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Joy Ryan, 96, has visited six continents since getting her first passport at 91, but she must follow her doctor’s advice to do the same routine every hour on long-haul flights

A 96-year-old grandmother who didn’t get her first passport until she was 91 has still found the time to visit six continents. Joy Ryan shared one of the biggest issues with long-haul travel in her advanced years as she has to follow strict doctor’s orders.

Since first travelling abroad, Joy has explored destinations including Kenya, the Galapagos Islands and Antarctica. But her adventures come with a health concern: long-haul flights increase the risk of blood clots, something she has experienced before.

Flights lasting more than four hours can increase the risk of deep vein thrombosis, with the risk rising further on journeys lasting more than eight to 10 hours. For Joy, following her doctor’s advice to keep moving is an important part of her travels.

The grandmother, from Duncan Falls, Ohio, USA, and her grandson Brad are set to visit Thailand, Australia and South Africa later this year.

Her passion for travel began long before she needed a passport. Joy had originally planned to see the world with her husband, but he died just months into his retirement in 1994.

Two decades passed before another opportunity arose. She hadn’t even seen a mountain before joining Brad on an overnight trip to the Great Smoky Mountains, along the Tennessee-North Carolina border.

Brad had been struggling with depression after starting vet school and hoped spending time in nature with his grandmother would help his mental health.

That overnight stay grew into a mission to visit every US national park. Along the way, Joy discovered her favourite destination: American Samoa.

The US territory in the South Pacific sits almost 5,000 miles from America’s west coast. Joy was determined to visit its national park, and got her first passport ahead of the trip, reports the Express.

Speaking to the Daily Telegraph, she said: “You just feel comfortable because everybody’s so friendly. They don’t have much, but they share it with you.

“They take care of their elders, too. There are no nursing home. They take them into their homes and keep them, and then, when they pass away, they bury them in the front yard so they’re still looking after them.”

Now 96, Joy says it is remarkable to witness how differently people communicate around the world, even when she cannot understand them.

The pair’s Instagram account, @grandmajoysroadtrip, has more than 115,000 followers. Joy shares their adventures there, along with dating advice.

Brad’s book Grandma Joy and Me: A Journey of Healing, One National Park at a Time was published earlier this year.

Jet2 passengers with flights before midday can check-in and drop off their luggage during a four-and-a-half hour window the day before their trip at 12 UK airports

Jet2 has confirmed a rule allowing passengers with flights before midday to check-in and drop off their luggage a day earlier.

Passengers usually have to arrive at their departure airport at least two hours before their flight and queue at check-in desks to get boarding passes before dropping off luggage.

However, Jet2 offers a twilight check-in service at 12 airports across the UK which allows passengers to bypass this process the night before, making morning departures less stressful.

Not only can passengers save valuable time on the day of their flight, they can also avoid having to wait in long check-in queues to drop off bags.

Jet2’s twilight check-in service is only available to passengers with flights due to depart before midday at the 12 airports listed below.

If you have an eligible flight, you can use the free twilight service within a four and a half hour window the evening before your morning flight and drop your bags off between 4.30pm and 9pm.

Passengers must also check-in for flights online any time from 28 days and no later than 24 hours before their flight via Jet2’s website or app.

Explaining how the service works, Jet2 said: “Check in online. You need to do this no later than 24 hours before your flight, but to make sure you don’t miss out, we recommend you check in as soon as online check-in opens, 28 days before you travel.

“Drop your bags at the airport. One person in your party can drop off up to six people’s bags. Simply take your luggage to the airport between 16:30-21:00 the evening before your flight. Don’t forget your boarding passes and passports!

“Sail straight through to security. On the morning of your flight, bypass check-in and head to security. Relax and enjoy your getaway!”

UK airports where Jet2’s twilight check-in is available

• Birmingham
• Bristol
• East Midlands
• Edinburgh
• Glasgow International
• Leeds Bradford
• Liverpool
• London Gatwick
• London Luton
• London Stansted
• Manchester
• Newcastle

Boxer Fernando Vargas Jr. was arrested on suspicion of DUI following a multi-vehicle collision at a Universal Studios Hollywood parking lot, according to law enforcement and multiple media outlets.

California Highway Patrol responded to the incident on Thursday after receiving a call at 7:51 p.m.

CHP confirmed to The Times that one arrest was made at the scene for “suspicion of DUI.” No other injuries were reported at the scene.

Reports by KTLA confirmed that the 29-year-old was the individual arrested after officers observed “signs of alcohol impairment from Vargas” and conducted a DUI investigation.

Officers took him to the CHP Central Los Angeles Area office. The case will be submitted to the Los Angeles city attorney’s office for possible charges.

Hours before the arrest, Vargas posted a video to Instagram of himself and a woman inside a vehicle, who appeared to be in the passenger seat, TMZ reported.

