The new Shark fan can blast blades of air in any direction, and it’s set to make summer far more bearable
The new Shark fan can blast blades of air in any direction, and it’s set to make summer far more bearable
New Shark TurboBlade is a powerful, bladeless fan with an unusual design
Arms can pivot and twist to send directional blasts of air
Currently only available in the US, for $249.99
Released earlier this week, the new Shark TurboBlade reimagines what a fan should look like and how it should behave, and I think it could be absolutely amazing when the hot weather kicks in. The fan part is made up of two arms, each of which blasts out a blade of concentrated air. These arms can be angled up and down, to direct the airflow, and the bit they’re attached to can also be rotated – so they can blast air horizontally (‘Blanket mode’) or vertically (‘Tower mode’). The whole thing is height-adjustable too.
The two blades are independently articulated, which means you can position them so one is pointing in a completely different direction to the other – so one can go high and the other low, or one can go right while the other’s going left.
(Image credit: Shark)
Like most of today’s best fans, it can still be set to oscillate, too. For that, the blades are oriented into ‘tower mode’. The whole pillar will then turn, widening the cooling field up to 180 degrees. On maximum power, the TurboBlade can blast out air up to an impressive 80 feet.
There are 10 different settings to explore. In Sleep mode, sounds are muted, lights dimmed and fan speed is optimized for minimal disturbance. For night-time use, you might also want to deploy ‘AirBlanket’ mode, where the fan will expel a wide, horizontal jet of air, and do so quietly (kudos to whoever came up with that name; I’ve never wanted a chilly night’s sleep more).
Or if you’re feeling experimental, you could try ‘Natural Breeze’ mode. Here, the fan will randomize its airflow so it feels like you’re on, I guess, a windy mountainside or something, rather than stuck in a sweltering living room.
(Image credit: Shark)
This brand has form when it comes to innovative fans – last summer saw the release of the Shark FlexBreeze, which doesn’t just blast air but can also mist you with water vapor, to intensify the cooling process. The TurboBlade doesn’t do that, but it’s innovative nonetheless. Bladeless fans are fairly common now, but I’ve never seen one designed quite like this. In fact, I could imagine someone mistaking the TurboBlade for a lamp (and getting a surprise when switching it on).
While it looks a little odd, I’m really coming round to this design. While overall it’s on the larger side, the footprint is small and it can be adjusted into a space-saving upright orientation when not in use. Being bladeless, there are minimal nooks and crannies to trap dirt, so keeping it clean should be easy (the inlet grille has a removable, easy-clean filter to ensure the insides don’t get clogged up, too).
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It’s currently only available in the US, at a list price of $249.99, in a charcoal colorway with a white option due soon. No news yet as to whether it’ll also be coming to the ***, Australia or elsewhere.
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Africa’s week in pictures: 1-6 March 2025
Africa’s week in pictures: 1-6 March 2025
A selection of the week’s best photos from across the African continent and beyond:
Esa Alexander / Reuters
A reveller sees the bright side of life at the Cape Town Pride celebration in South Africa on Saturday.
Luc Gnago / Reuters
Four-year-old Maëlis Kouakou dresses up for Mardi Gras, or Shrove Tuesday, in Abidjan, Ivory Coast.
Marco Longari / AFP
The children’s parade gets going at the Luanda Carnival in Angola on Saturday…
Julio Pacheco Ntela / AFP
The theme for this year’s carnival is 50 years of Angolan independence.
Hector Quintanar / Getty Images
On Tuesday, people of African descent get ready for the Carnival of Coyolillo in Mexico. Their dances are described as being similar to others found in Mozambique, Mali and Zambia.
Emmanuel Adegboye / EPA
On the same day in Ibadan, Nigeria, art historian and designer Olushola Olajobi shows some of his pieces made from waste products.
Olympia de Maismont / AFP
The next day in Lagos, fashion designer Florentina Agu displays some of her creations.
Olympia de Maismont / AFP
Days earlier in the same city, Omobolaji Oyeleye, who runs a private security company, stands at the gates at one of her work sites in the upmarket Ikoyi suburb.
Abdul Bah Jalanzo / EPA
On Monday, motorcycle taxi drivers in Liberia’s capital, Monrovia, protest against the new ban on all motorcycle transport in the city.
Siphiwe Sibeko / Reuters
Namibians pay their respects to the country’s first president, Sam Nujoma, before his burial on Saturday.
Tiziana Fabi / AFP
On the same day, a well-wisher draped in the Congolese flag prays for the health of Pope Francis in the Italian capital, Rome.
Simon Maina / AFP
In Kenya’s capital, Nairobi, Catholic worshippers mark Ash Wednesday.
Robert Ciuccio / AFP
A woman joins evening prayers in South Africa’s Gauteng province on Sunday, the first day of the holy month of Ramadan.
Cem Ozdel / Getty Images
That evening after sundown at Senegal’s famous Massalikoul Djinane mosque, Muslims break their fast at the first iftar dinner of Ramadan.
Kim Ludbrook / EPA
At sunrise on Thursday, canoeists glide across the Emmarentia Dam in Johannesburg, South Africa.
Cem Ozdel / Getty Images
And at The Gambia’s Bijilo Forest Park on Wednesday, a curious red colobus monkey peers at the camera.
From the BBC in Africa this week:Getty Images/BBC
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Could Elon Musk’s newfound political influence help him finally crack India? | India
Could Elon Musk’s newfound political influence help him finally crack India? | India
It is easy to believe that Elon Musk’s reach knows no limits. But while the world’s richest man may control a space satellite empire, own one of the largest social media platforms, produce the world’s bestselling electric car, and have been given carte blanche by Donald Trump to gut the US government, there is one market that Musk has yet to properly crack: India.
Now, with his newfound influence over the Trump administration and global geopolitics, it appears likely that Musk’s entrance into the Indian market, both with his Tesla electric cars and his Starlink satellite internet, may come smoother and faster than expected.
When the Indian prime minister, Narendra Modi, travelled to Washington to meet Trump earlier this month, he also sat down privately with Musk, where according to the Indian government, the pair “discussed strengthening collaboration between Indian and US entities in innovation, space exploration, artificial intelligence, and sustainable development”.
Trump put it more bluntly: “I assume he [Musk] wants to do business in India.”
Up till now, India’s 110% tariffs on imported electric vehicles have prevented Tesla from entering the fast-growing Indian market. However, Musk vowed last year that Tesla would be in India “as soon as humanly possible” – and after his recent encounter with Modi, it seems he is keen to make that a reality.
Tesla has already begun advertising for jobs in Mumbai and Delhi, and has signed a lease to open its first showroom in Mumbai. Tesla could also take advantage of a new Indian government scheme which lowers import tariffs on electric vehicles to just 15% if they commit to investing $500m within three years in a factory that will manufacture the cars. However, the tax break only applies to the first 8,000 vehicles, a limit Tesla is likely to push back on.
A Tesla factory would be a boon for India, a country that is desperate for foreign investment and job creation, particularly in manufacturing. Nonetheless, Musk has a chequered record for his commitments to investing in India. Last year, he left the Modi government reeling after he made high-profile plans to travel to India, and had dangled the possibility of a $3bn investment to build a Tesla factory in the country, only to cancel the trip last minute. Instead, he travelled to rival China – another huge market that Musk has been equally keen to capitalise on – to cut a major deal.
Elon Musk at the opening of the Tesla factory in Berlin, Germany, in 2022. Photograph: Patrick Pleul/AP
Tesla also faces stiff competition from Indian manufacturers, who are already making and selling popular electric SUVs for about a quarter of the £35,000 starting price that a Tesla costs, which would be far above the budget of most Indian families. (Sales of Tesla cars are also plummeting globally, with a 45% decline in Europe in January.)
Trump too has appeared less enthusiastic about Musk’s ambitions to start making Teslas in India. “Now, if he built the factory in India, that’s OK, but that’s unfair to us. It’s very unfair,” Trump told Fox News.
Another possibly more lucrative finger in India’s pie for Musk could be Starlink, the satellite internet technology operated by his SpaceX company. Globally, Musk already has a dominant lead on satellite internet, with more than half of all satellites in the skies.
Since 2021, he has been fixated on getting Starlink into India. While the current appetite for satellite internet in India is tiny, it is expected to grow to a $1.9bn (£1.5bn) market by 2030 according to Deloitte and is seen as a crucial entry point into India’s flourishing telecomms industry.
Speaking to reporters earlier this year, after Trump’s inauguration, at which Musk was highly prominent, India’s communications minister confirmed that Starlink was in the process of seeking necessary security permissions to operate in India.
Jyotiraditya Scindia said: “When you check all the boxes, you get the licence. If they [Starlink] do that, we will be very happy.”
Yet in India, telecoms, including satellite internet, are among the most strictly regulated and controlled industries in India, placing vast obstacles in the way of foreign companies such as Musk’s being granted security permissions to operate.
In particular, Musk’s close connections and business interests in China and the use of Starlink in the Ukraine war were seen as possibly insurmountable cybersecurity issues, as well as the ability of SpaceX to be able to control access to Starlink’s satellite internet from outside the country. The Indian governmentunder Modi has routinely ordered internet providers to block critical online content and used internet blackouts as a means of information control.
These fears could be heightened after sources in the Indian state of Manipur, which borders Myanmar, told the Guardian earlier this year that Starlink was already being used by militant groups in the state to circumvent regular internet shutdowns being imposed after outbreaks of ethnic violence.
A recent Indian thinktank report warned that Starlink was a “wolf in sheep’s clothing”, citing its use by US intelligence agencies and military, and warned of its potential to be used to undermine Indian security.
Yet, after the election of Trump, some believe that the Indian government may be more willing to side-step those concerns. “I think before the US election results came through, India would have had their doubts about giving Musk’s Starlink security clearance,” said Nikhil Pahwa, the founder of MediaNama, an Indian tech news platform.
“One of the things that India relies on is control over internet access and control over its operators. But now that Musk is a part of the US government, his leverage in India has certainly increased and his chances of Starlink clearing security approvals have probably improved dramatically – or at least will happen much faster.”
Starlink could provide satellite internet to rural areas but some have raised fears it could be used to undermine Indian security. Photograph: Nikolas Kokovlis/NurPhoto/Shutterstock
Pahwa said the decision on Starlink by the Indian government was now “as much of a political decision as a security decision”.
What’s been called “Starlink diplomacy” – opening up the country to Musk’s satellites in an apparent attempt to gratify the Trump administration – has already been evident in neighbouring Bangladesh, where this week the country’s interim leader, Muhammad Yunus, suddenly extended an invitation for Musk to launch Starlink in the country within 90 days.
Even prior to the re-election of Trump, the Indian government had already made manoeuvres favourable to Starlink’s ambitions. In October, the government announced that satellite spectrum for broadband would be allocated administratively rather than through auction, something that Musk had lobbied hard for. “We will do our best to serve the people of India with Starlink,” said Musk on X in response.
The decision means that Starlink has a far better opportunity to compete against Indian telecoms companies in the battle for control over the country’s satellite internet market. It was met with anger by some of the country’s biggest operators such as Jio, who also have vast ambitions in the satellite internet space, and have since been lobbying the government to reverse its decision on the auction.
One of the main benefits of satellite internet is that it can offer internet access even in the most remote areas. However, in India, most people living in rural areas are unlikely to be able to afford it, unless at heavily subsidised prices.
Prasanto K Roy, a technology analyst, said it could set off a pricing war with India’s biggest telecom operators if Starlink repeated what it has done in Africa with heavily reduced pricing, where Starlink costs about $10 compared with $120 in the US. Jio, whose success in mobile internet came from undercutting every competitor, making India’s mobile internet some of the cheapest in the world, is likely to follow suit.
“Starlink won’t find it as easy in India as it has in other markets, there is very strong competition here so it will be hard for it to gain a monopoly, even with low prices,” said Roy.
He added: “Those using Starlink are obviously going to be a very tiny niche at the top of the socioeconomic pyramid. But once he’s got a hold, it is something Musk could really leverage in India.”
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Climate activists will have sentences reduced
Climate activists will have sentences reduced
Six climate change activists, including the founder of Just Stop Oil (JSO), have had their sentences reduced, the Court of Appeal has heard.
