A MAJOR new museum is opening and it will be the largest archaeology museum in the world.
The Grand Egyptian Museum based in the winter sun spot of Cairo, will officially open to the public this weekend, after a decade of set backs.
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The Grand Egyptian Museum based in Cairo, Egypt will open this weekendCredit: ReutersThe museum has experienced more than a decade of delayed openingsCredit: AFPInside, visitors can learn about ancient Egyptian civilisationCredit: AFP
The new museum traces the history of ancient Egyptian civilisation and cost around $1billion (£761million) to build.
One of the main attractions are the Tutankhamun Galleries, which are home to 5,000 objects that were discovered when the famous pharaoh’s tomb was back in 1922.
Visitors will even be able to see his golden coffin, discovered more than a century ago.
In another wing, visitors will find two of King Khufu’s (the pharaoh who commissioned the construction of the Pyramid of Giza) solar boats, which were found near the Pyramids.
And if you want a glimpse of the pyramids, just look out the building’s sprawling windows.
The galleries are split by eras of Egyptian civilisation and include Predynastic, the Old Kingdom, the Middle Kingdom, the Late Kingdom, Ptolemaic Egypt and the Roman Period.
Throughout the museum, there are many interactive features such as pyramid building and papyrus making, and there is a children’s museum too.
According to Time Out, the museum features around 250,000 triangular stone pieces that make up its north facade.
There is then a pyramid-shaped entrance, with gold hieroglyphics.
As you enter, you will then see a huge atrium with an 11 metre tall statue of Ramses II – the pharaoh of Egypt between 1279 and 1213 BCE.
Also in the atrium, is a collection of restaurants and shops.
In total, the museum is the same size as 93 football pitches and once it is fully open, will house over 100,000 artefacts.
After exploring the museum, you can then head to the Pyramids of Giza which are just over a mile away.
Ahmed Youssel, CEO of the Egyptian Tourism Authority, told Time Out: “It’s not a museum, it’s a cultural hub.
“You don’t see history. You live history, you experience history.
This includes seeing 5,000 objects from Tutankhamun’s tombCredit: GettyThe museum also looks out to the Pyramids, which are just over a mile awayCredit: AFP
“That’s the idea. When we build new museums, we have this concept of virtual reality, augmented reality – electronic things everywhere.”
The museum was originally meant to open back in 2013, but it has been delayed several times due to a variety of reasons including politics, regional conflict, budget and the Covid-19 pandemic.
And last year it then opened for its soft launch, ahead of the official opening this weekend.
Tickets to the museum cost £23.36 per adult and £11.76 per child, and they can either be bought in advance online or at the museum.
Cairo has highs of 21C during the winter months, and lows of around 11C.
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — President Trump’s comments Thursday suggesting the United States will restart its testing of nuclear weapons upends decades of American policy in regards to the bomb, but come as Washington’s rivals have been expanding and testing their nuclear-capable arsenals.
Nuclear weapons policy, once thought to be a relic of the Cold War, increasingly has come to the fore as Russia has made repeated atomic threats to both the U.S. and Europe during its war on Ukraine. Moscow also acknowledged this week testing a nuclear-powered-and-capable cruise missile called the Burevestnik, code-named Skyfall by NATO, and a nuclear-armed underwater drone.
China is building more ground-based nuclear missile silos. Meanwhile, North Korea just unveiled a new intercontinental ballistic missile it plans to test, part of a nuclear-capable arsenal likely able to reach the continental U.S.
The threat is starting to bleed into popular culture as well, most recently with director Kathryn Bigelow ‘s new film “A House of Dynamite.”
But what does Trump’s announcement mean and how would it affect what’s happening now with nuclear tensions? Here’s what to know.
Trump’s comments came in a post on his Truth Social website just before meeting Chinese leader Xi Jinping. In it, Trump noted other countries testing weapons and wrote: “I have instructed the Department of War to start testing our Nuclear Weapons on an equal basis. That process will begin immediately.”
The president’s post raised immediate questions. America’s nuclear arsenal is maintained by the Energy Department and the National Nuclear Security Administration, a semiautonomous agency within it — not the Defense Department. The Energy Department has overseen testing of nuclear weapons since its creation in 1977. Two other agencies before it — not the Defense Department — conducted tests.
Trump also claimed the U.S. “has more Nuclear Weapons than any other country.” Russia is believed to have 5,580 nuclear warheads, according to the Washington-based Arms Control Association, while the U.S. has 5,225. Those figures include so-called “retired” warheads waiting to be dismantled.
The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute further breaks the warhead total down, with the U.S. having 1,770 deployed warheads with 1,930 in reserve. Russia has 1,718 deployed warheads and 2,591 in reserve.
The two countries account for nearly 90% of the world’s atomic warheads.
U.S. last carried out a nuclear test in 1992
From the time America conducted its “Trinity” nuclear bomb detonation in 1945 to 1992, the U.S. detonated 1,030 atomic bombs in tests — the most of any country. Those figures do not include the two nuclear weapons America used against Japan in Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the end of World War II.
The first American tests were atmospheric, but they were then moved underground to limit nuclear fallout. Scientists have come to refer to such tests as “shots.” The last such “shot,” called Divider as part of Operation Julin, took place Sept. 23, 1992, at the Nevada National Security Sites, a sprawling compound some 65 miles from Las Vegas.
America halted its tests for a couple of reasons. The first was the collapse of the Soviet Union at the end of the Cold War. The U.S. also signed the Comprehensive Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty in 1996. There have been tests since the treaty, however — by India, North Korea and Pakistan, the world’s newest nuclear powers. The United Kingdom and France also have nuclear weapons, while Israel long has been suspected of possessing atomic bombs.
But broadly speaking, the U.S. also had decades of data from tests, allowing it to use computer modeling and other techniques to determine whether a weapon would successfully detonate. Every president since Barack Obama has backed plans to modernize America’s nuclear arsenal, whose maintenance and upgrading will cost nearly $1 trillion over the next decade, according to the Congressional Budget Office.
The U.S. relies on the so-called “nuclear triad” — ground-based silos, aircraft-carried bombs and nuclear-tipped missiles in submarines at sea — to deter others from launching their weapons against America.
Restarting testing raises additional questions
If the U.S. restarted nuclear weapons testing, it isn’t immediately clear what the goal would be. Nonproliferation experts have warned any scientific objective likely would be eclipsed by the backlash to a test — and possibly be a starting gun for other major nuclear powers to begin their own widespread testing.
“Restarting the U.S. nuclear testing program could be one of the most consequential policy actions the Trump administration undertakes — a U.S. test could set off an uncontrolled chain of events, with other countries possibly responding with their own nuclear tests, destabilizing global security, and accelerating a new arms race,” experts warned in a February article in the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists.
“The goal of conducting a fast-tracked nuclear test can only be political, not scientific. … It would give Russia, China and other nuclear powers free rein to restart their own nuclear testing programs, essentially without political and economic fallout.”
Any future U.S. test likely would take place in Nevada at the testing sites, but a lot of work likely would need to go into the sites to prepare them given it’s been over 30 years since the last test. A series of slides made for a presentation at Los Alamos National Laboratories in 2018 laid out the challenges, noting that in the 1960s the city of Mercury, Nevada — at the testing grounds — had been the second-largest city in Nevada.
On average, 20,000 people had been on site to organize and prepare for the tests. That capacity has waned in the decades since.
“One effects shot would require from two to four years to plan and execute,” the presentation reads. “These were massive undertakings.”
Consumer confidence is dropping. The national debt is $38 trillion and climbing like the yodeling mountain climber in that “The Price is Right” game. Donald Trump’s approval ratings are falling and the U.S. is getting more and more restless as 2025 comes to a close.
What’s a wannabe strongman to do to prop up his regime?
Attack Latin America, of course!
U.S. war planes have bombed small ships in international waters off the coast of Venezuela and Colombia since September with extrajudicial zeal. The Trump administration has claimed those vessels were packed with drugs manned by “narco-terrorists” and have released videos for each of the 10 boats-and-counting it has incinerated to make the actions seem as normal as a mission in “Call of Duty.”
“Narco-terrorists intending to bring poison to our shores, will find no safe harbor anywhere in our hemisphere,” Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth posted on social media and who just ordered an aircraft carrier currently stationed in the Mediterranean to set up shop in the Caribbean. It’ll meet up with 10,000 troops stationed there as part of one of the area’s biggest U.S. deployments in decades, all in the name of stopping a drug epidemic that has ravaged red America for the past quarter century.
This week, Trump authorized covert CIA actions in Venezuela and revealed he wants to launch strikes against land targets where his people say Latin American cartels operate. Who cares whether the host countries will give permission? Who cares about American laws that state only Congress — not the president — can declare war against our enemies?
It’s Latin America, after all.
The military buildup, bombing and threat of more in the name of liberty is one of the oldest moves in the American foreign policy playbook. For more than two centuries, the United States has treated Latin America as its personal piñata, bashing it silly for goods and not caring about the ugly aftermath.
“It is known to all that we derive [our blessings] from the excellence of our institutions,” James Monroe concluded in the 1823 speech that set forth what became known as the Monroe Doctrine, which essentially told the rest of the world to leave the Western Hemisphere to us. “Ought we not, then, to adopt every measure which may be necessary to perpetuate them?”
Our 19th century wars of expansion, official and not, won us territories where Latin Americans lived — Panamanians, Puerto Ricans, but especially Mexicans — that we ended up treating as little better than serfs. We have occupied nations for years and imposed sanctions on others. We have propped up puppets and despots and taken down democratically elected governments with the regularity of the seasons.
The culmination of all these actions were the mass migrations from Latin America that forever altered the demographics of the United States. And when those people — like my parents — came here, they were immediately subjected to a racism hard-wired into the American psyche, which then justified a Latin American foreign policy bent on domination, not friendship.
Nothing rallies this country historically like sticking it to Latinos, whether in their ancestral countries or here. We’re this country’s perpetual scapegoats and eternal invaders, with harming gringos — whether by stealing their jobs, moving into their neighborhoods, marrying their daughters or smuggling drugs — supposedly the only thing on our mind.
That’s why when Trump ran on an isolationist platform last year, he never meant the region — of course not. The border between the U.S. and Latin America has never been the fence that divides the U.S. from Mexico or our shores. It’s wherever the hell we say it is.
Colombian President Gustavo Petro Urrego addresses the 80th session of the United Nations General Assembly on Sept. 23 at U.N. headquarters.
(Pamela Smith / Associated Press)
That’s why the Trump administration is banking on the idea that it can get away with its boat bombings and is salivating to escalate. To them, the 43 people American missile strikes have slaughtered on the open sea so far aren’t humans — and anyone who might have an iota of sympathy or doubt deserves aggression as well.
That’s why when Colombian President Gustavo Petro accused the U.S. of murder because one of the strikes killed a Colombian fisherman with no ties to cartels, Trump went on social media to lambaste Petro’s “fresh mouth,” accuse him of being a “drug leader” and warn the head of a longtime American ally he “better close up these killing fields [cartel bases] immediately, or the United States will close them up for him, and it won’t be done nicely.”
The only person who can turn down the proverbial temperature on this issue is Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who should know all the bad that American imperialism has wrought on Latin America. The U.S. treated his parents’ homeland of Cuba like a playground for decades, propping up one dictator after another until Cubans revolted and Fidel Castro took power. A decades-long embargo that Trump tightened upon assuming office the second time has done nothing to free the Cuban people and instead made things worse.
Instead, Rubio is the instigator. He’s pushing for regime change in Venezuela, chumming it up with self-proclaimed “world’s coolest dictator” Nayib Bukele of El Salvador and cheering on Trump’s missile attacks.
“Bottom line, these are drug boats,” Rubio told reporters recently with Trump by his side. “If people want to stop seeing drug boats blow up, stop sending drugs to the United States.”
