dreams

Gabby Logan has been a mainstay of the BBC Sport presenting team for many years, but she was given a reality check by her daughter when she tried to push her into certain sports

Few individuals could be better suited to front BBC Sport than self-proclaimed sports fanatic Gabby Logan.

Gabby, who competed for Wales in rhythmic gymnastics at the 1990 Commonwealth Games, has remained a familiar face for decades through her contributions to ITV and BBC, presenting World Cups, Olympic Games, Six Nations and countless other sporting occasions.

Following Gary Lineker’s exit from the corporation’s premier football programme, Match of the Day, she has joined the presenting roster tipped to succeed him. However, Gabby was decisively “put in her place” by her daughter Lois when she tried to guide her towards the sports she herself was most passionate about.

She explained to The Telegraph: “I always used to say to Lois, when she first got into horses at the age of nine: ‘Oh, if you played golf, I would play with you every night. If you played tennis, I’d play with you all the time.’

“And she’s like: ‘Mummy, those are your dreams, not mine.’ So I was very much put in my place… I used to tell Clare Balding that I’d had her love child.”

Gabby’s Clare Balding reference proved rather fitting.

Now aged 20, Lois works as a show jumper and recently took part in her first horse race as a jockey.

Lois’s twin brother Reuben has also inherited the family’s athletic streak, featuring as a back-row forward for Sale Sharks.

As a mum, Gabby admits she finds it challenging watching both her children pursue physically demanding and potentially dangerous sports. “They’ve not made it easy for me, have they?” she quipped.

“Or for Kenny, in terms of a nice, sedate sport – something a little less frenetic and potentially fraught with danger.

“Still, for me it was important that they had a passion and did something they wanted to do in life, and they both love sport.”

Reuben may have regretted his choice to go into professional rugby on one particular occasion, though.

One of his regular gym sessions at the club turned into a toe-curlingly embarrassing experience when one of his mum’s podcasts was played over the PA system.

It happened to be the episode in which Gabby, 50, was discussing changes in her sex life since her husband – former rugby international Kenny Logan – had his prostate removed following a cancer diagnosis in 2022.

Gabby has been outspoken about reconnecting with intimacy after menopause. She told The Sun: “Taking HRT saw my libido returning. I started with a very small dose of oestrogen and testosterone gels, and progesterone in tablet form. I noticed massive changes within a few weeks. It was a lovely feeling – like myself again.

“My libido came back within about a week. I felt a massive improvement there, and that was important to me and also to Kenny. Once I was on HRT and my libido returned, our sex life was back on track – even to the extent of having daytime sex. There are plus points to becoming empty nesters!”

U.S. credit card balances have surged in the past several years, from $787 billion in Q2 2021 to $1.2 trillion in Q2 2025. Though the pace of increases has slowed in 2025, average credit card interest rates still hover around 25%, leading to balances that swell faster than many can pay them down.

Image source: Getty Images.

Debt can happen at any age

There’s never a good time to get caught up in high-interest debt, but the situation is particularly critical when that debt prevents you from investing for retirement. Regardless of your current age, the last thing you want to do is give up aspects of your retirement because you can’t afford them.

Due to soaring inflation, retirees outspend their annual incomes by more than $4,000, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. With limited options to bridge that financial gap, more are turning to credit cards to cover everyday expenses. In fact, 41% of households headed by someone between the ages of 65 and 74 carry credit card debt. Few of these households likely expected to depend on credit cards as they planned for retirement.

But it’s not just those who’ve reached retirement age who depend on credit cards. Experian offers this overview of average credit card debt by age:

What credit card debt means to retirement

Let’s say you’re 55, part of Generation X, and owe $9,600 in credit card debt. If your cards carry an average annual percentage rate (APR) of 25% and you make monthly credit card payments totaling $300, it will take you 54 months to pay the cards off. Worse, you’ll spend $6,384 on interest.

Now, imagine that your credit card debt didn’t exist, and you invested that $6,384 instead. Assuming an average annual return of 7%, it would be worth $12,558 in 10 years, $17,614 in 15 years, and $24,704 in 20 years. That’s assuming you never contribute another penny to the investment. It may not be a fortune, but any money invested can be combined with Social Security and other sources of income to help you in retirement.

Whether you’re an experienced or beginner investor, freeing up the money currently spent on monthly credit card payments is one of the surest ways to bolster your retirement savings.

The trick is to get your credit card debt under control. Here are three ideas to get you started.

1. Look into a consolidation loan

Consider a personal loan with a lower interest rate than you’re paying on your credit cards (ideally, much lower). Use that loan to pay off your credit cards and then make regular monthly payments until the loan is paid off in full.

Again, let’s say you owe $9,600 in credit card debt. The personal loan you land has an APR of 11%. By making the same monthly payment of $300, the loan will be paid off in 39 months rather than the 54 months it would have taken to pay down the credit cards. Better yet, you’ll spend $1,815 in interest, saving you $4,569.

2. Take advantage of a pay-down option

Snowball and avalanche methods are two of the most popular ways to pay off existing debt. Here’s how they work:

• Snowball method: Prioritize paying off your smallest debt first while continuing to make minimum payments on your other debts. Once the smallest debt is paid off, move to the next smallest balance, adding the money you were putting toward the first debt to pay down the second debt at a faster clip. Once the second smallest debt is paid off, move on to the third smallest, and so on. With each debt you pay off, you have more money available to pay toward the next one, creating a snowball effect.
• Avalanche method: Prioritize paying off the debt with the highest interest rate (regardless of balance). Once the debt with the highest rate is paid off, move to the debt with the next highest interest rate, and so on. Like the snowball method, each debt you pay off gives you more money for the next debt.

3. Consider a debt management plan

Debt management plans (DMPs) consolidate your credit card debt into a single monthly payment. Typically offered through certified credit counseling agencies, DMP counselors work on your behalf to:

• Help you determine how much you can afford to pay each month.
• Negotiate with your creditors to adjust your repayment terms.
• Accept your monthly payment and distribute it to your creditors.

While DMPs may be an effective way to climb out of debt, they can initially hurt your credit score, so be sure you understand the pros and cons before entering a DMP agreement.

Credit card debt is not insurmountable, but it does take effort to conquer. The sooner you do that, the sooner you can make progress toward your ideal retirement. Whether that’s fishing every day, visiting your grandkids, or retiring to a beach in a foreign country, it’s your dream to build.

New Delhi, India — Meghna Gupta* had planned it all – a master’s degree by 23, a few years of working in India, and then a move to the United States before she turned 30 to eventually settle there.

So, she clocked countless hours at the Hyderabad office of Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), India’s largest IT firm and a driver of the country’s emergence as the global outsourcing powerhouse in the sector. She waited to get to the promotion that would mean a stint on California’s West Coast.

Now, Gupta is 29, and her dreams lie in tatters after US President Donald Trump’s administration upended the H-1B visa programme that tech firms have used for more than three decades to bring skilled workers to the US.

Trump’s decision to increase the fee for the visas from about $2,000, in many cases, to $100,000 has imposed dramatic new costs on companies that sponsor these applications. The base salary an H-1B visa employee is supposed to be paid is $60,000. But the employer’s cost now rises to $160,000 at the minimum, and in many cases, companies will likely find American workers with similar skills for lower pay.

