The prediction-market exchange Kalshi has permanently prohibited former Rep. George Santos from accessing the platform after establishing “reasonable cause to believe” that he participated in insider trading.

The lifetime ban—the first time Kalshi has ever imposed such a penalty on a user—comes after the company investigated the former New York Republican Congressman for allegedly placing bets on the prediction market platform over whether he was going to attend President Donald Trump’s State of the Union address on Feb. 24.

“As a person capable of influencing the outcome of the underlying event, Santos was prohibited from trading in this market” under Kalshi’s exchange rules, the company said in a statement. But, the company alleged, Santos “placed a series of large trades in a market where the underlying contracts depended upon his own attendance at the event” from Feb. 2 to 25. Kalshi added that Santos made “a series of public statements regarding his attendance at the event in an attempt to influence the price of Yes and No contracts, respectively,” and that some of those statements were “false or misleading.” On Kalshi, users can trade “Yes” or “No” on whether they think something will happen in the future.

Santos said on social media ahead of Trump’s State of the Union address in February that he was going to be at the event, but ultimately did not attend.

“The Compliance Department found that Santos made these statements with the intent to manipulate the price of the Yes or No contracts that he intended to purchase. Ultimately, these statements did in fact manipulate the price of said contracts,” Kalshi alleged. “Furthermore, The Department found that Santos materially benefited from his trading activity, profiting $17,839.57 in the Target Markets.”

In addition to permanently banning Santos from Kalshi, the company also levied a fine of $71,356 against him.

Santos responded to the news on Monday, saying in a post on X: “Hey @Kalshi thanks for the lifetime ban from your gambling platform. Let’s see how much longer you guys are around for.”

In another post on X, Santos alleged that Kalshi “violates its own notices and deadlines,” accusing the company of giving him a 30-day notice on Aug. 7 but announcing the lifetime ban ahead of the deadline.

Robert DeNault, head of enforcement at Kalshi, said on social media that the company was temporarily suspending other individuals over allegations of insider trading. He added, though, that Santos was the only person who didn’t cooperate with Kalshi’s investigation into the alleged violations.

Kalshi’s penalties against Santos come after the Commodity Futures Trading Commission fined the former Congressman more than $35,000 in July related to trading on his attendance at Trump’s State of the Union address. The commission alleged that Santos engaged “in manipulative activity in an event contract — whose underlying event Santos controlled — designed to affect the price of the swap.” Santos didn’t admit to the allegations, but he agreed to pay the penalties.

Santos, who was expelled from the House in 2023, was sentenced in April 2025 to more than seven years in prison after pleading guilty to federal charges of wire fraud and identity theft. But in October, Trump announced that he had commuted Santos’ sentence, and Santos was released after serving less than three months.

A festival will be held in Dolly Parton’s honor across consecutive weekends in Tennessee and England next year, the late country music legend’s estate announced on Monday.

Dubbed “Dollyfest,” the festival was initially scheduled to take place in Nashville on Parton’s 80th birthday this past January. Parton was set to serve as both the host and a performer at the event, which was also planned to include performances from several other musicians. In a statement on Monday, Danny Nozell, the founder and CEO of CTK Enterprises, said that the festival was “a dream of Dolly’s.” But as Parton was dealing with health issues in recent months, she “had to take a step back” from the event, Nozell said. 

In the wake of her death last week, Parton’s estate revealed in a press release on Monday that the festival will now be held in 2027 to honor her legacy.

“What Dolly started, we will ensure is brought to life,” Nozell said. “A lot of people always say, WWDD (What Would Dolly Do?), and, well, at this moment, DOLLYFEST is WDWD (What Dolly Would Do!).”

Read More: Dolly Parton's Life, in Pictures

The festival will take place in both Nashville and London, and “will be the party of a lifetime she wanted to share with the world,” according to the release. Parton’s estate has not yet shared details about the specific dates it will be held or the performers it will feature, but said that more information about the event would be shared at a later date.

“We are not discouraging people from celebrating Dolly in the ways they choose,” Nozell said. “However, as far as a traditional memorial goes, that is not something Dolly wanted. So, instead, it feels more appropriate for us to take a beat, let all the tributes that immediately make sense occur naturally, and then, see through this festival-style concept that was truly dreamed up by Dolly.” 

“This is something that is authentic to her, something that feels right to me, and something that artists and fans around the world can participate in, while also giving everyone time to grieve, and giving everyone time to plan,” Nozell said.

Last week, Parton’s publicist told news outlets that the country music icon had died after a “brief battle with cancer.” Parton had been dealing with health issues over the past year, postponing and later canceling several shows. She revealed in October that she was having “a few treatments here and there” at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, and said in May that her immune and digestive systems “got all out of whack” over the past few years and that her doctors were “working real hard on rebuilding and strengthening those.”

Almost immediately after her family announced her death, tributes for Parton began flooding in—from politicians like President Donald Trump to musical artists like Beyoncé.

“You were the barometer. The North Star. Bold and brilliant. Talented and tenacious. You taught so many lessons on how to be uniquely oneself,” Beyoncé said in a statement. “Thank you for your profound impact on the world. You are an angel who has made this world a happier place because of your joyful art. You are truly one of one.”

A private funeral service was held for Parton’s immediate family on Friday, The Associated Press reported.

Parton’s great-niece, Lainey Parton, shared a post on Instagram the following day, in which she wrote a touching tribute to Parton and included photos of them together.