You might ask: Who cares? Cartels are bad, drugs are bad, aren’t they? Of course. But every American should oppose every time a suspected drug boat launching from Latin America is destroyed with no questions asked and no proof offered. Because every time Trump violates yet another law or norm in the name of defending the U.S. and no one stops him, democracy erodes just a little bit more.
This is a president, after all, who seems to dream of treating his enemies, including American cities, like drug boats.
Few will care, alas. It’s Latin America, after all.
Food Network announced Monday that its long-running weekend culinary talk show “The Kitchen” is coming to an end. The final episode of the series, co-hosted by network favorites Sunny Anderson, Katie Lee Biegel, Jeff Mauro, Geoffrey Zakarian and recurring guest Alex Guarnaschelli, will air Dec. 13.
“It’s the end of an era,” Biegel said in her Instagram story sharing the news. “Thank you so much to all of our fans. The Kitchen was the greatest professional honor of my life and I will be forever grateful.” Biegel has served as one of the show’s co-hosts since its 2014 premiere.
Mauro, who has also been with the show since the beginning, echoed her sentiments on his own Instagram post.
“I always knew what we had was special — rare, a unicorn, an anomaly,” Mauro said in a lengthy caption thanking fans and colleagues. “I got to spend a dozen years with my best friends — cooking, laughing, and eating life-changing bites from some of the world’s greatest chefs and cooks.”
Currently in its 40th season, the Daytime Emmy-nominated cooking-themed talk show featured its hosts and guests sharing recipes, discussing food trends and offering other food tips. In addition to celebrated chefs and culinary personalities, “The Kitchen” opened its doors to various actors, musicians and celebrities.
“For over a decade Sunny, Katie, Jeff, Geoffrey and more recently Alex have engaged audiences with their individual and distinct food sensibilities and sense of humor that together make ‘The Kitchen’ a delicious way to spend an hour,” Warner Bros. Discovery head of food content Betsy Ayala said in a statement.
“Everyone knows all good parties end up in ‘The Kitchen,’ where the conversation, laughs and food flow; the best parties probably end a little bit earlier than some guests would like, but we’ve got twelve years of memories and wanted to celebrate this team’s hard work during one final holiday season.”
Food Network titan Bobby Flay congratulated the show’s team for “an iconic run” in the comments on Food Network’s Instagram post sharing the news.
“Thank you to the Kitchen and its fabulous chefs and hosts for holding it down in daytime on [Food Network] for the last decade,” Flay wrote.
Other Food Network stars also chimed in with tributes in the comments responding to the announcement.
“I loved this show because it reminded me of why I fell in love with cooking in the first place,” wrote Aarti Sequeira, Season 6 winner of “The Next Food Network Star,” “lots of voices and hands working together in a kitchen with equal servings of love and sass!!!!”
“[C]ongrats on an incredible show — one of my favorites to watch and to be part of,” “Chopped” judge Marc Murphy wrote. “You’re all legends.”
Fellow “Chopped” judge Tiffani Faison also congratulated the show’s staff for “a run worthy only of this team.”
After terrorists chased her from her home in Lungu village of Sokoto State, Saratu now sits in Jabo town, devastated after losing three of her own and two orphaned grandchildren who never made it out. The terrorists stormed their village in Sabon Birni, North West Nigeria. She ran barefoot to the bush, clutching a small wrapper, and never returned. For Saratu and countless others across the region, the statistics of killings, kidnappings, and cattle rustling are not just numbers. They are ruptured families, stolen futures, and a daily struggle to live with dignity in the reported violence.
Amidst shattered livelihoods and decades-long insecurity, people in Katsina, Zamfara, Kebbi, and Sokoto states have continued to push back with resilience that helps them survive, facing the violence that pushes them out of their houses and farmlands.
HumAngle interviewed locals across the states, documenting what drives the violence, how the communities struggle to cope, and what a credible path to peace might look like. Those interviewed included traditional rulers, religious leaders, women’s associations, vigilante groups, civil society activists, and members of both herding and farming communities who shared experiences, human costs, and grassroots resilience.
For about one and a half decades, these people have been engulfed in a violence that ravaged many parts of the northwestern region. What began as disputes between farmers and herders has mutated into cattle rustling, mass killing and the scourge of kidnapping for ransom. These conflicts have seeped into every facet of their lives, displacing families, crippling agriculture, eroding trust, and gnawing at the very fabric of society.
Taxed by fear
Sokoto’s geographical misfortune is evident on a map. Nestled against the volatile Zamfara State and sharing a porous frontier with the Niger Republic, the state’s rural local government areas (LGAs) have become easy targets for well-armed groups.
Sabon Birni and Isa LGAs, the worst affected, live under the shadow of Bello Turji, a notorious non-state armed group leader imposing “taxes” on villages, a perverse form of governance enforced through violence.
In Tangaza, Gudu, Binji, and Silami, locals now face an even deadlier menace. Their ungoverned frontiers with the Niger Republic have opened the door to the Lakurawa, a transnational terror group turning the borderland into its strongest foothold. Exploiting weak state security and the grinding poverty that traps many young men, the Lakurawa has embedded itself in local communities, luring recruits with promises of power, protection, or survival.
What began as a shadowy infiltration has evolved into a full-blown insurgency. Today, the group wages a campaign of killings, livestock raids, and mass intimidation on both sides of the border, leaving residents of Sokoto and neighbouring Nigerien villages in constant fear.
The human toll is staggering. Farming, the lifeline of most families, has been disrupted. Thousands of cattle have been stolen. In Sabon Birni alone, an estimated 600,000 cattle and five million small ruminants were rustled between 2019 and 2024, while vast tracts of farmland remain in accessible. For those farmers who manage to reach their fields, access often comes at a heavy price.
Kidnappings have become routine. In the same Sabon Birni, reports suggest that more than ₦160 billion was paid in ransoms and so-called protection levies over the same five-year period.
According to Shu’aibu Gwanda Gobir, a community leader, about 528 villages were once under the control of armed groups. A day after the brutal killing of the Sarkin Gobir of Gatawa District, Isa Bawa, in August 2024, gunmen kidnapped 192 people in the Sabon Birnin area. At the time, over 600 people were already being held captive.
Children have been driven out of classrooms; many are now in displacement camps, while countless others roam the streets, begging in the city of Sokoto.
Women recount harrowing tales of sexual violence, their trauma lingering long after the attacks, and hunger and malnutrition stalk villages already stripped of livelihoods, leaving communities in a state of protracted vulnerability.
For farming and herding families, the cost is measured not only in stolen cattle and abandoned fields but also in fractured trust, deepening poverty, and a sense of being abandoned by the state.
Beneath this devastation, communities are not merely passive victims; they also fight back for survival. According to Magajin Balle, the village head of Balle in Gudu LGA, “in some areas, youths patrol their own streets with locally purchased weapons. Vigilante networks such as the Vigilante Group of Nigeria and ‘Yansakai’ militias provide a semblance of security. Communities pool money to support local defenders.”
Elsewhere, however, resilience takes different forms. In rural parts of Isa LGA, attempts are made to negotiate fragile truces (Sulhu) with gang leaders. In rural areas of Balle, where Lakurawa terrorists have entrenched a stronghold, residents have been forced to submit to the directives of the group.
Armed groups continue to unleash relentless violence across Sokoto State, defying local resilience efforts. In recent weeks, waves of attacks have swept through Shagari, Isa, Sabon Birni, and Raba LGAs, with outlying villages in Dange-Shuni now also under siege. Entire communities have been uprooted, with women and children bearing the brunt.
Many families are forced into a cycle of displacement, seeking safety in nearby towns before returning to their homes by day, while others have fled entirely. Thousands are now sheltering in Jabo, Dange-Shuni, and Rara, or across the border in Guidan Roumdji of the Niger Republic, highlighting the deepening humanitarian crisis.
Tension has also heightened in Shagari LGA’s rural areas after a series of attacks in Aske Dodo, Tungar Barke, Jandutse, Lungu, and Ayeri by armed groups, leaving several dead, scores abducted, and hundreds displaced to Jabo, Kajiji, and Shagari in search of refuge. According to a BBC report, this led to women seeking shelter in Shagari town to stage a protest against the government.
In Raba LGA, over 500 people were forced to flee from their homes across six communities on August 26. Most of them are women and children, now crowded into a school and market square in Rara village, where they seek safety and shelter.
Women and children from the villages of Kwaren Lohwa and Dabagi wait for a lift to Dange, where they will spend the night to escape violent armed groups before returning to their villages in the morning. Photo: Labbo Abdullahi/HumAngle.
In Sabon Birni and Isa LGAs, communities remain trapped between violence and hunger. This September, armed groups unleashed deadly assaults like never before, while floods destroyed roads, bridges and crops, cutting residents off from aid. With no safe passage and livelihoods washed away, many fled across the border into Niger in search of refuge. “People are being squeezed from both sides by the gunmen and by the floods,” says Sa’idu Bargaja, a lawmaker representing the Isa-Sabon Birni constituency. It is, he says, a crisis that leaves no room for escape.
In Shagari LGA, the anguish of displacement is written into women’s lives like Saratu Sode of the Lungu community. Now taking refuge in Jabo, she describes how violence has torn apart her family and her village.
“We fled when word spread that gunmen were coming. Those who could not escape that night were caught. Two of our neighbours were attacked; one was hacked with a machete and is in hospital, and the other was shot dead. Three of my relatives were seized before they could run, and they are still in captivity,” she recounts.
“Three of my children and two of my orphaned grandchildren, whose father was killed during an earlier attack, are not with me. I don’t know where they are. They might have been killed, or they may be in the hands of armed groups.”
Her neighbour, Hadiza from the Aske Dodo community, shares a similar story. Forced from her home three times, she now shelters in an abandoned building in Jabo. “On the last occasion, we woke in the night to the news that someone nearby had been slaughtered. At dawn, we fled. Our children no longer go to school. Our husbands have abandoned their farms, fleeing to save their lives. I do not sleep at night,” she says.
Their voices echo a broader crisis in Sokoto’s rural communities, where waves of armed violence have left families fractured, livelihoods destroyed, and children robbed of education. Beyond the numbers of the dead and displaced, the stories of women like Saratu and Hadiza lay bare the daily reality: survival in a landscape where the state is absent, safety is fragile, and tomorrow is uncertain.
Hadiza from the Aske Dodo community shelters in an abandoned building in Jabo. Photo: Labbo Abdullahi/HumAngle.
Magajin Tsamaye, a village head in Sabon Birni, told HumAngle that peace deals and levies payments are not the best strategies. He urges the government to reform the social justice system and tackle root causes like illiteracy and youth unemployment. “People should be less fearful of death,” Magaji bluntly added, “so they can boldly repel attacks.”
Fighting without surrender
Kebbi’s experience mirrors Sokoto’s in many ways, but with one critical difference: communities here largely reject paying taxes to armed groups. While the LGAs of Fakai, Danko Wasagu, Zuru, Augie, and Yauri, which border the dens of armed groups in Sokoto, Zamfara, and Niger, face sporadic raids and kidnappings, an ethos of resistance endures.
In Augie, Arewa, and, to a lesser extent, Dandi, Bunza, Bagudo, Maiyama, Koko, and Fakai, the shadow of the Lakurawa looms large. Their presence causes sudden waves of violence that leave communities unsettled, never knowing when the next strike might come.
These unpredictable and ruthless raids have turned daily life into a gamble of survival. Farmers abandon fields, traders fear the open road, and entire villages, especially in Arewa and Augie, live with the gnawing uncertainty that their relative calm could be shattered at any moment. This unpredictability, the incessant rhythm of violence, cements Lakurawa’s grip.