Roger Hallam and 15 other protesters were jailed last year for their roles in four demonstrations held by JSO, including climbing on gantries over the M25 and throwing soup over Vincent van Gogh’s Sunflowers painting.
They challenged their sentences at the Court of Appeal, with their lawyers claiming they were “manifestly excessive”.
During the hearing, about two dozen JSO supporters stood up and turned their backs on the judges while wearing white T-shirts with the words “Corruption in Court”.
In a judgment on Friday, the Lady Chief Justice Baroness Carr, Mr Justice Lavender and Mr Justice Griffiths ruled that six of the 16 should have their sentences reduced while dismissing the other appeals.
Hallam was originally jailed for five years for agreeing to disrupt traffic by having protesters climb onto gantries over the M25 for four successive days. His sentence was reduced to four years.
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Extreme Networks scores next-gen Wi-Fi deal with United Soccer League
Extreme Networks scores next-gen Wi-Fi deal with United Soccer League
In a further expansion of the tech firm’s work in providing wireless solutions to sports clubs and organisations around the world, especially with football, the United Soccer League (USL) has selected Extreme Networks to be its Official Wi-Fi Solutions and Analytics Supplier.
Founded in 1986 and based in Tampa, Florida, the USL claims to be the largest and fastest growing pre-professional and professional soccer organisation in in North America, bringing the world’s game to communities across the US and Canada.
Counting more than 200 clubs in its membership, it oversees three men’s leagues (USL Championship, USL League One, USL League Two), two women’s leagues (USL Super League, USL W League), one elite player development platform (USL Academy), and a national youth platform (USL Youth). The USL Championship reaches a population of more than 84 million.
Looking at the rationale for the technology deployment, Extreme Wireless noted that modern stadium experiences, from retail point-of-***** (POS) systems to mobile ticketing and mobile concessions, all require secure connectivity built for high-density environments.
It stressed that the modern reality was that new generations of fans needed new generations of Wi-Fi. Moreover, it said fans, IT and operations teams now rely on an increasing number of applications and devices for everything including in-seat concessions ordering, social media sharing and live-streaming.
“As we continue to grow, it’s essential that our stadiums are equipped with networks capable of meeting the demands of our fans and operations,” said Josh Keller, senior vice-president of corporate development, United Soccer League.
“With Extreme, teams across our league now have access to the most powerful Wi-Fi solutions available today. This partnership enables us to enhance fan engagement, streamline operations and build a robust network foundation to embrace emerging sports technologies, ensuring the USL remains at the forefront of professional sports.”
The deployment includes Extreme’s Wi-Fi 7 solutions, including the AP5020 platform, which are designed to meet the challenges of dense indoor and outdoor environments while delivering increased network capacity for the required enhanced seamless experience.
Extreme also guaranteed that it could provide USL with actionable insights for continuously improved operations, enabling teams to elevate game-day experiences with granular network analytics that reveal fan activity and preferences. Specifically, the ExtremeCloud Business Insights for Venues solution has been implemented to help identify peak network usage, popular apps and high-traffic areas, enabling teams to spot trends and tailor offerings for maximised engagement.
The new technology also provides a basis for streamlined operations and simplified cloud management – USL teams can streamline operations with ExtremeCloud IQ and Universal ZTNA, helping to ensure easy network management, enhanced security and enhanced fan Wi-Fi.
With its Wi-Fi and cloud networking solutions, Extreme Wireless assured that USL would be able to allow its teams to deliver what it believes will be “seamless” fan experiences while gaining actionable insights on both fan behaviour and network performance and benefit from streamlined operations.
“In soccer, where every second counts, a well-connected stadium transforms the matchday experience. Whether it’s powering security surveillance, point-of-***** systems, fans’ social media posts or media broadcasts, low-latency Wi-Fi is critical to the overall experience,” said Extreme Networks chief commercial officer Norman Rice.
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Do You Like Your History With Imaginative Leaps or Grounded in Fact?
Do You Like Your History With Imaginative Leaps or Grounded in Fact?
It takes a lot for me to lose patience. My first biography, “The Peabody Sisters,” about three unsung heroines of New England’s Transcendentalist movement, took two decades to research and write, yet my interest in the thousands of pages of handwritten letters and journals I — a stickler for accuracy — had to read to tell their life stories never waned. The same held true through the seven years I spent on a biography of the sisters’ better-known colleague Margaret Fuller, friend to Ralph Waldo Emerson, editor of Henry David Thoreau and the leading American feminist of her day. (One life, one-third the time!)
Maybe that’s why it took only a few seconds for me to blow my top over an email from a librarian in Groton, Mass., inviting me to speak about Fuller, who’d lived a few crucial years in the town. I’d skimmed the librarian’s email and picked up the key details — Margaret Fuller, Community Read of 2025, the popularity of your visit two years ago. Halfway through drafting a message of acceptance, I realized my mistake: It wasn’t my book that had been chosen for the town to read. It was “Finding Margaret Fuller,” Allison Pataki’s newly published historical novel, her sixth in a decade, all but one featuring a female renegade. (That’s 1.67 years per book.) I was being called in to offer an expert’s gloss.
I had not gone rusty regarding Margaret Fuller. I’d just spent five years collaborating with two Fuller scholars on “Margaret Fuller: Collected Writings,” which was published in February by the Library of America. I was still at the top of this game. I could be pardoned, I thought, for misreading the invitation. Could this history-conscious blue-state exurb really have chosen fiction over fact?
But I can’t be pardoned for blowing up at a librarian. Yes, I’m ashamed to say, I let her have it. Had she read far enough in the book (Page 27) to find that Pataki’s Margaret Fuller knows how to swim? (Fuller drowned in 1850 at age 40 in a shipwreck within sight of shore because, like most women and men and even many sailors in her day, she couldn’t swim.) In the novel, Fuller’s mother warns her daughter against earning her living by public speaking, citing a law forbidding women to collect fees for lecturing. No such law. In any case, Fuller’s widowed mother relied on her adult daughter for advice, not the other way around.
And what of more trivial yet telling gaffes? At dinner with the Emersons, Fuller takes “quick, appreciative spoonfuls” of a fish stew spiced with garlic and lemon, when no New Englander cooked with garlic then — few Yankees did until Julia Child’s “The French Chef” aired on WGBH in 1963. I could have continued: Working on her first book in Harvard’s Gore Hall library in 1843, Pataki’s Fuller marvels at the “dust that lines the thousands of bookshelves.” Oops! Gore Hall was brand-new, just completed in 1841. Fuller accepts a job as literary editor for The New-York Tribune after Horace Greeley, her future boss, coaxes, “I’m looking for new content.”
Garlic, dust and “content”? Of such details worlds are made, whether fictional or non-. Part of the thrill in visiting the past through books comes from learning about its physical makeup, its inhabitants’ customs and ways of expressing themselves — feeling as if you are there. Do we really want to draw back the curtain on history and find people talking and acting the way we do? In Pataki’s novel, Emerson urges Fuller to “share” her feelings; in childhood, Margaret can’t “relate” to her peers; numerous characters pause for “a beat” before reacting, and “throw” smirks or sideways glances at one another. Is this the past?
The librarian in Groton didn’t reply — and no wonder. As a friend reminded me when I confided my fit of pique, and as I already knew from my own librarian grandmother, public library staff members simply want people to read. They don’t, and shouldn’t, care what.
And people are reading Pataki’s “Finding Margaret Fuller.” According to BookScan, the novel has sold nearly twice as many copies in the past year as my biography has since it was awarded a Pulitzer Prize in 2014. Similarly, “The Lioness of Boston” (2023), Emily Franklin’s novel about the fine art collector and museum founder Isabella Stewart Gardner, is selling at nearly triple the rate of Natalie Dykstra’s pitch-perfect biography, “Chasing Beauty” (2024).
One of the most successful of these recent bio-fictions, “The Personal Librarian” (2021), by Marie Benedict and Victoria Christopher Murray, was a “Good Morning America” book club pick and has been rated by close to 200,000 readers on Goodreads, dwarfing the 1,300 garnered by Jean Strouse’s exemplary “Morgan: American Financier” (1999), which broke the story of Belle da Costa Greene, the ****** woman whose decision to pass as white enabled her to curate J.P. Morgan’s collection of rare books and manuscripts.
I know: I’m beginning to sound like Nathaniel Hawthorne, inaccurately portrayed in “Finding Margaret Fuller” as the “local rogue,” who notoriously complained, in a letter to his publisher, of the “damn’d mob of scribbling women” whose popular novels were cutting into the sales of his own more literary fictions. Worse, I’m turning against my own kind — female writers and readers who are drawn to stories about women of the past. Maybe I shouldn’t fault them for preferring leaps of the imagination over retellings grounded in fact.
Literary critics have been worrying the question of why people read what they do for decades. In “Reading From the Heart: Women, Literature and the Search for True Love” (1994), Suzanne Juhasz speculates that women in particular seek to “live inside” female characters as a means of experiencing the nurturing of an “author-mother,” to “feel her care and love, her reliability.” For such readers, the way a character speaks may not really matter as long as she inspires them; perhaps all the better if she sounds like the reader herself.
In “Fantasy Echo: History and the Construction of Identity,” a 2001 essay, the historian Joan W. Scott questions the assumption that we should find meaning in the past through “empathetic identification” made possible by “universal human characteristics or … a transcendent set of traits” belonging to particular ethnic, religious or gender groups. Cultivating such identification requires a writer to establish, through narrative artifice, “scenarios that are at once historically specific in their representation and detail and transcendent of historical specificity” into which the reader can insert herself.
Moreover, Scott, paraphrasing the philosopher Slavoj Zizek, maintains that “the imposition of narrative logic on history is itself a fantasy.” For Scott, any rendering of the past that “extracts coherence from confusion, reduces multiplicity to singularity” and “enables individuals and groups to give themselves histories” is wishful thinking.
By this reasoning, my biography is not so different from Pataki’s novel: Both offer a sequence of scenes that transport readers imaginatively across time. Still, I’d like to underscore Scott’s phrase, “historically specific in their representation and detail” — the garlic?
Some readers of biographical novels are plagued by the question: Did this really happen? In a biography, a reader need not be troubled by that question — or can check the author’s sources, if in doubt. (I hope a few of Pataki’s readers will wonder whether Hawthorne really was the “local rogue” and look up a good biography.)
In his book “Sublime Historical Experience” (2005), the intellectual historian Frank Ankersmit objects to the critique of “narrativism” by Scott and others for passing off “historical writing as being merely a variant of the novel.” There can be no perfect representation of the past — we’d need all of time to recount it — yet Ankersmit believes writers can still “do justice” to it.
And justice, I think, is what I was seeking (and not finding) in Pataki’s version of Margaret Fuller. There are plenty of biographical novels in which facts and accurately rendered ******* detail support a made-up plot. Colm Tóibín’s “The Master” won me over with its astute evocation of Henry James’s ruminating genius (despite a slip involving his depiction of Hawthorne’s sisters). My favorites are novels that don’t seek to pass for biographies, in which the play of the author’s imagination with people of the past takes center stage, and questions of verisimilitude recede: Matthew Pearl’s literary whodunit, “The Dante Club”; Rebecca Goldstein’s intellectual Gothic, “The Dark Sister”; Alice Hoffman’s fanciful romance, “The Invisible Hour.”
But artful fictions aren’t what readers of “Finding Margaret Fuller” are necessarily looking for. Through the decades I spent writing my first biography, I often glanced up at a quotation I’d taped to the wall above my desk from a 1987 essay by Cynthia Ozick in The New York Times that addressed “our unslakable infatuation with the rich-blooded old novel’s royal cousin,” biography. This was a time when formal experimentation was de rigueur in fiction and the death of the novel was routinely predicted.
“With genius as its frequent subject,” Ozick wrote, “biography is the one remaining form that can — old-fashioned thought! — inspire.” Could Ozick have guessed that, in the next century, Pataki and her sister novelists would seize on just this aspect of biography? “What a woman! What a story!” Marie Benedict wrote in a blurb for “Finding Margaret Fuller,” adding that the book “promises to transform every reader it touches.”