The super welterweight boxer is the oldest son of two-time middleweight world champion Fernando Vargas. The famed Mexican American fighter from Oxnard — who at one point was the youngest U.S. national amateur champion — also faced legal troubles of his own for his role in a 1999 assault case.

Since fighting his first professional match in 2020, Vargas Jr. himself has built a steady record in the ring with 15 knockouts in 17 wins. His last bout was during the Canelo Alvarez-Terence Crawford card in September 2025, where he lost to Irish boxer Callum Walsh.

Gaza City, Gaza Strip – For more than four hours, Hajj Rabhi al-Fairi, 79, has been standing outside his home in Gaza City with his children and neighbours waiting their turn to use a small generator.

The generator’s owner pours in the fuel, starts a timer and switches on the machine.

Each family gets a few minutes to operate a pump that pushes water up to a storage tank on the roof, before the generator moves on to the next house.

For al-Fairi and his neighbours, this is how they get water.

“We have an old water pump, but there is no electricity to run it. We have to rent a generator,” al-Fairi tells Al Jazeera.

Since the family returned to their home in October 2025, after fleeing a month earlier during Israel’s assault on their neighbourhood, the generator has become a familiar sight on the streets of Nassr.

When it arrives, residents gather around it, each carrying a jerrycan of diesel to operate the machine, which they have to pay for themselves.

“We came back and found the place a tragedy,” he says.

Their neighbourhood and home were badly damaged from years of Israeli bombing, with no municipal electricity or water supplies functioning. The family depends on an old pump – but without electricity, it cannot bring water up to the rooftop tank.

Each family needs only about seven or eight minutes to fill up their tanks, but with the number of flats in their building, the generator needs to be rented for about an hour.

The cost has also risen. Al-Rabhi says families used to pay about 80 to 90 shekels ($26-30) to rent a generator for an hour. At different times, the price has risen to about 100 or 120 shekels ($33-40) an hour, excluding the cost of diesel.

A generator on wheels

Khalil Abu Ouda, 39, takes a machine mounted on a horse-driven cart from one house to another. The generator’s metal body is covered in black soot and grease, and white smoke rises from the engine when it operates.

At each house, Abu Ouda connects long electrical cables to the water pump. The cables stretch across the street as neighbours gather around the machine to wait their turn.

“Go on, switch it on,” someone calls.

For Abu Ouda, this machine is both a service for the neighbourhood and an essential source of income for his family.

He says there are very few small, mobile generators, like his, left in working condition in Gaza. Many have broken down, while spare parts are difficult to find or too expensive to source due to Israel’s siege.

Mechanics are also expensive to hire, while fuel and engine oil are increasingly scarce and costly.

“If I could, I would lower the price as much as possible,” he says.

At the same time, demand has never been higher.

“People are under pressure and they need water. If I stayed working until morning, I would keep working,” Abu Ouda says.

To cope with the demand, he often works for 10 to 12 hours a day, putting pressure on himself and the machine.

“But this is our livelihood. There is no alternative,” he said.

When the home stops providing

With most Palestinians in Gaza having no home or losing their possessions due to Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza, they have to rent or hire items or services for the most basic household chores.

This includes washing clothes, something once done at home but now impossible to do with no power.

Earlier in the war, Abeer Ghorab, 52, used to wash everything herself. Now she gathers clothes from her tent and takes them to a nearby laundry, where they can be washed and dried in far less time and with less effort.

“When these laundries started opening, they gave us some relief,” Ghorab said.

The difference is particularly important in winter, when heavy clothes, blankets and bedding can take time to dry.

“In winter, the tracksuits are heavy. They need another day to dry,” she said. “When I bring them here, they wash and dry them for me, and I get them back clean and dry. That really helps.”

But due to a limited income, Ghorab cannot afford to use this laundry service every day.

Before the war, Ghorab had a washing machine, a refrigerator and regular electricity at home.

“Things we once took for granted have become dreams. Now we have to pay for every little thing we used to do at home.”

The loss of the household

Across Gaza, the infrastructure that once allowed families to carry out everyday tasks at home has been severely disrupted.

A recent United Nations assessment found that 91 percent of surveyed households experienced moderate-to-high water shortages in early August.

A separate damage assessment by the authority found that 107,941 of the 178,632 housing units inspected – about 60 percent – were severely damaged, destroyed or otherwise considered uninhabitable.

Water systems, electricity, sanitation and household appliances, which families relied on to manage daily life, have also been disrupted.

For families living in damaged homes, tents or makeshift shelters, everyday tasks must be paid for.

A laundry adapting to shortages

Fadi Abu Shawarb, 23, has worked at his family’s al-Hurriya laundry for six years.

Before the war, the business relied on large, 50kg (110lb) washing machines for carpets, blankets and other heavy loads. But due to the high cost of operation, these machines are far too expensive to run.

