In 1790, President George Washington signed a bill creating the first U.S. copyright law.
In 1859, construction concluded and bells rang out for the first time from London’s Big Ben clock tower.
In 1889, a flood in Johnstown, Pa., left more than 2,200 people dead.
In 1902, Britain and South Africa signed a peace treaty ending the Boer War.
In 1916, the Battle of Verdun passed the 100-day mark. It would continue for another 200 days, amassing a casualty list of an estimated 800,000 soldiers dead, injured or missing.
In 1921, the Tulsa race massacre was set off when a mob of White residents attacked the Black residents and businesses in the Greenwood District. The total number of those killed in the violence is unknown, with an Oklahoma commission established in 2001 estimating between 75 to 100 people dead. The number of displaced Black residents was far greater.
In 1940, a thick fog hanging over the English Channel prevented the German Luftwaffe from flying missions against evacuating Allied troops from Dunkirk.
Troops evacuated from Dunkirk on a destroyer about to berth at Dover, England, on May 31, 1940. File Photo courtesy of the Imperial War Museum
In 1985, seven federally insured banks in Arkansas, Minnesota, Nebraska and Oregon were closed by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. It was a single-day record for closings since the FDIC was founded in 1934.
In 1996, Israeli voters elected opposition Likud Party leader Benjamin Netanyahu as prime minister.
In 2003, Eric Robert Rudolph, the long-sought fugitive in the 1996 Atlanta Olympics bombing and attacks on abortion clinics and a gay nightclub, was arrested while rummaging through a dumpster in North Carolina. Rudolph, whose bombings killed two people and injured many others, was sentenced to four life terms in prison.
In 2005, Mark Felt admitted that, while No. 2 man in the FBI, he was “Deep Throat,” the shadowy contact whose help to Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein on the 1972 Watergate break-in led to U.S. President Richard Nixon’s resignation.
In 2014, U.S. Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, 28, captured in Afghanistan nearly five years earlier, was released by the Taliban in exchange for five detainees held at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp in Cuba. In March 2015, the Army announced that Bergdahl had been charged with desertion.
In 2019, a shooting a a Virginia Beach, Va., municipal center left 12 victims and the shooter — a disgruntled former employee — dead.
In 2021, China announced plans to allow couples to have a third child, scrapping its controversial two-child policy amid a slumping birth rate and aging population.
People asked to avoid swarms of stinging insects after truck hauling 250 million bees rolls over near the Canadian border.
A truck carrying millions of honeybees has overturned in the northwestern United States, prompting emergency warnings from local authorities.
The truck, carrying approximately 31,751kg (70,000 pounds) of active beehives, overturned on Friday in Washington state’s Whatcom County – a rural area near the Canadian border, about 48km (30 miles) south of Vancouver.
“250 million bees are now loose,” the Whatcom County Sheriff’s Office (WCSO) announced on its official social media page. “Avoid the area due to the potential of bee escaping and swarming.”
Authorities sealed off parts of the area and urged the public to keep a safe distance of at least 200 yards (182 metres) as officials and bee experts helped recover, restore and reset the hives, according to the sheriff’s office.
The goal, officials said, is to safely re-hive the bees and help them locate their queens, a process that could take up to 48 hours.
While some beekeepers focus solely on honey production, many others lease their hives to farmers who rely on bees to pollinate their crops. The loss of millions of bees, even temporarily, could threaten the productivity of nearby farms during the growing season.
“While there is no general health risk to the public, anyone who is allergic to bee stings or has concerns should check the State Department of Health webpage on bees and wasps,” WCSO said.
Honeybees are crucial to the food supply, pollinating more than 100 crops including nuts, vegetables, berries, citrus and melons. Bees and other pollinators have been declining for years, and experts blame insecticides, parasites, disease, climate change and lack of a diverse food supply.
In 2018, the United Nations General Assembly sponsored the first “World Bee Day” on May 20 to bring attention to the bees’ plight.
Beekeepers often transport millions of bees from one location to another because leaving them in one location for too long can deplete resources for other pollinators, The Seattle Times newspaper reported.
In 2015, 14 million bees escaped a truck north of Seattle on Interstate 5 and started stinging people, the newspaper reported at the time.
A 53-year-old mum-of-six took a leap of faith, leaving behind her life and family in the UK to enjoy sun and cocktails in Ayia Napa. She speaks out to explain why she did it after revealing she has been trolled over her bold decision
09:00, 31 May 2025Updated 09:04, 31 May 2025
Amanda is at her happiest after taking a leap of faith(Image: Amanda Moss / SWNS)
Most of us have daydreamed about what life would be like if we just chose to live for ourselves – leaving behind all the things that hold us back. Imagine swapping the grey skies and endless routines for a place with scorching sun, cocktails, and parties. For most, it stays just a thought. But for one mum of six, it became reality.
Amanda Moss, 53, took the leap to leave her 25-year marriage, her children, and a £120k salary behind in the UK – to work from the beach in Ayia Napa. Since May 2020, she’s been living her “life with truth,” having settled in Cyprus.
But it wasn’t a snap decision. Amanda knew deep down her former routine wasn’t the life she was meant to live. “I was miserable. I thought ‘is this my life?’” she said. “I was 48 and thought ‘f*ck this.’”
Amanda before she changed her life completely. (Image: Amanda Moss / SWNS)
Now, Amanda runs her own magazine and PR business, making around £50k a year – less than half what she earned before, but with a far better work-life balance. “I was working from 5am as soon as I woke up,” she said. “A minimum of 12 hours a day. Now I probably work five hours a day but I have a much healthier work life balance.”
“I earn around £50k and I could earn more, but I just want to live my life.” Years of visiting Cyprus planted the seed. In 2008, she bought a holiday home there, a place where she’d often bring her kids while they were growing up. What started as a getaway eventually became her new permanent home.
She used to cry every time she went back to Liverpool after a holiday (Image: Amanda Moss / SWNS)
“Every time I’d come back to Liverpool I’d be crying,” Amanda said. “My two eldest, Floyd and Honey, said ‘why don’t you move? You’re happiest there.’”
When Covid hit, her business collapsed and suddenly it was now or never. Amanda had been sleeping in a bedroom on her own since her youngest was born – and that child is now 11.
“I didn’t think I was living up to my full potential for the last 30 to 40 years and I’m making up for it,” she said. Her three daughters moved with her initially but returned to the UK after Amanda decided the education system there was better.
While Cyprus might not be the perfect fit for her kids, it’s exactly where Amanda needed to be. She’s flourished working five hours on the beach, but still finds time to let her hair down and go clubbing multiple times a week.
Ayia Napa is exactly where Amanda needed to be – for her happiness (Image: Amanda Moss / SWNS)
“I go clubbing three to four times a week. My daughter, Honey, 23, wants me to go to the club with her and she’s like ‘that’s my mum.’”
Since moving, Amanda has also lost four stone, changing her diet and finally eating for herself rather than “comfort” – which she was doing for years. “I got to a size 18 and 15st and I thought ‘this isn’t me,’” she said. “I hated being fat.” Taking control, she started going to the gym, made new friends, and started believing in herself.
Now she spends around £400 a month on Botox, nails, lashes, and her gym membership. “Everything I do for my aesthetics and beauty regime is for me,” she said. “I’m investing in myself. I feel good. It’s the whole self-love thing, because I’ve felt all my life I’m fat and ugly.”
For her whole life Amanda felt ‘fat and ugly’(Image: Amanda Moss / SWNS)
The glamourous mum admits she is ” a little bit vain” but she believes she has now earnt it. She now experiments with cosmetic treatments such as botox.
Amanda starts her days at the gym, which is more for her mental health than anything else. She now uses her social media to speak about her life and her honest, open approach has earned her plenty of attention, and with the extra eyes on her life it has gained some love but also some hate.
“I’ve been trolled,” Amanda admitted. “People have said I’m irresponsible. My kids are supportive. I think I’ve taught my kids to live their life as they wish and not be told society’s expectations of what they should do. I just want them to experience life in all its glory.”
And while some people question her drastic life change, many people actually commend her – even looking up to her.
Some people she the 53 year old as a inspiration as she was brave to take the leap many want to(Image: Amanda Moss / SWNS)
“People always say to me ‘you’re so inspirational to me, I wish I could do what you do.’ And I say you can, just book it. I haven’t done anything extraordinary, I just booked a flight.” she said
Looking ahead, Amanda is embracing life with more bold leaps and ambitions and even hopes to find a romantic spark in her now home country. “Life is a gift to take control of. My next thing I want to do is fall in love with a rich handsome guy – I’m sick of working.”
“I’m living my truth, and I think people envy that. I sound really up my own arse but I’m not.”
Her children live in the UK (Image: Amanda Moss / SWNS)
Amanda’s six children Saxon, 24, Honey, 23, Floyd, 21, Albany, 19, plus a 16-year-old and an 11-year-old daughter all remain in the UK but often fly out during school holidays to see her. And for anyone dreaming about changing their life and ready to make the change. Amanda has simple advice: “How many people have the balls to get on a plane and say ‘I don’t want this life anymore?’”
You can follow Amanda’s journey on Instagram and TikTok @amandalifestylepr.
She’s also set to release her new book next month -‘You’re going to die so do it anyway – live life louder after 50’ where she will be sharing her journey and inspiring others to take control of their own happiness, no matter their age.
Emmerdale star Eden is up for two awards at the British Soap Awards this month for her portrayal of domestic abuse victim Belle Dingle, while the hard-hitting storyline is also up for a prize
Eden will celebrate 20 years of playing Belle Dingle on Emmerdale later this year (Image: Mark Bruce/ITV)
She’s been a staple in the Dales since the late 1990’s but now, Belle Dingle is set to leave the nest in upcoming scenes.
After a dramatic year at the heart of Emmerdale’s domestic abuse storyline, actress Eden Taylor-Draper is bound to become the belle of the British Soap Awards.
On top of that her soap family, the Dingles, are nominated in the Best Family category and Emmerdale is facing off against Hollyoaks, Coronation Street and EastEnders for Best Soap.
“I’m thrilled,” grins Eden, 27. “It’s a little bit scary but it’s been amazing. It’s so hard to put into words, but it’s been the most challenging and exciting year I’ve ever had at Emmerdale.”
With fight scenes, confessional scenes, unique perspectives and even alternative outcomes being filmed, the work has been challenging and fulfilling in equal measures for Eden.
Eden has been involved in a tense domestic abuse storyline in Emmerdale(Image: ITV)
“The episode with Belle’s imagination of the different outcomes was challenging because it was like playing many storylines at once and there were some very intense, violent scenes, which were intense to play,” says Eden. “It was a challenge but I also loved it and it’s one of my favourite episodes I’ve ever done.”
The hard-hitting scenes saw Belle bravely confide in her cousin Charity Dingle, played by Emma Atkins, who has been a rock during filming for Eden, alongside James Chase who starred as Belle’s evil but believable abuser Tom King. “Emma’s one of my best friends,” says Eden. “It was just so special that we got to have that moment together.”
During the character’s many years on the soap, Belle has faced serious mental health battles with both schizophrenia and psychosis, she was jailed as a teenager for the manslaughter of her best friend Gemma Andrews (Tendai Rinomhota) and she has been kidnapped by her serial killer boyfriend Lachlan White, played by Tom Atkinson.
Belle appeared in court in a 2014 episode
Despite being trusted with some of Emmerdale’s biggest plot points, Eden reveals she has never had any formal acting training. “No, I’ve never done anything.
I’ve just been at Emmerdale and that’s been it since the beginning,” says Eden. “One of the things about growing up on the show is that everyone that I work with has been a part of who I am today in both how I act and how I am as a person.”
Growing up on set meant Eden felt like she had four parents – her real mum and dad and also Jane Cox, who played her soap mum Lisa Dingle and the late actor Steve Halliwell, who played her dad Zak Dingle. She also cites Charity actress Emma and Cain Dingle actor Jeff Hordley as acting influences.