“This is a really hard post for me to make. I wanted to wait until after my granny was laid to rest yesterday before I tried to put any of this into words,” Lainey Parton said in the caption. “From the time I was little, my granny always had a way of making me feel like I was enough. She never made my dreams feel too big or made me feel like I couldn’t do something. She believed in me before I even knew how to believe in myself.”

“It still doesn’t feel real that she’s gone. I’m going to miss her voice, her laugh, her hugs, and just knowing she was there,” she continued. “Thank you to everyone who has reached out, sent messages, flowers to my house, or done any of the little things to show me love. I’ve noticed every single one, and they’ve meant more than you know. I feel incredibly lucky that I got to call her my granny.”

There are no public services planned by Parton’s family and estate, but her family encouraged fans to share tributes online and donate to Parton’s Imagination Library, a program she launched in 1995 that mails books to children for free.

Warning: This post contains spoilers for the finale of Furious.

By the end of the eighth and final episode of the first season of Furious, billionaire Jay Easton (Peter McRobbie) is dead, Catherine (Lola Petticrew) is in prison, and Alice (Emmy Rossum) has secured a full-time position working under Nora (Quincy Tyler Bernstine) in the Bureau's basement-level sex crimes unit. But not all was as simple as it seemed, as creator Elizabeth Meriwether's cat-and-mouse thriller still had a final twist up its sleeve.

Over the course of its first seven episodes, Furious tracked NYPD homicide detective-turned-probationary FBI duty agent Alice's hunt for serial killer Catherine, a sex trafficking survivor targeting wealthy, high-profile men involved in her past abuse. Along the way, we learned Catherine's primary motive was not simply retributive justice, but rather a desire to uncover the truth about the mysterious circumstances surrounding the death of her best friend and first love Isabel (Larissa Campos) at the Easton estate over a decade earlier. With the help of Nora's corrupt boss Ed (Danny McCarthy), Jay covered up Isabel's death to shield his involvement in a prolific child sexual abuse and trafficking ring. Catherine is convinced Jay himself killed Isabel, but due to the severe memory distortion she suffers from as a result of her trauma, she can't fully remember what happened on that fateful night.

After Catherine's fiancé Alden (Steve Way) gave Alice's former partner Danny (Scoot McNairy) a flash drive containing years of incriminating evidence against Jay and his associates, it was revealed there was a folder containing an illicit video of a then-14-year-old Alice being abused by one of the men within Jay's network. Episode 7 then ended with Alice tracking down Catherine and, instead of arresting her, manipulating her into driving out to Jay's Connecticut estate while Alice followed closely behind in order to orchestrate an incident that would allow Alice to search Jay's compound and arrest him without handing over the flash drive.

Who killed Isabel?

Although Episode 7 led us to believe Jay's daughter Emma (Hope Davis) was going to be exposed as the person who had killed Isabel, Furious had a much more tragic reveal on the way. While Emma was anything but innocent considering she spent years procuring underage girls for her father and destroyed evidence of his crimes to protect their family, in the finale, she helped Catherine remember that Catherine herself was the one who ultimately injected Isabel with the drugs that killed her.

On the night Isabel died, both girls had been brought to the Easton house to be abused by Jay and his men. However, Isabel had only recently given birth to her daughter Elena (Chloe Carrillo) and started hemorrhaging and crying out in pain, which led to Jay hitting her. Isabel then asked Catherine to end her life and put her out of her misery, and Catherine complied. In the present timeline, after Catherine finally came to terms with what actually happened, Alice arrests her. While the other cops who had arrived then take over the scene, Alice goes upstairs to find Jay and ends up witnessing him dying of respiratory failure—though we will soon learn that she did more than just witness his demise.

How does the finale end?

Since Emma had destroyed all the evidence at the house and Jay was no longer around to be interrogated, it initially seemed like everyone in Jay's circle was going to get off scot free while only Catherine went to prison, reinforcing the show's overarching message about our flawed justice system. But after weighing the personal cost of exposing her video, Alice decided to hand the flash drive over to Nora so she would at least be able to take Ed down.

While visiting Catherine in prison, Alice learned that Catherine had caught on to the fact that Alice had killed Jay that night by purposefully stepping on his breathing tube to cut off his oxygen supply. Alice also decided to take Nora's advice and watch the video of her abuse in order to face her trauma head on. The finale then ended with Alice using the FBI's search database to look up a list of everyone who had ever downloaded her file, implying Alice may have acquired a taste for the same method of vigilante justice Catherine had been so fond of doling out. And since it was announced on Aug. 27 that Furious has been renewed for a second season, it seems like we're eventually going to get to see Alice attempting to balance her devotion to her role as a FBI agent with her newfound thirst for vengeance against those who wronged her.

We also get a satisfying closing note to Alice and Danny's relationship, as they decompress from the events of the season during a romantic getaway at the beach house he mentioned several episodes back. As to what will happen between them in the future, Rossum tells Entertainment Weekly it's open-ended. "Now all of a sudden, they could be together, but he’s also processing not being really able to hold the totality of who she is and her secrets now that he knows the tape and has seen part of it," she says. "So I think it’s really complicated, and I think getting to watch the human toll on him, the potential partner of somebody that has been a victim of violence and sexual violence is really interesting.”

