All 11 people aboard a private plane that crashed at sea off central Florida survived the wreck and were rescued from their lifeboat hours later by a US Air Force Reserve team, US Coast Guard and US Air Force officials said on Wednesday. “For all those people to survive is pretty miraculous,” US Air Force Major Elizabeth Piowaty, commander of one of the aircraft involved in the rescue, told repor...
All 11 people aboard a private plane that crashed at sea off central Florida survived the wreck and were rescued from their lifeboat hours later by a US Air Force Reserve team, US Coast Guard and US Air Force officials said on Wednesday. “For all those people to survive is pretty miraculous,” US Air Force Major Elizabeth Piowaty, commander of one of the aircraft involved in the rescue, told reporters at a news briefing a day after Tuesday’s crash. The ill-fated plane, a twin-engined turboprop...
Researchers warn of a ‘real risk’ of unsafe conditions, with matches in Miami most likely to be affected, but the picture is mixed across the 16 stadiums It’s set to be hot in North America this summer. The “seasonal temperature outlook” for the US, compiled by the National Weather Service, suggests every part of the country will experience temperatures above the historical average in June and Jul...
Researchers warn of a ‘real risk’ of unsafe conditions, with matches in Miami most likely to be affected, but the picture is mixed across the 16 stadiums It’s set to be hot in North America this summer. The “seasonal temperature outlook” for the US, compiled by the National Weather Service, suggests every part of the country will experience temperatures above the historical average in June and July. It’s into this environment that 48 men’s national teams will arrive, all competing to win the World Cup in the US, Canada and Mexico. As the tournament approaches, the Guardian has taken an in-depth look at the meteorological conditions players could face, how they have changed since the last time the World Cup was held in North America in 1994 (when the US was the sole host nation), and the locations most likely to expose players to stressful levels of heat. Continue reading...
To get John Authers’ newsletter delivered directly to your inbox, sign up here . Today’s Points: Yes, it’s Chairman Kevin . The Senate has confirmed Warsh as Fed chair. US stocks are still surging — the Nasdaq 100 rose 1.04% to a new all-time record. US producer price inflation is now running at more than 6%. Keir Starmer is still the UK prime minister — but it’s not quite clear how. AND: Happy bi...
To get John Authers’ newsletter delivered directly to your inbox, sign up here . Today’s Points: Yes, it’s Chairman Kevin . The Senate has confirmed Warsh as Fed chair. US stocks are still surging — the Nasdaq 100 rose 1.04% to a new all-time record. US producer price inflation is now running at more than 6%. Keir Starmer is still the UK prime minister — but it’s not quite clear how. AND: Happy birthday Stephen Colbert . Half a Century Later It has been more than 50 years since the high-flying Polaroid Corp. fell back to earth during the collapse of the famed Nifty Fifty bubble . At its peak, Polaroid controlled nearly two-thirds of the instant-camera market and traded at earnings multiples exceeding 90x. Other Nifties enjoyed similarly extreme multiples, beyond anything in today’s AI-driven rally. When the bubble burst, the Nifties brought the whole markets down with them, underperforming along the way. This chart is from Bridgeway Capital , produced as long ago as 2021 when the post-pandemic surge in tech stocks had set off another bubble alarm: Naturally, this drives comparisons between the two eras. The Nasdaq 100 closed Wednesday at yet another record — but could its momentum ultimately unravel? The prevailing investor enthusiasm bears striking resemblance to the optimism around the Nifty Fifty half a century ago, even as market breadth appears considerably narrower now than it did then. In recent months, robust earnings across the board have led to a slight diversification away from the mega caps. But concentration is much greater now than in 1972. Such levels, coupled with unrestrained spending on AI data-center buildouts, make it difficult to dismiss the possibility that the trade could unravel in a painful way. At the peak of what felt like an unassailable dominance in the early 1970s, the Nifty Fifty, a group of 50 stocks, accounted for roughly 45% of the S&P 500 value, though market leadership at the time was spread across a more diverse mix of industries...
John Lithgow plays the gay and often nude septuagenarian father of Colman’s character in this bombshell-laden story of intergenerational queerness. She explains why her own dad would have ‘sat and cried all the way through it’ In Jimpa, Olivia Colman plays a woman called Hannah who leaves Adelaide with her husband and 16-year-old child to visit her father in Amsterdam. This is Jimpa – the word sti...
