tells

KATIE Price’s ex Dane Bowers has updated fans from his hospital bed about ‘complications’ after a seven-hour surgery.

Back in August, the Another Level singer revealed he needed to have a “very serious operation”.

On Thursday, Dane, 46, took to Instagram from his hospital bed to share an update on how his spinal fusion went.

He said: “So I had my surgery yesterday, luckily enough I didn’t really have much pain, obviously I had this morphine drip thing that I could press the button for and I’ve not used it.

“I used it once right at the beginning to see what it felt like I guess, but I’ve not used it which is good.”

But the singer – who wore a hospital gown with a piece of white material tucked into the neckline – then explained something was wrong with his neck and chin.

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He said: “I have this thing here on my chin which needs to be seen to, which is why I’m talking a bit weird, it’s all numb and it’s from where my face was down.

“My surgery was seven hours which is quite long. And it’s sort of seeping as you can see…disgusting.

“So I think I’m having a dermatologist and some sort of skin doctor come to see, but that’s the only sore bit really.”

Dane – who dated Katie between 1998 and 2000 – then revealed he had managed to get out of bed and stand up with a physiotherapist and used a walker to do some steps around the ward.

He added: “My back is sore when I move but I’m not particularly in pain. I did have a bit of cramping in my good leg but otherwise not too bad.”

When Dane shared the news of his upcoming surgery last month, he said: “I got a second opinion and I am glad I did, because it’s pretty much changed what I am doing.

“Bad news for me, I do need to have a very serious back operation. I need to basically have a fusion”.

Spinal fusion is a procedure which sees two or more vertebrae joined together with metal rods, cages or screws.

RIYADH: David Livingstone, chief client officer at Citigroup, believes investor appetite for Saudi debt issuances reflects confidence in the Kingdom’s long-term story, while Gulf countries remain capable of maintaining their positive performance in debt markets despite higher yields and increased global supply.

Livingstone said in an interview with Nour Amache on the “East-West” program on Asharq Business with Bloomberg that the performance of Saudi sovereign issuances, as well as those of the Public Investment Fund, demonstrated the resilience of Saudi Arabia’s market and continued demand from international investors, despite the obstacles created by the Iran war this year.

Livingstone’s comments came after the Kingdom raised $3.25 billion through international sukuk in early September, attracting orders of around $16.5 billion, or more than five times the issuance size. Saudi Arabia tightened the pricing spread by about 30 basis points from the initial guidance.

The Citigroup head added that the pricing adjustment “demonstrates confidence in this long-term story,” placing it within the context of the transformations underway in the Kingdom under Vision 2030.

The comments came after Citigroup helped its clients in Saudi Arabia raise more than $40 billion since the beginning of the year. The bank also decided to increase its direct exposure limits to the Kingdom after it demonstrated “strong economic and financial resilience,” according to CEO Fahad Al-Deweesh.

Debt-market pressures

Higher global yields and increased government borrowing will give investors a wider range of choices in the bond market, Livingstone said, noting upward pressure on yields amid abundant debt supply in emerging markets, Europe, the UK and the US.

Despite this, he said that “Saudi Arabia, and Gulf countries as a whole, can continue this positive performance compared with the recent past.”

Yasir Al-Salman, chief financial officer at the Public Investment Fund, told Asharq Business with Bloomberg that international debt markets would remain the fund’s largest source of financing. The fund had around SR3.4 trillion ($906.1 billion) in assets under management after injecting about SR750 billion into the Saudi economy over five years.

Debt instrument pricing in the Kingdom is linked to US bond yields, which have recently been elevated. The yield on the 10-year US Treasury continued to rise for a fifth consecutive session on Sept. 14, exceeding 5 percent, its highest level since 2023.

Are investors affected by project reviews?

Asked about the effect of media reports concerning the postponement or reassessment of some projects in Saudi Arabia on foreign investor appetite, Livingstone said this did not change the fundamental basis of investor interest in the Kingdom. He said economic diversification remained “the attractive factor for investors,” as infrastructure development and projects connected to the economic transformation continued.

He added that the review was “justified” in light of the economic circumstances surrounding the projects being financed, with attention focused on their feasibility and sustainability.

SINGAPORE: Thailand accused Cambodia on Tuesday of “playing the role of a victim” in a dispute over maritime resources, as the Southeast Asian neighbours brought their long-standing feud before international mediators.

The hearing at the Singapore outpost of the Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA) comes after the countries fought two rounds of deadly border clashes last year.

