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Charlie Kirk, the conservative millennial influencer who galvanized young Americans to support the GOP and was assassinated this week in Utah, was the most influential modern-day catalyst of shifting voting trends among fledgling voters, according to Republican and Democratic strategists.

Kirk founded the nonprofit Turning Point USA in 2012 at the age of 18, and it grew into a force that promoted conservative views on high school and college campuses across the nation.

“He found something among young people that none of us identified,” said Shawn Steel, a member of the Republican National Committee from Orange County who knew Kirk for nearly a decade and invited him to speak before the RNC’s conservative steering committee.

“He found an entire movement in America that conservatives were not even aware they could find. Not only that, he nurtured and created an entire new generation of conservative activists,” said Steel, the husband of former Rep. Michelle Steel. “His legacy will endure.”

The admiration for Kirk’s political organizing skills and mental acuity cut across political lines.

“Whether you agreed with him or not — and to be clear, I didn’t — he was one of the most brilliant political organizers of his generation, and probably generations before that,” said Stephanie Cutter, a veteran Democratic strategist who served as an advisor to Presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton, First Lady Michelle Obama and Vice President Kamala Harris. “He could be controversial, but he struck a nerve with people who were likely disengaged in politics prior to Turning Point and built a powerful movement.”

In addition to appealing to young voters about the economic headwinds they faced as they sought to climb the career ladder and tried to buy a house, Kirk also espoused sharply conservative views.

Beyond espousing traditional conservative views — being anti-abortion, pro-gun rights and dubious of climate change — Kirk was critical of gay and transgender rights, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and diversity, equity and inclusion efforts, saying last year that if he saw a Black airplane pilot, he hoped he was qualified. He was accused of being an anti-Semite because of repeated comments about the power of Jewish donors in the United States, and of being Islamophobic because of comments such as describing “large dedicated Islamic areas” as “a threat to America.”

Kirk, 31 and a father of two, died Wednesday after being shot in the neck while speaking at Utah Valley University. Kirk’s assassination was the latest instance of political violence in an increasingly politically polarized country.

In June, Democratic Minnesota Rep. Melissa Hortman and her husband were killed, while state Sen. John Hoffman and his wife survived a shooting at their home, roughly five miles away, the same day. In 2022, a home invader bludgeoned the husband of then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco). In 2017, House Majority Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.) was shot during a practice session for an annual congressional baseball game. In 2011, Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.) barely survived an assassination attempt as she met with constituents in a Tucson strip mall.

President Trump survived two assassination attempts in 2024 as he successfully sought reelection to the White House.

Kirk’s “mission was to bring young people into the political process, which he did better than anybody ever, to share his love of country and to spread the simple words of common sense on campuses nationwide,” Trump said Wednesday.

On Thursday, Trump told reporters on the White House’s South Lawn that Kirk was partly responsible for his victory in the 2024 presidential election and repeated that he would posthumously award Kirk the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Turning Point USA, created a month before Kirk graduated from high school, became the new face of conservatism on college campuses and had chapters at more than 800 schools. Prominent conservatives heavily funded the group; in the fiscal year that ended in June of 2024, Turning Point reported $85 million in revenue.

Longtime GOP activist Jon Fleischman, the former executive director of the California Republican Party and the former chairman of the state’s chapter of Young Americans for Freedom in the early 1990s, said Kirk was pivotal to Trump’s election.

“Charlie Kirk was probably the single most prominent and successful youth organizer in the Trump movement,” Fleischman said, adding that Kirk superseded any other GOP organizer he knew at increasing conservative prospects among young voters.

“As somebody who cut their teeth as a youth organizer, I have nothing but awe for the level of sophistication he brought to that field of work,” he said.

Support for Trump among young voters exponentially increased in the 2024 presidential election, according to data compiled by Tufts University. While President Biden had a 25-point edge over Trump among voters ages 18 to 29 in the 2020 election, Harris had a four-point advantage among this cohort last year.

“This last election was the best performance Republicans have had with the youth vote, particularly male voters, in 20 years, maybe even going back to the ’80s,” said Steve Deace, a conservative radio host in Iowa who had known Kirk for a decade.

He gave credit for that success partly to work Kirk did on the ground at colleges across the country, notably being willing to amicably debate with people who disagreed with his beliefs.

“Charlie was basically a Renaissance man who was comfortable in a lot of settings. He wasn’t hoity-toity,” he said.

Deace and others added that this moment could be a turning point for the nation’s democracy and the split between the left and the right.

“We’re going to have a real conversation about whether we can share a country or not. The answer may be we can’t,” Deace said. “We have to decide if we are capable of the fundamental differences between us being adjudicated at the ballot box…. We have to decide if we can share a country. If we truly want to, we’ll figure it out. If we don’t, we won’t. That’s the conversation that needs to happen.”

Bombastic conservative commentator Roger Stone went further, arguing that modern-day Democrats are a greater threat to the nation than terrorists, drug cartels and foreign spies.

“The rot is too deep to reverse our course with mere rhetoric,” Stone wrote to supporters. “Sept. 10, 2025 was the day we crossed the Rubicon, lost our innocence and realized only one path remains to ensure humanity’s survival. The time for American renewal is at hand, and the tree of liberty shall germinate in warp speed with Charlie Kirk serving as the martyr of our glorious refounding.”

Important recommendation for parents who are planning to take young children on a trip to Gran Canaria, Lanzarote, Tenerife and Fuerteventura have been issued by one mum

A British mum has shared important crucial guidance for all parents with young children planning a getaway to one of a number of popular Spanish islands. Mother-of-one Melissa O’Donnell praised a firm that assisted her baby during a recent family break to Gran Canaria.

“If you are taking a baby abroad to one of these locations – Gran Canaria, Lanzarote, Tenerife and Fuerteventura – you need to listen to this,” she began in a TikTok video. Confirming that the firm in question played no part in creating her clip, Melissa stated: “I’m doing this off my own back – I just want people to know how helpful it is.” She went on, revealing that Travel 4 Baby provides parents with the chance to rent “anything you could possibly need” for your baby whilst you are away.

“Cots, bath seats, sterilising machines, buggies, car seats – even down to potties – they have everything you’d want to put it in your suitcase but aren’t able to bring,” Melissa raved. “They are priced really fairly too.”

To highlight her point, she revealed she paid €20 [£17.34] for a snooze shade “for as long as we wanted it”. Melissa added: “They drop the item off at the hotel wherever you are staying and come and pick it up the day that you leave.”

Scores of others rushed to commend Travel 4 Baby as well, sharing their own holiday experiences with the firm.

“We used them when we went to Lanzarote!” one TikTok user wrote. “They have no idea how much it helped us!”

A second satisfied customer shared: “We used them for Lanzarote when baby was only 12 weeks old. When we arrived at hotel the steriliser, bottle, formula and water were all there when we arrived at check in. Definitely recommend them.”

A third added: “We hired so much from them in Tenerife last month. Made life so much easier and they were brilliant to deal with. Everything waiting for us at the hotel.”

Whilst a fourth person praised: “They are fab. We used them back in 2022 for our little one’s first holiday. Walker (so he can mooch about tiled rooms safely) and travel cot. But they have so much more – even bottle safe water – fab company.”

Travel 4 Baby also caters for those holidaying to several destinations across Spain and Portugal including major cities, and plans to extend its services to further hotspots including Benidorm in the near future.

The company offers further advice online, listing its top tips for a stress free trip with baby – which are:

• On the plane, babies under two years old can sit on your knee or some airlines let you book and pay for an extra seat for more space and comfort
• Change your babies nappy or take them to the toilet just before you board the aircraft
• Try keep them awake at the airport so they will sleep on the plane (fingers crossed!)
• Feed them when you get on the plane rather than before. The combination of feeding and the rocking and noise of the plane, will often send your baby to sleep.
• Take extra formula, snacks, nappies etc just in case of a delay.
• Always remember, if you don’t want to be traveling with too much luggage and baby items, check with us before you travel as most baby items can be hired and delivered to you in resort. Travel 4 baby has everything you will need and the less luggage you have to bring the better.

Some other year, under some other president, Republican Young Kim might have been a shoo-in to represent a majority-minority congressional district containing pieces of Orange, Los Angeles and San Bernardino counties.

Kim’s profile is as compelling as it is rare for someone running under the GOP banner: an immigrant, an Asian American and, perhaps most important, a woman in a year when female voter enthusiasm is surging. If she wins, she would be the first Korean American woman elected to Congress.

All of these facets might help her navigate the demographic changes that have been eroding Republican support for decades in the 39th Congressional District, where roughly two-thirds of residents are either Asian or Latino and immigrants make up about a third of the population.

But in this year’s tough midterm election, likely to be a referendum on Donald Trump’s divisive presidency, Kim will be forced to stitch together a majority out of disparate factions: die-hard Trump supporters, Trump-averse minorities and affluent suburban women. Kim, 55, finds herself in a race that’s virtually tied in a district where retiring GOP incumbent Ed Royce won the last three elections by double digits.

Republicans face big risks in contested California races as Democrats fight for control of the House »

On the campaign trail, she says, she’s faced questions about the president — his tweets, his policies, his tone. Kim says that Trump’s rhetoric concerns her and that his disparaging remarks about immigrants and women can be frustrating.

“I try to tell them I’m not running to be his spokesperson or represent Donald Trump in the White House,” she says.

Many GOP House candidates — in similarly diverse districts from the Virginia exurbs outside Washington to the bedroom communities east of Denver — share her plight.

In Southern California, Republicans’ tactics for dealing with Trump range from avoidance, as with two-term Rep. Mimi Walters of Laguna Beach, to a full embrace by Diane Harkey, who is running for a seat left open by retiring Rep. Darrell Issa of Vista.

Kim’s 39th Congressional District includes Chino Hills, Fullerton, Yorba Linda — the birthplace of Richard Nixon — and Diamond Bar.

Here, a taqueria can share a parking lot with a Taiwanese cafe. Spanish, Korean, Mandarin and Tagalog can be heard along with English in the upscale ethnic supermarkets that dot the area.

Will California flip the House? The key races to watch »

As she travels the region, Kim has tried to drive home two major points: that people living here know her, and that she understands their stories. She’s spent decades in the public arena, first as a longtime district staffer to Royce and then as a one-term state assemblywoman. She was once a TV talk show host on Korean-language television.

Kim speaks with a knowing ease about the sacrifices immigrants make for a shot at prosperity.

She often shares memories of interpreting for her parents and picking up cans and bottles on the beaches of Guam — a way station between Seoul and Hawaii, where her family later settled — to help raise money for their church.

“My personal experience of being an immigrant, having gone through what this diverse immigrant community has gone through, struggling,” Kim said. “Those are real life experiences that really helped me understand … the district.”

Kim, who owns a government affairs consulting business, moved to Southern California 37 years ago to attend USC. She lives in Fullerton with her husband, Charles; they have four adult children.

One recent Saturday at a campaign office in Rowland Heights, Kim bowed and greeted supporters with “Annyeonghaseyo!” — “Hello!” in Korean — before Saga Conroy took the stage.

“President Trump is not on the ballot, but his agenda is totally in this midterm election,” said Conroy, trying to pump up volunteers. “If we lose the majority in Congress, everything he achieved could be lost.”

It was a departure from Kim’s attempts to cast herself as an independent voice who will call out the president when she disagrees but is willing to work with him on policies that help the district. Kim’s campaign manager, wincing at the remarks, felt compelled to point out that Conroy isn’t a staffer but a volunteer coordinator for the California Republican Party.

“Voters want somebody to stand up to Trump and put a check on him,” said Ben Tulchin, a veteran pollster helping strategize for Kim’s opponent, Democrat Gil Cisneros. “A Republican who worked for a Republican member of Congress is not the person they’re looking for.”

As supporters snacked on spicy Korean rice cakes and egg rolls at the campaign office, one young woman approached Kim with a contribution and an invitation to speak at the next Rotary Club meeting in Fullerton.

“There’s three rotary clubs in Fullerton, so which one?” Kim said without missing a beat. “The main one,” the woman replied.

Kim insists that her strategy of showing up to dozens of groundbreakings, cultural fairs and community events will insulate her from national politics in a way she couldn’t manage in 2016, when she sought reelection to her Assembly seat.