There are those who argue that “novels have a way of getting to the truth of situations,” as the historian Robert Parkinson writes in the introduction to “Heart of American Darkness: Bewilderment and Horror on the Early Frontier” (2024); fiction can “connect us to the past by capturing things that often elude scrupulous, source-bound historians.” Parkinson adopted Conrad’s novella “Heart of Darkness” as his lodestar in writing his nonfiction account of a Revolutionary-era episode of savagery in the Ohio River Valley. “The totality of all the pain Kurtz has inflicted,” Parkinson contends, “is evident more in his whispering of two ghastly words — ‘the horror’ — than would be a list of all of his colonial crimes.”
Yet I doubt that’s true. “Heart of Darkness” is a psychological drama, no more an exposé of “colonial crimes” than “Moby-*****” is of the barbaric whaling industry. Both works are diminished if read for information; nor is historical “justice” served. Adam Hochschild’s “King Leopold’s Ghost” is the narrative (nonfiction) I’d turn to if I wanted to take in “the horror” of what happened in the Congo. I’d even prefer the list.
I let a few days pass and then emailed my apology to the librarian, offering to give the talk after all, and I was forgiven. I hope that some in my audience will be moved to read other books about and, more urgently, by Margaret Fuller — her utterly original “Summer on the Lakes, in 1843” and “Woman in the Nineteenth Century”; her letters and journals now in print — and discover that one needn’t break a law or know how to swim to be a bold woman.
Maybe someone will be inspired to replicate the meal served by the Emersons at an “all-day party” on Sept. 1, 1837, when Fuller and other members of the Transcendental Club gathered to celebrate their host’s delivery of the “American Scholar” address at Harvard the day before: a “noble great piece” of beef, a leg of mutton, cucumbers, tomatoes, lettuce, applesauce and rice pudding with currants. “The office of the scholar,” Emerson had told his audience, “is to cheer, to raise and to guide men by showing them facts amidst appearances.”
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Herd on the Terrace: Tony Sage hits big time on Fox as he flogs Critical Metals’ Ukraine, Greenland ambitions
Herd on the Terrace: Tony Sage hits big time on Fox as he flogs Critical Metals’ Ukraine, Greenland ambitions
Tony Sage has clearly hit the big time as he promotes his NASDAQ-listed wishful Critical Metals Corp.
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How to Use Tarot Cards in Balatro—All Tarot Cards Explained
How to Use Tarot Cards in Balatro—All Tarot Cards Explained
Balatro lets you play the roguelike in many ways, and Tarot Cards is a system in itself. Jokers take the acclaim, but sometimes you don’t need them if you know how to use Tarot Cards. This walkthrough aims to show you the tips and tricks to triumph.
I write this guide as someone who’s been on the other side of the fence: Wondering what a Joker does when it appears, and being blindsided by Planet Cards, Spectral Cards, Antes, round conditions, and Tarot Cards. Balatro’s popularity has risen even further thanks to Xbox Game Pass, and there are more new (and just as confused) players than ever.
You’re here because you seek information about Balatro’s Tarot Cards—one of the roguelike’s many consumables. This explanation aims to solve a lot of your confusion and simplify the concept.
What do Tarot Cards do in Balatro?
It’s all a bit much if you’re new. Image by Insider Gaming
Tarot Cards are a special consumable designed to manipulate your deck to give you more of the cards you want, change card suits, give you more Jokers, and add to your money.
I can tell you Tarot Cards are so good you can win games of Balatro using only them. The Star, The Moon, The Sun, and The World can change three cards to the different suits. This is great if you want a Flush deck, Flush House, or Flush Five for big scores.
Tarot Cards are also a great money-making method, with Temperance and The Hermit assisting your economy. Plus, using Tarot Cards can create an abundance of Glass Cards and Steel Cards—which can win games on their own!
All Tarot Cards in Balatro & What They Do
There are 22 Tarot Cards in Balatro, each with a unique function. Knowing what each one does is vital as you can get free money and enhance your deck with special cards.
If you ever need a quick list to cross-reference, here’s every Tarot Card in Balatro and its purpose.
Tarot Card Name
What it Does
The Fool
Creates the last Tarot or Planet card used during this run (The Fool excluded).
The Magician
Enhances 2 selected cards into Lucky Cards.
The High Priestess
Creates up to 2 random Planet cards (must have room).
The Empress
Enhances 2 selected cards to Mult Cards.
The Emperor
Creates up to 2 random Tarot cards (must have room).
The Hierophant
Enhances 2 selected cards to Bonus Cards.
The Lovers
Enhances 1 selected card into a Wild Card.
The Chariot
Enhances 1 selected card into a Steel Card.
Justice
Enhances 1 selected card into a Glass Card.
The Hermit
Doubles money (maximum of $20).
The Wheel of Fortune
1 in 4 chance to add Foil, Holographic, or Polychrome edition to a random Joker.
Strength
Increases rank of up to 2 selected cards by 1.
The Hanged Man
Destroys up to 2 selected cards.
Death
Select 2 cards, convert the left card into the right card (drag to rearrange).
Temperance
Gives the total sell value of all current Jokers (max of $50).
The ******
Enhances 1 selected card into a Gold Card.
The Tower
Enhances 1 selected card into a Stone Card.
The Star
Converts up to 3 selected cards to Diamonds.
The Moon
Converts up to 3 selected cards to Clubs.
The Sun
Converts up to 3 selected cards to Hearts.
Judgment
Creates a random Joker card (must have room).
The World
Converts up to 3 selected cards to Spades.
How to Get Tarot Cards in Balatro
You can get Tarot Cards from Arcana Packs, as random Cards in the Store, through certain Joker conditions, Purple-Seal Cards, choosing the Zodiac Deck, and you can increase the amount of Tarot Cards that appear in the end-of-round Shop through the Tarot Merchant and Tarot Tycoon Vouchers.
Arcana Packs
You can buy Arcana Packs or earn them as a free reward for skipping a Blind. Choosing a Jumbo or Mega Pack is a better choice though as this allows you to have a ******* selection of cards and choose two of five with a Mega Pack.
Jokers
Balatro has a few Jokers that can give Tarot Cards under certain conditions. Here’s a list of each one and how it works:
8-Ball Joker—Has a “1 in 4 chance for each played 8 to create a Tarot card when scored (Must have room)”
Superposition—”Create a Tarot card if poker hand contains an Ace and a Straight. (Must have room)”
Vagabond—”Create a Tarot card if hand is played with $4 or less.”
Hallucination—”1 in 2 chance to create a Tarot card when any Booster Pack is opened. (Must have room)”
Showman—”Joker, Tarot, Planet, and Spectral cards may appear multiple times.”
Cartomancer—”Create a Tarot card when Blind is selected. (Must have room)”
Purple Seals
If you add a card to your deck with a Purple Seal, or say you create one using the Medium Spectral Card, you can discard that card during a Blind, and it automatically generates a Tarot Card.
Store
Tarot Cards can appear in the Shop after defeating a blind. It’s completely random, but it’s an option—and each Reroll gives you a chance of pulling a Tarot Card.
Vouchers
The Tarot Merchant and Tarot Tycoon Vouchers increase your chances of Tarot Cards appearing in the Shop. Here’s each voucher, how to unlock it, and what it does.
Voucher Name
What it Does
How to Unlock
Tarot Merchant
Tarot Cards appear 2X more frequently in the shop.
Already unlocked from the beginning.
Tarot Tycoon
Tarot Cards appear 4X more frequently in the shop.
Buy a total of 50 Tarot Cards from the shop.
Zodiac Deck
The Zodiac Deck starts you with the following goodies: Tarot Merchant, Planet Merchant, and Overstock.
Tarot and Planet Cards feature heavily in the Shop as a result. In this case, you get more Tarot Cards than you would normally. Plus, if you have Tarot Tycoon unlocked, you’ve already bypassed Tarot Merchant and are one step closer to it.
I hope you leave this guide knowing more (if not everything) about Balatro’s Tarot Cards. It’s an incredible mechanic that can shape decks, win runs, and deliver astounding results. If you have more questions about Tarot Cards—or other Balatro gameplay mechanics—leave a comment below.
If you enjoyed this Balatro guide, I have good news as we have many more. Expand your knowledge by knowing what -1 Ante -1 Hand each round means, how to beat The Plant Boss Blind, what the Blank Voucher does, and you need to check out the best Balatro Seeds.
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South Korea military drills pause after accidental bombing may hinder upcoming exercises with U.S., experts say – CBS News
South Korea military drills pause after accidental bombing may hinder upcoming exercises with U.S., experts say – CBS News
South Korea military drills pause after accidental bombing may hinder upcoming exercises with U.S., experts say CBS NewsSouth Korean Fighter Jets Mistakenly Bomb Village, Leaving 7 Injured The New York TimesSouth Korea says number injured in fighter jet misfire rises to 29 Reuters‘Like a battle field’: See South Korean city after jets accidentally drop bombs on homes CNN
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5 Children’s Movies to Stream Now
5 Children’s Movies to Stream Now
During his acceptance speech at the Oscars on Sunday, the Latvian director Gints Zilbalodis (“Away”) spoke about overcoming our differences, a central theme of his movie and a lesson that feels more urgent today than ever. “Flow,” which won best animated feature film, is the dreamy tale of a ****** cat with huge, expressive yellow eyes. After getting caught in a sudden and enormous flood, the cat finds an old sailboat and then meets a capybara, a benevolent Labrador retriever, a secretary bird and a lemur along the way. The unlikely crew must learn to accept one another and work together to survive in their strange, beautiful, post-flood world.
There’s zero dialogue in this film, which might pose a challenge for children who are used to movies with rapid-fire chatter like “Sonic the Hedgehog,” but the animals here are so expressive, distinct and endearing, it’s easy to get swept up into the story. Even my son, a fierce dog lover who “hates cats,” gave it a go. Zilbalodis wrote the script with Matiss Kaza.
‘Plankton: The Movie’
Stream it on Netflix.
This is the latest in a string of animated musical features starring different characters from Nickelodeon’s “SpongeBob SquarePants” universe, created by Stephen Hillenburg. Our hero (well, antihero) this go-round is Plankton (voiced by Mr. Lawrence), a little green one-eyed baddie intent on taking over Bikini Bottom and then the world. When Plankton’s wife, Karen (Jill Talley), gets angry at him, she transforms into a rage-filled hydra-headed computer who has her own plan for world domination.
The plot is downright wacky, which makes sense given that this is based on a show about a yellow sponge who wears shorts and a necktie. Along the way, SpongeBob (Tom Kenny) occasionally transforms into a Freudian psychologist who analyzes Plankton to figure out what the heck is wrong with him. In the end, Plankton learns a little bit about empathy.
The original songs by Mark and Bob Mothersbaugh, Linda Perry and Bret McKenzie give the musical numbers a psychedelic-punk-comedy vibe. When Sandy Cheeks got her own movie last summer, my son watched it on repeat, so time will tell whether Plankton wields as much power over his imagination. Dave Needham (“The Loud House Movie”) directed, and the screenplay is by Mr. Lawrence and Kaz, and Mr. Lawrence and Chris Viscardi.
‘Pil’s Adventures’
Stream it on Prime Video.
Pil (voiced by Eleanor Noble in the English version) is a barefoot orphan snagging scraps of food in the streets of her medieval town. But Pil is, above all, kind. She loves animals, dreams of having friends and just wants to get by day to day. With her punked-out braids, she looks a little bit like a sweet animated version of a “Mad Max” character. She tries to keep her chin up even when the townspeople reject her. One day she sees the dastardly Lord Tristain (Terrence Scammell) try to poison young Prince Roland (Scott Humphrey) before Roland becomes king. Instead of killing him, the poison turns Roland into a half-chicken/half-cat creature. It’s then up to Pil, disguised as a princess, to help Roland and save the kingdom.
There are dragons, battles and sorceresses in this French film, as well as plenty of adventure to keep young viewers rapt. The French director Julien Fournet also wrote the screenplay.
‘Home Team’
Stream it on Netflix.