“I have so much credit to give to Jane and Steve who played Belle’s mum and dad because they were just brilliant and helped me in that environment,” says Eden.
“I’m surrounded by such talented people and it’s such an honour to be able to work with them. I’m always trying to learn, I’m always trying to better myself and be, you know, very natural and also be so in it.
The people around me help because everyone is so dedicated and so good at their craft. It definitely helps learning on the job from such a young age and getting to work with these people daily. It inspires you to keep pushing and keep growing every day.”
The domestic abuse storyline might be over now that Tom is serving three years behind bars, but the reaction from fans will never leave Eden.
“I’d never experienced anything like it with people reaching out and feeling they can share their stories,” says Eden. “The amount of messages I’ve had off people who have followed the story and said, ‘Watching this unfold, I’ve got myself out of that situation,’ or, ‘I’ve spoken to the police,’ or, ‘I’m now in a women’s refuge.’
It just blows my mind. That is the power of soap. To even help one person, it would be incredible, so the fact that multiple people have said we’ve helped them… I couldn’t ask for more.”
“He is great,” says Eden. “We were friends before we got together so he’s always known what I’ve done and he’s amazing. He’ll stay up with me, running lines, until God knows what hour. He’s very supportive.”
Eden is supported by her boyfriend Ed
With so many nominations, Eden is sure to get a lot of screen time when the British Soap Awards is broadcast on ITV1 on Thursday 5 June. Naturally, Eden is looking forward to casting off Belle’s practical padded jackets and jeans for a glamorous ball gown.
“On a night out my favourite bit sometimes is just doing my hair and make-up and listening to music,” says Eden. “I do enjoy that bit. I’m not sorted, I don’t have a dress. It’s all going to be very last-minute, but it will be nice to get dressed up.”
Many Emmerdale faces are up for awards including Eden’s co-star Beth Cordingly who is also nominated in the Best Leading Performer category for her role as Ruby Fox-Milligan alongside EastEnders legends Lacey Turner and Kellie Bright.
No matter who takes the coveted gongs home, Eden knows she and Beth will paint the town red. “I feel like whenever I’ve been at awards with Beth, she is up for a good time!” laughs Eden.
“There’s a good gang of us and I think everyone’s in high spirits. I think that will just be a lovely party… Hopefully I won’t be hungover, but I would love maybe a little dance.”
When she’s not working on a big storyline, Eden loves to travel with Ed. Later this year they’re going to Bali in Indonesia for the first time and they dream of travelling to Japan one day.
“I do love travelling,” says Eden. “I love a little break, I love a big break and I’ve got family in Australia so that’s really cool to get to go to the other side of the world and see them.
Last year I didn’t really travel that much because I was so busy, so this year I’m trying to cram as much travelling in as possible. Japan is on our bucket list and we’re actually heading to Bali at the end of the year and that’s my first time going there, so that should be really nice.”
However, home is where the heart is and having grown up on Emmerdale Belle never wants to leave. “I love it,” she says. “I’m so happy. I guess it’s not fully up to me, it’s up to the producers, but I am very happy there and I’d love to stay around.”
As Israel’s devastating war on Gaza grinds on, pushed forward by a prime minister insistent that a goal of total military victory be met, the divisions within Israeli society are growing increasingly deeper.
In the last few weeks, as Israeli peace activists and antiwar groups have stepped up their campaign against the conflict, supporters of the war have also increased their pressure to continue, whatever its humanitarian, political or diplomatic cost.
Members of the military have published open letters protesting the political motivations for continuing the war on Gaza, or claiming that the latest offensive, which is systematically razing Gaza, risks the remaining Israeli captives held in the Palestinian territory.
Another open letter has come from within Israel’s universities and colleges, with its signatories doing a rare thing within Israel since the war began in October 2023: focusing on Palestinian suffering.
Elsewhere, campaigns of protest and refusal of military service have spread – a result of a mixture of pro-peace sentiment and more prevalent anger at the government’s handling of the war – posing a risk to Israel’s war effort, which is reliant upon the active participation of the country’s youth.
The war’s critics say that the man they oppose, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, has become reliant upon the extreme right to maintain his coalition, and an opposition too cowardly to confront him in the face of mounting international accusations of genocide.
Powerful far right
It is important not to confuse the growing domestic criticism of the Israeli government’s handling of the war with any mass sympathy for the Palestinian people.
A recent poll reported that 82 percent of Jewish Israeli respondents would still like to see Gaza cleared of its Palestinian population, with almost 50 percent also backing what they said was the “mass killing” of civilians in enemy cities occupied by the Israeli army.
And on Monday, thousands of Israelis led by the country’s far-right national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, rampaged through occupied East Jerusalem’s Old City, chanting “death to Arabs” and attacking anyone perceived to be either Palestinian or defending them.
Also addressing the crowd at the “Jerusalem Day” march was the country’s ultranationalist finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, who has been vocal in his push for the annexation of the occupied West Bank, and the displacement of Palestinians from Gaza.
Smotrich asked the crowd: “Are we afraid of victory?”; “Are we afraid of the word ‘occupation?’” The crowd – described as “revellers” within parts of Israeli media – responded with a resounding “no”.
“There’s a cohort of the extreme right who feel vindicated by a year and a half of war,” the former Israeli diplomat Alon Pinkas told Al Jazeera. “They think their message that, if you blink you lose; if you pause, you lose; if you waver, you lose, has been borne out.”
Growing dissent
Alongside the intensifying of Israel’s onslaught on Gaza, which has now killed more than 54,000 Palestinians, voices of dissent have grown louder. In April, more than 1,000 serving and retired pilots issued an open letter protesting a war they said served “political and personal interests” rather than security ones. Further letters, as well as an organised campaign encouraging young Israelis to refuse to show up for military service, have followed.
Perhaps sensing the direction the wind was blowing, the leader of Israel’s left-wing Democrats Party, Yair Golan – who initially supported the war and took a hardline position on allowing humanitarian aid into Gaza – launched a stark broadside against the conflict earlier this month, claiming that Israel risked becoming a “pariah state” that killed “babies as a hobby” while giving itself the aim of “expelling populations”.
While welcomed by some, the comments of the former army major-general were rounded upon by others. Speaking at a conference in southern Israel alongside noted antiwar lawmaker Ofer Cassif, Golan was heckled and called a traitor by far-right members of the audience, before he had to be escorted off the premises by security.
Cassif, who refers to himself as an anti-Zionist, has long attracted the outrage of mainstream Israeli society for his loud denunciation of the way Israel treats Palestinians.
“There have always been threats against me,” Cassif, who has been alone among Israeli lawmakers in opposing the war from its onset, told Al Jazeera. “I can’t walk down my own street. I was attacked twice before October 7 and it’s gotten much worse since.
“But it’s not just me. All the peace activists risk being physically attacked or threatened, even the families of the hostages are at risk of attack by these bigots,” he said.
“Many people are coming to realise that this government and even the mainstream opposition aren’t fighting a war for security reasons, or even to recover the hostages, but are carrying out the kind of genocidal mission advocated by Smotrich and the other messianic bigots,” Cassif said of the finance minister and his supporters.
“This has been allowed by people like [Benny] Gantz, [Yair] Lapid and [Yoav] Gallant,” he said, citing prominent politicians opposed to the prime minister, “who didn’t dare criticise it [the war] and Netanyahu, who has manipulated it for his own ends.”
Cassif’s comments were echoed by one of the signatories to the academics’ open letter criticising the war, Ayelet Ben-Yishai, an associate professor at the University of Haifa.
“The opposition has nothing,” she told Al Jazeera. “I get that it’s hard to argue for a complicated future, but they do and say nothing. All they’ve left us with is a choice between managing the war and the occupation and Smotrich and his followers. That’s it. What kind of future is that?”
Inherent within Israel
Many members of the government and opposition have previously served in senior roles within the army, either engaging in or overseeing combat operations against Palestinians, and maintaining the illegal occupation of Palestinian land.
“What we’re seeing right now is a struggle between two Zionist elites over who is the greater fascist in different forms,” Yehouda Shenhav-Shahrabani, a professor at Tel Aviv University, said of the political struggles at play within Israel.
“On the one hand, there are the Ashkenazi Jews, who settled Israel, imposed the occupation and have killed thousands,” he said of Israel’s traditional military and governing elites, many of whom might describe themselves as liberal and democratic, and were originally from central and Eastern Europe. “Or [you have] the current religious Zionists, like Smotrich and Ben-Gvir, who [the old Ashkenazi elite] now accuse of being fascists.
“You can’t reduce this to left and right. I don’t buy into that,” Shenhav-Shahrabani said. “It goes deeper. Both sides are oblivious to the genocide in Gaza.”
While resistance against the war has grown both at home and abroad, so too has the intensity of the attacks being protested against.
Since Israel unilaterally broke a ceasefire in March, almost 4,000 Palestinians have been killed, hundreds of them children. In addition, a siege, imposed upon the decimated enclave on March 2, has pushed what remains of its pre-war population of more than two million to the point of famine, international agencies, including the United Nations, have warned.
At the same time as Israel’s war on Gaza has intensified, so too have its actions in the West Bank. Under the guise of another military operation, the Israeli army has occupied and levelled large parts of the occupied territory displacing a reported 40,000 of its inhabitants as it establishes its own military network there.
On Thursday, Israel’s Defence Minister Israel Katz, alongside Smotrich, who as finance minister enjoys significant control over the West Bank, announced the establishment of a further 22 Israeli settlements, all in defiance of international law.
Smotrich’s announcement came as a surprise to few. The far-right minister – himself a settler on Palestinian land – has previously been clear about his intention to see the West Bank annexed, even ordering preparations to do so in advance of US President Donald Trump’s inauguration, who he expected to support the idea. He has also said Gaza will be “totally destroyed” and its population expelled to a tiny strip of land along the Egyptian border.
For Shenhav-Shahrabani, little of it was surprising.
“I went with some others to South Africa in 1994. I met a justice of the Supreme Court, a Jew, who’d been injured by an Afrikaner bomb [during the struggle against apartheid],” Shenhav-Shahrabani said. “He told me that nothing will change for Palestinians until Israelis are ready to go to jail for them. We’re not there yet.”
Servite’s boys’ 4×100-meter relay team, consisting of freshmen Jace Wells, Jaelen Hunter, Kamil Pelovello and Jorden Wells got Friday’s CIF State Track and Field Championships off to a blazing start by winning the first heat in 40.28 seconds and earning the top qualifying time — not bad for the foursome’s first go around the oval.
Robert Gardner ran the anchor leg behind Jace Wells, Hunter and Pelovello six days earlier when the Friars clocked 40.40 to win the Southern Section Masters Meet and fellow sophomore Benjamin Harris joined Jorden Wells, Hunter and Gardner when Servite set a state and meet record at the Arcadia Invitational in April.
Justin Hart of Granada Hills ran the 400 meters in 47.72 seconds on Friday to earn the final qualifying spot for the CIF state final.
(Steve Galluzzo / For The Times)
Friday was all about the “youth movement.” They left Veterans Memorial Stadium at Buchanan High believing that they could return Saturday to break the state meet record of 40.24 set by Hawthorne in 1989.
“This is the first time that all four of us have been in the same relay,” Hunter said. “We’re going after the record tomorrow.”
Sherman Oaks Notre Dame won Heat 2 in 40.83, the second-fastest time.
Hunter showed why he’s the fastest freshman in the country one hour later when he looked like he was saving his energy for the finals even while winning his 400-meter heat in 47.43, the third-fastest prelims time behind Temecula Valley senior Jack Stadlman (46.99) and Culver City’s Duaine Mayrant (47.38).