John Lithgow plays the gay and often nude septuagenarian father of Colman’s character in this bombshell-laden story of intergenerational queerness. She explains why her own dad would have ‘sat and cried all the way through it’ In Jimpa, Olivia Colman plays a woman called Hannah who leaves Adelaide with her husband and 16-year-old child to visit her father in Amsterdam. This is Jimpa – the word sticks better once you know it’s a compound of Jim and grandpa. At the airport, the teenager, Frances, who’s trans, drops a bombshell: they want to move to the Netherlands and finish their schooling there. Hannah and her husband, Harry, respond thoughtfully, not freaking out. But once they arrive in Amsterdam, Jimpa, played by John Lithgow, brings enough drama for everyone – something he’s been doing for 40 years, since he left his family for a fuller queer life than Australia at the end of the 20th century could offer. The film revels in revealing the sort of lifestyle he enjoyed instead. Continue reading...
In 2024, when she filmed a quick video in her car on a work break, she thought nothing of it. But in days she had become a meme. What followed was excitement, opportunity and a crushing pressure ... Jools Lebron was in her car, taking a break from her job in a supermarket, when she posted the TikTok video that would change her life. “You see how I do my makeup for work?” she told her followers tha...
In 2024, when she filmed a quick video in her car on a work break, she thought nothing of it. But in days she had become a meme. What followed was excitement, opportunity and a crushing pressure ... Jools Lebron was in her car, taking a break from her job in a supermarket, when she posted the TikTok video that would change her life. “You see how I do my makeup for work?” she told her followers that day in August 2024. “Very demure, very mindful … A lot of you girls go to the interview looking like Marge Simpson and go to the job looking like Patty and Selma. Not demure.” “At first, it was like any other video,” she says, on a video call from her home in Chicago. “A few likes, a couple of comments. But then I started noticing the numbers moving faster than usual – faster than anything I had seen before. I remember refreshing my phone and just staring at it like: ‘Wait … what is happening?’” Continue reading...
Two mothers fought British bureaucracy to obtain lifesaving cannabis medicines for their children. But most patients are having to go private – at huge cost In the summer of 2012, Britain was in a festive mood. It was the year of the queen’s diamond jubilee and the London Olympics, and the country was celebrating. But for former hairdresser Hannah Deacon and her young family in Warwickshire, it wa...
Two mothers fought British bureaucracy to obtain lifesaving cannabis medicines for their children. But most patients are having to go private – at huge cost In the summer of 2012, Britain was in a festive mood. It was the year of the queen’s diamond jubilee and the London Olympics, and the country was celebrating. But for former hairdresser Hannah Deacon and her young family in Warwickshire, it was a summer of ambulances, hospital wards and doctors rushing in and out of emergency rooms. Eight months earlier, Deacon had given birth to a healthy baby boy named Alfie. The early months of his life had been challenging for her and her partner, Drew, as they are for any first-time parents, but by the summer, Alfie was sleeping and feeding well, and it felt like the family was settling into the new rhythm. However, one night the couple woke up to find their baby’s little body gripped by a paralysing seizure. Continue reading...
Ahmed al-Doush’s health said to be in sharp decline since his arrest in 2024 in relation to social media posts The wife of a British national who has been imprisoned in Saudi Arabia since 2024 for social media posts, has pleaded for his release as his wellbeing declines. In November, the UN working group on arbitrary detention found Ahmed al-Doush was being detained arbitrarily under international...
Ahmed al-Doush’s health said to be in sharp decline since his arrest in 2024 in relation to social media posts The wife of a British national who has been imprisoned in Saudi Arabia since 2024 for social media posts, has pleaded for his release as his wellbeing declines. In November, the UN working group on arbitrary detention found Ahmed al-Doush was being detained arbitrarily under international law and recommended his immediate release, as well as the payment of compensation. The findings followed its eight-month inquiry Continue reading...
King Arthur is said to have transformed into a chough when he died, its red feet and beak representing his bloody end Decades after disappearing from the jagged cliffs around Tintagel Castle on the coast of north Cornwall, a bird with legendary connections to the area has returned. The custodian of Tintagel, English Heritage , and local ornithologists have declared that choughs – charismatic corvi...
King Arthur is said to have transformed into a chough when he died, its red feet and beak representing his bloody end Decades after disappearing from the jagged cliffs around Tintagel Castle on the coast of north Cornwall, a bird with legendary connections to the area has returned. The custodian of Tintagel, English Heritage , and local ornithologists have declared that choughs – charismatic corvids with red beaks and feet – are back. Continue reading...
Millions of documents chronicling generations of trauma saved from Gaza and East Jerusalem in 10-month Unrwa operation East Jerusalem to Amman should have been an easy trip: a short drive down to the Dead Sea, across the border checkpoint and swiftly on to the Jordanian capital. But in the early summer of 2024, the distance appeared an almost insurmountable obstacle to humanitarian workers from Un...