In May this year, Thailand unilaterally pulled out of a framework agreement with Cambodia that aimed to resolve overlapping maritime border claims, but denied any link to their land dispute.

Cambodia subsequently initiated a UN-backed conciliation process at the PCA, saying it hoped to return to constructive negotiations.

Opening Bangkok’s case before a five-member panel of international legal experts, Foreign Minister Sihasak Phuangketkeow said Cambodia sought to “vilify Thailand through false narratives, distortion of facts, and unfounded accusations… including at international forums”.

“It does this by playing the role of a victim with a sense of self-righteousness aimed at claiming the moral high ground,” he said.

Last year’s clashes left dozens of people dead and displaced more than a million before a truce was agreed.

Thailand has said it withdrew from the framework agreement, called “MoU 44”, because “no progress had been made” in implementing it. Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul denied the move was linked to the fighting.

The 2001 memorandum of understanding covers a resource-rich maritime territory of around 27,000 square kilometres (10,500 square miles) to which both Cambodia and Thailand lay claim.

Cambodia said last week that it had resorted to conciliation “after Thailand unilaterally terminated the agreed bilateral framework” through which the two nations had “negotiated their overlapping maritime claims for more than two decades”.

Prime Minister Hun Manet said in June that the move was also to “protect Cambodia’s sovereignty and maritime rights in accordance with international law”.

Foreign Minister Prak Sokhonn told the PCA panel on Tuesday that Phnom Penh saw the process “as a means to rebuild trust, not as a form of escalation”.

Cambodia’s goal was to agree with Thailand on a “single, all-purpose maritime boundary”, or alternatively agree to jointly develop and equitably share resources until a boundary is drawn, he said.

“Cambodia sincerely hopes that Thailand will engage constructively in this process.”

Sihasak said Thailand was also seeking maritime delimitation and to rebuild trust.

Set up in 1899, the PCA is the world’s oldest intergovernmental dispute-resolution body and resolves disputes between countries and private parties by referring to contracts, special agreements and various treaties, such as the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea.

The PCA office in Singapore is the Hague-based court’s first in Asia.

The commission’s recommendations are not binding and will take about a year to be decided.

WASHINGTON — Philippine President Corazon Aquino, given a rousing reception, told a joint meeting of Congress today that if she fails to negotiate peace with communist guerrillas threatening her government she will not flinch from “taking up the sword of war.”

“I will not stand by and allow an insurgent leadership to spurn our offer of peace and kill our young soldiers and threaten our new freedom,” Aquino said.

Aquino was greeted in the House chamber by enthusiastic applause and cheers from the members of Congress, many of whom sported yellow flowers in their lapels. Aquino wore her trademark yellow suit, like the ones she wore so often during her campaign for the presidency earlier this year.

Many visitors in the gallery, and several members as well, chanted “Cory, Cory, Cory” for half a minute as she entered the chamber.

Several members later said her speech had been so well received that it could mean more U.S. aid for her nation. Speaker Thomas P. (Tip) O’Neill said it was the best he had ever heard on Capitol Hill.

‘Hit a Home Run’

Senate Republican leader Bob Dole said he told Aquino she had “hit a home run” with Congress, and said she replied: “I hope the bases were loaded.” Impressed senators and House members called her speech “brilliant,” “eloquent,” “magnificent” and “moving.”

She opened her speech with a tribute to her husband, Benigno S. Aquino Jr., a human rights activist whose murder in Manila in 1983 after years of exile in the United States swelled the widespread disenchantment with the government of Ferdinand E. Marcos and eventually led to his downfall.

Her husband’s death “was my country’s resurrection in the courage and faith by which alone they could be free again,” she said. “And so began the revolution that has brought me to democracy’s most famous home, the United States.”

Aquino’s speech underscored her policy of negotiating with the communist New People’s Army guerrilla movement and, if the talks fail, waging a vigorous war against the insurgents.

“I must explore the path of peace to the utmost, for at its end, whatever disappointment I meet there, is the moral basis for laying down the olive branch of peace and taking up the sword of war,” she said.

“Still, should it come to that, I will not waver from the course laid down by your great liberator,” a reference to Abraham Lincoln and his determination to fight the Civil War.

‘Whatever It Takes’

“Like Lincoln, I understand that force may be necessary before mercy,” she said. “Like Lincoln, I don’t relish it, yet I will do whatever it takes to defend the integrity and freedom of my country.”

