreciation for the sport.

Our trek around the southern part of Ireland, then up to Newmarket-on-Fergus in County Clare, took us through tiny towns, and I loved seeing the countryside and its ancient stone ruins and castles unfold before me. It was in those villages that we were able to enjoy homemade sausage pies and learn how to hand-churn butter at Rigney’s Farm, take a ferry to Whiddy Island for lunch and storytelling with a longtime resident, and learn about sustainable oyster farming at Kelly Oysters in County Galway. We gathered on a pier above the Atlantic, where Michael Kelly shucked us oyster after oyster, each one deliciously plump with the right amount of saltiness. Adding a splash of gin and squeeze of lemon only enhanced the flavour.

Having the opportunity to chat with locals about everything and anything – their work, their culture, their unfiltered thoughts on the All-Ireland Senior Hurling Championship – made these stops feel more like social calls than planned excursions. Abercrombie & Kent crafted the itinerary to include several of these special, one-of-a-kind opportunities, which let us experience a side of Ireland most visitors don’t get to see.

A taste of Irish hospitality

Hospitality is ingrained in Irish culture, and we received a warm welcome and top-notch service at the four hotels we stayed at. In Dublin, we checked into the contemporary Anantara The Marker, in the Docklands, which had one of the best breakfast buffets I’ve seen; the local meat and cheeses were fantastic. In County Cork, we stayed at Castlemartyr Resort, a historic property with elegant rooms that looked out at the countryside and Castlemartyr Golf Course.

We ate a lovely dinner here one night in the modern Canopy Restaurant, and the next evening set off for an unforgettable meal at the famed Ballymaloe House. The vegetables, grown just steps away, were exquisite, and we all got excited when the dessert trolley rolled in. Everything was prepared in-house, based on the ingredients in season, and we indulged in fresh sorbet served in an ice bowl, chocolate torte, an incredible fruity meringue and Mrs Allen’s Carrageen moss pudding.

Sheen Falls Lodge in Kenmare looked like it was straight out of a movie. A rushing river cuts through the property, and while I usually enjoy settling into hotel rooms, I couldn’t stay inside. I spent as much time outside as possible, walking along the pathways, snapping photos of blooming geraniums and enjoying a drink on the bar’s stone patio.

Our final hotel was Dromoland Castle, and our arrival was as dramatic as the landscape itself. We were greeted at the gate by three galloping horses and over a dozen hounds, who gracefully led us to the castle, where we were met by the delightful staff. It felt like a scene from “Downton Abbey”. I could have spent a week here exploring every nook and cranny of the castle and its 450 acres. The little touches also stood out; turndown service included a gift each night with different Dr. Barbara Sturm skin products, a welcome sight after a long day.

A journey to remember

On our first night, our guide Barbara told us the trip would go by in a flash, and she was right. It felt as if one minute we were stepping onto the bus for the first time, headed to Trinity College and St Patrick’s Cathedral, and the next it was time to say goodbye after our final dinner at Dromoland Castle.

Sharp as a tack with wit to match, Barbara was a wonderful guide, answering every question with aplomb. She brought along items like Irish linen to show us examples of traditional wares, and a map to point out where we were and where we were headed next. Our intrepid driver, Dermot, ferried us safely from stop to stop, and we all had room to spread out on the large, comfortable coach.

As a solo traveller, I was slightly apprehensive before arrival, but my fears disappeared the minute we all met and introduced ourselves. My fellow travellers’ enthusiasm for travelling and trying new things inspired me to do the same, and I enjoyed their company. I was on the trip by myself, but was never alone.

Abercrombie & Kent arranged a journey that was smooth from start to finish, and I appreciated all of the small details that made a huge difference, such as having laundry done at the halfway point (not having to pack a ton of clothes meant more room for souvenirs). I didn’t have to worry about a thing; all of my focus was on taking in the sights and enjoying the ride.

I left Ireland knowing I would be back. The Emerald Isle is a special place, and now that I’ve had a taste of the gorgeous scenery and rich history, I need to dive deeper – there’s more dramatic coastline to explore, villages to traverse, traditions to witness and craic to be had.

Catherine Garcia was a guest of Abercrombie & Kent

Dementia research has reached a major milestone: Alzheimer’s disease is no longer untreatable, according to a landmark global report. The growing range of treatment options marks a shift from seeking a cure to focusing on avoiding the disease entirely.

‘Era of unprecedented activity’

The Alzheimer’s research field is “witnessing a period of remarkable scientific momentum,” said the 2026 World Alzheimer Report, which is coauthored by Alzheimer’s Disease International and health journalist Paul Gallagher. The ADI is a global federation of dementia associations affiliated with the World Health Organization.

After years of being considered an “inevitable consequence of old age and neurodegeneration,” dementia research has entered an “era of unprecedented activity.” Experts are hopeful.