The first mail-in ballots in the country should start going out at the end of this week. It’s entirely possible that the Trump Administration’s fight over them won’t be settled for several more weeks—possibly right up to Election Day on November 3 or beyond.

The uncertainty is leaving campaign hands from both parties exasperated as they debate what to tell voters. Even the possibility that some mail-in ballots may be ignored poses very practical questions for campaigns planning out millions of dollars in spending to boost turnout. Should voters still trust mail-in ballots will still be counted? Should they instead vote early in person if they can? Should they hold their votes until Election Day itself, just to be sure?

“We’re all flying blind,” says one Democratic campaign consultant. 

“That’s the 8 million-vote question,” responds a Republican consultant when asked about how their party is adapting to the legal limbo. 

For over a year, President Donald Trump has been laying the groundwork for the U.S. Postal Service to take on a new role in deciding which mail-in ballots get to be counted, working off lists of citizens created by the Department of Homeland Security. It’s a process that experts predict would likely lead to the disenfranchisement of many legitimate voters. Most of them, it’s worth saying, are Democrats.

Last week, the Supreme Court issued an emergency order that amounted to a procedural and preliminary win for Trump’s plan, but other courts have stepped in to block it on merits. The result is growing confusion over how, exactly, the votes might—or might not—be counted come November.

Some election experts insist that things are not as urgent as either side would have you believe. “I’m annoyed, but not freaked out,” says Michael Waldman, president and CEO of the Brennan Center for Justice, a nonpartisan think tank. “The court’s ruling was a procedural one, with a great deal of legal back and forth to come. The executive order is still illegal and still unconstitutional.” 

“For voters, so far, nothing has changed—and is unlikely to before Election Day,” he adds.

That doesn’t mean this isn’t a problem for campaigns at the nuts-and-bolts level. Significant resources often go into encouraging voters to request a mail ballot, and then reminding them to fill it out and return it. Should campaigns maintain their plans for that outreach, or redirect that money to get-out-the-vote efforts at early-voting sites and on Election Day? There’s no settled answer at this point, leaving a messaging mess for campaigns on the ground.

Democratic campaigns, in particular, are wondering if focusing as much on banking votes via mailed ballots is too much of a risk this cycle. Even if the Supreme Court ultimately strikes down Trump’s plan, anxiety over some other election-eve upset targeting mail ballots could deter voters from bothering to put their ballot in the mailbox. Perhaps putting more resources into in-person, on-site voting would make more sense? “This is not an easy conversation,” a long-time Democratic campaign adviser says. “We are all operating on assumptions.”

Republican campaigns separately risk running afoul of Trump if they push mail ballots too hard. In practice, GOP party strategists in Washington are advising campaigns to run their races locally and tune out the Washington noise. “Why would we not go after every vote on every day we can?” asks a second GOP operative.

How many voters cast ballots by mail?

Mail-in voting rules vary by state, but their use overall has been growing. In 2024, 29% of votes were cast by mail, accounting for tens of millions of ballots. Democrats vote by mail more than Republicans, but, depending on the analysis, as many as a quarter of Republicans voted by mail in 2024.

At the center of all this, naturally, is Trump, who has for years advanced debunked conspiracy theories that U.S. elections are rife with fraud from votes by foreign nationals, immigrants who don’t have the proper documentation, and dead people. It’s part of why he keeps insisting he won the 2020 election, which he lost to Joe Biden.

In 2024, GOP advisers convinced Trump that dissuading his voters from using the mail-in option was self-sabotaging. This year, he’s swung back in the other direction, railing against mail ballots despite casting his own ballot that way for the Florida Republican primary.

The outlook around mail ballots is likely to remain muddled for at least a little while longer. But campaign managers don’t have that kind of time to settle on their plans for banking the most votes before Election Day. The first mail-in ballots are due to be ready for North Carolina voters this Friday.

El Niño is here, threatening to bring warmer global temperatures as it strengthens over the Pacific Ocean. 

“This El Niño could be a record setting event,” says Erin Coughlan de Perez, associate professor of climate science at Tufts University. 

Forecasts are anticipating it might be the strongest in living memory—but the impact will likely vary depending on where you’re located. Here’s what to expect, and how you can prepare. 

Read more: How El Niño May Test the Limits of Our Climate Knowledge

What weather can we expect El Niño to bring?

El Niño began forming in the early summer and is expected to last into 2027, reaching its peak strength in the last two months of 2026. 

The impact it has will vary. Forecasts predict that the system will bring drought conditions to southern Africa, southeast Asia, and the northern parts of South America, while parts of East Africa and the southern U.S. might see stormier weather and flooding.

An El Niño event increases global temperatures, which, coupled with rising temperatures fueled by climate change, means 2027 could shape up to be the warmest year on record, if predictions hold true. 

The impact will be felt around the world. “El Nino impacts millions of people's lives in terms of increasing the likelihood of above or below normal rainfall in some areas, which has impacts on agriculture production, crop yields, logistics, and transportation,” says Andrew Kruczkiewicz, senior researcher at the International Research Institute for Climate and Society at Columbia University. 

How will El Niño impact the U.S.?

In the U.S., El Niño often brings a warmer than usual winter to the northern U.S., and a wetter, cooler winter in the south, with a higher likelihood for rain and snow.  

“Much of the South, particularly the Southeast U.S. can expect to see wetter and likely cooler weather during those cool months into the late fall through the early spring,” says Emily Powell, Florida state climatologist at Florida State University, who notes that El Niño also brings increased risk for severe weather, including tornadoes to the area. 