Jace Wells clocked a personal-best to win his 200-meter heat in 21.03 while Stadlman (21 flat), Antrell Harris (21.14) and Leo Francis (21.16) from Santa Margarita also advanced to the finals ahead of USC-bound RJ Sermons of Rancho Cucamonga, who raced Nicolas Obimgba of Torrance head-to-head at 11 p.m. for the last qualifying spot after they tied to the thousandth of a second for ninth.
Sermons won by 20 hundredths of a second in 21.11 in an empty stadium to secure his spot in the finals.
“I’ve never been in a run-off before,” Sermons said, shaking his head. “I had a bad start the first time. No one to blame but me.”
Rancho Cucamonga’s RJ Sermons, right, wins a run-off against Nicolas Obimgba of Torrance to earn the last spot in the boys’ 200-meter finals.
(Steve Galluzzo / For The Times)
Servite capped its impressive day by winning its 4×400-meter heat in 3 minutes 10.94 seconds, holding off Cathedral (3:11.13) for the second-fastest qualifying time behind Long Beach Poly (3:10.70).
Maintenance crews will be working overnight trying remove the scorch marks on the track after the boys’ 100 meters. All nine sprinters who advanced to Saturday’s finals clocked 10.51 or under, led by De La Salle junior Jaden Jefferson, whose wind-legal 10.01 bettered the California record of 10.14 by Rodrick Pleasant of Gardena Serra in 2022. Second in the heat was Obimgba (10.20) and third was City Section champion Antrell Harris of Birmingham, giving a single heat the first, second and fourth-fastest times in the state this year.
USC-bound RJ Sermons of Rancho Cucamonga bounced back from a subpar Masters race, where he finished fourth in 10.47, to win his heat in 10.40 and Demare Dezeurn, who repeated as Masters champion in 10.35 seconds, also topped his heat Friday in 10.43. Benjamin Harris won Heat 4 in 10.49.
“Today was all about qualifying for finals, said Dezeurn, a sophomore from Alemany. “It’s great competition. I have to go hard tomorrow. If I can beat [Jefferson] at the start I can beat him in the race. He is good, though. Seeing those times just makes me love the game even more. I want to prove I belong here. I run to win!”
Kyra Terry, left, receives the baton from Oaks Christian teammate Rayah Rodriguez in a girls’ 4×100-meter relay heat at the state preliminaries on Friday.
(Steve Galluzzo / For The Times)
Christina Gray anchored Carson’s girls’ 4×100 relay, which posted the fastest qualifying time (46.16) while Journey Cole’s late kick on the anchor leg in Heat 2 allowed Redondo Union (46.33) to clip last year’s state champion Oaks Christian, which posted the same time (46.39) as Long Beach Poly. Gray followed with a personal-best 11.47 in the 100, beating Chaparral’s Keelan Wright by two hundredths of a second for second in her heat.
Calabasas sophomore Malia Rainey yelled “C’mon” after winning her heat in a personal-best 11.57 while teammate Marley Scoggins won Heat 4 in 11.67. Wright bounced back to post the best time (23.58) in the girls’ 200 meters while Gray finished second in 23.71, the second-fastest time and much swifter than her 24.62 at City Finals.
“In the 100 I had a great start, now I just have to work on the finish,” Gray said. “It’s still a great time for me. I’m feeling pretty good, there was no negative wind and winning the relay gave me confidence as I was feeling doubtful before that but after the 4×100 I knew I’d do well the rest of the day.
Carson 4×100-meter relay anchor runner Christina Gray crosses the finish line during a heat at the CIF state track and field preliminaries on Friday.
(Steve Galluzzo / For The Times)
Reigning discus champion Aja Johnson Sherman Oaks Notre Dame struggled Friday but secured the 12th and last finals spot with an effort of 139 feet 3 inches. Camarillo’s Trinity Tipton was the top qualifier at 152-06. The 2023 shot put state champion, Johnson was the top qualifier Friday at 45-05, beating Aliso Niguel’s Jaslene Massey by six inches.
Transgender athlete AB Hernandez of Jurupa Valley was the leading qualifier in the girls’ long jump (19-11.75), triple jump (40-09.75) and high jump (5-05.00).
Dimapur, Mokokchung, Wokha, Chumoukedima and Kohima, India — With its high ceilings, soft lighting and brown and turquoise blue cushioned chairs, Juro Coffee House has the appearance of a chic European cafe.
Sitting right off India’s National Highway-2, which connects the northeastern states of Assam, Nagaland and Manipur, the cafe hosts a live roastery unit that was set up in January by the Nagaland state government. Here, green coffee beans from 12 districts in Nagaland are roasted live, ground and served, from farm to cup.
On a typical day, the cafe gets about a hundred customers, sipping on coffee, with smoke breaks in between.
Those numbers aren’t big – but they’re a start.
For decades, an armed rebellion seeking the secession of Nagaland from India dominated the state’s political and economic landscape. Thousands have been killed in clashes between security forces and armed rebels in Nagaland since India’s independence, soon after which Naga separatists held a plebiscite in which nearly all votes were cast in favour of separating from the Indian union. India has never accepted that vote.
The state’s economy has depended on agriculture, with paddy, fruits like bananas and oranges and green leafy vegetables like mustard leaves, the main crops grown traditionally.
Now, a growing band of cafes, roasteries and farms across the state are looking to give Nagaland a new identity by promoting locally grown Arabica and Robusta coffee. Juro Coffee House is among them.
While coffee was first introduced to the state in 1981 by the Coffee Board of India, a body set up by the Indian government to promote coffee production, it only began to take off after 2014.
Helped by government policy changes and pushed by a set of young entrepreneurs, Nagaland today has almost 250 coffee farms spread across 10,700 hectares (26,400 acres) of land in 11 districts. About 9,500 farmers are engaged in coffee cultivation, according to the state government. The small state bordering Myanmar today boasts of eight roastery units, besides homegrown cafes mushrooming in major cities like Dimapur and Kohima, and interior districts like Mokokchung and Mon.
For Searon Yanthan, the founder of Juro Coffee House, the journey began with COVID-19, when the pandemic forced Naga youth studying or working in other parts of India or abroad to return home. But this became a blessing in disguise since they brought back value to the state, says Yanthan. “My father used to say, those were the days when we used to export people,” he told Al Jazeera. “Now it’s time to export our products and ideas, not the people.”
Like many kids his age, Yanthan left Nagaland for higher studies in 2010, first landing up in the southern city of Chennai for high school and then the northern state of Punjab for his undergraduate studies, before dropping out to study in Bangalore. “I studied commerce but the only subject I was good in was entrepreneurship,” said the 30-year-old founder, dressed in a pair of smart formal cotton pants and a baby pink polo neck shirt.
The pandemic hit just as he was about to graduate, and Yanthan left with no degree in hand. One day, he sneaked into a government vehicle from Dimapur during the COVID-19 lockdown – when only essential services like medical and government workers were allowed to move around – to return to his family farm estate, 112km (70 miles) from state capital Kohima, where his dad first started growing coffee in 2015.
He ended up spending seven months at the farm during lockdown and realised that coffee farmers didn’t know much about the quality of beans, which wasn’t surprising considering coffee is not a household beverage among Nagas and other ethnic communities in India’s northeast.
Yanthan, who launched Lithanro Coffee, the parent company behind Juro, in 2021, started visiting other farms, working with farmers on improving coffee quality and maintaining plantations. Once his own processing unit was set up, he began hosting other coffee farmers, offering them a manually brewed cup of their own produce.
Lithanro Coffee’s red beans [Photo courtesy Lithanro Coffee]
Gradually, he built a relationship with 200 farmers from whom he sources beans today, besides the coffee grown on his farm.
Yanthan sees coffee as an opportunity for Nagaland’s youth to dream of economic prospects beyond jobs in the government — the only aspiration for millions of Naga families in a state where private-sector employment has historically been uncertain. “Every village you go to, parents are working day and night in the farms to make his son or daughter get a government job,” Yanthan told Al Jazeera.
Coffee, to him, could also serve as a vehicle to bring people together. “In this industry, it’s not only one person who can do this work, it has to be a community,” he said.
Brewing success
So what changed in 2015? Coffee buyers and roasters are unanimous in crediting the state government’s decision to hand over charge of coffee development to Nagaland’s Land Resources Department (LRD) that year. The state department implements schemes sponsored by the federal government and the state government, including those promoting coffee.
Unlike in the past, when Nagaland – part of a region that has historically had poor physical connectivity with the rest of India – also had no internet, coffee roasters, buyers and farmers could now build online links with the outside world. “[The] market was not like what it is today,” said Albert Ngullie, the director of the LRD.
The LRD builds nurseries and provides free saplings to farmers, besides supporting farm maintenance. Unlike before, the government is also investing in the post-harvest process by supplying coffee pulpers to farmers, setting up washing stations and curing units in a few districts and recently, supporting entrepreneurs with roastery units.
Among those to benefit is Lichan Humtsoe. He set up his company Ete (which means “ours” in the Lotha Naga dialect) in 2016 after quitting his pen-pushing job in the LRD and was the first in the state to source, serve and supply Naga specialty coffee. Today, Ete runs its own cafes, roasteries and a coffee laboratory, researching the chemical properties of indigenous fruits as flavour notes. Ete also has a coffee school in Nagaland (and a campus in the neighbouring state of Manipur) with a dedicated curriculum and training facilities to foster the next generation of coffee professionals.
Humtsoe said the past decade has shown that the private sector and government in Nagaland have complemented each other in promoting coffee.
Nagaland’s growing coffee story also coincides with an overall increase in India’s exports of coffee beans.
In 2024, India’s coffee exports surpassed $1bn for the first time, with production doubling compared with 2020-21. While more than 70 percent of India’s coffee comes from the southern state of Karnataka, the Coffee Board has been trying to expand cultivation in the Northeast.
Building a coffee culture in Nagaland is no easy feat, given that decades of unrest left the state in want of infrastructure and almost completely reliant on federal funding. Growing up in the 1990s, when military operations against alleged armed groups were frequent and security forces would often barge into homes, day or night, Humtsoe wanted nothing to do with India.
At one point, he stopped speaking Nagamese – a bridge dialect among the state’s 16 tribes and a creole version of the Indian language, Assamese. But he grew disillusioned with the political solution rooted in separatism that armed groups were seeking. And the irony of the state’s dependence on funds from New Delhi hit the now 39-year-old.
Coffee became his own path to self-determination.
“From 2016 onwards, I was more of, ‘How can I inspire India?’”
Ete coffee’s training school for farmers and brewers in Nagaland, India [Courtesy Ete Coffee]
The quality challenge
Ngullie of the LRD insists that the coffee revolution brewing in Nagaland is also helping the state preserve its forests.
“We don’t do land clearing,” he said, in essence suggesting that coffee was helping the state’s agriculture transition from the traditional slash-and-burn techniques to agroforestry.
The LRD buys seed varieties from the Coffee Board for farmers, and growers make more money than before.
Limakumzak Walling, a 40-year-old farmer, recalled how his late father was one of the first to grow Arabica coffee in 1981 on a two-acre farm on their ancestral land in Mokokchung district’s Khar village. “During my father’s time, they used to cultivate it, but people didn’t find the market,” he said. “It was more of a burden than a bonus.”
Before the Nagaland government took charge of coffee development, the Coffee Board would buy produce from farmers and sell it to buyers or auction it in their headquarters in Bengaluru, Karnataka. But the payments, said Walling, would be made in instalments over a year, sometimes two. Since he took over the farm, and the state department became the nodal agency, payments are not only higher but paid upfront with buyers directly procuring from the farmers.
Still, profits aren’t huge. Walling makes less than 200,000 rupees per annum (roughly $2,300) and like most farmers, is still engaged in jhum cultivation, the traditional slash-and-burn method of farming practised by Indigenous tribes in northeastern hills. With erratic weather patterns and decreasing soil fertility in recent decades, intensified land use in jhum cultivation has been known to lead to further environmental degradation and greenhouse gas emissions, exacerbating climate change.
