Ethical Diamond came with a stunning late run to win the Breeders’ Cup Turf in a course record for Grand National-winning trainer Willie Mullins.
The 20-1 chance, who spent most of his early career jumping over hurdles, surged down the outside under Dylan Browne McMonagle to claim one of Flat racing’s biggest races, with more than £2m going to the winner at Del Mar in California.
Ethical Diamond, winner of the Ebor Handicap at York in August, triumphed from runner-up Rebel’s Romance and third-placed El Cordobes, with favourite Minnie Hauk unplaced.
For decades, men in many countries were expected to spend two or even three months’ salary on a diamond engagement ring. This notion – and the iconic status of this gem – did not come about by accident.
The story goes back to 1870, when an Oxford University dropout named Cecil Rhodes set off to try his luck in the Cape Colony – modern-day South Africa, then a key British domain.
Seeing the burgeoning diamond mining sector there, he began renting water pumps to diamond prospectors to prevent flooding of the mines. Then, over the next 20 years, Rhodes and his partner Charles Rudd proceeded to buy out hundreds, and then thousands, of small mines and “claims” – landholdings believed to contain diamonds – often for a pittance when their owners faced bankruptcy. Most miners were small operators, and Rhodes and Rudd had access to serious financial capital – notably the Rothschild banking empire – through their connections in London. As the two partners combined claims into larger mining units, overhead costs were reduced, and operations became more profitable.
The partners incorporated as De Beers Consolidated Mines, De Beers being the name of one of the mines they took over. By 1888, the company had a near-monopoly of South African claims and active diamond mines. With diamonds making up more than 25 percent of South African exports in 1900, De Beers became a powerhouse of the country’s economy, controlling some 90 percent of the world’s total diamond supply. Rhodes himself became a leading imperial figure, serving as prime minister of the Cape Colony from 1890 to 1896.
De Beers was founded upon the racist policies of South Africa, which at the time was ruled by a white minority. The diamonds were extracted by Black miners earning subsistence wages, while De Beers’s white, European-origin shareholders enjoyed the profits.
Following Rhodes’s death in 1902, control of De Beers ultimately passed to German-born entrepreneur Ernest Oppenheimer. Oppenheimer used a combination of financial incentives, strategic pressure, and diplomacy to persuade diamond suppliers in other countries to sell exclusively through the London-based and De Beers-owned “Central Selling Organization” (CSO), which in the 1930s became the unified sales channel for virtually all the world’s pre-cut diamonds. This enabled De Beers to stockpile diamonds, strictly control the release of stones to the global market, and effectively control prices – thereby creating an illusion of diamond scarcity worldwide.
Meanwhile, De Beers sought to enhance global demand for diamonds. In 1946, the company hired NW Ayer, a Philadelphia-based advertising agency, which one year later came up with the legendary slogan, “A diamond is forever”. This reframed the diamond and, specifically, the diamond engagement ring, as a symbol of “eternal love”. Through mass advertising, product placements in films, and celebrity PR – for example, lending jewellery to actors for major events – the campaign transformed the diamond market in the US, Europe and Japan.
Lasting 64 years, until 2011, this campaign was an astounding global success, with Ad Age magazine naming “A diamond is forever” as the top advertisement slogan of the 20th century. De Beers had manufactured a social norm, with the diamond engagement ring becoming almost mandatory in every developed market. While previously, a fiance might give a locket, a string of pearls, or a family heirloom to his intended, the number of American brides with a diamond ring climbed from 10 percent in 1940 to some 80 percent in 1980. In Japan, this figure rose from less than 5 percent in 1960 to 60 percent by 1981.
By the early 1950s, a diamond ring typically cost about $170 – about $2,300 in today’s money. De Beers advertisements initially suggested spending one month’s salary on an engagement ring, but by the 1980s, they were posing the question: “How can you make two months’ salary last forever?” Consumers appeared undeterred by the fact that a diamond’s resale value was typically just 50 percent of its original retail price (in contrast to gold, which has an “official” benchmark price set twice-daily).
By the time Marilyn Monroe sang “Diamonds are a girl’s best friend” in 1953 and the James Bond film “Diamonds Are Forever” was released in 1971, the diamond had become an icon.
The Kimberley diamond mines in South Africa, to which thousands flocked in the 1870s after the discovery of diamonds on the nearby De Beers farm [Gray Marrets/Getty Images]
‘Cartel behaviour’
By the late 1970s, De Beers was annually distributing some 50 million diamond carats, with sales of more than $2bn in the US alone.
But as the 1980s rolled around, problems started to emerge for the company.
De Beers came under increasing scrutiny as the anti-apartheid movement gained momentum in Europe and the United States. Reports of its working conditions were shocking: low pay for mineworkers, minimum safety training and crowded dormitory housing surrounded by barbed wire and security checkpoints. This negative publicity put De Beers firmly in the spotlight as one of the prime beneficiaries of apartheid.
De Beers had already fought off allegations of “cartel behaviour” from the US Department of Justice. But in 1994, the company was indicted by a US grand jury on price-fixing charges. The company was barred from doing business in the US, where its executives could no longer set foot for fear of arrest.
In the late 1990s, reports that the diamond trade was financing brutal civil wars in Angola, Sierra Leone and the Democratic Republic of Congo further soured consumer sentiment.