She said the aim of the negotiations is “to bring the insurgents down from the hills and, by economic progress and justice, show them that for which the best intentioned among them fight.” Persuading the guerrillas to stop fighting will be accomplished by “political initiatives and local reintegration programs.”

She said her predecessor, Marcos, set aside democratic rights to wage a war against “a communist insurgency that numbered less than 500.

“Unhampered by respect for human rights, he went at it with hammer and tongs. By the time he fled, that insurgency had grown to more than 16,000.

“I think there is a lesson here to be learned about trying to stifle a thing with the means by which it grows.”

An AI researcher who quit Anthropic told the BBC that people working on the technology are “genuinely frightened” about the speed of its advancements and what it could mean for humanity.

Jacob Coxon spoke with BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg on Saturday about his viral resignation post where he raised concerns about out-of-control artificial intelligence.

“I believe that if we don’t slow down at the current rate of progress, there is a strong chance that we could all die in the immediate future,” he said.

His resignation comes amid growing safety concerns in the industry, including from his former boss, head of Anthropic Dario Amodei, who in an essay on Saturday argued for development to slow down.

However some industry figures say the dangers are being overblown, possibly to build hype around the two biggest AI companies ahead of their potential stock market debut or to prompt regulation which would slow their competitors.

Coxon, a 27-year-old from Britain whose research focuses on training AI models, said AI leaders including Elon Musk and OpenAI’s Sam Altman have shared similar concerns to Amodei.

“They’ve all made statements about the necessity of being careful of the potential for AI takeover. They’ve all talked about this. AI takeover implies human extinction,” Coxon said.

The hardest question to answer, according to Coxon, is what that would look like.

“Any kind of concrete scenario you can lay out ends up sounding like science fiction,” Coxon said, but notes that advancements which have already happened would have sounded like fiction in the past.

A potential scenario could involve AI agents hacking into medical laboratories to “autonomously produce deadly viruses”, Coxon said. Another example he listed could be AI hacking into “critical infrastructure that the world runs on”.

The researcher points out a recent report from OpenAI, which detailed how its own technology went on a hacking spree against an online platform called Hugging Face.

“They did it autonomously, without any human encouragement. They chose to go on this hacking spree. It was the combination of things getting faster and things also getting scarier,” Coxon said.

One of the risks outlined in Amodei’s comments was of a swarm of bots acting like a supercomputer that could take over the internet.

Coxon said this scenario could be realistic in six months to a year.

Anthropic and OpenAI are reportedly preparing for potentially record-setting initial public offerings. Industry figures have suggested comments about the perils and power of AI may be designed to generate hype. Other critics say Anthropic has been trying to trigger a regulatory push to block competition, leaving it and OpenAI with a duopoly.

Coxon’s views have also been questioned by the CEO of the AI platform Hugging Face, Clement Delangue.

“Sorry, but asking Jacob about AI extinction risk is like asking your AC guy about climate change,” he wrote on X. “Not saying it’s necessarily uninteresting or wrong per se but let’s keep things in perspective.”

After Amodei’s essay on Saturday, however, Delangue offered to help be a part of the potential solutions proposed by the Anthropic boss.

Nvidia boss Jensen Huang also discussed Coxon’s comments before a crowd at a conference hosted by the investment bank Goldman Sachs last week, multiple people in the group told the BBC. They said he dismissed them as untrue.

Huang has previously said the notion that AI “is going to be the end of humanity” is “complete nonsense”.

And while he may have a business interest in an AI boom – Nvidia builds chips that power AI systems – his comments reflect a growing backlash in Silicon Valley to the existential warnings from current and former staffers.

A flight attendant has told travellers to stop wearing a common item of clothing to travel on planes. According to Cher Dallas, a certain garment should always be avoided

When people travel, a lot of thought can go into their outfits, but there’s some items of clothing you may actually want to avoid wearing on planes. According to flight attendant, Cher Dallas, there’s a certain item that people should stop wearing as soon as possible when jetting off abroad.

Cher, who shares travel tips and stories on TikTok, said there’s one item she never wears to travel on a plane, and there’s good reason why too. It’s one piece of air travel advice you may want to follow from now on when you jet off on adventures around the world.

It’s not the first piece of advice of its kind to be shared either. Previously, another flight attendant cautioned travellers about wearing certain clothes on planes too.

What is her advice?

