News Desk

The suspects face charges for theft committed by an organised gang and criminal conspiracy, prosecutor says.

Two men arrested over a jewel heist at France’s Louvre Museum are to be charged with theft and criminal conspiracy after “partially admitting to the charges”, Paris Public Prosecutor Laure Beccuau has said.

The suspects were to be brought before magistrates with a view to “charging them with organised theft, which carries a 15-year prison sentence”, and criminal conspiracy, punishable by 10 years, Beccuau told a press conference on Wednesday. The jewellery stolen on October 19 has “not yet been recovered”, Beccuau said.

Two suspects in the Louvre jewel heist have “partially” admitted their participation and are believed to be the men who forced their way into the world’s most visited museum, a Paris prosecutor said.

Beccuau said that the two suspects face preliminary charges of theft committed by an organised gang and criminal conspiracy, and are expected to be held in provisional detention. She did not give details about their comments.

It took thieves less than eight minutes to steal the jewels valued at 88 million euros ($102m), shocking the world. The thieves forced open a window, cut into cases with power tools, and fled with eight pieces of the French crown jewels.

One suspect is a 34-year-old Algerian national who has been living in France since 2010, Beccuau said. He was arrested Saturday night at Charles de Gaulle Airport as he was about to fly to Algeria with no return ticket. He was living in Paris’s northern suburb of Aubervilliers and was known to police mostly for road traffic offences, Beccuau said.

The other suspect, 39, was arrested Saturday night at his home, also in Aubervilliers.

“There is no evidence to suggest that he was about to leave the country,” Beccuau said. The man was known to police for several thefts, and his DNA was found on one of the glass cases where the jewels were displayed and on items the thieves left behind, she added.

Prosecutors had faced a late Wednesday deadline to charge the suspects, release them or seek a judge’s extension.

Jewels not yet recovered

The jewels have not been recovered, Beccuau said.

“These jewels are now, of course, unsellable … Anyone who buys them would be guilty of concealment of stolen goods,” she warned. “It’s still time to give them back.”

Earlier Wednesday, French police acknowledged major gaps in the Louvre’s defences – turning the dazzling daylight theft into a national reckoning over how France protects its treasures.

Paris Police Chief Patrice Faure told Senate lawmakers that ageing systems and slow-moving fixes left weak seams in the museum.

“A technological step has not been taken,” he said, noting that parts of the video network are still analog, producing lower-quality images that are slow to share in real time.

A long-promised revamp “will not be finished before 2029–2030”, he said.

Faure also disclosed that the Louvre’s authorisation to operate its security cameras quietly expired in July and wasn’t renewed – a paperwork lapse that some see as a symbol of broader negligence.

The police chief said officers “arrived extremely fast” after the theft, but added the lag in response occurred earlier in the chain – from first detection, to museum security, to the emergency line, to police command.

Faure and his team said the first alert to police came not from the Louvre’s alarms, but from a cyclist outside who dialed the emergency line after seeing helmeted men with a basket lift.

Within 24 hours of the Louvre heist, a museum in eastern France reported the theft of gold and silver coins after finding a smashed display case.

Last month, thieves broke into Paris’s Natural History Museum and stole gold nuggets worth more than $1.5m. A Chinese woman has been detained and charged in relation to the theft.

The Ta’ang National Liberation Army says it will pull out of the ruby-mining town of Mogok and nearby Momeik.

An armed rebel group in Myanmar says it has reached a truce with the military-run government to stop months of heavy clashes in the country’s north.

The Ta’ang National Liberation Army (TNLA) announced on Tuesday that it had signed an agreement with Myanmar’s government following several days of China-mediated talks in Kunming, roughly 400km (248 miles) from the Myanmar border.

Under the deal, the TNLA said it would withdraw from Mogok, the ruby-mining centre in the upper Mandalay region, and the neighbouring town of Momeik in northern part of Shan state, though it did not provide a timeline. Both rebel forces and government troops will “stop advancing” starting Wednesday, it added.

The group also said the military, which has not yet commented on the agreement, has agreed to halt air strikes.

The TNLA is part of the Three Brotherhood Alliance, which also includes the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army and the Arakan Army. They have been fighting for decades for greater autonomy from Myanmar’s central government and are loosely allied with the pro-democracy resistance groups that emerged after the army deposed the elected government and seized power in February 2021.

Since October 2023, the alliance has captured and controlled significant swaths of northeastern Myanmar and western Myanmar. The TNLA alone seized 12 towns in an offensive.

Their advance slowed following a series of China-brokered ceasefires earlier this year, allowing the army to retake major cities, including Lashio city in April and Nawnghkio in July, as well as Kyaukme and Hsipaw in October.

China is a central power broker in the civil war in Myanmar, where it has major geopolitical and economic interests.

Beijing has more openly backed the military government this year as it battles to shore up territory before an election slated for December, which it hopes will stabilise and help legitimise its rule.

However, the polls are expected to be blocked in large rebel-held areas, and many international observers have dismissed them as a tactic to mask continuing military rule.

FORMER Corrie actress Michelle Keegan is being courted for her first Hollywood film role.

US screen star Reese Witherspoon is keen for the 38-year-old to play the lead in a big-budget movie adaptation of her new novel.

Oscar-winner Reese, 49, wrote crime thriller Gone Before Goodbye with American author Harlan Coben, who was behind Michelle’s Netflix hit show Fool Me Once.

Harlan introduced the women to each other at the launch of the book at the ­London Literature Festival, held at the capital’s Festival Hall last weekend.

A source said: “Harlan has been singing Michelle’s praises to Reese and she was keen to meet her. They got on really well and it was clear Reese was really taken with Michelle.

“The plan is to turn the book into a film and Michelle is their first choice to take on the role of the lead character, Maggie McCabe.

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“She is a combat surgeon and Michelle previously played an Army medic in Our Girl on the BBC, so it’s a role they know she could take on with style.

“It’s early days but Harlan and Reese think Michelle is tailor-made for this role and would love her to come on board when the time is right.”

Ex-soap star Michelle became a global success after the mystery drama Fool Me Once was released last year.

The series became one of Netflix’s most watched TV shows of 2024 — with more than 107 million people streaming it worldwide in the first 90 days.

Best-selling author Harlan said of his leading lady: “I think what Michelle has, besides tremendous talent and all the other stuff, is a genuine authenticity.