Hundreds of clinical trials are investigating “medicines, diagnostics, lifestyle interventions, digital technologies, rehabilitation programs” and new care models for the disease, said the report. The disease is now seen as a condition for which “earlier diagnosis, better understanding of disease biology, and a wider range of interventions may collectively improve outcomes.”

During the past five years alone, novel drugs such as donanemab (brand name Kisunla) and lecanemab (brand name Leqembi) have been shown to “modestly slow decline in early Alzheimer’s,” while growing evidence suggests “some dementia cases could potentially be delayed or prevented through risk reduction,” said Science Alert.

What’s next?

There are drugs that “millions of people are taking right now for other reasons” that might also be able to help with Alzheimer’s disease, said Vox. GLP-1s “in particular are the big ones.”

It’s still “sort of theoretical,” but the Alzheimer’s Association is “putting $100 million behind some research projects” to investigate this possible link, said Vox. Years from now, when “millions of people are now on these GLP-1 drugs,” we may “start to see Alzheimer’s less often.” This would be “another reason to be optimistic” that the “future for this disease is looking brighter.”

You’ve undoubtedly heard of borrowing money to buy a house or a car. But Americans are also increasingly borrowing funds to invest, a practice known as margin trading.

As of this month, the “amount of money that investors are borrowing to make trades is at an all-time high — more than $1.5 trillion,” said NPR, which, impressively, is “more than the country’s total credit card debt.” But while it may sound better to invest more, there are some major risks involved, especially when someone else’s money is on the line.

What does it mean to buy on margin?

When you “buy securities on margin,” you are “able to leverage the value of securities you already own to increase the size of your investment,” said Fidelity. This investment strategy increases purchasing power, allowing investors to access opportunities they might not otherwise be able to afford. It can also “potentially magnify your returns, assuming the value of your investment rises.” Ideally, this would snowball into a “self-fulfilling opportunity cycle where increases in collateral value further increase leverage opportunities,” said Investopedia.

How does margin trading work?

To buy on margin, you must have a margin trading account, as opposed to the standard brokerage account. Once your account is open, you will need to make an initial deposit to a broker by putting down eligible securities, which will serve as collateral, backing the amount you borrow (and allowing the broker to seize it, if needed to recoup their losses).

The broker will then float you money to buy more investments, usually “up to 50% of the initial investment capital,” said Kiplinger. So, for example, this may give you the “ability to make a $20,000 investment despite having just $10,000 funded in your account.”

As with any loan, “when an investor buys securities on margin, they must eventually pay back the money borrowed, plus interest,” said Investopedia. This cost, which gets charged to your margin account, can make it that much harder to come out ahead when borrowing funds to invest.

Why is margin trading risky?

Although “making profits with other people’s money is great,” the “problem is when markets go down,” said NPR. And just as margin trading can potentially magnify returns, it does the same for losses. It’s “even possible for a margin trader to lose more money than they originally had to invest — meaning that they would have to make up the difference with additional assets,” said Investopedia.

This demand for more money is what is known as a margin call. And as if that were not already enough pressure, “if you do not act promptly, your brokerage firm may sell securities you own — without notifying you — in order to increase the equity in your account,” said Fidelity.

Political campaigns are awash in cash, thanks in part to U.S. Supreme Court decisions declaring that campaign contributions are a form of free speech. Montana voters are poised to push back with a proposed ban on corporate political spending.

What did the commentators say?

The November ballot measure is an attempt at “threading the needle” of the Supreme Court’s precedents, said The New York Times. Corporations that violate the proposed ban would have their state corporate registration revoked.

States, backers argue, have the right to “define corporations as ‘artificial persons’” that lack First Amendment rights, said the Times. Montana is not “necessarily associated with anticorporate sentiment.” But advocates say there is “widespread frustration” over the “influence of special interests” in Big Sky politics.

“There’s just one catch” to the Montana plan, Jessica Levinson said at MS NOW. The Supreme Court has found that “corporations should be treated the same way as individuals” when it comes to the First Amendment rights associated with political contributions. Montana is “attempting a clever solution” to the problem of money in politics, but even if voters approve the measure, “it is doomed to fail in court.”

Money “will always play a role in politics,” John Westenberg said at the Missoula Current. The Montana plan, however, would be a “huge step” to keep that money “honest” and stop political spending by “artificial persons” like corporations, nonprofits and trade unions to feed the “dark money machines.” The aim is to “take dark money out of Montana politics.”

What next?

Nearly three-quarters of U.S. citizens believe “money in politics is a problem,” said Bloomberg. As such, other states are joining in the effort to limit corporate political spending. Hawaii has already passed a Montana-style law, which is being challenged in court. And “reformers” in Oregon are pushing for a similar ballot measure, said Oregon Public Broadcasting. Such efforts have “national momentum right now,” Jason Kafoury of Honest Elections Oregon said to the outlet. Expect the Supreme Court to offer the last word.