This is the Trump administration’s rationale as it presses US companies to hire local talent amid its larger anti-immigration policies. But for thousands of young people around the world still captivated by the American dream, this is a blow. And nowhere is that more so than in India, the world’s most populous nation, that, despite an economy that is growing faster than most other major nations, has still been bleeding skilled young people to developed nations.

For years, Indian IT companies themselves sponsored the most H-1B visas of all firms, using them to bring Indian employees to the US and then contractually outsourcing their expertise to other businesses, too. This changed: In 2014, seven out of the 10 companies that received the most H-1B visas were Indian or started in India; In 2024, that number dropped to four.

And in the first six months of 2025, Gupta’s TCS was the only Indian company in the top-10 H-1B visa recipients, in a list otherwise dominated by Amazon, Microsoft, Meta and Apple.

But what had not changed until now was the demographic of the workers that even the above US companies hired on H-1B visas. More than 70 percent of all H-1B visas were granted to Indian nationals in 2024, ranging from the tech sector to medicine. Chinese nationals were a distant second, with less than 12 percent.

Now, thousands across India fear that this pathway to the US is being slammed shut.

“It has left me heartbroken,” Gupta told Al Jazeera of Trump’s fee hike.

“All my life, I planned for this; everything circled around this goal for me to move to the US,” said Gupta, who was born and raised in Bageshwar, a town of 10,000 people in the northern Indian state of Uttarakhand.

“The so-called ‘American Dream’ looks like a cruel joke now.”

‘In the hole’

Gupta’s crisis reflects a broader contradiction that defines India today. On the one hand, the country — as Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his government frequently mention — is the world’s fastest-growing major economy.

India today boasts the world’s fourth-largest gross domestic product (GDP), behind just the US, China and Germany, after it passed Japan earlier this year. But the country’s creation of new jobs lags far behind the number of young people who enter its workforce every year, widening its employment gap. India’s biggest cities are creaking under inadequate public infrastructure, potholed roads, traffic snarls and growing income inequality.

The result: Millions like Gupta aspire to a life in the West, picking their career choices, usually in sectors like engineering or medicine, and working to get into hard-fought seats in top colleges – and then migrating. In the last five years, India has witnessed a drastic rise in the outflow of skilled professionals, particularly in STEM fields, who migrate to countries like Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the US.

As per the Indian government’s data, those numbers rose from 94,145 Indians in 2020 to 348,629 by 2024 — a 270 percent rise.

Trump’s new visa regime could now effectively close the pipeline of those skilled workers into the US. The fee hike comes on the back of a series of tension points in a souring US-India relationship in recent months. New Delhi is also currently facing a steep 50 percent tariff on its exports to the US — half of that for buying Russian crude, which the US says is funding the Kremlin’s war on Ukraine.

Ajay Srivastava, a former Indian trade officer and founder of the Global Trade Research Initiative (GTRI), a Delhi-based think tank, told Al Jazeera that the hardest-hit sectors after the new visa policy will be “the ones that Indian professionals dominate: mid-level IT services jobs, software developers, project managers, and back-end support in finance and healthcare”.

For many of these positions, the new $100,000 fee exceeds an entry-level employee’s annual salary, making sponsorship uneconomical, especially for smaller firms and startups, said Srivastava. “The cost of hiring a foreign worker now exceeds local hiring by a wide margin,” he said, adding that this would shift the hiring calculus of US firms.

“American firms will scout more domestic talent, reserve H-1Bs for only the hardest-to-fill specialist roles, and push routine work offshore to India or other hubs,” said Srivastava.

“The market has already priced in this pivot,” he said, citing the fall of Indian stock markets since Trump’s announcement, “as investors brace for shrinking US hiring”.

Indian STEM graduates and students, he said, “have to rethink US career plans altogether”.

To Sudhanshu Kaushik, founder of the North American Association of Indian Students, a body with members across 120 universities, the Trump administration’s “motive is to create panic and distress among H-1B visa holders and other immigrant visa holders”.

“To remind them that they don’t belong,” Kaushik told Al Jazeera. “And at any time, at any whim, the possibility of remaining in the United States can become incredibly difficult and excruciatingly impossible.”

The announcement came soon after the start of the new academic session, when many international students – including from India, which sends the largest cohort of foreign students to the US – have begun classes.

Typically, a large chunk of such students stay back in the US for work after graduating. An analysis of the National Survey of College Graduates suggests that 41 percent of international students who graduated between 2012 and 2020 were still in the US in 2021. For PhD holders, that figure jumps to 75 percent.

But Kaushik said he has received more than 80 queries on their hotline for students now worried about what the future holds.

“They know that they’re already in the hole,” he said, referring to the tuition and other fees running into tens of thousands of dollars that they have invested in a US education, with increasingly unclear job prospects.

The landscape in the US today, Srivastava of GTRI said, represents “fewer opportunities, tougher competition, and shrinking returns on US education”.

Nasscom, India’s apex IT trade body, has said the policy’s abrupt rollout could “potentially disrupt families” and the continuity of ongoing onshore projects for the country’s technology services firms.

The new policy, it added, could have “ripple effects” on the US innovation ecosystem and global job markets, pointing out that for companies, “additional cost will require adjustments”.

‘They do not care for people at all’

Ansh*, a senior software engineer at Meta, graduated from an Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), one in a chain of India’s most prestigious engineering school, and landed a job with Facebook soon after that.

He now lives with his wife in Menlo Park, in the heart of the US’s Silicon Valley, and drives a BMW sedan to work. Both Ansh and his wife are in the US on H-1B visas.

Last Saturday’s news from the White House left him rattled.

He spent that evening figuring out flights for his friends — Indians on H-1B visas who were out of the country, one in London, another in Bengaluru, India — to see if they could rush back to the US before the new rules kicked in on Sunday, as major US tech firms had recommended to their employees.

Since then, the Trump administration has clarified that the new fees will not apply to existing H-1B visas or renewals. For now, Ansh’s job and status in the US are secure.

But this is little reassurance, he said.

“In the last 11 years, I have never felt like going back to India,” Ansh told Al Jazeera. “But this sort of instability triggers people to make those life changes. And now we are here, wondering if one should return to India?”

Because he and his wife do not have children, Ansh said that a move back to India — while a dramatic rupture in their lives and plans — was at least something they could consider. But what of his colleagues and friends on H-1B visas, who have children, he asked?

“The way this has been done by the US government shows that they do not care for people at all,” he said. “These types of decisions are like … brain wave strikes, and then it is just executed.”

Ansh believes that the US also stands to lose from the new visa policy. “The immigrant contribution is deeply sprinkled into the DNA of the US’s success,” he said.

“Once talent goes away, innovation won’t happen,” he said. “It is going to have long-term consequences for visa holders and their families. Its impact would reach everyone, one way or the other.”

India’s struggle

After the announcement from the White House on Saturday, Prime Minister Modi’s principal secretary, PK Mishra, said that the government was encouraging Indians working abroad to return to the country.

Mishra’s comments were in tune with some experts who have suggested that the disruption in the H-1B visa policy could serve as an opportunity for India — as it could, in theory, stanch the brain drain that the country has long suffered from.