In this feel-good sports flick from Adam Sandler’s Happy Madison Productions, Kevin James plays a somewhat fictionalized version of the real N.F.L. coach Sean Payton, who got suspended in 2012 for his role in the New Orleans Saints bounty scandal. After his ouster in the film, Payton goes home to Texas to see his son, Connor (Tait Blum), and his ex-wife, Beth (played by Sandler’s real wife, Jackie Sandler). When he watches Conner’s Pop Warner football team, the Warriors, get destroyed on the field game after game, the dethroned coach steps in to help the kids discover their inner athletes.
Taylor Lautner plays the Warriors’ dedicated but worn-down coach, and Rob Schneider plays Beth’s new husband, Jamie, a Snuggie-wearing vegan with a man bun who is the opposite of Payton. The underdog story line will be familiar to fans of “The Bad News Bears” and “The Sandlot,” so expect plenty of “That’s how you become great!” pep talks and moments of redemption. This film is not one of Happy Madison’s best by any stretch, but for little ones who love uplifting sports movies, it’s worth a try. Charles and Daniel Kinnane, the filmmaking brothers known for their short films starring James, directed. Chris Titone and Keith Blum wrote the script.
Azzu (Alison Miller) and Gazzu (Amanda Sullivan) are twin aliens whose pod ******-landed on Earth when they were children. The duo were raised by the mustachioed Uncle George (Simon Speight), a scientist and gadget maker who trained them in “the art of self-defense and warfare.” They’re now 11 years old and the most famous detectives in the world. When the royal family summons the twins to solve a mystery and save them from an evil monster, Azzu and Gazzu embark on a great adventure.
This low-fi animated film out of India is a little rough around the edges, with visuals that resemble an amateur YouTube video, but in a pinch, younger children should find the twins’ antics entertaining. At the end, a new bad guy called the Golden Goon shows up, so who knows? Maybe there will be a sequel. Deborah C. Stone directed from a script by Srivinay Salian.
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Jonas Mekas, Master of Avant-Garde Film, Shows His Tender Side
Jonas Mekas, Master of Avant-Garde Film, Shows His Tender Side
One bit of footage shows issues of Film Culture magazine, which Mekas started in 1954 with his brother Adolfas, rolling from a printing press. Several of Mekas’s segments show the buzz of activity at the Film-Makers’ Cooperative, which he co-founded in 1961 to distribute little-known movies. Mekas was also the first full-time film critic for The Village Voice and helped found Anthology Film Archives, in addition to directing films including “Guns of the Trees,” a feature about the lives of two New York City couples, and “Reminiscences of a Journey to Lithuania,” about his eventual return.
A diary segment from the early 1990s shows Allen Ginsberg at a dinner party at the Manhattan loft where Mekas lived for decades before moving to Brooklyn. Ginsberg rhythmically taps a table as he intones: “I’m alone in the sky / Where there’s nothing to lose / The sun’s not eternal / That’s why there’s the blues.”
In another segment, Mekas theorizes that Andy Warhol used a camera to mask his withdrawn nature. “A shy person is not able to connect 100 percent,” Mekas says gazing into his own lens, adding that a camera is then “the chain that keeps you attached to the people around you.”
Davison said that the diarylike segments, in which Mekas spoke to the camera and shot footage as he walked around New York, are among the most revealing parts of his archive because “he was so open and vulnerable” in them.
“It’s almost like no one knew him as well as the camera knew him,” she said.
In one moment of openness, Mekas recalls that he and his brother were “full of doubts about civilization” by the time they got to the United States. “We loved you, world, but you did lousy things to us,” he says. Elsewhere in the film, he speaks about the first time he did “not feel alone in America.” Referring to Lithuania, he adds: “There was a moment when I forgot my home.”
In a 1990 segment, Mekas speaks about his days as a “displaced person” as he walks through the Lower East Side of Manhattan, noting that he had lived there and across the East River in Williamsburg after arriving in New York.
“There is a point somewhere where you don’t know anymore where your home really is,” Mekas says, turning the camera toward the river. “I think my real home is cinema.”
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BBC to show World Cup qualifiers live for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland
BBC to show World Cup qualifiers live for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland
Rhodri Talfan Davies, director of BBC Nations, said: “I’m absolutely delighted that fans across Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland will now be able to enjoy live, free-to-air coverage of all the big international football matches.
“Nothing fires the imagination more than live international sport and the race to qualify for the world’s biggest tournament. It’s going to be quite a ride and I’m thrilled the BBC will be there every step of the way.”
The matches will be shown on BBC One in each nation and BBC iPlayer – with key fixtures also being broadcast on network television across the ***.
The live games add to existing live international coverage on BBC Radio Wales, BBC Radio Ulster, BBC Radio Scotland, BBC Radio Cymru and the BBC Sport app.
Live games on the BBC in March
Thursday, 20 March – Greece v Scotland (Nations League)
Friday, 21 March – Northern Ireland v Switzerland (friendly)
Saturday, 22 March – Wales v Kazakhstan (World Cup qualifier)
Sunday, 23 March – Scotland v Greece (Nations League)
Tuesday, 25 March – Sweden v Northern Ireland (friendly), North Macedonia v Wales (World Cup qualifier)
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WA election 2025: Labor hit with election eve embarrassment as locally made C-series trains taken off lines
WA election 2025: Labor hit with election eve embarrassment as locally made C-series trains taken off lines
Labor has been slapped with an election eve embarrassment, with the Public Transport Authority pulling the State’s locally manufactured trains from service just hours after they were praised by the Government.
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A Panorama of Design Products
A Panorama of Design Products
This article is part of our Design special section about the reverence for handmade objects.
Practical, No-Fuss Pieces Fit for an Evolving Family
The Paris-based design studio Goons is presenting its first solo show and new collection at St. Vincents gallery in Antwerp, Belgium. Titled “Evolving Forms,” the show stars an adaptable dining set composed of a console and two dining tables that can be arranged in nine different ways. Also in the collection, which is made from Scandinavian birch plywood, are a stool, a bench and three chairs.
Goons’s co-founders, Mia Kim and Paul Trussler, blend their backgrounds in fashion and architecture to create multifunctional goods that can evolve with life’s ever-changing demands. In fact, many of their pieces, the couple said, were developed in response to the spontaneous needs of their own young family.
Visitors to the show are encouraged to experience the objects for themselves. “There’s definitely something more robust about our pieces that almost begs you to interact with it because it’s not so precious looking or so delicate,” Mr. Trussler said.
Far from being foolish or brutish, as the studio’s name suggests, these Goons are pragmatic and precise. “We don’t like to fuss around,” Ms. Kim said. Through March 23 at 13 Kleine Markt 13, Antwerp, Belgium; studiogoons.com — MORGAN MALGET
The Marble Chest Inspired by ************ Embroidery
Nisreen Abu Dail and Nermeen Abu Dail wanted to make something special for their young niece, Shams (“sun” in Arabic). As the founders of the 16-year-old design studio Naqsh Collective in Amman, Jordan, the sisters turned a retrospective eye to their own ************ heritage and translated the bold patterns of traditional embroidery into a marble bridal chest.
Nisreen, an architect in Amman, said the chest was inspired by a ************ wedding custom in which women assemble trousseaus from an early age. On the wedding day, “There is a tradition that the bride will sit on top of a chest that is filled with her precious wares,” she said.
Nermeen, a graphic designer who now lives in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, added, “Embroidery was a common language across all Palestinians in the diaspora and back at home in Jordan.”
The sisters recalled their aunts’ embroidering their own wedding garments, which sometimes took a year to complete, even with other women pitching in. The pair knew the craft, but not the meanings carried by the floral and animal motifs. So they learned them.
The White Bridal Chest for Shams is adorned with examples from their library of antique patterns. Inside the marble door, they carved a guide to the designs: cypress trees, plumed stitches known as “moon feathers” and beehives.
Unlike fabric, the sisters pointed out, the marble isn’t subject to decay. naqshcollective.com — SARAH ARCHER
Faux Cakes That Look Good Enough to Eat
Life was not always sweet for Heather Rios. “I didn’t have cake or candy when I was little,” said the artist, who grew up poor in rural Appalachia and now lives in Morgantown, W.Va. For kindergarten birthdays, a teacher would present a fake cake, made of cement and frosted with drywall spackle, then add candles for kids to blow out. “I would stare up at that thing; I couldn’t wait for it to be my birthday,” she said.
Today, Ms. Rios, 45, is making faux cakes of her own. The confections are embroidered on a hoop with ramenlike loops that she snips to look like fluffy, colorful layer cakes. Using piping bags, she applies acrylic paint as she would buttercream frosting.
She uses a conventional oven to bake polymer clay sprinkles and coconut flakes and often serves her creations on ceramic dessert plates. “I just like the idea of the subtly surreal, something from our reality, but slightly askew,” she said.
She opened an Etsy shop to sell her trompe l’oeil confections in 2018 after leaving an abusive relationship. “I was going through a hard time,” she said. “I started thinking about birthdays and celebrations. Regardless of where you’re from or your religion, people enjoy cake together. It’s a little bit of joy.” etsy.com/shop/HeatherRiosArte — YELENA MOROZ ALPERT
Household Objects Reveal Their Racial History
For the last 15 years, the art historian and curator Adrienne L. Childs has scoured institutional and private collections for luxurious European household objects that depict ****** people. These at times appalling yet mesmerizing pieces, which proliferated between the 17th and 19th centuries, are the subject of her new book, “Ornamental Blackness: The ****** Figure in European Decorative Arts.”
The figures, many semi-nude and enchained, muscles straining and backs bowed, support tabletops, fireplaces, doorways, cabinets, clocks, sugar bowls and candlesticks. Some were sculpted from raw materials — ebony, precious metals, gemstones — that were extracted from the earth or harvested by enslaved laborers.
For the manufacturers, Dr. Childs said, “They were tour de force objects,” while for the aristocratic owners, they amounted to “trophies of empire.”
Many pieces remain in their original princely quarters. In the Green Vault, part of a castle in Dresden, Germany, that has been turned into a museum, for example, figures of shirtless, bejeweled ****** men made in the early 1700s proffer trays full of emeralds and pearls. Avid collectors in more recent times have included the fashion mavens Diana Vreeland and Coco Chanel and the grotesquely brutal slaveholder Calvin Candie, played by Leonardo DiCaprio in the film “Django Unchained.”
Dr. Childs said that being in the presence of the depictions of subjugated people, sometimes little noticed in the corners at historic buildings, “feels sad to me.” She described them as “serving in perpetuity.” yalebooks.yale.edu — EVE M. KAHN
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Book Review: ‘The Peach Thief,’ by Linda Joan Smith
Book Review: ‘The Peach Thief,’ by Linda Joan Smith
Mr. Layton lends her gardening books, teaches her how to care for seedlings, and demonstrates how to pack delicate grapes and pears away for the winter. “Plants need limits,” he tells her. “As do people.” Nobody has seen value in her before, and she can’t quite believe it. The head gardener looks fearsome, but “behind his hardened scar” he’s “wick, full of life, like the stone of the peach itself.”
So is Mrs. Nandi, his Indian housekeeper, who carries her own scars and sees through “Brownie” before anyone else does. (Mrs. Nandi’s presence, along with the cultivation of exotics in the earl’s garden, hints at the colonialism that built estates like Bolton Hall.)
Every garden is a secret garden, revealing wonders, if you know how to look. Smith, an author of garden books and the former editor of Country Home magazine, writes with a hands-in-the-dirt affinity for the rhythms and needs of growing things. “The Peach Thief” bursts with sensory details: the sun-warmed velvet of a ripe peach, rhubarb plants with “stalks red as rubies must be,” “the hum of life” in the “tiny scrap of green” of a cauliflower seedling.
Not even a perfect peach will satisfy the hunger for affection that gnaws at Scilla. She falls under the spell of Phineas Blake, a gardener-in-training who could charm the stars out of the sky. His smile makes Scilla feel as if the sun has “shone right on her,” as if she’s been “cold all her life, craving sun,” and hasn’t known it.
For someone who’s never been wanted by anyone, the attention proves irresistible — and dangerous. Phin takes her on midnight raids of “the glass-houses,” the greenhouses where the earl’s precious fruit grows out of season, warmed by hot-water pipes. It’s a betrayal of Mr. Layton’s trust, but when Scilla tries to resist, “that empty place inside her” starts “begging away, as starved as ever.”