George Lucas’ new billion-dollar L.A. museum “makes no apologies for looking like a spaceship,” said Philip Kennicott in The Washington Post. Built to house the Star Wars creator’s “vast and motley” personal collection of figurative art, the enormous white-clad structure brings centuries of efforts to democratize the museum experience to fruition in the form of “a gigantic, magnificent, messy, maddening absurdity.” To Lucas, good art is art that powerfully dramatizes the primal narrative of life, so his museum mixes Renaissance paintings with comics, manga, and science fiction illustration, while “Beatrix Potter rabbits and Maurice Sendak monsters rub shoulders with works by Andy Warhol and Frida Kahlo.” Because so many of the images and other cultural artifacts are famous, the museum “will be extraordinarily popular.” But don’t expect to find text that can help you sort through the work. “No museum I’ve ever visited is so committed to the anti-intellectual proposition that art is about feeling and experiencing, not thinking.

“Even if you hate art museums, consider this one,” said Rakesh Agrawal in PC Magazine. Rather than trying to educate visitors, it’s “just fun, with free-flowing galleries that encourage random exploration.” Not that you’re asked to shut off your brain. Among an array of charming Norman Rockwell paintings, the magazine illustrator’s famous 1958 image of a white boy chatting with a kindly cop at a diner counter hangs alongside a 2014 riff by Richard Williams that shows a Black boy recoiling from an officer in riot gear. “I spent two hours at the museum; I could easily have spent 10.” Though some visitors will be interested only in Star Wars paraphernalia, said Amy Nicholson in the Los Angeles Times, the franchise is largely limited to a single gallery focused on a single theme: vehicles. Among the highlights is a “fanged and ferocious” incarnation of General Grievous’ Revenge of the Sith wheel bike, which existed only in CGI until Lucas wanted to see one in person. Whatever gallery you wander into here, “you’re always aware of being inside his brain.”

“Proudly over the top, the Lucas is a weird kind of wonderful and an instant city landmark,” said Michael Kimmelman in The New York Times. Rising across the street from the University of Southern California, where Lucas studied film, it sits amid 13 acres of lawn and gardens. And while Chinese architect Ma Yansong’s creation shares the “blockbuster” ambitions of the new Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the DNA of the Lucas is closer to that of the region’s many existing go-it-alone, family-built art institutions, including the Getty, Huntington, Hammer, and Broad. “Vanity museums, some of the most memorable on the planet, have been a big part of what makes the city’s cultural landscape so lively, diverse, and deep.” If you’re ever in L.A., “you won’t want to miss this one.

As Russia’s full-scale invasion attempt against neighboring Ukraine nears its fifth year of region-disrupting violence, a new wave of intelligence reports has raised a frightening prospect: a widening theater of violence, in which Russian hybrid warfare strikes deep European Union territory. With alarm bells ringing over potential Russian offensives — both digital and kinetic — in the coming months, vulnerable European nations must figure out if, and how, to respond.

‘Undermining’ NATO

NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte has framed the “rising number” of hybrid incidents in NATO countries as a sign that Russia is “losing the war in Ukraine,” said The Associated Press. But recent incidents, including an “explosive-laden drone at a German airport” and a “strike on a passenger train near the Polish border,” have presaged a “rush of warnings about more chaos to come” across Europe, said The New York Times. “The question is how Europe responds.”

Unlike the “classic thing you think of with NATO” warfare, in which one country’s army “attacks, tries to invade” and “tries to take things,” Russia’s hybrid model is “aimed at undermining our NATO allies without a full-scale invasion,” said Kurt Volker, a former U.S. ambassador to NATO, on NPR’s “All Things Considered.” The goal is to “sow doubt” and “cause NATO countries to back off of support for Ukraine” for fear “there might be a bigger escalation with Russia that we don’t want.”

‘Hardened’ Western rhetoric

Russia’s “shadow war” with Europe “grows bolder by the day,” said the The Kyiv Independent. “No one can say how far the Kremlin is ready to go.” Although “rhetoric in Western capitals has hardened,” material responses so far have “ranged from symbolic ones” targeting Russian “cultural and diplomatic centers” to “fresh sanctions and arms packages for Ukraine,” which Moscow has already “weathered for years.”

Europeans should guard against “overreacting to any sort of hybrid activity,” said current U.S. Ambassador to NATO Matthew Whitaker at a recent event in Iowa, per the AP. Russian hybrid attacks aren’t “at a volume that would mean that it’s the beginning” of broader violence. “We haven’t reached that threshold.”

With summer at its end, many people are thrilled with the arrival of cooler weather, warm-beverage season and changing leaves. But you can also ring in the onset of fall with a collection of new albums from big-name artists.