Her Democratic opponent plastered the district with mailers featuring Kim’s face alongside the polarizing GOP presidential nominee and even released an ad disguised as a music video featuring lyrics declaring “Young Kim is like Donald Trump.” It contributed to her loss in the swing district.

Back then, Kim tried to sidestep the issue, saying she’d never met Trump and calling the tactic “desperate.” This time, she’s drawing sharper distinctions between her views and the president’s.

In an interview, Kim maintained that her party has not been captured by one man. “There is no party of Trump,” she said, banging her hand on a table. She’s running, she said, “because I’ve been here, I’ve been working here, I’ve raised my family here, I know the district…. I’m not running for the party of Trump.”

Still, Trump so dominates political discussion these days Kim can’t help but be drawn into the conversation. Her strategy is to ignore the president and his serial controversies as best she can. Kim, for instance, declined this week to comment on Trump’s mocking of Christine Blasey Ford, who accused Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh of sexual assault.

Coverage of California politics »

Kim has sought to carve out her own identity on issues by opposing, for instance, Trump’s policy of separating children from their parents who crossed the border illegally, saying it “does not live up” to American values. She vows to fight for a pathway to citizenship for young people brought to the country illegally as children.

She also breaks with Trump by supporting what he refers to as “chain migration,” which allows citizens to sponsor family members to join them. Like many in her district, Kim’s family has benefited from the long-standing policy. Kim’s adult sister, who had married an American serviceman and joined the military herself, was able to sponsor her, both of her parents and four siblings.

But Kim echoes Trump in other ways.

She called California’s so-called sanctuary state law an “affront to law-abiding citizens and a threat to public safety.” She praised a decision by the Trump administration to weigh in on a lawsuit against Harvard that alleges the university’s admissions policies discriminate against Asian Americans.

One of her first campaign ads emphasized how her family came to the country legally “and not because we wanted handouts.”

Bernie Overland, left, speaks to Democratic congressional candidate Gil Cisneros, center, at his home in Fullerton.

(Christine Mai-Duc / Los Angeles Times)

Those positions may help Kim hold on to support from the Republican base, but they alienate others who want no part of Trump and his presidency. There are frequent reminders of the fine line she walks.

Bernie Overland, a 78-year-old Republican, opened his door in Fullerton one recent Saturday when Cisneros, the Democrat, came knocking. Cisneros was there to speak to Overland’s wife, who’s a Democrat, but he first asked Bernie what issues he cares about most.

“Well, Trump is certainly one,” he said with a laugh.

He’s angry about Trump’s plans to build a border wall (he called it “a waste”) and is incensed by the risk of ballooning national debt from recently passed tax cuts.

“I just think he is taking this country down the garden path to disaster,” Overland said in an interview later. Overland says that he wants to send a message to Trump in this midterm election and that nothing Kim does and says will change his mind.

His plan: Vote for any candidate who is not a Republican.

[email protected]

Twitter: @cmaiduc

LOCALS in “Britain’s most dangerous” say it has become overrun with knife-wielding kids who are making their lives hell.

In a children’s playground at 2pm on a weekday afternoon, two masked drug dealers bear down on our photographer, spitting threats.

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The two young men had seen him taking pictures in the town centre park and wanted to make sure they didn’t appear in them, one putting on a balaclava and the second pulling up the hood of his jacket.

After threatening to smash up his equipment, one of them explained the reason they were there.

“We’re here to f*** up your society by selling drugs to the white boys,” he snarls.

It’s an alarming – but perhaps not surprising – welcome to Middlesbrough, the Teesside town which now has the unenviable status of “Britain’s most dangerous”.

New Home Office statistics reveal that the town suffered 158 crimes per 1,000 people – or to put it another way, one person in six was the victim of crime in the past year.

The Community Safety Partnership stats show Middlesbrough was eclipsed only by Westminster (423 crimes per 1,000) and Camden (195) – although both have much higher populations.

Another survey, by Statista, found the Cleveland Police area, which includes Middlesbrough, has the highest per capita crime rate in the UK, followed by West Yorkshire, Greater Manchester, South Yorkshire and the Met.

After encountering the town centre drug dealers, The Sun went to the crime-plagued Hemlington estate on the south western edge of the town to speak to locals.

The hot topic of the day was the suspension of bus routes to some parts of the estate due to stone and brick attacks by children aged as young as 10.

And another community facility, the Cleveland Huntsman pub, had just had its licence revoked after a man was allegedly stabbed and slashed in an altercation following a spate of criminal damage at the premises.

A number of knife-related cases from recent months are heading through the courts, including the murder of 28-year-old Jordan Hogg.

Four men and two youths deny stabbing him to death in the bleak Fonteyn Court.

It was also on Fonteyn Court that a 19-year-old man was stabbed on August 11 at 5.20pm – and within five minutes a 21-year-old man suffered the same fate on nearby Dalwood Court. 

There was a weary acceptance from locals.

“It’s sickening but at the same time it’s just bog standard,” says one elderly woman who stops to chat on Fonteyn Court.

The kids are carrying knives before they’ve left primary school and they learn from the older lads how to use them, the number of stabbings is out of control.

Resident in Fonteyn Court

“The kids are carrying knives before they’ve left primary school and they learn from the older lads how to use them, the number of stabbings is out of control.

“I’d say we need more bobbies, but they have no respect for authority. I mean, just look around you.”

She has a point. The street is split around 50/50 between occupied and boarded up houses. Disconcertingly, voices can be heard coming from behind some of the green shutters.

Mattresses are dumped on pavements and the remains of torched wheelie bins, sofas and shopping trolleys litter the deserted green areas where children might once have played.

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The one rare sign of cheer is that someone has placed a giant paddling pool at the centre of a grassy area, a hosepipe leading through the back gate of a neighbouring house.

People are loath to speak publicly for fear of reprisals, but one shopkeeper tells us “feral” kids are at the centre of the problems.

“You can see them lining up at the side of the road to bomb the buses with bricks,” he says.

“Some of them are tiny little kids, screaming and swearing as they chuck stones.”

Police travelling undercover on buses

The situation became so bad that officers from Middlesbrough Neighbourhood Policing Team travelled undercover on buses in the area, leading to the arrest of a 10-year-old boy on suspicion of four counts of criminal damage and three counts of causing danger to road users. 

He was later referred to the Youth Offending Team while another boy aged 14 was identified and dealt with for separate offences.

Middlesbrough Council identified a further 10 kids involved in nuisance behaviour, with home visits and “diversionary activity referrals” doles out to their parents.

Acting Inspector Des Horton, from Middlesbrough Neighbourhood Policing Team, said: “This operation not only helps us to identify those involved in these incidents, but also allows us to build up intelligence and provide reassurance to the drivers of the buses that are being targeted.”

In an unconnected incident, two teenagers have been charged with attempted murder after a 17-year-old was stabbed in the estate’s Phoenix Park in May.

And on August 14, a dozen police vehicles swarmed the estate after a police officer was injured as he responded to reports of a man in possession of a knife.

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An arrest was made following a five-hour stand-off in which cups, bricks and chairs were hurled in the direction of emergency workers.

Chinese takeaway owner Wailan Lau, 48, has lived in Hemlington for the past 25 years.

He told The Sun: “It has got worse and worse over the years, the number of stabbings we see now is completely out of control, it never used to be like this.

“Where I live is fine, I have the same neighbours I have had for years and it is a proper community, everyone looks out for each other.

“But some parts of the estate are just dangerous, so much so that buses and taxis will not go down those streets.

“A lot of the problems we face are down to drugs and in a lot of cases it is drug dealers fighting drug dealers, but sometimes innocent people get caught up in that, which is scary.

“Kids seem to carry knives all the time and the ones who do are getting younger. 

“It’s sad to see this town become one of the worst places in the country for crime because it’s a good place full of good people, unfortunately parts of it have become dangerous.”

Asked whether he knew anyone who had recently been a victim of crime, 17-year-old Harvey Wilson initially shook his head and then suddenly remembered: “Oh yeah, I was held at knifepoint.”

The casual way he recounts a terrifying encounter is chilling.

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Harvey, who hopes to become a carpet fitter when he finishes his studies, said: “I’d just gone for a walk near Albert Park in the town and two lads stopped me and pulled a knife.

“Thankfully I’d left my phone at home and didn’t have any money so they just walked away.

“I’ve been able to forget it pretty quickly but I suppose it is quite scary how many people carry knives. I never would but people do.

“There are areas where you know not to go and if you keep yourself to yourself you probably won’t get any trouble, it’s the people who try to make a name for themselves who end up getting hurt.

“If your name gets known you’ll end up getting hurt.”

Things are getting worse and there are way too many young kids getting killed and injured with knives or getting involved with drugs.

John Clark, 82Middlesbrough resident

In the Parkway Centre, just outside Hemlington, John Clark, 82, reflects on the change in his home town over the course of his lifetime.

He started his working life as a hand rammer making sand castings at steel foundry on the river Tees.

John said: “That was my life, working in steel works and foundries and all of that has gone, there’s nothing left of the industry that built the town and that’s a big part of its problems.

“When I was a kid we had prospects and there was work to pay us a wage and keep us occupied, now the young people have nothing.”

He nods down at his young grandson in the buggy he’s leaning on and says: “I don’t worry for myself when I go about in Middlesbrough but I worry for him and younger members of the family.

“Things are getting worse and there are way too many young kids getting killed and injured with knives or getting involved with drugs.

“The brand new sports shop near us got ram raided the other night as soon as it opened by people in flatbed trucks. The place was left in a right mess and he lost all his new stock.”

Rebecca Green, 40, agreed that poverty plays a part in MIddlesbrough’s crime epidemic.

She said: “We live in a part of the world that has high levels of deprivation and that feeds the crime rate, when people are struggling to live they do desperate things.”

Student Shay Thorpe, 18, hopes to be a social worker.

“I’d move away if I could,” she says. “Even though I have always lived here, there are some parts of the town that I wouldn’t go.

“The town centre is scary and you can see from looking round that there’s a major drug problem there.”

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YOUNG people being overdiagnosed with mental health conditions has left the state at breaking point, a report warns.

Policy Exchange’s study is backed by Jeremy Hunt, who as Health Secretary in 2012 pushed to give mental health the same importance as physical health.

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He now admits a surge in diagnoses — as parents chased support for kids — had “unintended consequences” by overwhelming the special educational needs (SEND) system.

The report says costs are “unsustainable” and seeks a radical overhaul.

Mr Hunt said: “We seem to have lost sight of the reality that child development is a messy and uneven process.”

He added that in trying to support young people there are “excessive impulses to medicalise and diagnose the routine, which can undercut grit and resilience”.

Earlier in the year, The Sun revealed that nearly one million children and young people were referred for mental health help last year.

Over 958,200 children in England were referred to Children and Young People’s Mental Health Services.

That is equal to eight per cent of England’s population of 12 million children.

And an increase of 10,000 from the previous year, according to research by the Children’s Commissioner. 

Anxiety was the most common reason, followed by neurodevelopmental conditions and autism.

Children’s Commissioner Dame Rachel de Souza called for urgent action to tackle waiting times.

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CONOR MCGREGOR has drawn the ire of UFC fans with his latest training footage.

The promotion’s former poster boy is slowly but surely ramping up training ahead of his long-proposed return to the octagon.

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McGregor, 37, has been putting in the work on the Thai pads during his recent stay in Italy and has since started sparring.

Footage of the former two-division champion trading heavy leather with two young sparring partners started doing the rounds on social media last weekend.

McGregor didn’t take it lightly on his training partners for the day, throwing some full-pelt shots their way.

The Dubliner’s apparent refusal to take it easy on the youngsters annoyed several MMA fans, one of whom wrote on X: “Hmmm. Not a good look for McGregor.”

Another said: “Still an embarrassing show. He is such a shell of his former self.”

And another said: “Bullying young fighters.”

One remarked: “Embarrassing, TBH.”

Another chimed in: “McGregor beating up 12-year-old kids – what a downfall.”

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Several fight fans, however, believed McGregor was giving the youngsters some invaluable experience, with one saying: “He is doing them a favour.”

Another said: “He’s a great teacher ’cause nobody will take it easy in them in the octagon.”

And another said: “Great training opportunity!”

McGregor hasn’t set foot inside the octagon since breaking his left leg in his trilogy fight with Dustin Poirier over four years ago.

He was set to make his grand cage comeback last June against Michael Chandler but withdrew from the Sin City showdown after breaking his left pinky toe.