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Chrystia Freeland Eyes Justin Trudeau’s Job as Canada’s Liberal Party Leader
Chrystia Freeland Eyes Justin Trudeau’s Job as Canada’s Liberal Party Leader
The protester leaped on to the stage, lunged at Chrystia Freeland and screamed within inches of her face.
She didn’t flinch.
Her January campaign launch for leadership of the Liberal Party, and by extension Canada, was disrupted, but the encounter made a point no stump speech could have landed as effectively: She’s unflappable.
Ms. Freeland, a career journalist from Alberta who rose through elite institutions to become a top politician, is now running to replace the man who brought her into politics, Justin Trudeau.
On Sunday, Canada’s Liberal Party will announce the results of its election for a new leader, chosen by 400,000 members. The winner will also become Canada’s prime minister, though not for long: The party does not command a majority in Parliament, so has a weak grip on power. Federal elections must take place before October.
Ms. Freeland’s dramatic December resignation as finance minister, deputy prime minister, and all-around right-hand woman to Mr. Trudeau triggered his own decision to step down, plunging Canada into political turmoil.
This has come as Canada is thrust in crisis. This week President Trump made good on his threat to impose sweeping tariffs on ********* goods and, while he eased some of those measures Thursday, he made plain he would continue to hit Canada’s economy with surcharges.
Canada retaliated, entering an uneven trade war with its closest economic partner. Mr. Trump has also menaced Canada in a more existential way, insisting he wants to make it the 51st state.
Grist in the Mill
Canadians are evaluating their political leaders on the basis of who is best to fight for Canada against Mr. Trump, polling shows. Ms. Freeland, 56, is the underdog. She is running against a friend, the former central banker Mark Carney, who is the front-runner.
Mr. Trump has repeatedly expressed his dislike of Ms. Freeland.
During his first presidency, she led the ********* side on the renegotiation of the North Atlantic Free Trade Agreement. By all accounts, she drove a tough bargain and won concessions for Canada.
When she announced she was stepping down in December, Mr. Trump posted, “Her behavior was totally toxic.”
And last week, in an interview with the British outlet The Spectator, he doubled down: “She’s a whack,” he said. “She’s absolutely terrible for the country.”
But Ms. Freeland seems to be relishing the fight.
“Donald Trump doesn’t like me very much,” she says with a smile on one of her ads. On her Instagram, she posted a New York Times article about Mr. Trump disparaging her, adding a dismissive caption: a manicure emoji.
“I have a strategy when it comes to the single biggest challenge Canada is facing: fighting for Canada, standing up to Trump,” she said in an interview with The Times at her Toronto home last month.
And despite the antipathy, she had praise for him. “I have a lot of respect for President Trump,” she said. “He is not afraid of being a disrupter, he glories in it, and he knows how to use that to his own benefit, and in many situations, it works,” she added.
Less ardent critics see Ms. Freeland’s effort to differentiate herself from Mr. Trudeau as too little too late, and hold her accountable for her central role in his now unpopular government.
Liberal Rise
Ms. Freeland’s had a modest childhood, raised by divorced parents and spending long stretches working on the family farm in Peace River, Alberta, and in Edmonton, where her mother, a Ukrainian immigrant, worked as a lawyer.
Ms. Freeland left Alberta on a scholarship at 16 to finish high school at a selective international school in Italy. She later studied at Harvard and was a Rhodes scholar at Oxford.
While at Harvard she spent time in Ukraine as an exchange student, and became involved in Ukraine’s then nascent independence movement. Her activism reportedly caught the eye of the K.G.B., which code-named her “Frida.”
Declassified K.G.B. documents showed the Soviet intelligence service loathed and admired her, calling her “a remarkable individual,” according to a report in the Globe and Mail.
She rose within the ranks of some of international journalism’s most venerable institutions, serving as a senior editor at The Financial Times and Reuters, with a brief stint at Canada’s Globe and Mail.
Ms. Freeland is married to Graham Bowley, a reporter on the Culture desk of The New York Times; they have three children.
Former co-workers and friends describe her as preternaturally active and decidedly no-frills: much of the furniture in her home is second hand. Most surfaces in her living room are covered in books and Ukrainian art hangs on the walls. She is known to bicycle everywhere, no matter the weather. She forgoes security.
Minister of Everything
In 2013, she moved her family from New York to Toronto, after Mr. Trudeau convinced her to run as a Liberal Party candidate.
He had just been elected as leader, and the party was in tatters, stuck in third place. Ms. Freeland takes pride in making what she calls “iconoclastic, high-risk decisions” and leaving journalism to join a party in bad shape was one of them.
“I called up lots of people, my friends, lifetime mentors, and everyone’s advice was: ‘Do not do it,’” she said.
Ms. Freeland won her seat and, within two years, Mr. Trudeau had brought the party back from the dead. At his swearing in as prime minister in 2015, she was by his side.
She served in key jobs, including foreign and finance minister. The joke in Ottawa was that she was his “minister of everything.” Her relentless energy and grasp of technical issues distinguished her, but her detractors said she came across as condescending or stiff in public.
She was heavily criticized for suggesting people cancel their Disney+ subscriptions as a response to an affordability crisis. Despite her own professed dedication to fiscal discipline, Ms. Freeland oversaw significant spending.
She remained loyal to Mr. Trudeau, even as Canadians started turning on him, and her leading role in his government has become a burden as she’s tried to separate herself from his legacy.
“People know there’s a difference between playing on a team and leading a team,” she said, adding that she was proud of the work she had done in government.
Family Drama
The end of her collaboration with Mr. Trudeau remains something of a mystery.
Mr. Trudeau, on a December Zoom call, told Ms. Freeland he would demote her to U.S.-Canada envoy and give her finance minister job to Mr. Carney, who is unelected.
Ms. Freeland and Mr. Trudeau had been in conflict over spending, believing some of his moves to ease financial burdens on Canadians were frivolous and politically motivated. She wanted to save money to deal with Mr. Trump’s tariffs, which she saw as inevitable.
She resigned soon after the Zoom call.
It was the final blow to Mr. Trudeau who, despite his unpopularity, had intended to remain Liberal leader and take the party to the next federal election.
Ms. Freeland said she did not anticipate her resignation would lead to Mr. Trudeau’s.
Mr. Trudeau has not commented on the events, nor has Mr. Carney, who did not agree to an interview.
Ms. Freeland’s campaign has been focused on reshaping a new image outside Mr. Trudeau’s shadow. She has been churning out detailed policy plans and broke with Mr. Trudeau on a controversial carbon tax that he had championed.
And she has tried to present herself as the grass roots, not the elite candidate — most of Mr. Trudeau’s cabinet has endorsed Mr. Carney — and in the process de-emphasize her own liberal establishment background.
“A failing of the center left is that it can be to be a little too technocratic, and to act like the technocrats have all the answers,” she said.
One of the first decisions she’ll make if she wins, is decide when to hold a federal election. She’s not in a hurry.
“It may well be that when we look at the situation in March and further challenges ahead in April, I may decide as prime minister, we may decide as Liberals, and frankly it may be the view of Canadians, that Canada would be better off having a stable government for a few months,” she said.
As for Mr. Carney who is, among other things, her youngest child’s godfather, she has been careful not to attack him.
“I have a lot of respect for Mark,” she said. “I would be really happy if he were to serve as finance minister in my government.”
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How the FDA lets chemicals pour into America’s food supply
How the FDA lets chemicals pour into America’s food supply
Joseph Shea, who sells athletic wear in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, wonders and worries about the food he eats.
The chemical ingredients with mystifying names. The references on product labels to unspecified natural or artificial flavors. The junk food that fits his budget but feels addictive and makes him feel unwell.
Shea, one of 1,310 people who responded to a poll the health policy research group KFF conducted on health care priorities, said he assumes the FDA is making sure the ingredients are safe.
In many cases, it is not.
The FDA’s restraints on food ingredients are limited and relatively feeble, especially compared with those in Europe, a KFF Health News examination found. There are at least 950 substances in our food that are not permitted in Europe, according to one expert’s estimate, and chemicals linked to health concerns show up in hundreds of products that line the shelves of American supermarkets.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the new head of the Department of Health and Human Services, has railed about the risks of food additives for years and has said he wants to end “the mass poisoning of American children.” At a March 6 confirmation hearing, Martin Makary, President Trump’s nominee to head the FDA, expressed concern about foods “with a lot of molecules that do not appear in nature.”
“These are chemicals that the industry insists are safe, a subset of which are concerning,” he said.
But the Trump administration’s initial moves to reduce staff at the FDA led the director of its food safety unit, Jim Jones, to resign last month and raised fears among food safety specialists that the administration could weaken oversight.
To a great extent, the FDA leaves it to food companies to determine whether their ingredients and additives are safe. Companies don’t have to tell the FDA about those decisions, and they don’t have to list all ingredients on their product labels.
Though pharmaceutical companies are required to share research on humans with the FDA, the agency is largely blind to what food-makers know about their products.
“The food industry does massive amounts of research that we have no access to,” Robert Califf told a Senate committee in December on his way out as FDA commissioner.
As a result: The FDA’s oversight of food additives is much weaker than its oversight of prescription drugs.
“There is good reason to be concerned about the chemicals that are routinely included in much of our food,” Califf testified.
Food is a big business. American consumers spend almost $1.7 trillion annually on food and beverages, according to Circana, a research and advisory firm.
Yet American food companies keep secret much of what they put in their products.
KFF Health News asked nine of the largest food manufacturers — The Coca-Cola Co., Conagra Brands, General Mills, Kellanova (successor to Kellogg), The Kraft Heinz Co., Mondelēz International, Nestlé, PepsiCo, and Unilever — for the number of ingredients, if any, that go unnamed on their product labels and the names of those ingredients deemed safe without involvement by the FDA, and substances used in their products in the United States but not in Europe, and vice versa.
None provided answers to those questions.
“We focus on the quality of the ingredients that we use, and all comply with applicable regulatory requirements,” Nestlé spokesperson Dana Stambaugh said.
Chemicals such as titanium dioxide and potassium bromate, whose safety has been debated, are allowed in foods in the United States but not in Europe.
Corporations may turn a blind eye to potential dangers, a July 2024 FDA-funded report warned.
Potentially harmful ingredients “are not necessarily required to be named on a product label,” the Reagan-Udall Foundation for the FDA, an adjunct to the agency, said in the report, which was based largely on interviews with representatives of companies across the food supply chain.
“Companies may choose not to track the presence of these ingredients/compounds due to concern about future litigation,” the report said.
Some additives can remain hidden from the public behind such catchall terms as “spices” and “artificial flavors,” as the Center for Science in the Public Interest has reported, or shrouded by other exemptions from disclosure requirements.
And some ingredients that should have been listed on product labels — potential allergens such as milk, wheat, eggs, and dyes — have at times gone undisclosed, according to a series of food recalls. Gaps in oversight have alarmed political leaders on both sides of the aisle, the U.S. Government Accountability Office, watchdog groups such as the CSPI, and academic researchers.
Adding to the concern: the profusion of ultra-processed foods, which use a wide array of chemicals to add flavor and color, extend shelf life, reduce cost, control texture or consistency, and generally tempt people to eat more. Ultra-processed foods now make up 73% of the U.S. food supply, researchers have estimated. Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, the ranking member of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, has said there’s growing evidence they are “deliberately designed to be addictive,” contributing to an epidemic of obesity — a rare point of agreement between him and Kennedy.
At his confirmation hearing, Makary said some ingredients cause a chronic, low-grade inflammatory reaction in the gastrointestinal tract. “And what are we doing? We are drugging our nation’s children at scale,” he said.
The KFF poll found that 58% of respondents want the Trump administration to prioritize setting stricter limits on chemicals in the U.S. food supply.
The Consumer Brands Association, which represents many of the largest food-makers, defends the regulatory system as “rigorous,” “evidence-based,” and “proven.” The system enables companies “to innovate to meet consumer demand,” Sarah Gallo, the association’s senior vice president of product policy, said in a statement to KFF Health News.
“Food manufacturers attest to the safety of an ingredient through the development of extensive scientific evidence and third-party expert review,” Gallo added.