Mykki Blanco, ‘CAFE PARADISO’

Mykki Blanco is a singular individual in the music space, a rapper who rose from humble beginnings to collaborate with some of the industry’s biggest names. Now, he has released his fourth studio album, “CAFE PARADISO,” marking his first LP in four years.

Unlike his prior albums, “CAFE PARADISO” follows Blanco as he “emerges completely reborn, trading the persona-driven theatrics of previous releases for something more interior, sensual and exacting,” said Transgressive Records. The LP also pulls large amounts of symbolism from Blanco’s life on the road, having lived in New York City, Portugal, Chicago, Switzerland and more. (out now)

Leon Bridges, ‘Happiness Anytime’

Leon Bridges has become one of the most influential names in the soul and R&B genres. Coming off his successful country-inspired 2024 album “Leon,” Bridges is releasing his fifth LP, “Happiness Anytime.”

The album combines the “sonic warmth of his beloved 2015 debut ‘Coming Home’ with the adventurous groove of his Khruangbin collaborations,” said DIY Magazine. There is a “feeling that we have to fix the problems of the world; you feel inadequate or it can be debilitating. My role is to be light,” Bridges said in a release of the new music. (out now)

Orville Peck, ‘Mule’

Orville Peck’s popular country music, as well as his proclivity for not showing his face, make him another singular musician. Now the South Africa-born artist is back with his fourth studio album, “Mule,” his third LP in just six years.

The record is a “chronological account of the year I lost my way,” Peck said on Instagram. It represents a “candid account of his journey through addiction and sobriety and how he rebuilt his life,” said Music Row, describing the “divide between the larger-than-life persona of Orville Peck and the man behind the mask.” (out now)

Space Afrika, ‘Quiet Storm’

Electronic duo Space Afrika released their debut album in 2014, and since then have been steadily rising in the techno music space. Their fourth LP, “Quiet Storm,” expands on its “predecessor’s sound and scale in every direction as a sprawling, collaborative vision shaped with profound patience and intention,” said label Dais Records. The album’s songs “allude to spirituality and the human condition, the tension between boldness and softness, ambition and the inner demons that persist.” Numerous big names in the techno genre also contribute. (out now)

Pabllo Vittar, ‘Lost in Lust’

Pabllo Vittar leveraged a successful career as a drag queen to launch a musical platform, becoming an icon among Brazil’s LGBTQ+ community. Now the singer is back with her seventh LP, “Lost in Lust,” which will mark Vittar’s fifth studio album in just six years.

One notable song from the album, “Rockstar,” features Villano Antillano, who “made history as the first openly transgender and nonbinary artist to enter Spotify’s Global Top 50,” said The Line of Best Fit. The LP itself “pulls from pop, dance and electronic music while keeping Brazilian influences.” The single “Rockstar” is out now. (Oct. 1)

Greta Van Fleet, ‘Palace for the People’

Greta Van Fleet has been entertaining audiences for over a decade since its founding in Michigan, and the rock band’s forthcoming fifth studio album, “Palace for the People,” looks to continue a string of successes. The album sees the band “continue to explore themes of humanity, connection, resilience and transcendence — building a body of work that feels both deeply personal and universally resonant,” said Blabbermouth.

The LP itself was heavily inspired by the band’s 2022 world tour. A single from the album, “Saw You Stand,” is out now. (Oct. 9)

Geologist, ‘The Sirens’ 

Now you can dig in with Geologist, as the musician’s next outing, his fourth LP, “The Sirens,” is soon hitting the market. The Baltimore-born artist, who is also a member of the experimental pop band Animal Collective, “harnessed the power of the moon to record music,” said Pitchfork.

Geologist, working with visual artist Kyle Simon, accomplished this by fitting a telescope with optical lenses. When the telescope is pointed at the night sky, light from lunar objects is then “converted into an electrical signal via an analog amplifier.” The album’s first single is available now. (Oct. 16)

Anderson .Paak and Cordae, ‘Heavy is the Crown’

Anderson .Paak and Cordae are two of music’s most innovative artists, and fans of rap can rejoice at “Heavy is the Crown,” the pair’s first combined LP. The two rappers “go way back,” having “first linked on ‘RNP’ from Cordae’s 2019 debut ‘The Lost Boy,’ and have remained frequent collaborators,” said Pitchfork.

The two seem to have a close relationship, given the LP’s album art is a nod to the 2008 comedy film “Step Brothers.” No music from the album has been released as of yet. (Oct. 23)

La Roux, ‘Old Flames’

Elly Jackson maintained her La Roux persona after her collaborative producer left in 2012, and she has been on a roll ever since. She is now set to release her first album in six years, and her fourth overall, “Old Flames.”