McGregor took a major step towards returning to the cage late last month by re-entering the UFC‘s drug testing pool.

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He submitted random samples to drug testers earlier this month, both of which came back negative for any banned substances.

If McGregor fights again, his next outing will be his first since he was found civilly liable for having assaulted Nikita Hand at a Dublin hotel in December 2018.

McGregor appealed the verdict turned in at Dublin‘s High Court but lost his bid to overturn the civil verdict in July.

Graffiti mars the crumbling walls of the main thermal baths in one of Europe’s oldest spa towns, Baile Herculane.

Yet after decades of neglect, a dedicated team of young architects is working to revive the picturesque Romanian resort that once drew emperors to its healing waters.

“Someone once said that if you drink water from the spring from Herculane, you never leave,” said 31-year-old architect Oana Chirila.

“I was struck by the beauty of the place,” she explained about the town in Romania’s southwest, nestled among mountains and bisected by a river. “And at the same time [I was] shocked by its condition,” she added, referring to the dilapidated state of the historic thermal baths.

Chirila first visited Baile Herculane eight years ago entirely by chance, she said.

Her group’s restoration project represents one of several recent civil society initiatives launched to safeguard Romania’s historic monuments.

Approximately 800 such monuments have deteriorated to an advanced state of decay or risk complete collapse. Some already pose significant public safety hazards.

Constructed in 1886, the Neptune Imperial Baths once welcomed distinguished guests seeking its warm sulphur treatments.

Among these illustrious visitors were Austria’s Emperor Franz Joseph and his wife Elisabeth, commonly known as Sisi. Franz Joseph himself described the town as Europe’s “most beautiful spa resort”.

Today, the baths stand closed, their interior walls defaced with graffiti, floors littered with debris, and rain seeping through the ceiling.

Despite the deterioration, tourists regularly pause to admire and photograph the long, rusted facade, with some attempting to glimpse the interior through broken windows.

Currently, Chirila and her volunteer team can only perform conservation work on the baths’ exterior structure. Full restoration remains impossible until legal conflicts between authorities and private owners are resolved, she explained, adding, “There’s always this fear that it might collapse.”

“Most of the historical monuments are in their current state – meaning constant decay – because they are legally blocked,” preventing utilisation of public or European funds for restoration.

For now, along one side of the riverbank, visitors can enjoy three sulphur water basins – what Chirila calls “little bathtubs”.

Her team refurbished these basins and constructed changing booths and wooden pavilions, one of several projects they have undertaken throughout the town.

In recent years, Baile Herculane, home to 3,800 residents, has experienced a steady increase in tourism, according to local officials. Some 160,000 tourists visited in 2024 – up from 90,000 in 2020 – many seeking spa treatments, but also hiking and climbing opportunities.

“The resort has changed,” Aura Zidarita, 50, a doctor, told the AFP news agency. She remained optimistic that it could reclaim its status as a “pearl of Europe”.

MANCHESTER UNITED’S ‘Kid-Messi’ wonderkid JJ Gabriel is set to train with Ruben Amorim’s first team at times this season.

At 14 years old, Gabriel is too young to feature in the FA Youth Cup despite becoming the youngest ever player to feature for the Under-18s.

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The forward will not be 15 years old until October, but is already the talk of Old Trafford and beyond with his fast-tracked displays.

This season’s Youth Cup players have to be born before the cut-off date of 31 August 2010, with Kai Rooney eligible to feature.

Gabriel committed his future to United for at the least the next two years and has been tipped by insiders to become their youngest EVER Premier League player.

He is so highly rated that technical director Jason Wilcox and director of football Matt Hargreaves played active roles in keeping him at the club.

Gabriel, who isn’t even in his GCSE year at school, was handed his first U18 start in Saturday’s 1-0 win at Everton, outperforming players who were mostly older and bigger.

United invited Gabriel to watch Sunday’s 1-0 defeat to Arsenal in the directors’ box, following the teenager’s decision to stay amid interest from Europe‘s biggest clubs.

He was then pictured with Amorim at Carrington on Thursday, with his family also introduced to the United boss.

The Portuguese gaffer, 40, will start working with Gabriel as he will be drafted into the first team group at times throughout the season.

While it’s not unusual for academy players to train with the big boys, it is rare for the youngest players to get the nod.

Gabriel made his debut for the U18s at the beginning of April and scored twice from the bench in a 13-1 hammering of Leeds.

That match saw him become the youngest ever player to feature for the U18s, with club legend Darren Fletcher in charge of his development.

He made a further two appearances for the U18s before the end of the season and scored again, while also featuring for England‘s Under-15s.

Shooting to stardom under the name ‘Kid Messi’ on YouTube five years ago, the schoolboy signed a lucrative deal with Nike in February.

Gabriel, whose full name is Joseph Junior Andreou Gabriel, was born in London and is the son of former Republic of Ireland defender Joe O’Cearuill, who spent most of his career playing non-League after starting out at Watford and Arsenal.

2

Seoul/Mokpo, South Korea – In 2018 when Kim Ji-ung lived in the South Korean capital, Seoul, he felt alone all the time. Single and in his early 30s, the salesman spent most of his day at work or holed up in his apartment.

“I pondered about dying during my morning commute,” Kim told Al Jazeera.

“The most difficult thing was that I had no one to talk to. After work, I would be at home scrolling through TV channels or playing video games,” he said.

Finding it difficult to make connections at work, Kim was feeling increasingly desperate and isolated. Then a close friend of his collapsed at their workplace and died.

“That’s when I really started to ask myself, ‘Will I be next?’” he said.

It was then that Kim made one of the toughest decisions of his life – to pack his bags and move away from Seoul, a city of 9.6 million people that offered him the best chance of a career and a stable salary.

The capital’s population, which peaked at 10.97 million in 1992, has been decreasing steadily in recent decades, sparking alarm among officials. The city’s population of those aged 19 to 39 has been on the decline as well, falling from 3.18 million in 2016 to 2.86 million in 2023.

While Seoul continues to draw people with its promise of high-paying corporate jobs, census figures show the city is failing to retain its young population with nearly as many leaving it as moving to it over the past decade.

‘Hell Joseon’

This trend comes despite South Korea’s capital becoming a technological and cultural powerhouse that is consistently ranked among the world’s most exciting cities by international travellers.

Fortune 500 companies such as LG, Hyundai Motors and SK Group employ thousands of young professionals in their headquarters in the bustling downtown. The ultra-fashionable Gangnam district hosts one of the premier art fairs in the world, Frieze Seoul, and the country’s cosmetics and beauty industry, pop culture and cuisine are popular worldwide.

Seoul’s international allure is also evident in the hip bars, eateries and clubs in the Hongdae and Seongsu neighbourhoods, where foreign tourists flood the streets seven days a week.

But Seoul’s young adults – disillusioned by a housing bubble that has made homes unaffordable and a competitive work culture marked by long hours and low pay – have branded the capital’s work-to-survive lifestyle “Hell Joseon”. The term references the ancient kingdom that was once based where Seoul is today.

“Our society is known for its infamous jobs that force employees to work long hours, cut off the careers of women who give birth and make it hard for men to apply for paternity leave,” said Yoo Hye-jeong of the think tank Korean Peninsula Population Institute for Future.

“Seoul’s abnormally high costs for housing and child education translate to difficulty in creating a stable economic foundation for families,” Yoo said, describing an incompatibility between work and having a family life in the capital.

‘Don’t Worry Village’

For Kim, his chance to move away from Seoul came by coincidence when he spotted an online ad for a getaway programme at Don’t Worry Village.

Located in Mokpo, a city tucked away in the southwestern corner of the country with a population of 210,000 and an abundance of abandoned buildings, the village got its start from another deserter from Seoul, Hong Dong-joo.

After receiving his high school education in Seoul’s upmarket Daechi-dong neighbourhood, Hong was destined to enter a top university in the capital and work for a major corporation – a direct route to the upper echelons of South Korean society.

But when he turned 20, he knew that “life in Seoul, working at a high-paying job was not the life I wanted,” the 38-year-old told Al Jazeera. “I didn’t want to spend long hours at the office every day.” And so, when Hong became a mechanical engineering major at a Seoul university, he did the improbable: He moved away from the city.

He came up with the plan to create Don’t Worry Village after setting up a travel agency and meeting hundreds of young adults who shared stories of isolation and struggling with corporate and social life in Seoul and elsewhere.

“The blueprint for our village was to make a hometown that would act as a community – something that so many people in our country lack in their lives,” he said.

“In some ways, I was in the business of providing protection for people in our society who needed it.”

‘National emergency’

Analysts describe the situation for many young people in the country as a “national emergency” that is being largely overlooked.

“In the process of becoming a developed nation really fast, our society forgot to establish a support net for our young population,” said Kim Seong-a, a researcher at the Korea Institute for Health and Social Affairs (KIHASA),

“The side effects of a society going through extreme industrialisation in a very short amount of time was the gradual disappearing roles of families” in the modern lifestyle and work becoming its primary focus, she said.

Findings from a 2021 Pew Research Center survey support her assessment. Participants from 17 advanced economies were asked: “What makes life meaningful?” The most common answer for people from 14 of the 17 nations – which included Japan, the United States and New Zealand – was family. South Korean respondents, however, chose material wellbeing as their top answer. For them, family came in third place.

Kim, the KIHASA researcher, said South Korean society now prioritises “money over people”.

“We’ve seen significant improvements in the country’s GDP, life expectancy and other areas that can be improved through policy changes,” she said. “But social factors like faith in others, trust in society and generosity towards others have relatively been less developed in our country.”

In surveys of satisfaction with life, South Korea ranked 33 among 38 member states of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), scoring 6.4 on a 10-point scale in 2023. It also has the highest number of suicides among OECD countries with a suicide rate of 24.3 per 100,000 people. Compare that with Lithuania, which came in at a distant second place with 18.5 per 100,000 people.

In the ensuing years, the South Korean suicide rate has only increased, reaching 28.3 per 100,000 people in 2024, a 13-year high.

Young people account for a significant number of the suicides. Of the 14,439 cases of suicide reported last year, 13.4 percent of the cases were people in their 30s.

“In our country, there are many young people who bear all the social risks that they accumulate from failing to get a job, struggling in school and going through family troubles,” Kim Seong-a said.

“They’re by themselves, so there’s a great chance that they can become isolated. They need someone around to talk to or ask for help when they’re going through a setback. This way, they can deal with it or overcome it,” she said.

Official figures, however, show the number of young people living alone in Seoul is on the rise. According to the Seoul Metropolitan Government, more than a third of the city’s population lives alone with young people accounting for 64 percent of single-person households, up from 51.3 percent a decade ago.

A recent survey of 3,000 single-person households in the city by The Seoul Institute, a leading think tank, found that 62.1 percent of respondents experienced persistent loneliness. Another 13.6 percent were identified as socially isolated, a term that refers to individuals with no support network during times of emotional distress, physical illness or sudden financial problems.

‘Seoul Without Loneliness’

South Korea’s government is well aware of the issues of social isolation and a punishing work culture in Seoul and has moved to address the issue in recent years.

Last year, it launched its “Seoul Without Loneliness” plan, which is investing 451.3 billion won ($322m) over five years in initiatives such as a 24-hour emotional support hotline and community centres called Seoul Maeum Convenience Stores, where people can seek counselling and drop in for free bowls of ramen noodles.

Authorities in Seoul have also promoted special date nights for singles in the city, and the government has introduced numerous stimulus packages for newlyweds and new parents to address South Korea’s declining birthrate, which is currently ranked the lowest in the world.

The government is also looking for solutions outside Seoul’s gates.

In fact, Don’t Worry Village was one of the first prototypes for inclusive communities outside Seoul that could potentially develop into youth-centred regions that create homes and jobs for young adults while populating rural regions.

With sponsorship from the Ministry of Interior and Safety, applicants to Don’t Worry Village receive financial assistance to relocate to Mokpo and attend workshops organised by Hong on useful skills required in the local community and networking with fellow residents.

Kim Ji-ung, the former salesman from Seoul, attended one such workshop in 2018 and then eventually moved there. After he did so, he said he was surprised by how easy it was to form social connections.

“Because the city is quite small, it’s likely that you’ll meet other young people through one way or another,” Kim said. “People ask favours to each other, and you make friends here by just saying ‘hi’ to them.”