More than a decade ago, Pew Charitable Trusts estimated that there were about 10,000 additives allowed in food in the United States — and that the FDA had not reviewed the safety of about 3,000 of them.
“The system is fundamentally broken,” said Thomas Neltner, one of the authors of the Pew study. “It’s so bad, nobody knows — not even FDA knows — what’s in our food.”
Banned abroad
The FDA allows titanium dioxide to be used to enhance the appearance of foods, among other purposes. According to an Environmental Working Group database, it’s listed as an ingredient in more than 1,900 products, including many candies.
The European Union takes a more cautious approach. In 2021, an EU regulatory panel concluded that titanium dioxide “can no longer be considered as safe when used as a food additive.” The panel said it couldn’t rule out the possibility that titanium dioxide could damage chromosomes.
The FDA allows potassium bromate to be used in baking, and, according to the EWG database, it’s listed as an ingredient in more than 200 products, including bread, buns, and bagels.
Potassium bromate has been banned from food in many countries, including those of the European Union, Canada, India, and Peru. In 2023, California banned it from food effective in 2027. The United Kingdom prohibited it in 1990. The International Agency for Research on ******* identified it as possibly carcinogenic more than 25 years ago. A joint committee of the United Nations and the World Health Organization identified it as a “genotoxic carcinogen” in 1992.
On its website, the FDA says it has worked with industry to minimize potassium bromate levels and is reviewing the chemical, among others.
The EWG says that it created the database to help consumers make healthier choices and that the raw data on product labels is supplied by Label Insight — which is owned by NielsenIQ, a major provider of data to industry. The EWG has called for tighter regulation of foods.
Based on a review of FDA and European Commission databases, it appears that at least 950 more additives are used in foods in the United States than are allowed in the European Union, said Erik Millstone, an emeritus professor at the University of Sussex in England who has been studying food safety policy since the 1970s.
Direct comparisons are difficult because the two regulatory systems and the way they keep their records differ greatly.
A definitive count is elusive because the FDA doesn’t require industry to inform it of everything used in foods in the United States.
“That kind of casual neglect totally would be unacceptable in Europe,” Millstone said.
“Several decades behind Europeans”
When the FDA formally approves substances for use in food, it can let decades pass without reassessing them — even when subsequent research raises doubts about their safety.
In January, when the FDA banned Red Dye No. 3 from foods, it cited research published in 1987. (The FDA said it had no evidence the dye puts people at risk; invoking one of the stricter consumer protections, it said a law from 1960 prohibits the use of additives found to induce ******* in animals.)
In the European Union, substances used in foods must pass regulatory approval before being introduced. The EU has also required that its regulators reassess all additives that were on the market before Jan. 20, 2009, a process that is ongoing.
“In the FDA, although we have authorization to do post-market reviews, there’s no statutory mandate to do them,” Jones, the former deputy commissioner of the FDA’s Human Foods Program, told a Senate committee in December. “We are several decades behind Europeans and our ********* counterparts because they have legal mandates to reevaluate chemicals that have been authorized at some point in the past.”
The FDA website lists 19 post-market determinations since 2010 that substances were not “generally recognized as safe.” Four involve chemical constituents of one mushroom and the mushroom itself. Others include an anabolic steroid, caffeinated alcoholic beverages, cannabidiol (CBD), Ginkgo biloba, melatonin, and partially hydrogenated oils.
Meanwhile, trichloroethylene, banned by the Environmental Protection Agency in December as “an extremely toxic chemical known to cause liver *******, kidney *******, and non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma,” is still allowed under FDA rules for use as a solvent in the production of foods.
FDA spokesperson Enrico Dinges said the agency will work with new leadership at HHS “to safeguard the food supply through pre-market and post-market safety evaluations of chemicals in the food supply.”
“The loophole swallowed the law”
The biggest gap in the FDA’s oversight of foods goes back generations.
In 1958, Congress mandated that, before additives could be used in foods, manufacturers had to prove they were safe and get FDA approval. However, Congress carved out an exception for substances “generally recognized as safe,” which came to be known simply as GRAS.
As conceived, GRAS promised regulatory relief for standard ingredients like salt, sugar, vinegar, and baking powder — along with many chemicals.
Over time, “the loophole swallowed the law,” said a 2014 report by Neltner and Maricel Maffini for the Natural Resources Defense Council.
Companies can unilaterally decide their ingredients are already recognized as safe and use them without asking the FDA for permission or even informing the agency.
A better translation of GRAS would be “Generally Recognized as SECRET,” the Natural Resources Defense Council report said.
A federal watchdog reached a similar conclusion. “GRAS substances can be marketed without FDA’s approval or even its knowledge,” the Government Accountability Office warned in 2010.
That spared the FDA from spending time reviewing countless substances.
For advice on whether ingredients are GRAS, companies may convene panels of specialists. The FDA has noted that panel members could be paid by the companies commissioning the review, but, in guidance to industry, it says “such compensation is not itself an unacceptable conflict.”
About 3,000 flavoring ingredients have been deemed GRAS by a panel of scientists working for an industry group, the Flavor and Extract Manufacturers Association of the United States, known as FEMA, said George Southworth, the organization’s executive director.
The scientists on the FEMA panel “adhere to stringent conflict-of-interest policies,” and their GRAS determinations are submitted to the FDA, which includes them in an online database, Southworth said.
Southworth described the panel as independent, and the FEMA website says panel members have never been employees of companies in the food industry.
Asked how many times FEMA’s panel found that a flavoring didn’t meet the test, Southworth wouldn’t say. He indicated that some reviews are called off before a conclusion is reached.
“Publicly reporting these numbers without full context could lead to misinterpretations about the safety of substances,” he added.
Another way
Food companies have another option: They can voluntarily notify the FDA that they believe their product is GRAS for its intended use and lay out their reasons — giving the FDA a heads up and essentially seeking its blessing.
If they take that route, they don’t have to wait for an answer from the FDA to begin marketing the product, the agency has said.
And they don’t risk much. If the FDA spots weaknesses in a company’s argument or reasons to worry about a chemical’s safety, it routinely calls off its review instead of declaring the substance unsafe.
FDA records posted on the agency’s website show that the FDA often coaches companies to ask the agency to cease its evaluation. That, too, leaves the company free to sell the product, food watchdogs said.
For companies that voluntarily run their products past the FDA, victory is a letter saying the agency has no questions.
But if companies market products as “generally recognized as safe” without firm grounds, they run the risk that the FDA could one day take enforcement action, such as issuing a warning or stopping sales. That’s if the FDA notices.
Psyched out
On March 8, 2022, a ********* company, Psyched Wellness, issued a news release saying it had a green light to market products in the United States.
An “independent review panel of scientific experts” concluded that an extract the company developed, AME-1, was “Generally Recognized As Safe,” paving the way for it to be sold in bulk and used as an ingredient, the company said.
The company described the panel’s judgment as a successful “certification” and “a key milestone.” The extract was derived from a hallucinogenic mushroom, Amanita muscaria, which the company said “has incredible healing and medicinal powers.” As the company later put it in a news release, it had obtained “self-Gras status.”
In June 2024, the company announced that it would soon release Amanita muscaria watermelon gummies.
However, the FDA later took issue with the company and its product.
In a memo dated Sept. 9, 2024, an FDA toxicologist said Psyched Wellness’ claim of GRAS certification was false. The firm failed to show that its extract was generally recognized as safe, the FDA memo said.
Speaking of the mushroom, its extracts, and its known “pharmacologically active constituents,” the FDA memo posted on the agency’s website said they have “potential for serious harm and adverse effects on the central nervous system.”
The FDA was focusing on the mushroom against the backdrop of a spate of medical problems linked to another company’s “Diamond Shruumz” brand chocolate bars, gummies, and infused cones. When it recalled those products in June 2024, that other company announced that a chemical found in Amanita mushrooms was a possible cause of symptoms, including seizures and loss of consciousness.
The FDA memo discussed that recall and said one death and 30 hospitalizations might have been related.
The memo did not connect Psyched Wellness to the outbreak or the Diamond Shruumz products.
The chief executive of Psyched Wellness, Jeffrey Stevens, did not respond to an interview request or written questions.
As recently as Feb. 1, Psyched Wellness said in a securities filing that it will “continue to market its products in the U.S. using the Self-GRAS designation.”
“Probably poisoning us”
If food ingredients cause acute reactions — sending people to emergency rooms, for example — the potential dangers may be relatively easy to identify, and regulatory action might naturally follow. Some critics of the system say they worry more about health effects that could take years or decades to develop.
Then, when it’s too late, it could be hard to trace the harm to any particular ingredient.
All that leaves Joseph Shea of Myrtle Beach in a tough spot.
For a while, Shea tried shopping at a market that has a lot of organic offerings, he said in an interview. That proved too expensive.
Shea said the entire picture is “incredibly frustrating.”
“They’re probably poisoning us, and we don’t know,” he said. “We’ll figure it out 30 years down the road when we get sick.”
KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF — the independent source for health policy research, polling, and journalism.
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Discovery of World War 2 bomb near major Paris train station disrupts services – Reuters
Discovery of World War 2 bomb near major Paris train station disrupts services – Reuters
Discovery of World War 2 bomb near major Paris train station disrupts services ReutersAll Paris Eurostar services cancelled for rest of the day after WW2 bomb found BBC.comAll Eurostar Paris trains cancelled on Friday amid French rail disruption over suspected WW2 bomb – Europe live The GuardianUnexploded WWII bomb in Paris halts Eurostar travel to London and trains to northern France ABC News
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Republican Voters Support Medicaid but Want Work Requirements, Poll Finds
Republican Voters Support Medicaid but Want Work Requirements, Poll Finds
As Congressional Republicans weigh major cuts to Medicaid, most voters do not want to see the public health plan’s funding dialed back, according to a poll released Friday by KFF, a nonpartisan health research firm.
Just 17 percent of respondents said they supported cuts to Medicaid, the government health insurance program that covers more than 70 million people. Forty percent said they wanted to keep spending unchanged, and 42 percent said they would like it increased.
But at the same time, the poll found significant support for certain policies that would limit the program, such as requiring enrollees to work. More than 60 percent of voters — and 47 percent of Democrats — supported a work requirement, the poll found.
That change, which has been championed by some congressional Republicans, is estimated to cut about $100 billion from Medicaid, as those who were unemployed — or could not file the paperwork showing they had a job — would no longer be covered. The program’s cost was $584 billion in 2024, or about 8 percent of total federal spending.
The poll also illustrated Medicaid’s wide reach, with just over half of respondents saying that either they or a family member had at one point had Medicaid coverage. There was nearly universal agreement that Medicaid mattered to voters’ local communities, with 98 percent of Democrats and 94 percent of Republicans saying they thought it was somewhat or very important.
Republicans in Congress are considering several changes to Medicaid as they look for ways to pay for President Trump’s tax cuts. Last month, the House passed a budget that, if approved by the Senate and signed by the president, could trim as much as $880 billion from the program over the next decade. That could happen with work requirements, caps on federal spending for the program, or reducing the share of costs the federal government pays.
Although poll respondents were generally in favor of work requirements, they held misconceptions about the policy: Sixty-two percent of voters thought that most Medicaid enrollees are unemployed, when in fact a vast majority have jobs.
Republican voters also expressed an openness to cutting funding for the Affordable Care Act Medicaid expansion. Right now, the federal government pays 90 percent of the costs for participants in the expansion, who tend to be healthy adults. That is a higher share than what it covers for other enrollees, such as children or disabled people.
Sixty-four percent of Republican voters — and 40 percent of voters overall — said they would support reducing the federal government’s contribution to Medicaid expansion. House Republicans continue to weigh this option, even though Speaker Mike Johnson said last week it was not on the table.
Voters’ opinions on reducing Medicaid expansion funding seemed malleable, however, in the face of additional information.
When respondents were given more information about the policy, including the fact that millions could lose coverage, Republican support fell to 43 percent. But being told that the change would cut federal spending by about $600 billion increased support to 73 percent.