“Trees are drying up and so is the mountain spring water,” Walling told Al Jazeera, pointing at the evergreen woods where spring leaves were already wilting in March, well before the formal arrival of summer. “Infestation is also a major issue and we don’t use even organic fertilisers because we are scared of spoiling our land,” he added.
And though the state government has set up some washing stations and curing units, many more are needed for these facilities to be accessible to all farmers, said Walling, for them to sustain coffee as a viable crop and secure better prices. “Right now we don’t know the quality. We just harvest it,” he said.
Dipanjali Kemprai, a liaison officer who leads the Coffee Board of India operations in Nagaland, told Al Jazeera that the agency encourages farmers to grow coffee alongside horticultural crops like black pepper to supplement their income. “But intercropping still hasn’t fully taken off,” said Kemprai.
Meanwhile, despite the state’s efforts to promote sustainable agriculture, recent satellite data suggests that shifting cultivation, or jhum, may be rising again.
A Lithanro farmer collecting coffee beans in a plantation in Nagaland, India [Photo courtesy Lithanro Coffee]
The future of Naga coffee
Though it is the seventh-largest producer of coffee, India is far behind export-heavy countries like Brazil, Vietnam, Colombia and Italy.
And while the Nagaland government maintains that exports have been steadily growing, entrepreneurs tell a different story. Vivito Yeptho, who co-owns Nagaland Coffee and became the state’s first certified barista in 2018, said that their last export of 15 metric tonnes (MT) was in 2019, to South Africa.
Still, there are other wins to boast of.
In 2024, the state registered its highest-ever production at 48 MT, per state department officials. Yeptho said Nagaland Coffee alone supplies 40 cafes across India, of which 12 are in the Northeast region. And Naga coffee is already making waves internationally, winning silver at the Aurora International Taste Challenge in South Africa in 2022 and then gold in 2023.
“To aim for export, we need to be at least producing 80-100 MT every year,” Yeptho told Al Jazeera.
But before aiming for mass production, entrepreneurs said they still have a long way to go in improving the quality of beans and their post-harvest processing.
With a washing mill and a curing unit in his farm, where he grows both Arabica and Robusta varieties, Yanthan’s Lithanro brand is the only farm-to-cup institution in the state. He believes farmers need to focus on better maintenance of their plantations, to begin with.
“Even today, the attitude is that the plants don’t need to be tended to during the summers and monsoon season before harvest (which starts by November),” Yanthan told Al Jazeera. “But the trees need to be constantly pruned to keep them within a certain height, weeding has to be done and the stems need to be maintained as well.”
Even as these challenges ground Naga farmers and entrepreneurs in reality, their dreams are soaring.
Humtsoe hopes for speciality coffee from Nagaland to soon be GI tagged, like varieties from Coorg, Chikmagalur, Araku Valley and Wayanad in southern India.
He wants good coffee from India to be associated with Nagas, not just Nagaland, he said.
Ukraine’s president has questioned Russia’s commitment to progressing peace talks after Moscow confirmed it was sending a team to talks in Istanbul on Monday.
Russia is yet to send its negotiating proposals to Ukraine – a key demand by Kyiv. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Moscow’s conditions for a ceasefire would be discussed in Turkey.
But Volodymyr Zelensky accused Moscow of “doing everything it can to ensure the next possible meeting is fruitless”.
“For a meeting to be meaningful, its agenda must be clear, and the negotiations must be properly prepared,” he said. Ukraine had sent its proposals to Russia, reaffirming “readiness for a full and unconditional ceasefire”.
The first round of talks two weeks ago in Istanbul brought no breakthrough, but achieved a prisoner of war swap.
Russian President Vladimir Putin launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
Russia currently controls about 20% of Ukraine’s territory, including the southern Crimea peninsula Moscow annexed in 2014.
As the talks approached, both Russia and Ukraine reported explosions on Friday night and in the early hours of Saturday morning.
In Ukraine’s Kherson region, three people were killed and 10 more were injured, according to Oleksandr Prokudin, head of the region’s military administration.
On social media, he said that the “Russian military hit critical and social infrastructure” as well as “residential areas of settlements in the region”.
One person was also killed in the Sumy region, the administration there said.
Officials said at least one person had also been injured in explosions in the cities of Kharkiv and Izyum.
Meanwhile, at least 14 people were injured in an explosion in Russia’s Kursk region, according to the acting local governor Alexander Khinshtein and Russia’s state-owned news agency, TASS.
On Friday, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha reiterated that Kyiv had already sent its own “vision of future steps” to Russia, adding Moscow “must accept an unconditional ceasefire” to pave the way for broader negotiations.
“We are interested in seeing these meetings continue because we want the war to end this year,” Sybiha said during a joint press conference with his Turkish counterpart Hakan Fidan.
Putin and Zelensky are not expected to attend the talks on Monday.
But Fidan said Turkey was hoping to eventually host a high-level summit.
“We sincerely think it is time to bring President Trump, President Putin and President Zelensky to the table,” he said.
Peskov said Russia’s ceasefire proposals would not be made public, and Moscow would only entertain the idea of a high-level summit if meaningful progress was achieved in preliminary discussions between the two countries.
He welcomed comments made by Trump’s envoy to Ukraine, retired Gen Keith Kellogg, who described Russian concerns over Nato enlargement as “fair”.
Gen Kellogg said Ukraine joining the military alliance, long hoped for by Kyiv, was not on the table.
He added President Trump was “frustrated” by what he described as Russia’s intransigence, but emphasised the need to keep negotiations alive.
On 19 May, Trump and Putin had a two-hour phone call to discuss a US-proposed ceasefire deal to halt the fighting.
The US president said he believed the call had gone “very well”, adding that Russia and Ukraine would “immediately start” negotiations towards a ceasefire and “an end to the war”.
Ukraine has publicly agreed to a 30-day ceasefire but Putin has only said Russia will work with Ukraine to craft a “memorandum” on a “possible future peace” – a move described by Kyiv and its European allies as delaying tactics so Russian troops could seize more Ukrainian territory.
In a rare rebuke to Putin just days later, Trump called the Kremlin leader “absolutely crazy” and threatened US sanctions. His comments followed Moscow’s largest drone and missile attacks on Ukraine.
On Wednesday, Germany’s new chancellor, Friedrich Merz, told Zelensky that Berlin would help Kyiv produce long-range missiles to defend itself from future Russian attacks.
The Kremlin said any decision to end range restrictions on the missiles Ukraine could use would represent a dangerous change in policy that would harm efforts to bring an end to the war.
China’s drills near the Scarborough Shoal came as South Korea announced finding new Chinese buoys in the Yellow Sea.
China’s navy has conducted “combat readiness patrols” near the disputed Scarborough Shoal in the South China Sea, while South Korean officials separately announced the discovery of more Chinese buoys in contested waters in the Yellow Sea.
The Southern Theatre Command of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) conducted the drills in the “territorial waters and airspace of China’s Huangyan Island and surrounding areas”, state-run news outlet Xinhua reported on Saturday, using China’s name for the Scarborough Shoal.
The report said the PLA had been conducting drills in the area throughout May to “further strengthen the control of relevant sea and air areas, resolutely defend national sovereignty and security, and resolutely maintain peace and stability in the South China Sea”.
The Scarborough Shoal is a rocky islet claimed by The Philippines, located 220km (119 miles) west of Luzon, the nearest landmass. Beijing blockaded and seized the territory, a traditional fishing ground, from Manila in 2012.
The Chinese navy regularly carries out provocative military drills in the area as part of its claims of sovereignty over almost all of the South China Sea, despite a 2016 international tribunal ruling that Beijing’s claims had no legal basis under international law.
In late April, Manila accused Beijing of carrying out “dangerous manoeuvres and obstruction” after a Chinese naval ship damaged a Philippine coastguard ship with a water cannon near the shoal.
Tension in the Yellow Sea
Also on Saturday, South Korean officials announced they had recorded three new Chinese buoys installed near overlapping waters with South Korea, bringing the total number of such devices installed by China in the Yellow Sea to 13.
“[We] are closely monitoring activities within the provisional maritime zone [PMZ], including China’s unauthorised installation of structures, and will closely [cooperate] with relevant agencies to protect our maritime sovereignty,” a Ministry of Defence official said, according to South Korea’s official Yonhap news agency.
Two of the Chinese buoys – first detected in May 2023, but only announced this week – have been installed near the zone, according to Yonhap.
The third buoy is located inside the maritime zone, a contested area where the exclusive economic zones (EEZ) claims of South Korea and China overlap, Yonhap added.
China asserts its maritime boundary is based on a 1962 agreement signed with North Korea which cuts into waters South Korea considers part of its economic zone.
The Yellow Sea PMZ allows joint management of marine resources and prohibits activities beyond navigation and fishing.
However, tensions have grown between Beijing and Seoul as China has repeatedly erected installations in the waters, including 10 three-metre-wide and six-metre-tall observation buoys since 2018 and a fixed steel structure in 2022.
Last week, China declared three no-sail zones within the zone, in a move “believed to be for military training purposes”, according to the Korea Joongang Daily newspaper.
The no-sail declarations caused concern in Seoul over a potential uptick in Chinese military activity in the area.
This village in Derbyshire is known as the “seaside town without the sea” but its beloved fish and chip shops, cable car rides and theme park make it a quintessentially British holiday destination
While not close to the sea, visitors can enjoy the river that runs past the village(Image: Getty Images)
This famous town in Derbyshire has all the makings of a great seaside town, except the sea. Located 94.4 miles away from Skegness, this unique destination still has plenty to offer, including fish and chip shops, cable car rides and an exciting theme park.
The official Visit Peak District & Derbyshire TikTok account posted a video spotlighting the town of Matlock Bath, referred to affectionately as the “seaside town without the sea”. The video documents how visitors can spend a day in the colourful and charming town.
The TikTok video reveals that Matlock Bath is “known for its colourful shops and fish and ships restaurants”. One must stop destination highlighted is Halls of Derbyshire, the traditional ice cream and confectionery shop.
The local shops have an old-fashion feel, best experienced at Halls(Image: Derby Telegraph)
Halls is a must-visit stop for anyone passing through the area, easy enough to spot with colourful balloons outside and a window full of cotton candy. Another spot highlighted in the video is Kostas Fish Bar, which happens to be right next door.
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Despite not being particularly close to the sea, Kostas’ over 50 years of combined history in the fish and chip industry means that the menu is sufficient to satisfy your seafood craving. According to the video, Matlock Bath has a “seaside vibe despite being landlocked”.
This is most likely due to its position along the River Derwent. The 66-mile long river flows between Matlock Bath and Derby, with Matlock Bath situated in the middle of the river’s path.
Visitors to the area can enjoy a stroll along the river’s path or opt for an elevated view of the town by taking a cable car ride up to the Heights of Abraham. As documented in Visit Peak District’s TikTok video, visitors can take a cable car up to the clifftop country park to enjoy picturesque views.
Matlock Bath is ideal for a daytrip out of the city or a half-term break(Image: Derby Telegraph)
There are also caverns, trails and playgrounds to explore for those who make it to the hilltop park. Those interested in more family-friendly activities can also check out Gulliver’s Kingdom – a small theme park located on the edge of the Peak District National Park.
Gulliver’s Kingdom is ideal for a short-term break, full of kid-safe rides and attractions. Matlock Bath’s Explorer Package might be a cost-effective option for those planning to visit both the theme park and the hilltop park, as both are included in the cost of some accommodation bookings.
That said, you can probably enjoy much of the town in an afternoon and staying overnight isn’t necessary given the convenience of its transport options. As shared in the TikTok video, Matlock Bath is easy to get to by bus or train.
If you’re looking to explore more of Derbyshire, another stop to add to your list is Castleton – considered one of the “prettiest” villages in the Peak District. Despite its small population – less than 700 residents – the village draws plenty of tourists each year with its quaint pubs, tea rooms and stunning stone architecture.