“I think the audience, loves her, people want to follow her life, because they sense that there’s a kindness and a gentleness.

“And that’s really her, she’s truly authentic.”

Speaking last year, 63-year-old Harlan insisted he would be keen to work with her again and reckoned: “If we could get Michelle, we’d love to get Michelle.”

Fans of Michelle, from Stockport — who has a daughter with Heart FM DJ husband Mark Wright — will next see her on screen in ITV crime drama The Blame.

She plays Detective Inspector Emma Crane in the six-parter, which is an adaptation of ­Charlotte Langley’s 2023 debut novel of the same name.

Michelle is also known for her roles in the Sky One comedy drama Brassic and BBC drama Ten Pound Poms, about Brits who migrated to Australia in the 1950s.

Oct. 29 (UPI) — Human rights organization Amnesty International said Wednesday that a U.S. airstrike that hit a Houthi detention center in Yemen in April should be investigated as a war crime.

The April attack on Saada, in the northwestern part of Yemen, was part of Operation Rough Rider and killed civilian migrants held in a Houthi detention center because of their immigration status, Amnesty said.

The migrants often come through Yemen from the horn of Africa to get to Saudi Arabia for work.

At the time of the attack, the Houthis reported that at least 68 African migrants were killed and 47 were injured.

On Wednesday, Amnesty also released a report, It is a miracle we survived: U.S. Air Strike on Civilians Held in Sa’ada Detention Centre, in which it interviewed 15 survivors and did analysis on satellite imagery and footage.

“The harrowing testimonies from survivors paint a clear picture of a civilian building, packed with detainees, being bombed without distinction,” said Kristine Beckerle, Amnesty International’s deputy regional director for the Middle East and North Africa, in a statement.

“This was a lethal failure by the U.S. to comply with one of its core obligations under international humanitarian law: to do everything feasible to verify whether the object attacked was a military objective.”

She called on the United States to give reparations to the migrants and their families, “including financial compensation. Given the air strike killed and injured civilians, the U.S. authorities should investigate this attack as a war crime,’ she said.

“Where sufficient evidence exists, competent authorities should prosecute any person suspected of criminal responsibility, including under the doctrine of command responsibility.”

The U.S. air strikes were conducted to protect the Red Sea from Houthi attacks, which had begun in response to the war between Israel and Hamas. The Houthi rebels, backed by Iran, support Hamas.

“The U.S. must conduct a prompt, thorough, independent, impartial, and transparent investigation into the air strike on the Saada migrant detention center and make the results public,” Beckerle said.

“Survivors of this attack deserve nothing less than full justice. They must receive full, effective, and prompt reparations, including restitution, compensation, rehabilitation, satisfaction and guarantees of non-repetition, through an effective and accessible mechanism.”

On April 27, CENTCOM released a statement saying, “These operations have been executed using detailed and comprehensive intelligence ensuring lethal effects against the Houthis while minimizing risk to civilians.

“To preserve operational security, we have intentionally limited disclosing details of our ongoing or future operations. We are very deliberate in our operational approach, but will not reveal specifics about what we’ve done or what we will do.”

Heathrow, NatWest and Minecraft are among some of the sites and services experiencing problems amid a global Microsoft outage.

Outage tracker Downdetector showed thousands of reports of issues with a number of websites globally on Wednesday.

Microsoft said some users of Microsoft 365 might see delays with Outlook and some other services.

The company’s Azure cloud computing platform, which underpins large parts of the internet, reported a “degradation of some services” at 1600 GMT.

It said this was due to “DNS issues” – the same root cause of the huge Amazon Web Services (AWS) outage last week.

Amazon says AWS is currently operating normally.

Other impacted sites in the UK include supermarket Asda and mobile phone operator O2 – while in the US, people have reported issues accessing the websites of coffee chain Starbucks and retailer Kroger.

Microsoft said business Microsoft 365 customers might see problems.

Some web pages on Microsoft also directed users to an error notifications that read “Uh oh! Something went wrong with the previous request.”

A Microsoft spokesperson said it is working to “address an issue affecting Azure Front Door that is impacting the availability of some services,” adding that it is sharing updates on the Azure status page.

It said it had found parts of its infrastructure with connectivity issues, and was working to “reroute affected traffic to restore service health”.

It has started a thread on X with updates after some users reported they could not access the service status page.

Meanwhile, business at the Scottish Parliament has been suspended because of technical issues with the parliament’s online voting system.

A senior Scottish Parliament source told BBC News they believe the problems are related to the Microsoft outage.

While NatWest’s website was impacted, the bank’s mobile banking, web chat, and telephone customer services are still available.

NatWest customers with online banking bookmarked were able to access that service as well, the bank said.

On its service status page, Azure’s network infrastructure was showing as “critical” in every region in the world.

Exactly how much of the internet is impacted is unclear, but estimates typically put Microsoft Azure at around 20% of the global cloud market.

The firm said it believed the outage was a result of “an inadvertent configuration change”.

In other words, a behind-the-scenes system was changed, with unintended consequences.

Microsoft said it plans on fixing the problem by effectively replacing its service with a recent backup it knows was working properly.

But it could not give an estimate for how long this would take.

The concentration of cloud services into Microsoft, Amazon and Google means an outage like this “can cripple hundreds, if not thousands of applications and systems,” said Dr Saqib Kakvi, from Royal Holloway University.

“Due to cost of hosting web content, economic forces lead to consolidation of resources into a few very large players, but it is effectively putting all our eggs in one of three baskets.”

“Who are you really? What is real happiness? What do you actually need for happiness?” Rhea Seehorn murmurs.

It’s an otherwise ordinary Wednesday afternoon, steps away from bookshelves stuffed with works like “East of Eden” by John Steinbeck and the “A Court of Thorns and Roses” series by Sarah J. Maas, when she casually lists these big life questions aloud while leaning over a vegan brownie and cup of tea at a small table inside Village Well Books & Coffee in Culver City. I’m still questioning whether I read the street parking signs correctly. But these are queries Seehorn has given hard thought to in recent months.

That’s what happens when you’re headlining a Vince Gilligan show. Existential reckonings are part of the gig.

