With decades of discrimination and exclusion, women have created networking events to help each other get a fair shake at climbing the ladder of success. But in an era that’s actively against diversity, equity and inclusion, these women-only spaces have become new targets of the Trump administration.

Why are ‘new girls’ clubs’ being targeted?

The president’s crackdown on DEI has had a “chilling effect on women’s initiatives across the business world,” said USA Today. President Donald Trump arrived ino office on campaign promises to “restore fairness in the workplace” by eradicating “woke” DEI policies he thinks “harm men and White Americans.” The fear of lawsuits and pressure to align with the administration has led “dozens of the nation’s largest companies, from McDonald’s to Facebook owner Meta,” to roll back diversity programs.

An Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) lawsuit against a Coca-Cola distributor for hosting a women’s retreat in 2024 could jeopardize the network as an antithesis to old-boys’ clubs. These “new girls' clubs” are “widely credited with helping women splinter the glass ceiling,” USA Today said. They allowed women to “gather, to share information, to share stories, to be inspired and to see there is a path forward for them,” Reshma Saujani, the founder of nonprofit Moms First, said to the outlet. Shutting those opportunities down is “not about restoring a meritocracy.” Instead, it’s about “ensuring there isn’t a meritocracy.”

The Coca-Cola lawsuit is the first “related to workplace diversity, equity and inclusion in the second Trump administration,” said The Independent. The EEOC accused the company of violating Title VII of the Civil Rights Act “with malice or reckless indifference to the federally protected rights of male employees,” the agency said in its complaint.

More such lawsuits “could be imminent,” said The Washington Post. In December, EEOC chair Andrea Lucas issued an unusual public appeal, asking white men who feel they have experienced discrimination at work to contact the agency “as soon as possible.” Women-only networking events create new girls’ clubs that operate like the old boys’ clubs before them, she said in February on LinkedIn, while likening them to racially segregated employee social events of the 1970s. The agency is already investigating “footwear giant Nike and financial services firm Northwestern Mutual over their corporate diversity initiatives,” said the Post.

Are women’s networks exclusionary?

Women’s networks “don’t exclude men, they help women catch up,” gender equity researcher Amy Diehl said to USA Today. Still, organizations have disbanded gender-based mentorship and coaching programs and employee resource groups since those programs were labeled exclusionary. Regardless of how these lawsuits are resolved, the “effect is already being felt.”

It is “really striking” that the EEOC has decided women’s networking is “so problematic that they have to go out against it,” said Chai Feldblum, the president of EEO Leaders, a group she cofounded last year to challenge the Trump administration’s attacks on employment civil rights. Our country is “not well served by frightening employers away from doing positive actions to ensure a fair and equal workplace.”

DEI opponents think the EEOC’s complaint is valid. Hosting a “lavish, all-expenses-paid retreat for women only,” while men are excluded, is “textbook discrimination, plain and simple,” Nick Barry, the senior counsel with the America First Legal advocacy organization, told USA TODAY. The law does not “carve out exceptions for discrimination that is fashionable or well-intentioned.”

Usually, these types of lawsuits involve “substantial workplace harm,” Jenny Yang, a former chair of the EEOC, said to the Post. That usually comes in the form of pay disparities and harassment, not a “single networking event, as in the Coca-Cola distributor case,” the outlet said. There has been a “sustained effort to locate a DEI-focused challenge for at least a year,” Yang said. It suggests “they didn’t have a stronger case to file.”

‘Turn on, tune in, cash out … the US right used to fear psychedelics. Now it wants to sell them.’

Kojo Koram at The Guardian

Trump “signed a new presidential executive order to accelerate mainstream access to medical treatment based on psychedelic drugs,” but “this executive order has not come out of the blue,” says Kojo Koram. Long “caricatured as a marker of countercultural decadence, psychedelics have been rebranded by recent clinical research as potentially transformative mental-health treatments.” It’s a “worldview that has found a comfortable new home” in an “administration that is, against all odds, transforming America’s relationship with drugs.”

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‘How Putin and Zelenskyy view the war in Iran’

Sudarsan Raghavan at The New Yorker

Nearly “two months into Iran’s war, its ripple effects are being felt around the world,” says Sudarsan Raghavan. The “war is also having a less visible, yet potentially more consequential, impact on some of the world’s other conflicts and crises.” The war in Ukraine is “increasingly connected to the Middle East conflict.” It is “in Russia’s favor to prolong the war in Iran” because the “longer it lasts, the longer Washington’s attention is not on Ukraine.”

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‘Could Ozempic save families from addiction and foster care?’

Naomi Schaefer Riley at The Boston Globe

GLP-1 drugs “like Ozempic and Wegovy are often called miraculous for their ability to promote weight loss, reduce the risk of diabetes and even lower the likelihood of dementia,” says Naomi Schaefer Riley. But “what if they can help combat drug and alcohol addiction by tempering cravings and ultimately prevent parents from losing their children to foster care?” This “class of drugs has wide-ranging health benefits and few side effects compared to other medically assisted treatments.”

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‘Religions all over the world are being blasphemed and perverted’

Janice Kennedy at the Toronto Star

Religion is “having a moment. And not in a good way,” says Janice Kennedy. No “matter its name, religion usually embraces three elements: faith in a divinity, rites and rituals honoring that faith and an inviolable moral code.” But this is “abased and abused by con artists twisting religion to fit insufferable egos and despicable political ends.” Committing “terrible deeds in the name of an almighty god is abhorrent to all people of good will.”

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When the 2026 FIFA World Cup kicks off in June, it may be missing something important: fans. Several factors, including political unrest and high transportation costs, are causing host cities across the United States to worry that the presumed economic bump from the World Cup may not occur.

What did the commentators say?

Eleven U.S. cities will be hosting World Cup games: Atlanta, Boston, Dallas, Houston, Kansas City, Los Angeles, Miami, New York City, Philadelphia, San Francisco and Seattle. These cities are dealing with everything from “labor strife and high ticket prices to geopolitical turmoil and culture-war politics fanned by President Donald Trump,” factors that are “turning the event into a nationwide stress test for the governmental institutions charged with pulling it off,” said Politico.

Many were hoping the World Cup would provide a “triumphal turn in the international spotlight” but it is instead becoming a “case study in the local hazards of staging a spectacle at a moment of global disruption,” said Politico. Cooling forecasts are largely due to “ticket prices, inflation fears and anti-American sentiment,” said the Financial Times. Many hotels are reflecting this reality; room rates for game days in “Atlanta, Dallas, Miami, Philadelphia and San Francisco have dropped about a third from their peak earlier this year.”

FIFA originally predicted the World Cup would give the U.S. a $30.5 billion economic boost. But the “demand has certainly not been at anywhere near that level,” Vijay Dandapani, the president and CEO of the Hotel Association of New York City, said to Forbes. International soccer fans were expected to provide a lifeline, as they typically “spend four times as much as domestic travelers,” said the outlet. But it is “unclear if foreign visitors will come in the numbers necessary to drive the promised economic boost.”

The White House’s “‘America First’ agenda and rhetoric have also fueled widespread perceptions that the country is unwelcoming,” said The Athletic, causing many international soccer fans to rethink their plans. The potential presence of immigration officers is worsening things for Europeans; the Trump administration’s immigration agenda has created “heightened anxiety about travel and attendance for both fans and teams,” said Politico. The tension is especially increased for Iran, as the ongoing war “has raised questions about whether that country’s squad will even play.”

Transportation has additionally played a role, especially in cities where the cost of living is higher. In Massachusetts, a game day train trip to the stadium near Boston will cost $80. In New Jersey, where the New York City-area games will be played, a ride will be $150; this is over an 11 times increase from the standard $12.90 train fare in New Jersey. FIFA is also charging an average of $175 for parking at most venues nationwide.

What next?

Trepidation over hosting the games in the U.S. “could be sufficient motivation” for global fans to “hold off until 2030, when the tournament will take place in Spain, Portugal and Morocco,” said the Financial Times. Amid growing tensions, the head of Norway’s soccer association has also called for Trump to be stripped of his recently awarded FIFA Peace Prize.

FIFA officials seem not to be too worried. The organization is “confident that the event will be a resounding success for everyone involved, all the participating teams, the fans from all around the world and the hosts,” FIFA spokesperson Bryan Swanson told Politico.

What happened

The United Arab Emirates on Tuesday announced it was withdrawing from OPEC and Russian-led OPEC+ on Friday, weakening the oil cartel’s leverage to set and stabilize oil prices. The UAE, which joined OPEC in 1967, is the cartel’s third-biggest oil producer, behind Saudi Arabia and Iran.

Who said what

The UAE’s exit “had been rumored as a possibility for some time, as it pushed back in recent years” against production limits enforced by OPEC to influence oil prices, The Associated Press said. In the short term, the decision “doesn’t really matter,” Semafor said, because with the “Strait of Hormuz closed, Gulf oil producers can’t hit their production targets anyway.” But “in the long term,” The New York Times said, the UAE’s move “could contribute to greater volatility” in the oil markets.

What next?

Free from the cartel’s “rigid quotas,” the UAE “gains the flexibility to aggressively increase its oil production on its own terms,” The Wall Street Journal said. Its departure could “spur more defections” from other members who have similarly “chafed at Saudi Arabia’s dominance.” This is the “beginning of the end of OPEC,” MST Financial energy analyst Saul Kavonic told the BBC.

What happened

The Justice Department on Tuesday indicted former FBI Director James Comey again, this time over a photo he posted last May showing seashells spelling out “86 47.” By posting 86 — a common term for ejecting unruly patrons from bars — and 47, the number of Donald Trump’s presidency, Comey “knowingly and willfully” threatened to “take the life of, and to inflict bodily harm upon, the president,” the two-count indictment alleged. The DOJ’s attempt to prosecute Comey last year for allegedly lying to Congress was thrown out by a judge.

Who said what

The charges are the “latest salvo” in the DOJ’s “tortured efforts to satisfy” Trump’s demands to “go after longtime targets of his wrath,” The New York Times said. Comey posted, then deleted, the beach photo “nearly a year ago,” The Associated Press said, but the indictment was secured as acting Attorney General Todd Blanche “aims to prove to the president that he is the right person to hold the job permanently.”

“Well, they’re back,” Comey said in a video statement Tuesday. “I’m still innocent, I’m still not afraid. … so let’s go.”

What next?

Prosecuting Comey for his seashell post “may be fruitless,” said CNN. “Especially given the country’s free speech protections.”

What happened

King Charles III on Tuesday spent the first full day of his state visit to the U.S. conversing privately with President Donald Trump, extolling America’s democracy and trans-Atlantic relations at a joint session of Congress and charming his host at a White House state dinner. The visit, ostensibly to mark the 250th anniversary of the U.S. breakup from Great Britain, is also a “crucial diplomatic play” by the U.K. to mend strained ties with the “royal-loving U.S. president,” The Wall Street Journal said.

Who said what

The king’s address to Congress, the second ever by a British monarch, included “among the most pointed comments any allied leader has given on American soil” during Trump’s second term, Politico said. Sprinkled among well-received jokes, Charles said it was crucial to protect the environment, acclaimed the importance of NATO and urged “unyielding” defense of Ukraine.

He also highlighted England’s foundational Magna Carta, which “declared that even a king isn’t above the law,” said Politico. In the U.S., the Magna Carta is “cited in at least 160 Supreme Court cases since 1789,” Charles said, and “not least as the foundation of the principle that executive power is subject to checks and balances.” That drew a bipartisan standing ovation in Congress. Trump “didn’t seem to mind” the “low-key criticism,” The Associated Press said. The White House posted a photo of Charles and Trump, labeling it “TWO KINGS.”

What next?

Charles and Queen Camilla travel to New York and Virginia before departing the U.S. on Thursday.

This week’s question: A Harvard study of ancient and modern human DNA has found that Homo sapiens are still evolving, and that natural selection seems to favor the red hair gene. If a researcher were to write a scientific paper explaining the evolutionary triumph of redheads, what should it be titled?

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On many stretches of water in Britain over the summer months and you will find people “wielding their paddles like modern-day Argonauts”, said The Economist.

Boosted by the Covid pandemic, the rise of stand-up paddleboarding has been sharp. One survey estimated that 4.5 million Britons had tried SUP, and people of all abilities now flock to rivers, lakes, canals and the coast to soak up the sun on their boards.

As summer fast approaches here are some of the best spots around the UK to explore by paddleboard.

Bala Lake, Snowdonia, Wales

With its “charming canals, rivers and dramatic coastlines”, Wales has many great paddleboarding locations, said Portia Jones in Wales Online.

Bala Lake, also known as Llyn Tegid, is the country’s largest natural lake at more than four miles long and a mile wide, and it “boasts the most inviting, clear water for paddling”. Bala Lake is also “famed for its impressive mountain scenery, rare wildlife and excellent fishing opportunities”.

Bala Watersports offers paddleboards to rent and you will need to collect your permit from the lake warden’s centre before taking to the water. There’s no need to stick to paddleboarding; there are plenty of opportunities for sailing, canoeing and wild swimming too.

Kingsbridge, Devon, England

The five-mile stretch of Salcombe Estuary and its surrounding rivers is “beautiful”, said Abigail Butcher in The Telegraph. Devon’s trademark “lush rolling hills” meet “clear and blue” water “lined with sandy beaches”. The wildlife is worth watching out for too, with regular sightings including seals, herons and egrets, and even basking sharks.

Most of the routes are suitable for “complete novices”, while expert paddlers can sign up for the “SUP the Creek” race in October – an annual event that includes a variety of challenges.

Portrush, Co. Antrim, Northern Ireland

Paddleboarding in the sea can feel daunting, but not on the Causeway Coast, said Lisa Drewe in The Times. Beginners can start in the “sheltered waters” and “calm conditions” of Portrush Harbour, and those with more confidence can progress to trace the coastline past Ramore Head and the Skerries Islands. These spots reveal “glimpses of marine life”, and seagulls “wheel overhead”.

Again, equipment can be picked up on arrival at Portrush Surf School, and Freedive NI offers guided tours along the Causeway Coast, with sea cave explorations included. The workouts deserve a reward too, with plenty of cafés and pubs in the area to follow a long day on the water.

Regent’s Canal, London, England

Don’t fancy the open water? For an alternative in the heart of the city, head along the canal between Paddington and King’s Cross, said London’s The Standard. The waterway offers a “seamless blend of the contemporary, historic and wild”, giving you a “unique view of the capital’s industrial heritage”.

On the way, you pass “charming” Little Venice, “vibrant” Lisson Grove and a “scenic green stretch” next to Regent’s Park. Later on, the sights of Camden Market and Gasholder Park promise a lovely balance between the buzz and tranquillity of London.

Isle of Wight, England

Just a hop, skip and jump away from the mainland, the Isle of Wight has so many fresh- and salt-water paddle options, said Lisa Joyner and Rosie Stagg in Country Living. Compton Bay, tucked away on the west coast, is one of the island’s “best-kept secrets” with its “seaside promenades, chalky cliffs, rolling hills and sandy beaches”. You can also combine the on-water exploration with fossil hunting, surfing or wildlife watching.

Just along the coast is Freshwater Bay, closer towards the western tip. This has become something of a “magnet” for paddleboarders. Its “brilliant pebble beach” is popular all year round for swimming, walks and boating.

Donald Trump has hailed the relationship between the US and UK as “a friendship unlike any other on Earth” during what is widely being seen as a hugely successful state visit by King Charles.