GTRI’s Srivastava said that US companies that have until now relied on immigrant visas like the H-1B might now explore more local hiring or offshore some jobs. “The $100,000 H-1B fee makes onsite deployment prohibitively expensive, so Indian IT firms will double down on offshore and remote delivery,” he said.

“US postings will be reserved only for mission-critical roles, while the bulk of hiring and project execution shifts to India and other offshore hubs,” he told Al Jazeera. “For US clients, this means higher dependence on offshore teams — raising familiar concerns about data security, compliance, and time-zone coordination — even as costs climb.”

Srivastava noted that India’s tech sector can absorb some returning H-1B workers, if they choose to return.

But that won’t be easy. He said that even though hiring in India’s IT and services sector has been growing year-on-year, the gaps are real, ranging from dipping job postings to new openings clustered in AI, cloud, and data science. And US-trained returnees would expect salaries well above Indian benchmarks.

And in reality, Kaushik said, many H-1B aspirants are looking at different countries as alternatives to the US — not India.

Ansh, the senior engineer at Meta, agreed. “In the US, we operate at the cutting edge of technology,” whereas the Indian tech ecosystem was still geared towards delivering immediate services.

“The Indian ecosystem is not at the pace where you innovate the next big thing in the world,” he said. “It is, in fact, far from there.”

Lilongwe, Malawi – In the rural valleys of Malawi, where homes are built of mud and grass, and electricity is scarce, Tamala Chunda spent his evenings bent over borrowed textbooks, reading by the dim light of a kerosene lamp.

During the day, he helped his parents care for the family’s few goats and tended their half-acre maize field in Emanyaleni village, some 400km (249 miles) from the capital city, Lilongwe. By night, he studied until his eyes stung, convinced that education was the only way to escape the poverty that had trapped his village for generations.

That conviction carried him through his final examinations, where he ranked among the top 10 students in his secondary school.

Then, this May, a letter arrived that seemed to vindicate every late-night hour and every sacrificed childhood game: a full scholarship to the University of Dayton in Ohio, the United States.

“I thought life was about to change for the first time,” Chunda told Al Jazeera. “For my entire family, not just myself.”

News of the award brought celebration to his grass-thatched home, where family and neighbours gathered to mark what felt like a rare triumph. His parents, subsistence farmers battling drought and rising fertiliser costs, marked the occasion by slaughtering their most valuable goat, a rare luxury in a village where many families survive on a single meal a day.

Distant neighbours even walked for miles to offer their congratulations to the boy who had become a beacon of hope for the children around him.

But just months later, that dream unravelled.

The US embassy informed Chunda that before travelling, he would have to post a $15,000 visa bond – more than 20 years of the average income in Malawi, where the gross domestic product (GDP) per person is just $580, and most families live on less than $2 a day, according to the World Bank.

“That scholarship offer was the first time I thought the world outside my village was opening up for me,” he said. “Now it feels as if I’m being informed that no matter how hard I work, doors will remain sealed by money I will never have.”

A sudden barrier

Chunda is one of hundreds of Malawian students and travellers caught in the sweep of a new US visa rule that critics say amounts to a travel ban under another name.

On August 20, 2025, the US State Department introduced a yearlong “pilot programme” requiring many business (B-1) and tourist (B-2) visa applicants from Malawi and neighbouring Zambia to post refundable bonds of $5,000, $10,000 or $15,000 before travelling.

The programme, modelled on a proposal first floated during the Trump administration in 2020, is intended to curb visa overstays. But Homeland Security’s own statistics suggest otherwise.

In 2023, the department reported that Malawian visitors had an overstay rate of approximately 14 percent, which is lower than that of several African nations not subject to the bond requirement, including Angola, Burkina Faso, Cape Verde, Liberia, Mauritania, Nigeria and Sierra Leone.

“It is the equivalent of asking a farmer who earns less than $500 a year to produce 30 years’ worth of income overnight,” said Charles Kajoloweka, executive director of Youth and Society, a Malawian civil society organisation that focuses on education. “For our students, it is less of a bond and more of an exclusion order.”

A US embassy spokesperson in Lilongwe told local media that the bond programme was intended to discourage overstays, and said it did not directly target student visas.

While student visas, known as F-1s, are technically exempt from the bond requirement in the pilot phase of the programme, in practice the situation is more complicated, observers note.

International students on F-1s are allowed to enter the US up to 30 days before their programme start date. However, for those needing to arrive prior to that – for orientation programmes, housing arrangements, or pre-college courses, for instance – they must apply for a separate B-2 tourist visa.

That means that many scholarship recipients need tourist visas to travel ahead of the academic year. But without funds to secure these visas, the scholarships can slip away.

For students entering the US on tourist visas with the intention of changing their status to F-1 once they are there, this is legally permissible, but it must be approved by the US Citizenship and Immigration Services. The visa bond requirements make this pathway much more complicated for Malawian students.

Even for those who manage to raise the funds, there is no guarantee of success. Posting a bond does not ensure approval, and refunds are only granted if travellers depart on time through one of three designated US airports: Logan in Boston, Kennedy in New York, and Dulles outside Washington.

Kajoloweka added that the policy also places extraordinary discretion in the hands of individual consular officers, who decide which applicants must pay bonds and how much.

Students in limbo

For decades, programmes such as the Fulbright scholarships, the Mandela Washington Fellowship, and EducationUSA have created a steady pipeline of Malawian talent to American universities.

“Malawi depends on its brightest young minds acquiring skills abroad, especially in fields where local universities lack capacity,” said Kajoloweka. “By shutting down access to US institutions, we are shrinking the pool of future doctors, engineers, scientists, and leaders … It is basically a brain drain in reverse.”

The visa bond has strained decades of diplomatic and educational ties between the US and Malawi, a relationship built by programmes dating from the 1960s and reinforced by sustained investment in education and development.

Last month, Malawi’s foreign minister, Nancy Tembo, called the policy a “de facto ban” that discriminates against citizens of one of the world’s poorest nations.

“This move has shattered the plans most Malawians had to travel,” said Abraham Samson, a student who had applied for US scholarships before the bond was announced. “With our economy, not everyone can manage this. For those of us chasing further studies, these dreams are now a mirage.”

Samson has stopped monitoring his email for scholarship responses. He feels there is little point, believing that even if an offer were to arrive, the overall costs of studying in the US would remain far beyond his reach.

Section 214(b) of US immigration law already presumes every visa applicant intends to immigrate unless proven otherwise, forcing students to demonstrate strong ties to their home country.

The bond adds another burden, wherein applicants must now prove both their intention to return and that they have access to wealth beyond the means of most.

Hope on hold

The situation is even more difficult for small business owners.

One businessman has spent two decades creating his small electronics import company in Lilongwe, relying on regular trips to the US to identify cost-effective suppliers.

In the aftermath of the mandate, the $15,000 visa bond has disrupted his plans, forcing him to buy from middlemen at outrageous prices.

“Every delay eats away at my margins,” he explained, speaking under the condition of anonymity to protect future visa prospects. “My six employees rely on me. If I can’t travel, I may have to send them home.”