“We started replacing the 50kg machines with 25kg ones because there is not enough electricity,” Fadi says. “There are no solar panels, no reliable power, and the generators are always breaking down.”

Most of his customers are displaced families who lack electricity, water or washing machines at home.

The laundry now handles about 20 to 30 loads a day, with clothes-washing among the most in-demand services.

A load costs six shekels ($2) when the laundry can use solar power and 12 shekels ($4) when it relies on a generator.

But even that is hard for people to pay. “People’s situation is difficult,” he says.

For Ghorab, the laundry is only one of the many expenses she now has to budget for.

“I feel like I’m going through a difficult time,” she says. “I have to pay for every little thing in my day, and with how difficult things are, it’s hard to keep up with everything.”

Ben Shelton messed up.

Sure, the U.S. tennis star advanced to his second U.S. Open semifinal in epic fashion, knocking off defending champion Carlos Alcaraz in a five-set marathon that did not end until 3:33 a.m. ET Wednesday.

It was during his on-court interview afterward, however, that Shelton committed a bit of a faux pas while discussing the match that ended later than any other in tournament history.

“I’m just hoping that my best friend and my sister over there don’t have to be at work at 6 a.m. in three hours,” Shelton said following the 6-7 (5), 6-1, 6-3, 1-6, 7-6 (10-7) victory. “It’d be huge from their employers to let them have the day off today.”

Shelton certainly didn’t have to give a shout out to two of his loved ones for hanging in there for the entire 4 hours 28 minutes … but since he did, there’s one other person Shelton probably should have mentioned as well: soccer star Trinity Rodman, who also was sitting courtside throughout the match. TV cameras showed her laughing and apparently saying, “What about me?”

Shelton and Rodman have been dating for more than a year, after going Instagram official in May 2025. They are seen in the stands at each other’s sporting events when their schedules allow.

For the record, Rodman apparently did have to work hours later. The U.S. national team and Washington Spirit player posted a video later Wednesday morning on TikTok that showed her inside a gym with the caption, “Yes, I’m at training now.”

She doesn’t seem to hold a grudge over her boyfriend’s omission, though. Rodman posted a video on her Instagram Story of the match’s aftermath, with the caption, “The moment belongs to Shelton!”

And Shelton actually did include Rodman in that moment, with the two of them making eye contact and flashing his signature “dialed-in” hand motion to each other as he celebrated.

Rodman’s schedule with the Spirit hasn’t allowed her to attend all of Shelton’s matches at Flushing Meadows, but she has been to at least three. For his Round 2 victory against Hubert Hurkacz, Rodman wore a black crop top that read, “I ❤️ my boyfriend.”

For the quarterfinal, Rodman carried a Shelton figurine, possibly as a good luck charm.

Shelton will face fellow U.S. player Frances Tiafoe in Friday’s semifinals.

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1. Palm Canyon Drive. (Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times) 2. A metal sculpture of a serpent by artist Richard Breceda. (Luis Sinco / Los Angeles Times)

This lonely San Diego County desert town, about 50 miles from the nearest Starbucks, deserves the attention of anyone who really wants peace and quiet. It’s home to perhaps 4,000 year-round residents, star-struck by night, startling at dawn, surrounded by the largest state park in California, Anza-Borrego Desert State Park.

Dark skies, aimless days and spring wildflowers draw many people. But fall visitors can hike the park’s Borrego Palm Canyon Trail (3 miles round trip) or the narrow canyon known as The Slot. Keep an eye out for bighorn sheep and dozens of metal artworks by sculptor Ricardo Breceda scattered around town, especially the 350-foot-long sea serpent (along Borrego Springs Road), which has become a community mascot.

Check out: The town’s biggest party of the year, Borrego Days, is coming Oct. 17-18. And its seasonal Farmers Market returns to Christmas Circle Community Park on Nov. 6.

Distance: A 4-hour drive from L.A. (154 miles from L.A. City Hall, via Google Maps).

TELLURIDE, Colo. — Standing ovations at film festivals are a rite: part appreciation, part obligation, part a need to stretch your legs after sitting for a couple of hours.

But for an audience to explode and roar their approval in the middle of a movie? That rarely, if ever, happens.

Except it did, midway through the Telluride Film Festival world premiere of Jesse Eisenberg‘s delightful comedy “The Debut.” The applause followed a scene between Julianne Moore and Paul Giamatti that took its audience on such an exhilarating journey that there was almost no choice but to cheer in admiration, as if to say: What did we just see?

Sitting in the theater, Eisenberg, producer Emma Stone and Paul Giamatti looked at each other and asked themselves the same question but for a different reason.

“It was hard to process and, at the same time, just so affirming,” Eisenberg told me a couple of hours after the premiere.

The next day, sitting down to grab a quick bite with Moore and Giamatti, that giddy feeling had not dissipated, though, truth be told, they knew this scene was an all-timer from the moment they read it.