Millions of documents chronicling generations of trauma saved from Gaza and East Jerusalem in 10-month Unrwa operation East Jerusalem to Amman should have been an easy trip: a short drive down to the Dead Sea, across the border checkpoint and swiftly on to the Jordanian capital. But in the early summer of 2024, the distance appeared an almost insurmountable obstacle to humanitarian workers from Unrwa (the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees), as they sought to safeguard huge quantities of archival documents vitally important to decades of recent Palestinian history. Continue reading...
Japan and Taiwan have enviable care systems because they had the courage to plan – some solutions are radical, most are hiding in plain sight It’s mid-afternoon in Fujisawa. Schoolchildren, rucksacks on their backs, bound into a room where a group of pensioners welcome them boisterously, before sitting them down to help with their homework. This group of older people is looked after by some of the...
Japan and Taiwan have enviable care systems because they had the courage to plan – some solutions are radical, most are hiding in plain sight It’s mid-afternoon in Fujisawa. Schoolchildren, rucksacks on their backs, bound into a room where a group of pensioners welcome them boisterously, before sitting them down to help with their homework. This group of older people is looked after by some of the pupils’ parents. Up the road, a cluster of university students live above some over-75s. They get half-price rent in return for checking in on them on their way to and from studies. This multigenerational community I visited in a small town not far from the port of Yokohama is one of 5,000 in Japan. Continue reading...
Mitul Magudia was in his mid-20s when the actuary got an offer to join a London startup built for one main purpose: taking pension funds off companies’ balance sheets. Back in the 2000s, the market for pension risk transfers was an eat-what-you-kill industry, and pickings were slim. Magudia worked days, nights and weekends convincing fund trustees that his fledgling firm, Pension Insurance Corp. ,...
Mitul Magudia was in his mid-20s when the actuary got an offer to join a London startup built for one main purpose: taking pension funds off companies’ balance sheets. Back in the 2000s, the market for pension risk transfers was an eat-what-you-kill industry, and pickings were slim. Magudia worked days, nights and weekends convincing fund trustees that his fledgling firm, Pension Insurance Corp. , could unshackle their companies from promises to pay guaranteed pensions to retired staff. Nearly two decades on, PRTs are a much easier sell. Firms weary of those liabilities are seeking out transactions to protect their retirement funds and focus squarely on their core businesses. “For the first 10 years, sales meant picking up the phone and trying to convince schemes to engage with insurance,” says Magudia. “Now, we answer the phone and respond to demand built over 15–20 years.” PIC now runs a portfolio of £54.8 billion ($74 billion) backing the assets of 438,000 savers, winning mandates from the likes of Rolls-Royce Holdings Plc and Dr. Martens Plc , and beating centuries-old City staple Legal & General Group Plc to some of the biggest deals. There are £1.3 trillion of assets left to fight for, spread over roughly 4,800 corporate pension funds. And in recent weeks, competition has stepped up a gear . Athora , a European insurer backed by private capital giant Apollo Global Management Inc. , has unveiled plans to move from Bermuda to the UK following its £5.7 billion swoop on PIC last July. An affiliate of Brookfield Corp. last month also completed its £2.4 billion takeover of Just Group Plc , a deal that turned the alternatives firm-turned-insurer into a sizable player overnight. Get the Going Private newsletter for coverage of private markets and the forces moving capital away from the public eye. Delivered Wednesdays and Fridays. “All of the insurers are very ambitious in terms of the volumes they want to write,” says Ruth Ward, a partner at consulting firm LCP . “La...
Li Hongzhi, an award-winning former head of GenAI at Microsoft Asia, has joined Tongji University, one of China’s leading universities. Li started his first job at technology giant Microsoft immediately after obtaining his PhD from Columbia University. For more than 10 years, he worked at Microsoft Research – the company’s subsidiary responsible for basic and applied research in computer science, ...
Li Hongzhi, an award-winning former head of GenAI at Microsoft Asia, has joined Tongji University, one of China’s leading universities. Li started his first job at technology giant Microsoft immediately after obtaining his PhD from Columbia University. For more than 10 years, he worked at Microsoft Research – the company’s subsidiary responsible for basic and applied research in computer science, software engineering and hardware design. Li was the head of Microsoft AI Asia’s GenAI Group before...
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Chinese President Xi Jinping has begun closed-door talks with his American counterpart Donald Trump following an elaborate welcome ceremony at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing. Here are some highlights from Thursday morning. High-level reception Beijing pulled out all the stops for Trump. The welcome ceremony at the Great Hall of the People featured a military display, a 21-gun salute, and ...
Chinese President Xi Jinping has begun closed-door talks with his American counterpart Donald Trump following an elaborate welcome ceremony at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing. Here are some highlights from Thursday morning. High-level reception Beijing pulled out all the stops for Trump. The welcome ceremony at the Great Hall of the People featured a military display, a 21-gun salute, and both national anthems played by a Chinese military band. Dozens of Chinese schoolchildren jumped and...