Civil society groups, such as the one Kajoloweka helms, are mobilising against the policy. The group is documenting “real-life stories of affected students,” lobbying both locally and internationally, and “engaging partners in the United States and Europe to raise the alarm”.

“We refuse to let this issue quietly extinguish the hopes of Malawian youth,” he said. “This bond is a barrier, but barriers can be challenged. Your dreams are valid, your aspirations are legitimate, and your voices matter. The world must not shut you out,” he added, speaking generally to Malawian youth.

Meanwhile, back in his village, Chunda contemplates a future far different from the one he had imagined. His scholarship to the University of Dayton sits unused, a reminder of an opportunity denied.

“I thought life was about to change for the first time,” he lamented. “For my entire family, not just myself. I now have to look elsewhere to realise my dream.”

This article is published in collaboration with Egab.

AFTER a lifetime spent trying to keep her curly locks in check, Hilary Freeman, 53, from London, sees if the new Airwrap makes styling them fuss-free.

When I was 12 and puberty kicked in, my previously smooth curls turned, almost overnight, into an uncontrollable mop of frizz.

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Ever since, I’ve spent thousands on styling products and tools, for a daily battle to tame my locks.

My hair is like candy floss: fine in texture, soft and big. Humidity and rain are its mortal enemies.

Yes, I am that woman you see with an umbrella in the slightest drizzle.

That’s because the merest hint of moisture turns me into Art Garfunkel. Or worse, Phil Spector.

Like them, I have what some affectionately call a “Jewfro”.

As a teen, I begged my mother to allow me to have my hair chemically straightened.

The foul-smelling treatment, in effect a reverse perm — this was well before the days of Brazilian blow dries — didn’t work, and just damaged my locks, making them even more frizzy.

In the Nineties, when poker-straight locks became almost compulsory, I bought hair straighteners.

But I didn’t have the patience or expertise to use them properly.

I ended up with a half-straight, half-curly do — and a second- degree burn on my neck.

Since then, I’ve avoided trying new gadgets, partly out of fear of damaging my hair and partly because, as a mum with a busy job as a writer, I simply don’t have the time.

Instead, I’ve resigned myself to wearing my hair long and curly.

I tend to half diffuse it and half air-dry it, depending on the time I have.

Over the years, hair dye to stem the ever-increasing tide of grey has conspired with my changing hormones to alter my curl pattern from tight curls to looser ones.

But the frizz has remained.

Bushy mess

Mousses and gels keep my hair defined for a day or so, but the curls quickly drop out and become lank and fluffy.

On a good day, it falls into ringlets; on a bad one, it’s a bushy mess.

Curly hair has a mind of its own, you see.

So, I was keen to test the brand new Dyson Airwrap Co-anda 2x.

The latest version of this heated styler, the Curly and Coily model (there’s also a Straight/Wavy one), promises effortless, long-lasting, sleek waves.

Like all Dyson products, it looks and feels a quality, luxury item.

But, at £579, I’ll admit, I am expecting some sort of miracle.

Could it work for me, or is it just a lot of hot air?

According to Dyson, the Co-anda 2x has twice as many attachments as its predecessor and can be used to dry, curl, wave, straighten, smooth and volumise your hair.

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These attachments, they say, are “intelligent” — I wonder if they can help with Wordle.

The Airwrap claims to provide “supercharged styling with a stronger Coanda airflow”.

It is 30 per cent more powerful than the previous model, has two times the air pressure and — most intriguingly — senses movement, automatically wrapping your hair and adapting heat, airflow and timings to your hair type, via the MyDyson app.

Faced with a box of attachments, I have no idea where to start.

Setting up the app is simple, after answering some questions on it my device is tailored to my hair type.

However, as a novice, I find navigating the app confusing.

Its video guides — I counted 37 ways to style your curly hair — are helpful but I can’t figure out how to watch tutorials while holding my switched-on Airwrap.

It doesn’t help that the Bluetooth keeps disconnecting.

The power cord is also surprisingly short, meaning I have to sit right next to the plug socket.

On the plus side, the motor is extremely powerful.

I’m impressed with how the barrel curl attachment intuitively collects the right amount of hair — as if slurping noodles.

‘Friends say I look glam’

And I’m reassured that once the Airwrap reaches a certain heat, it starts to cool, so it dries my hair but doesn’t burn it.

I also like the fact there’s a diffuser attachment among the options, so I can choose whether I want to dry my hair curly, wavy or straight with just one device.

But I do find the Airwrap heavier than my usual hairdryer.

Holding it in one position for any length of time made my arm ache.

But it’s much easier than holding both a brush and a dryer.

The results speak for themselves. My hair feels so smooth and light that I can’t help swishing it around. The colour also looks more refined and glossy.

While people usually compliment my hair, now they’re commenting on my overall look.

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Everyone says I look “glamorous” and “airbrushed” — not words they’ve used before. I can see I appear more tidy and professional, and less boho. However, I do think my usual curly style makes me look more youthful.

The night after my trial, I barely sleep for worrying I’ll ruin my new do.

But I wake to find it almost as smooth as before.

By the end of the day, my hair is starting to frizz at the edges and some rogue curls are appearing.

I decide to wash it again, and try the diffuser option, so I can compare it with my own high street dryer.

When I link the Airwrap up to the app, it automatically sets it to the right heat and speed settings for the diffuser attachment.

It dries quickly and efficiently, creating nice curls and achieving better root volume than my own model. It’s a good diffuser.

But I can’t say the result is £600 better.

The Airwrap Co-anda 2x is not for novices. If I’m honest, I would probably only use the diffuser option unless I have a special event, and a day off.

It is a big investment and not a must-have.

But as an alternative to professional blowouts, it’s a great option.

CUTTING THE HAIR COSTS

LILY ENGLAND DELUXE HOT BRUSH, £32.99

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WHILE it can’t dry and style simultaneously like the Airwrap, it is perfect for giving your hair a quick zhuzh, and its simple design is easy to get the hang of.

The large barrel is ideal for adding volume and lifting hair.

BELLISSIMA ITALIA AIR WONDER 8-IN-1 HAIR STYLER, £129.99

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WITH eight attachment heads, this budget styler curls, volumises and waves.

Hit its coolshot button after styling to lock in your look for longer.

Also doubles up as a traditional hairdryer.

REVLON ONE-STEP BLOW-DRY MULTI STYLER 3-IN-1 TOOL, £80

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HAILED as the ultimate Dyson dupe, this takes hair from wet to perfectly styled.

Has a curling wand, an oval brush for volumised locks and a concentrator head for drying your roots.

When Ruth Adamu finds her son, Hikame, he is in school. She walks down its corridors to find him, takes his hand, and tells him to come with her. She promises to buy him a new pair of shoes, and together, they head towards the gate. 

But just as they are about to leave, he pulls away and says, “Mummy, I’m coming,” before turning back inside. As he wanders off, she begins to worry he might get lost or go missing, and panic sets in. 

This is how her dreams about the boy go. 

Other times, when he appears in her dream, he tells her he is going to school, and she urges him to stay home. She reminds him that school is almost closing, and that he can go when it opens again.

The last time she dreamt of him, he asked her to be patient as he was going to meet “them.” In other dreams, he confides that he is afraid of the people he is with. 