Let’s set the stage for you in a way that won’t spoil this constantly surprising film when it arrives in theaters in December and starts piling up acclaim and awards for all concerned.

Moore plays Mona, a meek, thoroughly unseen wife and mother who impulsively decides to audition for a community theater production of a musical titled “Nosy Neighbors,” despite having no experience apart from singing in the church choir when she was 13. The director Jerry (Giamatti) cuts her tryout short, sending her home, only to relent when the woman he’d already cast (Bernadette Peters!) drops out and he has nowhere else to turn.

Mona is, as Moore puts it, a “nice lady.” But she’s not a natural performer. She can’t get into character playing Miss Danielle, the show’s tough, toolbelt-wearing building super. So Jerry takes Mona aside because that’s what he does. As her cast mates note, “He’s going to drag you through the s— and the mud and you have to be ready for the s— and the mud.”

It turns out, though, that Jerry is the one who isn’t ready for what’s about to happen. Sitting in a chair on the theater stage, Jerry holds an envelope containing cash, telling Mona that it’s her job to make him hand over the rent. It’s an acting-class exercise designed to make you listen, react and dig into your character’s truth. Moore begins with a whisper and builds to a roar as Mona improvises a manic rant that involves rats and the plague.

Suffice to say, Jerry hands over the rent.

“When I read that scene, I stood up, put my iPad down and started doing laps around my dining room table,” Moore remembers. “I couldn’t believe how beautiful it was. I was just like, ‘Oh my God! Aaaaaaagh!‘”

“It was five pages long,” Giamatti marvels. “Jerry just needs Mona to be better. And then he sees that maybe she could actually be kind of great. He cracks her open and he’s like, ‘Oh wow, who is this lady? Who the hell is this?’ The funny thing about that scene is s— like that happens in classes.” He turns to Moore. “Did that ever happen to you?”

“I had an audition for a university, actually, where they threw chairs in front of me while I did the monologue and made me climb over the chairs,” Moore says, laughing. “I look back on that now. I was 18 years old and I was like, “What?’ Yeah. It was really strange. They’re trying to get you to react authentically and be alive.”

She smiles at Giamatti. “Hopefully when you get to be our age, you don’t need that.”

Though the scene has Mona improvising, it was performed as written, down to every last pause.

“Everyone keeps asking if we improvised and I’m like, ‘Hell, no,’” Moore says. “Jesse’s like the Coens. Everything’s there on the page.”

Adds Giamatti, “It’s incredibly specific. You follow his punctuation. The commas matter in his writing.”

“What’s so f—ing delightful about about working with Paul is that his sense of timing and rhythm is so tight,” Moore continues. “That scene is a set piece that requires you to work in tandem and you need somebody to hit it back with the same intensity and the same speed.”

When Eisenberg first met Moore, he told her flat-out, “I don’t want you to worry about this scene.” He knew it was a bear, with pages and pages of lines, so he told her he’d have a teleprompter on set.

“That section, all that crazy s— she goes off on, that would be really hard,” Giamatti says.

“And I was like, ‘Phew, that’s fantastic,’ because I knew all I would do would be to worry about all those lines and be so scared,” Moore says. “But because he said that to me, I never worried. And I didn’t need the teleprompter.”

They shot the scene in one morning, just Moore and Giamatti alone on the stage with the rest of the crew downstairs in the video village. There was an energy on set, spiked by an unusual number of visitors (“People knew,” Giamatti says) and then they went to work.

“I remember the first time you really hit that speech and they called cut, I just couldn’t stop grinning,” Giamatti tells Moore. “And I reached out and just kind of held you for a second because I was like, ‘That was amazing.’ I wanted to convey just how great it was, what you were doing.”

Moore beams. “I just love him. Just love him, love him, love him. I have so much gratitude for Paul.”

“To watch you be a bad actor was so hilarious and then you would you would modulate it and change it,” Giamatti continues. “Watching her was the experience that Jerry was having. It was such a joy.”

The scene is the beginning of a simpatico relationship between Jerry and Mona, mentor and protege, predicated on the power of imagination and how it can make outcasts feel seen and heard.

“Everyone wants to be known as who we are, even though it’s so scary for us to really reveal it,” Moore says. “There’s a real mind-altering power in just being yourself.”

BRITS are facing huge queues and delayed trains after an operational issue has caused problems at the border.

Le Shuttle – previously called Eurotunnel Le Shuttle – has warned passengers not to arrive early in Folkestone for their train.

This is due to huge ongoing delays.

In a statement, they said: “Due to an operational issue, you may experience longer waiting times than usual.

“Please do not arrive more than two hours before your booked departure.”

The website warns of departure delays of approximately four hours from Folkestone to Calais, while the return Calais to Folkestone has delays of three hours.