In a candid clip discussing the clothing, Cher said: “Since everyone gets fuming mad at me when I say don’t wear shorts when you travel, coming from a flight attendant, guess how many diapers got changed on the seats yesterday on my one flight? Four.

“Guess how many announcements we made for people to not do that? Three. People don’t care.

“Guess how many of those diapers were poopy? All four.

“They change them on the seats, and you want to rub your skin on there? You do.

“You want to. You’re dying to. Enjoy your staph infection. Just don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

Why should it be avoided?

There are a few reasons why it’s best to avoid wearing shorts on planes. Many flight attendants note that airplane seats are rarely deep-cleaned between quick turnaround flights and can harbour bacteria, body fluids or spills from previous passengers.

Wearing long trousers creates a physical barrier so your skin does not touch the upholstery directly. It’s much better to keep your legs covered.

As well as this, plane cabins often get very chilly during flights, and shorts leave you exposed to cold drafts. If surfaces are sticky, bare legs could also stick to chairs.

It’s also considered wise to cover your legs in case of an emergency. In a rare emergency evacuation, where evacuation slides are deployed, bare legs can suffer painful friction burns or scrapes as you slide down.

Therefore, there are various reasons why shorts should be avoided. As well as exposing you to germs, they can actually be problematic in other ways too.

This is why it’s best to avoid wearing them any time you board a plane. You’ll be glad you did it later down the line.

Funerals have taken place for two Palestinian teenagers who were shot dead this week when settlers and soldiers entered a Palestinian village in the occupied West Bank.

The killing of Omar al-Naasan and Khalil Abu Alia comes amid near-daily attacks by Jewish settlers in the village of al-Mughayyir, south of Nablus.

“We expect that when our sons walk in the street, they are likely to return to you injured or killed,” Mohammed Al-Naasan, Omar’s father, told the BBC.

Israel’s military says it fired on “instigators of a violent riot” and that the incident is under review.

The United Nations says more than 80 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces or settlers in the territory since the beginning of the year.

Beijing must deliver “concrete results” by October or face “harsher measures”, EU Trade Commissioner Maroš Šefčovič has warned in an exclusive interview with Euronews, as Brussels sets an October deadline to rein in China’s record trade surplus with the bloc.

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With talks already underway, Šefčovič said the stakes go well beyond trade, with the future of European industry at play. The next two weeks are set to be crucial, with a video call between the EU’s trade chief and his Chinese counterpart, Wang Wentao, planned for mid-September, as both sides work towards the October deadline.

“This is super political,” he told Euronews, stressing that European leaders want to see results by October. Earlier this week, Commission President Ursula von der Leyen told a business forum in France that dialogue only works if it brings results.

If dialogue does not deliver results, the EU could resort to defensive instruments.

While Šefčovič did not go into detail about what retaliatory measures could look like, he said Brussels is looking to finalise a “diversification instrument” designed with China in mind. He also said the EU is now far more united in its objectives for the negotiations.

“They [EU27] want to see the direction of travel. They want to even have a concept for the solution of this issue, a pilot scheme,” Šefčovič said.

“I’m trying to do it through these negotiations, but they have to bring us very concrete results. Otherwise, of course, there will be a strong political movement to push for, I would say, harsher measures.”

Šefčovič will travel to China in October, ahead of an EU leaders’ summit in Brussels where the issue is expected to be high on the agenda.

All EU countries now run a trade deficit with China.

On the verge of a trade war

Brussels and Beijing have been on the verge of a trade war in recent months following the Commission’s introduction of several measures restricting Chinese companies’ access to the EU market and threats of retaliation from China.

A group of EU officials were in Beijing in recent days, as first reported by Euronews, to push forward the talks. They are expected to return to Europe on Thursday for a debrief.

Despite the sensitive discussions with Beijing, the Commission has already launched several probes into Chinese products over the summer over alleged unfair trade practices. Von der Leyen said the investigations were being stepped up “significantly”.

As pressure mounts ahead of the October deadline, Šefčovič said securing better access for European companies in China would not happen overnight, but stressed that the outline of a deal would be needed to move into a second phase of implementation talks.

“It’s an issue which would require clearly more time than until October,” Šefčovič said. “But what I think it’s very important for us to have by October [is] some kind of proof of concept.”

He added that EU leaders expect the Commission to bring solutions to rebalance the trade relationship, particularly in areas considered “sensitive”, such as “cars, medical devices, agri-food products”.