Whenever she wakes up from such visions, she slips into despair so deep it ruins her day and leaves her unable to do anything at all. She agonises over what state he might be in and wonders whether he has been radicalised by Boko Haram, the terrorist group in whose hands her son fell in 2014 as they fought to establish a radical Islamic state. 

“I know they won’t be easy on him. If he’s alive, they’ll definitely train him,“ she says, and that thought makes her heart ache.

Ruth was a 48-year-old mother of five in 2013 when her husband was killed by Boko Haram. She was surprised by how much her youngest child, 11-year-old Hikame, brought her comfort in her grief. Whenever she appeared to be sad or lost in thought, he would run to her and shout, “Mummy! Mummy! What is it? Come with me, let me show you something,” and then he’d engage her in a way that lifted her out of that heavy, sorrowful mood.

“He was very caring and very obedient,” she reminisces. “He never wanted, or allowed himself to see me worried or alone.”

When she headed out to sell eggs, he would drop whatever he was doing, even a game of football, and run to her, saying, “Mummy, let me come with you.” She would tell him it was fine and that he should go play, but he always insisted. 

He would accompany her, help with the sales, return home, and then assist with chores. Only after making sure everything was done would he ask, “Mummy, there’s nothing else, right?” Then, and only then, would he finally go off to play.

Hikame loved pigeons. He saved some money and asked his mother to help him cover the rest so he could buy one. A cage was built for it, and he delighted in feeding and caring for his new bird. Soon, Ruth grew an interest in the joys of pigeon-rearing as well. 

Ruth was separated from Hikame when he was 12 years and 10 days old. She remembers precisely that it was October 30, 2014. On that day, the town of Mubi, in Nigeria’s northeastern Adamawa State, came under attack by Boko Haram, which had declared war on the Nigerian state. 

That morning, she had started the generator to pump water into her fish pond. The sound kept her from hearing the chaos until her children came running to warn her. When she turned it off, the gunfire became loud, and she looked up to see an aeroplane firing downwards. 

She took all her children in the car and fled. They spent the night in the bush before proceeding at dusk, only stopping to ask for directions. A group of people by the roadside told her it was safe enough to drive on the main road, as the terrorists were already in Mubi, so she was unlikely to encounter them. Just then, a car passed by, and she was confident to follow suit.

“What I didn’t know was that it was a Boko Haram vehicle. When we reached a checkpoint manned by the terrorists, it was allowed to pass, but I was asked to stop,” she narrated.

Ruth, her children, and the three other people she had kindly given a ride obeyed the commands they were given. She handed over her keys to the gun-wielding terrorists who surrounded them, one from the front and another from behind. 

“The man in front turned to the other and asked, ‘What do we do with these ones who have obeyed us?’ The other stayed silent at first, then turned to me. ‘Madam, are all these your children?’ he asked. ‘No,’ I replied. He paused before saying, ‘All of you may go, except these two young men [Hikame and one of the passengers she had given a lift].’”

Ruth immediately fell to her knees and cupped her palms in an attempt to plead, but even before the words left her mouth, the terrorist violently cocked his gun and told her to get out of his sight. Her daughter dragged her away. 

They found a spot nearby, sat and waited for him to change his mind, or for his associates to convince him to let them go, or maybe for some miracle to happen where she could walk away with all her children. After waiting for what felt like too long, her daughter convinced her that it was time to move forward. Reluctantly, she left Hikame behind. 

When they reached the next safe town, she got a phone and called her eldest son and told him to try contacting Hikame. After several attempts, he spoke to his brother and told him to run whenever he got a chance. He warned him not to stay with the terrorists or listen to anything they preached to him. Then he emphasised, again, that he must run away. 

Whether Hikame got a chance to do so is still a mystery to his family 11 years later. They have never heard from him since that call. His number stopped going through, although tracking showed that he was around Bama, in Borno, northeastern Nigeria. Ruth went to the police station and declared her son missing. She did the same with the Nigerian Army, too, and finally, with the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC).

“The ICRC were the one who truly cared,” Ruth says. “I gave them Hikame’s details, and we’ve stayed in touch for about eight or nine years. At first, they often called to ask if I had heard anything about him. But those calls upset me badly. I would tremble, feel anxious. Talking about him was too painful, so I asked them to stop calling,” she explains. 

One time when they called, she broke down, shouting, crying, her head aching. Then one staff member consoled her softly. He told her that he, too, had been a victim. He offered words that soothed her and gave her strength and a renewed sense of hope. He also told her about a programme for the family of the missing she could join, promising that if she tried it and didn’t like it, she could leave whenever she wished.

“That programme helped me so much. It taught me resilience, how to manage my emotions, and gave me counselling. I used to isolate myself, but now I socialise more. We sit together as a family in the programme, they support us, even with transport fares, and they empower us. I’ve also built friendships there, and we visit and strengthen each other,” she says.

The International Committee of the Red Cross has registered at least 25,000 missing people in Nigeria since 2015, with over 14,000 of them being children.  

The protracted insurgency in the country’s North East has fueled a massive missing person problem across the region. Some vanish while fleeing violence, others are captured by terrorist groups, and many civilians are arbitrarily detained by the army, unable to distinguish terrorists from innocent people. 

An investigation by HumAngle revealed the devastating scale of the issue, documenting mass killings and mass graves. For families, the emotional toll is immense as they wait for news, grieve without bodies, and face practical challenges like inheritance disputes, as missing loved ones are not legally declared dead. Women wait years for their husbands, and children grow up with unanswered questions about their parents or siblings.

The ICRC started an Accompaniment Programme in 2019, which offers families of the missing emotional, economic, legal, and psychosocial support, helping them find hope and resilience.

It is the same programme that Ruth participated in. It has provided her with a support system, she says, as those who go through it have formed an organisation. They visit one another, pray together, and contribute small amounts of money to support each other during emergencies or special occasions, like weddings. It gives Ruth strength and comfort.

She says she no longer wallows in her grief for long periods of time. She doesn’t cry as frequently or avoid social interactions anymore. Talking about Hikame has also gotten easier, and the panic attacks don’t happen when she is asked about him. 

However, Ruth still believes that her body has suffered the consequences of grief and left scars that aren’t easily seen.

“Like my eyes,” she says. “I no longer see well with them, and I know it’s how much I cry that has affected it. It became so bad that I couldn’t step outside of my room into the light at some point. It hurt to look at the light. My legs also hurt, and I’m not as active as I used to be.”

When Ruth stands up, it is slightly laboured. She disappears into her room and reappears with two photos of Hikame in her hands. In one, he’s wearing a blue and yellow graduation gown and hat. There are other students in the background wearing school uniforms. 

Hikame will turn 23 on October 20 this year. If he were safe with his family, he would have worn a similar gown about three more times by now: once for his secondary school graduation, again for his university matriculation, and later for his convocation. 

Perhaps this picture is one that conjures up her frequent dreams of him in a school setting. 

In grief psychology, there’s a concept called continuing bonds. It refers to the way people hold on to memories, thoughts, or moments with loved ones who have passed or gone missing, sometimes even dreaming about them. “This is seen as part of healing, helping them cope with loss. In Ruth’s case, dreaming of her son in a school setting likely shows how important those school memories were to both of them,” Chioma Onyemaobi, a licensed clinical psychologist, explains.