SHUT DOWN

Major airport CLOSED and flights cancelled with 270k stranded by volcano eruption

EURO-STAY

Travel warning as strike to hit European country with Eurostar cancelled

However on the website, a 11:24am departure from Folkestone to Calais has now been scheduled for 4:45pm, with this having a knock on effect for the rest of the departures today.

The latest update on the website is for the 3:24pm departure which will now leave at 6:45pm.

A Calais to Folkestone train scheduled for 4:36pm is now set to depart at 7:51pm.

According to local media, one traveller said their train was delayed by 3.5 hours.

Another wrote on social media: “I am on my way to the terminal for a train at 8:24.

“You are running 4.5h late! How can I cancel my trip and get a full refund?”

A third said there were “hundreds of delayed people waiting to board”.

It isn’t clear what has caused the issue or when it will be fixed.

The Sun has contacted Eurotunnel for comment.

TELLURIDE, Colo. — For four days every Labor Day weekend, the Telluride Film Festival turns this tiny mountain town into something of a refuge from the outside world. Tucked into a box canyon and far from the usual machinery of Hollywood, moviegoers spend their days seeing films they may have known little about before arriving and talking about them almost nonstop.

Artificial intelligence, apparently, did not get the memo.

This year, even Telluride’s usually self-contained movie bubble couldn’t keep out the existential anxieties surrounding AI. On Saturday, the festival devoted two events to the subject, beginning with “The Humanity Dilemma,” an hourlong multimedia presentation mixing dire warnings with live music and imagery, and continuing with a panel bluntly titled “AI AI AI,” featuring Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates.

Introducing “The Humanity Dilemma” at the nearly packed Sheridan Opera House, festival executive director Julie Huntsinger acknowledged that Telluride normally steers clear of taking political sides. “We just let the program speak for us,” Huntsinger said.

But on AI, she made an exception.

“We are a very humanist festival — that’s how we identify,” Huntsinger said. “AI is a threat.” While acknowledging potentially beneficial applications, she urged the audience to become more engaged in the debate over its development.

“We all need to be very alert and vigilant and loving and kind and stop this s—,” she said, earning loud whoops of approval from some in the crowd.

AI already occupies an uneasy place in Hollywood, where filmmakers and studios are experimenting with the technology even as actors, writers and other creative workers fight to protect their jobs and likenesses from being exploited or replaced.

For all of Huntsinger’s warnings, Telluride is not treating AI as off-limits. Its program includes “Love, Rendered,” a short documentary directed by Liz Garbus and produced by Darren Aronofsky about an elderly couple confronting the husband’s memory loss. Using AI along with family photographs and stories from loved ones, the filmmakers recreate the moment the couple first met and fell in love 70 years earlier. On Sunday, the film’s creative team is scheduled to discuss the project at an event titled “Filmmaking and Technology With Empathy: AI for Societal Benefit.”

“The Humanity Dilemma” was presented by Tristan Harris and Aza Raskin, co-founders of the Center for Humane Technology, who appeared in the 2020 documentary “The Social Dilemma,” along with artist and researcher Joy Mauthe and violinist Andrei Matorin. Harris and Raskin also appear in this year’s “The AI Doc: Or How I Became an Apocaloptimist.”

The presentation was designed to work on the emotions as well as the intellect. Original songs about humanity’s relationship to AI ran through much of the hour, with Mauthe singing and playing guitar and Matorin on violin, as Harris and Raskin delivered warnings accompanied by images of environmental devastation, poverty and figures in the AI race including Elon Musk, Sam Altman and Larry Ellison.

Their argument was stark: The race to build more powerful AI is moving far faster than governments or the public can keep up. Their deepest fear is that humans could eventually lose control of increasingly capable AI systems altogether.

At the same time, they acknowledged the technology’s potentially transformative benefits.

“AI is confusing because it represents both simultaneous utopia and dystopia,” Raskin said. “Just imagine having to reason about a nuke that could also solve cancer.”

By the end, Harris was calling for a halt to the development of more powerful systems.

“We need to pause frontier AI development and pivot and steer towards a pro-human future,” he said.

The hour concluded with Mauthe leading the audience in a final refrain, singing that the future is “still in our hands.” It was the kind of unabashedly earnest moment that could easily have tipped into awkwardness, but many in the room seemed to embrace it.

A few hours later, Harris and Raskin returned for “AI AI AI,” held outdoors at the Abel Gance Open Air Cinema in Telluride’s Elks Park, joined by Gates and filmmaker Joshua Oppenheimer, director of the Oscar-nominated documentaries “The Act of Killing” and “The Look of Silence,” who served as a moderator.

From left, Bill Gates, Aza Raskin, Tristan Harris and filmmaker Joshua Oppenheimer discuss the risks and potential benefits of artificial intelligence at the Telluride Film Festival on Saturday.