That was such a stark contrast to Seoul, where people do not have time to greet each other and do not want to become involved in other people’s businesses, he said.

Kim worked various jobs in Mokpo until 2022 when he put his university degree to use and started a one-person interior design company. Hong is his neighbour, and the pair frequently grab lunch together. In addition to doing what he loves, Kim said the biggest change he has experienced is starting to enjoy leisure time.

“On random nights, I’ll just go down to the ferry terminal and get on a midnight boat to Jeju Island,” he said. “I’ll just stay there for the morning, but it’s the small things like this that tell me that I’m having a good time here.”

Looking outside Seoul

Hong’s life, too, has changed dramatically.

Back in his days in Seoul, he did not think too much about getting married. But he soon met the woman who became his wife in Mokpo and is now a father as well.

“In Seoul, the individual has to sacrifice so much of their own lives for their companies, to make a living and for the good of society as a whole,” Hong said. “But in Mokpo, I have control over my time. I’m able to do what I want for work, and money is not that intimidating to me any more.”

Two other residents in Don’t Worry Village, husband and wife Park Myung-ho and Kim Min-jee, also gave up lucrative careers in Seoul for what they described as a more “relaxed life” in Mokpo.

Park, 38, worked for one of South Korea’s biggest arms manufacturers while Kim was an employee at the country’s largest advertising company.

The couple married after meeting in Don’t Worry Village.

“There’s just too much competition in Seoul. It seemed like only people who possessed a lot of capital succeeded in starting a business,” Park said. “As someone who wanted to start my own business, it was more reasonable to look outside of Seoul.”

Park is now the CEO of a local property development company while Kim runs a guesthouse in downtown Mokpo that was developed by her husband’s company.

Kim, 35, also gave birth to a son more than a year ago whom she did not expect to have so soon.

“I always pictured having a child late in my years or being married without kids,” she said.

“Working for a major company meant nearly no time at home and weekends spent in the office. It’s almost impossible to raise kids in Seoul without the help of parents or childcare services, and finding an affordable housing arrangement is even harder,” she said.

‘You’re judged for literally everything’

While Don’t Worry Village has become a prototype for more than 50 youth-centred communities around the country that the government has created in recent years, the reality for young adults moving away from Seoul to live in rural regions has proven to be difficult.

Workplaces, jobs and key infrastructure are still concentrated in Seoul.

And that is why, despite Hong hosting more than 21 workshops for people considering moving to Don’t Worry Village and attracting more than 2,000 visitors, only 20 people have remained there.

The Ministry of Interior and Safety, which helped start the youth villages, said about 10,000 people have participated in workshops at youth-centred communities across the country, but only about 900 ended up moving to them.

For many South Korean youth, starting a second chapter in life outside the country has become increasingly popular.

Brianna Lee is one of the tens of thousands of young adults who apply every year for working holiday visas to live and work abroad for a set time.

“Life in South Korea is just too intensive,” 30-year-old Lee said.

“You’re expected to get a job, get married, buy a house and have an amount of money at a certain age. And you’re judged for literally everything,” she said.

Working as a nurse in Ilsan, a city just north of Seoul, Lee said there is widespread discrimination inside hospitals, where people are critical towards nurses and view them as socially inferior.

“On top of working 11-hour shifts, we would be asked to do tasks that we weren’t required to perform,” she said.

After facing burnout, Lee applied for a working holiday in Canada, where she worked at restaurants and attended classes at an English-language academy for about a year.

Today, she is back home preparing to take a test to become a nurse in the US.

“They pay much better, and people give a lot of respect towards nurses in the US,” Lee said.

“Most importantly, people aren’t nosy,” she said.

“I think people care less about what you do for work and how you choose to live your life there.”

Rizik ran on. Next to him was a young man who spoke to Al Jazeera later, requesting anonymity for his safety.

He said Rizik fell while jumping over a stone wall, hurting his legs, but that when they saw two boys who needed help, Rizik joined the young man in carrying them to safety.

But then Rizik and his friend found themselves surrounded by settlers.

They ran, but just as he dove for cover in the bushes, the friend saw a settler shoot Rizik in the chest.

“The settlers started shouting: ‘Yes! I got you!’” he recalled, describing how several settlers gathered around Rizik as he lay on the ground.

At about the time of the shooting, Rizik had called his family, but the family told others the call lasted only seconds, with no response from Rizik, although they heard shouts in Hebrew in the background.

Rizik’s friend ran for his life down the side of the mountain, heading east.

At 3:18pm, he sent a panicked voice message to local WhatsApp groups, begging for help: “Someone’s been martyred!” he beseeched.

[Audio]: Witness to Muhammad Rizik al-Shalabi’s shooting, believing he’s been killed and sending a voice message calling for help.

Later reconstructions estimated that Rizik may have still been alive at the time, but he was dead by the time search parties were able to access the area to look for him.

Meanwhile, Saif and others were running for their lives further south, headed towards Ain al-Sarara.

As family members confirmed to Al Jazeera, one of those young men was caught along the way and tied up by a gang of about nine settlers.

Witnesses say the settlers repeatedly smashed the young man in the knee with their weapons, then dragged him, tied up, into a car and shot bullets all around him.

Then they threw him to the ground over and over, until the young man was begging them to kill him.

“They said: ‘I’m not going to kill you,’” a friend recalled on TikTok. “‘I’m going to chop off your arms and your legs and throw you on the side of the road like a dog.’”

According to Sinjil activist Ayed Ghafari, among the settlers was Yahariv Mangory, reportedly the leader of the outpost builders in al-Baten, who was carrying an M16 rifle.

Mangory later identified himself in an interview with Israel’s Channel 14 as the “owner” of the al-Baten outposts.

Saif and the others had managed to go up a hill, but at about 3:30pm, they were met by a group of settlers coming downhill and attacked them from above, according to Ghafari, who spoke with the young men.

The settlers were pelting the young men with rocks, with occasional bullets zooming past them as they made their way down the hill.

A settler hit Saif square in the back with a rock, toppling him. He was instantly surrounded by a group of settlers who beat him with clubs and sticks all over, according to witnesses.

Dazed, Saif staggered to his feet after the settlers stopped beating him, heading south down the hill until he came across a big oak tree where a young Palestinian man was hiding.

Battered, he sank to the ground there for the next two and a half hours as the young man tried to reach out to people from Mazraa, asking for help.

Saif was vomiting and struggling to breathe, his condition worsening by the minute.

That was when Muhammad caught word that his big brother was in trouble.

WASHINGTON — Alana Voechting, a 27-year-old nursing student, had never heard of Klarna when she noticed its bright pink logo while checking out at Sephora.com with $165 in skin care products.

Mounting medical debts from chronic health conditions left Voechting with money problems, so she was thrilled to learn the app would allow her to break the purchase price into four installments over six weeks — with no interest, fees or credit inquiries to ding her already subpar credit score.

“It’s like your brain thinks, ‘Oh, I’m getting this product for cheap,’ because you really only look at that first payment, and after that you kind of forget about it,” she said. “So psychologically, it feels like you’re spending so much less when you’re not.”

Soon Voechting began regularly using not just Klarna but also similar services, including Quadpay and Affirm, to buy makeup, clothing, airline tickets and expensive lounge wear she acknowledged she “would not have purchased otherwise.”

Voechting is one of millions of young Americans with scant or subprime credit histories who are using so-called buy-now-pay-later apps every month.

The smartphone-based services are an updated version of the old layaway plan, except users can do it all on their phones and — most appealingly — get their purchase immediately rather than having to wait until they’ve paid for it.

The companies act as intermediaries between retailers and consumers, making most of their profit by charging merchants 2% to 8% of the purchase price, similar to the retailer fees levied by credit card companies.

The apps are taking off among millennials and Generation Z consumers attracted by the ability to bypass traditional credit cards and still delay payments with no interest.

Retailers such as Macy’s and H&M have jumped to partner with the services, which soared in popularity during the COVID-19 pandemic. Roughly 42% of Americans report using the apps at least once, according to a Credit Karma survey from February.

U.S. regulators are taking a wait-and-see approach, saying they don’t want to stifle a new financial product that could help consumers who might otherwise fall into predatory lending schemes.

But regulators in Europe and Australia, where many of the companies first launched, are increasingly concerned the apps are extending credit irresponsibly.

Using celebrities such as A$AP Rocky and Keke Palmer to portray the services as a hip alternative to the “gotcha” fine print of credit cards, the apps could promote overborrowing in a generation already struggling with high debt and poor credit, consumer advocates warn.

And despite claims that users’ credit ratings won’t be affected and that there are no hidden fees, experts say consumers can still face late charges, overdraft fees and debt collection. Some apps, such as Quadpay, charge a $1 transaction fee on every payment made, regardless of the amount.

“It sounds too good to be true, and it is, in many ways, because there are perils for people who use this,” said Jamie Court, president of Consumer Watchdog.

The apps offer different repayment options, but the most common links to a user’s debit card and makes automatic withdrawals every two weeks. Problems quickly arise when there is not enough money in the account, potentially resulting in charges by both the user’s bank and the app.

Voechting said that for the most part she has been able to control her spending and keep track of when her payments will be withdrawn, a challenge when dealing with multiple purchases and multiple apps.

But this year, she missed a payment with Quadpay on a $120 order from Beautycounter because she failed to change her payment information in the app after receiving a new debit card.

Sixty days later, she was informed the installment would go to collections unless she paid off the full remaining balance of $54, plus a $10 late fee. Voechting promptly gathered the money, fearing more damage to her credit.

Services boast that users’ activity and debt are not regularly reported to major credit bureaus. That’s appealing to consumers under pressure or already cut off from traditional lenders.

But not reporting on-time payments also means that users don’t see their credit scores increase as they demonstrate a track record of responsible borrowing, a crucial hurdle for younger consumers.

And the apps may report missed or late payments for some payment plans, which can hurt users’ credit scores, according to a clause buried deep in terms and conditions agreements for Quadpay, Affirm and Klarna.

The Credit Karma survey found about 38% of buy-now-pay-later customers had missed at least one payment, and 72% of those users reported seeing their credit score drop afterward, though many factors can cause fluctuations.

Buy-now-pay-later users also don’t benefit from many protections applied to credit cards.

For instance, if a credit card company refuses to offer credit to a potential customer, it must disclose why the application was declined. No such rules apply to the apps, which authorize every purchase on a case-by-case basis. That means users have no assurance a transaction will be approved.

“They don’t know what the issue is,” said Angela Hunt, 31, of Hampton, Va., part of a Facebook group devoted to Klarna, in which members frequently complain they are denied approval for purchases in a seemingly random manner.

App users also don’t enjoy the same billing-dispute protections they would with other payment methods, so returning merchandise, resolving fraudulent charges and requesting refunds can be difficult.

In January, Brittany Conn, 30, was moving into a new apartment in Melbourne, Fla., and used Klarna on Wayfair to buy a bed frame, headboard and bookcase for $450.

The bookcase never arrived, so she reached out to Klarna to get a partial refund. Multiple agents promised a supervisor would contact her, but the call never came. When she tried to publicly request help on Klarna’s Facebook page, she said, her comments were deleted.

If Conn had made her purchase with a credit card, the lender would have been forced to respond immediately, launch an investigation and explain its final determination within two billing cycles. During the process, she would be entitled to withhold payment on the disputed amount.

It took Conn, who works in customer service, nearly two months and many emails and online chats to get her money back. She filed a complaint with the Better Business Bureau.

“It was just an uphill battle, just email after email and chat after chat, and it got to a point where my chats weren’t being answered anymore,” she said.

According to the Better Business Bureau, Klarna — the largest buy-now-pay-later app in the U.S. with 15 million customers in 2020 — received 676 complaints in the last 12 months.

Quadpay received 979. Affirm had 227, and Afterpay and Sezzle saw more than 100 complaints each.

By comparison, Discover, a well-established credit card brand with more than 55 million customers, saw 532 complaints with the Better Business Bureau in the same period.

The rise in users — and complaints — has brought more scrutiny to the apps.

Credit card giant Capital One barred its customers worldwide last year from linking its cards to fund buy-now-pay-later purchases, citing the lack of consumer protections.

Class-action lawsuits in California, Connecticut and New York allege plaintiffs suffered from large bank overdraft fees due to automatic withdrawals, undisclosed late fees and deceptive marketing.