Now 60, Ruth lives with her teenage granddaughter, who she says has helped in engaging her so that she doesn’t fall into despair again. The girl reminds her of Hikame and how he did the same for her when she was grieving her husband. 

If grief, as they say, is love that has nowhere to go, then while nothing can replace Ruth’s love for Hikame, she channels it into her granddaughter, all the while holding onto hope for a reunion with her son.

She no longer runs her fishery or egg businesses, partly because the war took everything from her and forced her to rebuild from scratch, and partly because the weight of grief has drained her strength. 

Now she buys wholesale rice, shares it among retailers, and earns a commission from their sales.

There’s one more thing Ruth does. One more place she channels love into: the rearing of pigeons. 

“To this day, I make sure I never stop caring for pigeons,” Ruth says, and a teardrop escapes her eyes. She blinks. “I rear some even now, and every time I feed them, I think of Hikame.” 

Scheffler said he intends to leave for home in Texas later on Sunday and “celebrate with the people that have helped me along the way”.

After he tapped in on the 18th an hour or so earlier – and the crowds offered their throaty approval – the first person he looked for was wife Meredith.

Belatedly spotting her, and 14-month-old son Bennett, who was toddling on to the green, Scheffler’s typically muted response changed.

He hurled his hat into the sky, roared with delight, and lumbered with arms outstretched towards them.

The trio embraced before Scheffler retrieved his hat and left the green with a bemused Bennett nestled in the crook of his left arm.

“When I saw my family, that was a pretty special feeling,” said Scheffler, who insisted earlier in the week that he would quit golf if it started to impact upon his family.

“It’s one that’s very hard to describe. It’s something I’m very grateful for and something that I’ll hold on to for a long time.”

‘What happens to a dream deferred, Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun’? Langston Hughes’ haunting question is beginning to echo uncomfortably in the political lifeline of Floyd Shivambu. Once a fierce and eloquent voice in Parliament’s red berets, today Shivambu finds himself marginalized, demoted to the political backbenches of the newly formed MK Party (MKP). A career that once burned with promise now flickers in uncertainty.

Was his fall from political prominence an accident, or was it engineered?. From the commanding front benches of the EFF to the shadows of the MKP, Shivambu’s descent raises critical questions. Was his departure from the EFF a genuine political realignment, or a cleverly orchestrated move to destabilize Julius Malema’s party by luring away one of its sharpest minds? Could this have been a strategic masterstroke by the likes of Jacob Zuma, a political chess player known for his ability to manipulate alliances and rivalries to his advantage?

If Shivambu was poached, it was certainly not for a promotion. Within months of joining MKP, he appears to have been politically neutered. Public disputes, such as the reported spat with Duduzile Zuma-Sambudla, Jacob Zuma’s daughter, have only added fuel to speculation that Shivambu was never meant to flourish in MKP, only to falter. Was he simply unaware of the unwritten rule that MKP is less a political party and more a Zuma family affair?

Some argue that this was less about strategy and more about power consolidation, not just weakening the EFF, but silencing an independent voice that could challenge the growing cult of personality around the Zuma’s within MKP. In that reading, Shivambu was not just collateral damage, he was the target.

Progressive Forces Eating Their Own? This unfolding saga raises disturbing questions about the nature of South Africa’s so-called progressive forces. How did a movement born from struggle and revolution devolve into petty factionalism and guerrilla-style politics against its own members? While the Democratic Alliance continues to mount a serious opposition to transformative policies, those who once stood together for economic emancipation are now sniping at each other from inside their trenches. It’s not just a tragedy for Shivambu. It’s a betrayal of the broader transformation agenda. Politically, Shivambu faces a daunting crossroads. The MKP seems to be squeezing him out. A return to the EFF is unlikely, not least because of the silence, or strategic distancing by Julius Malema and senior EFF leaders regarding Shivambu’s current woes. Their silence may be a political statement in itself. Or perhaps, they saw it coming.

Shivambu’s options appear limited. He could attempt to reinvent himself as an independent political voice, but without a party infrastructure or public platform, the road is steep. Alternatively, he might pivot to civil society, academia, or media spaces where his intellect and experience could still influence discourse. But make no mistake, the days of legislative thunder from the EFF’s deputy president may be behind him.

Political commentators like Tshidi Madia of Eyewitness News and others have noted the oddity of Shivambu’s muted role within MKP. Once celebrated for his incisive critiques and command of policy detail, he is now a near-invisible figure in a party defined by populist rhetoric and internal power dynamics. Madia and others suggest this was less an ideological shift and more a miscalculation on Shivambu’s part, one that may cost him his political future.

MKP’s Blind Spot In its apparent mission to sideline Shivambu reveals its own weaknesses. A political movement that cannot tolerate internal diversity or accommodate experienced leadership may soon find itself irrelevant. The very act of ejecting those with independent thought betrays a deeper insecurity  and an inability to transform from a personality cult into a credible political force. Floyd Shivambu may not have been perfect, very few in politics are but his marginalization marks more than just a personal tragedy. It reflects a broader crisis in South African progressive politics, a moment when internal rivalries and unchecked egos are dismantling movements from within. If a figure as pivotal and principled as Shivambu can be cast aside so easily, what hope is there for unity, let alone transformation?

In the end, Hughes’ poem lingers: “Or does it explode?” Time will tell whether Shivambu’s deferred dream leads to a rebirth, or the quiet explosion of a once-promising career. The biggest takeaway from the Shivambu-MKP debacle is the deepening disunity among parties that claim to represent the economically marginalized and working-class majority. Rather than building a unified front against inequality and state capture by elite interests, progressive parties are cannibalizing each other.

 By 2026, South Africa is likely to experience more splinters and splinter parties formed from fallouts within MKP and EFF. Weaker coordination at municipal and ward levels, especially in metros like Johannesburg, Ekurhuleni, and eThekwini. Increased voter confusion as ideological lines blur between former comrades turned competitors. The 2026 local elections could be a watershed moment not because of who wins outright, but because it will reflect whether progressive politics in South Africa can regroup or whether it has entered a cycle of permanent fragmentation. Unless bold leadership emerges to build bridges, articulate a unifying agenda, and restore public trust, the progressive forces risk becoming irrelevant spectators in the very struggle they once led.

Ahmedabad, India — For the Patel family, April was a month of answered prayers.

The news arrived in a simple email: their son, Sahil Patel, had won a visa lottery. He was one of 3,000 Indians chosen by a random ballot for a coveted two-year United Kingdom work visa, under the British government’s India Young Professionals Scheme.

For the 25-year-old from a middle-class family, it was a pathway from a modest home in Sarod village, 150km (93 miles) from Ahmedabad, the biggest city in the western Indian state of Gujarat, to a new life in London. For his family, the visa was the culmination of every prayer, a chance for the social mobility they had worked their whole lives for.

But less than two months later, that excitement has turned to grief: Sahil was one of the 241 people on Air India 171 who died when the plane crashed into a medical college’s hostel just outside Ahmedabad airport on Thursday, June 12, seconds after taking off.