In this year’s rainy season, vast tracts of land in Kebbi State have not been tilted because the Lakurawa declared them no-go zones. In the remote areas of Augie and Arewa LGAs, the group has marked out areas as “buffer zones,” warning through local agents that any farmer seen nearby would be punished.
“In the remote villages of Garu, Kunchin Baba, Gumki, and Gumundai, farmers now live under these restrictions,” said a man known as Bello Manager, the Commandant of the Vigilante Group of Niger in the Arewa LGA.
“Farmers are forbidden not only from cultivating their land but also from adapting to change. The militants have blocked the sale of farming bulls for power tillers; machines many had hoped would ease labour shortages, and in some cases seized and destroyed the tillers outright,” the Bello added.
A resident of Goru, speaking to BBC Hausa on condition of anonymity, said: “The majority of communities where the Lakurawa have established a stronghold are living in fear and uncertainty. These include Goru, Malam Yauro, Goru Babba, Goru Karama, Gorun Bagiga, Gumki and Faske. In these places, the Lakurawa force herders to pay ₦10,000 per cow; they have banned women from farming, and traditional rulers are forbidden from wearing turbans. Across all these areas, there is no visible sign of state presence.”
This ban is devastating for communities already struggling with the steady depletion of oxen used for ploughing and harrowing. What should have been a season of renewal is turning instead into a season of fear and enforced stagnation.
In Bunza LGA, the Lakurawa have tightened their grip, launching repeated assaults and livestock raids that have crippled livelihoods and deepened fear. In just the past seven months, more than 1,000 head of cattle have been rustled beyond several cattle they extort as so-called zakat.
“The scale of the theft underscores the vulnerability of even the most prominent figures. Victims include retired Deputy Inspector General of Police Abubakar Tilli, who lost 110 cattle; Bello Mamuda, former chairman of Bunza, who lost 67; and a former member of the House of Assembly representing Bunza, whose herd of 49 was stolen. Altogether, over 1,000 cattle have been stolen by the Lakurawa in Bunza over the past seven months,” Yau Gumundai, a local in the area, told HumAngle.
But the damage goes beyond statistics. Markets have emptied, families have scattered, and fear has become part of daily life. “Recently, there has been an intensification of Lakurawa assaults in Bunza and neighbouring Dandi,” Gumundai explains.
“Their last attack in Bunza was on Friday, Sept. 19, when they opened fire at a security checkpoint. People fled the market in panic, leaving behind their belongings. Many were injured. They keep us in constant fear.”
The attacks illustrate a grim pattern: armed groups now challenge not only ordinary citizens but also security forces and political elites. As livestock raiding evolves from economic plunder into a tool of terror, communities in not only Bunza but also many other LGAs of Kebbi State are left with dwindling livelihoods, deepening insecurity, and a gnawing uncertainty about whether the state can protect them.
Local security has become a sophisticated patchwork of formal and informal alliances. Security outfits work hand-in-hand with trade unions; from motor transport workers to petroleum marketers to monitor public spaces, track suspicious movements, and alert communities. In every LGA, from ward level upwards, volunteer patrols are organised. Wealthy residents and the poor pool resources to fund the patrols in shifts from dawn to dusk.
While the rural communities of Tangaza and Gudu in Sokoto State have succumbed and remain defenceless, an investigation by HumAngle found that, in the face of Lakurawa incursions and raids, the people of Augie in Kebbi refuse to stand idle.
Until recently, as Lakurawa incursions continue, particularly in Arewa, Augie, and Bunza LGAs, locals argued that collaborative vigilance in Kebbi was what prevented the violence of armed groups from reaching the scale seen in Zamfara, Sokoto, and Katsina. But it is also draining; financially, psychologically, and militarily, particularly now that communities face mobile insurgents armed with military-grade weapons, including PKTs, RPGs, GPMGs, AAs, and AK-49s.
Living and negotiating with the enemy
While Sokoto is taxed by fear, some of the most striking community-led peace deals have emerged in Zamfara.
In Kaura Namoda, Maru, Bungudu, and elsewhere, communities have brokered localised truces with armed groups. The terms vary; in some cases, farmers pay “levies” to cultivate land; in others, both sides settle for a “peace” that often turns cold. When such agreements hold, people return to their fields, markets reopen, and a fragile semblance of regular life returns.
But peace is never absolute. A deal with one gang does not protect against another, and breaches, whether through real provocations or whispered rumours, collapse months of careful dialogue. The Yansakai’s actions, sometimes indiscriminate and retaliatory, also undermine trust.
A resident of Nasarawa Burkulu and a member of Miyetti Allah, speaking to HumAngle on condition of anonymity, paints a chilling picture of life under sustained attack in Bukkuyum LGA. He says that from the first assault in 2019 through to September 2025, thousands have been kidnapped, tens of thousands of ruminants rustled, and hundreds killed, while whole villages have at times fallen under the control of armed groups.
“Between 2019 and today, over 3,000 people have been taken, 30,000 livestock stolen, and more than 1,000 people brutally killed in Bukkuyum LGA,” the local told HumAngle. “Several settlements towards the Anka-Bukkuyum boundary: Ruwan Rani, Yashi, Zauna, Bardi, Kwali, Bunkasau, Kamaru, Gasa Hula, and Rafin Maiki are flooded with armed men, some of whom appear to be recent arrivals. Many villages are effectively under siege.”
The human consequences are stark. “In these communities, most men have fled their homes,” the source added. “Women and children run into the bush when armed men arrive at night.” The testimony underlines how insecurity has hollowed out normal life: farms lie untended, markets are disrupted, and entire families live in constant fear.
Another local source described the trauma of abduction, detailing how unarmed citizens were held captive for more than four months. Also a victim of abduction, the source was released only after her parents paid ₦430,000 in ransom.
“In captivity we were dehumanised,” she recalled. “I watched people being murdered in front of me. Returning home brought stigma; I often wished for death because I felt my life was worthless.”
These accounts expose a sustained campaign that is not merely criminal theft and occasional violence but a strategy that displaces communities, destroys livelihoods and inflicts deep psychological wounds. They also raise urgent questions about the state’s capacity to protect civilians in areas where armed groups can operate with impunity.
Armed groups continue to ravage communities, where killings and kidnappings for ransom have become routine. The crisis, analysts and statesmen say, has worsened under the so-called Sulhu dialogue strategy in Kaduna’s Birnin Gwari and Katsina, pushing armed groups into Zamfara in unprecedented numbers.
“Dialogue in Birnin Gwari has led to the intensification of violence in Sokoto, Zamfara, and Kebbi, as many members of armed groups move into areas not under the Sulhu regime,” says Murtala Rufa’i, a professor of peace and conflict studies at Usmanu Danfodiyo University, Sokoto.
“The truces struck with armed groups in Kaduna displaced hundreds of armed groups’ members into rural Zamfara and adjacent Sokoto, leaving villages under relentless assault while towns such as Gummi, Bukkuyum, and Garin Gaura in Zamfara, and Kebbe and Shagari in Sokoto, are overwhelmed by displaced families,” says Hon. Suleman Muhammad Abubakar, lawmaker representing the Gummi-Bukkuyum constituency.
The human toll is devastating. “Recently, a canoe carrying people fleeing Gummi and nearby villages capsized, killing 15,” Abubakar recounts. “They were escaping the siege of armed groups who had poured into Gummi and Bukkuyum after leaving Birnin Gwari, a direct consequence of the dialogue policy.”
Despite this, there is an undercurrent of hope, as locals express the readiness of many communities to reintegrate repentant members of armed groups, provided the process is genuine and inclusive. Traditional authorities still hold moral sway, and even some armed groups’ leaders enforce discipline within their ranks to preserve deals.
Locals recommend empowering these traditional and religious actors, strengthening rural education, and ensuring government services reach neglected areas. “Peace is possible,” says village head of Birnin Magaji, “but only if we all talk honestly, and to everyone who holds a gun.”
Conflict on the city’s edge
Katsina’s pain is sharpened by geography. Not only does it border Zamfara and Sokoto, but its northern frontier touches the Niger Republic, a corridor for illicit arms. Some of the region’s most feared warlords, such as Dogo Gide and Ado Aleru, frequent the state, and in specific communities, non-state armed groups effectively govern in place of the state.
Rural violence’s evolution in Katsina follows a now-familiar pattern: resource conflict between herders and farmers, worsened by climate change and land encroachment, spiralling into cattle rustling, then into the kidnapping economy. Today, it is a fully fledged industry, drawing in disenfranchised youth as foot soldiers.
In Kankara District, Ibro Gwani and Rabi Usman Mani of Dannakwabo account for an unending ordeal of violence in Katsina State.
From 2011 to 2025, the district was scarred by killings, abductions and violent attacks that have left families shattered and entire communities traumatised.
Since the devastating blow of Dec. 11, 2020, which left over 300 boys kidnapped, waves of killings, abductions, and displacements have continued.
Ibro Gwani, for instance, was kidnapped three times for which he paid a ransom of ₦10 million. “I know that one of our community leaders, Mai Unguwa Babangida Lauwal, was kidnapped and had to pay ₦4 million,” Gwani adds.
Rabi Usman Dannakwabo was also abducted alongside her husband, Usman Mani Dannakwabo, who is a police officer.
“Residents have been murdered in their homes, on their farms, on village roads and even on playgrounds. I know of dozens of men, women and children who have been shot dead,” she says. “Some of our relatives had also been gunned down, hacked with machetes, and some, including myself and my husband, have been dragged into captivity, many of us never return.”
The state government’s measures, from negotiations to fuel sales bans to military offensives, have had mixed results. While initial gains were sometimes significant, armed groups adapted swiftly, exploiting sophisticated communications technology and local networks and even controlling the sale of scarce commodities in some areas.
Communities often choose confrontation over negotiation. Informal militias are armed and funded by locals, and private gun ownership for self-defence is widespread. But there are costs: accusations of abuses by community militias against innocent Fulani have driven some into the arms of the very armed groups they once feared.
Past state-led dialogues faltered, partly due to the exclusion of affected communities from the process. A local tells HumAngle that effective dialogue should emphasise the need for inclusive engagement, economic empowerment, better governance, and border control to stem the flow of weapons.
Despite earlier peace deals, armed groups shatter the calm with fresh and increasingly brutal assaults. One of the most recent was on August 19, when gunmen stormed Unguwan Mantau in Malumfashi LGA. At dawn, they attacked a village mosque filled with worshippers. Young and old men were bowed in prayer when the shooting began, leaving many dead and others injured and rushed to the hospital.
From December, as new coat of arms will appear on the front, designed by Prince Charles.
The British passport already changed back in 2020 from burgundy to blue, as well as to be signed in His Majesty’s name after the death of Queen Elizabeth II.
Burgundy passports and old blue design passports are still valid for use until they expire.
Just make sure to check the start date as a number of people have been caught out by confusing rules introduced post-Brexit.
When Diane Keaton was 11, her father told her she was growing into a pretty young woman and someday, a boy would make her happy. She was horrified. One boy? Keaton — then going by her birth name of Diane Hall — needed to be loved by everyone. It was an early sign that she was meant to be an actor.
“Intimacy meant only one person loved you, not thousands, not millions,” Keaton wrote decades later in her 2011 memoir “Then Again.” Like drinking and smoking, she added, intimacy should be handled with caution.
“I wanted to be Warren Beatty, not date him,” Keaton confessed, romancing fellow artists as long as their relationship was mutually stimulating and then after that, remaining friends. “I collect men,” she jokingly told me when I interviewed her a decade ago, referring to a photo wall in her Los Angeles home of fellows she admired, including Morgan Freeman, Abraham Lincoln, Gary Cooper and John Wayne. She wanted an excuse to add Ryan Gosling and Channing Tatum, so I suggested a love-triangle comedy as a twofer. “No! Not one movie!” Keaton exclaimed. “I want to keep my career going.”