After delivering a much-praised speech to Congress, the King, with Queen Camilla, last night joined the US president and first lady for a star-studded banquet. In a playful toast, Charles joked about Trump’s “readjustments” to the East Wing of the White House following his “visit to Windsor Castle last year”, and presented the president with the bell from the British Second World War submarine, HMS Trump.

Officially a celebration of 250 years of American independence, the three-day visit “has also been billed as a rescue mission”, said the BBC’s North America correspondent Anthony Zurcher. With US-UK relations “strained” by Britain’s refusal to fully back the US-Israeli war against Iran, “the King’s goal has been to ease those tensions with a royal charm offensive”.

What did the commentators say?

King Charles delivered a “masterclass in Trump II diplomacy” at the banquet, said Shawn McCreesh, White House reporter for The New York Times. His speech had “all the right ingredients”: “dry British understatement”; jokes tailored to “Trump’s proclivities”; “a little obsequiousness balanced with a little prodding about Nato”, and “the shiniest, Trumpiest of gifts”.

The president was “on his best behaviour” and, apart from one protocol-breaking moment when he suggested that the King had agreed with his views on Iran’s nuclear ambitions, he “seemed like putty in the bejewelled hands of the monarch. There are few foreign figureheads who can work this president the way this king can.”

“Entirely predictably”, Charles’ speech to Congress did not directly mention Iran, Israel, climate change, immigration, Jeffrey Epstein, “nor a bunch of other hot potatoes in the Trump era”, said David Smith, The Guardian’s Washington correspondent. But it was “exquisitely measured” in its “less-is-more” emphasis on “common bonds that long predate” this president and – “hopefully! – will long outlast him”. Judging by the applause, this “soft power flex worked a treat”.

Charles showed “deep respect for his hosts”, said CNN’s Stephen Collinson. But it’s no small irony that “it took a king to remind America of its republican values: the rule of law, democracy and the power of its international example”.

What next?

After recent “fraught” weeks, this state visit will “probably help stabilise relations” between Britain and America, said former Tory foreign secretary William Hague in The Times. But “it cannot, on its own, reverse the trend of declining trust and mutual respect”. We will still look at Trump, “fearing this might be the future”, and the US will “look at us and worry that our glories are all in the past”.

The special relationship will endure, “whatever the quarrels over Iran”, said the Financial Times editorial board, but “Britain’s place in the world is not what it was” in its heyday. “In the harsh new world of the 21st century, other connections are going to matter a lot, too.”

A mysterious new pro-Iran terror group has been linked to a series of recent attacks on Jewish communities and US financial institutions in the UK and Europe.

The only “catch”, said CNN, is that it “may be a mirage”.

Who are they and what have they claimed?

Harakat Ashab al-Yamin al-Islamia (HAYI), the Arabic name meaning “The Islamic Movement of the Companions of the Right(eous)”, first appeared online shortly after the US and Israel launched their war on Iran at the end of February.

On 9 March, HAYI posted on the encrypted messaging app Telegram that “military operations” against US and Israeli interests around the world had begun. Two weeks later, a Telegram channel claiming to represent the group made an unsubstantiated claim of responsibility for an arson attack on four Jewish ambulances in Golders Green, north London.

It then posted videos of four other arson attacks in Belgium, Greece and the Netherlands, as well as threatening a further attack against the Bank of America building in Paris, before the channel was deleted.

Who is behind the group?

Examining the group’s digital footprint, the International Centre for Counter-Terrorism found “no known references, neither online nor offline, to HAYI prior to 9 March”.

The Netherlands-based think tank highlighted “suspicious dissemination patterns” that were seemingly coordinated with the pro-Iranian online ecosystem. This raises the question “whether HAYI is a genuine terrorist group or merely serves as a façade for Iranian hybrid operations that enable plausible deniability”.

“This group is an Iranian creation,” Phillip Smyth, an analyst on the counterterrorism advisory board for Homeland Security Today, told The i Paper. “The scope of their actions, branding, and Iran’s own messages all demonstrate a clear link.”

For Western security experts, HAYI is “either a construct aligned with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) or an opportunistic network operating within the broader pro-Iranian online ecosystem”, said Radio Free Europe.

Do the attacks follow a pattern?

UK security officials have previously warned of a “rise in ‘gig-economy’ Iranian spies offered cash for operations across Europe”, and have been “actively investigating Iran’s use of social media platforms” to create “sleeper cells with the potential to carry out violent attacks”, said The i Paper.

The spate of arson attacks since the start of the war in Iran are “similar in nature to Russia’s so-called hybrid operations in Europe”, in which people have been recruited online “to carry out sabotage attacks”, said CNN. These are often perpetrated “by non-Russian nationals for small amounts of money and without full knowledge of who the operations serve”.

The series of “low-intensity” incidents involving Jewish and US targets have so far carried “limited material damage but strong symbolic impact, disseminated and amplified through channels linked to the pro-Iranian ecosystem”, said Decode 39.

These “operational and propaganda dynamics point to a possible hybrid model of terrorism in Europe: simple actions, local perpetrators and maximum ambiguity”.

Tony Schumacher gave himself a “tough act to follow” with “The Responder”, said Carol Midgley in The Times. Based on the years he spent working as a police officer, the “quietly glorious” drama about a beleaguered first responder “electrified the flagging cop show format”.

His new series stars the “endlessly watchable” Michael Socha as Matty, a “likeable but chaotic” Liverpool casino manager, and the “equally likeable” Leanne (Sheridan Smith) who works as a cashier. Both have money worries and both start “cooking the books to steal cash until they realise they are both on the fiddle and begin to work together”.

Schumacher has a “rare talent for fleshing out every character and relationship”, said Lucy Mangan in The Guardian. Leanne is a widowed mother of two facing eviction and struggling to make ends meet while looking after her kids and caring for her grandmother who has dementia. Meanwhile, “recovering drug addict” Matty is still in the “grip of a gambling addiction” and is “too ashamed of himself” to see much of his teenage daughter “whom he loves dearly”.

On the surface this is the tale of a robbery at a casino. But in reality it’s an “astonishing, deeply angry, deeply moving state-of-the-nation piece merely masquerading as a mesmerising, perfectly paced and plotted thriller”.

Leanne and Matty soon find themselves “in over their heads” and “at the mercy of serious criminals”, said Anita Singh in The Telegraph. It’s an “enthralling watch”, carried by the “sheer force” of the “charisma” of Socha and Smith. “You’ll be rooting for this hopeless Bonnie and Clyde.”

Yes, the central characters are “interesting”, said Nick Hilton in The Independent. However, other aspects of the show “slip into cliché”, and the “streak of sentimentality” introduces a certain “triteness”.

I found the “emotionally weighty” drama “deeply” moving, said Janet A. Leigh on Digital Spy. And “The Cage” gets its pacing “spot on”, gradually building the “delicious tension” with a multi-layered, “consuming” story. “Before episode one draws to a close, you will be hooked.”

With the Trump administration ramping up ICE raids and mass deportations, some immigrants are falling victim to scammers going after these vulnerable communities. Many of the targeted immigrants, including those who are in the country legally, say they’ve lost thousands of dollars and are often left with no recourse.

How are these scams perpetrated?

Legal organizations and immigrant rights groups “have warned that scams targeting immigrants and attorneys have increased to an alarming level,” said Mother Jones. Scammers may look to focus on these people because of the “desperate positions many immigrants find themselves in today as the Trump administration ramps up detention and deportation efforts.” The exact schemes vary, but scammers frequently “adopt the name of a reputable law office” and “advertise themselves on Facebook as law firms.”

These scammers then coerce their victims into handing over large sums of money in exchange for purported legal advice. At least “six immigrants in five states — Florida, Iowa, Michigan, New York and Washington — lost between $1,300 and $11,000 to criminal networks operating on Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp,” said NBC News. One legal resident of the U.S., Odalys González Silvera, sent scammers $5,488, and Evelyn Molina, a Peruvian asylum seeker, was “scammed by a purported law firm on Facebook that promised her residency through a fictitious virtual hearing.”

Some of the scammers also pretend to be law enforcement. One man in San Diego recently pleaded guilty to “impersonating an immigration agent in order to con tens of thousands of dollars from Orange County immigrants” seeking green cards, said KNSD-TV San Diego. The man victimized undocumented immigrants by “telling them he could help with work permits, legal U.S. residency and U.S. citizenship,” and reportedly charged between $10,000 and $20,000.

How can people protect themselves?

Some officials are working to stem the flow of these scammers. Most notably, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg sent a letter to Meta, the parent company of Facebook, asking them to crack down on the schemes. Meta can “play an important role in protecting users from fraud and theft” and should “prioritize addressing reports of imposter accounts where criminality is alleged and temporarily suspend those accounts while the investigation is conducted,” Bragg’s letter said.

There are other ways experts say immigrants can protect themselves. One major step is to verify that the person in question is a licensed attorney. All states “have a website where you can confirm whether an attorney or accredited representative has an active practice license,” said NBC News. People should also refrain from paying via instant transfer systems like PayPal, Venmo or Zelle, as “legitimate legal organizations and private lawyers always present a formal contract and collect payment in a planned manner.”

Despite these tips, the fight to stop the scamming is ongoing, and the “impacts on victims are endless,” said Mother Jones. Beyond the money lost, the victims may also end up “missing court deadlines and hearings in their cases at a time when the system is increasingly hostile to them.” The scams “hurt the rule of law. It hurts our standing as a system of justice,” Charity Anastasio, a counsel at the American Immigration Lawyers Association, told Mother Jones. The legal system is “under enough attack now already. We really don’t need this added criminal element.”

‘Fidelity’ by Yaya Bey

★★★

“Whether the subject is her people, herself, or a loved one,” Yaya Bey is “one of the most thoughtful, incisive, and witty lyricists of her generation,” said Andy Kellman in AllMusic. On a record that “caps a three-album/three-year streak for the ages,” the Queens-born singer, songwriter, and producer is once again synthesizing soul, funk, hip-hop, reggae, and electronic dance music “with buoyant facility.” While she lamented her late father on 2024’s Ten Fold, the mourning she does on Fidelity is more expansive, addressing losses suffered by the Black community, from gentrification to the abbreviated lives of great artists. Despite the focus on weighty subjects, the artist, at 35, “still finds ways to inject some humor,” said Grant Sharples in Paste. On “Simp Daddy Line Dance,” she chides a deadbeat lover while playfully interpolating dance commands from DJ Casper’s “Cha-Cha Slide.” She’s at her best on “Blue,” with her rhythm section entwined “like slow dancers in a tight embrace” before Bey’s “mesmerizing” voice “emerges like a light in thick fog,” singing about a new day. “Life is far too short, she tells us, to not lay it all out there.”

‘Nine Inch Noize’ by Nine Inch Nails & Boys Noize

★★★

“Ever wondered what Trent Reznor would be like with a couple of glow sticks and a string vest?” asked Rich Hobson in Louder. “That’s effectively the question Nine Inch Noize answers,” memorializing the recent rave-tent collaborations between the industrial-rock legend and German-Iraqi DJ Alex Ridha, aka Boys Noize. The pair’s remixes feature “some brilliant reinterpretations of classic Nine Inch Nails cuts,” including of “Heresy,” which here becomes “a cross between Purple Rain–era Prince and Godflesh.” All that’s missing is “the full sensory experience” of the act’s live show, so don’t miss the videos from Coachella posted online. While Nine Inch Noize is “essentially an EDM album,” said Kory Grow in Rolling Stone, it’s also “a full-circle moment” for Reznor. From NIN’s earliest days, he put out multiple mixes of the band’s singles “in hopes of filling smoky dance floors at Midwestern goth nights.” Aside from “Closer,” Reznor and Ridha avoided obvious NIN hits. “Instead, they chose songs that could benefit from head-imploding electronic bass drums and a little TB-303 squelch.” The most unexpected track: a cover of Soft Cell’s “Memorabilia” that ends with a big house beat.

Leave it to L.A. to erect a new signature building that “challenges nearly every convention of what a museum should be,” said Sam Lubell in the Los Angeles Times. Twenty years in the making, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art’s new $724 million centerpiece is a megastructure three football fields long whose sinuous single exhibition floor hovers 30 feet off the ground and on one end hurdles palm-tree-lined Wilshire Boulevard. “This is no machine or temple for art. It has the scale of a landform and the shape of a living being. And like all living beings, it is far from perfect.” But the new home of LACMA’s permanent collection reinvents the largest museum in the western U.S. and, in an era when even Southern California seems to have lost its nerve, “stands as a reminder that risk and ambition are still possible.”

It’s certainly “the most significant American museum built this century,” and “not merely because of its architecture,” said Michael J. Lewis in The Wall Street Journal. Michael Govan, LACMA’s director since 2006, aimed to redefine the museum-going experience when he picked Swiss architect Peter Zumthor to pursue the mission. Govan wanted to eliminate the chronological display of an international art collection that spans centuries, inviting visitors to wander among the works unguided, as if in a forest. Unfortunately, the largely formless building Zumthor has created shows “a willful disregard for the way that people experience space” and is “maddeningly difficult to navigate.” The natural light let in by the floor-to-ceiling windows that wrap the half-mile-long gallery space is welcome, but the interior is crammed with 29 boxy concrete galleries that are all “oppressively gloomy.” It’s a confounding place. “Its error is to confuse formlessness with freedom.”

The concrete-and-glass exterior, despite its sweeping curves and amoeba-like form, looks “surprisingly conventional” from ground level, said Paul Goldberger in Air Mail. “You want it to dance a little more.” Stepping inside, however, I was pleasantly surprised. When LACMA provided a preview last summer, before the art was installed, some visitors worried that the endless windows and concrete interior walls would defeat effective display, but rough concrete turns out to be an “exceptionally elegant” backdrop for paintings and sculpture, adding more drama than painted plaster could, while Zumthor’s meandering form “makes you want to meander within it.” The experience of chancing upon remarkable works of art and design as you wander can be “thoroughly engaging,” said Sarah Amelar in Architectural Record. You might be taken in by a 17th-century Dutch master, a court robe from Qing-dynasty China, or a Raymond Loewy–designed 1963 Studebaker Avanti. “I didn’t expect to be enthralled, but I found the art-viewing experience so captivating that I eventually had to be torn away—and can’t wait to go back.”

‘Mutiny: The Rise and Revolt of the College-Educated Working Class’ by Noam Scheiber

“A college-educated working class sounds like an oxymoron,” said George Packer in The Atlantic. But New York Times labor reporter Noam Scheiber has great hopes for the cohort on which he’s affixed that label: college graduates in their 20s and early 30s who have had to settle for low-paying wage work after earning their degrees. In his new book, Scheiber profiles about a dozen or so young Americans who turned to labor activism following dispiriting experiences with employers including Starbucks, Amazon, Apple, Hollywood studios, and the universities that impoverished them in the first place. While he occasionally questions his subjects’ career decisions, “he’s plainly on their side,” viewing their perception of unfairness as real and their activism as the best way to fight economic inequality. Unfortunately, “he isn’t sufficiently aware of the insularity of their project,” of how unlikely it is that these young progressives will ever be joined by noncollege wage workers in an effective broader movement.

“There’s much truth in Scheiber’s reporting,” said Eric Levitz in Vox. College graduates have become more progressive in their economic views since the 1990s and more likely to identify with rank-and-file workers. But his claim that today’s college grads have been pushed leftward mainly by their collapsing economic fortunes is “a bit misleading.” Yes, tuition and housing costs have soared. But the share of college grads who hold low-wage jobs is smaller than it was three decades ago, and the relative return on a degree in lifetime earnings, despite the impact of the Great Recession and the pandemic, is significantly greater. The stories Scheiber shares are well told, and the precarity of his subjects’ lives “vividly evoked,” said Ruy Teixeira in The Wall Street Journal. But among their generation, they’re “an idiosyncratic subset,” not the norm.