Seehorn is at least familiar with the deep internal struggles that swirl within Gilligan’s protagonists. For six seasons on “Better Call Saul,” AMC’s hit prequel spinoff to “Breaking Bad” that told the backstory of Walter White’s smarmy lawyer Saul Goodman a.k.a. Jimmy McGill (Bob Odenkirk), Seehorn played Kim Wexler. The fan-favorite type A lawyer with a perfectly-positioned ponytail was McGill/Goodman’s principled but increasingly conflicted girlfriend who got caught up in his elaborate schemes and paid a price for his crimes.

In his first follow-up to the “Breaking Bad” universe, Gilligan opted to forgo revolving another series around a tormented man in favor of one that let the shades of Seehorn’s talent fill the screen.

Gilligan says that in “Better Call Saul,” which he co-created with Peter Gould, he saw in Seehorn what he had observed in Aaron Paul years before on “Breaking Bad” — an actor whose performance propelled a side character, wayward junkie Jesse Pinkman, into a figure that commanded viewers’ attention and became integral to the story.

“Aaron made that character indispensable,” Gilligan says over video call. “It was like déjà vu with Rhea Seehorn. I hate saying I wasn’t aware of her prior to us auditioning and casting her. But she was just fantastic from Day 1. What Peter and I saw in her was a potential to take a show that, at the beginning, was about one character and make it a two-hander. And I just knew very, very quickly in the early life of ‘Better Call Saul’ that I wanted to work with her again after it was over.”

So he set out to create a story where she was No. 1 on the call sheet.

How did Seehorn process that news?

“I just cried,” she says.

It’s not, as some may have hoped, a Kim Wexler spinoff — though, she’s still open to that: “I’ll do it. I’ll do it. Anything. A series. A film. A Staples commercial,” she says.

Rhea Seehorn as Carol in Apple TV’s “Pluribus.”

(Apple TV)

“Pluribus” has been a tightly-guarded project for Apple TV with a strict embargo on details that makes it difficult to provide a lot of context to its premise. Here’s what can be said: Seehorn plays Carol, a fantasy romance author who, despite a successful career and seemingly loving relationship with her partner, is described as “the most miserable person on Earth.” After a signal from space changes the world in a significant way, she must save humankind from happiness. The nine-episode drama premieres with two episodes on Nov. 7; new episodes will be released weekly after that.

For a while, Seehorn only had the first script to make her assessments about the world Gilligan was building. She eventually got her hands on two more before 2023’s dual Hollywood strikes kicked in. When she finished reading through them, one thought came to mind: “‘Wow, this is a lot of me,’” she says, launching into laughter. “He had warned me — ‘You’re going to be in almost every scene’ — but then you read it and you’re like, ‘Oh … oh.’”

Careful to be as vague as possible, she continues: “I can’t spoil it. There’s a lot of time I spend completely on my own. I’m not giving away anything am I? Make sure I’m not!” Aside from the way she has to be coy about the series, she’s appealingly unguarded in her enthusiasm for the journey it sent her on as an actor.

“‘Better Call Saul’ was its own animal, but it had the mothership,” she says. “With this, in our conversations, it felt like Vince wanted to push things to the limit — it’s genre-defying, tone-defying. It’s hilarious and then gut-wrenchingly upsetting. It’s scary in a variety of ways. It really makes you think: What would you do in this situation?”

Seeking to playfully lean into the show’s interest in exploring happiness and the human condition, in scheduling our meet-up I asked that Seehorn pick a location that makes her happy, which led us to this bookstore near her home. “I buy books constantly,” she says. Her most recent purchase was Rachel Kushner’s spy thriller “Creation Lake.” But lately, she’s been prioritizing William T. Harper’s book, “Eleven Days in Hell: The 1974 Carrasco Prison Siege at Huntsville, Texas,” which chronicles the true story of the standoff between inmates and law enforcement. At the time of this sit-down, Seehorn is days away from beginning production in Texas on a film adaptation of the book that will also star Taylor Kitsch and Diego Luna.

She lights up as the conversation veers into the stuff she watched to unwind while shooting “Pluribus”: “I’m obsessed with ‘Chicken Shop Date,’” she says. “Do you watch? Can we please use this article to get me on that show? This is my campaign.”

Rhea Seehorn, who stars in the new Apple TV series “Pluribus,” says the show is genre-defying: “It’s hilarious and then gut-wrenchingly upsetting. It’s scary in a variety of ways. It really makes you think: What would you do in this situation?”

(Anthony Avellano / For The Times)

She wrapped production on “Pluribus” last December. Since then, she‘s shot an indie film, “Sender,” with “Severance’s” Britt Lower, had a brief family vacation and helped the eldest of her two stepsons get settled in for his first year of college. They’re the kind of life moments, she says, that feed into those big questions discussed earlier and what the show confronts.

“It’s about this reckoning — a big exploration of who you are. It got me thinking about how we handle really difficult emotions,” Seehorn says. “There was a constant through line for me about this feeling of anxiety that we all know. When we have those nightmares where you’re running around telling everyone that the barn is on fire and they all keep saying, ‘It’s fine.’ And you’re screaming that it’s not.

“You find yourself thinking, how do I measure success?” she continues. “About everything — relationships, career, talent, ambition. There’s reasons we make armor, sometimes long-term, sometimes short-term. There are choices that are survival skills, that are good for you at one time, that later are no longer the crutches and tools they used to be. The performance Carol is giving at the beginning — where she hates the life she’s living and questions the people who like her work because it’s not impressive enough — Vince and I had some deep-dive talks about that as people in the arts.”

Of course, the philosophy of self and purpose and happiness was not something Seehorn considered much while growing up. Deborah Rhea Seehorn — she went by Debbie until her early teens — was born in Norfolk, Va., but spent her childhood in places like Arizona and Japan because of her father’s job as an agent for the Naval Investigative Service, later known as NCIS when it added “Criminal” to its name. “My dad was not Mark Harmon,” she jokes. After her parents divorced when she was 12, the family stayed in the Virginia Beach area.

On paper, Seehorn wasn’t primed for a life of acting. But she felt a creative pull: Her mother did musical theater in high school; her father and paternal grandmother painted. And Seehorn and her sister began sketching from a young age. Seehorn initially had ambitions of pursuing a career in design or art — she majored in painting while a student at George Mason University. She thought maybe she’d land a job doing exhibition design or art restoration at the Smithsonian or one of the other museums around town. But when she was required to take an elective course her freshman year, she saw an opportunity to try something that otherwise felt out of reach to her.