Consumer complaints prompted regulators in other countries to crack down. Sweden enacted a law last year that bans online checkout portals from making the apps the default payment option.

Australian financial experts wrote a report in November that found 20% of app users surveyed “cut back on or went without essentials” to make their payments on time. The United Kingdom released a nearly 70-page report in February concluding that “urgent and timely” regulatory changes were needed.

U.S. regulators say they are aware of the services but are exercising caution.

“We’re really interested in use cases of buy-now-pay-later where perhaps a consumer that would otherwise go to a payday lender and pay a very high cost for a loan might be able to use it,” said John McNamara, principal assistant director of markets at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

In July, the CFPB released a blog post titled “Should you buy now and pay later?” warning consumers that the apps can charge late fees, report to credit bureaus and do not offer the same protections as other credit products.

Laura Udis, who manages installment loan programs at the CFPB, said the apps are subject to the Dodd-Frank act, passed in 2010 after the subprime mortgage crisis to prevent unfair, deceptive and abusive practices by lenders. She said the law “should be flexible enough to apply to any particular credit situation, including new innovations like buy-now-pay-later.”

But the services have found loopholes in regulation.

For instance, the Truth in Lending Act, which requires lenders disclose the terms and costs of services, states that payment plans of fewer than five installments are not subject to ad disclosure requirements as long as they avoid certain terms.

Consumer advocates say that explains why many apps are structured as four installments. And the companies help merchants avoid terminology that would trigger greater disclosures.

Affirm offers its merchant partners a guide. Quadpay has a variety of promotions for merchants to download that won’t trigger disclosures.

An advertisement for Afterpay and United Kingdom-based retailer Boohoo at a company-sponsored party.

(Caroline McCredie / Getty Images )

An Affirm spokesperson said the company provides information to users at checkout, including disclosures that would be required by the Truth in Lending Act, to ensure customers are informed. A Quadpay spokesperson said the company makes “every effort to help consumers by providing fair, flexible and transparent payment terms.”

Ira Rheingold, executive director of the National Assn. of Consumer Advocates, said it may take time for regulators to sort out how lending laws apply to the services, and whether new ones are needed.

“I think there are different ways that regulators can deal with them,” he said. “And I think that there’s some places where they’ll be far behind and some places where they won’t be.”

Lawmakers show no signs of getting involved. Spokespeople for multiple congressional committees said they were not considering regulating the apps.

California’s regulators are among the few U.S. watchdogs that have taken substantive actions against the services. In 2019, the state’s Department of Business Oversight, now the Department of Financial Protection and Innovation, sued Sezzle, Afterpay, Quadpay and Klarna for making illegal loans.

Each of the companies ultimately settled and had to get licensed, refund fees collected from Californians and pay fines.

“Today, the buy-now-pay-later companies we license in California are required to take into consideration a borrower’s ability to repay the loan and are subject to strict rate and fee caps,” department spokesperson Maria Luisa Cesar said.

As regulators and lawmakers determine how best to keep up with the growth of the apps, their popularity endures. Voechting, Hunt and Conn all said they will continue to use them.

“It’s kind of nice to be able to say, ‘Oh, you know, I can’t afford to buy this right upfront, but I can split it up into four payments and afford it that way,’” Conn said.

Before the apps, Conn would spend weeks saving money for special purchases. The apps allow her to get products immediately.

Said Conn: “Why not just buy it?”

“I never really thought I’d be that emotional about it. I wasn’t going to let it get away from me today.”

Young, who led by five shots after the third round, bogeyed the opening hole but birdied the next five and could afford to drop shots on the 16th and 17th.

He is the 1,000th winner on the PGA Tour.

Young said he would “love the chance to play” in the Ryder Cup against Europe in New York in September.

“That team is the goal for many of us,” he said.

The Wyndham Championship is the final tournament of the PGA Tour’s regular season.

The top 70 players in the FedEx Cup standings qualify for the opening play-off event, the St Jude Championship in Memphis, Tennessee, starting on Thursday. German Matti Schmid claimed the last spot.

Reporting from CINCINNATI — Before he became the king of Atlantic City casinos, before he put his name on steaks or starred on reality television, Donald Trump served his own apprenticeship in the less glamorous family business of renting apartments.

Trump, in his autobiography, recalled learning valuable lessons from his father, Fred: Hunt for bargains. Chase out deadbeats. Spend some money on paint and polish.

Some alleged there was another part to the Trump formula: Make it tough for black people to move in.

In two court cases, built on evidence gathered from frustrated black apartment-seekers, housing activists and former employees, Fred, and, in a later case, Donald Trump faced accusations of systematic discrimination against African Americans, cases that the Trumps ultimately settled without admitting any wrongdoing.

Some would-be tenants were turned away at a complex in Cincinnati, where Donald Trump says he got his start as a property manager. And in New York, the allegations led to what was then one of the largest housing discrimination lawsuits filed by the federal government.

More than 1,000 pages of documents in the two cases in Cincinnati and New York, reviewed by the Los Angeles Times, demonstrate how accusations of racial discrimination dogged the family business from the earliest days of Donald Trump’s career. And they illustrate how young Trump, faced with an early crisis, responded aggressively to charges of bias.

Since he began his run for president more than a year ago, Trump has frequently been criticized for trading in racially tinged appeals, describing some Mexican immigrants as rapists and questioning whether a federal judge’s Mexican heritage made him incapable of being fair to Trump.

He angered some Native Americans by attacking a U.S. senator as “Pocahontas” and spurring supporters into sarcastic war whoops. Most recently, he criticized the parents of a fallen soldier, suggesting their Muslim beliefs forbade his mother from speaking in public after her husband denounced Trump’s call to bar Muslims from entering the country.

Hillary Clinton recently began using the discrimination cases in attacks on Trump. Introducing her running mate, Sen. Tim Kaine, recently in Miami, she said, “While Tim was taking on housing discrimination and homelessness, Donald Trump was denying apartments to people who were African American.”

The Trump campaign did not respond to requests for comment for this story. Trump once called the federal charges “outrageous lies.”

“I have always tried to see to it that buildings which we own and manage are well-run and that there is equal opportunity for anyone to rent apartments,” he wrote in a 1973 affidavit. “The fact is that our apartments have the same ratio of minority tenants as exists in the community as a whole. Our organization has never discriminated and does not now discriminate.”

Trump’s father once was one of the biggest landlords in New York, with 14,000 units in 39 buildings, mostly in Brooklyn and Queens. Folk singer Woody Guthrie lived in one of Fred Trump’s Brooklyn projects when Donald was a toddler, and reworked his song “I Ain’t Got No Home” into a protest against the complex’s exclusionary policies:

We all are crazy fools

As long as race hate rules!

No no no! Old Man Trump!

Beach Haven ain’t my home!

At a foreclosure auction in 1964, Fred Trump bought Swifton Village, a half-empty complex that was the largest in Cincinnati. Donald Trump was just a high school senior in a military academy, but assumed increasing responsibility in managing the complex through college and business school.

In his book “The Art of the Deal,” Trump described Swifton Village as his “first big deal.” He recounted, in a chapter titled “The Cincinnati Kid,” booting poor, nonpaying tenants who had “come down from the hills of Kentucky” with “seven or eight children, almost no possessions.”

His experience in Cincinnati “gave [him] a lot of confidence,” Trump said recently at an Ohio rally.

Swifton Village had a reputation as a white complex, said Carol Coaston, now 72, who began working at a Cincinnati fair housing agency, Housing Opportunities Made Equal, around the time the suit was filed. That fall, just two or three apartments out of 1,167 in the complex were rented to black families, Fred Trump’s lawyer told a judge.

“You just kind of, growing up here, knew certain areas where discrimination occurred or you didn’t feel welcome,” Coaston said.

As the Trumps worked to upgrade Swifton Village, they employed a racial quota system and turned away black applicants, according to a lawsuit filed against Fred Trump’s company in 1969, a year after the Fair Housing Act became law. Donald Trump was not named in the complaint.

According to records from the suit and in housing agency files, a young black couple named Haywood and Rennell Cash spent four and a half months trying to rent an apartment, without success. They had two young children and were desperate to find an apartment close to Haywood’s job at General Electric and leave his mother’s crowded house. Haywood Cash said an agent took his $83 deposit, but he was repeatedly told no vacancies existed and “they couldn’t predict any.” Other African Americans were given similar explanations.

Days after the Cashes’ last inquiry, a white woman and a man posing as apartment seekers were told an apartment was available immediately and given a break on income requirements. “She urged that we get over there quick with a deposit to hold it,” wrote the woman, Margaret Faye Boyar, in a statement in the housing agency’s records.

Boyar went to the complex with Haywood Cash. When she said she did not want the apartment, but was instead helping the Cashes, the property manager “jumped out of his chair,” told Boyar to “get the hell out,” and used a racial slur, according to the lawsuit. He “began screaming at me, saying that what I was doing was ‘fraud’ and that ‘neither you nor Mr. Cash can have any damn apartment,’” she wrote.

Fred Trump’s attorneys, while denying any discrimination, tried at first to have the suit moved to the Ohio Civil Rights Commission, which could have delayed the Cashes’ claim by a year, according to the renters’ lawyer. But eventually, Fred Trump agreed to rent them an apartment and an appeals court dismissed the agency’s effort to expand the case into a class-action suit.

“Their vetting operation consisted of looking at what color your skin was,” said Gwenda Blair, who wrote a history of the family’s real estate empire. “It’s certainly a one-step process.”

The New York case, filed by civil rights lawyers from the Justice Department in 1973, generated front-page headlines. The complaint alleged that the Trump company used various tactics to discriminate, including falsely claiming a lack of vacancies and requiring stiffer rental terms. The case included allegations of discrimination at at least 17 Trump properties in New York and two in Norfolk, Va.

One of those people who said they were turned away was a then-31-year-old law student from Jamaica.

“I liked the setting, I liked the view, I liked the apartment,” said the woman, Henrietta Davis, now 75. “I am a person who believes that I have an equal right to do anything I want.”

She said she visited the Brooklyn complex and was told a place was available. When she called back the next day to plan her move, she was told no apartment was available after all.

“It was very obvious,” she said. Davis said the agent encouraged her to apply at another, integrated Trump building, adding that a black judge had recently rented there. Davis said she filed a complaint with a housing agency and moved on.

“Look, it’s against the law,” she said. “They were not supposed to have been discriminating, and they discriminated, and they had to face the consequences.”

The court case included allegations from whites sent by the Urban League to pose as renters, who were offered apartments while blacks were turned away, and statements from at least 10 people who worked for the company and described tactics used to discourage black applicants. One doorman reported to investigators that he was told to tell black visitors that no apartments were available; a building superintendent in Queens said he was told to attach a paper to applications from blacks with a letter “C,” for “colored.” He said he was afraid the Trumps would have him “knocked off” if he talked. Another employee said he used the code “number 9” to flag black applicants.

By that time, 1973, Donald Trump was president of Trump Management. Instead of settling the case, he hired lawyer Roy Cohn, who had been a prominent aide to Sen. Joseph McCarthy during the anti-communist hunts of the 1950s. Cohn launched an aggressive counterattack.

Trump and Cohn denounced the civil rights lawyers at a news conference, and Trump had Cohn file a counter-suit, claiming $100 million in damages to his reputation; it was dismissed. Cohn kept the government busy with procedural protests, and obtained affidavits from some witnesses — including the Queens superintendent — recanting their statements and claiming that they had been threatened. One said the government lawyers had engaged in “Gestapo tactics.”

After two years of wrangling, the complaint was resolved with a consent agreement in which Fred and Donald Trump agreed not to discriminate, to send a list of vacancies to the Urban League and to advertise that their apartments were open to all. At one point, Fred and Donald Trump haggled over the fine points of the ad requirements before a judge.

“We were not convicted. We would win this case if we fought it,” Fred Trump said.

“Don’t be too sure of that,” said the judge, according to a transcript of the hearing.

Three years after the settlement, the Justice Department reopened the case, charging that the company was using the same tactics to chase away black tenants, saying that “racially discriminatory conduct by Trump agents” was occurring frequently. Court records do not indicate how the second court action was resolved.

Blair, the author, said that the experience in fighting the New York charges helped to forge Trump’s brash, confrontational style — even when facing serious charges of racial bias.