You could also say Scheiber’s heroes were naive to expect better from their employers, said Kenneth S. Baer in Washington Monthly. Often, though, they were misled. Apple used the label “geniuses” for retail-store staffers like Chaya Barrett, but the sweet talk didn’t pay her bills and she soon turned to union organizing. While Mutiny celebrates such activism, Scheiber is “too keen an observer of American political life” to fail to mention that the college-educated working class may be too progressive to mesh easily with the rest of the working class, whose members strongly favored President Trump in 2024. But while Scheiber focuses on workplace issues, Mutiny is “ultimately an education book,” a warning to our colleges and universities that “higher education, as an industry, has become too expensive, too mercenary, and too irrelevant for far too many.”

‘Famesick: A Memoir’ by Lena Dunham

“This may be the first Lena Dunham work built on deep hindsight,” said Madeline Leung Coleman in NYMag.com. The star and creator of Girls shot to fame in her early 20s by appearing to present her own life raw, with all its embarrassments. She did so in her debut film, in her hit HBO series, on Twitter, and in her best-selling 2014 memoir. Now, though, as she nears 40, Dunham is ready to look back on those heady years and connect the dots between her impulse to share, her lightning-rod status, and the onset of chronic illnesses that still plague her. “It’s a Hollywood story written in blood and vomit and pus,” but because she’s a savvy writer, “she knows to foreground the relatable.”

“If you’ve hated Dunham this whole time and resented her success, well, good news,” said Scaachi Koul in Slate. “Famesick will tell you just how awful all that success made her feel.” As her star rose, critics blamed her for everything wrong in the world, including the failures of feminism, Millennials, and white people, and Dunham was listening. Worse, as she stretched herself thin during Girls’ six-season run, her body was rebelling, generating racking pain, triggering a Klonopin addiction, and eventually requiring acceptance of living with an incurable connective tissue disorder. Not surprisingly, “it’s a shocking and funny read,” packed with tidbits about fellow celebrities, and a reminder of “what made her so interesting in the first place.”

Dunham’s first memoir was “pert and packaged,” adorned with lists, asterisks, and “cute little pen-and-ink illustrations,” said Alexandra Jacobs in The New York Times. Famesick, to its credit, “dispenses with such pleasantries.” It also names names. Hitmaker Jack Antonoff is painted as an inadequate boyfriend. Adam Driver, Dunham’s onscreen boyfriend, throws a chair during the shooting of a difficult scene. Jenni Konner, Dunham’s co-showrunner, comes across as “a callous taskmistress,” one who ignored Dunham’s calls for medical help. “What a relief,” then, that Dunham, who’s been sober for eight years and is now married to a man she mentions only in the acknowledgments, is “not a true casualty of all the cruelty visited upon her.”

There has been an increase in the spread of alpha-gal syndrome (AGS), a tick-borne disease that can cause a serious allergy to red meat. More than 110,000 suspected cases of AGS were identified between 2010 and 2022, and while the actual number of U.S. cases is not known, as many as 450,000 people may be affected, according to the CDC. With a particularly strong tick season on the horizon and climate change continuing to worsen, the illness is likely to become more common.

What are the symptoms of AGS?

Alpha-gal is a molecule that is “naturally produced in the bodies of most mammals but not in people” and also “found in the saliva (spit) of some ticks,” said the CDC. When someone gets bitten by a tick, the alpha-gal molecule can be transferred to their blood. Then the “body’s natural defenses, or immune system, can identify alpha-gal as a threat and trigger an allergic reaction.” The reaction occurs “after people eat red meat or are exposed to other products made from mammals.”

Unlike most other allergies, which tend to produce reactions almost immediately, “those with alpha-gal may not experience a reaction to a hamburger for four or six hours” because of “how alpha-gal binds to fats, taking longer to absorb,” said The New York Times. Symptoms may manifest in different ways depending on the person, including “hives, angioedema, gastrointestinal distress and life-threatening anaphylaxis,” said an article published in the Journal of Medical Entomology. There is currently no cure for AGS, and the most common treatment is avoiding “not only red meat and dairy but also vaccines, antivenoms and medications made with components derived from mammals,” said Entomology Today.

AGS can be diagnosed through a blood test, but experts advise getting tested only when someone experiences a reaction and not just after being bitten by a tick. “It’s perfectly clear that 50% of people who have a positive test have no reactions whatsoever,” Thomas Platts-Mills, an allergist at the University of Virginia School of Medicine, said to the Times. The factors that determine whether someone has a reaction are still unknown. Along with some people being asymptomatic, “there are so many false positives,” Scott Commins, a professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Medicine, said to the Times. “So testing after any tick bite would lead to a lot of people avoiding red meat unnecessarily.”

How common is it?

It will likely be a bad year for ticks, “with an unusually high number of bites already reported across the country,” said The Associated Press. “If you have a lot of exposures, there will probably be more cases of tick-related infections,” Alina Filozov, an infectious disease doctor at Middlesex Hospital in Middletown, Connecticut, told the outlet. In the U.S., AGS is “primarily associated with the bite of a lone star tick” and less commonly with the bite of a “blacklegged tick or a western blacklegged tick,” said the CDC. There have been at least 12 tick species linked to alpha-gal syndrome globally, and the disease has been found on six continents.

The best way to prevent AGS is to avoid being bitten by ticks in the first place. Steer clear of heavily wooded or grassy areas, wear light colors and use an approved insect repellent. If you do find a tick on yourself or your pet, remove it immediately.

Climate change is expanding the range of these insects. “Ticks like warm, humid weather, and more can be seen after a mild winter,” said the AP. “More deer and mice available for them to feed on may also factor.” Along with AGS, ticks can spread other diseases, including Lyme disease and Rocky Mountain spotted fever.

Thrill seekers, consider China for your next adventure. There are lots of spots around the country where you can get your adrenaline pumping, whether that involves taking a hair-raising plank walk along a sheer cliff or bungee jumping from the top of Macau Tower. These six experiences are not for the faint of heart, but they will surely give you stories to share.

Pass through the Guoliang Tunnel, Henan province

The Guoliang Tunnel in the Taihang Mountains may seem like an ancient wonder, but it was constructed in the 1970s by villagers who carved it into the side of a cliff. This .75-mile-long tunnel is 16 feet tall and 13 feet wide, and allowed cars to enter and exit the isolated village.

The construction is an “amazing feat” but has never been a “pillar of safety.” Visitors who brave the road will find that “in many spots, roughly carved pillars are the only thing keeping you from plunging to your death,” said Atlas Obscura. There are “twists, turns and dips” in the most “unpredictable places,” and it’s a trip whether you’re walking through or driving “white-knuckled in terror.”

Take the Mount Huashan Plank Walk, Shaanxi province

Whatever you do, don’t unhook your harness and rope. Those tools are what keep you upright on the Mount Huashan Plank Walk — and prevent you from plunging 1,000 feet to the bottom of the cliff. The 328-foot-long path is described as the World’s Most Dangerous Hiking Trail and consists of wooden boards nailed together and affixed to the side of the mountain. It’s safer now to visit than it once was: It used to be a free climb.

Travel along the Sichuan-Tibet Highway

It’s understandable if you want to keep your eyes closed when traveling on the Sichuan-Tibet Highway, but don’t — you’ll miss the breathtaking scenery. This highway is one of the world’s most dangerous roads, with hairpin turns, narrow and steep descents and high risk for mudslides and rockslides.

The curvy 1,500-mile route links Chengdu in Sichuan province with Lhasa, the capital of Tibet, and passes through rugged mountains and valleys and by glaciers, rivers and permafrost. The highest point is the Mount Zheduoshan Pass at 14,075 feet, offering panoramic views, plus, of course, the potential for altitude sickness. Driving this route is challenging, and you should plan on trips taking longer than expected because of how slow cars, buses and trucks have to drive through certain areas.

Go bungee jumping at Skypark Macau

Macau is considered the “Vegas of China,” an “epicenter of gambling and glitz," said Lonely Planet. And just like in Vegas, there are lots of over-the-top ways to spend your time — like by leaping from the top of the 1,109-foot-tall Macau Tower at Skypark Macau.

Skypark is the highest commercial bungee jumping facility in the world, and the attraction says more than 5 million people have safely bungeed with the company. Visitors also have the option to take it a bit slower and instead glide down the tower while attached to a wire cable.

Power paraglide in Yangshuo, Guangxi region

Soaring above picturesque Yangshuo and its tall karsts and verdant valleys is an electrifying way to sightsee. Powered paragliding is gaining popularity in Yangshuo, with pilots taking tourists on guided tours through the sky. When back on solid ground, rent a bike to ride through the countryside, then climb aboard a bamboo raft for a journey down the Yulong River.

Walk across the Zhangjiajie Glass Bridge, Hunan province

Take a walk on the wild side. The 1,410-foot-long Zhangjiajie Glass Bridge is suspended 980 feet above the ground, and its transparent glass bottom allows visitors to look at the “dizzying abyss below,” said Escape. The span connects two cliffs at Zhangjiajie National Forest Park and offers an exhilarating way to enjoy the “panoramic” views. It’s not the park’s only thrill: You can also shoot up the Bailong Elevator, the world’s tallest outdoor elevator, built into a cliff. There’s a glass window, so you can look around you as the elevator climbs 1,000 feet in two minutes.

President Donald Trump is, by his own repeated admissions, first and foremost a businessman. Even after entering the rarified echelons of hegemonic decision-making, he often touts his track record as a corporate wheeler-dealer as proof he's prepared for the pressures of managing a geopolitical superpower. Now, as commander in chief, Trump has seemingly merged the political with the profitable. From teasing tariffs to raking in royalties, the president has used the Oval Office for his own financial interests in many ways. (edited)

Cryptocurrency

Of all the various Trump-linked business projects operating concurrently with the president’s administration, “none” pose a conflict of interest that can “compare to those that have emerged since the birth” of cryptocurrency firm World Liberty Financial, said The New York Times. Trump is now “not only a major crypto dealer” but one of the industry’s “top policy makers,” whose family-owned foray into digital currency is “eviscerating the boundary between private enterprise and government policy.”

During the first year of his second term, Trump signed the GENIUS Act into law, thereby establishing federal regulations that the “industry had sought around stablecoins, a kind of cryptocurrency pegged to the U.S. dollar,” said Time. “Earlier that year,” Trump launched USD1, “his own stablecoin business.”

World Liberty also offers “governance tokens,” which can be purchased to offer owners “certain voting rights in its business, though not equity stakes,” The Associated Press said. The result? “Hundreds of millions of dollars” for Trump and his family from his World Liberty ownership and a “separate side deal allowing them a cut of these sales.”

Real estate development

You can take the president out of the cutthroat world of elite property deals, but you can’t take the elite property deals out of the president. At least that is how Trump seems to have operated since taking office, with his geopolitical responsibilities in office often overlapping with international development deals being pursued in his corporate name.

While the eponymous Trump Organization “did zero deals in foreign countries” during the first Trump term, it has done at least eight in his second, “all ostensibly complying with the Trump Organization’s self-imposed rule not to do business directly with foreign governments,” said the AP. But “authoritarian” and one-party states “rarely take a hands-off approach” when it comes to big business deals — “especially when the business belongs to a sitting president.”

The president “continues to profit” from his partnership with a “major Saudi developer with a history of close ties to the royal family,” said The New Yorker. This past winter, the Trump organization began “licensing its name” for the development of a “new golf club, a luxury hotel and a number of mansions in Diriyah, near Riyadh.” It has also “sold the use of the president’s name for a Trump Plaza development in Jeddah.”

Tariffs

In his second term, Trump has centered tariffs as a load-bearing policy of his entire administration. But to “truly understand why Donald Trump likes tariffs so much,” said Jen Psaki on MS NOW, “you have to look at the Trump International real estate development” project moving forward in Vietnam.

Trump’s threat to slap the Vietnamese government with exorbitantly high tariffs on the self-titled “liberation day” came amid a push for luxury developments in and around the country. Hanoi was facing “intense pressure to strike a trade deal that would head off President Trump’s threat of steep tariffs,” said The New York Times. That pressure prompted Vietnamese officials to request support from the top levels of government, as the project was “receiving special attention from the Trump administration and President Donald Trump personally,” per a letter obtained by the Times.

Trump’s “freewheeling use of tariffs as a tool of American power” has seen him apply the economic measure toward “national security goals, as well as the interests of individual companies,” The Washington Post said. Tariffs are a “tool the president enjoys because it’s personal power,” former Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke said at HuffPo.

With tariffs, Trump doesn’t “have to go through Congress” and can “exercise personal power” instead. Tariffs, to Trump, are a “potent and unilateral mechanism for reintroducing systematic corruption into the economy,” said Mother Jones. Controlling tariffs allows the White House to “grant waivers and exemptions,” which forces “people, corporations, localities and even nations and foreign actors to come seeking reprieve on bended knee.”

Tchotchkes and royalties

The first year of Trump’s second term in office was a “lucrative” one when it came to “royalty payments for the various goods that are sold featuring his name and likeness,” said NBC News. Per his 2025 financial disclosure forms, Trump that year earned more than $1 million from sales of his “45 guitar, which features Trump’s ‘Make America Great Again’ phrase inlaid in ‘authentic pearl’ on the neck of the guitar, as well as the “number ‘45’ on the headstock, referring to his time as the 45th president of the United States,” said Fox Business.

The disclosure forms also list him as earning $2.5 million in royalties from “Trump Sneakers and Fragrances” and an additional $1.3 million from the “Greenwood Bible,” inspired by singer Lee Greenwood — a frequent Trump supporter — and his “God Bless the U.S.A.” anthem. “Besides a King James Version translation,” Trump’s bible contains “the U.S. Constitution, the Bill of Rights, the Declaration of Independence and the Pledge of Allegiance, as well as a handwritten chorus of the famous Greenwood song,” The Associated Press said.

Trump’s licensing and merchandise windfalls come after he “launched a number of new licensing deals” in late 2024, a “couple of weeks before taking the oath of office,” Time said.

Settlements and suit threats

Since returning to office, the famously litigious Trump has raked in at least $90 million in lawsuit settlements from tech and media juggernauts, including X, Meta and Paramount, The New York Times said, even as many of Trump’s suits weren’t “justified on the merits.” Several of those high-profile settlements were then used to “help fund the creation of Donald Trump’s presidential library,” The New Republic said.

The Miami-based site, which, in a “perfect Trumpian twist may also double as a hotel,” has earned congressional notice for its unique funding origins. “Not one” of the companies whose settlement funds are being applied “can say with any clarity where their multimillion-dollar donations to Donald Trump’s library slush fund are or where they will go,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) said to The New Republic.

Scrutiny over Trump’s settlement-funded library comes as the White House is “engaged in discussions’ with the president’s IRS and Treasury Departments to “resolve” a $10 billion lawsuit filed this past winter that accuses the agencies of an “unauthorized leak of his tax information during his first administration,” CNN said. Trump filed that suit “personally, not in his official capacity as president,” although any monetary settlement would see “Trump’s own administration paying him and his family.”