However, it doesn’t mean these conditions are a given. “Right now we are in a moderate to strong El Niño, and it's forecast to strengthen,” says Kruczkiewicz. “Now, that doesn't necessarily mean the impacts around the world will be moderate or strong or weak or will manifest at all.” That’s because there are a number of other modes of climate variability, including the Indian Ocean Dipole (which impacts sea surface temperatures in the Indian Ocean) and the Madden-Julian Oscillation (a tropical atmospheric phenomenon that influences rainfall), both of which can also impact weather patterns alongside El Niño. 

How can I prepare for El Niño?

If you live in an area that’s likely to see stormy weather this winter, preparing for El Niño doesn’t have to be complicated. “People should just think about this as preparing as they would for any kind of system that would bring more rain and increase risk for flooding,” says Powell. 

Make sure the area around your home has good drainage, clear your gutters, and patch up any leaks. 

Sign up for emergency alerts and pay attention to local forecasts. “These are good for providing general awareness of what's expected in terms of whether your area will be wetter than average in the coming weeks to months,” says Powell. 

Some of the weather impacts that El Niño may bring—like snowstorms or flash floods—can come during a normal winter. It presents an opportunity for governments to make sure they’re prepared to tackle extreme weather events that are only becoming more common due to climate change. Cities can prepare in advance: setting up cooling centers and creating action plans to help those most vulnerable to extreme heat or helping residents understand flood risk and purchase flood insurance.

“El Niño years should [in theory] be the years with the fewest disasters because we have the warning. If we actually do take this seriously, and we prepare, this could be a year where we don't have big impacts,” says Coughlan de Perez. “We shouldn't be surprised. We shouldn't be caught unaware.”

Funding cuts to federal agencies, including NOAA and the National Weather Service, however, is leading to some concerns about U.S. preparedness levels when it comes to facing extreme weather. According to the Center for American Progress, the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s funding has been drained to “emergency” levels. 

“We need the weather service to give us the heads up, as you know, as early as possible,” says Coughlan de Perez. “They need really good staffing. They need a lot of investment. And I would hope that we are making that investment, for the American people, in our government to provide these warnings.” 

Collect everything the average American kid throws away in the school cafeteria over a single year, pile it on a scale, and you'd be looking at roughly 39 lbs of food. That’s about what a typical 4-year-old weighs.

Multiply that across the country, and school food waste adds up to an estimated 530,000 tons every year—an alarming amount of uneaten sandwiches, rejected fruit, and unopened snacks. 

That makes food waste difficult to dismiss as somebody else’s problem. “If you eat food, you’re part of this whether you like it or not,” says Lauren Click, founder of the nonprofit Let’s Go Compost, which runs food-waste programming in more than 600 schools, libraries, and community centers. The flip side is that you’re also in a position to waste less—starting with a packed lunch, one of the few pieces of the food system a family fully controls. 

Here’s how experts recommend packing a school lunch that produces less trash—and stands a better chance of getting eaten.

See what comes home

Before you overhaul your lunch-packing routine, spend a couple weeks paying attention to what returns at the end of the day. Which foods are untouched? Is the bologna sandwich always missing exactly one bite? What never even made it out of the wrapper?

After a few days, you’ll probably start to notice a pattern. “If you pack based on what actually comes home, not what seems balanced on paper, you can track it each week and adjust over time,” says Lizzie Horvitz, founder and CEO of Finch, a platform that evaluates products for sustainability.

You don’t have to keep tabs on the lunchbox all year. August and September are when parents are still figuring out what—and how much—their kids will eat. “If you're really paying attention to ‘what's my kid eating?’ and ‘what's my kid consistently bringing home?’” Horvitz says, “there really shouldn't be any waste after a couple of weeks.”

Ask your kid what happened

Seeing what comes home is only half the job. You also need to find out why—and good luck guessing correctly.

Click has heard every version of this story: A kid suddenly stops eating apples, and their parent assumes they don’t like the fruit. The real problem? A classmate declared apples uncool. “You can't make assumptions, because you'll never guess what's going on in the mind of a 5-year-old,” she says.

Keep the conversation curious, not accusatory. Ask your kid who they sit with, how much time they have to eat, and what their friends bring. Maybe the orange takes too long to peel, or they can’t open one of the containers without help. Maybe their friend brings two sandwiches and shares one every day—in which case, congratulations, you can stop making a sandwich.

Save new foods for dinner

The school cafeteria isn't exactly an ideal tasting room. Lunch periods are short, cafeterias can be loud and chaotic, and no one is sitting nearby encouraging your kid to give that unfamiliar vegetable one more chance. (Rutabaga, anyone?)

“Maybe this isn't the time to have a really balanced, try-new-things meal,” Horvitz says. “Let's save that for meals at home.” That's not an argument for packing nothing but cookies. It means lunch should mostly consist of foods you already know your child will eat; save the experiments for dinner, when you’re there to encourage them.

Choose the food before the lunchbox

Compartmentalized bento boxes are adorable. They're also built for a very specific amount (and shape) of food, which may not match what—or how much—your kid eats.