Just as she hoped, millions of us did fall in love with Keaton, who died Saturday at age 79. She captivated us for over 50 years, from awards heavy-hitters to a late-career string of hangout comedies that weren’t about anything more than the joy of spending time with Diane Keaton, or in the case of her 2022 body swap movie “Mack & Rita,” the thrill of becoming Diane Keaton.
In her final films, including “Summer Camp” and the “Book Club” franchise, Keaton pretty much only played variations of herself, providing reason enough to watch. I looked forward to the moment her character fully embraced looking like Diane Keaton, writing in my otherwise middling review of “Mack & Rita” that the sequence in which she “picks up a kooky blazer and wide belt is presented with the anticipation of Bruce Wayne reaching for his cowl.”
I wanted to be Diane Keaton, even if she wanted to be Warren Beatty.
The contradiction of her career is that the things we in the audience loved about her — the breezy humor, the self-deprecating charm, the iconic threads — were Keaton’s attempts to mask her own insecurities. She struggled to love herself. Even after success, Keaton remained iffy about her looks, her talent and her achievements. In interviews, she openly admitted to feeling inadequate in her signature halting, circular stammers. That is, when she’d consent to be interviewed at all, which in the first decade of her career was so rare that Keaton, loping across Central Park in baggy pants to the white-on-white apartment where she lived alone, was essentially a movie star Sasquatch.
Journalists described her as a modern Garbo. “Her habit is to clutch privacy about her like a shawl,” Time Magazine wrote in 1977, the year that “Annie Hall” and “Looking for Mr. Goodbar” established Keaton as a kooky sweetheart with serious range. I love that simile because she did refer to her wardrobe as an “impenetrable fortress.” The more bizarre the ensemble — jackets over skirts over pants over boots — the less anyone would notice the person wearing it.
Odd ducks like myself adored the whole package, including her relatable candor. She showed us how to charge through the world with aplomb, even when you’re nervous as heck.
Once young Keaton decided she wanted to perform, she set about auditioning for everything from the church choir and the cheerleading squad to the class play. But her school had a traditionally beautiful ingenue who landed the leads. This was Orange County, after all. Keaton would go home, stare at the mirror and feel disappointed by her reflection. She dreamed of looking like perky, platinum blond Doris Day. Instead, she saw a miniature Amelia Earhart. (She’d eventually get a Golden Globe nomination for playing Earhart on television in 1994.)
Keaton stuck a clothespin on the tip of her nose to make it smaller, and acted the part of an extrovert: big laugh, big hair and, when she stopped liking her hair, big hats. By age 15, she was assembling the bold, black and white wardrobe she’d wear forever and her taste for monochrome clothes was already so entrenched that she wrote Judy Garland a fan letter wondering why Dorothy had to leave Kansas for garish Oz. She might have been the only person to ever ask that question.
Not too long after that, Keaton flew across the country to New York where several things happened in short succession that would have puffed up anyone else’s ego. The drama coach Sanford Meisner gave her his blessing. The Broadway hit “Hair” gave her the main part (and agreed she could stay fully clothed). And “The Godfather,” the No. 1 box office hit of 1972, plucked Keaton from stage obscurity to give the fledgling screen actor its crucial final shot, a close-up.
Keaton made $6,000 for “The Godfather,” less than a quarter of her salary for the national deodorant commercial she’d shot a year earlier. Her memories from the set of the first film were uncharacteristically terse. Her wig was heavy, her part was “background music” and the one time Marlon Brando spoke to her, he said, “Nice tits.”
Nevertheless, Keaton’s Kay is so soft, friendly and assured when she first meets the Corleone clan at a wedding, sweetly refusing to let her boyfriend Michael dodge how the family knows the pop singer Johnny Fontane, that it’s heartbreaking (and impressive) to watch her become smaller and harder across her few scenes. But Keaton says she never saw the finished movie. “I couldn’t stand looking at myself,” she wrote in “Then Again.”
Woody Allen put the Keaton he adored front and center when he wrote “Annie Hall.” He wanted audiences to fall in love with the singular daffiness of his former girlfriend and it worked like gangbusters. It’s my favorite of his movies and my favorite of hers, and there’s just no use in pretending otherwise, as obvious of a pick as it is. Even now that I know the Annie Hall I worship is a shy woman putting on a show of being herself, the “la-di-dah” confidence she projects makes her the most precious of screen presences: the icon who feels like friend.
But I wonder if Allen also made “Annie Hall” so that Diane Keaton could fall in love with Diane Keaton just as he had. Maybe if she saw herself through his eyes, it could convince her that she really was sexy, sparkling and hilarious. But Keaton only watched “Annie Hall” once, in an ordinary theater well after it opened, and she found the experience of staring at herself miserable. She never absorbed her lead actress Oscar win. “I knew I didn’t deserve it,” she said. “I’d won an Academy Award for playing an affable version of myself.”
Nearly herself, that is. The onscreen version of Keaton is stumped when Alvy Singer brings her a copy of the philosophical tome “Death and Western Thought.” But a decade later, Keaton directed “Heaven,” an entire documentary about the subject, in which she asked street preachers and Don King and her 94-year-old grandmother how they imagined the afterlife. (As in Allen’s movie, her grandmother actually was named Grammy Hall.)
“Heaven” is an experimental film that’s heavy on dramatic shadows and surreal old movie footage, the sort of thing that would play best on an art gallery wall. It flopped, as test screenings warned it would, cautioning Keaton that her directorial debut only appealed to female weirdos — people like her. Keaton isn’t a voice in the film. Yet, that she made it at all makes every frame feel personal, and you hear her affection for the cadence of her occasionally tongue-tied subjects. Her first interviewee stutters, “Uh, heaven, heaven is, uh, um, let me see.” Exactly how Annie Hall would have put it.
Today more than ever, I’m wishing Keaton had been comfortable turning her camera on herself. I’d have liked to watch her explain where she thinks she’s gone, however adorably flustered the answer. But in her four memoirs, she safely bared all in print, openly confronting her harsh inner critic, her battle with bulimia, and — yes, Alvy — her musings on death.
“I don’t know if I have the courage to stare into the spectacle of the great unknown,” Keaton wrote in 2014’s “Let’s Just Say It Wasn’t Pretty,” sounding as apprehensive as ever. “I don’t know if I will make bold mistakes, go out on a blaze of glory unbroken by my losses, defy complacency, and refuse to face the unknown like the coward I know myself to be.”
At last, a sliver of confidence peeks out. “But I hope so.”
Former Rep. Katie Porter of Irvine received the endorsement of a prominent Democratic women’s group on Monday that backs candidates who support abortion rights. The organization could provide significant funding and grass-roots support to boost Porter’s 2026 gubernatorial campaign.
“Katie Porter has spent her career holding the powerful accountable, fighting to lower costs and taking on Wall Street and Trump administration officials to deliver results for California’s working families,” said Jessica Mackler, president of EMILY’s List. “At a time when President Trump and his allies are attacking Californians’ health care and making their lives more expensive, Katie is the proven leader California needs.”
The organization’s name stands for Early Money Is Like Yeast, a reference to the importance of early fundraising for female candidates. It was founded four decades ago to promote Democratic women who support legal abortion. The group has raised nearly $950 million to help elect such candidates across the country, including backing Porter’s successful congressional campaign to flip a GOP district in Orange County.
“There’s nothing that Donald Trump hates more than facing down a strong, powerful woman,” Porter said. “For decades, EMILY’s List has backed winner after winner, helping elect pro-choice Democratic women to public office. They were instrumental in helping me flip a Republican stronghold blue in 2018, and together I’m confident we will make history again.”
It’s unclear, however, how much the organization will spend on Porter’s bid to be California’s first female governor. There are multiple critical congressional races next year that will determine control of the House that the group will likely throw its weight behind.
At the moment, Porter, a UC Irvine law professor who unsuccessfully ran for U.S. Senate last year, has a small edge in the polls among the multitude of Democrats running for the seat. The primary is in June.
Four of America’s nominally closest allies — Britain, Australia, France and Canada — disgraced themselves this week by recognizing a so-called Palestinian state. In so doing, these nations didn’t merely betray their Western civilizational inheritance. They also rewarded terrorism, strengthened the genocidal ambitions of the global jihad and sent a chilling message: The path to international legitimacy runs not through the difficult work of building up a nation-state and engaging in diplomacy, but through mass murder, the weaponization of transnational institutions and the erasure of historical truth.
The Trump administration has already denounced this craven capitulation by our allies. There should be no recognition of an independent Palestinian state at this moment in history. Such a recognition is an abdication not only of basic human decency, but also of national interest and strategic sanity.
The global march toward recognition of an independent Palestinian state ignores decades of brutal facts on the ground as well as the specific tide of blood behind this latest surge. It was less than two years ago — Oct. 7, 2023 — that Hamas launched the most barbaric anti-Jewish pogrom since the Holocaust: 6,000 terrorists poured into Israel, massacring roughly 1,200 innocent people in acts of unconscionable depravity — systematic rape, torture, kidnapping of babies. The terrorists livestreamed their own atrocities and dragged more than 250 hostages back to Gaza’s sprawling subterranean terror dungeons, where dozens remain to this day.
Many gullible liberal elites wish to believe that the radical jihadists of Hamas do not represent the broader Palestinian-Arab population, but that is a lie. Polls consistently show — and anecdotal videos of large street crowds consistently demonstrate — that Hamas and like-minded jihadist groups maintain overwhelming popularity in both Gaza and Judea and Samaria (what the international community refers to as the West Bank). These groups deserve shame, scorn and diplomatic rebuke — not fawning sympathy and United Nations red carpets.
The “government” in Gaza is a theocratic, Iranian-backed terror entity whose founding charter drips with unrepentant Jew-hatred and whose leaders routinely celebrate the wanton slaughter of innocent Israelis as triumphs of “resistance.” Along with the kleptocratic Palestinian Authority dictatorship in Ramallah, this is who, and what, Group of 7 powers like Britain and France have decided to reward with an imprimatur of legitimate statehood.
There is no meaningful “peace partner,” and no “two-state” vision to be realized, amid this horrible reality. There is only a sick cult of violence, lavishly funded from Tehran and eager for widespread international recognition as a stepping stone toward the destruction of Israel — and the broader West for which Israel is a proxy.
For decades, Western leaders maintained a straightforward position: There can be no recognition of a Palestinian state outside of direct negotiations with Israel, full demilitarization and the unqualified acceptance of Israel’s right to exist in secure borders as a distinctly Jewish state. The move at the United Nations to recognize a Palestinian state torches that policy, declaring to the world that savagery and maximalist rejectionism are the currency of international legitimacy. By rewarding unilateralism and eschewing direct negotiation, these reckless Western governments have proved us international law skeptics right: The much-ballyhooed “peace process” agreements, such as the Oslo Accords of the 1990s, are not worth the paper they were written on.
In the wake of Oct. 7, these nations condemned the massacre, proclaimed solidarity with Israel and even briefly suspended funding for UNRWA, the U.N. aid group for the Palestinian territories, after agency employees were accused of participating in the attack. Yet, under the relentless drumbeat of anti-Israel activism and diplomatic cowardice, they have now chosen to rehabilitate the Palestinian-Arab nationalist cause — not after the leaders of the cause renounced terrorism, but while its most gruesome crimes remained unpunished, its hostages still languish in concentration camp-like squalor and its leaders still clamor for the annihilation of Israel.
Trump should clarify not only that America will not join in this dangerous, high-stakes charade, but also that there could very well be negative trade or diplomatic repercussions for countries that recognize an independent Palestinian terror state. The reason for such consequences would be simple: Undermining America’s strongest ally in the Middle East while simultaneously creating yet another new terror-friendly Islamist state directly harms the American national interest. There is no American national interest — none, zero — in the creation of a new Palestinian state in the heart of the Holy Land. On the contrary, as the Abraham Accords peace deals of 2020 proved, there is plenty of reason to embolden Israel. Contra liberal elites, it is this bolstering of Israel that fosters genuine regional peace.