(Josh Rottenberg)

For Gates, who has spent decades focusing much of his philanthropy and public advocacy on global health and poverty, the rise of AI has forced him to make room for a new priority. In an essay published last week, he warned that the technology was improving faster than he anticipated and called for a new framework to manage its risks.

At Telluride, Gates said he now feels compelled to devote some of the political influence he has long used to advocate for causes such as malnutrition, polio and malaria to raise alarms about AI as well.

“Is this the greatest problem humanity has ever faced?” Gates said. “That is just a fact.”

Gates said his concerns have grown as AI systems have become more capable, particularly at writing computer code, something he has been obsessed with since he was 13.

“The AIs are superhuman, i.e., better than I am at writing code,” Gates said.

He laid out five broad areas of concern: jobs, biotechnology, cyberattacks, psychosocial harms and whether humans will be able to maintain control over the systems they are building.

Oppenheimer said that after spending hours digging into AI risks ahead of the panel, he had come away “absolutely terrified.” He read aloud an answer he had received after asking ChatGPT to estimate the risks if the race toward increasingly powerful AI continued with little regulation.

The chatbot put the chance of “persistent dystopian outcomes for all humanity” at 25% to 40%, a civilization-scale catastrophe at 5% to 15% and human extinction or permanent loss of human control at 5% to 10%.

“That’s what AI thinks,” Oppenheimer said.

Gates stressed AI’s potential upside, citing advances in medicine, education and assistance to farmers in poor countries. But pressed on whether development should be slowed until safety measures catch up, he said he would be open to the idea.

“If there was a credible plan that would cause this to be either slowed down or, you know, even held in stasis for a period of time, I would likely support that,” Gates said.

The difficulty, he said, is that multiple developers in both the U.S. and China are pushing closer to the technological frontier. Still, Gates rejected the argument that competition with China makes meaningful regulation impossible.

“China does not want cyberattacks, bioattacks or loss of control,” Gates said.

The discussion was punctuated by a pair of outbursts from the audience. At one point, as Gates discussed the economic incentives driving AI development, a man shouted that they represented “everything that’s wrong with America” and invoked Jesus Christ. Gates paused before responding dryly: “Anyway, not everything is wrong with America, according to me.”

Gates argued that government and civil society need to move much more quickly.

“This five-year period, in my view, is a very critical period,” he said, adding that responses that take five or six years to get underway could come too late.

Despite the dire warnings, Harris pointed to signs that pressure for safeguards is growing, including calls from AI-industry employees to limit the development of more powerful systems. Just last week, Meta agreed to pay $17 billion to settle claims by 29 states that Facebook and Instagram harmed young users while also agreeing to new child-safety measures on the platforms.

“I just want to leave you with not naive optimism, but momentum,” Harris said.

Near the end, Raskin suggested that President Trump’s well-documented desire to win the Nobel Peace Prize might provide an incentive for him to pursue a U.S.-China pause on more powerful AI systems.

“What’s better than solving one war?” Raskin said. “Saving all of humanity forever from uncontrollable AI.”

Gates, with a wry smile, called the Nobel angle “smart.”

“Whoever really takes the step to solve this AI problem would deserve the Nobel Prize,” he said.

Later that night, the festival would hold an outdoor screening of Stanley Kubrick’s “2001: A Space Odyssey,” featuring HAL 9000, one of cinema’s most famous rogue artificial intelligences.

Gates framed the current stakes in similarly cinematic terms.

“There are these movies where the aliens are coming, and you see unprecedented levels of cooperation between China and the U.S.,” he said. “Well, believe me, the aliens are here.”

Jared Freid remembers the moment he found his true calling in comedy.

Oddly it came after he’d already found success with his debut Netflix special “37 & Single” in 2023, which allowed him to live the stand-up dream of making it to a big streamer. But then that moment passed and the Boston-bred comic was once again starting from square one scrounging for joke ideas. That’s when he decided to dig up an old story he’d told on stage about his dad body-shaming him during a family outing in Delrey Beach, Fla.

“We’re sitting at the beach, and my dad asked me how much I weighed, and I was so mad about it,” Freid remembers. Seething at his dad for poking at his body insecurities, the comedian dealt with his emotions like any good millennial — by podcasting about it. Venting the story that took only about a minute to tell on a microphone led to more fights with his aging boomer parents soon after when they heard the episode.

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Jared Freid sits down with LA Times Entertainment Editor Nate Jackson to discuss his new Netflix hour, “The Family Plan,” which turns a beach blowup with his dad into a sharply observed, big-hearted look at boomer-millennial family warfare and reconciliation.

Scrolling back through that memory, Freid said something clicked when he thought about the alarmingly close relationship millennials still have with their parents in adulthood including still being on the family cellphone plan. “I can pay my own cellphone bill, but I’m still on their family plan,” he said. “That says something about the millennial/boomer relationship, in my opinion. We’re weirdly attached to our parents, and in a way that no other generations were tied like that, like not mushed together.”