The album’s songs address the English singer’s “breakdown of a 17-year relationship, addiction and dealing with identity,” said The Line of Best Fit. It “says things how they are: how I am and who I am. It’s been a process of admitting what I got wrong,” she told the outlet. A single from the LP, “Cabin Fever,” is out now. (Nov. 6)

Ane Brun, ‘I Thought We Were the Same’

Norwegian musician Ane Brun released two albums in 2020, then took a break from LP work. Now she’s back with a vengeance with “I Thought We Were the Same,” her 11th studio album.

The LP is “being promised as Brun’s most personal work yet,” said The Needle Drop. With her latest release, Brun “wanted to experiment with how far I could take my music into a clearer and more pop sound with distinct choruses and hooks without the music losing its nerve,” she said in a release. The lead single from the album, “Hold Me,” is out now. (Nov. 6)

With prices spiking and borrowing costs already high, the Federal Reserve’s latest decision could make life even more expensive, said Rachel Lerman in The Washington Post. The central bank’s vote this September to raise interest rates by a quarter percentage point to 3.75% 4%, the first such hike since 2023, could affect everything from student loans to mortgage rates. The Fed “sets the federal funds rate, or the standard rule for how banks borrow money from each other.” That doesn’t impact longer-term rates like business or car loans directly, but if “banks are paying more to borrow money,” they will soon begin “charging customers a higher interest rate,” too. Expect auto loan and credit card rates to jump first—with payments climbing by a few dollars on average— adding strain to households already holding a record $18.8 trillion in debt. And more rate hikes could be coming this year, because the Fed signaled that its effort “to slow the economy slightly and rein in persistent inflation” remains a work in progress.

It’s not all bad news, said Jessica Hall in MarketWatch. Higher rates can lift yields on savings and certificates of deposit (CDs), so savers will “finally get paid something for holding safe assets.” For seniors with a fixed income, that extra cash is often spendable money that ends up back in the economy. Buying annuities when rates are high can also provide a larger regular payout.

There’s less optimism about the housing market, said Nicholas G. Miller in The Wall Street Journal. The 30-year fixed mortgage rate is set by lenders based on the 10-year Treasury yield, which is normally dictated by investors’ views of the economy. “If the market believes that the Fed is taking inflation seriously,” yields might fall. But “if taken as a sign that the economy faces a real inflation problem,” then they won’t. Mortgage rates “are closing in on 7% for the first time since the beginning of last year.” Even a tiny rise can make “prospective homebuyers hesitant to make a big-ticket purchase.”

We all better get used to it, said Craig Torres in MarketWatch, because high rates are here to stay. “For nearly a dozen years, starting with the global financial crisis” and lasting until 2023, we lived in a near-zero-rate world. “That phase is starting to look like an anomaly.” Rates are roughly back to where they were before 2008. Will they return to pre- pandemic lows anytime soon? Doubtful. It’s increasingly apparent that “a regime change is taking place—one where rates will need to be higher” to lower inflation that continues to be inflamed by tariffs, wars, and uncertainty. This rate hike could be “signaling something more structural and lasting.”

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Emily Ruskovich is the author of the novel Idaho, a prize-winning 2017 best seller. Her new short-story collection, Nightjar, includes “Owl,” her O. Henry Award–winning tale about a fur trapper caring for his wife after she’s been shot in an encounter with four adolescent boys.

‘Housekeeping’ by Marilynne Robinson (1980)

The most foundational novel of my life. A flooded house, a derailed train, a lake haunted by tragedies both personal and mythic. This is the most beautiful depiction of childhood and sisterhood I’ve ever read. Buy it here.

‘About, Above, Around’ by Mark Mayer (2025)

In this weird, gorgeous story collection, which is as funny as it is heartbreaking, Mayer has set out to illuminate the feeling, the life, inherent in the smallest increments of language. He succeeds brilliantly. I will never look at “after” or “by” or especially “near” the same way. Buy it here.

‘The Lost Journals of Sacajewea’ by Debra Magpie Earling (2023)

Earling gives a voice to the young girl Sacajewea, creating a shattering first-person account of her enslavement, her grief, and her endurance, re-centering her in a brutal history. The language of this novel is so alive, so singular and devastating, that I’ll never forget it. Buy it here.

‘Never Let Me Go’ by Kazuo Ishiguro (2005)

Kathy H. is the young narrator of this intensely haunting novel about love, art, childhood, friendship, grief, and the very definition of humanity. At the heart of this speculative novel is an unspeakable atrocity that serves as the premise of Kathy’s life. Yet it is a childhood love that guides the narrative to its brilliant end. Buy it here.

‘Salvage the Bones’ by Jesmyn Ward (2011)

Esch is 15 years old, motherless, poor, living in rural Mississippi. Twelve days before Hurricane Katrina strikes, she is throwing up from morning sickness and watching her big brother fret over his beloved pit bull’s newborn pups, which are dying one by one. The story is a moving and raw depiction of a lasting familial love. Buy it here.