Lindsey Schoenfeld, a registered dietitian nutritionist, chef, and co-author of To Your Taste: How to Eat Well and Feel Better for Your Whole Life, suggests starting with the food instead. Ask your kid what they ate all summer and which lunches they loved last year. Then choose containers that fit those foods. The folded half-sandwich that nestled perfectly into one tiny compartment in second grade might not cut it for a middle-schooler.

Before splurging on new gear, check your cabinets. “There's so many containers that we have around the house,” Schoenfeld says. “Maybe they don't have a lid right now. Maybe we need to dig through a few shelves.” You might need a new lunchbox, but you probably don't need every container inside it to be new too.

Reusable containers only reduce waste if you use them over and over, so make cleanup as painless as possible. Many silicone bags and food containers can go straight into the dishwasher—check the manufacturer’s instructions—and you don’t need to scrub them spotless first. “The dishwasher’s job is to make them completely spotless,” Horvitz says.

Pack the amount your child actually eats

An oversized container practically begs to be filled, Schoenfeld says—and parents often respond by packing more than their kid will eat.

As a rough starting point, she suggests about half a cup of fruit, or one small piece of whole fruit, for younger elementary-school kids, in addition to a quarter- to half-cup of vegetables and one serving of grains, such as a slice of bread or a 6-inch tortilla. Middle-schoolers might need the higher end of those ranges, while high-schoolers may eat a full cup of produce and two servings of grains.

But kids aren’t measuring cups. “They grow at different times, and their activity is very different,” Schoenfeld says. One child might spend all day running around on the playground or practicing with the marching band, while another might take medication that suppresses their appetite at lunchtime. If the same amount keeps returning, try sending less before deciding your child has rejected the food altogether.

Find out what time lunch starts

Plenty of parents don’t know what time their kid eats lunch. It's worth checking: Because schools stagger lunch by grade, some are sitting down with their sandwiches at 10:30 a.m.

That can explain a lot. A child who ate breakfast at 7 might not be hungry three and a half hours later, even though they're ravenous when they get home. Pack a little less for an early lunch, Schoenfeld suggests, and have a substantial snack ready after school. She likes options that include a real food group, such as cheese and whole-grain crackers, fruit, or carrot sticks.

“It's good to capture these kids when they're hungry and you have something good ready,” she says.

Send last night's dinner

One of the easiest ways to waste less is to pack food you already made—and already know your child likes.

Jessica Randhawa, the chef and recipe developer behind The Forked Spoon, has used vacuum-insulated stainless-steel containers for her son's lunch since preschool. In the morning, she reheats leftovers—vegetables, meat, whatever is in the fridge—and transfers them to the insulated container. In winter, she sends leftover chicken soup, one of his favorites, in a larger container with a handle. A reusable metal spork goes in with it.

Her larger point: The container matters far less than whether the food gets eaten. “The best low-waste lunch system is one that the child actually eats,” Randhawa says. “Reusable containers aren’t helpful if the food inside is repeatedly wasted.”

Open the lunchbox before the pantry

When a hungry kid walks through the door, take a look inside their lunchbox before handing over a new snack. Schoenfeld does this automatically. “I’m known for saying, ‘Oh, you’re hungry?’” Schoenfeld says. “I just open the lunchbox back up. ‘Look, it’s perfect. It’s ready to go.’”

Of course, food safety gets the final say. Shelf-stable foods—crackers, a sealed pouch, an unopened bag of chips—can go back into the pantry or be eaten later. Perishable food is a different story: If it didn’t stay cold during the school day, toss it.

Don't automatically rule out single-serve packages

An individually packaged snack isn’t always an environmental villain. If your kid brings home an unopened package of crackers, it can go straight back into the pantry. “It’s like it never came to school,” Horvitz says.

Loose crackers can be saved too, of course, but people are often more willing to toss food that’s already been opened and portioned out. Buying in bulk and using reusable containers still produces the least packaging—but a single-serve snack that gets eaten another day can be better than food that lands in the trash.

“If we're assuming a kid is eating everything in their lunchbox, we of course want to stray from individually packaged food,” Horvitz says. But if your child is unpredictable about what they'll eat, a sealed package that comes home isn't necessarily a failure. The best option is to buy in bulk and portion food into reusable containers; after that, a packaged snack that gets eaten another day can be better than loose food that lands in the trash.

The same general rule applies to drinks: A reusable bottle is best, and pouring juice from a large jug creates less packaging than sending an individual box. If you do pack a can, don't crush it afterward; Horvitz notes that intact cans are easier for recycling facilities to sort.

Consider a secondhand lunchbox

There's no rule that says a lunchbox has to be new. Click suggests checking Facebook Marketplace, Poshmark, and eBay, where last year's enthusiasm for a particular cartoon character is now available at a discount. “They have every character you can think of,” she says.

Just don't try to replace every disposable item in one frantic back-to-school shopping trip. Pick one change, get used to it, and then consider another. “Don't try to go zero-waste in one day, because you're gonna get frustrated,” Click says. “It's like saying you're gonna lose 50 lbs in one month.”

Be skeptical of “compostable” packaging

“Compostable” packaging usually needs more than a trash can—or even a backyard compost pile. Many products break down only in commercial composting facilities. Yet a 2025 national analysis found that just 18.1% of the sampled U.S. population had access to a curbside or drop-off program that accepted food scraps and at least some forms of compostable packaging. If your local program doesn’t accept these products, they’ll probably end up in a landfill.