The world must know: In the face of evil, America does not flinch, does not equivocate and does not reward those who murder our friends and threaten the Judeo-Christian West. As long as the Jewish state stands on the front lines of civilization, the United States must remain at its side, unwavering, unbowed and unashamed. Basic human decency and the American national interest both require nothing less.
Josh Hammer’s latest book is “Israel and Civilization: The Fate of the Jewish Nation and the Destiny of the West.” This article was produced in collaboration with Creators Syndicate. X: @josh_hammer
On a recent Friday afternoon in London, Jarvis Cocker, 62, is musing over the suit he’s just picked up from the Portobello Road Market: “I’m quite pleased with it,” he says.
He’s also grabbed some clogs — not to wear but to look at — and he notes that his wife “hates them,” but he’s happily in awe of the pair.
The outing represents a blissful break for Pulp’s leading man; it’s been a little more than two months since the group’s eighth studio effort, which debuted at No. 1 on the U.K. album charts. “More” comes more than two decades after their last project, “We Love Life,” released in 2001.
“I’ve come to realize over 24 years that I enjoy making music,” Cocker says. “It’s a main source of enjoyment. I mean, I enjoy being with my wife and stuff like that. But in terms of creativity, it’s my favorite thing to do.”
When Cocker first started making music — around “15 or 16” — he saw forming a band as a way for him to “navigate the world at a safe distance.”
“I was always quite a shy kid, so it was difficult for me to talk to people,” he recalls. “To talk to people from a stage, rather than to their faces… that worked to a certain extent.”
Though generally considered the “underdogs” of Britpop, Pulp produced some of the most intriguing sounds of the ’90s.
(Tom Jackson)
But the band’s early attempts to make the grade had fallen flat on its face. Unlike some of the group’s Britpop peers, Pulp had been around since the ’80s — Blur,Oasis, and Suede all released their debuts in the first half of the ’90s.
“It” came out as a mini-LP of sorts, under Red Rhino Records, with a short 31-minute run time over eight tracks.
“It was a deafening silence,” Cocker says of its reception. “It really didn’t sell anything at all … We played a few concerts, and then the band fell apart.”
He adds that at that point, he was considering giving up music, shipping off to Liverpool and studying English. He’d been offered entry into a program there, but two months before he was due to start, he got a call from Russell Senior.
“[He] asked me what I was doing, and I said, ‘Oh, I’m giving up music, it’s not working out’” he says. “We had a rehearsal just him, me, and Magnus Doyle [brother of Candida Doyle, Pulp’s eventual keyboardist], and it was exciting.”
Notably, he remembers thinking, “I don’t want to go read English. I’m going to stay in Sheffield and see what happens.”
Though the group would inch closer to what we now know as Pulp’s lineup, the musicians faced similar problems: They “didn’t sell anything” and were “quite ignored.” In fact, it wasn’t until Cocker went off to college to study filmmaking at Central Saint Martins — taking a sabbatical from Pulp and then returning in 1991 — that the band was asked to play a concert in ’92 and gained some traction.
Later that year, Britpop fame followed, as they were asked to play a Parisian festival alongside some would-be familiar faces: Blur and Lush.
“It was like we had some friends at last,” he jokes.
A historic run of releases came in the following decade, with “His ‘n’ Hers,” “Different Class” and “This Is Hardcore” all concocted in a period of four years.
“Having been a real … wilderness for a long time, and feeling very out on a limb … to be considered part of a movement, at least at first, was exciting,” he recalls.
“Once we actually got a chance to become popular, especially after ‘Common People’ had been a hit … then we had to record ‘Different Class’ very quickly to kind of capitalize on that.”
But the grind began to slow down to a halt. He confesses that after Pulp released “This Is Hardcore” in 1998, he began contemplating whether he “should still be in a band.” In the face of growing popularity, Cocker’s image became more well known, and the lens began to close in.
“It just put me into a different kind of social situation that I didn’t really enjoy,” he remembers. “So, I was conflicted.”
Around 2002 — one year after the release of “We Love Life” — the group quietly disbanded. In the more than two decades in between, Cocker positioned himself as a bit of a renaissance man, while pulling away from the Pulp lifestyle and delving into a solo career.
He waded into broadcast media, serving as a host on BBC Radio 6 Music’s “Jarvis Cocker’s Sunday Service,” wrote a memoir titled “Mother, Brother, Lover,” and made a cameo in “Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire” in 2005 as part of the fictional band the Weird Sisters. His bandmates? Jonny Greenwood, Jason Buckle and Pulp bass guitarist Steve Mackey.
“I have written a book, and I presented radio shows, and I enjoy those. But music, to me … it’s a way of me making sense of what has happened to me in my life,” he says. “I write about things that have happened, and I, in a way, dramatize them by putting music to it.”
“I fell in love with music at a very early age, and so it feels like a magical thing to be able to make something that you like so much,” he adds.
In this lengthy love affair with music, it was inevitable that he would return to his first love: Pulp.
“More” returns to the band’s sonic roots, with thoughtful tunes such as “Grown Ups” and “A Sunset.”
(Tom Jackson)
When the band began working on “More,” Cocker’s main concern was that his bandmates would have thought they were “being sentenced to three years’ jail time.”
“I was loath to say to the band, ‘Let’s make an album,’ just because the last two Pulp albums that we’ve done, ‘This Is Hardcore’ and ‘We Love Life,’ had taken so long to record,” he explains.
For further context, “This is Hardcore” took around three years to record. “More” would only take three weeks and was released on June 6.
“There were songs that I knew could be good, but we’d never managed to realize them properly,” he says. “And then there were newer songs, and some songs that I’d done that I tried to play in the band, “Jarvis,” but hadn’t quite worked out.”
“The thing that makes a song good … You can’t control it, and sometimes it works easily, and sometimes it doesn’t work at all … we were just lucky, maybe because we’d left it for a long time.”
He also credits the album’s swift completion to working with music producer James Ford, who previously refined tracks for a seemingly endless list of artists. Some recent highlights include Blur’s “The Ballad of Darren,” Fontaines D.C.’s “Romance” and “Forever, Howlong,” by Black Country, New Road.
“He created a really good environment for us to record in, and everybody felt quite relaxed,” Cocker says. “It seemed like it was ready. So, it was just, ‘OK, it’s ripe. Just pick it from the tree and eat it.’”
Fresh off the June release, Cocker also kick-started a tour with dates across the U.K. and Ireland. In September, he landed in Atlanta for its North American leg, which features two shows in Los Angeles.
In particular, these stand out because Pulp will play alongside LCD Soundsystem at the Hollywood Bowl on Thursday and Friday. Simply put, Murphy said, “We’re playing at the Hollywood Bowl, would you like to come play with us?” — to which Cocker replied, “That would be good.”
It’s all been going relatively swimmingly for him, who simply sticks to his ways. But who is Jarvis Cocker in 2025?
He pauses a moment before speaking.
“It’s hard to put it into words, but I came to the realization that I wanted to live, or attempt to live, more in a world of feelings than in a world of ideas,” he says, thoughtfully. “So yeah, that’s my experiment at the moment. I’ll let you know how it goes.”
By now, Nvidia has become a household name. The artificial intelligence (AI) chip stock dominates the market for GPUs, the chips that make AI models like ChatGPT run, and has ridden the AI boom to become the most valuable company in the world.
However, some investors are already looking for the next big thing in technology, and seem to have settled on quantum computing, a revolutionary technology that uses qubits, or quantum bits, to process information. By doing so, these computers are able to perform complex calculations exponentially faster than traditional computers, meaning they could have a similar disruptive effect as AI.
Image source: Getty Images.
Quantum stocks have gotten buzzy this year, and stocks like IonQ (IONQ 5.63%) have surged. As you can see from the chart below, IonQ and its peers have skyrocketed over the last year in a rally that began last December with Alphabet‘s announcement of a breakthrough with its Willow quantum chip.
IonQ is the biggest of the four pure-play quantum stocks, now trading at a market cap of $19.4 billion. Though the company still has very little revenue, it’s been building significant momentum and showing more evidence that it and quantum computing more generally can go mainstream. Let’s take a closer look at where IonQ stands today and where it could go in the next decade.
IonQ today
IonQ reported $20.7 million in revenue in the second quarter, up 82% from the quarter a year ago. That’s still tiny for a company with a market cap of nearly $20 billion, but there are signs of a bright future for IonQ.
In the second quarter, the company said a collaborative research program between it, AstraZeneca, Amazon Web Services (AWS), and Nvidia achieved more than 20 times improvement in end-to-end time-to-solution using a quantum-accelerated computational chemistry workflow for drug discovery. That’s strong evidence of the potential of the technology.
The company also forged partnerships around the world in the second quarter, including in South Korea, Japan, and Sweden, and announced an expansion in the Asia-Pacific region in collaboration with Emergence Quantum, an Australian company.
Finally, IonQ has been growing through a string of acquisitions, beefing up its capabilities in quantum computing. Those include Lightsynq and Capella in the second quarter, and Oxford Ionics and Vector Atomic, which hasn’t closed yet, in September.
Just on Wednesday, the company signed a memorandum of understanding with the U.S. Department of Energy to advance quantum technologies in space, showing the federal government is getting more involved in quantum.
Will it beat Nvidia over the next decade?
There’s a ton of uncertainty in quantum computing over the next decade. The technology seems promising, but IonQ’s growth forecast still seems relatively modest as it expects full-year revenue of $82 million to $100 million. It could still be several years before it reaches $1 billion.
Comparing IonQ’s prospects to Nvidia’s is difficult because Nvidia is at a much different stage of its life cycle. As the most valuable company in the world, the ceiling for Nvidia’s growth is much lower than IonQ. At a price-to-earnings ratio of roughly 40, a 10x for Nvidia over the next decade would mean reaching $40 trillion in market cap and $1 trillion in profit if it maintained its valuation.
Currently, there aren’t any companies with $1 trillion in revenue, let alone $1 trillion in profit, and the S&P 500‘s current market cap is about $55 trillion. Looking at it that way, a 10x return for Nvidia will be difficult, if not unrealistic, over the next decade.
With greater upside potential and the potential disruption from quantum computing, IonQ could outperform Nvidia, but it’s much riskier than the AI leader.
For tech-minded growth investors, owning both stocks might be the best approach. It will also give you exposure to the top names in AI and quantum computing.
Jeremy Bowman has positions in Amazon and Nvidia. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Alphabet, Amazon, and Nvidia. The Motley Fool recommends AstraZeneca Plc. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
Northern Lights holidays are a hit with intrepid explorers over the winter season but 2026 is well worth having on your radar as it’s one of the ‘best years in a decade’ for booking
If you’ve always dreamed of seeing the Northern Lights, then this winter might be the time to finally do it.
In fact, you may want to consider a trip in January or February, as 2026 is expected to be the best year in a decade for Aurora viewing opportunities.
That’s because next year will bring with it a once-in-a-decade phenomenon; the solar maximum. This rare event sees the Sun’s heightened magnetic activity release charged particles that collide with Earth’s atmosphere, creating brighter and more frequent auroras. Scientists are expecting it to peak until March 2026, before fading again until the mid 2030s.
The good news is that you don’t need to head into the deep depths of the Arctic if you want to try and spot the lights. There are plenty of European destinations including Iceland, Norway, Sweden and Finland where you can watch the Aurora because of their proximity to the Arctic Circle.