“At the time, at least to me, American television and film had people who looked like models,” she says. “I didn’t. I thought I would get made fun of mercilessly if I said I wanted to be an actor. It felt the same as saying I wanted to be a supermodel. But I knew immediately, with the first class I took, that acting was it for me.”

It was taught by Lynnie Raybuck, a teacher and actor who remains a mentor to Seehorn. This is where — in life and in this conversation — it becomes clear Seehorn revels in the technique of acting. She grows animated referencing Practical Aesthetics, the acting technique developed by David Mamet and William H. Macy for the Atlantic Theater Company, and detailing her fondness for in-depth script analysis.

“To me, it blew my mind the first time I realized that it isn’t magic fairy dust on some people — that they’re just talented and you’re not,” she says. “That there is a way to work toward that. As soon as somebody said there was a way to study that and there was a way to get closer and closer to inviting that audience in to go with you on a journey and make it believable, I just was like, ‘Well, this is what I’m doing for a living.’”

Rhea Seehorn starred as Kim Wexler opposite Bob Odenkirk’s Saul Goodman/Jimmy McGill in “Better Call Saul.” (Greg Lewis/AMC/Sony Pictures Television)

She knew it wouldn’t pay the bills right away. She ushered, worked the box office, read stage directions for new plays — she had days jobs, too, like working at TGI Fridays — “By the way, they just offered me suspenders since I never got them.” (She was underage and unable to serve alcohol at the time, so she was a hostess who did expo for the waiters.)

She eventually landed in New York, working at Playwright Horizons, an off-Broadway theater. After a few years, the pull of L.A. led her west. She was cast in the ABC sitcom “I’m With Her,” starring Teri Polo and loosely based on writer Chris Henchy’s marriage to Brooke Shields. It didn’t last long, but other roles would come along with varying degrees of steadiness. She had a recurring role as an assistant DA in the legal dramedy “Franklin & Bash” and played the best friend of Whitney Cummings’ fictionalized version of herself in NBC’s “Whitney,” which ran for two seasons from 2011 to 2013.

Then, as “Better Call Saul” was coming together, the casting directors working on the project were familiar with Seehorn, who had auditioned for them many times over the years, and what she could deliver.

“The first time I met her was for the producer sessions and there were three actresses who were reading for Kim with me,” Odenkirk says by phone. “The other two actresses were absolutely fantastic. But Rhea and I had chemistry, and we all knew it. We all felt it. It was undeniable and it was easy.”

She was cast as Kim, before a last name was even assigned to the character, and with no inkling for how essential she would become to the story. And it quickly becomes clear how she dissects her characters. (Both Odenkirk and Gilligan, without prompting, say that her scripts were often heavily marked up with scribbled notes, highlights and tabs.)

“I only have one line of dialogue in that first episode, other than the intercom,” Seehorn says, still able to recite it by memory. “They told me later it wasn’t on purpose that I have almost no contractions in the first couple of episodes and other people do. And I was like, should I ask them if it’s OK to elide ‘want to’ to ‘wanna’ or ‘do not’ to ‘don’t.’ But then I was like, ‘No! What if I just try to figure out who talks like this?’ It started to be this thing of ‘Who is this controlled person? And why would she be this controlled?’ She became so important to me because I had largely built her out of subtext and this private part of her that mostly the audience was my biggest confidant.”

Rhea Seehorn on starting her acting career: “I thought I would get made fun of mercilessly if I said I wanted to be an actor. It felt the same as saying I wanted to be a supermodel. But I knew immediately, with the first class I took, that acting was it for me.” (Anthony Avellano/For The Times)

Odenkirk admiringly references Seehorn’s level of attention and their shared approach in defending the emotional intelligence of their characters. He notes the predicament the “Better Call Saul” writers sometimes faced in placing Jimmy/Saul and Kim, who knew each other so well, in dramatic situations that ordinarily would require more obliviousness or willing unawareness.

“When Kim and Jimmy were together, there were times — not many, but a few — where one of them was lying to the other one,” he says. “And it was always a challenge. We’d be like, ‘Saul knows he’s being lied to’ or ‘Kim knows Saul is lying.’ And we’d have to find a way around it. Or we’d have to let go — she’s [Rhea] good at that too … I just love her seriousness of purpose. And her love for losing herself in the dream.”

It’s why he’s not surprised Gilligan wanted her to lead his next series.

“She is formidable in nature,” Odenkirk says. “Her strength on screen is great, her dynamic range is incredible. She has the strength of character of a leading man — I’m just going to say it. She has the backbone and the steely determination of a leading man.”

In fact, when the idea for “Pluribus” began tugging at Gilligan years ago, in the midst of “Better Call Saul,” he initially envisioned it having a male protagonist.

“But I would take these long walks during our lunch breaks in the writers room and, I can’t remember when exactly, but it dawned on me on one of those walks that I really like this young lady, Rhea Seehorn,” he says. “She’s a really good actor. And I started thinking, ‘Why does the main character of my next show have to be a guy? ‘ I was about to say I kind of tailored the role to Rhea, but the truth is, I don’t know if that’s true. Rhea has so many strengths as an actor, I know she can do anything I threw at her — just like I knew many years before that Bryan Cranston could do anything. She makes it look easy.”

When Seehorn and I speak again a few weeks after our initial meeting, she is video-calling from a nondescript room during a break from production on “Eleven Days.” She has already fiddled through a number of jigsaw puzzles and “Paint by Numbers” — her activities of choice when she needs to turn down her actor brain — in the time since we last spoke; she reaches for the painting of plants she recently completed as proof. We eventually return to the idea of happiness. What makes her happy right now?

“It is my family and my friends, but it’s also my work,” she says. “Carol, on paper, has many of the things that I want, that many of us want. Success at work, especially in a career in the arts. But she won’t believe the hype. Her mocking of her work and her fans is just a mocking of herself. It’s self-loathing — like she’s trying to beat people to the punch.

“For me, I realized I fully own and will not be embarrassed about the fact that a third leg on that stool for my happiness is my work,” she continues. “It is intrinsically a part of who I am and I am a better mom to my stepsons and a better partner to my fiance because I get to do what I love.”