Rebel groups targeted “alluvial” diamond mines – relatively easy-to-extract surface deposits, often in riverbeds – selling stones into the informal “grey” market and using the profits to buy weapons. The phrase “blood diamonds” entered the lexicon as investigative articles depicted enslaved children with pickaxes and shovels. De Beers was accused of turning a blind eye, if not outright complicity. The company’s sales declined more than 20 percent in two years, from about $5.7bn in 1999 to $4.45bn in 2001, with other diamond suppliers such as Angola’s Endiama and Russia’s Alrosa equally affected.
But since the early 1990s, changes had been afoot at De Beers. Facing pressure from South Africa’s newly elected African National Congress (ANC), it had introduced better conditions and wages for its mainly Black mineworkers. At the same time, Black South Africans also began to occupy some management roles.
Meanwhile, the US indictment meant the company had no choice but to terminate its CSO in 2000, ushering in competition from other producers. Diamond prices, no longer set and dictated by the CSO, became more volatile, subject to fluctuating demand, economic cycles, and geopolitical conditions.
To counter the blood diamond backlash, De Beers helped implement the “Kimberley Process” in 2003, through which diamond dealers can trace the origin of diamonds and authenticate “clean’’ diamonds with a microscopic stamp.
A salesperson shows a diamond ring to a prospective buyer at a jewellery shop in Ahmedabad, India, on April 14, 2025 [Ajit Solanki/AP Photo]
Not forever?
Today, natural diamonds may have lost some of their allure with the rise of “lab-grown” stones and “diamond simulants” such as cubic zirconia, which are up to 90 percent cheaper than the mined variety and often distinguishable from the real thing only by experts using specialised equipment.
Over the past two years, the diamond industry has been hit by a “perfect storm” of cheaper synthetic stones, weak consumer demand in the US and China, sanctions against Russia and, more recently, high US tariffs. This has had a widespread adverse impact: the Antwerp World Diamond Centre (AWDC) reported that rough diamond imports dropped 35 percent in 2024, with overall trade declining by 25 percent year-on-year (from $32.5bn to $24.4bn) – and in the Indian gem processing hub of Surat, at least 50,000 diamond workers were rendered jobless in 2024. At least 80 diamond workers in India have died by suicide in the past two years.
In 2011, the Oppenheimer family sold its interest in De Beers to the London-based mining corporation Anglo American, another major shareholder, for just over $5bn. De Beers is now once more up for sale, again with a $5bn price tag, as Anglo American seeks to exit the declining diamond market in favour of copper, iron ore and rare earth minerals.
Despite the volatile market conditions, total global consumer diamond sales were valued at approximately $100bn in 2024, with the average price of $6,750 for a diamond ring in the US, according to the Natural Diamond Council – about 1.3 months’ standard wage in the United States, but about eight months’ worth of the global median income. For those of greater means, London’s Harrods reportedly has a 228.31 carat, pear-shaped diamond available to view by private appointment – with a price estimated to be in excess of $30m.
This article is part of “Ordinary items, extraordinary stories”, a series about the surprising stories behind well-known items.
St Lucia’s Olympic champion Julien Alfred wins the women’s 100m at the Diamond League Final in Zurich as Jamaica’s Tia Clayton comes second and Britain’s Dina Asher-Smith third.
For Kalpesh Patel, Diwali, the festival of lights celebrated across India, might well mark lights out for his eight-year-old diamond cutting and polishing unit.
The 35-year-old employs about 40 workers who transform rough diamonds into perfectly polished gems for exports at the small factory in Surat, a city located in the western Indian state of Gujarat.
His business has survived multiple speed bumps in recent years. But United States President Donald Trump’s mammoth 50 percent tariffs on imports from India might be the final nail in the coffin for his unit, part of an already struggling natural diamond industry, he said.
“We still have some orders for Diwali and will try to complete them,” he told Al Jazeera.
Diwali, arguably India’s single biggest festival, scheduled for late October this year, usually sees domestic sales of most goods soar. “But we might have to shut the business even before the festival, as exporters might cancel the orders due to high tariffs in the US,” Patesh said.
“It is becoming increasingly difficult to pay the salaries and maintain other expenses with falling orders.”
He is among the 20,000-odd small and medium traders in Surat, known as the “Diamond City of India”, which together cut and polish 14 out of every 15 natural diamonds produced globally.
The US is their single largest export market. According to the Gem and Jewellery Export Promotion Council (GJEPC), India’s apex body for the industry, the country exported cut and polished gems worth $4.8bn to the US in the 2024-25 financial year, which ended in March. That is more than one-third of India’s total exports of cut and polished diamonds, at $13.2bn over the same period.
Dimpal Shah, a Kolkata-based diamond exporter, told Al Jazeera that orders have already started getting cancelled. “Buyers in the US are refusing to offload the shipped products, citing high tariffs. This is the worst phase of my two-decade-old career in diamonds.”
Kalpesh Patel, who runs a diamond cutting and polishing business in Surat, Gujarat, fears that he may not be able to continue his business for long, because of US tariffs on Indian imports [Photo courtesy of Kalpesh Patel]
US imposes penalty
A 25 percent reciprocal tariff on all Indian goods, which Trump announced on April 2, came into effect on August 7, after talks between the two countries failed to yield a trade deal by then. Negotiations are continuing.