Only one passenger survived India’s deadliest aviation disaster in more than three decades. Dozens of people on the ground were killed, including several students at BJ Medical College, when the plane erupted into a ball of fire after crashing into their mess. Several others were injured, many of them still in critical care.

Those killed on board include young students on their way to London on scholarships, a family returning home from a wedding in Gujarat, another that was visiting India for Eid, and those like Sahil whose families believed they had won the luck of a lifetime.

‘Why my child?’

In the mess hall at Gujarat’s oldest medical school, Rakesh Deora was finishing his lunch along with more than 70 other medical students. From a small town in Bhavnagar in southeastern Gujarat, Deora was in the second year of his undergraduate studies – but, friends and family recalled, did not like wearing his white coat.

When the plane struck the building, he was killed by the falling debris. In the chaos that followed, many of the bodies – from the plane and on the ground – were charred beyond recognition. Deora’s face was still recognisable when his family saw his body.

At the Ahmedabad Civil Hospital, five hours after the crash, another family rushed in. Irfan, 22, was an Air India cabin crew member, his uniform a symbol of pride for his family. They rushed to the morgue, unaware of what they were about to face. When an official showed Irfan’s father his son’s body – his face still recognisable – the man’s composure shattered.

He collapsed against a wall, his voice a raw lament to God. “I have been religious my whole life,” he cried, his words echoing in the sterile hallway. “I gave to charity, I taught my son character … Why this punishment upon him? Why my child?”

Beside him, Irfan’s mother refused to believe that her son was dead. “No!” she screamed at anyone who came near. “He promised he would see me when he got back. You’re lying. It’s not him.”

For another family, recognition came not from a face, but from a small, gold pendant. It was a gift from a husband to his wife, Syed Nafisa Bano, and it was the only way to identify her. Nafisa was one of four members of the Syed family on board, including her husband Syed Inayat Ali, and their two young children, Taskin Ali and Waqee Ali. They had been buzzing with excitement, talking about their return to London after spending a wonderful two months in India celebrating Eid al-Adha with their relatives. On Thursday, their family in Gujarat huddled together in the hospital corridor in mourning, the laughter they had shared consigned to memories.

‘God saved us, but he took so many others’

Just 500 metres from the main crash site, rickshaw driver Rajesh Patel was waiting for his next customer. The 50-year-old was the sole earner for his family. He wasn’t struck by debris, but by the explosion’s brutal heat, which engulfed him in flames. He now lies in a critical care unit, fighting for his life. His wife sits outside the room, her hands clasped in prayer.

In the narrow lanes of the Meghaninagar neighbourhood near the crash site, Tara Ben had just finished her morning chores and was lying down for a rest.

The sudden, deafening roar that shook her home’s tin roof sounded like a gas cylinder explosion, a familiar danger in the densely packed neighbourhood. But the screams from outside that followed told her this was different. “Arey, aa to aeroplane chhe! Plan tooti gayo! [Oh, it’s an aeroplane! It’s a plane crash!]” a man shrieked in Gujarati; his voice laced with a terror she had never heard before. Tara Ben ran out into the chaos. The air was thick with smoke and a smell she couldn’t place – acrid and metallic.

As she joined the crowd rushing to view the crash site, a cold dread washed over her – a mix of gratitude and guilt. It wasn’t just for the victims, but for her own community. She looked back at the maze of makeshift homes in her neighbourhood, where hundreds of families lived stacked one upon another. “If it had fallen here,” she later said, her voice barely a whisper, “there would be no one left to count the bodies. God saved us, but he took so many others.”

Veteran rescue worker Tofiq Mansuri has seen tragedy many times before, but nothing had prepared him for this, he said. For four hours, from mid-afternoon until the sun began to set, he and his team worked in the shadow of the smouldering wreckage to recover the dead with dignity. “The morale was high at first,” Mansuri recalled, his gaze distant, his face etched with exhaustion. “You go into a mode. You are there to do a job. You focus on the task.”

He described lifting body bag after body bag into the ambulances. But then, they found her. A small child, no more than two or three years old, her tiny body charred by the inferno. In that moment, the professional wall Mansuri had built to allow himself to deal with the dead, crumbled.

“We are trained for this, but how can you train for that?” he asked, his voice breaking for the first time. “To see a little girl … a baby … it just broke us. The spirits were gone. We were just men, carrying a child who would never go home.”

Mansuri knows the sight will stay with him. “I won’t be able to sleep for many nights,” he said, shaking his head.

‘Air India killed him’

By 7pm, five hours after the crash, ambulances were arriving at Ahmedabad Civil Hospital in a grim procession, not with sirens blaring, but in a near-silent parade of the dead.

Inside the hospital, a wave of anguish rippled through the crowd each time the doors of the morgue swung open. In one corner, a woman’s voice rose above the din, a sharp, piercing cry of accusation. “Air India killed him!” she screamed. “Air India killed my only son!” Then she collapsed into a heap on the cold floor. No one rushed to help; they simply watched, everyone struggling with their own grief.

Dozens of families waited – for a name to be called, for a familiar face on a list, for a piece of information that might anchor them amid a disorienting nightmare. They huddled in small, broken circles, strangers united by a singular, unbearable fate. Some were called into small, sterile rooms to give DNA samples to help identify their dead relatives.

Then an official’s announcement cut through the air: identified remains would only be released after 72 hours, after post-mortem procedures.

As the night deepened, some relatives, exhausted and emotionally spent, began their journey home, leaving one or two family members behind to keep vigil. But many refused to leave. They sat on the floor, their backs against the wall, their eyes vacant.

While some families still cling to the fragile hope of survival, such as in the case of Rajesh Patel, the rickshaw driver, others are grappling with the grief differently.

Away from the hospital’s frantic chaos, Sahil Patel’s father Salim Ibrahim was away in his village, calm and composed. Over the telephone, his voice did not break but remained chillingly calm, his grief masked by a single practical question.

“Will they give him back to us in a closed box?” he asked. “I just … I cannot bear for anyone to see him like that. I want him to be brought home with dignity.”

The visa that promised a new world to Sahil is now a worthless piece of paper. The plane was a Dreamliner, an aircraft named for the very thing it was meant to carry. The dream of London has dissolved into a nightmare in a morgue. And in the end, all a father can ask for his son is the mercy of a closed lid.

California’s two most prominent Democrats remain mum on their future plans, but former Vice President Kamala Harris and Governor Gavin Newsom both took time to tend to their political personas in Compton Thursday, attending separate events at local schools.

As hundreds of graduating seniors crossed the stage in their blue and white regalia early that morning at Compton High School, many paused to shake hands and take selfies with an honored guest on the dais: the former vice president herself, who’d made a surprise appearance after being invited by a graduating student.

Several hours later, Newsom read to young students at Compton’s Clinton Elementary School before standing with local leaders in front of a cheery, cartoon mural to launch a new state literacy plan. The issue is one of deep importance to the governor, whose own educational career was often defined by his dyslexia.

The adjacent appearances, which occurred a few miles apart, were “coincidental,” Newsom said. But they come at a moment when both the high-octane Democrats are in a political limbo of sorts.

The pair are viewed as potential 2028 presidential candidates, but the California political world is also waiting on tenterhooks to see if Harris enters California’s 2026 race for governor – a move that would almost certainly preclude a 2028 presidential bid. Harris is expected to make a decision by summer, and her entrance would upend the already crowded race.