“The word compostable doesn't mean it will compost,” Click says. She recommends choosing reusable items first. If you do buy compostable products, make sure you have a realistic way to compost them—either at home, if they’re certified for home composting, or through a local service that accepts and processes them.

Show kids where the trash goes

The most effective tool for cutting lunch waste isn't a product. It might be a field trip.

Click takes children to landfills, where the hard hats, safety vests, and enormous trucks are a hit. But the adults tend to leave with the bigger revelation. “You start to see the birds there eating trash,” she says. “You're really faced with this reality of, like, you contribute to this.”

Many recycling facilities offer free tours, and county extension offices around the country run gardening and composting programs for kids. The point isn’t to make children feel guilty about every granola-bar wrapper. It’s to help them see where their trash ends up—and why small changes matter.

“There's not a magical product that you can order online and have it shipped with two-day shipping that will solve this,” Click says. “It really comes down to healthy daily habits that you build over time.”

The Mediterranean diet is one of the most researched and most prescribed eating plans for weight loss, heart health, and many conditions in between. Research has linked it to better health outcomes, including lower rates of Type 2 diabetes, stroke, heart issues, cancer, and even better cognitive health. 

Yet many people still have misconceptions about the Mediterranean diet: mainly that it’s expensive and difficult. “I think that people just have to be told that it is affordable and it's quite easy,” says Joan Salge Blake, clinical professor of nutrition at Boston University, author of the book Nutrition & You, and the host of the nutrition podcast Spot On! 

The pillars of the Mediterranean diet include eating more vegetables, whole grains, fish, and olive oil, and consuming minimal amounts of alcohol, red meat, and saturated fats. Getting good amounts of physical and social activity is a core tenet of the lifestyle plan, too. But you don’t have to overhaul your diet overnight. “Try to take one one or two small steps at a time, and you'll eventually get there,” says Angel Planells, a registered dietitian in Seattle and spokesperson for the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics.

We spoke to experts about easy ways to start adopting the Mediterranean diet. 

Embrace frozen and canned produce

Americans are woefully behind on their produce intake. Only about 12% of U.S. adults ate the recommended amount of fruit, and 10% ate enough vegetables, according to the latest analysis by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention..

A great way to start getting more produce on your plate is through your freezer and pantry, Blake says. When you’re first learning to prepare fresh fruits and vegetables, they can become expensive—especially if they end up rotting away, forgotten, in a fridge drawer. Since grocery bills have skyrocketed over the last few years, that can make the shift even more daunting. But Blake points out that frozen and canned produce can carry the same nutrients in an easier-to-store, more cost-effective format. 

“Some people think, ‘Oh, I’ve got to cook from scratch, and everything's got to be fresh,’” says Blake. “And the answer is, ‘No, it does not.’”

It’s also easier to deal with. “Canned and frozen produce is cleaned, chopped, and ready to go. It's like having Rachael Ray in your freezer and pantry,” she says. “Fresh is not always best.” 

Choose frozen or canned seafood

Fresh seafood is also often pricey, but it’s not a requirement that your seafood be fresh, either. 

“It could be frozen. It could be out of a can,” Blake says. Tuna and salmon also come packaged in a pouch, which is “extremely, extremely affordable and really, really good for you based on the science that we have today,” she says. 

For time-strapped Americans, frozen and canned foods can help speed things along, reduce food waste, and ensure that there’s always some kind of produce at the ready. 

Read More: 6 Easy Ways to Move More While Working from Home

“These are as nutritious as fresh, and they're convenient, and this way you don't have to go back to the supermarket more than once a week,” she says. She also recommends checking out your local supermarket’s deals to see what’s on sale that week. 

Diversify your protein sources

“We get kind of fixated that it has to be animal protein, and that's clearly not the case,” says Planells. For animal protein, the Mediterranean diet favors seafood and leaner cuts of meat, and it also recommends plant-based sources of protein like beans and lentils. 

Despite rising grocery costs, a May 2026 report from the American Farm Bureau Federation finds that “America’s demand for meat continues to grow.” As of July, ground beef prices were up 10% from the same time in 2025. 

“Everyone wants protein, protein, protein, but we're going to go broke,” says Planells. 

Swap in leaner cuts and types of meat, embrace eggs, and try more plant-based protein like tofu, beans, nuts, and seeds, he recommends, which both comply with the Mediterranean diet and might end up being a cost effective and healthier trade. 

You can also add leaner, greener proteins into meaty dishes you already like. “If you're going to make a chili, what you can do instead of putting in like 2 lbs of ground beef is put in 1 lb of lean ground beef and double up or triple up on beans,” Blake suggests. “You cut the cost of that meal per serving, and you also decrease the saturated fat and increase the fiber per serving.”

Take baby steps

“Whatever way people eat, whatever way they shop, it would be better to try to look into their life and try to make small, gradual changes in what they're doing than trying to give them the pathway to excellence,” says Planells. Instead of fried foods, opt for baked, grilled, or steamed. In terms of meats, pick leaner cuts. Choose healthier snacks, like nuts or yogurt, instead of products like chips. Swap in whole grains like quinoa, brown rice, and whole wheat pasta instead of processed versions. 

“Every time we have a meal or snack, it's an opportunity to try to make it as nutrient-rich as possible,” says Planells. 

When Planells works with a patient, he often suggests making one small diet-related and physical-related change a week. 