Meanwhile, on August 6, Trump announced an additional 25 percent tariff, taking the total tariff rate to 50 percent. He termed the additional tariff that would come into effect from August 27 as a penalty for India’s continued buying of Russian oil, as the US president tries to push Moscow into accepting a ceasefire in Ukraine.
For the gems industry, which already faced a pre-existing 2.1 percent tariff, the effective tariff now amounts to 52.1 percent.
Ajay Srivastava, the founder of Global Research Trade Initiative (GTRI), a trade research group, termed the Trump government’s additional hike as an act of “hypocrisy”, citing how the US itself continues to trade with Russia, and how China – Russia’s biggest oil buyer – faces no similar penalty.
“Trump is targeting India out of frustration as it refused to toe the US line on the Russia-Ukraine conflict, and for its refusal to open its agriculture and dairy sector,” he added, referring to broader ongoing trade talks and differences over US demands for greater access to critical Indian economic sectors.
Yet, whatever the reasons for Trump’s tariffs, they are hurting a diamond industry already bleeding from multiple hits.
India supplies almost all of the world’s cut and polished diamonds, produced in small units across the state of Gujarat [Photo courtesy Ramesh Zilriya, president of the state’s Diamond Workers Association]
Diamond sector badly hit
More than 2 million people are employed in diamond polishing and cutting units in Surat, Ahmedabad and Rajkot cities in Gujarat — and many have already suffered salary cuts in recent years, first because of the COVID-19 pandemic, and then Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
“The pandemic led to economic slowdown affecting the international markets in Hong Kong and China,” Ramesh Zilriya, the president of Gujarat’s Diamond Workers Union, told Al Jazeera. The “Western ban on rough diamond imports from Russia due to the Russia-Ukraine war and the G7 ban on Russia also affected our business”, he added.
Russia has historically been a major source of raw diamonds.
Zilriya claimed that 80 diamond workers have died by suicide over the past two years because of this economic crisis.
“The situation in the international market led to the wages of the workers getting halved to approximately 15,000-17,000 rupees ($194) per month, which made survival difficult in the face of rising inflation,” he said.
Once the Trump tariffs fully kick in, Zilriya fears that up to 200,000 people in Gujarat may lose their livelihoods.
Already, more than 120,000 former diamond sector workers have applied for benefits. A 13,500-rupee ($154) allowance per child, to support their families, was promised in May by the state government to those who have lost jobs due to the tumult in the sector in recent years.
But the tariffs, pandemic and war are not alone to blame for the crisis: Lab-grown diamonds are also slowly eating into the market of their natural counterparts.
“Unlike natural [diamonds], the lab-grown diamonds are not mined but manufactured in specialised laboratories and priced at just 10 percent of the natural ones. It is difficult even for a seasoned jeweller to identify the natural and lab-grown with a naked eye. The taste of consumers is now shifting to lab-grown [diamonds], as they are cheap,” said Salim Daginawala, the president of the Surat Jewellers Association.
A worker checks the polishing of a lab-grown diamond in Surat, India, Monday, February 5, 2024 [Ajit Solanki/AP Photo]
Decline in exports
In the 2024-25 financial year, India imported rough diamonds worth $10.8bn, marking a 24.27 percent decline from the $14bn imported in 2023-24, as per the statistics by the GJEPC.
The exports of cut and polished natural diamonds similarly witnessed a 16.75 percent decline, with exports declining to $13.2bn in 2024-25 as compared with $16bn in the preceding year.
“This move [the tariffs] would have far-reaching repercussions on the Indian economy that might disrupt critical supply chains, stalling exports and threatening thousands of livelihoods. We hope to get a favourable reduction in tariffs; otherwise, it would be difficult to survive,” said Kirit Bhansali, the chairman of the GJEPC.
The tariffs could also hurt US jewellers, warned Rajesh Rokde, the chairman of the All India Gems and Jewellery Domestic Council (GJC), a national trade federation for the industry.
“The US has around 70,000 jewellers who would also face a crisis if the jewellery becomes expensive,” Rokde added.
A salesperson shows a diamond ring to a prospective buyer at a jewellery shop in Ahmedabad, India, on April 14, 2025 [Ajit Solanki/AP Photo]
A domestic solution?
Traders say that the need of the hour is to increase domestic demand for diamonds and diversify to new markets.
A stronger domestic market “would not only contribute to the local economy, but would also create jobs for several thousands of people”, said Radha Krishna Agrawal, the director of Narayan das Saraf Jewellers in Varanasi city, in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh.
The tariffs, he said, could prove a “blessing in disguise” if they end up reducing the dependence of India’s gems industry “on other countries”.
Bhansali said that the domestic gems and jewellery market was growing, and expected to reach $130bn in the next two years, up from $85bn at the moment. The industry is also looking for new markets, including Latin America and the Middle East.
Gold already offers an example of a strong domestic market, cushioning the impact of hits on exports, said Amit Korat, the president of the Surat Jewellery Manufacturers Association.
But for now, the diamond sector in India has no such shield. It needs to be saved, urgently, said Patel, the Surat business owner on the cusp of shutting down his polishing and cutting unit.