Like father, like sons

For as much as Trump has expanded the horizons of potential presidential profiteering, so too have his eldest sons, Don Jr. and Eric, done the same for the Trump dynasty. Last spring, the pair “contributed their family name — and nothing else of obvious value — to a complicated series of transactions” to take a significant stake in the cryptocurrency mining firm American Bitcoin, said The New Yorker. Had their father lost in 2024, “surely” they wouldn’t have been granted “such a large stake in a business that they had virtually no experience in and to which they had contributed so little.”

As the pair’s “new drone company seeks Pentagon contracts,” other government contracting companies in which at least one brother owns an ownership stake “are taking in tens of millions of dollars of new taxpayer money,” the AP said. Still, the notion that Donald Jr. should “cease living his life and making a living to provide for his five kids” simply because of his father is “quite frankly, a laughable and ridiculous standard,” said a family spokesperson to the outlet.

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Clean energy pushes fossil-fuel power into reverse

Renewable energy met all global electricity demand growth in 2025, with solar generation surging by nearly a third. This is the first time that clean energy generation, including solar, wind and water power, has pushed “fossil fuel power into reverse,” said Euronews. Solar generation met 75% of the rise in demand, while wind supplied most of the remaining increase, according to research from the think tank Ember. Renewables now produce 34% of global electricity.

A music fan’s recordings of 10,000 shows go online for free

Aadam Jacobs has been taping live concerts for 40 years, and is now uploading 10,000 recordings to a free online archive. The Aadam Jacobs Collection, hosted by the Internet Archive, features his recordings of major artists at small Chicago venues in the 1980s, including Nirvana and The Cure. He first used a Walkman-style recorder to tape the performances, and then purchased digital recorders. Volunteers are working with Jacobs to organize, digitize and upload the tapes.

Independent bookstores stage a comeback

A total of 422 new independent bookstores opened across the U.S. in 2025, up 31% from 2024, according to data from the American Booksellers Association. That uptick defies “predictions of retail consolidation,” said Gene Marks at The Guardian, and leans into the spirit of “entrepreneurism and independence.” Indie bookshops also offer “resources and spaces for learning, organizing and respite,” providing “third spaces” for people in cities, towns and rural areas, Mark Pearson said at the Los Angeles Times.

First ‘cloud jaguar’ spotted in 10 years in Honduras

A camera trap in Honduras’ Sierra del Merendón mountain range recently captured the first footage of a jaguar there in a decade. The animal is called a “cloud jaguar,” since it was spotted in a mountaintop cloud forest. Local officials and Panthera, a wildcat conservation organization, have been working together to improve conditions in the area for jaguars, taking steps like increasing the number of anti-poaching rangers on patrol and reintroducing iguanas and other prey.

What happened

President Donald Trump and first lady Melania Trump on Monday separately demanded that ABC fire late-night host Jimmy Kimmel over a parody White House Correspondents’ Association dinner roast during last week’s show in which Kimmel joked that the first lady had a “glow like an expectant widow.” The outcry followed the shooting incident at the real gala two nights later. Federal prosecutors on Monday charged the alleged gunman with trying to assassinate Trump.

Who said what

Kimmel’s “rhetoric” was “completely deranged,” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters. “Who in their right mind says a wife would be glowing over the potential murder of her beloved husband?” It was “obviously” a “very light roast joke about the fact that he’s almost 80 and she’s younger than I am,” Kimmel said on Monday night’s “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” The joke “was not, by any stretch of the definition, a call to assassination, and they know that.”

What next?

The controversy over a joke about a “dinner meant to honor the First Amendment is sure to revive” the censorship battle between Trump and Kimmel that “erupted” last fall, The New York Times said. After a brief suspension following a joke involving Charlie Kirk, Kimmel signed a one-year contract extension due to keep him on air until May 2027.

‘Report cards are sending parents the wrong signals’

Bloomberg editorial board

Most “students in the U.S. aren’t proficient in reading or math — but you wouldn’t know it by looking at their report cards,” says the Bloomberg editorial board. Grade inflation “has been seeping through the nation’s education system for decades and worsened during the pandemic,” and “today, more than half of schools use at least one ‘alternative grading’ strategy, including ‘no zeros.’” It “isn’t hard to see how such measures might obscure academic weaknesses and mislead parents.”

Read more

‘Why we should agree to agree’

Lisa Sherman at Time

At a “time when many of our most important conversations feel increasingly polarized, it’s easy to fall into patterns,” says Lisa Sherman. When a “conversation begins to feel too complex or emotionally charged, we often reach for a common refrain: ‘agree to disagree.’” But “building on the common ground that already exists is the key to bridging what divides us.” What “matters more than perfect agreement is what we do with disagreement once we’ve chosen to move forward.”

Read more

‘African governments need to take urgent action on fertilizer shortages’

Martin Fregene and Chakib Jenane at Al Jazeera

The “conflict between the United States, Israel and Iran is disrupting global fertilizer trade flows — and this stands to leave millions of African farmers without the ammonia, urea, phosphate, sulphur and other fertilizer inputs vital to growing more food in sub-Saharan Africa,” say Martin Fregene and Chakib Jenane. When “global supply falters, Africa’s farmers often feel the economic shocks the hardest.” Fertilizer security is “tied to food security, which, in turn, is linked to economic and social stability.”

Read more

‘Newspapers face tight supply as mills cut newsprint production’

Brier Dudley at The Seattle Times

As if “they didn’t have enough to deal with, America’s newspaper publishers are facing a tight supply of newsprint that’s driving up prices,” says Brier Dudley. The “crunch may be temporary but it highlights the uncertainty and cost pressures straining a local news industry that’s largely online nowadays but still heavily dependent on printed newspapers.” There is “little consolation” for “some local publishers scrambling for enough paper to print the next week’s newspapers.”

Read more

Japan wrote pacifism into its constitution and culture following World War II, but that era may be coming to an end. Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi last week moved to allow arms sales to foreign countries, signaling a pivot toward a more hawkish stance.

Many Japanese felt pride in the country’s postwar commitment to “never resort to force to settle international disputes,” said The Wall Street Journal. Pacifism “has been our moral compass after the tragedy,” 87-year-old Michiko Yagi said to the outlet. But growing tensions with China have sharpened a sense of alarm and increased support for Takaichi’s efforts to build the country’s defenses. Japan cannot expect the U.S. to come to the country’s defense “when our own people aren’t even defending our own country,” said Nagasaki resident Masashi Kajiyama.

The U.S. focus on Iran is a factor in the pivot: The Trump administration moved military assets from Asia to the Middle East to support the war, leaving Japanese leaders “rushing to find viable alternatives for its own security and defense,” Keio University’s Michito Tsuruoka said to The New York Times. Raising Japan’s defenses is a response to an “increasingly challenging security environment,” Takaichi said in a social media post.

What did the commentators say?

Japan’s pacifism “once served a purpose,” Kenji Yoshida said at Asia Times. Dovishness “reassured neighbors” threatened by the country’s former militarism and enabled a near-miraculous economic recovery from World War II. But such stances “can outlive their usefulness.” Tokyo has long found ways to stretch its supposed constitutional limits, dispatching minesweepers during the 1991 Gulf War and deploying “noncombat” troops to Iraq during the 2004 invasion. “Public opinion remains cautious” on such issues, but the time has come for Japan to shed its “unsustainable pacifist illusion.”

The Japanese public is “divided” on the move to a more hawkish stance, The Japan Times said in an editorial. Japanese people retain an “instinctive concern” about security issues that is a “remnant of the bitter experience of World War II.” But an “increasingly contested security environment” in Asia requires change. Tokyo must “value hard power as a contributor to deterrence” against threats. “Ideally, the provision of defense equipment will prevent conflict, not enable it.”

What next?

Japan has seen a “seeming erosion of pacifist norms” over the past decade, said The Diplomat. Mass protests greeted 2015 legislation to allow the country’s military to deploy overseas. But Takaichi’s recent popularity suggests the arrival of a “post-pacifist” era, giving her “unprecedented authority to expand Japan’s defense ambitions.”

Takaichi has suggested she will seek “changes to the pacifist clause” of Japan’s constitution, said The Washington Post. But the hints of change have also sparked “rare nationwide protests” by Japanese who fear the country might be “drawn into military conflicts if it drops its constitutional guardrails.” The “hollowing out of pacifism” could prompt a backlash from Japan’s neighbors, Hiroshima City University’s Shiro Sato said to the Post, making Japan less safe by “increasing insecurity and potentially worsening the security environment.”

What happened

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) said on Monday that a Senate bill to fund most of the Department of Homeland Security contains “problematic language,” and House Republicans “have a modified version” that would be “much better for both chambers.” Any changes to the bill, which the Senate twice passed unanimously a month ago, would prolong the record 73-day DHS shutdown.

Who said what

Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) told reporters that anything other than a “technical fix” in the House would be a “real problem.” A group of House Republicans is pushing to strip “language that ‘zeroes out’ funding for ICE and Border Patrol,” seeking to avoid “taking a vote seen as defunding law enforcement,” Axios said. “Frustration is running high among Senate Republicans over Johnson’s failure” to get his party in line. There’s also “growing animosity from rank-and-file Republicans that a handful of conservatives are dictating the process,” CNN said.

What next?

DHS funding is one of a “slew of contentious votes” Republicans face this week, along with spy powers legislation “that conservative privacy hawks detest and a massive farm bill that’s angered the MAHA bloc of the GOP,” CNN said.

What happened

Iran has proposed a deal to open the State of Hormuz provided the U.S. and Israel cease their attacks and the U.S. ends its naval blockade of Iranian ships and ports. Tehran’s nuclear program and enriched uranium would be discussed at a later date. The proposal, passed to the U.S. through Pakistan on Sunday, followed an Iranian offer to suspend its uranium enrichment that President Donald Trump rejected.

Who said what

Trump is “unhappy with Iran's proposal as he wants nuclear issues dealt with from the outset,” Reuters said, citing a U.S. official. The proposal was “subject to a vigorous debate inside the administration” over which side “has more leverage,” The New York Times said, “and which country is better positioned to endure the economic hardship” from the strait’s closure.

Iranian officials are “serious about getting themselves out of the mess that they’re in,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Fox News. The Americans “have achieved none of their goals, and this is why they are asking for negotiations,” Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi told reporters in Russia. “We are now considering it.” Leaders of European nations also weighed in: the U.S. “quite obviously went into this war without any strategy” and has “no truly convincing strategy in the negotiations either,” German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said Monday. “A whole nation is being humiliated by the Iranian leadership.”

What next?

The “tense stalemate” has “entered a Cold War-like phase of financial sanctions, gunboat interdictions and talks about having talks,” with “no immediate end in sight,” Axios said. With the midterms six months away, a “frozen conflict is the worst thing for Trump politically and economically,” said a source close to the president.

CROSSWORD - May 8, 2026

SUDOKU - May 8, 2026

CROSSWORD - May 8, 2026

SUDOKU - May 8, 2026

The Trump administration’s threat to review its position on Britain’s claim to the Falkland Islands could have a significant impact on the future of the South Atlantic British Overseas Territory, analysts have said.

A leaked internal Pentagon memo published last week by Reuters revealed that, as punishment for not supporting Donald Trump’s war against Iran, the US could reassess diplomatic support for longstanding European “imperial possessions”, such as the ⁠Falkland Islands, which have been administered by Britain since 1833 but are still claimed by Argentina.

Argentina’s President Javier Milei is “upbeat about the prospects”, said Reuters, after the Trump ally told a radio show that “we are doing everything humanly possible to bring the Falkland Islands back into Argentine hands”.

On Monday, his vice president, Victoria Villarruel, ramped up rhetoric further by calling for Falkland Islanders to go back to England.

What did the commentators say?

Donald Trump “has repeatedly demonstrated his desire to use transactional diplomacy to pressure both allies and adversaries”, said the BBC. The Falklands are a “pressure point for the UK but irrelevant to the US”, making them a perfect target for this kind of “leverage”.

Given the current state of Britain’s armed forces, the UK would “struggle to defend the Falkland Islands if Donald Trump followed through on threats to withdraw American support for British sovereignty”, said The i Paper.

But while the loss of American backing for UK control of the islands would “make it easier for Argentina to press its claim more assertively”, said Dr Johanna Amaya-Panche, senior lecturer in international relations and politics at Liverpool John Moores University, an invasion remains unlikely.

“Argentina is not capable of retaking the islands militarily, and there is no credible indication that it intends to try,” but the Milei government “may adopt a more assertive diplomatic or legal strategy, seeking to internationalise the dispute and mobilise external support”.

Downing Street has insisted that the Falkland Islands’ status will remain unchanged, with the prime minister’s spokesperson saying “sovereignty rests with the UK and the islanders’ right to self-determination is paramount”.

“Such robustness is a welcome surprise,” said The Telegraph in an editorial. The government will be hoping the state visit by King Charles will help defuse tensions with the White House. The reality is that “casting doubt over the ownership of the Falklands would hardly be in Washington’s interests”. Even in 1982, the Royal Navy “had to leave other missions unresourced in order to retake the islands” and today its numbers are “so shrunken that it could never act meaningfully in the South Atlantic and in support of the US simultaneously”.

What next?

If the US did change its position to one in which it supported Argentinian claims over the islands, that would be “pretty significant”, Ed Arnold from the Royal United Services Institute security think tank, told the BBC, as “it might cause other countries to move that way as well”.

“You could potentially see a situation where Argentina pushes for some intervention at the UN and the US may support or just not actively block.”

“A change of US policy towards the sovereignty of the Falklands will not mean we will face a repeat” of the 1982 war with Argentina, said former defence secretary Penny Mordaunt in The Express. “But it should be a reminder that the world can change fast” and that “we owe it to all Brits, whether they reside in the UK or in her territories, that we are capable of defending them and their interests.”

The case of an “off-grid” Anglo-Australian couple whose children were removed by authorities has divided Italy. Nathan Trevallion, a British former chef, and Australian ex-horse trainer Catherine Birmingham were raising three children in a stone farmhouse in the woods of the mountainous Abruzzo region. But the children were taken into care last year, when the family ended up in hospital after eating poisonous foraged mushrooms.

The couple have been battling to get their children back, filing an appeal with the court in regional capital L’Aquila. In the meantime, the family has become a cause célèbre for the far-right, with Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni expressing her “alarm” and declaring that “children are not of the state”.

Remote ‘paradise’

The couple moved to a two-room cottage in Abruzzo’s “remote woodland” in 2021, said The Times. They hoped to “build an off-grid paradise”, growing their own food and homeschooling their daughter, Utopia Rose, now eight, and twins Bluebell and Galorian, seven.

The family would “draw water from a well” and “produce electricity from solar panels”, said The Telegraph. Their house is surrounded by wildlife, including wolves. They slept in one room and used a lavatory in a wooden outhouse, but had a car for shopping in the nearby village of Palmoli, as well as a computer and mobile phones.

But in 2025, when the entire family was hospitalised after eating poisonous mushrooms, their “woodland existence” became known to authorities. Police officers who inspected their home reported the family to social services, who described the farmhouse as “a dilapidated ruin” that was unacceptable for young children. The family “fled to Spain”, then to Emilia-Romagna in northern Italy, before returning to their “little patch of wilderness”.

Five months ago, a juvenile court in L’Aquila ordered that the children be put into care. Prosecutors said the children were being raised in “challenging and harmful” environment, without sanitation, formal education or medical supervision. Their mother was initially allowed to live in a room in the same building as her children. But she was “ejected in March”, said The Times, “accused of turning them against staff”.

Cause célèbre

The decision to remove the children “sparked a fierce debate in the country over alternative lifestyles”, said The Guardian. Both parents have given interviews “generating support from thousands” who want the family kept together, and backlash against the magistrate who ordered the children’s removal.