And she’s finding new ways to do more of it. She has become an executive producer on Katja Meier’s Swiss TV show “$hare” and made her episodic directorial debut with “Better Call Saul” — “I would like to try to direct again. There’s a couple of projects and people I’m talking to about directing on their show. People are like, ‘Why didn’t you direct the first season [of ‘Pluribus’]?’ I’m like,’I was trying to remember to brush my teeth with all I had going on.’”

She references the children’s book “Archibald’s Next Big Thing,” written by actor Tony Hale, whom she shared screen time with on “Veep.” It’s about embracing the journey you’re on.

“You’re constantly moving your goal post and all it is doing is just s— on yourself and where you are now,” she says. “Carol missed things until they were taken away. She could have stopped judging everything and judging herself.”

It was a reminder to embrace the freedom to think outside the box with her performance. The first episode is a high-wire balancing act; at one point, there’s a 12-minute stretch that has her character twisting through confusion, fear, grief, anger and frustration like pretzel dough being looped into a knot — on her own, yet not alone.

“Everything made me nervous about Carol,” she says. “As soon as Vince sent me the script, I was like, ‘This is bananas.’ You’re on your way to work and you just think, ‘What if I just took this off-ramp and I fled the scene and it would be all over?’ But then you’re like, ‘You know what, I’m gonna show up and do my best. Believe me, I did some takes that I’m sure were embarrassing, but I was just like, ‘When else are you going to try? The time is now.”

In other words, she says, “Don’t be a Carol.”

The United States Federal Reserve has cut its benchmark interest rate by 25 basis points to 3.75 – 4.00 percent, amid signs of a slowing labour market and continued pressure on consumer prices.

The cut, announced on Wednesday, marks the US central bank’s second rate cut this year.

“Job gains have slowed this year, and the unemployment rate has edged up but remained low through August; more recent indicators are consistent with these developments. Inflation has moved up since earlier in the year and remains somewhat elevated,” the Fed said in a statement.

“Uncertainty about the economic outlook remains elevated.”

The cuts were largely in line with expectations. Earlier on Wednesday, CME Fed Watch — which tracks the likelihood of rate cuts — said there was a 97.8 percent probability of rate cuts.

After the September cut, economists had largely been expecting two additional rate cuts for the rest of this year. Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, HSBC, and Morgan Stanley, among others, forecast one more 25-basis-point reduction by year’s end following Wednesday’s cut. Bank of America Global Research is the only major firm that is not anticipating another 25-basis-point cut in 2025.

“The Fed has a challenging line to walk; lower interest rates to support labour markets and growth, or raise them to tamp down inflation. For now, they are taking a cautious approach tilted a bit towards the growth concerns,” Michael Klein, professor of international economic affairs at The Fletcher School at Tufts University in Massachusetts, told Al Jazeera.

Despite forecasts, Federal reserve chairman Jerome Powell isn’t necessarily inevitable.

“We haven’t made a decision about December,” Powell told reporters in a press conference.

“We remain well-positioned to respond in a timely way to potential economic developments.”

Government shutdown implications

The cuts come as economic data becomes increasingly scarce amid the ongoing government shutdown, now in its 29th day as of Wednesday, making it the second-longest in US history, behind the 35-day shutdown during the first presidency of Donald Trump in late 2018 and early 2019.

Because of the shutdown, the Department of Labor did not release the September jobs report, which was scheduled for October 3. The only major government economic data released this month was the Consumer Price Index (CPI), which tracks the cost of goods and services and is a key measure of inflation. The CPI rose 0.3 percent in September on a month-over-month basis to an inflation rate of 3 percent.

That data was released because the Social Security Administration required it to calculate cost-of-living adjustments for 2026. As a result, Social Security beneficiaries will receive a 2.8 percent increase in payments compared to 2025.

The shutdown, however, could have a bigger impact on next month’s central bank decision as the Labor Department is currently unable to compile the data needed for its November reports.

However, amid the limited government data, private trackers are showing a slowdown.

“We are not going to be able to have the detailed feel of things, but I think if there were a significant or material change in the economy one way or another, I think we would pick that up,” Powell said.

Consumer confidence lags

Consumer confidence fell to a six-month low, according to The Conference Board’s report that was released on Tuesday.

The data showed that lower-income earners – those making less than $75,000 a year – are less confident about the economy as fears of job scarcity loom. This comes only days after several large corporations announced waves of layoffs.

On Wednesday, Paramount cut 2,000 people from its workforce. On Tuesday, Amazon cut 14,000 corporate jobs. Last week, big box retailer Target cut 1,800 jobs. This, as furloughs and layoffs weigh on government workers. The US government is the nation’s largest employer.

Those making more than $200,000 annually remain fairly confident and are leading consumer spending that is keeping the economy afloat, according to The Conference Board.

Pressures both on consumer spending and the labour market are largely driven by tariffs weighing on consumers and businesses.

US markets are ticking up on the rate cut. The Nasdaq is up 0.5, the S&P 500 is up 0.1, and the Dow Jones Industrial Average is up by 0.26 as of 2pm in New York (18:00 GMT).

Ngomari Costine has a terrible reputation. The area, in Maiduguri, northeastern Nigeria, is filled with delinquent youth popularly referred to as Marlians, named after a controversial Nigerian musician whose songs and style they imitate. 

Groups of young people in flashy clothes and elaborate hairstyles gather in front of shops and on benches outside houses in the area. But it’s not their dressing that worries residents; it’s what lies beneath: gangs ready to turn violent at the slightest provocation.

The same issue plagues Gwange 2, another densely populated neighbourhood where hundreds of teenagers roam the streets at almost every hour. Their presence alone sends jolts of fear down the resident’s spine; their actions do far worse than that. 

“Almost every day, there is a gang violence incident,” said Zanna Abba Kaka, the District Head of Ngomari Costine. “This made our community a highly unsafe place to live in.” 

The aftermath of the heydays of Boko Haram insurgency in Nigeria’s North East, particularly in Borno State, which is the epicentre of the violence, has left behind a generation of young people who have become psychologically accustomed to violence. 

When the insurgency began to wane and relative peace returned, new forms of insecurity started to take root. The easy availability of light weapons, coupled with limited education and shrinking economic opportunities, pushed many young people into drugs, theft, political thuggery, and the violent street gangs that now dominate several neighbourhoods.

Much of this violence, according to Zanna, stems from political manipulation. “These thugs regard themselves as employees [of the politicians] and they do as they wish.”