The Northern Lights are on most people’s bucket lists(Image: Getty Images)
The experts at Travel Republic recommend the likes of Iceland, Sweden and Finland as these destinations offer over 200 nights of Northern Lights activity every year, so they’re the spots where you’ll be putting the odds in our favour. The travel insiders also suggested Norway, specifically areas such as Tromsø, the Lofoten Islands, Alta, and Svalbard.
If you want to go further afield, Canada’s northwest territories offer Northern Lights viewing opportunities for up to 240 nights annually, while Alaska’s Fairbanks promises an 80% chance of seeing the aurora.
The best time to spot the aurora typically falls between October through to March; some destinations do have sightings in February and April but the likelihood of getting a great view is reduced.
If you are thinking of booking that dream getaway, the Travel Republic team shared some of their top tips for planning the ultimate trip – check out their advice below.
Choose dark, remote locations: Rural or wilderness areas, away from buildings and vehicles, with minimal artificial light, offer the most vivid aurora displays.
Monitor the weather: Clouds can get in the way, even during peak aurora activity. Check forecasts and aim for clear nights in regions known for stable winter weather.
Consider guided tours: Experienced operators know the best locations and conditions, helping you chase clear skies and capture unforgettable sightings of the Northern Lights.
You don’t necessarily have to go abroad as there are parts of the UK where you can spot the Aurora when there are clear, dark skies over the winter months. Scotland will be your best bet, especially regions such as Caithness, Lewis and Harris, the Moray Coast, the Isle of Skye and the Cairngorms, thanks to their remote landscapes and dark, clear skies. Over in England, the likes of Cumbria and Yorkshire have also been the setting for Northern Lights spotting.
In fact, earlier this month the Met Office said that the Aurora Borealis would be visible across parts of the UK, as the enhanced geomagnetic activity created conditions that could allow the lights to be visible further south than usual.
Do you have a holiday story that you want to share with us? Email us at [email protected].
Websites like Shein and Wish sell children’s car seats which are potentially lethal, Which? says
Lethal children’s car seats are still appearing for sale on online marketplaces a decade after concerns were first raised by trading standards officers and a well-known consumer group.
Which? warned in 2014 the fabric seats were potentially dangerous to children due to safety defects and were illegal to use in the UK following tests by Surrey Trading Standards, which dubbed the products “killers”.
Which? is urging parents not to be tempted into buying cheap seats after it found they are still being sold via online sites including Shein and eBay, both of which said they took safety very seriously.
Regulations state only EU-approved child car seats with R44 or R129 codes can be used in the UK.
Approved seats carry a clear orange label, on which the codes are printed, to indicate they have been put through EU safety testing and can therefore be legally sold on the UK market.
In 2014, Surrey Trading Standards tested a fabric seat which fell to pieces in a 30 mph accident. The crash test dummy of a three-year-old child was flung through the windscreen when the straps securing the seat failed.
Which? said families struggling with living costs could be tempted by the cheaper products, which cost as little as £12.50, compared to the more expensive ones that retail in excess of £80.
Stuart Howarth, a car seat safety advisor at Good Egg Safety, which campaigns on child safety, told BBC News he had seen a child using an unsafe seat that had “no support to the body” and “no way of securing it to the car safely”.
“It’s just a lethal piece of material,” he said.
“You might as well just sit on a settee cushion and hope for the best.”
Child car seats that have been tested have a bright orange label on them
Which? said it found more than a dozen listings of illegal car seats on websites such as eBay, Little Dreams, ManoMano, Shein and Wish.
One listing for a child’s car seat on eBay warned against using it in cars despite the product being described as suitable.
The description in the listing read: “It is best not to use it on high-speed cars.
“We recommend that it be used in non-motorized products such as electric vehicles, two-wheelers… Because it is not a child safety seat that complies with traffic.”
In response, eBay said consumer safety “is a top priority”.
“eBay swiftly removed the listings reported by Which? and the BBC and notified buyers,” a spokesperson said
“We have updated our existing measures accordingly and remain committed to preventing unsafe products from appearing on the site.”
Which? said stricter rules were needed to “impose a clear and robust duty on online marketplaces to prevent the sale of unsafe products” and called for “strong penalties and rigorous enforcement”.
Sue Davies, Which? head of consumer protection policy, said: “It is appalling that these deadly car seats are reappearing on online marketplaces more than a decade after Which? first exposed them, but it is not surprising.”
She said children’s lives “will be at risk” until online retailers were forced to comply with product safety regulations.
Which?
An eBay listing for a car seat said it was not safe for use in “high-speed” vehicles
Which? advised families to look for retailers who can provide guidance and help fit the seat.
It suggested car seats should not be bought secondhand, as they might have been involved in an accident and damage to the seat may be unclear.
Janis James, chief executive of Good Egg Safety, urged parents not to “skimp” on cash when purchasing car seats for children.
In a statement, Shein said it was committed to “offering safe and reliable products to its customers”.
The online retail giant said the product Which? found listed on its website had been “mislabelled” by a third-party seller and Shein had “taken action against the seller” after removing it from its platform.
It said vendors were required to comply with the company’s rules and “stringent safety standards and must also abide by the relevant laws and regulations of the markets where we operate”.
Little Dreams also told the BBC product safety was a “top priority”.
ManoMano said its online marketplace was used by third party sellers to sell their own products.
It added: “We rely on our sellers to provide a resolution to any product/fulfilment issues.”
Focusing on high-quality businesses with durable competitive advantages, or moats, can be a lucrative long-term investment strategy.
Global spending on information technology is expected to reach nearly $5.4 billion in 2025, driven primarily by the growing adoption of artificial intelligence (AI). This massive wave of investment is creating long-term opportunities for businesses that can scale with these digital shifts. Companies with robust competitive advantages and proven business models are positioned to benefit most from this trend.
Image source: Getty Images
As this trend accelerates, here’s why these two growth stocks can prove to be exceptional buy-and-hold picks for the next decade.
Meta Platforms
Meta Platforms (META 0.70%) remains a leading player in the social media and digital advertising landscape, and it’s now accelerating its investment in AI infrastructure to drive the next phase of growth.
Meta’s core business is a cash-generating machine that can fund future growth opportunities. In the second quarter of 2025 (ending June 30), revenues rose 22% year over year to $47.5 billion, with an operating margin of 43% and free cash flow of $8.5 billion.
It is indisputable that digital advertising remains the primary driver of growth. Meta is leveraging advanced AI technologies to enhance ad targeting and recommendations as well as user engagement across Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Threads, strengthening its digital advertising business.
The company serves over 3.4 billion daily active users and uses AI models, including Andromeda, GEM, and Lattice, to enhance ad conversions and pricing across its applications, resulting in stronger monetization.
Its push beyond its core apps into newer platforms may also begin to generate fresh advertising growth. Threads has already surpassed 350 million users, and ads are starting to appear across its feed. Advertisements are also being introduced in the status and channels features of WhatsApp. Business messaging is scaling, with U.S. click-to-message revenue up more than 40% year over year in the second quarter.
Meta is also rolling out subscriptions for WhatsApp channels — a feature that can help businesses connect with over 1.5 billion daily active users who visit the channels. Meta AI, a consumer-facing AI-powered assistant integrated into its app ecosystem, has already built a user base of over 1 billion monthly active users. Besides improving user engagement through personalized recommendations and enhanced content discovery, it can also become a new monetization avenue in the coming quarters.
The tech giant is aggressively investing to expand its AI infrastructure. Meta expects capital expenditures of $66 billion to $72 billion in 2025, with even higher figures in 2026 as it builds AI data centers to support advanced AI models. While this may affect margins and cash flows in the near term, the long-term payoff of leveraging in-house AI capabilities to strengthen the core business may be exceptionally impressive.
Meta’s shares trade at a rich valuation of nearly 28.5 times forward earnings. While the company’s growth to date has been awe-inspiring, this may be just the beginning of an AI-powered multiyear growth story. Hence, considering Meta’s scale, cash generation potential, and AI investments, the stock remains an attractive choice for the next decade.
Amazon
E-commerce and cloud computing giant Amazon(AMZN -0.74%) is also doubling down on cloud computing, advertising, and AI to fuel its next chapter of growth.
The company’s core business is strong, and it clearly has enough financial flexibility to fund future growth opportunities: Amazon’s revenue increased 13.3% year over year to $167.7 billion while operating income soared 31% year over year to $19.2 billion in the second quarter of fiscal 2025 (ending June 30). The company also reported trailing-12-month free cash flow of $18.2 billion at the end of the second quarter.
Amazon Web Services (AWS), the company’s cloud computing business, accounted for 30% of the global cloud infrastructure services market in the second quarter of 2025, up from 29% in the prior quarter. With 85% to 90% of global IT spend focused on the on-premises environment and enterprises increasingly shifting workloads to the cloud, there is huge scope for AWS to grow in the coming years.
AWS revenue grew 17.5% year over year to $30.9 billion in the second quarter. The business has now reached an annualized run rate of $123 billion.
AWS had a backlog worth $195 billion at the end of the second quarter, reflecting strong demand for Amazon’s infrastructure and AI services. AWS is giving customers the use of Nvidia‘s cutting-edge graphics processing units as well as its own custom chip, Trainium2, to ensure better performance and lower costs to clients running AI workloads.
Additionally, Amazon Bedrock (a fully managed service enabling clients to build and scale generative AI applications on AWS) is adding several leading large language models like Anthropic’s Claude and the company’s own model, Nova.
Amazon’s e-commerce business is also speeding up, especially as the company leverages automation and robotics to improve cost efficiencies, which could boost margins. Faster delivery is becoming a significant competitive advantage in the e-commerce market. In the second quarter, the company delivered 30% more items on the same day or the next day in the U.S. than it had in the same period last year. The company is planning to expand this same-day and next-day delivery to over 4,000 smaller U.S. towns by the end of 2025.
Finally, advertising is fast becoming a major growth catalyst. Amazon’s advertising revenues grew 22% in the second quarter of 2025 to $15.7 billion. With proprietary shopping, browsing, and streaming data secured from its platforms, advertisers can optimize their efforts, leading to improved outcomes. Advertising is proving ever more effective on platforms such as its retail marketplace, Prime Video, Fire TV, Twitch, and live sports.
Despite the many tailwinds, Amazon’s shares trade at 34.6 times forward earnings, which is not cheap. But considering AWS’s growth, fueled by rising AI adoption and improving e-commerce and advertising businesses, the stock may be attractive to investors seeking long-term growth opportunities.
New York — It was a quiet, while not quite silent, morning for the“Table of Silence Project” Thursday, on the plaza of Lincoln Center and in front of David Geffen Hall, home of the New York Philharmonic. Commemorating the 24th anniversary of 9/11, white-robed members of the Buglisi Dance Theatre circled the plaza, a few with megaphones for chants, an occasional violin joining in, mellowing even the sounds of background traffic roaring down busy Broadway.
On this solemn but beautiful New York day and after more than two years in waiting, Gustavo Dudamel took charge, at least in practice, of the New York Philharmonic. Six decades ago, during the Leonard Bernstein era, America’s oldest and most celebrated orchestra had the city’s (and much of the nation’s) full attention in a way it hasn’t since. Could that happen again?
When Dudamelannounced in early February 2023 that he would leave the Los Angeles Philharmonic to become music and artistic director of the New York Philharmonic in the fall of 2026, he became instant celebrity news here. A New York Philharmonic player gives Dudamel a cheesecake, and the New York Times writes a story.
This season Dudamel gains his first official title: music and artistic director designate. But the orchestra is basically his baby now. His photo is plastered on the orchestra’s posters and publicity. And on Thursday night, Dudamel, for the first time, opened the New York Philharmonic’s new season. After two weeks this month, he will have a sizable presence later winter and in spring, while also closing out his last L.A. Phil season with major programs.