Without help, he said, “the business will lose its shine forever”.
The feature film will tell an extraordinary true crime story
The creative team behind popular docuseries Don’t F*** With Cats have dropped their brand new title on Netflix about the ‘world’s greatest diamond heist’.
Stolen: Heist of the Century releases on the streaming platform from Friday (August 8). It is produced by the company RAW, not only known for the hit true crime series but also American Nightmare and The Tindler Swindler.
Their latest entry is said to tell the story of the ultimate true-life crime caper, the world’s greatest diamond heist. According to the synopsis provided by Netflix, the Antwerp detectives who cracked the case along with the alleged criminal mastermind are gathered for the first time to give a blow-by-blow account of what really happened.
The feature length documentary is said to reveal the secrets of ‘The Heist of the Century’. Unlike the previous limited series released, this will be a film coming in at around one hour and 35 minutes in length.
The detectives and those involved in the heist will reveal what really happened(Image: Netflix)
On the morning of February 17, 2003, detectives from Antwerp’s infamous Diamond Squad were called to investigate the brazen night-time robbery of an allegedly impregnable vault in the middle of the City of Diamonds.
It is estimated that between $100 million and half a billion dollars worth of diamonds were stolen. An ingenious gang of master thieves from Italy, known as The School of Turin were said to be behind the audacious heist.
Now, after more than 20 years, the world will finally learn how they pulled it off.
Sharing the same director as Don’t F*** With Cats, the new film is based on the book Flawless, which was written by Scott Andrew Selby and Greg Campbell.
Fans were full of praise for Don’t F*** With Cats, with one person claiming it was ‘the best documentary ever made’. Another fan posted online saying: “A really excellent crime and investigation series based on true events, the only downside is that at first it feels a little dry and uninteresting, but if you can tolerate the beginning, this is a masterpiece series.”
Between $100 million and $500 million worth of diamonds were stolen(Image: Netflix)
Someone else stated: “Don’t F**k with Cats” is a gripping rollercoaster of a documentary that will leave you on the edge of your seat from start to finish.”
It means that Stolen: Heist of the Century has been set a high bar of expectations if it is to be as well received. Anticipation has been building for its release ever since Netflix shared the trailer online.
Replying to the teaser on its YouTube page, one user claimed it looked like a real life version of action movie Den of Thieves. Another said: “These guys pulled off something so wild, I thought it was straight out of Grand Theft Auto.”
Stolen: Heist of the Century is streaming on Netflix.
There was perhaps no better reaction than that of Dobson, who appeared stunned after coming from seemingly nowhere with 100m remaining to beat world-class competition.
Olympic and world silver medallist Hudson-Smith crossed the line second in 44.27, ahead of South Africa’s Zakithi Nene, who has run the fastest time in the world this year with 43.76.
“I don’t know what happened,” Dobson told BBC Sport.
“I got to the last 100m and I felt great. I was catching everyone. I thought to myself, ‘If I just dig really deep then I can get them’ – and I did!”
Having already clinched victory in the women’s high jump with her second-time clearance at 1.96m, Lake thrived under the gaze of the entire crowd and went close to breaking her British record with three solid attempts at 2m.
While Kerr could not deliver the record-breaking finale he hoped to, he will take lessons from his loss to Koech and has time on his side with two months until his world title defence in Tokyo.
“I should be winning those so I am frustrated,” said Kerr.
“I really wanted to show up and win for this crowd but all I can promise to them now is in a few months’ time I will be battling for a gold medal for this country. I’ll bring it home and then everyone can see what we were working towards today.”
Former 200m world champion Asher-Smith overhauled Hunt as she crossed the line in 22.25 seconds, with the ever-improving Hunt, 23, clocking 22.31.
But Olympic 100m champion Alfred proved a class above, recording the joint-ninth fastest 200m of all time as she stormed to victory in 21.71.
Ireland’s Rhasidat Adeleke was fourth in 22.52, with Daryll Neita sixth in 22.69.
Capitalizing on natural resources and a prime geographic location, the island nation considers a host of opportunities to expand exports and encourage foreign investment.
A cultural affinity with the United States and a year-round tropical climate have made the Dominican Republic an attractive destination for tourists from the north. But the number of visitors has trended downward and the new remittance tax in President Donald Trump’s “Big, Beautiful Bill” Act have highlighted the need for the island nation to accelerate its long march diversifying the economy.
“The Dominican economy has been diversifying since the fall of the Trujillo dictatorship” in 1961, points out Franklin Vásquez, economist and CEO of CYFRAS Consultores. “We’ve promoted and fostered financial capital, then we moved on to promoting tourism, then the free trade zones, then we opened the economy to early-1990s neoliberalism. Then we supported the agricultural sector.”
Currently, the focus is on services and creating a logistics hub, capitalizing on the republic’s proximity to the US and China’s interest in including it in the Belt and Road Initiative.
Foreign investors can take advantage of free trade zones, of which the Dominican Republic has 92, housing 850 companies. Logistics companies, which accounted for 3.14% of GDP in 2023, are treated the same way, tax-wise, as those that set up in the free trade zones. According to a recent report by the Ministry of Industry, Commerce, and Small Business (MICM), logistics’ slice of GDP could climb to 3.78% over the next decade. Five logistics centers and 33 companies combine for over $2 billion in revenue a year, or 1.58% of the country’s $126.2 billion GDP.