Born in Vizzolo Predabissi, a village 15 miles away from San Siro and the site of his so-far most iconic moment, Acerbi’s sporting history began in 2006 at nearby Pavia in Serie C.
After a loan spell at Renate in Serie D, Acerbi began touring Italy with moves to Reggina, Genoa and Chievo, where he made his Serie A debut and emerged as one of the most promising defenders in the league.
AC Milan, the club he had supported since childhood, took notice of his qualities. In 2012 he made a permanent move to the Rossoneri where, however, things did not turn out as expected.
Acerbi had a problem, which in turn triggered others – an unresolved relationship with his father, his first admirer but also his first critic.
“He wanted to do me good, but without meaning to, he would go so far as to hurt me,” Acerbi recently said of his father’s constant criticism.
Paolo Franchini, the psychotherapist who helped Acerbi make peace with his father over the years, said: “He was his number one fan, but also his number one pain in the neck. He was always pointing out the mistakes he made.”
Now, when Acerbi raises his arms to the sky at the start of each game, he does it for him, but his has been a long journey.
His father died shortly after his move to AC Milan. Acerbi lost his balance and fell into depression.
“Already at the beginning of my career I didn’t really have the right attitude for a professional player,” he later said.
“I would often arrive tipsy at trainings, without having fully recovered from the night before. I was physically strong, and that was enough for me.
“As my father died, however, I hit rock bottom. I no longer had any drive and could no longer play. I was sick and would drink anything.”
After just six months, the Rossoneri loaned him back to Chievo, then he moved on again to Sassuolo at the end of the season.
Chilean scientists develop the world’s first patented probiotic shown to prevent gastric cancer. File Photo by Billie Jean Shaw/UPI
May 30 (UPI) — Scientists at the University of Concepción in Chile have developed the world’s first patented probiotic designed to prevent gastric cancer. The oral supplement is 93.6% effective and targets Helicobacter pylori, a key bacterial factor in the disease.
The probiotic forms a protective coating along the stomach lining, preventing the bacteria from attaching when contaminated food or water is consumed. The supplement is approved for use starting at age 8 and also functions as an immunobiotic, helping regulate the body’s immune response.
Chilean biochemist and Ph.D. in biological sciences Apolinaria García led the research, using Lactobacillus fermentum as the base of the probiotic compound.
Gastric cancer is among the most common cancers worldwide and ranks as the fourth-deadliest. Often called a “silent killer,” its early symptoms are difficult to distinguish from more common and benign digestive conditions.
Helicobacter pylori is found in about half the global population and is linked not only to gastric cancer but also to precursor conditions such as stomach ulcers and MALT lymphoma.
In the United States, the American Cancer Society estimates that nearly 30,000 new stomach cancer cases will be diagnosed in 2025, with more than 10,000 deaths expected.
In Latin America, countries such as Chile, Peru, Ecuador and Colombia report some of the highest incidence rates and lowest survival rates for gastric cancer, said Dr. Patricio Mardónez, president of Chile’s National Health Network.
He noted that countries like Japan and South Korea have significantly reduced mortality through widespread early detection and screening programs.
“Regionally, what was once a cancer seen mostly in people over 65 is now being detected in patients under 50,” Mardónez said.
While the exact causes behind the rise in gastric cancer diagnoses among younger people are still under investigation, several hypotheses have been proposed.
Changes in diet and lifestyle may be contributing, including increased consumption of highly processed foods high in sodium and low in fresh fruits and vegetables. Sedentary behavior and obesity are also risk factors, along with prolonged use of medications such as proton pump inhibitors (PPI), commonly prescribed for acid reflux.
In the world of international relations, foreign aid is not simply about altruism. It is a very complex thing, as Carol Lancaster points out in her fundamental work, Foreign Aid: Diplomacy, Development, and Domestic Politics: Aid is not just about pure altruism or even pure development. It is also about a country’s diplomacy, its domestic politics, and other broader strategic interests. In today’s evolving global landscape, this diplomatic element has increased even further. Today, the world is no longer dominated by one or just two superpowers, but rather a new multipolar order has taken shape, giving rise to a phenomenon or concept that we can call “competitive aid.”
Aid is no longer about who gives more, but rather about a high-stakes game in which countries use it to compete, gain advantage, and consolidate their influence in a country or region. Under these conditions, what does this increased competition mean for recipient countries? Does it really lead to better outcomes for developing countries? Or is it just creating a mess of fragmented efforts, redundant projects, and inappropriate prioritization by geopolitical shifting rather than actual development needs?
Foreign Aid Diplomacy in the New Global Era
To better understand “competitive aid,” we can recall where foreign aid diplomacy came from. For decades after World War II, especially during the Cold War, aid was largely a Western affair, with the United States in the lead. The narrative was often about rebuilding war-ravaged economies or, most importantly, preventing the spread of communist ideology. Aid is a key component of soft power, building alliances and promoting a particular vision of the global order.
Jump forward to the 21st century; the situation seems completely different. We have seen the rise of new economic giants, most notably China, as well as increasingly influential players such as India, Brazil, and the Gulf states. These are not just new faces on the list of donor countries. They bring very different philosophies, historical experiences, and, most importantly, strategic interests. China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is a very clear example. It is a massive infrastructure financing project that often offers large-scale loans on easier political terms than the approach of traditional Western donors. On the other hand, the European Union emphasizes human rights and good governance in its development cooperation. Meanwhile, US aid often ties its assistance directly to national security concerns, such as stabilizing an unstable region or securing vital supply chains. This diversity of donors, each with their own geopolitical strategies, has undeniably increased competition for aid.
The Dynamics of “Competitive Aid”
So, what exactly does “competitive aid” look like on the ground? It is a complex form of diplomacy where development projects are likened to pawns on a global chessboard. Donor countries are not just writing checks; they are actively competing for influence by offering what they expect to be the most attractive terms, the most impactful projects, or the most strategically aligned visions. The most prominent example of this competitive dynamic is seen in the global scramble for infrastructure development and connectivity. China’s BRI, launched more than a decade ago, has poured massive investment into roads, railways, ports, and digital networks across the continent. While Beijing insists that it is purely about economic growth and trade, it is hard to disregard the undeniable geopolitical implications of expanding China’s economic reach and gaining political influence as a result. A simple example is the Hambantota port project in Sri Lanka. While the project has economic aspirations, its handover to Chinese control due to Sri Lanka’s debt problems has sparked a heated debate on “debt trap diplomacy” and potential strategic leverage for Beijing.
In response, Western powers did not remain silent. The G7’s “Partnership for Global Infrastructure and Investment” (PGII) and the EU’s “Global Gateway” are a direct response and counter-response. These initiatives explicitly aim to provide a “value-based” alternative to infrastructure financing, emphasizing transparency, environmental sustainability, and fair labor practices. It is a clear competition over who will build the next big highway or port, with recipient countries finding themselves persuaded by many different parties offering favors.
However, competitive aid goes beyond just concrete and steel alone. It is also fiercely played out in efforts to gain access to resources. Donors might sweeten the aid package with agreements that guarantee access to vital minerals—for example, cobalt in the Democratic Republic of Congo or lithium in Latin America—or other important energy supplies. This could manifest as direct investment in extractive industries or broader development programs designed to stabilize strategic resource-rich regions. And let’s not forget the drive to grow political influence and shape the international norm. This can involve financial support for democratic institutions, judicial reform, or civil society groups, all aimed at promoting the donor country’s preferred governance model. Sometimes, it is more transactional in nature, with aid subtly or overtly linked to the recipient country’s support for the donor country’s position on international forums, such as votes in the UN or alignment on key geopolitical issues. This competition is not just about physical assets; it is about hearts, minds, and diplomatic solidarity.
So, what does all this competition mean for aid effectiveness and how it is coordinated? To be honest, it’s a double-edged sword that offers both exciting possibilities and significant headaches for recipient countries. On the one hand, a diverse donor landscape can be a good thing. With many players offering aid, recipient countries may find themselves in a stronger bargaining position. They can potentially negotiate better terms, more flexible loan conditions, or projects that are truly aligned with their own development plans. This is a bit like a “buyer’s market” for development, which, in an ideal world, could lead to more aid flows and faster progress. Just imagine a country in need of a new national railroad, perhaps getting attractive bids from Chinese, European, and American consortiums, allowing them to choose the best fit. This competitive pressure may even encourage donors to be more responsive to local needs.
However, the drawbacks of competitive aid are often greater, creating real challenges for aid effectiveness. First, when donors focus primarily on their own strategic interests, it often leads to a lack of coordination that is ultimately underwhelming. Donors may ignore existing national development strategies or multilateral coordination mechanisms and prefer to work bilaterally to maximize their own visibility and influence. This can result in fragmented aid efforts, where projects are undertaken in isolation, without synergy or a cohesive approach to a country’s overall development. Imagine a scenario where multiple donors fund separate, unconnected health clinics in the same district, rather than collaborating to build a comprehensive and integrated healthcare system. This duplication of efforts and resources is simply very inefficient and certainly wasteful.
Second, competitive aid can easily lead to misplaced development priorities. Recipient countries, desperate for funds, may feel pressured to accept projects that primarily serve the donor’s strategic agenda, even if it is not the most urgent or beneficial for themselves. This can result in the infamous “white elephant” projects with large-scale infrastructure that look impressive but are economically unfeasible or poorly integrated into the local economy. They become more about donor prestige than real development goals. And then there is the obvious risk of an increased debt burden. While the “debt trap diplomacy” narrative (the idea that China deliberately traps countries in debt to seize assets) is the subject of ongoing academic debate, the reality is that large, non-transparent loans from multiple sources can pile up very quickly. If these projects do not generate sufficient economic returns, recipient countries can find themselves trapped in ongoing debt and forced to divert critical resources from social services to debt repayment.
Finally, this competitive dynamic could erode multilateralism and established international development norms. If powerful countries consistently prioritize interest-driven bilateral aid over collaborative efforts through multilateral bodies, it will undermine institutions designed to promote coordinated, principles-based development. This could erode trust, create parallel aid structures, and make it harder to address global challenges that truly require collective action, such as climate change or future pandemics, which demand a united front. The recent decline in official development assistance (ODA) from some traditional donors, partly due to domestic refugee costs and shifting geopolitical priorities, further underscores how fragile the aid landscape is in this competitive environment.
A Path Forward: Navigating the New Aid Landscape
It is clear that foreign aid diplomacy has undergone a profound transformation. What was once a tool for post-war reconstruction has become a central player in today’s complex geopolitical arena. The rise of new global powers has undeniably ushered in an era of “competitive aid,” where development assistance is increasingly becoming a strategic asset in the pursuit of influence and advantage. Despite the tempting promise that this competition might offer more choice and leverage to recipient countries, fragmentation, duplication, distorted priorities, and the continuing shadow of debt present formidable obstacles to proper and long-term development.
So, where do we go from here? Responsibility certainly lies on both sides. For recipient countries, it is crucial to develop strong strategic planning capacity and sharpen their negotiation skills. This is not just about receiving money but rather about ensuring that foreign aid actually serves their national development agenda rather than being a mere pawn in a larger geopolitical chess game. For donor countries, while national interest will always be a driving force, there is a strong argument for a renewed commitment to coordination, transparency, and adherence to internationally agreed principles of aid effectiveness. In conclusion, moving beyond a purely competitive mindset towards a more collaborative approach to foreign aid diplomacy is very essential. It’s not just about being generous. It is about how to effectively address global challenges together and build a more just and prosperous world for all. The shifting balance of power demands not only new strategies but also a careful re-evaluation of the purpose and practice of foreign aid itself.
THE 1% Club left contestants scratching their heads after a devilishly tricky maths question saw just 13 players pass just to make it through.
The hit ITV quiz show, fronted by funnyman Lee Mack, threw in a numbers puzzle that had the players panicking.