“We live outside of the system, this is what they’re accusing us of,” Trevallion told La Repubblica. “They are ruining the life of a happy family.” Birmingham told a press conference: “This has been by far the cruellest thing I have experienced and personally seen done to children in my life.”

The Italian far-right has “seized upon the case in the name of educational freedom”, said Le Monde, with deputy prime minister Matteo Salvini likening the case to a kidnapping. Trevallion and Birmingham, “foreigners without clear professional activity, not integrated into Italian society and living in informal housing”, have become improbable “victims to be defended” by a faction that is usually “less sympathetic to such profiles”. But, for Salvini's party, which is linked to Donald Trump and Tommy Robinson, the “forest family” has become “a top priority”, used to “fuel its anti-judge rhetoric, portraying magistrates as enemies of family liberties”.

The couple are currently renovating the farmhouse, adding running water and electricity to comply with social services’ requirements. They are also considering moving into an apartment on the edge of the woods that was offered free by the mayor, as a temporary solution. A decision on whether they can have their children back is possible as soon as next month.

“Britons are rushing to book holidays in the UK”, said the Financial Times. Fears over soaring airfares and travel delays triggered by the Iran war have “put people off long-haul trips”. Holidaymakers choosing to stay closer to home are booking trips everywhere from postcard-worthy Cotswold villages to the rolling valleys of the Yorkshire Dales. Here are some of our favourite spots.

The Fish, Cotswolds

With its “cheerful smattering of honey-hued villages” and “endless rolling green expanses”, the Cotswolds is “one of the loveliest” spots in the UK, said Charley Ward in Condé Nast Traveller. “So where could be better to head for some R&R on a long weekend?” This beautiful part of the country offers plenty of chances for “long walks to cosy pubs along cobbled ancient streets” – the kinds of activities that “you just don’t need to step on a plane for”. Consider checking in at The Fish where you can opt to stay either in a treehouse, cabin or woodland hut. Its “unique village-style layout” promises “extra peace and quiet” and gives you “more precious opportunity to soak up some of the scenery while you amble leisurely over to supper”.

Blakeney Hotel, Norfolk

The pretty coastal village of Blakeney is “secluded up in the most northern part of Norfolk where it’s a positive rather than a hassle that the phone reception is a bit scatty”, said Lela London in GQ. “Not a huge amount happens” here – but that’s sort of the point. If you’re looking for somewhere to completely relax and unwind, try Blakeney Hotel on the seafront. Its “Edwardian handsomeness” feels “reassuringly traditional”, and there are plenty of walks right from the doorstep through the “wildlife-rich marshes” or you can drive along the coast for a visit to the grand stately home of Holkham Hall and wonderful sandy beaches.

Looking Glass Lodge, East Sussex

Nestled among the trees in an ancient woodland just an hour from London, the glass-fronted, eco-friendly Looking Glass Lodge is the “ideal escape for those looking to reconnect with nature”, said Elle. The self-catering retreat is rendered extra-special by thoughtful touches from “luxury deli hampers packed with local cheese and wines” to a “floating log burner for chilly nights and a vinyl collection that fits perfectly with the mood, and in case the owls get too loud”. If you really want to push the boat out you can also book a bespoke treatment with a masseuse, or try a forest bathing session with a local psychotherapist.

Middleton Lodge, North Yorkshire

“When it comes to rural retreats, Middleton Lodge might just have it all,” said Sarah Allard in Condé Nast Traveller. Set within 200 acres of parkland and woods on the edge of the Yorkshire Dales, the Georgian mansion is home to a collection of “light and airy” rooms, with “cloud-like beds with deep, squashy sofas”. But what really “sets this place apart” is the hotel’s “eco-forward ethos”; head chef Jake Jones crafts his menus using ingredients from the “impressive walled garden”. And the idyllic spa includes a heated outdoor pool that’s “so striking, you’ll want to pull your phone out of your robe pocket for a snap”. It’s a must-visit.

The giant kraken, a mythical marine beast, may not be entirely fiction. New evidence suggests that octopuses up to 62 feet long likely roamed the waters of ancient Earth, ripping and devouring prey in their path.

Monster under the sea

These gigantic octopuses might have been formidable predators of the ocean approximately 100 million years ago, according to a study published in the journal Science. “With their large bodies, long arms, powerful jaws and advanced behavior, they represent what could be described as a real Cretaceous Kraken,” said Yasuhiro Iba, a paleontologist at Hokkaido University in Japan and the lead author of the study, to Reuters. The invertebrates would have "rivaled” and “possibly even preyed upon apex predators such as mosasaurs and plesiosaurs,” said The Guardian.

Though octopuses are some of Earth’s oldest animals, they are difficult to study from the past, because they lack hard external shells and have very few fossils. So researchers studied the fossilized beaks of the animals, revealing two extinct species: Nanaimoteuthis jeletzkyi and Nanaimoteuthis haggarti. The beaks and jaws were used to deduce the size of the creatures, between 23 and 62 feet, as well as their feeding habits.

The jaws showed "signs of intensive wear, with patterns indicating that these animals were dismantling hard-shelled prey,” said Live Science (a sister site of The Week). “To see a beak this size is quite amazing, to be honest. It was a massive animal,” said Thomas Clements, a paleobiologist at the University of Reading, to The Guardian. “I certainly wouldn’t have wanted to go swimming in the ancient oceans if these things were swimming around.”

Large and in charge

The octopuses of today are notoriously intelligent, and that was likely the case in the past, as well. The researchers found that the octopuses’ jaws were “ground down on one side by as much as 10% of their total size, based on reconstructions,” said Live Science. This “lopsided loss suggests lateralized behavior, which is linked to being brainier.”

“Some of those remarkable traits” that are also present in the modern-day creatures “may already have been emerging in early octopuses during the Cretaceous,” said Iba to NPR. Along with intelligence, ancient octopuses probably also used their strong tentacles to rip prey apart before eating it, similar to modern octopuses’ hunting patterns.

“For roughly the past 370 million years, marine ​ecosystems have been thought to be dominated by large vertebrate predators — first fishes and sharks, then marine reptiles and later whales,” said Iba. “Giant invertebrates, namely octopuses, also functioned as apex predators in the Cretaceous sea,” according to the research.

However, there may be some inaccuracies in the findings because the researchers used “error-prone” methods in estimating the size of the octopuses and produced the largest possible size range for them, said René Hoffmann, a paleontologist focusing on fossil cephalopods at the Ruhr University Bochum in Germany, to Live Science. Their size also doesn’t necessarily mean that the octopuses were apex predators.

Despite this, the results provide valuable new information about the ancient animals. “It’s a big old planet,” said Neil Landman, a paleontologist at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, to The Associated Press. “So we have lots to look at to piece together the marine ecosystem through time.”

Following an assassination attempt at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner on April 25, President Donald Trump wasted little time in framing the still-ambiguous episode to support his legally dubious ballroom construction efforts. He also used the opportunity to attack a familiar list of political adversaries, including Democrats and members of the press.

What did the commentators say?

After the attack on the WHCA dinner, Trump and his allies have “coalesced” around the embattled ballroom construction project as their “solution for presidential security,” The New York Times said. Trump’s plans for the White House ballroom include a secure bunker under what was once the East Wing. But Trump and his administration’s “coordinated effort” to connect the WHCA attempted shooting to the ongoing legal “tug of war” over the ballroom “ignored the realities of the annual dinner and the circumstances of the breach.” The shooting attempt has become “fodder to support building the president’s pet project,” said Zeteo. “Even before Trump addressed the public, the talking points already seemed to be circulating.”

Trump has a history of using attempts on his life as a “political symbol” to “rally his supporters and strengthen his grip on state affairs,” said South Korea’s The Chosun Daily. His post on Truth Social requesting the WHCA “LET THE SHOW GO ON” after the attack shows that even during a “crisis that could have led to a disaster,” Trump was able to display his “signature showmanship.”

It is “notable” that “neither Trump nor anyone on his team rushed to assign a political motive” in the hours immediately following Saturday’s attack, said The Sydney Morning Herald. Instead, Trump “predictably” spent the time turning the attack “to his own purposes.” The president’s behavior in the immediate aftermath of the shooting attempt, including at his press briefing that evening, “underscored his instinct to spin narratives with himself as the undaunted hero” while “rarely missing a chance to plug his priorities,” said Reuters.

There is a “pattern” at play, said Politico. After an attempt on Trump’s life, there are “calls from both sides to turn down the temperature. And then, a pivot.” After initially pushing for Americans to “resolve” their differences, it took “less than 24 hours” for Trump to insist in a 60 Minutes interview with CBS’s Norah O’Donnell that the “hate speech of the Democrats” is “very dangerous.”

As in previous instances where Trump has asked for bipartisan calm after facing violence, such calls “proved to be very short-lived,” said The Associated Press. A host of “right-wing politicians and media figures” have begun “laboring to blame the apparent assassination attempt on rhetoric from Democrats,” said Zeteo. It is this dynamic that has allowed Trump to cast himself as a unifier who, on Sunday, “vowed that violence should not win,” while at the same time “accusing the Washington press of being in league with Democrats and covering him unfairly,” said CNN.

What next?

That there were still WHCA after-parties and associated events in the hours following the assassination attempt is a “testament to the nonstop insanity of the Trump era,” during which an “active shooter getting close to the president — for a second time” can be so “quickly metabolized by Washington,” said New York magazine.

Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche has already begun using the episode to “pressure a preservation group to drop a lawsuit seeking to halt the construction” of Trump’s ballroom, The Guardian said. “I hope yesterday’s narrow miss will help you finally realize the folly of a lawsuit that literally serves no purpose except to stop President Trump, no matter the cost,” Blanche said in a letter to the National Trust for Historic Preservation, which has sued to stop what it claims is Trump’s illegal ballroom construction. “Enough is enough.”

Ultimately, Trump has “experience” with the “opportunities presented by such moments,” Reuters said. “No one can turn danger into a political asset better than this president,” one White House official said to the outlet.

Arizona’s three national parks show off the state’s beauty in different ways. Grand Canyon National Park offers jaw-dropping views of the massive geological wonder, while Saguaro National Park celebrates the iconic native cactus and Petrified Forest National Park showcases ancient fossils and vibrant badlands. Each one has its own story, millions of years in the making.

Grand Canyon National Park

Until you see the Grand Canyon in person, it can be difficult to comprehend just how immense it is. The mile-deep canyon is 278 river miles long, and 18 miles across at its widest point. Visitors can explore the park across different avenues, with the South Rim the most popular.

The South Rim is open year-round and has the “greatest number of viewpoints, visitor services and hotels,” said Afar. Mather Point, extremely well-liked at sunrise and sunset, has a stunning perspective of the canyon, and on clear days you can see at least 30 miles to the east and 60 miles to the west. Hundreds of bird, mammal, fish and amphibian species live at the park, and visitors might see mule deer, elk, javelina and squirrels.

Day hikers can also set out on several journeys from the South Rim, with top picks including the scenic South Kaibab Trail, Rim Trail and interpretive Trail of Time, which provides “detailed explanations” on the “colorful layers that give the canyon walls their candy-stripe appearance.” Those who prefer to learn about the canyon indoors can watch two 24-minute films inside the South Rim Visitor Center: “We Are Grand Canyon” and “Grand Canyon: A Journey of Wonder.” Before leaving, visit Hopi House to purchase Indigenous arts and crafts.

The less developed and “more rugged” North Rim is much quieter than the South Rim, and due to its remoteness only sees about 10% of the total annual visitors to the park. It’s also 1,000 feet higher, and because of heavier snow in the winter, is only open from mid-May to mid-October. The North Rim is “covered in forests of aspen, fir and spruce trees,” and “memorable views” can be found on the North Kaibab Trail, which “descends 14 miles to the Colorado River.” A devastating fire ripped through the North Rim in July 2025, which destroyed the Grand Canyon Lodge and more than 100 other structures and burned countless trees and shrubs.

The West Rim, or Grand Canyon West, is on Hualapai land and is known for the Grand Canyon Skywalk, a glass-bottomed bridge. The East Rim is part of the Navajo Nation and includes “numerous smaller canyons carved by the Little Colorado River.”

Where to stay: The historic El Tovar has been welcoming guests since 1905, providing a comfortable place to stay right on the South Rim. This is one of the “grandest” National Park lodges, and guests enjoy the rustic charm of the lobby and dining room filled with Hopi, Apache, Mojave and Navajo murals.

Best time to visit: The Grand Canyon is busiest during the summer months, when the weather is also hottest. If possible, plan a trip during the late spring, when it’s still warming up, or September through November to enjoy cooler temperatures and beautiful fall colors. Rangers recommend that hikers bring plenty of water and sun protection year-round, and pack at least four liters of water during the hottest months.

Petrified Forest National Park

The 200,000-acre Petrified Forest, part of the greater Painted Desert, provides a “remarkable example” of how this region, a primeval tropical forest, has “radically evolved through the ages,” said National Geographic. Badlands, grasslands, ancestral Pueblo sites and petrified logs — tons and tons of them — make up the park, along with an “amazing array” of wildlife like bobcats, pronghorn antelope, rattlesnakes, coyotes, migratory birds and salamanders.

The short Giant Logs Trail gives hikers the chance to see petrified wood up close, and the beautiful Blue Mesa Trail showcases the Painted Desert’s colorful cones. Another way to see the park is by car. There are two audio tours that go into great detail about dozens of stops along the Petrified Forest Scenic Drive (one tour is for drivers entering from the north, the other is for those entering from the south). Highlights include Puerco Pueblo, dating back to 1100, and the Newspaper Rock site. Ancestral Puebloans etched more than 650 petroglyphs onto rocks in this area, and the “high concentration” of markings likely mean this was a “hugely significant” place, said the National Parks Service.

Where to stay: There are no accommodations inside the park, and only backcountry camping is allowed with a permit. It’s worth driving 60 miles from the park’s main entrance to the city of Winslow to stay at the nearly 100-year-old La Posada Hotel. Designed by architect Mary Jane Colter, this estancia has been revitalized, with a substantial art gallery and rooms featuring Southwestern decor.

Best time to visit: The park is open year-round, except for Thanksgiving and Christmas. It’s most crowded during the summer, when temperatures can soar to triple digits. The coldest time to visit is during the winter, and visitors should plan for it to drop down to below 0 Fahrenheit at night. Milder temperatures — and clearer skies — prevail during late spring, October and November.

Saguaro National Park

The saguaro cactus is native to the Sonoran Desert, and more than 2 million can be found spread across Saguaro National Park West, in the Tucson Mountains, and Saguaro National Park East, in the Rincon Mountains. The two districts are “nearly an hour’s drive apart,” but both have “towering cacti, captivating desert scenery and outdoor recreation opportunities,” said Travel and Leisure. The saguaro forest is “denser” in the west, and the east provides access to a “plethora of mountainous backcountry trails.”

Saguaros might reign supreme in the park, but cholla, prickly pear and barrel cactus also have a presence. See them while on a ranger-led tour or while gliding by on a bike. The most accessible trail in the west park is Signal Hill, which passes boulders covered in Hohokam petroglyphs. In the east park, the Freeman Homestead Nature Trail passes through a saguaro grove and doubles as an educational experience, with signs “informing visitors about the area’s history and flora.” Desert sunsets are spectacularly colorful affairs and are best viewed from Tanque Verde Ridge Trail and Javelina Rocks. Plan on staying once the sun goes down for “incredible” stargazing.