“With adequate policies, we should increase the complexity of our export basket.”
Juan Ariel Jiménez Núñez, former Economics Minister
Eduardo Sanz Lovatón, director general of customs, sees the Dominican Republic becoming the Caribbean’s most important logistics center. Besides its geographical position, Sanz points out that 20% of the country’s $4.5 billion foreign direct investment in 2024 was channelled into manufacturing. Companies including clothing manufacturers Hanes and Timberland, aerospace businesses like Eaton Corporation, and IT companies such as Rockwell Automation have established facilities on the island.
Challenges for companies considering relocation include scaling to provide for the fast-growing Asian market; education needs, especially for engineers; and occupancy rates in the country’s sophisticated business parks, which are running at 99% to 100%. But with a median worker’s age of 28, former Economics Minister Juan Ariel Jiménez Núñez sees a path to reindustrialization as well. That workforce is “willing to learn, willing to speak English,” he says. “I think we should try industrial goods: more medical devices and electrical components.”
That could help meet the challenge posed by Trump’s one percent remittance tax, which could cost the Dominican Republic more than $234 million per year, according to the Center for Global Development. Tourism accounts for 8.3% of GDP value-added; together with remittances, this increases to almost 30%.
“With adequate policies, we should increase the complexity of our export basket,” Former Minister of Industry and Commerce José del Castillo Saviñón argues. “We should do more tourism for sure, but we should do better tourism. We should do health tourism and retirement tourism. It’s not only diversifying away from tourism but also diversifying the tourism industry itself.”
The republic already has a tourism diversification policy in place, which is estimated to have added almost 104,000 tourists from South America this year. Tourist visits from Argentina have doubled since the signing of an open skies agreement in December 2024 that increased direct flights and included international promotion by the government. This has helped offset 88,000 fewer tourists arrivals from North America in the first quarter of 2025, which the Tourism Ministry explains as being due to seasonal factors including the leap year and early Holy Week celebrations.
Increasing the country’s presence in business service processing (BPO), which currently brings in $250 million per year according to Statistica, is another option. At least 14 BPO start-ups are currently operating in and around the capital of Santo Domingo, employing 36,000 call center workers. A report by the Banco Central de la República Dominicana calculates the industry has grown 12% annually for the past five years.
The DR’s Geographical Advantages
Another feature the republic could exploit is its northern port, Manzanillo, which is two days away by boat from the US eastern seaboard. At present, the country mainly uses its southern ports including, Haina and Santo Domingo. While the country continues developing a cruise-ship port in Arroyo Barril in the east, the northern coast remains underutilized.
Jiménez believes the Dominican Republic could also be the main supplier of agricultural and industrial goods to the Caribbean islands. Further afield, he argues for increased integration with the US and possibly Europe, but not Latin America, given that the US offers clearer competitive advantages.
Another option is energy diversification: in particular, nuclear energy.
Franklin Vásquez, economist and CEO of CYFRAS Consultores
In June, Gaddis Corporán Segura, vice minister of Nuclear Energy, revealed that a draft nuclear law is ready to be presented to the Chamber of Deputies. Should the republic go nuclear, it would be the first Caribbean Island to do so. Other, shorter-term measures could include a dosimetry calibration laboratory that could be used region wide. This would allow the Dominican Republic to calibrate instruments used in industry, medicine and research.
The Development Bank of Latin America and the Caribbean (CAF) has promised $2.5 billion of investment in the region to help improve the ocean economy. The CAF’s aims include preserving oceans, encouraging responsible tourism, managing the region’s coastlines, conserving and restoring marine ecosystems, developing clean technologies and renewable ocean energy, and decarbonizing ports and maritime transport. In June 2024, the Dominican Republic issued its first sovereign green bond for $750 million through the Ministry of Finance.
But despite “good relations” between the Dominican Republic and multilaterals in the region, Jiménez notes that timing will be a major issue, since discussing such projects can take longer than many of the region’s governments typically last. As a result, the Dominican Republic has had to rely more on sovereign bond issuance than multilateral loans.
Mining has always been one of the republic’s largest export industries. Last year, the sector contributed 43.3% of the country’s exports and 1.4% of GDP. China is a leading export market and experts believe that along with gold—which Barrick Gold has successfully exploited—copper, zinc, bauxite, silver, and precious metal wastes present significant growth opportunities. The southeast of the country, especially, could benefit from new exploration grants from the government: including, says Vasquez, for oil.
Perhaps the republic’s most significant recent economic trend, however, has been the rapid increase in women joining the workforce.
“I believe women have been the greatest beneficiaries of the labor market and economic dynamics,” Vásquez says. “Before, you could have had a labor market that was 20% to 30% female; now, we see that 50% of the labor market is female. If you look at the financial system, the majority of bank and financial institution employees are women. Dominican women have empowered themselves and trained themselves. They have wanted to move forward.”
The larger issue, however, is what types of work women are securing. Assistance from a World Bank program aims to redress an imbalance that sees only 18% of female students choose information and communication technology and women making up only 5% of STEM graduates.
Nevertheless, greater economic participation by women has contributed to improved social stability in a country that already has economic and political solidity, according to Vásquez. A plethora of laws and policies aim to limit public spending and increase access to financial services, potentially broadening the tax base.