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Many players were stumped on a maths questionCredit: ITV
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Lee was shocked to learn 13 players used their passCredit: ITV
Instead of testing players on their general knowledge, 100 contestants try their luck at solving riddles within 30 seconds.
On The 1% Club, they are whittled down round by round as they are tasked with using their logic, reasoning skills, and common sense.
With every player that gets eliminated, £1,000 gets added to the prize pot as the players try to answer questions that certain percentages of the public would get right.
The players that remain at the end will fight to win a potentially huge jackpot prize and a chance at joining the prestigious one percent club.
But the the 35% question saw a whopping 13 players use their pass.
Lee showed a picture of a coloured pie chart with numbers and asked: “What number replaces the question mark when you read it clockwise from the start?”
The remaining players faces looked puzzled as they tried to figure out the answer within the 30 seconds.
Lee then revealed the right answer was 27 as they alternate segments reveal consecutive multiples of three and 27 is the next number in the three times table.
Lee was stunned to see that a massive 13 players used their pass to get through to the next round.
The episode also saw an ‘easy’ common sense riddle knock out 23 people earlier on in the show.
The 1% Club players stumped by ‘easy’ question that knocks out 23 people – would you have got it-
When Lee moved onto the 70% question, he asked the remaining players to solve a question.
Lee said: “John writes with his right hand and the last word he’d right if he was writing this sentence would be be.
“If Keith writes with his left hand, what would be the last word he would write in the sentence above?”
Of course the answer was the word ‘be’, as a different writing hand would not change the last word, something which many viewers playing along got correct.
Hardest Quiz Show Questions
Would you know the answers to some of quizzing TV’s hardest questions
Who Wants To Be A Millionaire – Earlier this year, fans were left outraged after what they described as the “worst” question in the show’s history. Host Jeremy Clarkson asked: “From the 2000 awards ceremony onwards, the Best Actress Oscar has never been won by a woman whose surname begins with which one of these letters?” The multiple choice answers were between G, K, M and W. In the end, and with the £32,000 safe, player Glen had to make a guess and went for G. It turned out to be correct as Nicole Kidman, Frances McDormand and Kate Winslet are among the stars who have won the Best Actress gong since 2000.
The 1% Club – Viewers of Lee Mack’s popular ITV show were left dumbfounded by a question that also left the players perplexed. The query went as follows: “Edna’s birthday is on the 6th of April and Jen’s birthday falls on the 15th of October, therefore Amir’s birthday must be the ‘X’ of January.” It turns out the conundrum links the numbers with its position in the sentence, so 6th is the sixth word and 15th is the fifteenth word. Therefore, Amir’s birthday is January 24th, corresponding to the 24th word in the sentence.
The Chase – The ITV daytime favourite left fans scratching their heads when it threw up one of the most bizarre questions to ever grace the programme. One of the questions asked the player: “Someone with a nightshade intolerance should avoid eating what?” The options were – sweetcorn, potatoes, carrots – with Steve selecting sweetcorn but the correct answer was potatoes.
However, a whopping 23 players in the studio answered the riddle incorrectly and they were eliminated from the game.
Viewers took to social media in droves as they couldn’t believe so many players left the game after such an ‘easy’ question
One wrote: “How t* have 23 gone out?? Being left handed doesn’t mean you write words in the wrong order.”
Another added: “Too many people thinking too hard on that one #The1PercentClub.”
A third penned: “TWENTY THREE out on THAT?!?!”
The 1% Club is available to watch on ITV1 and stream on ITVX.
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Many viewers said the question was ‘easy’ – but would you have got it right?Credit: itv
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The different hands would not have effected the structure of the sentenceCredit: ITV
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23 players were eliminated from The 1% Club in a shocking roundCredit: ITV
Hailing from some of today’s funniest TV series, six actors gathered recently for an uninhibited conversation about what it takes to make people laugh at The Envelope’s Emmy Roundtable for comedy actors.
In Netflix’s “Running Point,”Kate Hudson plays Isla, a woman who becomes pro basketball’s first girl boss when she takes over the family franchise. In ABC’s “Abbott Elementary,” Lisa Ann Walter portrays Melissa Schemmenti, a tough grade school teacher in Philly’s underfunded public education system. With Hulu’s “Mid-Century Modern,” Nathan Lane takes on the role of Bunny, an aging gay man who brings together a chosen family when he invites two friends to reside in his Palm Springs home. “Hacks” co-creator Paul W. Downs does double duty as Jimmy, the manager to legendary comedian Deborah Vance (Jean Smart) in the Max series. Bridget Everett, creator of HBO’s “Somebody Somewhere,” plays Sam, a cabaret singer who moves back to her family’s sleepy Kansas town to take care of her dying sister. And David Alan Grier stars as Dr. Ron, a devoted physician and cranky veteran who’s seen it all in the overrun ER of a small-town hospital in NBC’s “St. Denis Medical.”
The talented group spoke with The Times about their respective shows, typecasting and the risks one takes to make great comedy. Read on for excerpts from our discussion — and watch video of the roundtable above.
The 2025 Emmy Comedy Roundtable: Kate Hudson, left, Paul W. Downs, Bridget Everett, Nathan Lane, Lisa Ann Walter and David Alan Grier.
The best comedy pushes boundaries, which means it can also skirt the edge of offensive. How do you know if you’ve gone too far, or haven’t pushed it enough?
Downs: In the “Hacks” pilot, Jean Smart’s character, Deborah Vance, says there is no line. I think there’s nothing off limits, because it’s really about execution and thoughtfulness. The thing that makes edgy comedy not funny is when it causes harm, when it’s something that’s punching down, when it’s not something that can bring people together. That, to me, isn’t worth it. But there’s nothing that’s too taboo, because that’s what comedy is for. It’s to examine things, explore things, get close to the edge.
Everett: I think that comedy is about making people feel good. I want to make people feel joy. So as long as I’m not hurting anybody’s feelings, I think everything’s on the table.
Grier: I don’t think you know the edge and that’s why it’s dangerous. I’ve done things where I thought, “This is too much,” and things where I thought, “We didn’t go far enough.” So you have to play that game. My intention is never to anger and offend, but you do have to put yourself in that position and take a chance, especially with comedy. You can prescreen it, but who are you prescreening it to? Sixty-year-old white women? High school kids? You have to take a chance.
Kate Hudson of “Running Point.”
Hudson: I’m not a stand-up [comedian], so it’s fun to watch people walk that line. It’s exciting. What are they going to say? Is it going to be offensive? Is it not? Is it going to be brilliant? That’s part of what’s fun about being an audience of adult comedy. But I don’t like mean comedy. It’s really hard for me to see. I’ve been asked to do roasts a million times, and I just can’t do it. It just doesn’t move me in any way.
Lane: I was asked. This was the biggest mistake of my life. … A Friars [Club] Roast that was going to happen. [Jerry Lewis] was going to be roasted. And Richard Belzer said to me, “Oh, Nathan, would you be a part of it? Would you do it? It would mean a lot to Jerry.” And I’m like, “Oh, yeah, sure. I’ll do the roast.” And then I’m suddenly there and I’m sitting next to Paul Shaffer and Jeff Ross, who apologized in advance for what he might say. And I realized then that, “Oh, you’re not getting up and just roasting this person. You’re attacked. You’re on the dais.” So I thought, “Oh, what have I gotten into?” And I had asked them, “Please let me go first.” And I had worked out jokes. I had a couple of writers help me, and there was an initial joke, which was, “The only reason I agreed to do this was because I thought by the time it happened, Jerry would be dead.”
Walter: I’m on a show that’s got a lot of kids, and families can watch it together, which was [creator] Quinta Brunson’s intention. But there are things that the kids won’t get and that adults get. Melissa Schemmenti gets bleeped out regularly because she curses. She’s South Philly! As a comic, I only am interested in edge, that’s where I want to live … It’s easier to make a point and get ears when you’re making people laugh. And we do that on the show quite frequently. They’ll do a storyline about the school-to-prison pipeline, but it’s not ham-fisted, it’s not preachy. It’s edgy and it’s all within jokes. Anytime you’re making people laugh, I think you can say whatever you want.
What’s the strangest or most difficult skill you’ve had to learn for a role?
Hudson: In “Almost Famous,” [director] Cameron [Crowe] wanted me to learn how to roll cigarettes fast with one hand. And so I was learning how to roll, and I got really good at it really fast. And then when we were doing camera tests, I was doing it and I was smoking. And he was like, “No.” And I was like, “What? I just spent months trying to learn how to do that!” Then I started rolling my own cigarettes and got into a really bad habit and then spent years trying to quit.
Paul W. Downs of “Hacks.”
Downs: On “Broad City,” I had to learn and do parkour. It’s high skill level and high risk. You know, when you jump off buildings and roll around … [leap] off chairs and over fire hydrants. I did it, but not a lot of it ended up onscreen. Just the most comedic moments. I jumped between buildings and they didn’t even put it in!
Lane: When I did “Only Murders in the Building,” they said, “So you have a deaf son and you’re going to have scenes with him in ASL [American Sign Language].” It was challenging. I had a coach and I would work with him. And the wonderful young actor, James Caverly, who is Deaf … he was very supportive. If I had to become fluent, it would’ve taken six months to a year to do it well. But I had an advantage; they said, “Oh, your character is embarrassed by having a deaf son, so he didn’t learn it until later in life. So he’s not that good at it.” But it was a great thing to learn. I loved it.
Grier: I did an episode of a sitcom in which it was assumed, unbeknownst to me, that I was very proficient playing an upright bass. This is not true. I played cello as a child. I had to play this upright bass and as a jazz musician. It was horrible. Your fingers swell and blister and bleed. Of course, I went along with it because that’s what we’re all supposed to do. But by Day 4, my fingers were in great pain. I never mastered it. But I did want to ask them, “Who told you I could play?”
Everett: I did a little trapeze work, but since the knee thing, I can’t anymore … [Laughs]
Lane: This was the independent film about the Wallendas, right?
Everett: The truth is I’ve never had to do anything. Really. I had to rollerblade once in a Moby video, but that doesn’t seem like it’s going to stack up against all this, so maybe we should just move on to the next person. I would do trapeze, though. I’ll do anything. Well, not anything. Can we just edit this part out in post?
Hudson: I’m in love with you.
Walter: In a movie I did where I started out as the nosy neighbor, I found out that I was going to be a cougar assassin and I had to stunt drive a Mustang and shoot a Glock. It was a surprise. Literally. When I got to set, I saw my wardrobe and went, “I think I’m playing a different character than what I auditioned for.” … They put the car on a chain and I got T-boned. I was terrified, but then I was like, “Let’s go again!” That was the most dangerous thing until I had to do a South Philly accent as Melissa, and do it good enough so that South Philly wouldn’t kill me. That was probably more dangerous.
David Alan Grier of “St. Denis Medical.”
Let’s talk about typecasting. What are the types of roles that frequently come to you, where you’re like “Oh, my God, not again!”
Lane: Oh, not another mysterious drifter.
Hudson: Rom-coms. If I can’t get a job doing anything else, I can get a job doing a romantic comedy. When you have major success in something, you realize the business is just so excited [that] they want you in them all the time. It really has nothing to do with anything other than that. It’s something that I’m very grateful for, but you’re constantly having to fight to do different things. I’d be bored if I was constantly doing the same thing over and over again. But it’s just how the business works. Once you’re in that machine, they just want to keep going until they go to somebody else.
Walter: I can’t tell you how bored I am with being the gorgeous object of men’s desire. I named my first production company Fat Funny Friend … But as a mother of four in Los Angeles, I didn’t really have the luxury of saying, “I want to branch out.” But I did say, “Can I play someone smart?” My father was a NASA physicist. My mother was brilliant. I was over doing things I could do in my sleep, always getting the part of the woman who sticks her head out of the trailer door and goes, “I didn’t kill him, but I ain’t sorry he’s dead!” … It’s like, “Can I play someone who has a college education?” And I did, finally, but it took Quinta to do it.