The consequences are visible in everyday life. In Gwange 2, community leader Alkali Grema recalled one day at the front of his house when an 18-year-old boy attacked his peer with a knife and slashed his neck before others could intervene. 

“It happened so fast,” he said. This was a reprisal attack and just one out of many. Unfortunately, the victim lost his life. Alkali said he had witnessed so many instances where the gangs wielded dangerous weapons; “shiny and can be as long as the length of an adult’s shin.”

‘Unity for Peace’

As such incidents became more frequent and brazen, the authorities began to act. Investigations traced the flow of these weapons to the city’s Gamboru Steel Market, prompting several crackdowns. But when blacksmiths were banned from producing them openly, many quietly moved their operations underground.

In 2019, a different approach emerged. The non-profit International Alert, known for its peacebuilding work, launched the Hadin Kai Domin Zaman Lafia (Unity for Peace) project with support from the US Embassy’s Trans-Sahara Counterterrorism Partnership programme. The initiative aimed to reorient the community through peacebuilding and vocational training.

At-risk youth were identified and trained in tailoring, painting,  and embroidery. To foster a sense of belonging between the disarmed youth and other members of the community, International Alert engaged local entrepreneurs to facilitate the training.

The non-profit also organised dialogue sessions between community leaders and young people. Gradually, results began to show. The programme inspired community-driven initiatives like sanitation and improved school enrolment for vulnerable children. 

“We were able to enrol more children in Gomari Costine Primary School than ever before,” Zanna said. “Sometimes the school accepts them without us paying for registration or other charges.”

A thug’s turnaround

Thirty-nine-year-old Sani Umar has spent most of his life in Gomari Costine. He grew up underprivileged, without formal education or marketable skills, and for 15 years was one of the most feared political thugs in the area. He led a group called “A dakatar da Mutane”, roughly translated as “People must be stopped”.

Sani was one of the 150 youths who participated in the Unity For Peace initiative. “During the programme, I learnt tailoring and ventured into the tailoring business, but it wasn’t moving well because people don’t really bother much about making clothes in this economy, so I switched to selling tea,” he told HumAngle.

These days, you will find him at his tea joint as he tends to his customers and earns an honest living. Three years ago, at this time, he would likely be at their popular gang joint in the community, where many youths like him, who were jobless, would gather to chat, argue, and fight.

While narrating his life in the last decade, Sani looked sombre, with a demeanour that screams regret, especially as he shared a particular incident that threw him into fear and isolation in 2015.

“We attacked a neighbouring community, where unfortunately, my friend stabbed an opponent who was pronounced dead,” Sani paused. “I was shaken and I had to go into hiding to avoid arrest, and I couldn’t be seen in the community, at places where I normally stay for a long time. I was very much disturbed by that.” 

The event haunted him for years, but it was not until 2019, after joining the reform programme, that he finally walked away from violence.

Women leading peace

International Alert is not alone in this effort. In Gwange 2, the Unified Members for Women Advancement (UMWA) implemented the Youth Peace Building Initiative with support from the European Union’s Managing Conflict in Nigeria (MCN) programme. The project targeted 20 gang leaders, training them to advocate for peace and reject violence.

According to Hassana Ibrahim Waziri, UMWA’s Executive Director, her team began by identifying at-risk youth and inviting gang leaders for open discussions. “We gradually introduced peace concepts before expanding to the wider community,” she said.

To win trust, they organised a mass circumcision ceremony for boys; a culturally symbolic act showing they had the community’s best interests at heart.

After weeks of training and sensitisation, the reformed youths were appointed as peace ambassadors. Among them was Hassan Kambar, also known as Go Slow. He used to be feared as the leader of one of the local gangs, “The Branch”. He joined the group as far back as 2000, working as a thug for one of the big political parties then. 

“When UMWA came, they made us realise that if we keep living this way, what future will our younger ones have? That touched me deeply, and I decided to quit,” he said.

Today, the 45-year-old serves as a chairperson in the Civilian Joint Task Force (CJTF) and earns a living as a carpenter.

Their transformation has had ripple effects. Ahead of the 2023 elections, some former gang members carried placards urging voters to reject violence. Others formed night-watch committees to guard their communities.

Many now dream of joining the police, army, or civil defence, determined to serve the same society they once harmed.

Peacebuilding also took a local turn. In Maiduguri, respected elders known as Lawan traditionally mediate disputes under a symbolic shed outside their homes. This same model was adopted in Gwange 2 and Ngomari Costine, where elders and youth now meet regularly to discuss issues.

“At first, the community leaders were afraid. They did not want to be involved with these boys, but they are our kids, there’s nothing we can do,” Dr Hassana. 

She explained that UMWA’s approach focused on changing mindsets as much as behaviour, as this goes with educating them that violence doesn’t equal strength as perceived by the gangs, rather it is about the capacity to organise and live peacefully with people, to move forward and foster development.

“We target the mindset… even though we do not give skill acquisition training, some of them reach out to us for recommendations when they want to join forces to do better with their lives,” Dr Hassana said.

Measuring change and facing limits

Community leaders who spoke to HumAngle said gang violence has declined noticeably. “Around 2020 and 2021, we used to get such cases every day, not only in this area but in Maiduguri generally, but it has reduced,” said the District Head of Ngomari Costine.

Yet the progress is fragile.

Zanna, who mobilised the youth to participate in the Unity for Peace programme, noted that only about 150 participants joined — far too few for a city the size of Maiduguri. Many young people remain outside the reach of these projects.

The sustainability of the programme poses another obstacle. While the programmes briefly expanded to London Ciki, Polo, and nearby communities, other hotspots such as Dala and Kaleri continue to struggle with gang activity.

And there is no system in place to ensure that these skills are transferable to the teeming upcoming youth. As much as the beneficiaries may want to help their community, they can only engage one or two people whenever they get a job.

According to UMWA, its Youth Peace Building Initiative lasted just one year due to limited funding. “Ideally, such projects should run longer to make the changes stick,” Hassana explained. 

Like most NGOs, both groups rely on donor grants. As funds shrink, their reach contracts, and the continuity of their work becomes uncertain.

A fragile peace

With non-governmental organisations stepping back, local authorities have become the last line of defence. Cases of conflict are now referred to the Lawan or CJTF chairmen, who attempt mediation before involving the police.