Given these attributes, “the Dominican Republic is the diamond in Latin America,” Jiménez says. “With adequate policies, especially with a better education system, we can shine that diamond quite a lot.”
“A Beautiful Noise” is a jukebox musical that understands the assignment.
The show, which opened Wednesday at the Hollywood Pantages Theatre on the Broadway musical’s North American tour, exists to celebrate the rough magic of Neil Diamond’s catalog. If glorious singing of American pop gold is what you’re looking for, “A Beautiful Noise” delivers.
Diamond’s fans will no doubt feel remunerated by the thrilling vocal performance of Nick Fradiani, the 2015 winner of “American Idol,” who plays the young iteration of the double-cast Neil, the Brooklyn-born pop sensation who went on a rocket ship to fame and fortune that gave him everything in the world but the peace that had always eluded him. Fradiani vocally captures not just the driving excitement of Diamond’s singing but the note of masculine melancholy that gives the songs their grainy, ruminative subtext.
Hannah Jewel Kohn and Nick Fradiani play Marcia Murphey and the young version of the double-cast Neil Diamond, respectively.
(Jeremy Daniel)
Jukebox musicals, inspired perhaps by the commercial success of “Mamma Mia!,” tend to muscle an artist’s hits into flagrantly incongruous dramatic contexts. Anthony McCarten, the book writer of “A Beautiful Noise,” avoids this trap by setting up a framework that deepens our appreciation of Diamond’s music by shining a biographical light on how the songs came into existence.
The older version of , now the grizzled Diamond burnt out by tour life and desperate not to duplicate the mistakes he made in his first two marriages, is played by Robert Westenberg. He’s been sent by his third wife to a psychotherapist to work on himself. As he shares with the doctor (Lisa Reneé Pitts), he’s been told that he’s hard to live with — an accusation that his long, stubborn silences in the session make instantly credible.
Introspection is as unnatural to Neil as it was for Tony Soprano, but the doctor gently guides Neil past his resistance. Intrigued by his remark that he put everything he had to say into his music, she presents him with a volume of his collected lyrics and asks him to talk her through one of his songs.
Nick Fradiani, from left, Robert Westenberg and Lisa Reneé Pitts as both iterations of Neil and his doctor during an onstage therapy session.
(Jeremy Daniel)
“I Am … I Said,” which makes reference to a frog that dreamed of being a king before becoming one, cuts too close to the bone. That single will have to wait for a breakthrough in therapy, but he is lured back into his past when the Jewish boy from Flatbush talked his way into a meeting with Ellie Greenwich (Kate A. Mulligan), the famed songwriter and producer, who convinced him not to change his name and gave him the chance that set him down the road to stardom.
The production, directed by Michael Mayer and choreographed by Steven Hoggett, marks this therapy milestone by having backup singers and chorus members emerge from behind Neil’s chair. Out of darkness, musical euphoria shines through.
The show’s approach is largely chronological. “I’m A Believer,” which became a runaway hit for the Monkees, catapults Diamond into the big leagues. Once he starts singing his own material, he becomes a bona fide rock star — a moody Elvis who straddles rock, country, folk and pop with a hangdog bravura.
Neil’s first marriage to Jaye Posner (a touching Tiffany Tatreau) is an early casualty after he falls in love with Marcia Murphey (Hannah Jewel Kohn, spinning a seductive spell musically and dramatically). It’s Marcia who coaches him into playing the part of front man. The hits come fast and furious after that, but the frenzy of tour life exacts a severe toll.
Tiffany Tatreau as Diamond’s first wife Jaye Posner, from center left, Nick Fradiani and Kate A. Mulligan as singer-producer Ellie Greenwich in “A Beautiful Noise.”
(Jeremy Daniel)
Of course, everyone at the Pantages is waiting impatiently for “Sweet Caroline,” the anthem that never fails to transform into a sing-along after the first “bum-bum-bum.” The performance of this ecstatic number is powerfully mood-elevating.
Fradiani’s character work is most impressive in his singing. That’s when the inner trouble Neil has been evading since his Brooklyn childhood hauntingly resounds.
“America,” “A Beautiful Noise,” “Song Sung Blue,” “Love on the Rocks” and “You Don’t Bring Me Flowers,” songs heard countless times, take on more weight as the circumstances of their creation are revealed. The therapy gets a little heavy-handed in the protracted final stretch. But Westenberg, who’s a touch too emphatic early on, lends poignancy to the cathartic release that ushers Neil into a new place of self-understanding.
By keeping the focus where it should be — on the music — “A Beautiful Noise” thrives where more ambitious jukebox musicals stumble. This is a show for fans. But as the son of one who remembers the songs from family road trips, even though I have none of them in my music library, I was grooving to the sound of a bygone America, high on its own unlimited possibilities.
At the curtain call at Wednesday’s opening, Katie Diamond came on stage and video-called her husband as the Pantages audience collectively joined in an encore of “Sweet Caroline.” It wasn’t easy to hear Diamond sing, but it hardly mattered. Fradiani had supplied that dopamine rush for more than two hours with his virtuoso musical portrayal.