Where to stay: There are no hotels within either district, but there are six wilderness campgrounds in Saguaro National Park East. For a more luxurious experience, go glamping at Solana Guest Ranch and Spanish Villas. The property, near Saguaro National Park East, offers villas that are perfect for bigger groups, as well as four Conestoga wagons with pillow-top beds, air conditioning and access to the ranch’s amenities.

Best time to visit: The park is open year-round, except for Thanksgiving and Christmas. The busiest time of year is from November to March, when temperatures are typically in the high 50s to mid 70s. To see cactus and wildflower blooms, visit between late February and late April.

You hear the terms buyer’s market and seller’s market get tossed around a lot when the real estate market changes, whether due to varying supply and demand or mortgage rate movements. But if you are getting ready to enter the market, either as a buyer preparing to make a purchase or a seller listing their property, what does it actually mean for your homebuying — or selling — experience?

These terms effectively give you a clue as to which party will likely have the upper hand in transactions. If you are a buyer entering a buyer’s market, you can generally expect more options to choose from and greater leverage in negotiations. A seller’s market, by contrast, gives the seller the advantage, meaning they may get a better sales price, will have to offer fewer credits and repairs to seal the deal and even see bidding wars.

What is the difference between a buyer’s vs. seller’s market?

A buyer’s market happens when the “number of homes for sale exceeds the number of active buyers,” said Realtor.com. When this is the balance in the market, it typically “gives buyers more leverage as sellers compete to outshine one another.”

In a seller’s market, the exact opposition is true: there “will be more buyers than homes for sale, so sellers have more control over the transaction,” said Yahoo Finance. As a result, buyers have a “lower chance of getting a home they want for a lower price, negotiating for repairs or receiving closing cost assistance from sellers,” and they may even “have to compete for a property in a bidding war.”

How can you tell if it is a buyer’s or a seller’s market?

One of the biggest tipoffs is home inventory. The “larger the inventory, the more likely it is that your local area is in the midst of a buyer’s market,” said Rocket Mortgage.

Another way to gauge market conditions is by digging into homes that were recently sold. For instance, “if you find that homes generally have been selling above their asking price, it’s a good indication that you’re in a seller’s market,” said Rocket Mortgage. If homes are sitting on the market for a while and there are price cuts, that suggest a buyer’s market.

Lastly, mortgage rates and where they have been headed can be an indicator. “Rising interest rates make it more expensive for buyers to borrow money for a mortgage loan,” which can mean “first-time buyers and those on tighter budgets are often pushed out of the market entirely, reducing overall demand,” said HomeLight, a home buying and selling platform. Lower rates, on the other hand, will have more buyers ready to make moves.

Is it bad to sell in a buyer’s market, and vice versa?

Not necessarily, as long as you understand the implications and adjust your expectations and strategy accordingly. If you want to sell your house in a buyer’s market, “consider your list price carefully, compare the numbers for a good estimate of what the sale proceeds will be and be ready for a possibly slower sale,” said Yahoo Finance.

On the flip side, as a seller in a buyer’s market, it is important to balance making a competitive offer without compromising on your budget or eventual home purchase. In this situation, a knowledgeable real estate agent, a mortgage preapproval, an earnest money deposit and some flexibility around a closing date can go a long way. Patience is also key, since “during a seller’s market, sometimes buyers lose out on homes they’re interested in,” said Rocket Mortgage, and they may have to make multiple offers and commit to a longer search.

“If chatbots were as all-knowing as we’ve been led to believe, they should have seen the backlash to artificial intelligence coming,” said Martin Baccardax in Barron’s. Now it’s here. Daniel Moreno-Gama, 20, was carrying an anti-AI manifesto when he allegedly threw a Molotov cocktail at OpenAI CEO Sam Altman’s $27 million San Francisco mansion earlier this month. Two days later, a man and a woman in their 20s were arrested for allegedly firing a gun outside Altman’s house. Someone fired 13 bullets into Indianapolis councilman Ron Gibson’s home the previous week, leaving a note reading, “No Data Centers.” Gibson had supported a new AI data center. AI is barging “into public life with a pace and aggression unlike any of its technological predecessors.” Its creators warn that AI will eliminate half of white-collar jobs in five years, concentrate even more money and power at the top, and consume vast amounts of water and electricity. Just 26% of Americans see AI as a positive force. Is it any surprise the backlash has “turned violent”?

On social media, many people justified the attacks against Altman, said Clare Duffy in CNN.com. If the “commoditization of what it means to be human is allowed to continue,” wrote one Reddit user, violence “will be much more common.” Some activists deemed Moreno-Gama a hero, comparing his alleged attack to Luigi Mangione allegedly murdering UnitedHealthcare’s CEO. Before he was charged with attempted murder, Moreno-Gama himself posted about “Luigi-ing tech CEOs.”

The “Stop AI” movement is being driven by young people who’ve already experienced technology taking over their lives, said Eva Roytburg in Fortune. But the backlash is spreading across America’s heartland as communities reject massive data centers, citing concerns about water usage and utility bills. Americans have stopped or delayed $64 billion worth of data centers in two years. Maine is set to become the first state to ban them. In Festus, Mo., voters just ousted local politicians who approved a data center. These developments “signal an escalation in the blowback,” said Brian Merchant in his Substack newsletter. AI executives have been warning that they’re building a tool so powerful it will automate millions of jobs and “might literally end humanity,” but seem shocked we’re finally listening. “Ordinary people are saying: Wake up. We have good reason to hate AI.” The backlash will likely only “get worse from here.”

“Kash Patel has never been qualified to lead the FBI,” said Danielle Han in Jezebel, and The Atlantic just showed us “the gazillionth reason why.” In a damning report published two weeks ago, the magazine alleged that the bureau’s director suffers paranoid “freak-outs” about being fired, is often absent from work, and is “regularly too drunk to do his job.”

Justice Department and White House sources told The Atlantic that Patel’s security detail has repeatedly struggled to wake the seemingly hungover FBI boss, forcing meetings and briefings to be rescheduled for later in the day. Last year, his detail even reportedly considered using SWAT-style “breaching equipment” because Patel had been unreachable behind locked doors. Some FBI and administration officials wonder if alcohol explains Patel’s repeated missteps—such as his sharing of inaccurate information about a suspect following the September murder of Charlie Kirk—and fear that he’s become a national security risk. Patel vehemently denies all the accusations and last week filed a $250 million defamation lawsuit against The Atlantic, calling its report “hit-piece lies.”

“Patel’s goal, of course, isn’t actually to win in court,” said William Kristol in The Bulwark. To do that, he’d have to prove not only that the claims in The Atlantic were false but also that the outlet knew they were so when it published them, “or at least didn’t care if they were true or not.” His real aim is to punish a publication that dared embarrass him with a costly nuisance suit “and to demonstrate to an audience of one, President Trump, that he’s fighting the lying lib media.” For now, Patel “still has support from the White House,” said Mike Pesca in his Substack newsletter. Trump appreciates his willingness to target perceived enemies—Patel vowed last week that arrests related to the 2020 election are “coming soon”—and to purge anyone who is “anything less than loyal to the president,” including scores of FBI agents over the past year.

It’s possible The Atlantic exposé will doom Patel, said Jeet Heer in The Nation. Trump, a teetotaler who watched his older brother drink himself to death, cannot abide substance abuse in his underlings. But whatever happens with Patel, the damage he’s wreaked “will outlive his tenure.” He has gutted FBI teams focused on terrorism, political corruption, and organized crime, and turned the bureau into “a dangerously right-wing” agency with the power to hurt the president’s political foes. “The real problem is not Patel’s alleged inebriation but the deep corruption of the most important law enforcement agency in the country.”

An “ethics earthquake” hit Congress two weeks ago, said Zachary Schermele in USA Today, and it’s only intensifying. The first tremor was the resignation of Rep. Eric Swalwell, the seven-term California Democrat and a leading candidate to be the state’s next governor, after he was accused of sexual assault and misconduct by multiple women. The married father of three says the accusations—including that he raped two women—are “false” and “lies.”

Just hours after Swalwell quit, Rep. Tony Gonzales (R-Texas), who admitted an affair with a female aide who later died by suicide, also resigned. In both cases, a bipartisan coalition of female lawmakers had signaled they were moving toward expulsion votes, but this “#MeToo moment” seems part of a broader reckoning, Schermele said. Rep. Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick (D-Fla.) resigned last week after the House Ethics Committee found her guilty of spending millions of Covid relief dollars on her 2022 election. And pressure is mounting on Rep. Cory Mills (R-Fla.), who’s being investigated over allegations of domestic violence, revenge porn, and campaign finance violations; he denies any wrongdoing.

Why is this happening now? asked Joan Vennochi in The Boston Globe. Maybe it’s a backlash to the #MeToo backlash. Maybe it’s our post-Epstein sensitivity to “power and perversion.” Whatever the reason, it’s good for the country that Congress is policing itself and “setting standards in a bipartisan way.”

Swalwell’s exit was about politics, not decency, said Allysia Finley in The Wall Street Journal. Democrats knew for years that Swalwell was a sex pest, but they still cheered his relentless attacks on President Trump and nodded along as he declared during Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court confirmation hearings that sexual assault victims “deserve to be heard.” But when the allegations against him became public, Democrats turned on Swalwell in case he threw the California governor’s race to a Republican. It’s nice that other resignations have followed, said Jon Allsop in The New Yorker. But the careful, scalp-for-scalp arithmetic carries “an unseemly whiff of partisan horse-trading.” Is this a real crackdown on ugly behavior? Or a choreographed effort to look like they’re “taking it seriously”?

The House’s “culture of turning a blind eye” will be hard to shake, said Michelle Cottle in The New York Times. Yes, the #MeToo movement “scared some people straight for a while,” but it didn’t change “the essential power dynamic on the Hill,” where members drunk on flattery and self-regard routinely abuse the often young, often female staffers who work for them. For the ambitious Swalwell, that culture of sexual tolerance was as much of a draw as fame, power, and the other “trappings of office,” said Melanie Mason in Politico. A protégé of former speaker Nancy Pelosi, Swalwell “thought he was untouchable—until he wasn’t.”

Republicans are in no position to moralize, said Christian Schneider in National Review, having handed their party to “inveterate horndog” Donald Trump. But Swalwell does represent a uniquely Democratic species of predator: the “male feminist” who trumpets his support for women as a “prelude to making advances,” then uses his progressivism as a “cloak of invisibility” when accountability looms. Swalwell, at least, has paid a price, and with criminal probes underway in New York and California, it could get higher, said Ingrid Jacques in USA Today. But until both parties stop recruiting “creeps and criminals,” and voters start demanding better, the swamp of congressional ethics will remain “a bipartisan problem.”

What happened

Democrats’ efforts to reclaim the U.S. House of Representatives got a major assist last week, after voters in Virginia approved an aggressively gerrymandered electoral map that could gain the party four more seats in the chamber. By 51% to 49%, Virginians voted to allow the state legislature to redraw the state’s representative districts in a way that likely gives Democrats 10 out of its 11 seats—up from six now—until at least after the 2030 census. President Trump immediately claimed without evidence the result was “rigged.”

Since California voters had earlier approved a map that eliminated five Republican districts, Democrats have now pulled even with GOP redistricting gains in Texas, Missouri, Ohio, and North Carolina. Those states heeded Trump’s repeated calls to redraw maps to help the GOP hold the House in the midterms, setting off the redistricting battle with Democrats. “Many expected Democrats to roll over,” said House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries. “We fought back. When they go low, we hit back hard.”

Virginia’s redrawn map could still be scrapped by the state Supreme Court, which is still considering Republican claims that Democrats illegally organized the redistricting effort. Republicans could also gain as many as five more seats from Florida, which will hold a special session on redistricting next week. The U.S. Supreme Court, meanwhile, has delayed a ruling on a case that could overturn the 1965 Voting Rights Act’s prohibition of racial gerrymandering, which could encourage legislatures in multiple Southern states to redraw their maps before the midterms.

What the columnists said

Carving up Virginia into “salamander-like” districts “wasn’t an easy sell,” said William Kristol in The Bulwark. As Virginia Republicans emphasized in attack ads, Democrats such as Barack Obama and Gov. Abigail Spanberger once condemned gerrymandering. But now that Trump has forced the issue, Democrats—often “thought to be hapless competitors” in this dirtier political age—finally “stepped up and fought back.”

Now they can “spare us the false sanctimony about democratic norms,” said The Washington Post in an editorial. Some 46% of Virginians voted for Trump in 2024; this outrageously gerrymandered map would reduce their House representation to barely 9%. We can blame “Trump’s original foolhardy and suicidal decision to goad Texas into mid-decade redistricting,” said Jeffrey Blehar in National Review. But it’s still unjust to turn purple Virginia “into almost a one-party state.”

This was a “less resounding” win for Democrats than the party might suggest, said Aaron Blake in CNN.com. Spanberger won the Virginia governorship by 15 percentage points in November; this map squeezed by with 2. It also may have cost her politically. The centrist Spanberger, a potential presidential candidate, faced complaints of hypocrisy from the Right and criticism from the Left for not advocating for the referendum strongly enough. “The lesson of the current redistricting war” is that pragmatism doesn’t pay; you need to “take whatever advantage you can, whenever you can.”

What happened

With peace talks between the U.S. and Iran at an impasse, the clash for control of the crucial Strait of Hormuz intensified last week as Iran seized at least two cargo ships in the trade corridor in retaliation for a U.S. naval blockade of its ports. The Navy has turned back some 30 ships trying to enter or exit Iranian ports since the blockade was imposed earlier this month, and in a bid to ramp up the economic pressure on Tehran, the U.S. last week boarded a tanker carrying Iranian oil in the Indian Ocean and seized an Iranian-flagged container ship that tried to run the blockade. The Iranian regime accused the U.S. of “piracy” and soon after seized two cargo ships—one flying a Panamanian flag, the other a Liberian flag—claiming the vessels had tried to navigate the contested strait without its approval. White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt said Iran’s attacks on “international vessels” didn’t constitute a violation of the U.S.-Iran ceasefire.

A U.S. delegation led by Vice President JD Vance was set to travel to Pakistan for a second round of peace talks, but the trip was delayed after Iran refused to take part. A foreign ministry spokesman cited “contradictory messages” and “inconsistent behavior” from the Americans; other Iranian officials cited the blockade, which the regime called “an act of war.” Trump, who had warned that the “military is raring to go” for strikes on Iran if a deal wasn’t reached before the temporary ceasefire ended last week, extended the truce indefinitely, saying Iran’s leadership was “fractured” and needed time to “come up with a unified proposal.” Iranian officials accused Trump of trying to “buy time for a surprise strike.”

With traffic at a standstill in the strait, which carried some 20% of the world’s oil before the start of the war, U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright acknowledged that gas prices—now averaging about $4 a gallon—might not drop below $3 until next year. Trump said that’s “totally wrong” and that prices will plummet “as soon as this ends,” a claim experts called unrealistic. “Oil and gasoline rise very quickly, and they come down very slowly,” said economist Peter Earle. A new Quinnipiac poll found 65% of Americans blame Trump for the spike in gas prices, and more than half blame him “a lot.”

What the columnists said

As Trump’s approval numbers plunge to the mid-30s, associates say he “wants out of the increasingly unpopular war,” said Barak Ravid in Axios. His negotiators suspect a peace deal is within reach, but that “they may not have anyone in Tehran empowered to say yes.” Hard-line generals from the elite Revolutionary Guard now run the country, and they’re “openly at odds over strategy” with Iran’s civilian negotiators. The new supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, could break the impasse. But he is rumored to have been badly wounded in the air strike that killed his father, former Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, and is “barely communicating.”