‘What the Ice Gets’ by Melinda Mueller (2000)

A Homeric retelling of Ernest Shackleton’s attempt to reach the South Pole. Mueller was a biology teacher from Seattle who found her own way into the incredible story of the Endurance. She wrote her book-length poem in response to her battle with cancer. When my husband gave me the book years ago, he said, “This book is to ice what Housekeeping is to water.” Buy it here.

When DOGE began cutting up government entities in 2025, among the most severely affected was the Education Department’s little-known National Center for Education Statistics (NCES). Now, more than a year later, experts say the gutting of this center has made it very hard to keep track of the nation’s education goals.

What does NCES do?

The NCES is the federal body “responsible for collecting, analyzing and reporting data on the condition of U.S. education — from early childhood to adult education — to help improve student outcomes,” said the agency’s website. It produces reports via “direct student assessments, longitudinal studies, international surveys, postsecondary institutions, adult surveys and synthesizing data from federal sources.”

The agency has been significantly hampered by federal cuts from the Trump administration. As part of nearly $900 million in cuts to the Department of Education last year, NCES’ work was “abruptly terminated and its headcount dropped” massively, said The Guardian. Prior to the funding slashes, NCES had about 100 staffers; it currently has just 12, according to a government directory. This has “hamstrung the historically under-resourced agency’s ability to collect and report on a range of data on K-12 and college students.”

What will NCES do now?

The American Statistical Association put together a report on how the situation at NCES could be improved. More streamlined data collection would allow NCES to “much more readily modernize how it meets its responsibility to report on the condition and progress of education,” said the report. NCES should also be “ensuring that data is handled safely and ethically and is more useful to state and local practitioners,” said Education Week.

It would be beneficial for NCES to “become a more modern, data-centric partner to states” instead of returning to the “structure it had before it was largely dismantled” and relying on the methods it used before being gutted, said StateScoop. “What is lacking is national comparability,” said Shelly Martinez, an independent statistical consultant who worked on the report, to the outlet. “I think there is an interest and an understanding that there’s federal data that could really enhance those analyses and that evidence is building.”

How are drones changing warfare?

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have been used by militaries for decades, with the U.S. leaning heavily on multimillion-dollar systems like the Predator and Reaper in the war on terror. But those SUV-size drones are increasingly being replaced by smaller quadcopter and winged drones that can cost as little as a few hundred dollars and can be deployed to track enemy movements, supply frontline troops, and deliver deadly payloads, either by dropping explosives or smashing into targets kamikaze-style. Ukraine, which has used drones to fight Russia’s larger, more powerful military to a deadlock, has become a closely studied laboratory for drone warfare. Instead of a front line where troops mass, there’s a ghostly 20-mile “kill zone” where remotely piloted surveillance and attack drones buzz in the sky night and day, and small clutches of soldiers hunker in foxholes. Of the tens of thousands of casualties Russia suffers each month, up to 90% are inflicted by drones. Russia, meanwhile, is using Iranian- designed Shahed drones fitted with turbojets to target residential buildings, shopping malls, gas stations, and power plants across Ukraine. “It’s like [the advent of] gunpowder,” former U.S. Army officer Patrick Shepherd said of the impact of cheap drones on warfare. The U.S. is

What’s happening in that conflict?

Iran’s long-range, highly accurate Shahed-136 attack drones — flying fiberglass triangles that cost about $35,000 each — have helped Tehran hold off the world’s most powerful military. Iranian drones have hit U.S. bases, logistics hubs, and radar stations across the Middle East; an April strike on a base in Kuwait killed six U.S. service members. They’ve damaged energy infrastructure in Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates, and allowed Iran to secure partial control over the Strait of Hormuz. While most drones are shot down, successive waves of attacks have badly depleted U.S. stocks of Patriot and THAAD air- defense interceptors, which cost between $4 million and $12 million a shot. “You do not need to be a defense planner to understand that cost curve is in the wrong direction,” said Michael Horowitz, a military technology expert at the University of Pennsylvania. And the frenetic pace of drone innovation is making it steadily harder to develop effective and affordable countermeasures.

How is the technology advancing?

Ukraine’s hundreds of domestic drone manufacturers have built long-range drones that have hit oil refineries up to 1,000 miles inside Russia, and ground drones resembling small tractors that can clear mines, ferry supplies, rescue wounded soldiers, and attack enemy positions with onboard machine guns. “It’s a hunk of iron sent to do the job we used to send soldiers to do,” one commander told Reuters. Ukraine has also deployed Jet Ski–size marine drones that have shot down Russian fighter jets and sunk or damaged at least 19 warships, effectively neutralizing Russia’s Black Sea fleet. Moscow is hard at work as well: One game- changing Russian innovation was the development of drones operated via miles-long, ultrathin fiber- optic cables, which can’t be disrupted by radio- frequency jamming.

What innovations are coming?