“His whole winning formula is to always be unpredictable,” she said. “You don’t know what he’s going to say, except that he’s going to kick somebody in the shins.”

Tanfani and Bierman reported from Washington. Times staff writer Michael A. Memoli in Cincinnati contributed to this report.

Twitter: @jtanfani, @noahbierman

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FOR a housewife who started out charging ten pence for after-school drama lessons, Sylvia Young had an incredible ability to spot raw talent.

The 85-year-old, who died on Wednesday, helped hone the skills of a who’s who of the ­British entertainment industry.

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Among those to have passed the audition to join her theatre school in London were singers Amy Winehouse, Leona Lewis, Dua Lipa, Rita Ora and three-quarters of All Saints.

Dua, who has won seven Brit awards and three Grammys, said that she did not know she could sing until a teacher at the Sylvia Young Theatre School told her how good she was.

Actors who attended her classes include Keeley Hawes, Doctor Who’s Matt Smith, Nicholas Hoult, who is in the latest Superman blockbuster, and Emmy-nominated Adolescence and Top Boy star Ashley Walters.

The school was also a conveyor belt for EastEnders stars, with Nick Berry, Letitia Dean, Adam Woodyatt and Dean Gaffney all passing through its doors.

Stage fright

But there were problems along the way. In 1998 one of the drama ­masters was arrested for indecent assault, and the company struggled to survive the Covid shutdown.

The pressures of fame also proved too much for some former pupils, including the late Winehouse and EastEnders’ original Mark Fowler, David Scarboro, who was found at the bottom of cliffs as Beachy Head in East Sussex in 1988.

Sylvia, though, was loved by her former pupils, many of whom paid tribute to the “backstage ­matriarch”.

Keeley Hawes wrote: “I wouldn’t have the career I have today without her help”.

And All Saints singer Nicole ­Appleton commented: “This is going to really affect us all who were lucky enough to be part of her amazing world growing up. What a time, the best memories.”

DJ Tony Blackburn added: “She was a very lovely lady who I had the privilege of knowing for many years. She will be sadly missed.”

Actress Sadie Frost commented online: “What a woman, what a family, what a legacy! Sending everyone so much love and support. She was always so lovely to me.”

And TV and radio presenter Kate Thornton said she “meant so much to so many”.

Sylvia did not boast about the ­success of her students and the school’s website does not mention its incredible roster of ex-pupils.

But it is hard to imagine a single drama teacher ever having as much impact as her. Sylvia’s two daughters, Alison and Frances Ruffelle, who are directors of the theatre school, said: “Our mum was a true visionary.

“She gave young people from all walks of life the chance to pursue their performing arts skills to the highest standard.

“Her rare ability to recognise raw talent and encourage all her students contributed to the richness of today’s theatre and music world, even ­winning herself an Olivier Award along the way.”

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Sylvia made it to the top of the British entertainment industry the hard way.

She was the eldest of nine children born to Abraham Bakal, a tailor’s presser, and housewife Sophie in London’s East End. Born in 1939 just after the outbreak of World War Two she remembered the air raid sirens during the Blitz of the capital.

She was evacuated to a village near Barnsley during the war, only returning home once it was over.

At the local library she was gripped by reading plays and would meet up with friends to perform them.

While still at school she joined a theatre group in North London, but her dreams of treading the boards in the West End were dashed by stage fright.

She said: “I used to lose my voice before every production. When I think about it, they were sort of panic attacks.”

Instead, she married telephone engineer Norman Ruffell in 1961 and stayed at home to look after their two daughters.

When Alison and Frances attended primary school, Sylvia started teaching drama to their fellow pupils. It cost just ten pence and the kids also got a cup of orange squash and a biscuit.

Word spread and when her ­students got the nickname the ­Young-uns, Sylvia decided to adopt the surname Young for business ­purposes.

The first Sylvia Young Theatre School was set up in 1981 in Drury Lane in the heart of London’s theatre district.

Two years later, it moved to a ­former church school in Marylebone in central London, where most of its famous pupils got their start.

Even though it is fee-paying, everyone has to pass an audition — and only one in 25 applicants are successful.

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It costs up to £7,000 per term for full-time students and only has places for 250 pupils aged ten to 16.

There are bursaries and fee reductions for pupils from less well-off backgrounds, plus a Saturday school and part-time classes.

Sylvia was always keen to avoid it being a school for rich kids.

When she took an assembly she would ask pupils, “What mustn’t we be?”, and they would shout back, “Stage school brats”.

Keeping kids level-headed when stardom beckoned was also important for the teacher.

She said: “I offer good training and like to keep the students as individual as possible.

“We develop a lot of confidence and communication skills. Of course they want immediate stardom, but they’re not expecting it. You don’t find notices up here about who’s doing what. It is actually played down tremendously.”

‘Baby Spice was lovely’

A need for discipline even applied to Sylvia’s daughter Frances, who she expelled from the school.

Frances clearly got over it, going on to have a career in musical theatre and representing the United Kingdom in the 1994 Eurovision Song Contest, finishing tenth.

Those genes were strong, with Frances’ daughter, stage name Eliza Doolittle, having a Top Five hit with Pack Up in 2010.

The ever-rebellious Amy Winehouse, who died in 2011 aged 27 from accidental alcohol poisoning, claimed to have been kicked out, too.

She said: “I was just being a brat and being disruptive and so on. I loved it there, I didn’t have a problem, I just didn’t want to conform.

“And they didn’t like me wearing a nose piercing.”

But Sylvia did not want Amy to leave. She said: “She would upset the academic teachers, except the English teacher who thought she’d be a novelist. She seemed to be just loved. But she was naughty.”

Other singers were clearly inspired by their time at the school, which moved to new premises in Westminster in 2010.

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Dua Lipa, who went to the ­Saturday school from the age of nine, was asked to sing in front of other pupils shortly after joining.

She said, “I was terrified”, but that the vocal coach “was the first person to tell me I could sing”.

Talent scouts and casting agents would put up requests on the notice board at the school. One such ­posting led to Emma Bunton ­joining the Spice Girls.

Of Baby Spice, Sylvia said: “She got away with whatever she could. But she was a lovely, happy-go-lucky individual with a sweet ­singing voice.”

Groups were also formed by ­Sylvia’s ex-pupils.

All Saints singer Melanie Blatt became best friends with Nicole Appleton at Sylvia Young’s and brought her in when her band needed new singers in 1996.

But Melanie was not complimentary about the school, once saying: “I just found the whole thing really up its own arse.”

Casting agents did, however, hold the classes in very high regard.

The professionalism instilled in the students meant that producers from major British TV shows such as EastEnders and Grange Hill kept coming back for more.

Hundreds, if not thousands, of less well-known performers treading the boards of Britain’s stages also have the school’s ethos to thank for their success.

Those achievements were recognised in the 2005 Honours List when Sylvia was awarded an OBE for services to the arts.

Sir Cameron Mackintosh, who has produced shows including Les Miserables and Cats, said: “The show that provided the greatest showcase for the young actors she discovered and nurtured is undoubtedly Oliver! which has featured hundreds of her students over the years.

“Sylvia was a pioneer who became a caring but formidable children’s agent.”

Trump says he cut off his relationship with Epstein because the sex offender poached workers from his Florida resort.

United States President Donald Trump has said that he ended his relationship with disgraced financier and convicted sex abuser Jeffrey Epstein because he “stole” young female workers from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort.

Speaking to reporters on his way home from a trip to Scotland on Tuesday, Trump alleged that one such worker was the late Virginia Giuffre, one of Epstein‘s highest-profile accusers.

“People were taken out of the [Mar-a-Lago] spa, hired by him. In other words, gone,” Trump said. “When I heard about it, I told him, I said, ‘Listen, we don’t want you taking our people.’

“And then, not too long after that, he did it again. And I said, ‘Out of here.’”

The US president, who had a close relationship with Epstein for years, has become increasingly defensive as he faces growing scrutiny over his administration’s refusal to release government records with information about Epstein’s abuses.

Officials including Attorney General Pam Bondi have said that releasing further documents would risk disseminating victim information and child pornography collected as evidence.

But Bondi’s comments have helped fuel the controversy. In a February interview with Fox News, Bondi said that Epstein’s supposed client list was “sitting on my desk right now”.

Conspiracy theorists have long maintained that Epstein kept a list or book of contacts in order to coerce powerful figures in arts and politics. They also have cast doubt on Epstein’s jailhouse suicide in 2019, calling it, without proof, a cover-up.

Current members of Trump’s administration, including FBI director Kash Patel and his deputy, Dan Bongino, had played up those theories in past media appearances.

But the Department of Justice and FBI later released a review concluding that there was no reason to believe such a list existed and that Epstein had died by suicide, as the government originally concluded.

That assertion was met with frustration from some corners of Trump’s own far-right base, who have speculated for years about Epstein’s ties with powerful figures and the circumstances of his death.

Giuffre has been a prominent figure in online conspiracy theories. She had accused Epstein of pressuring her to have sex with the powerful men in his orbit.

Until her death by suicide earlier this year, Giuffre maintained that she had been approached as a teenager by Epstein’s former girlfriend, Ghislaine Maxwell, while she was working at Mar-a-Lago.

Giuffre had been employed at the time as a spa attendant. Her father worked in maintenance at the resort.

Maxwell, according to Giuffre, offered her money to work as a masseuse for Epstein, who then sexually abused her. She described Maxwell and Epstein as grooming her to perform sex acts for other men. Giuffre alleged that “massage” was sometimes used as a code word for sex.

Giuffre ultimately filed a civil suit against Maxwell in New York. While Maxwell has denied Giuffre’s allegations, she settled the suit for an undisclosed sum.

Maxwell is currently serving a 20-year prison sentence in a Florida federal prison for conspiring with Epstein to sexually abuse underage girls.

If you or someone you know is at risk of suicide, these organisations may be able to help.

A mum of two tried out the UK’s biggest outdoor waterpark, and she was seriously impressed with what she found, calling it ‘the perfect family day out’ for her brood

The summer holidays are stretching ahead of us, and for parents across the UK prospect of keeping the kids entertained whilst they are off school can sometimes be pretty daunting.

Many families throughout the country are working to pretty tight budgets, so parents are often on the lookout for days out that won’t break the bank.

If you’re looking for a day out to remember with the whole family, then one mum-of-two has recommended paying the UK’s biggest waterpark a visit this summer – which promises fun for every age group.

Perched right by the stunning beach, Goodrington Sands, Splashdown Quaywest is a jewel in Devon’s crown as the largest outdoor waterpark in the country.

Mum of two, Chloe Sweet, posted about her family’s day out to the waterpark on her TikTok account, which boasts 113,000 followers.

She was seriously impressed with the range of what the waterpark offered, with something to keep children of every age entertained.

“There’s 18 waterslides in total,” Chloe explained in her video, “If you’re into that adrenaline buzz, it’s got some serious fast flumes for older children and adults, you’ve got the slides such as the devil’s drop, the screamer, Kamikaze, and much more that will test [your] nerves”.

However, the facilities and slides for younger children and toddlers left Chloe really impressed, with one area a major perk for young families.

“They have a dedicated section called Shipwreck Island, which is amazing for toddlers and little ones. There’s seven slides in this section, and it’s just the right height for toddlers.

“The water is all shallow, so you don’t have to stress, it’s like a big massive splash zone.”

Chloe added, “They have water sprinkling out all over and, of course, the big massive tipping bucket that soaks everyone every couple of minutes, the kids absolutely enjoyed themselves”.

The mum of two explained the different tickets you can get for the waterpark, which include two, three, and four-hour slots, as well as entire day passes.

The waterpark warns on their website that you cannot get tickets on the door for this attraction, so anyone interested in spending a day out there has to make sure they have booked their slot ahead.

Chloe added that there were good food offerings available at the waterpark, including things like burgers, but that her family opted to bring packed lunches – and there was plenty of space for them to enjoy their little picnic.

There’s also an ice cream stand, which families will definitely make the most of during a hot summer’s day, and Chloe advised that if you are planning on booking a two or three-hour slot, you should make the most of the day out by spending time at the beach next door as well.

She called Splashdown Quaywest the “perfect family day out,” and people in the comments seemed keen to try it out, with many asking for further details, and one user writing: “That’s awesome, looks like it’s abroad.” and another commenting: “Went Monday…I love it’.