Movement is just as key to the Mediterranean lifestyle as the food is. When researchers originally started studying the diets and lifestyles of people in the region, Blake says, they found that physical activity was an important part. “We really need to start getting movement in our life as a habit,” says Blake. 

Correction, Aug. 31

The original version of this story misspelled a dietitian's name; she is Joan Salge Blake, not Joan Saldge Blake.

TIME is committed to sharing data about our global employee population annually. Information on gender identity and race is voluntarily self-reported by our employees. Here is how our employees have identified as of December 2025.

Notes:

• Information on gender identity and race is voluntarily self-reported by TIME employees.
• This data represents the employee population at TIME as of December 2025 (not including temporary and contract workers).
• “Leadership” here includes all employees with a “Director” title and above. 
• We intend to report on the demographic makeup of our employee population annually.
• As a U.S.-headquartered company, the categories used here align with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) classifications.

Previous Years:

2024

2023

2022

2021

As New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani works to implement his campaign promise to create public grocery stores, the initiative has been met with significant criticism, especially from economists.  The criticism is, I believe, badly misplaced, based on the very models of the economy that have contributed to our slow growth, increasing inequality, and today’s affordability crisis. 

There is indeed a strong economic argument for doing something along the lines that Mayor Mamdani proposes.

Traditional economists typically begin with the presumption that private, competitive markets are efficient and the desirable way to provide ordinary goods like groceries. Government should stick to where it is needed, these economists believe, like providing defense and environmental regulation. 

But over the past 50 years, this presumption has been totally undermined, as we’ve come to understand better the many ways in which markets “fail,” especially in the presence of imperfect information. Even in the simple area of groceries, market incentives direct consumers to more profitable but less nutritious foods, contributing, for instance, to the childhood diabetes crisis.  Public grocery stores, whose objective is to provide better, more affordable goods for all citizens—rather than just maximizing profits—hold out the promise of a healthier population and a more productive labor force.

The argument for private markets begins with unrealistic assumptions about perfect markets, with perfect competition and perfect information. Even seemingly competitive markets like grocery stores are better described by monopolistic competition than perfect competition. In a series of papers, I showed that the market equilibrium in such markets was not, in general, efficient. This is true even if profit margins of grocery stores are thin. Indeed, part of the problem is that to maintain even these thin margins, grocery stores often have to engage in exploitative activities that encourage the consumption of high-margin and often less-nutritious foods at the expense of lower-margin foods that would be better for everyone’s health.

To be sure, the objective of any business is to extract as much money from its consumers as it can. The issue is that the objective of grocery stores in a monopolistically competitive market—especially with consumers who are not fully informed and would be better described by models of behavioral economics than by models that assume perfectly rational and perfectly informed individuals maximizing expected utility over their lifetimes—can be at odds with the customers’ health, communities’ productivity, and society’s well-being. 

The disparity between societal interests and the interests of profit-maximizing grocery stores can be seen in the food deserts—large areas throughout the country where nutritious food is simply not available—and at the checkout counters, where candy and other unhealthy snacks jostle for the attention at the eye level of children. And food deserts also demonstrate the high price of inequality, in which America’s poorest are ironically forced to spend more time and resources traveling farther to find healthy food, even if they have fewer resources to spare. 

Of course, grocery stores are only one part of an ecosystem focused more on profits than health—including a food industry that pushes excessively processed and sugar-rich foods that contribute to the country’s childhood diabetes problem. 

And what I have described so far are only some of the market failures rampant here. Risk (insurance) markets too are imperfect. What's more, fluctuations in grocery store prices put a disproportionately bigger burden on poor families, with a large reduction in their well-being. In a well-functioning economic system, these risks would be transferred to consumers who are better able to absorb them.

The market failures in the provision of food should not be a partisan matter. One of Mamdani's predecessors, former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, also tried to improve the health, nutrition, and productivity of New Yorkers, with lasting benefits. He left a legacy of corner fruit and vegetable stands. He tried mightily to curb the exploitative efforts to encourage excessive sugar consumption in movie theatres—with enormous pushback from the food companies profiting from the sales. 

Ongoing research at Columbia University shows that in markets that are not perfectly competitive, the provision of an alternative public option can increase societal welfare, and this is true even if the public option is less efficient than the private sector and even if it runs at a loss. 

No doubt, New York City will face a big challenge in running these grocery stores, but there are models of successful alternatives to the current system, including co-ops in many places around the world.

It behooves all of us to do what we can to ensure that this important initiative succeeds. 

And it behooves us not to write off fresh ideas based on stale definitions of what a healthy economy looks like.

Two people have died and more than a dozen others are missing or unaccounted for after a flash flood ripped through the Grand Canyon over the weekend, according to park service officials.

The National Park Service (NPS) wrote in a social media post on Monday that two bodies have been recovered, with search and rescue efforts ongoing. The NPS earlier shared late Sunday night that rescuers had found the body of a 46-year-old man near Crystal Rapids along the Colorado River. It has not provided any further information about the deceased.

Read More: Nepal Flash Flooding Leaves Hundreds Dead

In a separate statement on Sunday, the agency asked the public for information on 15 individuals who may be missing or remain unaccounted for. As of Sunday morning, 62 people had been evacuated from Phantom Ranch and the lower North Kaibab Trail, and more were expected to be evacuated in nearby areas, NPS officials added.

NPS asked those who know of hikers or backpackers in the inner canyon along the Bright Angel Creek corridor on Saturday, “as well as anyone who had a campground reservation in the affected corridor,” to provide information.