Unmanned vessels and vehicles that can work in coordination. In an unprecedented July operation, a Ukrainian sea drone delivered a ground drone that then fired on Russian positions. In the works are “nano drones” the size of insects, which could be fitted with small explosive charges. But the biggest shift will be toward AI- guided weapons that autonomously hunt targets and execute missions without a human in the loop. Russia took a step toward that future in August, when three Ukrainian civilians outside a gas station in Zaporizhzhia were killed by a drone believed to have been fully guided by AI. Experts say we’ll soon see AI-guided drone swarms that can autonomously execute complex operations. “In a few years,” said Col. Serhiy Minaiev, a Ukrainian commander, “we will be living in a Terminator movie.”

Is the U.S. prepared for that future?

Lt. Gen. Charles Costanza, a top commander in Europe until his abrupt removal in August, said last year that the U.S. is “behind” on drones. “We aren’t moving fast enough.” Retired military leaders including former Joint Chiefs chair Mark Milley and former CIA chief David Petraeus have echoed that view. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has taken steps to up the military’s game. He announced a Drone Dominance program last year, committing $1 billion to purchasing 200,000 drones by 2027, and in a July memo vowed to boost domestic drone production and integrate unmanned sys tems “into all relevant combat training.” But we’re playing catch-up: Russia is producing more than 6 million drones a year, and China is believed to be churning out an even higher number. And recent actions by Hegseth have raised worries about U.S. preparedness.

What has Hegseth done?

This year he pushed out two highly respected generals, Army chief of staff Randy George and Gen. Chris Donahue, the top Army commander in Europe, who were leading efforts to modernize the Army. Gen. Christopher La Neve, a Hegseth loyalist who replaced George in an acting capacity, last month disbanded a 600- person drone battalion that had been championed by George and Dona hue and was meant to apply lessons learned from Ukraine. August also saw the resignation of Army Sec re tary Dan Driscoll, who reportedly warned Pres i dent Trump on his way out that Hegseth was damaging “Army transformation.” To disband the drone unit in a time of dizzying change is “deeply regrettable and dangerous,” said Michael O’Hanlon, a defense expert at the Brookings Institution. But Hegseth has a different view, an Army spokesman told The Wall Street Journal. The drone unit, the official said, needed to go back to basics and “refocus on its core war fighting tasks.

‘Exit Party’ by Emily St. John Mandel

“Let’s hope that Emily St. John Mandel’s gift for writing prophetic fiction is overrated,” said Maureen Corrigan in NPR .org. Station Eleven, the Canadian novelist’s 2014 breakthrough, anticipated the outbreak of a worldwide pandemic. Unsettlingly, her “ingenious, eerie, and complex” new work opens in 2031 in the immediate wake of the collapse of the United States. Fighting by then has subsided enough that Ari Waker, a woman in Los Angeles who’s recently completed a well-earned 18-year prison stint, feels safe enough to attend a party. There, by some strange accident, two guests from an alternative world materialize while the host vanishes into that same other dimension, where the U.S. isn’t violently riven but is instead a placid authoritarian state with a citizenry under constant surveillance.

Despite its science fiction framework, Exit Party, “like all the best stories,” is character driven, said Adam Begley in The Atlantic. In its first half, we follow Ari as she rapidly reinvents herself again and again, graduating from dishwasher to gunrunner, trophy wife, philanthropist, and Paris-based art collector. The second half throws us into the other timeline, where Ari’s doppelgänger, known as Ibari, is a high-ranking undercover operative willing to disappear fellow citizens that pose challenges to the authoritarian government. Though these twinned protagonists act immorally, Mandel makes both Ari and Ibari compelling and sympathetic. And as in her previous novels, “the underlying theme is irresistible: how shockingly little humanity understands about the sudden swerves and reversals that shape a life—or end it.”

With its shifting time frames and stories nesting within stories, said Ron Charles in his Substack newsletter, “Exit Party sometimes feels dazzling and sometimes feels like it was composed by a squirrel with a Ph.D.” Still “it grows more satisfying with every page” as we follow Ari and Ibari’s misadventures. “The only worldbuilder more efficient than Mandel may be God,” because she sketches each of her parallel dystopias in “a few deft strokes,” then immerses us in individual lives made complex by the particular circumstances in which those lives unfold. It’s not always easy to understand exactly what’s happening in Exit Plan, and “anybody who promises you definitive clarity on this mind-bending story should be regarded with the suspicion reserved for Instagram health experts.” Ari struggles to understand how its two worlds connect, and as events in one world echo events in the other, so will many readers. “Mandel has engineered this uncanny novel to spark déjà vu, to send you flipping back to passages you read too quickly, to drive you mad. But what a way to go!”