Dudamel arrived in New York on Tuesday, having spent two weeks conducting the Simon Bolivar Orchestra of Venezuela, his homeland orchestra, to open Coldplay’s concerts at Glastonbury in England, just as the newly named U.S. Department of War immediately began to live up to its name by sending warships to Dudamel’s native Venezuela and threatening regime change.
But here in New York, Dudamel paid tribute to a new city in his life with Bartók’s Piano Concerto No. 3 and Charles Ives’ Symphony No. 2. In 1945, Bartók, having fled Nazi-invaded Hungary, wrote his final piano concerto in a New York apartment on 57th Street, a block west of Carnegie Hall. Bernstein led the New York Philharmonic premiere of Ives’ Second — the first great American symphony — at Carnegie, then the New York Philharmonic’s home, six years later.
Still, the first orchestral sounds that emanated from the Dudamel designated directorship turned out to be barely heard, while not silent, percussion stirrings. Following a season-opening tradition he began when he became music director of the L.A. Phil, Dudamel began the program with a world premiere.
For this, he directed New Yorkers’ attention westward. In “of light and stone,” Leilehua Lanzilotti sets the sonic stage for an evocation of Hawaii, where she resides, before statehood. She makes references to King Kalakaua, Queen Lili’uokalani and other Hawaiian nobility few in a mainland audience are likely to know. There are fragments of Hawaiian song, a dance of the wind.
Nothing settles in this four-part, 15-minute song of a land, a score that falls somewhere between history lesson and color-field sonic landscape. A whisp of a canorous clarinet or a rumbling rattle is all it takes for a kind of instant transport to a far-off time and place. New York Philharmonic audiences can be cool, but they’ve demonstratively taken to Dudamel at Geffen, and an ethereal performance appeared to open ears.
The young Korean pianist, Yunchan Lim, who became instantly hot after winning the Van Cliburn competition three years ago, was soloist in Bartók’s Third Piano Concerto. Lim will be a soloist with Dudamel and the L.A. Phil this season as well as give a solo recital in Walt Disney Concert Hall. He is an exceptional pianist. He too opens ears and can transport a listener to a distant land. And Lim’s case is far more distant or far less knowable than Hawaii.
Lim’s Bartók exists in a world of the pianist’s own. Every phrase is for him an oddity, as if he had found some weird object in an imaginary world and was figuring out what he might do with it. His tools were rhythm, accents and dynamics, each a quirky new toy. The New York Philharmonic produced beauty and excitement, but Lim went his own way that wasn’t quite imaginative enough to improve on Bartók. Here we go again with an exceptional young soloist being pushed into the limelight too soon.
The New York Philharmonic owns Ives’ Second. Written in the first decade of the 20th century, the symphony offered a whole new way of thinking about American and European music and it sat dormant for some four decades before Bernstein premiered it. But that 1951 performance had a huge effect on how to transform folk music, popular music, Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony and what-not, twisted, transformed and tacked together. Bernstein later recorded it twice with the New York Philharmonic. The first time full of beans that revived it for good. The second time in 1987 as a glorious spiritual exercise. Hearing that performance live left me in a state of rapture.
Dudamel has made a specialty of the symphony himself, conducting it with the Vienna Philharmonic, recording it with the L.A. Phil and now going to the source. His performance Thursday night did not try to follow in Bernstein’s footsteps or necessarily Dudamel’s own. The performance flowed with exquisite lyricism and mustered a thrilling finale.
In Vienna, Dudamel was more robust. At Disney, Dudamel found exceptional expression in every little detail. That was the Dudamel that we last saw at the Hollywood Bowl this summer when he conducted Mahler’s First more vividly than ever.
That is not, quite yet, the Dudamel for New York. Here his Ives seemed to be laying the groundwork, letting his new orchestra show him what it can do before he begins, as he surely will, digging deeper.
It took a once controversial effort for Bernstein to transform an uptight virtuosic New York Philharmonic into a tight but electric one. Now it’s Dudamel’s turn for transmogrification, and he’s made a promising beginning.
One of the greatest films of the decade is apparently now on Netflix after a TikTok reviewer shed light on the movie in a recent post – and it’s just over 90 minutes long
You can give this movie on Netflix a go(Image: NurPhoto via Getty Images)
A movie fan has named one of the “greatest films” of the decade – and it’s on Netflix. In recent weeks, we’ve seen a number of shows go viral, including the ‘most addictive’ Netflix series that people are raving on about.
Now we all know TikTok is the best place for advice on pretty much everything so how about you check this film out? EccyReviews, who boasts 350,300 followers, recently named “one of the greatest films of the decade” in a clip which garnered 1,300 likes. He used his platform to urge fans to watch the drama movie Hard Truths.
The 2024 drama was written and directed by Mike Leigh with a cast which includes Marianne Jean-Baptiste, Michele Austin, and David Webber. Set in London, its plot follows the story of a depressed woman and the relationship with her sister.
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It was named one of the top 10 independent films of 2024 by the National Board of Review, meanwhile Jean-Baptiste received Best Actress nominations at the Critics’ Choice Awards, BAFTA Film Awards and the Gotham Awards.
As for IMDB, the 12A film has a rating of 7.2/10.
And recently the TikTok video revealed why it was the greatest film to watch right now.
The user said: “So Netflix has just dropped one of the greatest films of the decade and you need to go and check it out immediately.
“It’s raw, it’s emotional and it’s one of the most human films you will ever see.
“The film is called Hard Truths, this film is just over 90 minutes long, it’s set in London, tells a raw and emotional story of grief and depression.
“It’s such a gripping film if you’ve ever grieved for anyone in your life, you will resonate with this film so much, it’s such a passionate and beautiful story which more people need to see.”
Speaking about the performances, the reviewer claimed they were “truly unbelievable” and not “spoken about enough”.
“It will make you laugh, it will make you cry,” he continued.
“It’s genuinely a film that will stay with you for a very long time.”
The reviewer concluded: “Please get this film on your watch list, get it watched and make sure you tag your friends so they can check out this hidden gem.”
Since the recommendation was shared on TikTok earlier this week, it racked up a lot of attention from viewers eager to give it a go.
One said: “Thank you for giving news about films going to watch now. Hard Truths.” Another added: “I watched this last night, was captivating.”
A third commented: “Loved it. Sad, but funny and so truthful.” While a fourth admitted: “Cheers, on it now.”
John L. Burton, the proudly liberal and pro-labor lawmaker who shaped California politics and policy over six decades on topics as varied as welfare, foster care, auto emissions, guns and foie gras, has died. He was 92.
With his brother, Rep. Phillip Burton, and college buddy, former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown, Burton was integral to the organization that dominated Democratic politics in San Francisco and the state starting in the 1960s.
Burton was elected to the Assembly in 1964 and Congress a decade later. Laid low by cocaine addiction, he did not seek reelection in 1982. But he returned to Sacramento after getting clean and became the Capitol’s most powerful legislator as Senate president pro tem from 1998 until term limits forced him to retire in 2004.
“I think government’s there to help the people who can’t help themselves. And there’s a lot of people that can’t help themselves,” Burton said, describing his view of a politician’s job in an oral history interview by Open California.
Burton’s death was confirmed in a statement released by his family on Sunday.
“He cared a lot,” said Kimiko Burton, his daughter. “He always instilled in me that we fight for the underdog. There are literally millions of people whose lives he helped over the years who have no idea who he is.”
An L.A. Times writer described Brown, always dapper and cool, as a piece of living art. In contrast, Burton was performance art — rumpled, often rude, too fidgety to sit in long policy meetings. Some people sprinkle conversation with profanities. Burton doused his sentences with expletives, usually F-bombs.
John Burton with then-California Atty. Gen. Kamala Harris and Sen. Dianne Feinstein in 2011.
(Rich Pedroncelli / Associated Press)
He was quick to yell but could also be charming. He bought pies from a fruit stand off Interstate 80 between San Francisco and Sacramento and delivered them as apologies to targets of his rants. An aide once gave him a T-shirt with the phrase: “I yell because I care.”
Unlike most politicians, who dress to the nines, Burton wore ties reluctantly and showed up at meetings with governors wearing guayaberas, rarely with his hair in place. When cameras weren’t around, he drove through San Francisco delivering blankets to homeless people.
One of Burton’s many intensely loyal aides was Angie Tate, whom he hired to be his political fundraiser in 1998 knowing she was pregnant with twins. After she gave birth three months early and tried to return to work, Burton insisted that she take a year off, fully paid. She worked with him for the rest of his days.
In later years, he created John Burton Advocates for Youth, a nonprofit group to mentor foster youth and seek policy changes. One such bill extended services for foster youth until age 21, rather than the previous cutoff of 18.
“I don’t think there is a person who has done more for foster kids than John Burton,” said Miles Cooley, a Los Angeles entertainment attorney who was in foster care when he was a child and sits on the board of Burton’s foundation. “He wasn’t speaking truth to power. He was yelling it.”
From his early days in public life, Burton, a lawyer and Army veteran, advocated for greater civil rights, opposed the death penalty, and was an antiwar activist, protesting U.S. involvement in Vietnam in October 1963, when the U.S. had fewer than 17,000 troops there.
As state Senate leader four decades later, Burton joined folk singer Joan Baez at a protest of President George W. Bush’s impending invasion of Iraq. As California Democratic Party chair from 2009 to 2017, he presided as the party changed its platform to oppose capital punishment.
“John Burton was liberal when it was popular to be liberal and he was liberal when it was not popular. I always admired that,” said former state Sen. Jim Brulte, a Republican who tangled with Burton in the Legislature and later when they chaired their respective political parties.
A party chair’s job is to win elections. That requires money. In 2008, the year before Burton took over the state Democratic Party, the California Republican and Democratic parties raised and spent roughly equal sums. By 2016, his final campaign as chair, the Democrats were outspending the Republicans $36.2 million to $17.7 million.
He promoted a ballot measure in 2010 that allows the Legislature to pass the annual budget by a simple majority rather than the previous two-thirds supermajority, allowing the Democrats to pass a legislative session’s most important measure — the budget — without Republican votes, further marginalizing the GOP in Sacramento.
Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco), then-Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Oakland), Los Angeles County Supervisor Hilda Solis and state Treasurer Fiona Ma were among the politicians, most of them women, who joined Burton on the convention stage in 2017 for his farewell as party chair. Former state Sen. Martha Escutia serenaded him with a rendition of “Bésame Mucho.”
“John is the chief architect of the Democrats’ dominance in California,” Pelosi said at the time.
Burton paid tribute to the people who had helped him, saying, “You’re only as good as your staff,” and closed by exhorting party loyalists to raise their middle fingers and give a Burton-like cheer to then-President Trump.
Although Burton was a partisan, his closest friend in the Senate was Ross Johnson of Fullerton, who was Senate Republican leader. Sharing a quirky love of song, the unlikely duet interrupted a Senate floor session with a rendition of “Big Rock Candy Mountain.”
They also shared a distrust of authority and collaborated to curb law enforcement’s ability to seize individuals’ assets without a trial. Burton and Johnson shaped campaign finance law with a ballot measure permitting political parties to accept unlimited donations, enhancing parties’ power. As a sweetener for voters, the measure required rapid disclosure of contributions.
John Lowell Burton, born in Cincinnati in 1932, was the youngest of three brothers. After his father completed medical school in Chicago, the family relocated to San Francisco, where Dr. Burton cared for patients whether they could pay or not.
Burton lettered in basketball at San Francisco State College and kept a clipping of a newspaper box score showing he scored 20 points against a University of San Francisco team that included young Bill Russell, one of the greatest basketball players of all time. He met Brown at San Francisco State and they became lifelong friends. A bartender in his younger days, Burton was arrested for bookmaking in 1962, but was cleared.