Grier: I’ve found that the older I’ve gotten, the roles I’m offered have broadened. And I’ve played a variety of really challenging great roles because I’m old now. That’s been a real joy because I didn’t really expect that. I just thought I’d be retired. I did. So it’s been awesome.
Nathan Lane of “Mid-Century Modern.”
Lane: There was an article written about me, it was sort of a career-assessment article. It was a very nice piece, but it referred to me as the greatest stage entertainer of the last decade. And as flattering as it was, I can find a dark cloud in any silver lining. I felt, “Oh, that’s how they see me?” As an “entertainer” because of musicals and things [I did] like “The Birdcage” or “The Lion King.” I’d been an actor for 35 years and I thought, “I have more to offer.” So I wound up doing “The Iceman Cometh” in Chicago … and that would change everything. It was the beginning of a process where I lucked out and got some serious roles in television, and that led to other things. But it was a concerted effort over a period of 10, 15 years, and difficult because everybody wants to put you in a box.
Is it difficult in the industry to make the move between drama and comedy?
Walter: It’s a lifelong consternation to me that there is an idea that if you are known comedically, that’s what you do. We are quite capable of playing all of the things.
Grier: I remember seeing Jackie Gleason in “The Hustler.” I loved it. He was so great. Robin Williams also did serious. I think it’s actually harder when you see serious actors try to be comedians.
As a mother of four in Los Angeles, I didn’t really have the luxury of saying, ‘I want to branch out.’ But I did say, ‘Can I play someone smart?’ My father was a NASA physicist. My mother was brilliant. I was over doing things I could do in my sleep, always getting the part of the woman who sticks her head out of the trailer door and goes, ‘I didn’t kill him, but I ain’t sorry he’s dead!’
— “Abbott Elementary” actor Lisa Ann Walter on being typecast
Downs: One of the things about making “Hacks” is we wanted to do something that was mixed tone, that it was funny and comedic but also let actors like myself, like Jean, all of these people, have moments. Because to us, the most funny things are right next to the most tragic things.
Hudson: And usually the most classic. When you think about the movies that people know generation after generation, they’re usually the ones that walk the line. And they’re the ones that you just want to go back and watch over and over and over again.
Bridget Everett of “Somebody Somewhere.”
Everett: I haven’t had a lot of experience with being typecast because I’ve been in the clubs for a long time doing cabaret. But on my show, Tim Bagley, who plays Brad … he’s been doing the same characters for I don’t know for how long. So we wrote this part for him, and one of the most rewarding things for me on this show was sitting behind the monitor and watching him get to have the moment he deserved … It’s one of the greatest gifts to me as a creator to have been part of that. It’s a whole thing in my show. We’re all getting this break together. We’ve all struggled to pay our rent well into our 40s. I waited tables into my 40s, but you don’t give up because you love doing it.
I’m sure many of you are recognized in public, but what about being mistaken for somebody else who’s famous?
Grier: I went to a performance of a David Mamet show on Broadway. I went backstage, and this particular day, it was when Broadway was raising money to benefit AIDS. There was a Midwestern couple there with their young son and they saw me, and the house manager said, “This couple, they’re going to give us an extra $1,000 if you take a picture with them. Would you mind?” I’m like, “Yeah, cool.” So I’m posing and the dad goes, “It is our honor to take a picture with you, Mr. LeVar Burton.” Now in that moment, I thought if I say no, people will die. So I looked at them and I went, “You liked me in ‘Roots?’” He said, “We loved you.” Click, we took the picture. I’m not going to be like, “How dare you?!”
Walter: Peg Bundy I got a couple of times. But as soon as I open my mouth, they know who I am. I can hide my hair, but as soon as I talk, I’m made.
Hudson: I’ve had a lot of Drew Barrymore. And then every other Kate. Kate Winslet, Katie Holmes … I’ve gotten all of them.
Walter: Do you correct them?
Hudson: Never. I just say yes and sign it “Cate Blanchett.”
Lisa Ann Walter of “Abbott Elementary.”
I’d love to know who everybody’s comedic inspiration was growing up.
Walter: My dad used to let me stay up and watch “The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour” and “Laugh-In.” I got to see Ruth Buzzi, rest in peace, and Goldie Hawn and Lily Tomlin. Jo Anne Worley. All these funny women. That’s what made me think, “You can get a job doing this, the thing that I get in trouble for at school?!”
Grier: My comedy hero was Richard Pryor. I was this Black little boy in Detroit, and George Jessel would come on “The Mike Douglas Show” and he might as well have been speaking Russian. I’m like, “How can this be comedy?” Then I saw Richard Pryor, and he was the first comic who I just went, “Well, this guy’s hilarious.”
Downs: I remember one of the first comedies that my dad showed me was “Young Frankenstein.” I remember Teri Garr, Cloris Leachman and Madeline Kahn. All of these women. I was always like, “They’re the funniest ones.”
Hudson: My era growing up was Steve Martin, Martin Short, Albert Brooks, Mel Brooks. But women were, for me, the classics. Lucille Ball.
Walter: There was a time when I was growing up where women really dominated comedy. They were your mom [nods at Hudson, Hawn’s daughter], Whoopi [Goldberg], Bette Midler. The biggest stars of the biggest comedies were women, and then that all went away for a really long time. I think it found its way back with Judd Apatow and then he made “Bridesmaids.”
Hudson: I tried really hard to make edgy comedy and studios wouldn’t do it. They wouldn’t. It took Judd to convince the studio system that women are ready. That we can handle rated-R. In the ’70s and ’80s, there was a ton of rated-R comedy with women. But for some reason, it just all of a sudden became like, “Oh, there’s only 1½ demographics for women in comedy.” I always felt like it was an uphill battle trying to get them made. Then I remember when Jenji [Kohan] came in with “Orange Is the New Black.” That was really awesome.
Lane: Above all, it was always Jackie Gleason for me. He was such an influence. He was hilarious, and of course, very broadly funny, but then there was something so sad. It was such pathos with him. … He was this wonderful, serious actor, as well as being Ralph Kramden.
Everett: There’s nobody that taught me more about how to be funny than my mom. She just had this way of being that I have used in my live shows. It’s led to where I am now. She used to wet her pants [laughing] so she had to put towels down on all the chairs in the house. She just didn’t care. That shows you to not care, to go out there. I live in fear, but not when I feel like she’s with me.
Grier: That’s the edge. You’re either going to weep or you’re going to [laugh] until you urinate.
Lawyers for the six victims say ‘historic’ court decision recognises the plight of survivors who demanded justice for decades.
A top Guatemalan court has sentenced three former paramilitaries to 40 years each in prison after they were found guilty of raping six Indigenous women between 1981 and 1983, one of the bloodiest periods of the Central American nation’s civil war.
The conviction and sentencing on Friday mark another significant step towards attaining justice for the Maya Achi Indigenous women, who were sexually abused by pro-government armed groups, during a period of extreme bloodshed between the military and left-wing rebels that left as many as 200,000 dead or missing.
Former Civil Self-Defence Patrol members Pedro Sanchez, Simeon Enriquez and Felix Tum were found guilty of crimes against humanity for sexually assaulting six members of the Maya Achi group, Judge Maria Eugenia Castellanos said.
“The women recognised the perpetrators, they recognised the places where the events took place. They were victims of crimes against humanity,” she said, praising the women’s bravery in coming to court to testify on repeated occasions.
“They are crimes of solitude that stigmatise the woman. It is not easy to speak of them,” the judge said.
Three former paramilitaries, from left, Simeon Enriquez, Pedro Sanchez and Felix Tum, leave the court after their conviction and sentencing on Friday [Johan Ordonez/AFP]
Indigenous lawyer Haydee Valey, who represented the women, said the sentence was “historic” because it finally recognised the struggle of civil war survivors who had demanded justice for decades.
Several Maya Achi women in the courtroom applauded at the end of the trial, where some dressed in traditional attire and others listened to the verdict through an interpreter.
One of the victims, a 62-year-old woman, told the AFP news agency she was “very happy” with the verdict.
Pedro Sanchez, one of the three men convicted, told the court before the sentencing, “I am innocent of what they are accusing me of.”
But Judge Marling Mayela Gonzalez Arrivillaga, another member of the all-women, three-panel court, said there was no doubt about the women’s testimony against the suspects.
The convictions were second in the Maya Achi women’s case against former military personnel and paramilitaries. The first trial, which took place in January 2022, saw five former paramilitaries sentenced to 30 years in prison.
Advocacy group Impunity Watch said the case “highlights how the Guatemalan army used sexual violence as a weapon of war against Indigenous women” during the civil conflict.
In 2016, a Guatemalan court sentenced two former military officers for holding 15 women from the Q’eqchi community, who are also of Maya origin, as sex slaves. Both officers were sentenced to a combined 360 years in prison.
Almost five million Brits are slated to flock to this stunning European country this year, which has recently threatened holiday makers with hefty £50 fines before they’ve even got off the plane
Brits have been warned about the new penalties(Image: Getty Images/iStockphoto)
Sun-worshipping Brits have been threatened with a hefty fine for breaking a strict new rule – before they’ve even embarked.
There’s no greater feeling than stepping off the plane and feeling the warm air hit your face. It’s an experience almost five million UK holidaymakers will experience this year, as Turkey (Türkiye) prepares for record-breaking levels of tourism.
However, the country is clamping down on inpatient passengers who are too eager for their own good. The brutal warning comes as the Turkish Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) announces it will start introducing penalties for those who unfasten their seatbelt and stand up before the plane has fully come to a stop.
Standing up before the seatbelt light switches off now risks a fine(Image: NurPhoto via Getty Images)
“According to the regulation, airlines are obliged to remind passengers to fasten their seatbelts during and after landing until they reach the parking position and to explicitly point out that any infringement will be reported to the aviation authority, and a fine will be imposed,” the CAA said, according to Euronews. Now, passengers reaching for their overhead luggage before the seatbelt light has switched off will now be fined €62 (approx. £50).
Turkish Airlines – the country’s flagship airline – has reportedly already updated its landing announcement to make tourists aware of the penalty. It states rule-breakers will be reported to the Directorate General of Civil Aviation through a Disruptive Passenger Report. Then, an ‘administrative fine’ will be imposed in accordance with ‘applicable legal regulations’.
The country is clamping down on inpatient passengers(Image: Getty Images/iStockphoto)
It has yet to be confirmed whether other airlines will introduce similar warnings for flights touching down in the country. Either way, it’s worth sitting patiently until you know it’s safe to take your seatbelt off.
The news sparked fierce debate online, with many holidaymakers arguing the rule will worsen delays and make disembarking even longer. “There are umpteen reasons why I have been put off flying – for good,” one person said. “This is just another one of them.”
Another agreed, writing: “For goodness sake, I just want to stretch my legs, is that a crime?” while a third added: “I suspect airlines will start charging us to board first and leave first, just like they do with everything else.”
However, others seemed in favour of the new rules – with some social media commentators even suggesting the fine should be higher. “What’s the point of rushing off the plane?” one person asked. “So you can wait for longer at the baggage carousel?”
Another wrote: “I’ve never understood why people do that. You always have caught up to them at baggage claim, so why push to be the first off?” while a third branded the fine a ‘good idea’.
The Mirror has approached Turkish Airlines for comment.
Do you have a story to share? Email us at [email protected] for a chance to be featured.
Marina won the Southern Section Division 3 softball championship with an 8-1 win over Westlake in Irvine on Friday.
Aviana Valbuena had three hits and four RBIs. Sister Mia Valbuena struck out 13 with one walk.
Marina improved to 19-13.
Los Alamitos won the Division 2 championship with a 3-0 win over JSerra that took 10 innings. Cienna Kowaleski hit a two-run home run in the 10th to end a great pitching duel.
JSerra’s Liliana Escobar struck out 16. Los Alamitos’ Jaliane Brooks threw all 10 innings, striking out five.