Extending his one-minute bit into a full hour in his new Netflix special “The Family Plan” (out on Tuesday) took two and a half years of dedication polishing the story and seeing it start to resonate on tour at shows around the world. It also required him understanding that what underlies the struggles between millennials and their parents is how shockingly alike they are despite being constantly annoyed by each other. Freid now says his goal is to be a family-friendly comedian for families that usually aren’t friendly with each other but can easily agree on that fact while they laugh at jokes about themselves.

This interview was edited for length and clarity.

Your new one-hour special was inspired by a one-minute story you’ve told about a fight with your dad at the beach. You tapped into something really universal with the strife between boomer parents and their millennial children — a real tug of war for power that’s happening in a lot of people’s lives right now.

Totally, I and I feel it, especially because we can talk back to [our boomer parents] in a respectful way. We can have debates. You’re finding out your parents are just people too. I started telling people on my podcast, “Bring your parents.” This special is to be enjoyed with your family. You’d see a guy with his dad [at one of my shows], point at him and go “[Jared’s] talking about you!” That made me feel so good. I did it in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Europe, I did it everywhere, and it was always just unbelievable how much people related to it and now it’s how I want to do comedy. This is who I am. This special means so much to me. It’s been a fight to get it out. I wanted it on a platform like Netflix because I want parents to watch it with their kids. It’s hard enough to get your parents on your Netflix account. Imagine getting them to watch a special on YouTube? They’re not going to do it. So I need this to be in a place where boomers and millennials can share it with each other and enjoy it together.

As an adult, what’s been the most interesting thing about seeing what things you picked up from your parents despite constantly arguing with them?

We’re exactly the same. We’re so alike that that’s probably why my dad’s asking me how much I weigh at the beach because I also look like him. It’s almost like an argument with yourself. I’m a version of him, and he’s a version of me. I have a lot of empathy for my parents. I’m 41, no kids, never married. They had to grow up while having a kid. I can’t understand that.

Right now there’s a lot of talk about divorcing your parents going around. I also can’t understand that for a second, because it’s not in my nature. For so many of the things that I go through in my life and feel frustrated by, [my parents] are, they’re my conscience a lot of times. Like when I wonder whether I should go right or left, I hear my mom in my head like, “You’re gonna go right? Why would you go right? You always go right. You’re lazy.” I hear them. I feel like I understand them more now, being older.

From selling life insurance in New York to headlining global tours and hit podcasts, Freid has built a devoted, largely female fan base that treats his stand-up like family therapy.

(Christina House / Los Angeles Times)

Every generation has their obstacles, and we’re constantly looking at each saying “Oh, you have it easy, no you have it easy!” But in your special, it kind of comes out that there’s obstacles for every group.

Totally. I don’t do comedy to make anyone feel bad. I do it to make people laugh and enjoy. And like it was cool to see a family would come to me to take a picture afterwards, and then the parents would be like, “We’re the boomers you’re making fun of.” I’m making fun of them, but I’m also making fun of ourselves [as millennials]. And I think it strikes a balance between the two because it does show that I love my family. I love how I grew up. I love that you know the people in my life. That doesn’t mean you can’t be totally angered by them.

Where did you cut your teeth in comedy?

I started in New York. I was selling life insurance and annuities in New York, and I was writing funny emails to friends. Any time we were on the same group email, Gmail, or G Chat it was always “what did we do last weekend, and what are we going to do this weekend?” And then you just make fun of each other. Anytime someone would write back “Oh my God, I’m dying at my desk. That made me laugh so hard,” I was like, “That that feels like drugs. How do I get that?” I started doing open mics, and I kind of treated it like grad school. I did improv, sketch, and storytelling. I took all these classes, and just to see what I liked, because I just wanted to be funny for my friends. Plus I could go to open mics at night, so you could add that in and feel forward momentum.

Being a millennial comedian right now seems very much like being stuck between two worlds of having the old model of success in comedy you learned from your idols and then you have people who are younger than you who are blowing up just by like posting a random video.

What you’re saying is completely right. Like we’d look up to these guys like Colin Quinn on his show “Tough Crowd,” that’s the table I wanted to sit at, and I wanted to hang out with those guys and bust each other’s chops, that’s what comedy is. I always could see myself at that table, but I also understood that table is kind of earned. You don’t just get to it because you’re funny. When I started, you could count the comedians on one hand that could do theaters, without being on a TV show. You know, there was like Brian Regan, Kathleen Madigan, Jim Gaffigan. These people weren’t on TV, but they had their audience, so it was very different to be a stand-up. Earthquake is in that group. Then you look at the sitcom people who get to do stand-up because they were on a sitcom, like you know Seinfeld and you know Ray Romano, and these are great stand-ups.