There’s another major obstacle, said Alayna Treene and Kevin Liptak in CNN.com: The Iranians don’t trust Trump. The two sides seemed two weeks ago to be nearing an agreement. Then Trump went on a tear on social media and in interviews, falsely claiming Iran had agreed to “a host of provisions that hadn’t been finalized” and had accepted the most contentious U.S. demands, such as handing over its stockpile of enriched uranium. That tanked “the rising optimism for a deal,” and “it’s unclear where peace talks go from here.”

“Even Trump’s most basic claims about the Iran war can’t be trusted,” said Daniel Dale, also in CNN.com. He said last week that Vance was en route to Islamabad; in fact, the veep had never left the U.S. And he falsely claimed two weeks ago that Iran had agreed to never again close the Strait of Hormuz. Virtually nothing the president says can be taken at face value, a situation the world “has never had to contend with.” He’s confounded not just negotiators but ordinary Americans, said Peter Hamby in Puck. A new poll shows they “have no idea why this war is happening,” with answers ranging from keeping Iran from getting nukes (22%) to “taking oil” (20%) to “a show of power” (13%).

Control of the strait has become “the strategic fulcrum of the war,” said National Review in an editorial. Iran seems to think if it keeps the strait closed it will “exact so much economic pain” that Trump will end his blockade, or accept a deal that relents on his “red lines.” He needs to convince Tehran he’s “perfectly willing to start shooting again” and “take the strait back by force.”

Iran thinks it has the upper hand, said Erika Solomon in The New York Times. After a “high-stakes game of chicken,” it believes “Trump blinked first” when he extended the ceasefire with no concessions. That validates its view that Iran’s readiness to absorb the economic pain wrought by the war exceeds Trump’s. The regime sees this as an “existential battle,” and no matter how much suffering the blockade inflicts, experts say “it’s not going to blink.”

Both sides have powerful incentives to end this, so “in a world of logic” a settlement would be “a safe bet,” said Marc Champion in Bloomberg. But we’re in a realm where logic doesn’t seem to apply, stuck with leaders who lack “the personal and political courage needed for compromise.” In Tehran, fanatical hard-liners call the shots. In Washington, we have a president who “seems to live in his own movie, reinventing reality to follow a script in which he plays the triumphant hero.” It’s “an inherently unstable situation” with no obvious way out, and “a return to war looks all too possible.”

‘This degree changed my life. And it’s essential to a changing America.’

Thurka Sangaramoorthy at The Washington Post

Anthropology is a “discipline that teaches students to do something remarkably difficult and remarkably rare: to move between close attention to individual lives and systemic analysis of the structures that shape them,” says Thurka Sangaramoorthy. Americans are “living in what is called the age of big data,” but the “hardest problems facing institutions, governments and companies right now are not technical ones. They are human ones.” Anthropology is an “essential skill in the age of big data.”

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‘Don’t look to my patients for Medicaid fraud. Look at Dr. Oz.’

Tyler Evans at USA Today

Dr. Mehmet Oz “posted a video accusing New York state of running a fraud-ridden Medicaid program,” but the “people being targeted by these claims are not fraudsters,” says Tyler Evans. The “personal care services Oz attacked in New York are the clinical alternative to nursing home placement.” Oz is “constructing a caricature to make the public comfortable with cutting their care.” This is the “person now running the largest health care financing program in the United States.”

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‘Millions of clicks on sexual assault — where’s the outrage?’ 

Jodi Bondi Norgaard at Newsweek

According to “CNN’s reporting, one porn site, Motherless.com, hosts 20,000 videos of so-called ‘sleep content,’” with “men logging on to learn how to drug and violate their wives, their partners, the women sleeping beside them, the people who trust them most,” says Jodi Bondi Norgaard. This is “not a niche crime or a fringe corner of the internet. This is a global network that teaches men how to drug and rape women, and it is met with near silence.”

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‘The ABA is a joke. So why is it still accrediting law schools?’ 

Sarah Parshall Perry at the National Review

The American Bar Association’s “monopoly over the accreditation of U.S. law schools has long been defended as essential to maintaining excellence in the legal profession,” says Sarah Parshall Perry. But this “authority rests on an implicit premise of institutional neutrality, a premise that no longer holds — if it ever did at all.” The ABA “doesn’t represent a majority — or even a plurality — of American lawyers.” The “profession, the academy and the public deserve better.”

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“Everyone knows everyone in St Lucia,” said our driver as he took us through the palm-fringed roads of the eastern Caribbean island. “When we toot our horns, it’s because we’re saying hello.” And toot they did, always with a smile and a wave.

This warmth is part of the draw for the million or so tourists who visit St Lucia each year. That and the exceptional beaches, views and experiences. If you want to throw in some romance and adventure, Serenity at Coconut Bay has you covered.

Why stay here?

Serenity is an adults-only resort within the larger family-friendly Coconut Bay Beach Resort & Spa. Popular with honeymooners and couples celebrating anniversaries and birthdays, it has 36 suites, each with its own plunge pool, indoor soaking tub and 24-hour personal butler service. Guests are greeted by their butler with a drink on arrival (there’s nothing like rum served in a fresh coconut to welcome you to the Caribbean) and shown around their suite.

Every villa feels tucked away from the rest, giving couples a quiet space to themselves. There’s even a service hatch by the outside door so messages and room service can be delivered discreetly. As well as the private pool, the large deck includes an outdoor kitchen area, shower and hammock built for two, the perfect place to watch the stars with just the sound of the birds and crickets. Inside, there is a four-poster bed, rain shower and tub, which was filled up for me with bubbles and fresh bougainvillea petals more than once during my stay. His and hers wardrobes and sinks mean you won’t be fighting over space.

Butlers can help with anything from arranging meals and excursions to creating once-in-a-lifetime moments like proposals or a birthday surprise. They can be reached on a special mobile phone, dubbed the “batphone” by my butler, which can be taken around the resort. Serenity has its own pool area, or guests can head over to the larger Coconut Bay before returning to their exclusive hideaway.

Eating and drinking

St Lucia is a rum lover’s dream. It’s a primary ingredient for many of the cocktails on Serenity’s extensive drinks list (if you have a sweet tooth, don’t leave without trying Jonathan’s Special or the Dirty Banana) and guests can take part in rum-tasting nights, where locally produced blends like Chairman’s Reserve are paired with different foods.

Serenity has its own restaurant, The Greathouse, which serves up an extensive range of options, from chargrilled octopus to filet mignon and pistachio-crusted lamb rack. It caters well for different dietary needs and offers service with a whole lot of smiles. Guests also have the choice of Coconut Bay’s eight restaurants and seven bars, which include contemporary Caribbean fine-dining at Calabash, the Asian-inspired Silk and the outdoor Jerk Treehouse. Couples can hire beach cabanas for the day, with food and drinks brought to them, or celebrate a special occasion in the private oceanside dining spaces of La Luna.

Be sure to try the island’s national dish, green fig (actually a green banana) and saltfish, as well as the fried plantain and freshly grown fruit. Bananas are the island’s biggest export and it has dozens of varieties of mangoes. And did I mention the rum?

Things to do

You could easily while away a week at the resort, enjoying the pools, spa and entertainment. The mile-long beach suffers from sargassum (floating algae) at certain times of the year, but the hotel is efficient at clearing it each day and it is home to water sports, like kayaking and paddleboarding, as well as a turtle conservation programme. There are plenty of night activities, too, including creole classes, sushi-making and “Paint and Punch”.

Those who choose to venture beyond the hotel will be rewarded with jaw-dropping views of the volcanic island, with its famous twin peaks and lush rainforests. You will get a snapshot of island life just driving past the brightly coloured houses, churches, schools and fishing villages. Serenity can organise a huge range of trips, from boats and dune buggies to zip-lines and ATV tours. One unforgettable way to explore the island is by horse. Atlantic Shores Riding Stables can take you on a ride over hills above the Atlantic Ocean and down to the beach for an hour – or more, if your glutes can handle it.

We took a catamaran from Port Vieux up the southwest coast of the island, past the iconic Pitons, stopping to snorkel in the turquoise Caribbean Sea. After lunch at a local restaurant, we drove to the mud baths at Sulphur Springs in Soufriere to douse ourselves in mineral-rich mud. You’ll have to practise mouth breathing to avoid the sulphur smell but your soft skin will thank you for it.

The verdict

Just a few minutes’ drive from Hewanorra International Airport and about 45 minutes from the Pitons, Serenity is conveniently located for a trip to the south of St Lucia. As the name suggests, it is a peaceful sanctuary offering a truly special grown-up break on the friendliest of islands.

Hollie was a guest of Serenity at Coconut Bay

What happened

Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) said Sunday he was prepared to drop his blockade of President Donald Trump’s nominee to lead the Federal Reserve after the Justice Department assured him it had dropped its criminal investigation of outgoing Fed Chair Jerome Powell. Tillis’ decision cleared the last major obstacle for Kevin Warsh to replace Powell.

Who said what

U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro last week said she had dropped her investigation of Powell tied to cost overruns on a Federal Reserve renovation, though she would “not hesitate to restart” it “should the facts warrant doing so.” With Democrats calling Warsh a “sock puppet” for Trump’s demanded interest rate cuts, Tillis’ opposition had “created an insurmountable deadlock” on the narrowly divided Banking Committee, The New York Times said.

What next?

The Banking Committee has scheduled a Wednesday vote on Warsh’s nomination, potentially advancing it to a full Senate vote before Powell’s chairmanship expires May 15. Powell can remain on the Fed Board of Governors through 2028, and Tillis said he suspected he would do so until the investigation is “fully settled,” which could be “a lengthy process.”

What happened

Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi arrived in Russia on Monday morning after a weekend of diplomatic trips to Pakistan and Oman, but no direct talks with the United States. President Donald Trump on Saturday called off an announced trip to Islamabad by his envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, saying it would be a waste of time given Iran’s lack of commitment to meet with them.

Who said what

“If they want to talk, they can come to us, or they can call us,” Trump told Fox News on Sunday. With U.S.-Iran talks “derailed, at least for now,” The New York Times said, “Tehran and Washington are sinking into an awkward limbo of neither peace, nor war,” with each projecting confidence they can “outlast the other in a standoff with drastic stakes for the global economy.” Pakistani officials said “indirect talks” were ongoing even as they “scrambled to reignite” direct negotiations, The Associated Press said.

What next?

Trump was “expected to hold a Situation Room meeting” on Monday after receiving an Iranian proposal to “reopen the Strait of Hormuz and end the war,” Axios said, “with nuclear negotiations postponed for a later stage.”

What happened

The gunman accused of trying to charge into the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner on Saturday night appears to have “set out to target folks who work in the administration, likely including the president,” acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said over the weekend. Law enforcement officials said they are trying to determine the assailant’s motive, but he was believed to have acted alone.

The suspect, identified as 31-year-old Cole Tomas Allen of California, was tackled after sprinting through a security checkpoint at the Washington Hilton carrying a handgun, a shotgun and knives, police said. A Secret Service agent was shot but protected by a bulletproof vest.

Who said what

After popping sounds were heard outside the ballroom during the salad course, Secret Service agents swarmed in, ushering President Donald Trump, Vice President JD Vance and top Cabinet officials to safety as most guests ducked for cover. The gunman “barely breached the perimeter,” Blanche told CNN, calling it a “massive security success story.”

At a White House press conference after the shooting, Trump “was unusually conciliatory,” The Associated Press said. But he “flashed a familiar anger” during a “60 Minutes” interview on Sunday, when Norah O’Donnell read from a manifesto Allen reportedly sent relatives before the attack, even though it did not mention Trump by name, Politico said. “I’m not a rapist,” and “I’m not a pedophile,” Trump said. “You shouldn’t be reading that on ‘60 Minutes,’ you’re a disgrace.”

What next?

Allen is scheduled to be arraigned in federal court Monday on preliminary charges of assaulting a federal officer and weapons charges.

As polarisation increasingly divides America, violence is becoming embedded in its politics.

“We do believe it was administration officials,” said Acting US Attorney General Todd Blanche, when asked for the target of the shooting at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner in Washington. “But as far as exacting threats that may have been communicated beforehand, we’re still actively investigating that evidence.”

For many Americans, Saturday night’s events were “at once shocking and familiar”, said Lisa Lerer in The New York Times. Politically motivated violence has become a “routine intruder” into our lives, bringing with it a “numbing narrative of assaults, bomb threats and assassination attempts”.

What did the commentators say?

“Instead of a speech stacked with heated barbs against the media, the event ended like many in the US do: with gun violence,” said Rachel Leingang in The Guardian.

The association’s initial decision to continue the event (it was later rescheduled) may have surprised some, but for many it “struck a chord about the regularity of gun violence in American life”. Trump said afterwards that the presidency is a “dangerous profession”, but the fact that violence in the political domain is a “feature”, rather than an “outlier, rang true on a night meant to celebrate the freedom of the press”.

Attacks like these are “convulsing” American politics from both sides of the partisan divide, said Guy Chazan in the Financial Times. The suspected gunman had barely been apprehended before “ranks of Maga influencers” were blaming Democrats, and left-leaning conspiracy theorists claimed it was a “staged” hoax to “advance Trump’s political agenda”.

So-called “conflict entrepreneurs” are “getting rich by making us angry at one another”, fuelled by a “loss of trust in democratic institutions that makes it easier to see illegal violence as a solution”, said William Braniff, from the American University. Modern assassination attempts are “backed by a growing public acceptance of the use of violence in the pursuit of political ends”, said Chazan. “Things could get even worse.”

Saturday’s events reveal how “dangerous” US politics has become over the last few years, said James Piazza, political science professor at Penn State, on The Conversation. Intense polarisation means opponents are “suspicious and hostile” towards each other, believing others to be “evil or immoral” instead of merely sharing a different view.

In turn, this has made violence more “normalised”, and because public backlash is “dampened” at each attempt, further violence becomes even “more likely”. Disinformation and social media have also accelerated this trend. Disinformed users are “hermetically sealed off” from alternative sources and this “facilitates radicalisation” for isolated communities.

Even with America’s “grim history of political violence”, Trump “certainly seems to attract a higher share than others of would-be assassins”, said Edward Luce in the Financial Times. He has now been the target of three assassination attempts: his “ear was grazed” by a bullet in Butler, Pennsylvania; there was the Mar-a-Lago golf course incident that was foiled by Secret Service agents; and then Saturday’s Washington dinner.

Nearly following in the footsteps of Abraham Lincoln, James Garfield, William McKinley and John F. Kennedy, Trump said that he was “honoured” by comparisons with the four assassinated presidents because he’s “done a lot”. Let’s not forget that eight children were killed in Louisiana last week, but it “only briefly made the headlines”: mass shootings are now “part of the texture of American life”, said Luce.

What next?

It is “absolutely critical” that both Democratic and Republican politicians “unite to condemn this attack and all political violence”, said Piazza on The Conversation.

Commentators should condemn any violence with political aims and political elites should “adopt rhetoric that does not normalise this sort of behaviour. If the message comes from across the political spectrum, it will be that much more effective at reducing the public attitudes that nurture political violence.”

Following the Pennsylvania assassination attempt the image of Trump with a bloodied face raising his fist “partly defined his campaign”, said Luce. This time around, “any sympathy wave is likely to be more limited”.

Before the incident at the Washington Hilton Hotel, Trump’s approval ratings hit a “personal low of below 40%” in some polls last week, and the “rising unpopularity” of the war in Iran is “driving his nadir”.