In Division 6, Irvine University defeated Rio Hondo Prep 4-1. In Division 7, Rancho Mirage defeated Culver City 7-3.
Bokeo province, Laos – Khobby was living in Dubai last year when he received an intriguing message about a well-paying job working online in a far-flung corner of Southeast Asia.
The salary was good, he was told. He would be working on computers in an office.
The company would even foot the bill for his relocation to join the firm in Laos – a country of 7.6 million people nestled between China, Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam and Myanmar.
With the company paying for his flights, Khobby decided to take the plunge.
But his landing in Laos was anything but smooth.
Khobby discovered that the promised dream job was rapidly becoming a nightmare when his Ghanaian passport was taken on arrival by his new employers.
With his passport confiscated and threats of physical harm ever present, he endured months working inside a compound which he could not leave.
The 21-year-old had become the latest victim of booming online cyber-scam operations in Southeast Asia – an industry that is believed to have enslaved tens of thousands of workers lured with the promise of decently paid jobs in online sales and the information technology industry.
“When I got there, I saw a lot of Africans in the office, with a lot of phones,” Khobby told Al Jazeera, recounting his arrival in Laos.
“Each person had 10 phones, 15 phones. That was when I realised this was a scamming job,” he said.
The operation Khobby found himself working for was in a remote area in northwest Laos, where a casino city has been carved out of a patch of jungle in the infamous “Golden Triangle” region – the lawless border zone between Myanmar, Laos and Thailand that has long been a centre for global drug production and trafficking.
He said he was forced to work long days and sleep in a dormitory with five other African workers at night during the months he spent at the scam centre in the Golden Triangle Special Economic Zone.
Khobby recounted the original message he received from an acquaintance encouraging him to take the job in Laos.
“My company is hiring new staff”, he said, adding that he was told the salary was $1,200 per month.
“He told me it was data entry.”
People rescued from cyber-scam centres in Myanmar travel inside a Thai military truck after arriving in Thailand, at the Myanmar-Thai border in Phop Phra district, near Mae Sot, Tak province, northern Thailand, in February 2025 [Somrerk Kosolwitthayanant/EPA]
Casino city
The Golden Triangle Special Economic Zone (GTSEZ) where Khobby was lured to for work operates as an autonomous territory within Laos.
Leased from Laotian authorities by Chinese national Zhao Wei, whom the US government has designated the leader of a transnational criminal organisation, life in the GTSEZ is monitored by a myriad of security cameras and protected by its own private security force.
Clocks are set to Beijing time. Signage is predominantly in Chinese, and China’s yuan is the dominant and preferred currency.
Central to the GTSEZ city-state is Zhao Wei’s Kings Romans casino, which the United States Treasury also described as a hub for criminal activity such as money laundering, narcotics and wildlife trafficking.
During a recent visit to the zone by Al Jazeera, Rolls Royce limousines ferried gamblers to some of the city’s casinos while workers toiled on the construction of an elaborate and expansive Venice-style waterway just a stone’s throw from the Mekong river.
Vehicles stop at the the entrance to the Kings Romans casino, part of the Golden Triangle Special Economic Zone, in Laos along the Mekong river in the Golden Triangle region bordering Thailand, Laos and Myanmar [File: Sukree Sukplang/Reuters]
While luxury construction projects – including the recently completed Bokeo International Airport – speak to the vast amounts of money flowing through this mini casino city, it is inside the grey, nondescript tower blocks dotted around the economic zone where the lucrative online scam trade occurs.
Within these tower blocks, thousands of trafficked workers from all over the world – just like Khobby – are reported to spend up to 17 hours a day working online to dupe unsuspecting “clients” into parting with their money.
The online swindles are as varied as investing money in fake business portfolios to paying false tax bills that appear very real and from trading phoney cryptocurrency to being caught in online romance traps.
Anti-trafficking experts say most of the workers are deceived into leaving their home countries – such are nearby China, Thailand and Indonesia or as far away as Nigeria, Ghana, Uganda and Ethiopia – with the promise of decent salaries.
New high-rise buildings are being constructed rapidly in the GTSEZ in Laos [Ali MC/Al Jazeera]
Online ‘butchering’
Khobby told how his “data entry” job was, in fact, a scam known in the cybercrime underworld as “pig butchering”.
This is where victims are identified, cold-called or messaged directly by phone in a bid to establish a relationship. Trust is built up over time to the point where an initial investment is made by the intended victim. This can be, at first, a small amount of the victim’s money or emotions in the case of fake online relationships.
There are small rewards on the investments, Khobby explained, telling how those in the industry refer to their victims as pigs who are being “fattened” by trust built up with the scammers.
That fattening continues until a substantial monetary investment is made in whatever scam the victim has become part of. Then they are swiftly “butchered”, which is when the scammers get away with the ill-gotten gains taken from their victims.
Once the butchering is done, all communications are cut with the victims and the scammers disappear without leaving a digital trace.
Myanmar police hand over five telecom and internet fraud suspects to Chinese police at Yangon International Airport in Yangon, Myanmar, in August 2023 [Chinese embassy in Myanmar/Xinhua via AP]
According to experts, cyber-scamming inside the GTSEZ boomed during the 2019 and 2020 COVID lockdowns when restrictions on travel meant international visitors could not access the Kings Romans casino.
In the years since, the cyber-scam industry has burgeoned, physically transcended borders to become one of the dominant profit-making illicit activities in the region, not only in the GTSEZ in Laos but also in neighbouring Cambodia and in conflict-ridden Myanmar.
Though not as elaborate as the GTSEZ, purpose-built cyber-scam “compounds” have proliferated in Myanmar’s border areas with Thailand.
The Center for Strategic and International Studies estimates that cyber-scamming in Southeast Asia generates tens of billions annually, while the United States Institute of Peace equates the threat to that of the destructive fentanyl trade.
“Cyber-scam operations have significantly benefitted from developments in the fintech industry, including cryptocurrencies, with apps being directly developed for use at [cyber-scam] compounds to launder money,” said Kristina Amerhauser, of the Global Initiative against Transnational Organized Crime.
“Victims and perpetrators are spread across different countries, money is laundered offshore, operations are global,” Amerhauser told Al Jazeera, explaining that the sophisticated technology used in cyber-scamming, along with its international reach, has made it extremely difficult to combat.
The US recently imposed sanctions on Myanmar rebel leader Saw Chit Thu (centre), his two sons and the armed group he leads, the Karen National Army. The US Treasury said Saw Chit Thu and the KNU, which is based in Shwe Kokko – a so-called “Special Economic Zone” along the Thai-Myanmar border – leased land and provided security for online scam compounds [Reuters]
Complicit victims?
About 260 trafficked scam-centre workers were recently rescued in a cross-border operation between Thailand and Myanmar. Yet, even in rare instances such as this when trafficked workers are freed, they still face complications due to their visa status and their own potential complicity in criminal activity.
Khobby – who is now back in Dubai – told Al Jazeera that while he was coerced into working in the GTSEZ, he did actually receive the promised $1,200 monthly salary, and he had even signed a six-month “contract” with the Chinese bosses who ran the operation.
Richard Horsey, International Crisis Group’s senior adviser on Myanmar, said Khobby’s experience reflected a changing trend in recruitment by the criminal organisations running the scam centres.
“Some of the more sophisticated gangs are getting out of the human trafficking game and starting to trick workers to come,” Horsey said.
“People don’t like to answer an advert for criminal scamming, and it’s hard to advertise that. But once they’re there, it’s like – actually, we will pay you. We may have taken your passport, but there is a route to quite a lucrative opportunity here and we will give you a small part of that,” he said.
In this photo provided by India’s Ministry of External Affairs, Indian workers rescued after they were lured by fake job opportunities in the IT sector in Thailand arrive at the airport in Chennai, India, in October 2022 [Ministry of External Affairs via AP]
The issue of salaries paid to coerced and enslaved workers complicates efforts to repatriate trafficking victims, who may be considered complicit criminals due to their status as “paid” workers in the scam centres, said Eric Heintz, from the US-based anti-trafficking organisation International Justice Mission (IJM).
“We know of individuals being paid for the first few months they were inside, but then it tapers off to the point where they are making little – if any – money,” Heintz said, describing how victims become “trapped in this cycle of abuse unable to leave the compound”.
“This specific aspect was a challenge early on with the victim identity process – when an official would ask if an individual previously in the scam compound was paid, the victim would answer that initially he or she was. That was enough for some officials to not identify them as victims,” Heintz said.
Some workers have also been sold between criminal organisations and moved across borders to other scam centres, he said.
“We have heard of people being moved from a compound in one country to one in another – for example from Myawaddy to the GTSEZ or Cambodia and vice versa,” he said.
Khobby said many of the workers in his “office” had already had experience with scamming in other compounds and in other countries.
“Most of them had experience. They knew the job already,” he said.
“This job is going on in a lot of places – Thailand, Laos, Myanmar. They were OK because they got paid. They had experience and they knew what they were doing,” he added.
‘What are we here for? Money!’
High-school graduate Jojo said she was working as a maid in Kampala, Uganda, when she received a message on the Telegram messaging app about an opportunity in Asia that involved being sponsored to do computer studies as part of a job in IT.
“I was so excited,” Jojo recounted, “I told my mum about the offer.”
Jojo told how she was sent an airline ticket, and described how multiple people met her along the way as she journeyed from Kampala to Laos. Eventually Jojo arrived in the same scam operation as Khobby.
She described an atmosphere similar to a fast-paced sales centre, with Chinese bosses shouting encouragement when a victim had been ‘butchered’ and their money stolen, telling how she witnessed people scammed for as much as $200,000.
“They would shout a lot, in Chinese – ‘What are we here for? Money!’”
On top of adrenaline, the scam operation also ran on fear, Jojo said.
Workers were beaten if they did not meet targets for swindling money. Mostly locked inside the building where she worked and lived; Jojo said she was only able to leave the scam operation once in the four months she was in the GTSEZ, and that was to attend a local hospital after falling ill.
Fear of the Chinese bosses who ran the operation not only permeated their workstations but in the dormitory where they slept.
“They told us ‘Whatever happens in the room, we are listening’,” she said, also telling how her co-workers were beaten when they failed to meet targets.
“They stopped them from working. They stopped them from coming to get food. They were not getting results. They were not bringing in the money they wanted. So they saw them as useless,” she said.
“They were torturing them every day.”
Khobby and Jojo said they were moved to act in case it was their turn next.
When they organised a strike to demand better treatment, their bosses brought in Laotian police and several of the strikers – including Jojo and Khobby – were taken to a police station where they were told they were sacked.
They were also told they would not be paid what was owed in wages and their overseers refused to give their passports back.
Khobby said he was left stranded without a passport and the police refused to help.
“This is not about only the Chinese people,” Khobby said. “Even in Vientiane, they have immigration offices who are involved. They are the ones giving the visas. When I got to Laos, it was the immigration officer who was waiting for me. I didn’t even fill out any form,” he said.
The international immigration checkpoint in the GTSEZ [Al Jazeera/Ali MC]
With help from the Ghanaian embassy, Khobby and Jojo were eventually able to retrieve their passports, and with assistance from family and friends, they returned home.
The IJM’s Heintz, said that target countries for scammer recruitment – such as those in Africa – need better awareness of the dangers of trafficking.
“There needs to be better awareness at the source country level of the dangers associated with these jobs,” he said.
Reflecting on what led him to work up the courage to lead a strike in the scam centre, Khobby considered his childhood back in Ghana.
“I was a boy who was raised in a police station. My grandpa was a police commander. So in that aspect, I’m very bold, I have that courage. I like giving things a try and I like taking risks,” he said.
Jojo told Al Jazeera how she continues to chat online with friends who are still trapped in scam centres in Laos, and who have told her that new recruits arrive each day in the GTSEZ.
Her friends want to get out of the scam business and the economic zone in Laos. But it is not so easy to leave, Jojo said.
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