What happened
Pope Leo XIV yesterday underwent surgery to remove a nodule in his right lung. While the 90-minute operation was “successful” with “no complications,” the Vatican said, doctors confirmed suspicions that the 71-year-old pope has lung adenocarcinoma, the most common type of lung cancer. The lower lobe of his right lung was removed and will be examined to determine if the cancer has spread.

Who said what
Leo has “offered a rare level of transparency about the first publicly disclosed major health problem of his 17-month papacy,” The Associated Press said. On Sunday, he announced during his noon prayer that a small, “well-contained” nodule had been detected on his lung “at a very early stage.“ 

If that turns out to be true, and the cancer hasn’t metastasized, there’s probably at least an 80% chance of recurrence-free survival, Dr. Inderpal Sarkaria, chief of thoracic surgery at UT Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, said to The Wall Street Journal. “Prognosis-wise, it’s very positive.” Still, any cancer diagnosis “poses a lurching shift in the outlook for a pope whose relative youth and health indicated he had decades to reign,” said The New York Times.

What next?
Leo has canceled all public events until Oct. 20. He told colleagues he hopes to go ahead with his 11-day trip to Uruguay, Argentina and Peru starting Nov. 6. 

What happened
Six Flags yesterday said it was temporarily closing nine roller coasters at six of its North American theme parks along with Six Flags Over Georgia’s Goliath ride, from which a 42-year-old Atlanta school teacher fell to his death on Monday. The nine roller coasters have similar designs to Goliath and are being suspended “out of an abundance of caution,” a spokesperson said. 

Who said what
“Witnesses watched in horror” as Hassan Kariem “was ejected from his seat, almost seeming to hover above the car before hitting several people and falling to his death,” The Associated Press said. In a theme-park industry “constantly introducing new thrills,” the Goliath ride is “far from the world’s tallest, fastest or wildest coaster,” and “many questions” remain about Kariem’s “nightmarish death.” 

The tragedy comes at a “make-or-break moment” for Six Flags Entertainment, The Wall Street Journal said. A month after it shuttered its X2 coaster at Magic Mountain in Southern California amid multiple allegations of severe brain injuries, the new safety concerns risk “upending” the company’s “turnaround campaign.”

What next?
The Cobb County Police Department and the Georgia agency that oversees amusement parks are investigating Kariem’s death. Bolliger & Mabillard, the Swiss maker of Goliath and eight of the other shuttered coasters, said it is also investigating and won’t comment “until we have a better understanding of what happened.”

Surrogacy remains illegal in China, but fertility concerns are universal. So an “industry of agencies, consultancies and fertility clinics” has sprung up to help Chinese nationals connect with potential surrogate mothers abroad, according to the Financial Times. Many look to the U.S., drawn by its “advanced medical facilities, strong legal protections for the parents and the prospect of an American passport for their child.”

Between 2014 and 2020, nearly a third of babies born via surrogacy in the U.S. were intended for international parents, according to a 2024 survey from the Society for Assisted Reproductive Technology. And more than 40% of those were from China.

There’s also a darker side. In a “little-known trend in the largely unregulated U.S. surrogacy industry,” wealthy Chinese elites are paying to “quietly have large numbers of U.S.-born babies,” said The Wall Street Journal. Some, “inspired by Elon Musk’s 14 known children,” shell out millions to hire American women to “help them build families of jaw-dropping size.”

Billionaire Xu Bo, an “online megaposter” and “vocal critic of feminism,” claims to have 100 children and told a U.S. court in 2023 he hoped to have 20 U.S.-born boys through surrogacy, the Journal said. Another wealthy Chinese executive, Wang Huiwu, hired U.S. models as egg donors to have 10 girls, allegedly with the “aim of one day marrying them off to powerful men.” 

Wang ultimately plans to father 100 “high-net-worth babies,” said The Times. And although the practice is “arousing concern” in the U.S. and China, there’s no U.S. law stopping multiple surrogacy births for the same family.