The Burton brothers reflected a dichotomy in California politics, rising from the left while Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan ascended from the right, against the swirl of the Bay Area’s brand of radical politics. John Burton and Brown won their Assembly seats in 1964, the same year that voters approved a ballot measure backed by the real estate industry giving property owners the right to refuse to sell to people of color. Courts later overturned it.
The Burton-Brown organization spawned a who’s who of leaders, including two San Francisco mayors — George Moscone, who was a high school friend, and Brown, the most powerful Assembly speaker in California history. Burton was a friend of Gov. Gavin Newsom’s father, a state appellate court justice, and watched young Gavin’s high school sports games. Brown gave Newsom his start in politics with an appointment.
Barbara Boxer worked for John Burton during his time in Congress, before succeeding him in 1982 and winning a U.S. Senate seat a decade later. When Boxer retired in 2016, Brown helped promote Boxer’s successor, Kamala Harris.
Pelosi is most consequential of all. Phillip Burton’s widow, Sala Burton, succeeded him in Congress. As she was dying of cancer, Sala Burton told John that she wanted Pelosi to succeed her, and he used all his connections to help Pelosi win the congressional seat in 1987.
Outgoing California Democratic Party Chairman John Burton at the California Democratic State Convention in 2017.
(Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times)
In November 1978, Burton declined an invitation from Rep. Leo Ryan, a Democrat from San Mateo, to accompany him to Guyana to investigate the People’s Temple cult, once a force in San Francisco politics. On Nov. 18, as Ryan’s plane was about to depart with cult defectors, one of cult leader Jim Jones’ followers assassinated the congressman. Jones led a murder-suicide resulting in more than 900 deaths.
On Nov. 27, 1978, with the city convulsed by the Jonestown cataclysm, Dan White, a former San Francisco supervisor, sneaked into City Hall and assassinated Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk.
Burton fell hard in the months and years after, drinking heavily, huffing nitrous oxide and freebasing cocaine. He missed congressional votes, and aides feared he would be found dead. In 1982, he checked into a rehab facility in Arizona and did not seek reelection.
Burton’s eclectic circle of friends included national political figures, Hollywood glitterati, football coach John Madden, North Beach topless dancer Carol Doda and, from his bartending days, Alice Kleupfer, a cocktail waitress.
In this small world, Kleupfer’s son James Rogan won an Assembly seat from the Burbank area as a Republican in 1994, was elected to Congress in 1996, and helped lead the impeachment of President Clinton. Politics aside, Burton and Rogan shared a connection through Kleupfer.
That friendship mattered on May 30, 1996, when Republicans, holding a short-lived 41-39 seat advantage in the Assembly, rushed to approve tough-on-crime bills. One bill would have made it a crime for pregnant women to abuse drugs, a response to accounts of babies born addicted to cocaine. The GOP-led Assembly seemed certain to pass it when Burton stood to speak.
Though not a commanding orator, Burton spoke from the heart about how cocaine “takes total control of your life,” and how he spent days freebasing in hotel rooms, refusing maid service because he didn’t want anyone to see him.
“It took me, somebody who at least has got a fair set of brains sometimes, who comes from a background that is not deprived, who at the time I was doing it — and I’m not proud to say — was a member of the House of Representatives, and it took me two years to get off this drug, which is the most insidious drug you can imagine,” Burton said.
Floor speeches rarely change minds. But after Burton pleaded with Republicans not to “turn these young women into criminals,” Rogan, then-Speaker Curt Pringle and a few other Republicans withheld their votes. With the bill pending, Republicans conferred behind closed doors and quietly dropped the bill.
“It wasn’t planned. It wasn’t scripted. It was pure John Burton,” said Rogan, who went on to become a Superior Court judge in Orange County. Burton was the only Democrat who had the relationships and gravitas to derail the bill.
For most of his time in office, Burton served under Republican governors. He butted heads with them and on occasion won them over.
When young Assemblyman Burton sought to decriminalize marijuana, Reagan, implying that Burton was a nut, quipped that the San Franciscan was the one man in Sacramento who had the most to fear from the squirrels that populate Capitol Park. Burton answered by calling reporters to the park and trying to feed squirrels a copy of some Reagan-backed legislation.
“There’s some benefit to people thinking you’re nuts,” Burton said in an interview.
Though he was a relatively junior legislator, Burton took a lead role in Reagan’s 1971 welfare overhaul, pushing for annual cost-of-living adjustments for welfare recipients, something he fought to protect over the years.
He disparaged Gov. Pete Wilson, a Marine Corps veteran, for his efforts to limit welfare by calling him “the little Marine.” Burton had a “wicked sense of humor and a “colorful” way of expressing it” but was “a straight shooter,” Wilson said.
“With respect to legislative leaders, as Democrats, I would say that the combination of John Burton and Willie Brown negotiating budget and policy solutions during a time of crisis in the Reagan Cabinet Room was some of the finest policy and political talent California has ever seen,” Wilson said.
Voters elected Burton to the state Senate in 1996, and senators elected him Senate president pro tem in 1998, the year Gray Davis was elected governor, the first Democrat to hold that office after 16 years of Republicans. The relationship was strained.
In appearance, temperament and approach, they were opposites, and they clashed. Davis was a centrist who tried to be tightfisted. Burton, often dismissive of Davis, tried to pull him to the left. When it suited their interests, however, Davis signed legislation that Burton advocated, and Burton carried administration legislation.
“It ain’t brain surgery,” Burton said in 2021 of the art of turning a bill into a law. But few legislators could handle a lawmaking scalpel like Burton.
As Senate leader, he shepherded legislation to buy the last large stands of old-growth redwoods, increase public employee pensions, restrict guns and expand the right to sue, including for victims of sexual harassment. He was the target of such a suit in 2008. It was settled a few months later.
Burton routinely blocked legislation that increased the length of prison sentences but was a favorite of the California Correctional Peace Officers Assn., which represents prison guards. He was, after all, pro-labor.
In 2002, Burton carried legislation ratifying the prison officers’ contract negotiated by the Davis administration granting officers a raise of roughly 35% over five years, and boosting their pensions. Later that year the union, run by the fedora-wearing Don Novey, celebrated Burton’s 70th birthday by donating $70,000 to his campaign account.
Often, Burton sought no credit for what he helped others accomplish, as Fran Pavley discovered. In 2001, her first year in the Assembly, Pavley, an Agoura Hills Democrat, proposed far-reaching climate change legislation to authorize the California Air Resources Board to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from vehicle tailpipes.
Lobbyists for automakers shifted into overdrive, airing ads warning California that AB 1058 would dictate what cars people could own. The oil industry, drive-time talk radio hosts, and even Cal Worthington and his dog Spot piled on. AB 1058 looked like roadkill.
Burton’s solution: Hijack another bill and insert the contents of Pavley’s bill into it. With that bit of legerdemain, AB 1058 died, AB 1493 was born, and the auto industry’s campaign crashed.
Burton didn’t attend the ceremony when Davis signed the bill. Nor did he accompany Pavley a decade later when President Obama held a Rose Garden ceremony embracing the California concept in nationwide fuel-efficiency standards.
Pavley said she had never seen a politician work so hard for a bill for no credit, ”and I haven’t seen it since.”
Burton took special interest in certain issues. He was, for example, appalled at the force-feeding of ducks and geese to enlarge their livers to produce foie gras. In one of his final bills, he battled restaurant owners and agricultural interests to ban the practice. It passed the Senate by one vote.
In a letter urging Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to sign the bill against the wishes of some chefs, he included Burtonesque doggerel: “Save Donald Duck. F— Wolfgang Puck.”
Schwarzenegger signed the bill and sent Burton a photo of himself and Burton in the governor’s office looking at the bottom of the governor’s shoe with a note: “I got duck liver on my shoe!” In the background of the photo, there’s an image of Reagan, smiling with his head tilted back as if he’s having a good laugh.
Burton, who was divorced twice, is survived by his daughter, attorney Kimiko Burton, and two grandchildren.
Times staff writer David Zahniser contributed to this report.
TARTUS, Syria, Sept 1- Syria conducted its first official oil export in 14 years, dispatching 600,000 barrels of heavy crude oil from the port of Tartus on Monday.
This transaction was part of an agreement with B Serve Energy, a firm connected to the global oil trading company BB Energy. Syria’s oil sector, which exported 380,000 barrels per day in 2010, was significantly impacted by the nearly 14-year war.
The current government, established after the toppling of Bashar al-Assad, aims to revitalize the nation’s economy. The exported crude was sourced from multiple Syrian fields, though specific locations were not disclosed, and its export follows a period where Syrian oil fields in the northeast, under Kurdish-led authority control, began supplying the central government, though relations have since deteriorated.
The nation’s oil industry has been further complicated by shifting field ownership during the conflict and U.S. and European sanctions. The lifting of American sanctions by President Donald Trump in June has opened avenues for U.S. firms to engage in Syrian oil and gas exploration. Additionally, Syria has signed an $800 million memorandum of understanding with DP World to develop and operate a multi-purpose terminal at Tartus.
Mandel increased his Amazon stake by a sizable amount.
Billionaire Steve Mandel and his hedge fund Lone Pine Capital have been a great one to follow for individual investors. Although some hedge funds have a poor record of underperforming the broader market, Mandel has substantially outperformed the market over the past three years. So, when he makes a move in his portfolio, investors should pay attention.
One thing Mandel did during Q2 was sell off some of his Microsoft shares. Although it wasn’t a massive move, the hedge fund reduced its position by about 5%. Then, Mandel used some of those funds to invest in another promising AI stock that has increased in value by nearly 800% over the past decade.
AWS is the best reason to invest in Amazon right now
Amazon may not be the first company that comes to mind when you think about AI. Instead, it probably seems more like an e-commerce investment. While that sentiment is true for the consumer-facing portion, the reality is that a large chunk of Amazon’s profits comes from AI-related revenue streams.
The biggest is from Amazon Web Services (AWS), its cloud computing arm. Cloud computing firms are having a strong year, thanks to the massive demand generated by AI workloads. Because more companies can’t justify spending millions (or even billions) of dollars on a data center dedicated to training AI models, it’s far more reasonable to rent computing power from a firm that already has the capacity. That’s the idea behind cloud computing, and it has translated into strong growth for the business unit.
In Q2, AWS’s sales rose 17% to $30.9 billion. That’s strong growth, but it is a bit slower than its peers, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud, which each grew revenue by more than 30% in Q2. However, AWS is much larger than both of these units, so it shouldn’t surprise investors that AWS is growing at a slower rate. AWS accounted for about 18% of Amazon’s total revenue in Q2, but it made up 53% of its operating profit. That’s because AWS has far superior margins compared to its commerce business units, making AWS a critical part of the Amazon investment thesis.
AWS is experiencing a significant boost from AI, making it a strong stock pick in this space.
But Microsoft is also a solid AI pick, so why is Mandel moving from Microsoft to Amazon?
Amazon’s stock looks more promising over the long term
From a valuation perspective, both companies trade at fairly expensive levels for their growth. However, they’re both priced about the same from a forward price-to-earnings (P/E) standpoint.
One thing Amazon has going for it that Microsoft doesn’t is the steady upward pressure on Amazon’s margins. Thanks to AWS and its advertising service business units being the fastest growing in Amazon, its margins are steadily improving. Although Amazon’s revenue growth rate appears to be somewhat slow, its operating income growth rate is actually quite rapid.
This trend still has years to unfold, which is a solid reason to transition from Microsoft to Amazon. I believe this will be a winning trade over the long term, as Amazon’s profits are expected to grow at a significantly faster rate than Microsoft’s, resulting in the stock outperforming its peer over the long term due to their similar valuations.
However, both stocks are still solid AI picks, and you can’t go wrong with either one.
Keithen Drury has positions in Amazon. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Amazon and Microsoft. The Motley Fool recommends the following options: long January 2026 $395 calls on Microsoft and short January 2026 $405 calls on Microsoft. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