The polling looks similar to what Americans felt during the Affordable Care Act repeal debate in 2017, when Republicans failed to roll back the law in large part because of political opposition to Medicaid cuts. Back then, 70 percent of voters supported work requirements and 36 percent favored cutting Medicaid expansion funding.
“Medicaid is a very popular program among a wide swath of the public including Republicans,” said Mollyann Brodie, KFF’s executive director of survey research.
But, she added, “opinions could be quickly moved in the context of debate where people learn more information and feel their coverage is threatened.”
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Fired Federal Workers Face a Sluggish Job Market
Fired Federal Workers Face a Sluggish Job Market
For about a year now, the labor market has existed in a state of eerie calm: Not many people were losing their jobs or quitting, but not many of those seeking work were getting job offers.
The mass layoffs now underway across the federal government, along with its employees who are voluntarily heading for the exits, could disrupt that uneasy equilibrium.
While unemployment is relatively low at 4 percent, those losing their positions could face a difficult time finding work, depending on how well their skills translate to a private sector that does not seem eager to hire.
“Federal workers all across the country are starting to look, and it’s impacting people everywhere,” said Cory Stahle, an economist at the job search platform Indeed. “It’s hard to think this isn’t going to stress test the labor market in the coming months.”
On the eve of the Trump administration, the federal government’s executive branch employed about 2.3 million civilians. It’s not clear how many of those will end up being cut, and how many will get their jobs back after lawsuits over those terminations work through the courts.
But impact of the pace at which government spending is being slashed, along with instructions from the White House budget office for agencies to slice even deeper, could be meaningful.
“The firing on the government side is real,” said Thomas Barkin, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, at an event late last month. “It’s happening.”
Gregory Daco, chief U.S. economist at the accounting firm EY-Parthenon, estimates that in the most extreme case, one million jobs could be trimmed overall. That estimate assumes 500,000 government contractors are laid off alongside 250,000 federal workers and another 250,000 in job losses at the state and local government levels. Such a winnowing would exert a cumulative drag on gross domestic product of as much as 1 percent over time, Mr. Daco said.
Other estimates suggest the hit could be more contained. Michael Pugliese, a senior economist at Wells Fargo, said federal layoffs would present “only a small headwind to broader economic growth” in the months ahead.
The impact will depend on how many of those workers are absorbed into other jobs, and how quickly. Their prospects vary widely with their skill sets, industries and willingness to relocate.
Chmura Economics & Analytics, a labor market research firm, analyzed the likely distribution of laid-off probationary workers, who have been targeted first. Their chances tend to be better in larger cities than in rural areas. In the first round of announced terminations, there were 718 open jobs for every recently hired worker laid off in the Baltimore metropolitan area, for example, and only three in Oglala Lakota County, S.D.
Finding an open job with the right skill requirements could make things more challenging. In the Washington metropolitan area in mid-February, there were 11,600 postings for business operations specialists, but for just 106 tax examiners and one agricultural inspector.
Not everybody will have trouble finding a new job. In any market, those pushed out of health care roles — about 16 percent of the federal work force, according to an analysis by the Pew Research Center — are likely to find plenty of options. The same is true of people with advanced technology experience, whom the federal government had been focused on hiring in recent years.
One of those now-unemployed workers is Fardous Sabnur, a data scientist just a few years out of college who joined the Internal Revenue Service last summer. She thought it would be a stable job with benefits that would look good on her résumé. And she felt she could do some good in the world, applying machine learning and artificial intelligence techniques to make filing tax returns easier.
Since being fired a few weeks ago, Ms. Sabnur said, she has been interviewing every day and expects to land at a big company, like an investment bank. Still, the transition out of federal service is bittersweet.
“I have very strong prospects, and it won’t be difficult for me to find something new,” said Ms. Sabnur, who lives in the New York City borough of Queens. “But when I go into these companies, I know that my work won’t have as much value in the society as it did at the I.R.S.”
The future looks cloudier for those whose roles were highly government-specific, and whose fields have been decimated by the Trump administration’s crackdown on federal agencies. That includes the U.S. Agency for International Development.
The United States was the single largest global source of foreign aid, and the cancellation of thousands of contracts has forced mass layoffs among the companies that depended on them, leaving their workers with nowhere to go for work with a similar mission.
Wayan Vota, who was laid off from his U.S.A.I.D.-funded company at the end of January, calls it an “extinction event” for the sector. To help aid workers move forward, he started a Substack newsletter geared toward helping international development professionals retool their résumés and translate their skills for private companies. Many have skills managing complex supply chains in unstable countries, which could be useful for large retailers.
“I think someone who has been getting H.I.V. medicines to rural clinics in Mozambique has all the skills, and then some, to get cereal boxes onto the shelves of Walmart,” said Mr. Vota, 52, who is based in Chapel Hill, N.C.
Even for those who work in less niche fields, like financial or environmental enforcement, the Trump administration’s deregulatory agenda could deflate new job opportunities. Requiring fewer studies under the National Environmental Policy Act or the Toxic Substances Control Act, for example, means less work for the technical consulting firms that conducted them.
Scientists who have lost their jobs also face a double whammy: Academic research institutions also depend heavily on federal grants, which the Trump administration has sought to curtail through cuts to the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health. Universities are already pulling back on admitting new doctoral students.
And while the government employs a lot of lawyers, the legal market is being flooded. Law firms often prize attorneys with government experience, who advise clients on compliance and dealing with federal investigations. But if the new administration dials down on oversight as it has promised, those firms may struggle to keep their existing lawyers busy.
Karen Vladeck, an independent legal recruiter, has recently donated some time to maintain a list of jobs available to lawyers leaving federal service — some involuntarily, and others because they see the writing on the wall.
“We really have had a bubble burst on the federal legal work force,” Ms. Vladeck said. “What people are underestimating is that it’s not just people who have already been let go. There are people looking to leave regardless.”
Job cuts may be particularly difficult for the nearly 30 percent of federal workers who are veterans. They often enjoy preferences in the federal hiring process that may not be available in the private sector.
Ross ********, the chief executive of Hire Heroes, an employment nonprofit for veterans, said his staff had seen more unemployed veterans come in looking for help this month than a year ago. The time that veterans spend without jobs has also increased. Some of them had found work in field positions that could be difficult to replace.
“I’m mostly worried about veterans or military spouses who came from career fields in the military that already had transferability challenges,” Mr. ******** said. “If you were Marine infantry and then worked in the forestry service, there’s not always a ton of open market roles along that career trajectory.”
There is one bright spot for federal employees: State and local governments often need people with similar types of experience. States like Hawaii, Maryland, Virginia and New York have been advertising their available positions. A new platform, Civic Match, has worked with more than 4,000 former federal workers, seeking to hook them up with open roles across 124 cities and 41 states.
But Civic Match’s founder, Caitlin Lewis, said some of those public-sector employers were facing uncertainty about their own budgets, given the unpredictable cost-cutting in Washington.
Eventually, drastic cuts in the federal work force may drag down private-sector employment more broadly. Defunding basic research and development, for example, could slow scientific advances that fuel growth. Cuts to emergency management and disaster response could make it harder for communities to recover from fires and storms.
Tara Sinclair, a professor at George Washington University who previously worked at the Treasury Department, said reducing public services — and jettisoning the highly trained professionals who understand how government works — could lead to a “slow degradation of our productive capacity.”
“It might just be this malaise that builds up over time,” Dr. Sinclair added.
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11 New Movies Our Critics Are Talking About This Week
11 New Movies Our Critics Are Talking About This Week
‘Mickey 17’
The latest from ***** Joon Ho follows Mickey (Robert Pattinson) on a dangerous space expedition as he repeatedly dies and is resurrected via cloning and develops a relationship with a fellow crew member, Nasha (Naomi Ackie).
From our review:
Like the working-class crew of the extraterrestrial tugboat in Ridley Scott’s “Alien,” Mickey, Nasha and the rest of the workers are headed into uncharted, dangerous territory. There will be monsters and, yes, blood. There will, as well, be love, kindness, camaraderie, heroism and sacrifice in a movie that teeters close to apocalyptic despair but also, because ***** is finally an idealist and not only one of the great filmmakers working today, lifts you to the skies.
In theaters. Read the full review.
Critic’s Pick
The bases are loaded — with heart.
‘Eephus’
Before a small town’s baseball field closes permanently, two local recreational teams gather for one final game in this dramedy directed by Carson Lund.
From our review:
It dwells in some languid liminal space between hangout movie and elegy, a tribute to the community institutions that hold us together, that introduce us to one another and that, in an age of optimized life choices and disappearing public spaces, are slowly fading away. That makes it sound very serious, which “Eephus” is not.
In theaters. Read the full review.
Critic’s Pick
A bruising cultural reckoning.
‘On Becoming a Guinea Fowl’
After Shula (Susan Chardy) discovers the dead body of her uncle on the side of the road, family secrets begin to surface in this dark dramedy directed by Rungano Nyoni.
From our review:
Rungano Nyoni, who was born in Zambia and grew up in Wales, knows how to make an entrance, and so does Shula. She’s a great character, and while her arresting introduction grabs you from the start, Shula keeps you tethered throughout. Hers is a story of discoveries both minor and monumental, one that’s flecked with troubling visions and an escalating sense of urgency.
In theaters. Read the full review.
Critic’s Pick
****** and white with lots of nuance.
‘There’s Still Tomorrow’
This drama directed by and starring Paola Cortellesi centers on Delia, a mother of three living in Rome after World War II, who is mistreated by her husband Ivano (Valerio Mastandrea).
From our review:
Cortellesi, as both director and performer, doesn’t sink into miserabilism. The beautifully built-out sense of place, populated by memorable personalities (Ivano’s bedridden father; Delia’s best friend, who runs a vegetable stand; the mechanic with whom Delia is in love), demonstrates the richness of Delia’s life in an effortless balance of humor and tragedy.
In theaters. Read the full review.
A photographer rom-com that doesn’t take long to develop.
‘Picture This’
When a medium predicts that the highly independent Pia (Simone Ashley) will meet the love of her life within her next five dates, her family rushes to set her up in this rom-com directed by Prarthana Mohan.
From our review:
The palette here is vivid. Screens split — sometimes vertically, other times horizontally — all in the spirit of playfulness, while the music is a mix of international pop grooves. For all the potentially crushing challenges Pia faces — losing her business, not living out her dream of being a photographer, alienating her beloved younger sister — “Picture This,” keeps it light, never letting the sharp edges of potential failure come into focus.
Watch on Prime Video. Read the full review.
The humor is far, far away.
‘The Empire’
Two alien races, One and Zero, descend on a small fishing village in Northern France where they fight for control and get involved in an interspecies love triangle.
From our review:
Reveling in galactic absurdity, “The Empire,” the latest from the fiercely unconventional French filmmaker Bruno Dumont, plunks us down in a fishing village in Northern France to witness an extraterrestrial war for control of humankind. What that looks like, however, is less a space opera than a banal, metaphysical farce — a “Star Wars” parody of increasing daftness and diminishing fun.
In theaters. Read the full review.
Apocalyptically bad.
‘In the Lost Lands’
Dave Bautista and Milla Jovovich star as a body hunter and a sorceress in pursuit of a shape-shifter in this dystopian action romance directed by Paul W.S. Anderson.
From our review:
Though Anderson and his trusted cinematographer Glen MacPherson remain capable of framing and lighting engrossing shots, the cheap effects used for the film’s many firefights and explosions look like a flurry of pixels. The editing attempts to hide these shortcomings, cutting around the action to the point of being incomprehensible. And maybe that’s for the best.
In theaters. Read the full review.
A wrestling film that’s stuck in one corner.
‘Queen of the Ring’
This sports drama directed by Ash Avildsen follows Mildred Burke (Emily Bett Rickards), a waitress who becomes a wrestler in the 1930s.
From our review:
In its plot-heavy second half, “The Queen of the Ring” loses coherence when it speeds through a storyline about rival women’s leagues and sidelines characters it had only recently introduced. The muddle causes any sincere emotion to turn into schlock. One senses that Avildsen was desperate to pack an emotional punch, but he could have pulled a few instead.
In theaters. Read the full review.
This robotics team presses all the right buttons.
‘Rule Breakers’
Four young girls become Afghanistan’s first robotics team, traveling to a worldwide competition in Washington and facing trials and triumphs along the way.