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Over the last several months, a deep sense of unease has settled over laboratories across the United States. Researchers at every stage — from graduate students to senior faculty — have been forced to shelve experiments, rework career plans, and quietly warn each other not to count on long-term funding. Some are even considering leaving the country altogether.

This growing anxiety stems from an abrupt shift in how research is funded — and who, if anyone, will receive support moving forward. As grants are being frozen or rescinded with little warning and layoffs begin to ripple through institutions, scientists have been left to confront a troubling question: Is it still possible to build a future in U.S. science?

On May 2, the White House released its Fiscal Year 2026 Discretionary Budget Request, proposing a nearly $18-billion cut from the National Institutes of Health. This cut, which represents approximately 40% of the NIH’s 2025 budget, is set to take effect on Oct. 1 if adopted by Congress.

“This proposal will have long-term and short-term consequences,” said Stephen Jameson, president of the American Assn. of Immunologists. “Many ongoing research projects will have to stop, clinical trials will have to be halted, and there’ll be the knock-on effects on the trainees who are the next generation of leaders in biomedical research. So I think there’s going to be varied and potentially catastrophic effects, especially on the next generation of our researchers, which in turn will lead to a loss of the status of the U.S. as a leader in biomedical research.“

In the request, the administration justified the move as part of its broader commitment to “restoring accountability, public trust, and transparency at the NIH.” It accused the NIH of engaging in “wasteful spending” and “risky research,” releasing “misleading information,” and promoting “dangerous ideologies that undermine public health.”

National Institutes of Health.

(NIH.gov)

To track the scope of NIH funding cuts, a group of scientists and data analysts launched Grant Watch, an independent project that monitors grant cancellations at the NIH and the National Science Foundation. This database compiles information from public government records, official databases, and direct submissions from affected researchers, grant administrators, and program directors.

As of July 3, Grant Watch reports 4,473 affected NIH grants, totaling more than $10.1 billion in lost or at-risk funding. These include research and training grants, fellowships, infrastructure support, and career development awards — and affect large and small institutions across the country. Research grants were the most heavily affected, accounting for 2,834 of the listed grants, followed by fellowships (473), career development awards (374) and training grants (289).

The NIH plays a foundational role in U.S. research. Its grants support the work of more than 300,000 scientists, technicians and research personnel, across some 2,500 institutions and comprising the vast majority of the nation’s biomedical research workforce. As an example, one study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, found that funding from the NIH contributed to research associated with every one of the 210 new drugs approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration between 2010 and 2016.

Jameson emphasized that these kinds of breakthroughs are made possible only by long-term federal investment in fundamental research. “It’s not just scientists sitting in ivory towers,” he said. “There are enough occasions where [basic research] produces something new and actionable — drugs that will save lives.”

That investment pays off in other ways too. In a 2025 analysis, United for Medical Research, a nonprofit coalition of academic research institutions, patient groups and members of the life sciences industry, found that every dollar the NIH spends generates $2.56 in economic activity.

A ‘brain drain’ on the horizon

Support from the NIH underpins not only research, but also the training pipeline for scientists, physicians and entrepreneurs — the workforce that fuels U.S. leadership in medicine, biotechnology and global health innovation. But continued American preeminence is not a given. Other countries are rapidly expanding their investments in science and research-intensive industries.

If current trends continue, the U.S. risks undergoing a severe “brain drain.” In a March survey conducted by Nature, 75% of U.S. scientists said they were considering looking for jobs abroad, most commonly in Europe and Canada.

This exodus would shrink domestic lab rosters, and could erode the collaborative power and downstream innovation that typically follows discovery. “It’s wonderful that scientists share everything as new discoveries come out,” Jameson said. “But, you tend to work with the people who are nearby. So if there’s a major discovery in another country, they will work with their pharmaceutical companies to develop it, not ours.”

At UCLA, Dr. Antoni Ribas has already started to see the ripple effects. “One of my senior scientists was on the job market,” Ribas said. “She had a couple of offers before the election, and those offers were higher than anything that she’s seen since. What’s being offered to people looking to start their own laboratories and independent research careers is going down — fast.”

In addition, Ribas, who directs the Tumor Immunology Program at the Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center, says that academia and industry are now closing their door to young talent. “The cuts in academia will lead to less positions being offered,” Ribas explained. “Institutions are becoming more reluctant to attract new faculty and provide startup packages.” At the same time, he said, the biotech industry is also struggling. “Even companies that were doing well are facing difficulties raising enough money to keep going, so we’re losing even more potential positions for researchers that are finishing their training.”

This comes at a particularly bitter moment. Scientific capabilities are soaring, with new tools allowing researchers to examine single cells in precise detail, probe every gene in the genome, and even trace diseases at the molecular level. “It’s a pity,” Ribas said, “Because we have made demonstrable progress in treating cancer and other diseases. But now we’re seeing this artificial attack being imposed on the whole enterprise.”

Without federal support, he warns, the system begins to collapse. “It’s as if you have a football team, but then you don’t have a football field. We have the people and the ideas, but without the infrastructure — the labs, the funding, the institutional support — we can’t do the research.”

For graduate students and postdoctoral fellows in particular, funding uncertainty has placed them in a precarious position.

“I think everyone is in this constant state of uncertainty,” said Julia Falo, a postdoctoral fellow at UC Berkeley and recording secretary of UAW 4811, the union for workers at the University of California. “We don’t know if our own grants are going to be funded, if our supervisor’s grants are going to be funded, or even if there will be faculty jobs in the next two years.”

She described colleagues who have had funding delayed or withdrawn without warning, sometimes for containing flagged words like “diverse” or “trans-” or even for having any international component.

The stakes are especially high for researchers on visas. As Falo points out for those researchers, “If the grant that is funding your work doesn’t exist anymore, you can be issued a layoff. Depending on your visa, you may have only a few months to find a new job — or leave the country.”

A graduate student at a California university, who requested anonymity due to the potential impact on their own position — which is funded by an NIH grant— echoed those concerns. “I think we’re all a little on edge. We’re all nervous,” they said. “We have to make sure that we’re planning only a year in advance, just so that we can be sure that we’re confident of where that funding is going to come from. In case it all of a sudden gets cut.”

The student said their decision to pursue research was rooted in a desire to study rare diseases often overlooked by industry. After transitioning from a more clinical setting, they were drawn to academia for its ability to fund smaller, higher-impact projects — the kind that might never turn a profit but could still change lives. They hope to one day become a principal investigator, or PI, and lead their own research lab.

Now, that path feels increasingly uncertain. “If things continue the way that they have been,” they said. “I’m concerned about getting or continuing to get NIH funding, especially as a new PI.”

Still, they are staying committed to academic research. “If we all shy off and back down, the people who want this defunded win.”

Rallying behind science

Already, researchers, universities and advocacy groups have been pushing back against the proposed budget cut.

On campuses across the country, students and researchers have organized rallies, marches and letter-writing campaigns to defend federal research funding. “Stand Up for Science” protests have occurred nationwide, and unions like UAW 4811 have mobilized across the UC system to pressure lawmakers and demand support for at-risk researchers. Their efforts have helped prevent additional state-level cuts in California: in June, the Legislature rejected Gov. Gavin Newsom’s proposed $129.7-million reduction to the UC budget.

Earlier this year, a coalition of public health groups, researchers and unions — led by the American Public Health Assn. — sued the NIH and Department of Health and Human Services over the termination of more than a thousand grants. On June 16, U.S. District Judge William Young ruled in their favor, ordering the NIH to reinstate over 900 canceled grants and calling the terminations unlawful and discriminatory. Although the ruling applies only to grants named in the lawsuit, it marks the first major legal setback to the administration’s research funding rollback.

Though much of the current spotlight (including that lawsuit) has focused on biomedical science, the proposed NIH cuts threaten research far beyond immunology or cancer. Fields ranging from mental health to environmental science stand to lose crucial support. And although some grants may be in the process of reinstatement, the damage already done — paused projects, lost jobs and upended career paths — can’t simply be undone with next year’s budget.

And yet, amid the fear and frustration, there’s still resolve. “I’m floored by the fact that the trainees are still devoted,” Jameson said. “They still come in and work hard. They’re still hopeful about the future.”

SEOUL — It’s a worldwide shift that has taken political scientists and sociologists by surprise: the growing ideological divide between young men and women.

In the recent U.S. presidential election, President Trump won 56% of the vote among men ages 18 to 29, according to an analysis from Tufts University’s Center for Information & Research on Civic Learning and Engagement.

In Germany, young men are twice as likely as young women to support the far-right Alternative for Germany party, or AfD, according to the Pew Research Center. Last year’s European Parliament elections showed a similar trend. According to the European Policy Center, in Portugal, Denmark and Croatia, more than four young men voted for far-right candidates for every young woman who did the same.

But few countries exemplify the trend more than South Korea, where a recent presidential election showed just how polarized its youth has become.

In South Korea, 74.1% of men in their 20s and 60.3% of men in their 30s voted for one of the two conservative candidates compared with 35.6% and 40.5% of their female counterparts, respectively.

Experts say the so-called 2030 male (men in their 20s and 30s) phenomenon, which emerged alongside the mainstreaming of gender equality discourse in South Korea over the last decade, has defied traditional left-right taxonomies.

The “2030 men are difficult to define under standard electoral theory frameworks,” said Kim Yeun-sook, a political scientist at Seoul National University’s Institute of Korean Political Studies.

Having come of age in a world with radically different social contracts than those of their parents, right-leaning 2030 male voters are less likely to focus on North Korea — a defining preoccupation for older conservatives — than on feminism, which for them has become a dirty word that conjures “freeloading” women trying to take more than they are owed.

The men have taken umbrage with visual symbols or hand gestures — such as a pinched forefinger and thumb — that they argue are anti-male dog whistles used by feminists, in some cases succeeding in getting companies to discontinue marketing campaigns featuring such offending content.

South Korean women supporting the #MeToo movement stage a rally to mark the upcoming International Women’s Day in Seoul on March 4, 2018.

(Ahn Young-joon / Associated Press)

In the 2022 presidential election, it was men in their 20s and 30s who helped Yoon Suk Yeol — the conservative candidate who claimed that structural sexism no longer existed — clinch a razor-thin victory over his liberal opponent, Lee Jae-myung, who was elected president in June.

This perception that men — not women — are the true victims of gender discrimination in contemporary society is a defining belief for many young South Korean men, says Chun Gwan-yul, a data journalist and the author of “20-something Male,” a book about the phenomenon that draws on extensive original polling of young South Koreans.

Although male backlash to contemporary feminism is the most visible aspect of the phenomenon, Kim Chang-hwan, a sociologist at the University of Kansas, says that its roots go back to socioeconomic changes that began much earlier.

Among them was a series of government policies three decades earlier that led to a surge in both male and female college enrollment, which soared from around 30% of the general population in 1990 to 75% in 2024. Add to that the increasingly long-term participation of women in the workforce, Kim said, and “the supply of educated labor has ended up outpacing economic growth.”

“The young men of today are now feeling like they are having to compete five times harder than the previous generation,” he said.

(Despite the fact that gender inequality in South Korea’s job market is among the worst in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, with women making on average around 65% of their male counterparts and far more likely to be precariously employed, such wage gaps tend to be less prominent for earners in their 20s.)

And although most research has shown that the negative effect of South Korea’s male-only compulsory military service — which lasts up to 21 months — on wages and employment is minimal, anxieties about getting a later start than women in a hypercompetitive job market have also contributed to young South Korean men feeling that they are getting a raw deal.

Chun, the data journalist, points out that the mass entry of women into higher education also led to another tectonic shift being felt by the current crop of young men: the rapid collapse of traditional marriage dynamics.

“Women have been doing the math and are increasingly concluding marriage is a net loss for them,” he said. “South Korea transformed from a society where marriage was universal into a marriage-is-optional one in an incredibly short time frame, especially compared to many Western countries where those changes played out over 60 or 70 years.”

In 2000, just 19% of South Koreans between the ages of 30 and 34 were unmarried, but today that number is 56%, according to government data. Over a third of women between 25 and 49 years old now say they don’t ever want to get married, compared with 13% of men, according to a government survey last year. One in 4 men will now remain unmarried in their 40s.

South Korean women take part in a rally to mark International Women’s Day in downtown Seoul on March 8, 2024.