But sustaining peace comes at a personal cost. In Gwange, Lawan Grema said the absence of UMWA’s support has made his role harder. “Sometimes I remove money from my own pocket to settle small disputes,” he said. “People are no longer motivated to keep the peace.”

For these communities, the calm that has returned is hard-won but fragile. Without steady support, the cycle of neglect and violence that once defined them could easily begin again.

This story was produced under the HumAngle Foundation’s Advancing Peace and Security through Journalism project, supported by the National Endowment for Democracy (NED).

A Gogglebox couple who have been married for several years have been keeping fans entertained with their hilarious takes on the telly highlights

Gogglebox viewers were left stunned after a married duo posted a nostalgic photograph.

Much-loved South London pair Sue and Steve became part of the enduring Channel 4 programme back in 2019 – and the pair quickly established themselves as audience favourites.

Throughout the years, Steve, a former black cab driver, and Sue, who is semi-retired, have left audiences in fits of laughter with their witty remarks and amusing reactions to television highlights.

Beyond the long-running show, the couple – who have been wed for more than 40 years – are devoted parents to two daughters and proud grandparents to grandson Roman.

Sue and Steve regularly keep their 5,000 Instagram followers informed about their everyday lives. This week, the duo thrilled fans by posting a throwback photograph, reports the Manchester Evening News.

The image, captured during the 1980s, showed Sue and Steve posing for the camera, appearing considerably younger. They wrote alongside the post: “The way we were #somanyyearsago #younglove #the80s #greattimes #dinnerdances #carefree.”

Fans immediately flooded the comments section to praise the “gorgeous” couple. One admirer commented: “You both look amazing then and now. Love you both on Gogglebox.”

Another added on the platform: “Great pic. Steve’s punching here.” A third person remarked: “What a gorgeous picture of you both. Lovely couple.” Sharing similar sentiments, Gogglebox co-star Ellie Warner wrote: “Youngs love dream.”

In a health-related revelation, Sue took a brief hiatus from Gogglebox in 2024, later bravely sharing her battle with Bell’s Palsy, which resulted in temporary facial paralysis.

She candidly discussed the hurdles she faced post-diagnosis, admitting that she had to “relearn” certain fundamental actions. In her words: “One is to speak through the side of my mouth, and the other one is chewing. Chewing takes a long time.”

Steve couldn’t resist a cheeky comment: “I have offered to chew your food for you, but you declined. I’ve gotta say, you haven’t lost the sharp side of your tongue though, have you?”.

Bell’s Palsy is a neurological disorder that causes temporary weakness or lack of movement on one side of the face. The condition can, on rare occasions, spread to both sides of the face, while more typical symptoms include a drooping eyelid or corner of your mouth, dry mouth or drooling, loss of taste and a dry or watering eye.

Gogglebox airs every Friday at 9pm on Channel 4.

Oct. 29 (UPI) — Two U.S. attorneys in Washington, D.C., have been suspended after turning in a sentencing memo that described the events at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, as carried out by “thousands of people comprising a mob of rioters,” sources said.

The prosecutors were assistant U.S. attorneys Carlos Valdivia and Samuel White, who were prosecuting a case against Taylor Taranto. Taranto was pardoned by President Donald Trump for his part in the Jan. 6 riots. He was arrested for unrelated threats and firearms charges, and the description of the capitol insurrection was part of a sentencing memo for that case, according to anonymous sources reported by ABC News, Politico and The Washington Post. Taranto is scheduled to be sentenced Friday.

White and Valdivia were locked out of their government-issued devices Wednesday and told they will be placed on leave. It happened just hours after they filed the memo, sources told ABC.

The memo asked U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols to sentence Taranto to 27 months in prison for a hoax threat against the National Institute of Standards and Technology and for driving through President Barack Obama‘s neighborhood with a van full of guns and ammunition.

A spokesperson for the Department of Justice and U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro, who leads the Washington, D.C., office prosecuting Taranto, declined to comment.

But Pirro released a statement on the case.

“While we don’t comment on personnel decisions, we want to make very clear that we take violence and threats of violence against law enforcement, current or former government officials extremely seriously,” Politico reported Pirro said in a statement. “We have and will continue to vigorously pursue justice against those who commit or threaten violence without regard to the political party of the offender or the target.”

It wasn’t clear whether the two prosecutors were told why they were put on leave or if the suspensions would change Taranto’s sentencing date.

In the memo, White and Valdivia said the following about Jan. 6:

“On January 6, 2021, thousands of people comprising a mob of rioters attacked the U.S. Capitol while a joint session of Congress met to certify the results of the 2020 presidential election. Taranto was accused of participating in the riot in Washington, D.C., by entering the U.S. Capitol Building. After the riot, Taranto returned to his home in the State of Washington, where he promoted conspiracy theories about the events of January 6, 2021.”

President Vladimir Putin says that Russia successfully tested one of its Poseidon nuclear-powered, nuclear-tipped, ultra-long-endurance torpedoes yesterday. The Russian leader’s revelation comes just two days after the announcement of a first long-range test for the Burevestnik nuclear-powered cruise missile, as you can read about here, and is part of a wider pattern of recent strategic signaling by the Kremlin.

Of the Poseidon test, Putin said: “For the first time, we managed not only to launch it with a launch engine from a carrier submarine, but also to launch the nuclear power unit on which this device passed a certain amount of time.” The Russian president made the claims at a hospital in Moscow, while taking tea and cakes with Russian soldiers wounded in the war in Ukraine.

“There is nothing like this,” Putin said of the Poseidon, also known as the 2M39 Status-6, which was one of six ‘super weapons’ that the Russian president officially revealed during an address in 2018. These also included the Burevestnik and different hypersonic weapons.

Putin said that Poseidon is a more powerful weapon than “even our most promising Sarmat intercontinental-range missile,” another one of the weapons highlighted back in his 2018 address. Known to NATO as the SS-X-29, this heavy intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) has been developed to replace the Cold War-era R-36M (SS-18 Satan).

In contrast to the Sarmat, the Poseidon represents an entirely new class of weapon, with capabilities falling somewhere between a torpedo and an uncrewed underwater vessel (UUV), and with the intent to carry a nuclear warhead.

The Poseidon seems to have first emerged publicly in 2015, when Russian television broadcasts caught a glimpse of it in a briefing book while covering an otherwise mundane meeting between Russian President Vladimir Putin and representatives of the country’s defense industries. At the time, it was shown on the chart as an “autonomous underwater vehicle.”