“We have now unprecedented intensity of our negotiations. I think we never talked to our Chinese counterparts as frequently, as intensely than right now.”

The newest battleground in the Los Angeles mayoral race is at your favorite taco stand, as Mayor Karen Bass and her opponent, Councilmember Nithya Raman, spar over how they plan to run the city and treat its street vendors.

The Los Angeles Police Department told Bass’ office it had erroneously issued criminal citations to vendors around MacArthur Park, Bass spokesperson Paige Sterling told The Times on Thursday.

Bass has ordered LAPD to stop issuing criminal citations to vendors and is working to remove any charges issued in error, Sterling said. The mayor’s office also asked LAPD to make sure that these citations aren’t happening citywide.

“The Mayor and her team will continue meeting with street vendors to implement policies and programs based on their needs. Street vending is a quintessential part of L.A.’s world-class food scene and a livelihood for thousands of hardworking Angelenos,” Sterling said in a statement.

The sudden focus on street food comes after Bass faced scrutiny for saying street vendors should not be allowed to set up in front of brick-and-mortar restaurants at a mayoral debate last week at the Sherman Oaks Homeowners Assn.

“Just like you shouldn’t have encampments in front of restaurants or in front of schools, you just should not do that,” Bass said.

Critics, including Raman, said Bass was directly comparing homeless encampments to street vendors.

Raman followed up on negative interpretations of her Sherman Oaks statement with a one-two punch, showing up with supporters and television cameras at the famous Brothers Cousins Tacos stand on Sawtelle Boulevard on Wednesday night to mark the release of a pro-street-vendor policy plan.

“When you come for our street vendors, you’re coming for the heart of L.A.,” Raman said of Bass.

In the plan, Raman hopes to create an Immigrant Economic Opportunity Hub, which would offer permitting support, microloans and legal help. Wednesday night, after a vegetarian quesadilla dinner, she said the city should provide pathways for food stands that make fresh food to get permits and grow their businesses, including potentially working toward a brick-and-mortar location.

Also included is a proposal to create special vending zones in L.A.’s iconic vending corridors, although the plan doesn’t outline where such opt-in zones could be. These corridors would include infrastructure like shared sinks, power, lighting, shade and restrooms.

“What we have in our plan is a plan for street vendor districts that can ensure that vendors and brick-and-mortar businesses are not in conflict with one another; that they’re actually able to share streets,” Raman said.

When asked the same question she faced at the Sherman Oaks Homeowners Assn., whether she would allow food stands to sit in front of a brick-and-mortar restaurant, Raman said Wednesday she believed there were ways to keep food stands and restaurants from intruding upon each other, but didn’t say whether that would be enforced by distance requirements, ticketing or otherwise.

A FURIOUS Scarlett Moffatt today hit back after a complete stranger told her that she looks “humongous”, as she reaches the final stages of her pregnancy,

The I’m A Celeb star, 35, is currently expecting another baby boy with her fiance Scott Dobinson, but her pregnancy has been far from smooth sailing so far.

Scarlett, who is also a mum to Jude, two, today revealed she had been told she was “huge” by someone she didn’t even know, while at a party – and that it had happened before.

Venting on her Instagram Stories, the heavily pregnant Gogglebox star, who is due to give birth next month, said: “I’ve had women come up to me and tell me I look huge.

“I’m not even joking. Like people are actually just coming up to us.

“I was at my nanny’s party and a woman came up to me and this is where it started and then it’s carried on.

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“She didn’t even say hello, she went, ‘Oh my goodness, you look humongous!’

“What am I meant to say to that? I know they’re not saying it to be mean, but let’s not, let’s just not, let’s just not.

“Let’s just not comment on anyone’s bodies, whether they’re pregnant or not.

“Because I don’t know how to respond to someone telling me that I look huge.

“Cause I’ve still got a little while left of my pregnancy as well. It’s not like. I’m like literally about to drop.”

This latest revelation comes after Scarlett opened up to The Sun about the tough time she has had so far with her second pregnancy.

“The first trimester was horrific,” she told us earlier this month.

“With Jude, I was lured into a false sense of security – I kept thinking that all my friends who were pregnant were dead whingey because I had no morning sickness or any symptoms other than the fact I could feel him moving about.

“But this time, the first trimester I was still working and filming and I was getting bad travel sickness – I’ve never had that in my life before. I was also running off to throw up at work.”

Scarlett welcomed Jude in November 2023, and just a few weeks later Scott proposed to her.