With just 19 months left in his second and final term, the lame duck governor is scrambling to cement his gubernatorial legacy while also positioning himself as a pragmatic leader capable of steering his national party out of the wilderness. Harris, meanwhile, must decide if she actually wants to govern a famously unwieldy state and, if she does, whether California voters feel the same.

Both Harris and Newsom were notably absent at the state party convention last weekend, as thousands of party delegates, activists, donors and labor leaders convened in Anaheim.

California Governor Gavin Newsom presents his Golden State Literacy Plan at Clinton Elementary School in Compton on Thursday.

(Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Times)

Newsom was a famously loyal surrogate to then-President Biden. But in recent months with his “This Is Gavin Newsom” podcast and its long list of Democratic bête noire guests, the governor has worked to publicly differentiate his own brand from that of his bedraggled party, one controversial interview at a time.

Meanwhile, Newsom — who previously scoffed at the speculation and said he wasn’t considering a bid for the White House, despite his manifest ambitions — is more openly acknowledging that he could run for the country’s top job in the future.

“I might,” Newsom said in an interview last month. “I don’t know, but I have to have a burning why, and I have to have a compelling vision that distinguishes myself from anybody else. Without that, without both, and, I don’t deserve to even be in the conversation.”

Newsom demurred Thursday when asked whether he thought Harris would run for governor.

“Look, I got someone right behind me running for governor, so I’m going to be very careful here,” Newsom said to laughter, as California Supt. of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond — who announced his 2026 gubernatorial bid back in September 2023 — smiled behind him.

Harris attended the Compton High graduation at the invitation of Compton Unified School District Student Board Member MyShay Causey, a student athlete and graduating senior. She did not speak at the ceremony, though she received an honorary diploma.

Staff writer Taryn Luna contributed to this report.

In Syria, optimism abounds. The unexpected decision by United States President Donald Trump to lift sanctions on the country, announced in Riyadh on Tuesday, is a relief for Syrians. They hope that the move will reintegrate Syria into the global economy, and bring much-needed investment into a country trying to recover from more than 50 years of dynastic family rule, as well as a nearly 14-year-long war.

The impact of Trump’s statement, which he said would give Syria “a chance at greatness” after the December overthrow of Bashar al-Assad, had an almost immediate effect, as the Syrian pound strengthened against the US dollar by about 25 percent, in a boost to a country suffering through economic hardship.

“Lifting sanctions on Syria represents a fundamental turning point,” Ibrahim Nafi Qushji, an economist and banking expert, told Al Jazeera. “The Syrian economy will transition from interacting with developing economies to integrating with more developed ones, potentially significantly reshaping trade and investment relations.”

Complex sanctions

While the announcement will likely lead to some imminent progress, there are still some stumbling blocks to the sanctions removal, analysts and experts told Al Jazeera.

US sanctions on Syria date back to 1979, when the country was under the iron grip of President Hafez al-Assad – Bashar’s father – and designated a “state sponsor of terrorism”. In the intervening years, additional sanctions were placed on the state and individuals associated with both the regime and the opposition, including current President Ahmed al-Sharaa – a result of his former association with al-Qaeda.

“There’s an entire building of a complex gamut of sanctions,” Vittorio Maresca di Serracapriola, sanctions lead analyst for Karam Shaar Advisory Limited, a consulting company with a focus on the political economy of the Middle East, told Al Jazeera.

Analysts said that Trump could remove certain sanctions through executive order, while some “foreign terrorist organisation” (FTO) designations could be removed by US Secretary of State Marco Rubio. But other sanctions may be more complicated to end.

According to Maresca di Serracapriola, there are also a series of export controls, executive orders that target the banking sector, and acts that were passed by the US Congress.

“It is a huge moment for the country,” Maresca di Serracapriola said. “Of course, sanctions are very technical and complicated tools, so it’s still unclear how the US government will be able to implement what it promised.”

There are also questions about the timeline. The economic situation for many Syrians is dire, with 90 percent of the population living in poverty and approximately 25 percent jobless, according to the United Nations. The new Syrian authority is under extreme economic pressure, while at times struggling to exert its authority and provide security around the country.

Trump’s decision will come as a welcome reprieve, but Syrians may have to wait for sanctions relief to take effect. Analysts said the changes would come gradually and could take up to a year before “tangible results” are seen.

Sanctions relief alone will also not be enough. Analysts noted that Syria still needs banking reforms to comply and get off international monitoring lists. There will also need to be incentives from the US and other international actors to build trust among private investors looking to invest in Syria’s future.

“Achieving long-term growth requires implementing internal economic reforms, including improving the business environment, enhancing financial transparency, and developing productive sectors to ensure the Syrian economy effectively benefits from global opportunities,” Qushji said. “Lifting economic sanctions on Syria is a first step toward restructuring the economy, but it requires reform policies focused on sustainable development and global economic integration to ensure a real and productive recovery.”

Trump meets al-Sharaa

For months, everyone from Syria’s new leadership, analysts, and international actors has said there is a dire need for sanctions relief. But the US has previously taken an inflexible stance against al-Sharaa’s government, due to perceived ties to violence and armed groups.

Regional powers like Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkiye, however, have built strong relations with the new government in Damascus. Before Trump’s pronouncement on Tuesday, multiple analysts told Al Jazeera they did not expect Syria’s sanctions relief to be high up on the agenda for the US or the Gulf states Trump visited during his three-country tour.

The US has taken a cautious, and at times conflicting, approach to Syria’s new authority since the fall of the Assad regime on December 8.

On March 9, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio condemned Syria’s new government for their failure to prevent sectarian violence and massacres in the country’s coastal region. But then, three days later, Rubio praised the agreement between the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) and the Syrian central government in Damascus that ostensibly would see the SDF integrate into state institutions.

Previously, the US provided Syria a list of demands that included destroying the remaining chemical weapons, cooperation on “counterterrorism”, and the removal of foreign fighters from senior roles in the new government or military. There have also been suggestions that Syria might throw in a Trump Tower deal in Damascus and that Trump wanted ties between Syria and Israel before any sanctions relief.

But by Tuesday evening, everything had changed. Trump announced he would remove sanctions on Syria without conditions.

“The key emphasis here is it’s a Saudi-US deal rather than something between the US and Syria,” Rob Geist Pinfold, a lecturer in defence studies at King’s College in London.

Then, on Wednesday morning, Trump and al-Sharaa met for a little more than half an hour in the presence of Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and with Turkiye’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan phoning in. The meeting appeared to please Trump.

Speaking to reporters on Air Force One on his way to Doha, Trump called al-Sharaa a “young, attractive guy. Tough guy. Strong past. Very strong past. Fighter.”

After the talks, the White House released a list of issues Trump discussed with al-Sharaa. They included some of the US’s prior demands on Syria, such as dealing with foreign fighters and “counterterrorism” cooperation. But Trump also brought up Syria recognising Israel, as well as taking over ISIL detention centres in northern Syria.

“These don’t appear to be preconditions, but they could slowroll the lifting [of sanctions],” Natasha Hall, a senior fellow with the Middle East Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told Al Jazeera.