A millennial comic wedged between club legends and viral upstarts, Freid uses candid stories and crowd work to bridge generational divides — including in L.A.’s intimate, under-the-radar comedy rooms.

(Christina House / Los Angeles Times)

How did podcasting allow you to grow your career in a different way?

I thought “well, I’m listening to these podcasts. I should start a podcast.” And I was downloading podcasts in 15-minute increments to my iPod Nano. I love talk radio. I grew up on WEI in Boston. I love sports, I like sports talk, I like high energy shows. At that time, I thought everyone had one, but now I look like I started early. I can do a podcast where I can speak directly to people who might want to come to my shows. I didn’t even think of ads. I wasn’t thinking of that stuff. I was just [thinking] I can talk right to someone who likes what I do, and I would team up with these websites… I was trying to do this internet stuff, understanding there was power there. I was caught between two worlds, working on my stand-up as kind of my nighttime job, and then doing these podcasts and contributing wherever I could as a daytime job.

When you started working with Betches Media through podcasting on shows like “U Up?” [with platform co-founder Jordana Abraham] it opened up a lane for you to suddenly grow a female audience in a way that seemed natural despite being out of the ordinary for most straight male comedians. What’s that been like to grow that type of audience?

It’s weirdly gratifying. It’s not what I was like angling towards. I think if I was angling towards a female audience as a stand-up, it wouldn’t work. I think that it would be a lie. I’m so happy with it. I feel really thankful because you know the [founders of] Betches [Abraham, Aleen Dreksler and Samantha Fishbein] they’re my sisters. The audience is family like when they come to shows I know them, you know, that’s like a beautiful thing and I think especially in the world of stand-up where all you hear about is like the Manosphere and the Rogan types, and a lot of stand-up comedy is men dragging a girlfriend to someone they think is funny because they get an ego puff out of showing a woman who they know is to be funny. And my shows are very different. It’s women bringing their boyfriends, women who now bring their husbands, couples coming together, and I love it.

Lastly, what cellphone family plan are you and your parents currently on?

Oh, we’re on T-Mobile. I’m getting kicked off by my dad currently.

Because you’re too famous?

Yeah, he’s like it’s getting embarrassing for him. I could pay for it myself. I just like, now I got to go to the store, I gotta go do it. It’s annoying.

JUST over an hour from the UK you could visit a pretty village famous for revolutionising European travel.

Schengen is a quiet village in the southeast of Luxembourg, bordering Germany and France and just an hour from Luxembourg city.

The village was the precise spot where the 1985 Schengen Agreement was signed, creating Europe’s passport-free travel zone.

The small village – home to just 500 people – was chosen due to its location on the borders of the three countries.

In Schengen, you can head to the Schengen Museum, which costs just €3 per person to enter and showcases the history of the Schengen Agreement.

The museum even has items that have been seized at borders.

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Visitors can even step into the signing room where the agreement was signed, onboard the Prinzessin Marie-Astrid Europa vessel.

When having a wander around the village look out for the Schengen Memorial which is formed of steel columns displaying national stars, located along the waterfront.

Nearby, outdoor enthusiasts can also head to Stromberg Nature Reserve, with picturesque hikes through vineyard trails.

Once you reach the top of Stromberg hill, you will see panoramic views of all three neighboring countries.

If you want to stay in the town and enjoy its peacefulness, you can head to the Schengen Castle.

The grand chateau dates back to the 13th century when it was a moated fortress although reopened in 2024 as a hotel.

Rooms cost as little as €100 (£85.64) for a double room, but you could splurge and get the Royal Suite for €180 (£154.16) a night.

You can fly from London Stansted with Ryanair in an hour and 15 minutes for as little as £14.99 a way.

Then once in Luxembourg, bus transport is entirely free.

The best part of a Happy Meal is the toy that comes with your food. But now that you’re all grown up, you might be looking for a different type of treat.

In an effort to fill seats during off hours and typically slow nights, L.A.’s restaurants and bars are tempting patrons with discounted burger combos that replace toys with cocktails. It’s an adult take on a kid’s Happy Meal. These deals also address a growing concern among restaurant-goers regarding the price of dining out, a cost that has risen in recent years due to factors such as increased minimum wage, rising rents and inflated food costs.

And because it’s L.A., you can expect global interpretations of the classic comfort dish, including a Mexico City-inspired hamburguesa that’s turned a Monday industry night into a citywide destination, a New York-founded Korean restaurant serving a short-rib burger with gochujang aioli and a French-hued take with cognac sauce and optional fondue.

Treats — er, drinks — run the gamut from classic martinis and house wine to margaritas, ice-cold beer and makgeolli. Often overlapping with happy hour, be sure to take note of the specific days and hours each deal is offered.

Here are 16 burger-and-drink combos for those times your inner kid needs an adult happy meal.