Firm details relating to Poseidon’s specifications and performance are almost non-existent.

Russian media reports that each torpedo is around 66 feet, roughly six feet in diameter, and weighs 110 tons. Analysts have previously assessed it as having a range of 6,200 miles, and there have been some claims that it has a speed of around 100 knots, although this may well be an exaggeration. In the past, arms control experts have suggested that Poseidon is powered by a liquid-metal-cooled reactor and armed with a two-megaton warhead.

It is assumed that the primary mission of the Poseidon is to strike coastal installations with little to no warning. There have been various reports that it’s armed with an especially ‘dirty’ warhead, which would ensure not only the usual thermonuclear destruction but also spread radioactive contamination over a wide area. There have also been accounts suggesting that it could potentially be detonated further out to sea to create a kind of radioactive tsunami that could bring even more destruction and contamination to a wider coastal area, although the accuracy of these reports is debatable.

Exactly how it is intended to be used in wartime is somewhat unclear, but these assumed characteristics have fueled media descriptions of the Poseidon as a ‘super torpedo’ or ‘doomsday weapon.’

However, with its nuclear propulsion, the weapon should have the ability to cruise around the oceans for extremely long periods before unleashing a surprise attack. This is especially concerning, since it would make it difficult to defend against. Like the Burevestnik, if perfected, it would provide Russia with a strategic nuclear option that avoids existing missile defense systems.

It would also potentially give Russia a ‘second strike’ capability that could be argued is more resilient than submarine-launched ballistic missiles, should one of its enemies try to paralyze its strategic nuclear forces in a first-strike scenario.

The initial launch platform for the Poseidon is understood to be the Russian Navy’s shadowy Project 09852 Belgorod, the world’s longest submarine.

The Belgorod — also known as K-329 — entered service with the Russian Navy in 2022. It was first launched as an Oscar II class nuclear-powered guided-missile submarine before being heavily reworked, including adding the capacity to carry six Poseidon torpedoes.

In the past, Russia has described the Belgorod as a “research” vessel able to conduct “diverse scientific expeditions and rescue operations in the most remote areas of the world ocean.” More accurately, this submarine was schemed as a ‘mother ship’ that can deploy a variety of deep-sea drones, a deep-diving nuclear-powered minisub, a submersible nuclear powerplant to power an undersea sensor network — as well as the Poseidon.

Ultimately, Russia plans to put three Project 09852 submarines into service. Beyond that, it remains possible that other platforms, too, might deploy the Poseidon, including surface vessels.

There have been announcements of previous Poseidon tests.

A Russian Ministry of Defense video from February 2019, seen below, purportedly showed part of an underwater test of the weapon.

In the summer of 2021, satellite imagery appeared that seemed to show a Poseidon test round, or perhaps a surrogate round of similar dimensions, aboard the special-purpose ship, Akademik Aleksandrov, at Severodvinsk on the White Sea, suggesting a new round of at-sea trials of the torpedo.

In January 2023, Russia’s state-run TASS news agency reported a series of “throw tests” that it claimed involved mock-ups of the Poseidon, launched from the Belgorod. These likely involved ejection tests of the Poseidon, in which test rounds would have been deployed from the launcher and likely retrieved by a special-purpose vessel afterward, without powering up the reactor.

Only days after that, TASS reported that “the first batch of Poseidon ammunition has been manufactured” for the Belgorod and will be delivered “soon.”

That same report said that trials had already been completed of various components related to the Poseidon, including its nuclear powerplant — Putin’s comments today suggest that earlier tests didn’t involve the powerplant being activated during at-sea launches.

Presuming that the Russian media claims about the delivery of the first production examples of the Poseidon were correct, then the timing of yesterday’s test, billed as the most extensive yet, would seem to tally.

On the other hand, there has so far been no independent verification that the test occurred, and there don’t appear to be very many obvious signs of a Poseidon test yesterday or recently. These might have been expected to include movements of Russian support and monitoring vessels, as well as NATO intelligence-gathering assets, including ships and aircraft. Potentially related, however, was the presence of six unidentified ships off the coast of Novaya Zemlya, an archipelago in northern Russia, situated in the Arctic Ocean, and used for many previous weapons tests.

1/5
Kara Sea Activity

Caveat: Preliminary findings.

On October 28th, when the Poseidon test was conducted according to Putin, there were 6 unidentified ships off the eastern coast of Novaya Zemlya, Kara Sea.

No NOTAM, no PRIP, but well off the path for any civilian traffic. pic.twitter.com/f2ZLuy4M0I

— Thord Are Iversen (@The_Lookout_N) October 29, 2025

Putting aside the details of the claimed test, it is notable that it was announced today, two days after the announcement of the Burevestnik test, and a week after Russia began its annual strategic nuclear drills.

This flurry of activity and the explicit nature of the related announcements would appear to be tailored to respond to U.S. President Donald Trump’s tougher stance on Russia, as well as his own more bellicose rhetoric.

Regarding Putin’s comments on the Burevestnik test, Trump said: “I don’t think it’s an appropriate thing for Putin to be saying,” and called upon the Russian leader to end the war in Ukraine “instead of testing missiles.”

Trump has previously described Russia as a “paper tiger,” due to the slow progress its armed forces are making in Ukraine.

For Putin, meanwhile, tests of high-profile weapons like the Poseidon and Burevestnik are intended to send a clear message to the West that it won’t bow to pressure, especially over the conflict in Ukraine.

The tests should also be seen in the context of nuclear arms control discussions, with these new classes of weapons having been described by Putin as part of the response to the U.S. withdrawal from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty as well as to NATO’s eastern enlargement.

While other parts of Russia’s military are struggling in the face of the war in Ukraine, crippling international sanctions, and broader economic pressures, strategic weapons programs have generally tended to receive priority. They are also seen as key to projecting Russia’s status as a global military power.

Like the Burevestnik, the Poseidon promises to be a highly versatile and lethal weapon, provided it can successfully complete its development and be fielded. Until then, further details of these mysterious programs are likely to be hard to come by, although, given the prevailing geopolitical situation, there is every sign they will be increasingly used to underscore the potency of Russia’s strategic nuclear arsenal.

Contact the author: [email protected]