‘Redwood: The Untold Story of the Cold War’s Most Extraordinary Spy’ by Ben Macintyre

“Ben Macintyre has made an illustrious career of taking dusty government archives and transforming them into propulsive nonfiction thrillers,” said Joseph Finder in The New York Times. With his new account about a Soviet spy who may have altered history, the author of Operation Mincemeat, which was adapted into a 2021 movie, “has done it again.” In 1981, KGB major Vladimir Kuzichkin offered to slip secrets about Soviet meddling in post-revolution Iran to British intelligence, but not because of ideology or money. It was because he suffered from erectile dysfunction and hoped Western doctors could help. Might Iran have fallen into Soviet hands had Viagra already existed? Macintyre floats that “audacious” thought, but his tale doesn’t rest on such speculation.

Think of Redwood as “an artfully constructed nonfiction equivalent to one of John le Carré’s most accomplished novels,” said Andrew Nagorski in The Wall Street Journal. The author traces the life paths that brought Kuzichkin and his MI6 handler, Ian McCredie, together, making them allies in documenting how Moscow was seeking to use the communist Tudeh Party to topple Ayatollah Khomeini and install its own puppet leader. MI6, with the CIA’s approval, then handed this intel to Khomeini, knowing full well that he might kill or lock up thousands of Tudeh members Kuzichkin had identified. And that’s what happened, strengthening the ayatollah’s grip on power. By then, Kuzichkin had been spirited away to the U.K., where he died of a heart attack years later next to an empty bottle of vodka.

“There’s much to like in Redwood,” said Boris Starling in The Telegraph (U.K.). But “there are two minor flaws.” First, the background narrative, with its abundance of characters that don’t merit being named, “seems at times unnecessarily complex.” Second, the entire story is less exciting and fraught than the one Macintyre told in 2018’s masterful The Spy and the Traitor. Still, Macintyre remains “incapable of writing a dull sentence,” specializing in “deliciously wry” turns of phrase. In Kuzichkin, he’s also found another “wildly unforgettable” character.

“If this were an alien-invasion movie,” said Toluse Olorunnipa in The Atlantic, now would be the moment when people of all persuasions “band together to save the human race.” In recent weeks, a string of top artificial intelligence researchers have warned that “AI could wipe out humanity before the decade ends,” and executives at Anthropic, OpenAI, and other AI firms have called for a slowdown in the technology’s frenetic pace of development. There have been disturbing reports of ever more capable AI agents going “rogue” and disobeying and deceiving their human creators—one OpenAI model rewrote its own instructions, stating it was free from any “obligation to be subservient.” Yet despite the warning signs flashing red, we’re stuck in the familiar “partisan gridlock.” On the Left, figures like Sen. Bernie Sanders are demanding a ban on “artificial superintelligence.” On the Right, President Trump—whose family business has invested heavily in the AI sector—is dismissing the warnings from AI insiders as a “HOAX.” We can’t let AI safety become another “political team sport,” said Megan McArdle in The Washington Post. If the worst fears of the frontier AI labs come to pass, and there are reasons to be skeptical, Team Red and Team Blue will both “lose the only contest that matters.” They need to work together for “Team Humanity.”

Actually, the AI crisis has already “scrambled” our usual tribal alliances, said Liam Dillon in Politico. Yes, some Republicans oppose AI regulation on principle, and many in the administration fear an AI pause would aid China and crater our AI-heavy stock market. But a growing number of Republicans are defying “Trump’s hands off approach”: Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and Utah Gov. Spencer Cox, for example, are pushing ahead with state-level regulations. The Left is also “split over AI doom,” said Vittoria Elliott and Molly Taft in Wired. Most Democrats agree with Sanders, but some progressives think the AI companies are deliberately promoting alarmist scenarios of all-powerful machine gods to distract us from pollution-spewing data centers, job losses, and other more realistic AI harms.

We don’t need politics to save us, said The Washington Post in an editorial. For all their sci-fi strangeness, AI models are products, built by corporations, and we already have a mechanism— legal liability—to dissuade corporations from making dangerous products. By framing AI as a novel threat requiring an “all-of-humanity response,” Silicon Valley’s “prophets of doom” are asking the rest of us to share responsibility for any future catastrophes. But why should we? Rather than trying to regulate the “unknowable future,” lawsuits and ruinous damages should be enough to “make AI companies fear the consequences of behaving recklessly in the present.”

If AI runs amok, punishing those responsible won’t help, said Ezra Klein in The New York Times. The reason Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei and OpenAI head Sam Altman are panicking now is that they know their models are on the brink of “recursive self- improvement,” the point at which they can start building their own more powerful replacements, hurtling to superintelligence without human oversight or control. Would a superintelligent AI wipe out humanity? Not necessarily. It might content itself with raiding the global banking system, or hacking the power grid. To avoid that scenario, we should ban AI models from being allowed to write their own code. That would be the beginning, not the end, of an AI safety agenda. But at least it would let us “understand where the AI frontier is, and remain in a position to make decisions about it.”