Though there is no doubt Trump will “try to make political hay” from the attempt on his life, “ironically” it has been his “early zeal for assassinating senior Iranians” that is “shaping his political future”.

“Dying people in California could soon get support from a familiar face,” said The Times. Nicole Kidman has revealed she is training to become a death doula following the painful loss of her mother, Janelle, who died in 2024 aged 84.

The Oscar-winning actor admitted her new venture “sounds a little weird”. But she told an audience at the University of San Francisco she had discovered there was “only so much the family could provide” as her mother approached the end of her life. “That’s when I went, ‘I wish there was these people in the world that were there to sit impartially and just provide solace and care.’”

Bridging the gap

A death doula works in a “similar capacity” to a birth doula, said PhD candidate Syman Braun Freck on The Conversation. Instead of assisting a mother during pregnancy and childbirth, a death doula is a “community partner offering support to the dying”. They act as a “neutral third party”, inhabiting a space between family, medical professionals and funeral directors.

Death used to be a “sacred communal process” that took place within the “comfort” of the family home. But during the late 19th and early 20th century dying became “institutionalised” and “medicalised”, and loved ones were “pushed to the wayside”.

This gap in end-of-life care opened a space for a “host of paraprofessionals” and led in the early 2000s to the re-emergence of the “ancient practice” of death doulas.

These individuals aren’t medically trained. They provide practical, spiritual and emotional support for clients, helping them “navigate fear and uncertainty about death and what might come after it”, said The New York Times. Death doulas also assist people expressing their wishes for end-of-life care, help to facilitate “meaningful conversations with their families”, and provide guidance for loved ones left behind.

Meaningful ends

There has been a “rapid” rise in the number of people training to become death doulas in recent years, Dr Emma Clare, chief executive of End of Life Doula UK, told The Times. The charity has around 450 members, after more than 100 joined last year. And it’s not just those with a terminal illness who are using the service; since the pandemic, more “healthy 30-somethings” have also been seeking death doulas to plan a meaningful end to life. The NHS has started to recognise this work, in some cases commissioning doulas to provide additional palliative care for people dying at home.

“I wasn’t surprised” that Nicole Kidman chose to embark on her new venture after losing her mother, said death doula Anna Lyons in The Times. “People often enter into this line of work following grief. You suddenly understand what kind of support is needed.”

I work with people from diagnosis until they die, and support their families after they’re gone. “My role is primarily to listen” and “be a witness to the end of their life”, ensuring they don’t have to go through it alone. There is something “very beautiful about being able to help somebody” in this way. “It is a privilege.”

It is a “lovely thing that everybody should have the opportunity to utilise”, said Eva Wiseman in The Observer. And the “true benefit” of a celebrity doula could lie not in helping you to find peace in your final days, but instead in bringing “distraction from it”. To spend your last moments “holding the manicured hand of a person you loved (in “Moulin Rouge” and “The Others”) would not only add some sparkle to the painful mundanity of death but also, surely, provide meaning when we need it most”.

“There are few better ways to immerse yourself in the great outdoors than to forage,” said Connor McGovern in National Geographic. As the countryside springs to life with an abundance of edible plants, now is a great time to start keeping an eye out for ingredients on your next walk.

April is “peak nettle season”. Packed with minerals and vitamins, the herbaceous perennial is surprisingly versatile and can easily be added to soups or used to make tea. Best harvested “sooner rather than later”, make sure you wear gloves to avoid getting stung and only pick the “top few leaves”.

Look out also for wild garlic, which “often grows in dense clusters on the floor of damp woodland and along shaded hedgerows”, said Helen Keating on the Woodland Trust. The leaves and flowers of the native bulb have an “unmistakable” garlicky smell, and can be used to whip up a “wild garlic pesto” or mixed with butter to make a “delicious version of garlic bread”.

Cow parsley, also known as wild chervil, is an “excellent all-round” ingredient. The perennial herb features tiny white flowers in “umbrella-like clusters” and “fern-like” leaves, and can be used in the same way as parsley when cooking. A word of warning: be careful not to mistake it for poison hemlock, which has distinctive purple blotches at the base of its stems, and an unpleasant musty odour.

Now is also the time dandelions “explode across fields, verges, scrubland and any patch of your garden they can set down roots in”, said Carys Matthews on BBC Countryfile. The petals of the bright yellow wildflower can be used to make desserts and “look lovely sprinkled on a cake”.

Be sure to look out for blackcurrant leaves, too, which have palmate lobes and a “serrated margin”. A handful of “fresh, young leaves” from the deciduous shrub can be used to make a “tasty tea with antimicrobial and anti-inflammatory” properties.

And if you’re on a health kick, try swapping out spinach for common mallow leaves or using the edible weed to thicken up soups. Identifiable by its “five-lobed leaves”, it’s rich in vitamins A, B, C and E and come summer its mauve-coloured flowers can be used to garnish cocktails and salads.

Breaking up is hard to do, but a gift registry could ease the pain. Functioning much like the wedding or baby shower version, a divorce registry lists items to purchase for a newly single person, to help them transition to their new life. The trend took off last year after the influencer Becca Murray created one following her divorce.

Financial and emotional loss

Divorces can be a heavy financial burden. Aside from hiring a lawyer, “you have to file your divorce with the court, potentially sell your marital property or negotiate a deal to buy it out, and deal with many other types of negotiations,” said Apartment Therapy. The process can “take years before it’s finalized.” And buying the small items required to rebuild amid such tumult is a drag.

A divorce registry “helps support people” who may be “suddenly losing half of their income, moving to a new home or refilling a half-empty one, all while paying for a divorce, which can cost five to six figures,” said Apartment Therapy. While married or dating, a couple “usually shares a lot of household essentials, like electronics, cookware and furniture,” which require replacing after splitting them and going separate ways, said Cafe Mom.

The products in divorce registries are “exactly what you think people need,” said Olivia Howell, the founder of the gift registry Fresh Starts, to CBS News. It’s the items that “your partner may have touched a lot: dishes, cups, utensils, towels, sheets, bedding, blankets.”

Healing and destigmatizing

“Even everyday items can carry heavy memories and leave homes feeling half-empty,” said CBS News. So receiving a gift from a breakup or divorce registry is a “great way to begin the healing process,” whether it’s a “cute pair of earrings” or “accessories to make your space your own again,” said the lifestyle publication Chatelaine.

Research shows that “emotional processing can be easier when the nervous system feels safer and more regulated,” said Jessica O’Reilly, a Toronto relationship expert with a Ph.D. in human sexuality, to the outlet. And a present from a loved one and a newly established routine can help regulate the nervous system.

Most of the people building divorce and breakup registries are women. But a breakup is nonetheless the great equalizer, and a “lot of men are in the same position [that] a lot of women are in,” said Howell to CBC. “They don’t have anything when they start out” after a divorce. And even though men may also be struggling, “culturally, a lot of men are told to not ask for help or support.”

The “shift toward destigmatizing divorce was already underway,” said the Fresh Starts website. A registry gives it “infrastructure, language and legitimacy.” Plus, filling your home with gifts from loved ones “helps bolster your confidence,” said Howell, and lets you “make bigger, bolder decisions in life.”

Tampa

This 1994 six-bedroom Mediterranean home on Tampa Bay includes a cocktail lounge with a stone bar, bottle shelving on a mirrored wall, a fireplace, and water views. The open-plan interior features a curved iron staircase and arched doorways, a gourmet kitchen, and a gas fireplace.

A saltwater pool and spa, a covered patio, an outdoor kitchen, and a shared dock complete the property. Downtown Tampa is a 15-minute drive. $5,600,000. Jennifer Zales, Coldwell Banker Realty, (813) 758-3443

Farmington, Conn.

Built by a renowned abolitionist in 1832, this historically designated Georgian-inspired estate has a fully outfitted Irish pub with wainscoting, coffered ceilings, and a wraparound wood bar. The eight-bedroom main house includes a library, a sitting room with inlaid floors, a billiards room, a wine cellar, a music room, and an updated chef’s kitchen.

The nearly 5-acre property includes a guest cottage, pool, tennis court, and greenhouse. $3,450,000. Scott Holmes, William Pitt Sotheby’s International Realty, (860) 485-5875

Darby, Mont.

Hart Bench Ranch, in the Bitterroot Mountains, features a Western-style saloon in a workshop with wood walls, saddle barstools, and a sitting area with a woodstove. The main residence, a 2001 four-bedroom log home, has a double-height great room with a loft, an antler chandelier, a stone fireplace, and a windowed gable.

The 155-acre lot offers mountain views, a greenhouse, a guesthouse, a garage, and a barn with five horse stalls. $7,450,000. Deke Tidwell, Hall and Hall, (406) 544-7191

Berthoud, Colo.

This 2022 contemporary four-bedroom has a lower-level rec-room wet bar with cristallo quartzite counters, a beverage fridge, and an adjacent wine room. In the living room are clerestory windows, accordion doors, and a 21-foot floor-to-ceiling fireplace finished in hot rolled steel.

An upper deck and a patio with a built-in grill offer mountain views. Access to a pool and gym are included. $2,750,000. David Johnson, LIV Sotheby’s International Realty, (970) 213-0648

San Francisco

Designed by Robert Arrigoni and built in 1970, this curved modern home above Edgehill Way has a C-shaped four-seat bar with a brass footrest, wood walls, and cement posts in a sitting room. The eight-bedroom’s main space has 20-foot ceilings, a catwalk, herringbone wood floors, and cement beams and details contrasting with warm wood.

There’s also an elevator, and ocean and city views. Edgehill Mountain Park is a short walk, and Golden Gate Park is a 10-minute drive. $7,950,000. Neal Ward, Compass, (415) 269-9933

Sherrills Ford, N.C.

This updated 1990 ranch near Lake Norman has a step-up barroom just off the vaulted living room, with an eight-door cabinet and beverage fridge. The three-bedroom includes new wood-look floors, a painted brick fireplace, and a skylighted sitting room with walls of glass.

On the 1.5-acre property are a two-bay garage, a fenced saltwater pool, a hot tub, three decks, flat yards, and a shed. Charlotte is less than an hour away. $560,000. Victoria McHutchon, Compass, (206) 565-4106

‘Michael’

Directed by Antoine Fuqua (PG-13)

★

“Michael is like if you made a cheery biopic of Bill Cosby that ended with his successful run on The Cosby Show,” said Nick Schager in The Daily Beast. “A deliberate act of whitewashing,” the long-awaited new Michael Jackson biopic presents the crowd-pleasing half of a “sordid” true tale, cutting short its account just before it would have become necessary to revisit the multiple allegations of child sexual abuse that surfaced in 1993 and have continued to shadow the pop star’s legacy since his 2009 death. “The fact that Michael concludes with a title card announcing ‘His Story Continues’ doesn’t suffice as an explanation.”

If you focus only on what this “lavishly conventional” biopic leaves out, however, “you may miss the compelling urgency of what it gets in,” said Owen Gleiberman in Variety. The movie opens in 1966, when Michael was roughly 8 and his tyrannical father Joe, played by Colman Domingo, is beating and berating his five young sons to push them to stardom. We then leap to 1978 to witness a young adult Michael, played by real-life nephew Jaafar Jackson, engineering his escape into a solo career, with Quincy Jones guiding him. The younger Jackson isn’t as photogenic as his indelible uncle, “but does he ever nail the look, the voice, the electrostatic moves—and, more than that, the mixture of delicacy and steel that made Michael who he was.” The picture’s downfall is its lack of real interest in Michael as a human being, said Robert Daniels in RogerEbert.com. Produced by its subject’s estate and four of his siblings, “it has nothing original to say about him,” merely resketching his life to age 30 as most of us know it, failing even to provide insight into his emotional pain. Barely a movie, Michael is “a filmed playlist in search of a story.”

‘Mother’

Directed by David Lowery (R)

★★

“The more movies you’ve seen, the less patience you might have with movies that try to impress you with how wiggy they are,” said Stephanie Zacharek in Time. When the new film featuring Anne Hathaway as an icy fictional pop icon isn’t teasing us with glimpses of ghosts or bloodlettings, it’s “just a slog,” despite a premise and a pairing of two stars that suggest it could have been more. At times, Mother Mary is “a phantasmagoric fever dream of a gothic pop opera,” said Katie Walsh in the Chicago Tribune. At others, it’s “a single-setting two-hander that pits two of our most mesmerizing actresses against each other.”

Hathaway, playing the titular singer on the eve of a highly anticipated comeback, journeys to the atelier of a former close collaborator portrayed by Michaela Coel. Hathaway’s fraying idol wants a dress of nearly magical power as she returns to the stage, and Coel’s Sam agrees to make it, airing grievances as she does about how Mary treated her. The movie “certainly casts a spell,” but the story itself “devolves into mush.” To enjoy the film, “a certain leap of faith is required,” said David Fear in Rolling Stone. When, at last, it “rushes headfirst into delirium,” viewers ready to roll with it may find that it “taps into the same transcendent state that great pop music does,” getting into your head and under your skin “in ways that defy description.

Japan could soon be selling more arms overseas after it lifted a ban on exporting lethal weapons, including fighter jets. It’s the country’s biggest overhaul of defence export rules for decades and a “major shift” to Japan’s “post-World War II constitution”, said Al Jazeera.

Pacifist nation no more

“Pacifist restraints” have “shaped” Japan’s post-war security policy, said Reuters. The previous rules, introduced in 1967 and enacted in 1976, restricted military exports to non-lethal arms, such as those used for surveillance and mine sweeping.

There was a partial easing in 2014, when then-Prime Minister Shinzo Abe lifted the self-imposed ban on arms exports and defence industry cooperation. Then, last year, Australia sourced advanced frigates from Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, a deal that meant Japan began to emerge as a “major arms exporter”, said Newsweek.

Now, the five export categories that had limited military exports to rescue, transport, warning, surveillance and mine-sweeping equipment, are being removed. Instead of banning exports of lethal arms outright, ministers and officials will assess the merits of each proposed sale.

Some export principles will remain: strict screening, controls on transfers to third countries, and a ban on sales to countries involved in conflict. But the government said exceptions could be made when deemed necessary for national security.

It’s thought that nations interested in buying Japanese-made weapons include Australia, New Zealand, the Philippines and Indonesia. Sources told Reuters that warships for the Philippines may be among the first exports.

“With this amendment, transfers of all defence equipment will in principle become possible,” the PM, Sanae Takaichi, posted on X, adding that “recipients will be limited to countries that commit to use in accordance with the UN Charter”.

New rules for a new world

Explaining the shift in policy, Takaichi said that “in an increasingly severe security environment, no single country can now protect its own peace and security alone”.

Takaichi, who is regarded as a China “hawk” and often referred to as Japan’s “Iron Lady”, is among a number of recent Japanese leaders to have “pushed back against the country’s pacifist stance”, said Al Jazeera.

There is an “increasingly severe security environment”, said the Japan News. So her government feels that the regional environment has become significantly more dangerous, because of China’s growing military power and tensions over Taiwan, North Korea’s missile and nuclear programs, Moscow’s activity in the region, and the knock-on effect of tensions in the Middle East.

So it wants to deepen military cooperation with friendly countries and share the burden of regional security, instead of relying almost entirely on Washington. There’s also an economic dimension: Japan hopes to scale up production, attract revenue, innovation and investment.

We “shouldn’t underplay how important this will be”, William Yang, a senior analyst on north-east Asia at the International Crisis Group think tank, told The Telegraph, because “over the last few decades, Japan has been secluded from the global defence and arms supplies markets”.