‘The Neil Diamond Musical: A Beautiful Noise’
Where: Hollywood Pantages Theatre, 6233 Hollywood Blvd., L.A.
When: 7:30 p.m. Tuesdays-Thursdays, 8 p.m. Fridays, 2 and 8 p.m. Saturdays, 1 and 6:30 p.m. Sundays. Ends July 27.
Armand Duplantis, Julien Alfred and Matthew Hudson-Smith are among the stars competing at the Eugene Diamond League
The 2025 Eugene Diamond League meeting boasts one of the best fields this year with 17 individual champions from the Paris Olympics and 14 world record holders in action.
Five events feature all three medallists from the Paris Olympics, including the women’s 100m, which sees St Lucia’s Olympic champion Julien Alfred take on American duo Sha’Carri Richardson and Melissa Jefferson-Wooden.
Among the world record holders in Oregon are Sweden’s Armand Duplantis, who set a new high of 6.28m in the men’s pole vault in Stockholm last month, and Kenya’s three-time Olympic 1500m champion Faith Kipyegon.
You can watch all the Diamond League, also known as Prefontaine Classic, action unfold on BBC iPlayer, the BBC Sport website and the BBC Sport app from 21:00-23:00 BST.
Which British stars are competing?
Image source, Getty Images
Image caption,
Matthew Hudson-Smith won individual and relay medals at the Paris Olympics
In the men’s 100m, Britain’s 60m world indoor champion Jeremiah Azu and British record holder Zharnel Hughes go up against Olympic silver medallist Kishane Thompson of Jamaica, who with 9.75 seconds has the fastest time in the world this year, and American Trayvon Bromell.
Great Britain’s Matthew Hudson-Smith, who won silver in France last summer, and Charlie Dobson take on Olympic champion Quincy Hall and Olympic bronze medallist Muzala Samukonga in the men’s 400m.
Britain’s Olympic bronze medallist Georgia Hunter-Bell faces the challenge of Kenyan great Faith Kipyegon and Australian star Jessica Hull in the women’s 1500m.
GB’s world indoor champion Amber Anning is up against two-time Olympic 400m hurdles champion Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone in the women’s flat 400m.
Other British athletes in action include Dina Asher-Smith, Neil Gourley and Jake Wightman,but Olympic 800m champion Keely Hodgkinson, whose return from a hamstring injury was delayed by a setback in April, and Josh Kerr are not competing.
Media caption,
Hunter-Bell wins Diamond League women’s 800m
What time are the key events in Eugene?
21:12 BST – men’s 100m featuring Jeremiah Azu and Zharnel Hughes
21:43 BST – men’s 400m featuring Matt Hudson-Smith and Charlie Dobson
21:51 BST – women’s 400m featuring Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone and Amber Anning
22:34 BST – women’s 800m featuring Mary Moraa and Athing Mu-Nikolayev
22:44 BST – women’s 100m featuring Julien Alfred, Sha’Carri Richardson, Melissa Jefferson-Wooden and Dina Asher-Smith
22:50 BST – Bowerman Mile featuring Cole Hocker, Neil Gourley and Jake Wightman
What’s coming up this Diamond League season?
After stops in Eugene and Monaco, the series visits the UK for the sold-out London Diamond League on 19 July.
Injury permitting, Hodgkinson is expected to compete at the event where last summer she improved her British record to one minute 54.61 seconds.
London is also set to host the latest chapter in the 1500m rivalry between world champion Josh Kerr and Norwegian rival Jakob Ingebrigtsen.
Olympic and world 100m champion Noah Lyles, world 400m hurdles champion Femke Bol and British pole vaulter Molly Caudery are also on the entry lists, as the world’s top athletes build towards their shot at World Championship glory in Japan in September.
What is on the line in the Diamond League?
Athletes compete for points in 32 disciplines in a bid to qualify for the Diamond League Finals in Zurich in August.
That takes place just over a fortnight before the start of the World Athletics Championships in Tokyo.
All Diamond League events will be shown on the BBC, which has agreed a deal to broadcast the competition for the next five years.
The Diamond League has increased its prize money to the highest level in its history, with a total prize pot of $9.24m (£6.95m) on offer across the series.
That includes $500,000 (£375,000) at each of the 14 series meetings, and $2.2m (£1.7m) at the Diamond League final.
How does the Diamond League work?
Athletes will compete for points at the 14 regular series meetings which started in April and run through to August.
Points are awarded on a scale from eight for first place to one for eighth place.
After the 14th meeting in Brussels, the top six ranked athletes in the field events, the top eight in track events from 100m up to 800m, and the top 10 in the distances from 1500m upwards qualify for the final.
The two-day finals are a winner-takes-all competition to be crowned Diamond League champion in each event.
Media caption,
‘He’s got it!’ – Duplants sets new pole vault world record
Strumming a black acoustic guitar to match his black tuxedo pants and jacket, Hugh Jackman strolled onto the stage of the Hollywood Bowl and let the audience know precisely what it was in for.
“Little bit of Neil Diamond,” he said as the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra revved up the go-go self-improvement jive of “Crunchy Granola Suite.”
A dedicated student of showbiz history, the Australian singer and actor was starting his concert Saturday night just as Diamond did half a century ago at the Greek Theatre gig famously captured on his classic “Hot August Night” LP.