(Jung Yeon-je/ AFP/Getty Images)

Chun notes that the mismatch in the marriage landscape has bred in many the misogynistic resentment associated with incels, a term for men who identify as involuntarily celibate. A common refrain among young conservative men is the swearing-off of South Korean women, who are often cast as “kimchi women” — gold diggers who are unwilling to pull their weight while demanding too much of men.

“Do you need to only date Korean women just because you’re Korean? No,” said Chul Gu, an online personality popular among young men in a recent stream. “There are Thai women, Russian women, women of all nationalities. There is no need to suffer the stress of dating a Korean kimchi woman.”

Resentment toward South Korean women, Chun says, is inseparable from the generational animus that feeds it.

“In the worldview of young South Korean men, they aren’t just fighting women, they are fighting the older generation that is siding with those women,” he said. “It’s essentially an anti-establishment ethos.”

The “586 generation,” as they are commonly called, are South Koreans in their 50s or 60s who came of age during the high-growth, authoritarian period of the 1980s. Associated with the pro-democracy movements of the time, the 586 generation is one of the most liberal and pro-gender equality demographics in South Korea — and one whose members built much of their wealth through cheap real estate, an avenue no longer available for the majority of young South Koreans accustomed to seeing housing prices in Seoul double in as little as four years.

“Young South Koreans are seeing those homes become worth millions,” Chun said. “Meanwhile, South Korea’s birth rate is falling and life expectancy is rising to 80 or 90, so many young voters are thinking, ‘We’re going to have to be responsible for them for the next 40 to 50 years.’”

Among the candidates in last month’s presidential election, it was Lee Jun-seok, a 40-year-old third-party conservative candidate, who most aggressively targeted these tensions.

During his campaign, Lee promised to segregate South Korea’s fast-depleting national pension by age, a move he said would relieve younger South Koreans of the burden of subsidizing the older generation’s retirement.

Although he finished with just 8% of the total vote, he won the largest share — 37.2% — of the 20-something male vote, and 25.8% from men in their 30s.

“South Korea is very much locked into a two-party system where it is generally rare to see a third party candidate make much of a difference,” Kim, the political scientist, said. “I think there’s a lot of negative polarization at play — an expression of defeatism or disenfranchisement at the fact that status quo politicians aren’t addressing young men’s problems.”

Data show that disillusionment with democracy too runs deep.

According to a recent survey of 1,514 South Koreans by the East Asia Institute, a Seoul-based think tank, just 62.6% of South Korean men between the ages of 18 and 29 believe that democracy is the best political system — the lowest percentage in any age and gender group — with nearly a quarter believing that a dictatorship can sometimes be more preferable.

Whether the rightward drift of young South Korean men is a temporary deviation or a more serious forecast for South Korea’s democracy is still an open question, according to Kim.

“But now is the time to act,” she said. “There absolutely needs to be a political response to the younger generations’ frustrations.”

This essay is adapted from Merrick Morton’s “La Bamba: A Visual History,” published by Hat & Beard Press.

“Dance!! Dance!! Dance!! to the music of the Silhouettes Band!!” read the handbill. The Silhouettes featured Ritchie Valens — “the fabulous Lil’ Richi and his Crying Guitar!!” — at a 1958 appearance at the San Fernando American Legion Hall in Southern California.

He was 16 years old. The Silhouettes was Ritchie’s first band, and they launched him into history. But a silhouette itself is an interesting thing: You can see the general shape of something while you hardly know the figure casting the shadow. Valens’ musical story begins with the Silhouettes, and we have been filling in his story, and projecting ourselves onto it, ever since he left.

A founding father of rock ’n’ roll, he would lose his life barely a year later, when the plane carrying members of the Winter Dance Party Tour — Buddy Holly, the Big Bopper and Valens — crashed on Feb. 3, 1959, in an Iowa snowstorm. A Chicano icon. A stranger.

Ritchie was a kid playing his guitar to make money for his family and one song he played was a version of “Malagueña.” The number was rooted in centuries-old Spanish flamenco music that had spread in all directions, becoming a classical music melody and a Hollywood soundtrack go-to by the 1950s. In his hands, it became a catapult for guitar hero god shots.

Candid shot of Ritchie Valens, Big Bopper (J.P. Richardson) and Buddy Holly during the Winter Dance Party Tour.

(C3 Entertainment)

“Malagueña” communicated experience and rico suave flair to his audience. Meanwhile, his mom was selling homemade tamales at his shows in the American Legion Hall. This guileless 17-year-old, Chicano kid from Pacoima found a way to introduce himself to America by taking something familiar and making it feel like nothing you had heard before.

From the beginning, Ritchie heard the possibilities in turning a familiar sound forward. He saw, even as the teenager he will forever be to us, how in reinventing a song, you could reinvent yourself. Listen to “Donna,” the heartfelt love ballad that felt familiar to Chicano ears, listeners who for years had tuned in to Black vocal groups. In the process, he cleared the way for so much great Chicano soul to come in the next two decades.

Valens performing to a packed house.

(C3 Entertainment)

Most of all, of course, listen to “La Bamba.” A centuries-old song from Veracruz, Mexico; the tune has African, Spanish, Indigenous and Caribbean DNA. In the movie, he encounters the song for the first time when his brother Bob takes him to a Tijuana brothel, but however he first heard it, Valens viewed it as a prism, a way of flooding all that was in front of him with his voice and guitar.

The music he made came from Mexico, and it came from Los Angeles, where 1940s Spanish-language swing tunes, Black doo-wop sounds and hillbilly guitar-plucking were mashed together in a molcajete y tejolote. Most of all, it came from the radio, which lined up sounds that were not like the ones that came right before and blasted them out on AM stations from corner to corner across the Southland. Radio devoured difference and transformed it, and if Ritchie is now regarded as a pioneer of Chicano music, he was in his own, brief time, a product of AM democracy, a silhouette with a spotlight shining on him.

Danny Valdez knew all the songs. In the early 1970s, the artist and activist had released “Mestizo,” billed as the first Chicano protest album put out by a major label. The singer-songwriter and his buddy Taylor Hackford would drink beer, belt out Ritchie Valens songs and make big plans. They talked about someday shooting a movie together, with Valdez playing Ritchie and Hackford directing. “Neither of us had a pot to piss in,” said Hackford, “so we never made that movie.” But years later, after Hackford had a hit with “An Officer and A Gentleman,” Valdez called him and raised the idea once more.

There were many steps to getting “La Bamba” on the screen, but it began with an understanding that it would be about the music. That meant they had to make the music feel alive — namely the handful of recordings produced by Bob Keane that Ritchie left behind. The owner of Del-Fi Records, Keane was a guiding figure in the singer’s life, recording his songs, urging him to mask his ethnicity by changing his name from Richard Steven Valenzuela and giving him career advice. Keane booked Gold Star Studios, cheap at $15 an hour, and brought in great session musicians as Ritchie’s backing band, including future Wrecking Crew members Earl Palmer and Carol Kaye. But the recordings he made were not state of the art, even in their own time.

“They weren’t high-quality,” said Hackford, comparing them to the early Ray Charles sessions for the Swing Time label. “I had a commercial idea in mind, of music selling the film, of people walking out of the theater singing ‘La Bamba’ who had never heard of it before,” he said. That meant he needed contemporary musicians who understood the records and could re-record Ritchie’s songs and reach an audience that was listening to Michael Jackson, Madonna and George Michael.

Valens signing autographs for his fans.

(C3 Entertainment)

Ritchie’s family, including his mother, Connie, and his siblings, had already heard that Los Lobos were playing “Come On, Let’s Go” live in East L.A. When the band played a concert in Santa Cruz, where the Valenzuela family was living by the 1980s, a friendship grew.

“Danny and I knew Los Lobos in the ‘70s when they were just starting out,” says writer and director Luis Valdez, “when they were literally just another band from East L.A. We were very fortunate that they were at that point in their career where they could take on this project. Without Los Lobos, we wouldn’t have Ritchie. David Hidalgo’s voice is incredible. I don’t think we could have found other musicians to cover him. They come from East L.A., they’re all Chicanos. They were paying an homage. We happened to be in the airport together when they got the news that ‘La Bamba’ had become number one in the national charts.”

“They called themselves the spiritual inheritors of Ritchie Valens,” says Hackford. “And they went in and re-recorded Ritchie’s songs plus several that he had played in concert but never recorded.” Now Hackford had his own album of old tunes that turned in a forward direction.

Next, Hackford made sure there were roles for modern performers to play the classic rockers from the Winter Dance Party Tour. He cast contemporary performers who could re-record their material too: Marshall Crenshaw as Buddy Holly, Brian Setzer as Eddie Cochran and Howard Huntsberry as Jackie Wilson.

Then there’s the surprise of the first song heard in the film — a rumbling version of Bo Diddley’s “Who Do You Love?” that had Carlos Santana, hired as a soundtrack composer, playing with Los Lobos, and Bo himself offering a fresh vocal over everything.

“We were so happy to have the touch of Carlos Santana as part of Ritchie’s story,” said Luis Valdez. “It’s his guitar that underscores a lot of the scenes and he had a theme for each of the players. We screened the whole movie for him first and he was very moved by it and ready to go right away once he saw it without his contribution. He was alone on the soundstage at Paramount, where we recorded his soundtrack, doing his magic with his guitar. He became a great friend as a result of that. It’s incredible what an artist can do.”

Actor Lou Diamond Phillips as Ritchie Valens in the 1987 film “La Bamba.”

(Merrick Morton)

The original soundtrack recording topped the Billboard pop charts and went double platinum.

Hackford loved pop music; his first feature film, “The Idolmaker” (1980), was a rock musical. Releasing hit music became a key promotional element of the package. In advance of 1982’s “An Officer and a Gentleman” came “Up Where We Belong” by Joe Cocker and Jennifer Warnes. It went to No. 1 a week after the opening. For 1984’s “Against All Odds,” he selected Phil Collins to sing the title cut, a song released three weeks before opening; the song soon went No. 1. 1985’s “White Nights” had two No. 1 songs, Lionel Ritchie’s “Say You Say Me” and Phil Collins and Marilyn Martin’s duet “Separate Lives.”

One looming problem for “La Bamba” was that the 1987 moviegoing public was not familiar with the name Ritchie Valens. Hackford had ideas for that as well. He set out to introduce him to contemporary audiences — convincing the studio to fund a unique teaser trailer to run weeks before the official movie trailer went into theaters.

The producer assembled a parade of familiar faces to reintroduce Valens. The short film included Canadian hitmaker Bryan Adams and Little Richard talking about the icon. There was also the vision of Bob Dylan in a top-down convertible riding along the Pacific Coast Highway. The 17-year-old Dylan was present at a Valens concert in Duluth, Minn., just days before the plane crashed; he popped up talking about what Valens’ music meant to him. “You bet it made a difference,” said Hackford.

After the “La Bamba” soundtrack became a hit (there was also a Volume Two), Los Lobos made the most of their elevated success. They had experienced head-turning celebrity with “La Bamba,” and they followed it up with “La Pistola y El Corazón,” a gritty selection of mariachi and Tejano songs played on acoustic traditional instruments. They had banked cultural capital and directed their large new audience to this music that many had never heard before. “La Pistola y El Corazón” won a Grammy in 1989 for Mexican-American performance.

The “La Bamba” soundtrack helped set a precedent for the crossover global success of Latin music, which has become a major force in mainstream pop culture. From Ricky Martin and Jennifer Lopez to Shakira, Bad Bunny, Peso Pluma, Becky G, Anitta, J Balvin, Karol G and Maluma, among others who are dominating the charts, racking up billions of streams, headlining massive tours and festivals.

Does Hackford think “La Bamba” helped set the table for subsequent Latino pop star success?

“I think the one who set the table was Ritchie Valens. He recorded a song in Spanish, a rock ’n’ roll version of a folk song, and he made it a huge hit.

“I challenge you, any party you go to — wedding reception, bar mitzvah, whatever it is — when ‘La Bamba’ comes on, the tables clear and everybody gets up to dance. That’s Ritchie Valens; he deserves that credit. We came afterwards.”

RJ Smith is a Los Angeles-based author. He has written for Blender, the Village Voice, Spin, GQ and the New York Times Magazine. His books include “The Great Black Way,” “The One: The Life and Music of James Brown” and “Chuck Berry: An American Life.”