From our review:
This is a story of heartening firsts: Roya Mahboob, who spearheaded the initiative for schoolgirls, is the first woman to own a tech company in Afghanistan. The director Bill Guttentag and his cast get the can-do spirit at its core, as well as the societal constrictions that make such perseverance especially impressive, but it’s also a story that could have been told with more concision and subtlety.
In theaters. Read the full review.
All dolled up and nowhere to run.
‘The Rule of Jenny Pen’
John Lithgow stars as Dave Crealy, a patient at an assisted living facility who antagonizes the other residents with a creepy baby doll puppet in this horror movie directed by James Ashcroft.
From our review:
The director remains near-merciless in his approach, never shying away from showing his vulnerable characters (and the tormentor played with twisted relish by Lithgow is, ultimately, as unprotected as any of the others) in states of utter abjection.
In theaters. Read the full review.
A dramatist’s trauma.
‘Seven Veils’
In this drama directed by Atom Egoyan, Jeanine (Amanda Seyfried) directs a production of an opera that resurfaces traumatic memories.
From our review:
“Seven Veils” offers plenty to think about. But fans who mourn that Egoyan’s dramatic instincts have slipped in recent years won’t quite be getting a return to form. Seyfried in particular seems out of place, and although the apparent miscasting might be intentional (Jeanine, giving an interview to a podcaster, pointedly explains that she is older than she looks), certain plot points and motifs, such as home movies featuring a blindfold and tangerines, approach self-parody.
In theaters. Read the full review.
Compiled by Kellina Moore.
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New Albany Racing Club board appointed, Alan Smith re-elected as president and ex-MP Alannah MacTiernan joins
New Albany Racing Club board appointed, Alan Smith re-elected as president and ex-MP Alannah MacTiernan joins
Albany Racing Club have had a major board shake-up with only Alan Smith being re-elected after a tumultuous couple of months.
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Director of 2025 Elden Ring Competitor Was the Brains Behind Marvel’s Most Underrated Game of This Decade
Director of 2025 Elden Ring Competitor Was the Brains Behind Marvel’s Most Underrated Game of This Decade
Jacque Belletête has had a long career in the gaming industry, spanning almost 23 years. He has worked with a lot of top developers in the world, including Ubisoft and Square Enix. His upcoming game Hell is Us is considered a competitor of Elden Ring.
Hell is Us is the upcoming game from Jacque Belletête. Image Credit: Rogue Factor
Belletête is a highly skilled video game developer who has left a lasting mark on any game that he has ever worked on, including the best and most underrated Marvel game, Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy. He was the art director for this game.
Belletête’s contribution made Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy special
This game is considered to be Elden Ring’s competitor. Image Credit: Rogue Factor
After working for many years at Ubisoft, Belletête had enough and wanted to start something of his own. He, along with a few others, left Ubisoft and started Eidos Montréal, a studio that would later be included in the production of a lot of successful games, including Deus Ex: Human Revolution and Mankind Divided.
Then the studio decided to collaborate with Square Enix and attempted to do Final Fantasy XV. After that, he came on board as the art director of Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy, which, despite being a great game, went under the radar.
It was after this when he decided that he was done and now wanted to make a game of his own, a game that would later be known as Hell is Us. This upcoming third-person horror game has been generating a lot of hype lately, and people have high expectations from it. During an interview with TrueAchievements, he said:
And at that point, I was like, you know, what? I want to do my game. My friend Yves (Bordeleau), who’s the general manager at Rogue Factor, we had been talking for years about working together, but it was never really the right moment.
Then I was like, ‘I think this is it: I’m a bit a bit done with the whole AAA studio thing.’ It has nothing to do with Eidos — I mean Eidos is like my family, man. I mean, we built that ***** from… we were four at the beginning when we really started doing Deus Ex. When I left, we were 500, you know? These guys are my brothers and sisters. But no, the whole AAA thing, I was just getting bored and I was just getting too comfortable.
He had had enough with AAA titles and wanted to explore things uniquely and differently, and that made him come up with a third-person horror game. Hell is Us is expected to release in the latter half of 2025.
Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy has a special place in people’s hearts
Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy deserves more love. Image Credit: Eidos Montréal
Despite Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy not being a massive hit, it still managed to find a niche audience who still respect the game for what it managed to achieve in terms of gameplay and narrative. It does a lot of things better than MCU.
It offers a unique perspective in the world of the guardians where you play as the Star Lord, who has a lot of special abilities, accompanied by the other guardians, including Gamora, Rocket Raccoon, and Groot.
The game largely garnered a positive response but still failed to generate a lot of hype and is hence by far the most underrated Marvel game of this decade. Do you still like playing Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy? Let us know in the comments below.
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A ****** Leader’s Release From Prison Reopens Old Wounds in Israel
A ****** Leader’s Release From Prison Reopens Old Wounds in Israel
The moment Ashraf Zughayer, a ****** leader in Israeli prison, heard in October 2023 that ************ militants had taken hostages, he knew his life sentence for murdering six people in Tel Aviv could soon be wiped away, he said.
It took more than a year. But in late January, as part of the cease-fire and hostage release deal between Israel and ******, Mr. Zughayer, 46, rode through the streets of East Jerusalem on a truck festooned with green ****** flags, surrounded by jubilant supporters.
Thirty miles away, Tova Sisso, whose mother was killed in the Tel Aviv attack, watched with horror. Her mother, Rozana, had survived the Holocaust only to be killed in a 2002 suicide bombing that Mr. Zughayer helped orchestrate.
“Seeing him being celebrated like this tears open a deep wound all over again,” Ms. Sisso said. “My joy in life was stolen from me that day.”
Since the truce began last month, Israelis and Palestinians have been gripped by images of emotional homecomings that have summoned a welter of pain, happiness, frustration and grief. The scenes cut to the heart of how many on both sides understand the cycle of violence that has haunted their families for decades.
For Israelis, watching freed hostages reunite with relatives has been a rare moment of national catharsis since the Oct. 7, 2023 attack that killed 1,200 people, saw 250 taken hostage and ignited the devastating war in Gaza. But they have also been angered and deeply dismayed by the release of ************ prisoners like Mr. Zughayer in exchange.
Palestinians have greeted hundreds of prisoners released by Israel. They included some detained without charges or for minor offenses, a group that Palestinians often view as effectively hostages themselves. Under the deal, Israel committed to releasing 1,000 Gazans, most of whom had been held without anything resembling a criminal trial.
But ****** also secured the release of hundreds of prisoners like Mr. Zughayer — militants convicted of deadly attacks against Israelis. More than 200 of those freed were serving life sentences for ******* and other offenses for their role in bombings, shootings and other acts of violence.
Israelis see them as murderous terrorists, noting many deliberately targeted civilians. Many Palestinians call them heroes in a struggle against Israel’s decades-long occupation.
“A nation that wants to break free must fight for it,” Mr. Zughayer said shortly after his release, sitting in his parents’ front yard. He refused to discuss whether the Oct. 7 attacks had successfully advanced the ************ national cause.
Palestinians are split over the 2023 attacks led by his organization. At least some say they were a devastating mistake for having prompted Israel’s sweeping military response, which has killed tens of thousands of Palestinians and destroyed much of Gaza.
“It’s good that there is a prisoner deal, but it did not require all this bloodshed and destruction,” Ahmed Yousef, a veteran ****** member, said in a phone interview from southern Gaza. “Oct. 7, in my opinion, was a terrible error.”
In late January, Mr. Zughayer’s family held a subdued celebration at their East Jerusalem home to welcome him back, wary of Israeli restrictions on “expressions of joy” for freed militants. Israel annexed East Jerusalem after the 1967 war in a move not recognized by most of the international community.
Teenage relatives bustled around a quiet courtyard, pouring coffee and handing out sweets. Others hung on every word uttered by the skinny, ******-bearded Mr. Zughayer, who appeared slightly dazed to be seeing the outside world for the first time in years. A slim green scarf emblazoned with a ****** logo hung around his neck, until a child took it away.
“My son’s imprisonment was a badge of honor,” said Mr. Zughayer’s father, Munir, a community organizer who liaises between residents and Israeli authorities. “You could enter prison for thieving or criminality. But I’m not the father of a criminal, I’m the father of a hero.”
The 2002 bombing that Ashraf Zughayer helped carry out killed six civilians: five Israelis and a British Jew. The bomber, wearing an explosive vest, had mounted a bus in Tel Aviv and detonated his cargo as soon as the bus began to move, according to court filings.
Yoni Jesner, a 19-year-old religious student from Scotland, was one of those killed in the explosion. His family chose to donate his organs, one of which was given to a young ************ girl, his brother Ari said in an interview.
Mr. Zughayer was convicted of driving the bomber to his target. As a resident of Israeli-annexed East Jerusalem, he held an Israeli ID that allowed him to easily slip in and out of the West Bank. He was involved in planning another attack when he was arrested, according to Israeli court filings.
Munir Zughayer said he hoped for a normal life for his son and a peaceful resolution to the conflict — one that would allow both Israelis and Palestinians to live “in equality and with human rights.” His son said that he hoped to pursue a doctorate in political science, and was exploring options in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
As night fell, Israeli soldiers raided the home, guns drawn and loaded, and then assaulted the elder Mr. Zughayer, as well as a disabled relative and a reporter for The New York Times.
The soldiers detained several of Ashraf Zughayer’s siblings, accusing them of waving ****** flags and shooting in the air. The family denies the allegations, and no one was visibly armed at the event.
Nearly a month later, the Israeli police released them, but charged Mr. Zughayer and two of his relatives with riding unsecured in the back of a pickup truck on the afternoon of his release, according to a police statement. They face possible fines for the charge.
Israeli prison interrogators frequently asked Mr. Zughayer whether he felt any remorse, he said. He had once believed in the peace process, he said, but lost hope after watching reports of ************ civilians, including children, shot dead by Israeli soldiers with apparent impunity.
“Our goal isn’t to hurt civilians. We were forced into it,” he said, declining to extensively discuss the attack. “If the legal system here were just, I would see this whole thing differently.”
Once convicted, Mr. Zughayer was assigned to a prison wing dominated by ****** detainees. One was Yahya Sinwar, the ****** leader who later masterminded the 2023 attack. Mr. Sinwar taught his fellow inmates Hebrew to better understand their shared enemy, Mr. Zughayer recounted.
“I used to think that Israeli society was a monolith,” he said. Through studying the language and history of the Jewish people, he realized that Israelis were not of one mind. “Some want peace, and some do not,” he said.
During his time in prison, Mr. Zughayer learned fluent Hebrew, earning a master’s degree from an Israeli university. He also became a top member of ******’s prison leadership, charged with conveying demands in negotiations with their jailers.
But he said he was as shocked as his Israeli guards when ****** fighters swarmed into Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
That morning, ************ prisoners hunched over small televisions in their cells, watching in disbelief as Israeli news outlets showed ****** gunmen driving through the Israeli city of Sderot.
Hours into the attack, the guards took away the televisions. Prisoners then huddled around a radio, where they heard that ****** had seized Israeli hostages before it too was taken away.
After the ******-led attack, the guards began treating imprisoned Palestinians much more harshly, said Mr. Zughayer. At least 10 ************ prisoners died in Israeli jail last year, according to the Israeli prison service; autopsies showed at least some bore signs of physical trauma, according to postmortem reports.
Israeli hostages who were freed during the cease-fire also emerged gaunt, some having lost dozens of pounds during their captivity.
Since Mr. Zughayer’s release, Israel and ****** have completed several more transfers of hostages and prisoners, each of which has elicited intense, conflicting emotions among Israelis and Palestinians.
When one of the hostages was freed, “it felt like a family member coming home,” said Mr. Jesner, despite his mixed feelings over Mr. Zughayer’s release.
Nir Zinger, whose brother was killed in the Tel Aviv bombing, vividly remembers the moment in 2002 that he picked up the phone and heard about the attack. He said he thinks about his brother, Ofer, almost every day.
Seeing Mr. Zughayer walk free was difficult, he said, but he called it worth it to save more of the living hostages.
“We know the meaning of grief,” Mr. Zinger said. “We don’t want other families to have to endure that pain.”
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