Yet Diamond was just one of the flamboyant showmen Jackman aspired to emulate as he headlined the opening night of the Bowl’s 2025 season. Later in the concert, the 56-year-old sang a medley of tunes by Peter Allen, the Australian songwriter and Manhattan bon vivant whom Jackman portrayed on Broadway in 2003 in “The Boy From Oz.” And then there was P.T. Barnum, whose career as a maker of spectacle inspired the 2017 blockbuster “The Greatest Showman,” which starred Jackman as Barnum and spawned a surprise-hit soundtrack that went quadruple-platinum.
“There’s 17,000 of you, and if any of you did not see ‘The Greatest Showman,’ you might be thinking right now: This guy is super-confident,” Jackman told the crowd, panting ever so slightly after he sang the movie’s title song, which has more than 625 million streams on Spotify.
The success of “Showman” notwithstanding, Jackman’s brand of stage-and-screen razzle-dazzle feels fairly rare in pop music these days among male performers. (The theater-kid moment that helped make “Wicked” a phenomenon was almost exclusively engineered — and has almost exclusively benefited — women such as Ariana Grande, Cynthia Erivo, Chappell Roan and Laufey.) What makes Jackman’s jazz-handing even more remarkable is that to many he’s best known as the extravagantly mutton-chopped Wolverine character from the Marvel movies.
Before Jackman’s performance on Saturday, the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra, conducted by Thomas Wilkins, played a brief set of orchestral music that included selections from John Ottman’s score for “X2: X-Men United.”
The ascent of Benson Boone, with his mustache and his backflips, suggests that Jackman may yet find inheritors to carry on the tradition he himself was bequeathed by Diamond and the rest. But of course that assumes that Jackman is looking to pass the baton, which was not at all the impression you got from his spirited and athletic 90-minute show at the Bowl.
In addition to stuff from “The Greatest Showman” and a swinging tribute to Frank Sinatra, he did a second Diamond tune — “Sweet Caroline,” naturally, which he said figures into an upcoming movie in which he plays a Diamond impersonator — and a couple of Jean Valjean’s numbers from “Les Misérables,” which Jackman sang in the 2012 movie adaptation that earned him an Academy Award nomination for lead actor. (With an Emmy, a Grammy and two Tonys to his name, he’s an Oscar win away from EGOT status.)
Hugh Jackman with members of the L.A. Phil’s Youth Orchestra Los Angeles on Saturday night.
(Timothy Norris)
For “You Will Be Found,” from “Dear Evan Hansen,” he sat down behind a grand piano and accompanied himself for a bit; for the motor-mouthed “Ya Got Trouble,” from “The Music Man” — the first show he ever did as a high school kid, he pointed out — he came out into the crowd, weaving among the Bowl’s boxes and interacting with audience members as he sang.
“I just saw a lot of friends as I went through,” he said when he returned to the stage. “Hello, Melissa Etheridge and Linda. Hello, Jess Platt. Hi, Steph, hi, David, hi, Sophia, hi, Orlando — so many friends. Very difficult to say hello to friends and still do that dialogue.” He was panting again, this time more showily. “It’s like 53 degrees and I’m sweating.”
The show’s comedic centerpiece was a version of John Denver’s “Thank God I’m a Country Boy” that Jackman remade to celebrate his roots as an “Aussie boy.” There were good-natured jokes about shark attacks and koalas and Margot Robbie, as well as a few pointed political gibes, one about how “our leaders aren’t 100 years old” — “I’m moving on from that joke fast,” he added — and another that rhymed “Life down under is really quite fun” with “I never have to worry: Does that guy have a gun?”
The emotional centerpiece, meanwhile, was “Showman’s” “A Million Dreams,” for which the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra was joined by 18 members of the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s Youth Orchestra Los Angeles. The song itself is pretty cringe, with a lyric bogged down by cliches and a melody you’ve heard a zillion times before. But Jackman sold its corny idealism with a huckster’s sincerity you couldn’t help but buy.
The 16th Diamond League season is under way as athletics’ Olympic stars build towards their shot at world glory in 2025, with coverage live on the BBC.
The series sees athletes compete for points in 32 disciplines across 14 meetings in a bid to qualify for the winner-takes-all two-day finals in Zurich in August.
That takes place just over a fortnight before the start of the World Athletics Championships in Tokyo, Japan in September.
It is also the first year in which the Diamond League must compete with Michael Johnson’s new Grand Slam Track for athletes’ attention.
However, there has been only one direct clash between the two competitions – with the Miami Slam on 2-4 May having taken place at the same time as the meet in Keqiao, China on 3 May.
The Diamond League has increased its prize money to the highest level in its history, with a total prize pot of $9.24m (£6.95m) on offer across the series.
That includes $500,000 (£375,000) at each of the 14 series meetings, and $2.2m (£1.7m) at the Diamond League final.
BBC Sport has agreed a deal to broadcast the Diamond League for the next five years.
Watch the Doha Diamond League action on the BBC Two, BBC iPlayer and the BBC Sport website and app from 17:00 to 19:00 BST on Friday.
![Gujarat [Photo courtesy Ramesh Zilriya, president of the state's Diamond Workers Association]](https://www.occasionaldigest.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/IMG-20250805-WA0035-1755048666.jpg)