The continuing search may be impacted by rain and thunderstorms that have been forecasted in the area, the agency warned on Monday.

How the Grand Canyon flash flooding unfolded

The flash-flood event occurred in Bright Angel Canyon and the Phantom Ranch area on Saturday afternoon at around 2:30 p.m. Arizona is currently in the throes of the monsoon season, and storms poured over the Grand Canyon from early Saturday morning and returned in the evening. 

Nearly all footbridges over Bright Angel Creek were destroyed in the floods, the Park Service said, preventing hikers from crossing. NPS is continuing to assess the extent of the damage. Parts of the canyon—Phantom Ranch, Bright Angel Campground, the Phantom Ranch Canteen and cabins, and the entire North Kaibab Trail from the North Kaibab Trailhead to Phantom Ranch—were closed until further notice. 

The Transcanyon Waterline, a 12.5-mile pipeline in the Grand Canyon that carries water for drinking and fire suppression has also been damaged. With that pipeline out of action, the park has a limited water supply and has resorted to conservation measures. 

The National Park Service warns of ongoing risk

Other restrictions have been imposed following the floods. By Monday, all concessions inside the park will end overnight accommodations. Only dry camping—camping without utility hookups to water or sewage—will be allowed on the South Rim, and fires on the South Rim and inner canyon areas will be prohibited.

NPS also warned that flash floods may recur and cause debris flow, as thunderstorms and heavy rainfall are anticipated until Monday.

The National Weather Service in Flagstaff, Ariz. has issued a flash flood watch, urging caution in flood-prone areas like creeks, slot canyons, and low water crossings, among others.

U.S. users looking for Lake Ontario on Google Maps will now find “Lake America” in its place, after President Donald Trump’s executive order to rename the lake amid an escalating trade stoush.

Google announced Saturday that the lake, which borders the Canadian province of Ontario and the U.S. state of New York, will appear as “Lake America” in the U.S., “Lake Ontario” in Canada, and “Lake Ontario (Lake America)” for users in the rest of the world. 

The company said it changed the maps following the formal renaming by the U.S. Geographic Names Information System (GNIS), and that the update is in line with its “long-standing policy for bodies of water with names that vary from country to country.”

Read More: The Trouble With Trump’s Attempt to Rename Lake Ontario

The change has divided tech companies.

MapQuest, the first commercial web mapping service, said in a Thursday post, “We’re not changing the name of Lake Ontario. Name it whatever you want at your leisure.” The post included a link to a satirical tool allowing users to give the lake a name of their choosing and an image of a parody map labeling the body of water, “Lake Are We Doing This Again?”

As of Sunday, Apple had not changed the name on Apple Maps.

Lake Ontario/America

The change comes after Trump signed an executive order Thursday to officially rename the body of water—the latest salvo in an escalating trade war with Canada. After trade talks abruptly collapsed earlier this month, the U.S. and Canada announced tit-for-tat tariffs of up to 50% on some goods.

Canadian officials also called for Canadians to boycott U.S. travel and products, while Trump revived rhetoric of Canada being the “51st state” of the U.S., claiming that Canada wanted “the benefits of being a State, without being one.”

The name change has faced significant opposition from Democrats. Rep. Debbie Dingell (D, Mich.) announced plans to introduce the “Hands Off Our Great Lakes Act,” a bill that would reverse Trump’s order renaming the lake. Other Democratic lawmakers reportedly said they were preparing legislation to counter the name change.

Canadian officials also derided the name change. Prime Minister Mark Carney rejected the renaming on Thursday, noting that Canadians will continue “calling it Lake Ontario—then, now and always.”

On Saturday, Ontario Premier Doug Ford unveiled a newly erected 24-by-12-foot sign overlooking the lake in Winona, Ontario, that read “Lake Ontario Now and Always” in English and French.

Ford told ABC Sunday that the name change is “like something out of ‘Saturday Night Live.’”

“No one’s going to call it Lake of America. It’s been Lake Ontario for hundreds of years. It’s going to continue being Lake Ontario. It’s just so disappointing,” he said.

Some Ontario government and business websites that use data from Google Maps showed “Lake America” after the change. A Google spokesperson told Axios that website developers embedding Google Maps can select a region to localize their maps.

“Following recent changes by Google, we’re actively reviewing our websites to make sure they all identify Lake Ontario by its correct name: Lake Ontario,” Stephen Crawford, Ontario’s minister of public and business service delivery and procurement, posted. “As Ontarians, we will always stand up for our province, our identity and the places that define it.”

Follows renaming Gulf of Mexico as the ‘Gulf of America’

Google made a similar change in February 2025 after Trump issued an executive order renaming the Gulf of Mexico the “Gulf of America.” Google began displaying “Gulf of America” to Google Maps users in the U.S. after the name change was made in the U.S. federal geographic database.

Users in Mexico continued to see “Gulf of Mexico” and users elsewhere saw both names. Soon after, Apple Maps adopted the new name for U.S. users.

Mexico filed a lawsuit against Google in May 2025, arguing that the U.S. did not have the authority to rename the entire gulf, including waters under Mexican jurisdiction. The suit followed Google’s refusal to limit the “Gulf of America” label to the portion of the gulf under U.S. jurisdiction, as Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum had requested. The lawsuit remains pending before the Superior Court of Justice of Mexico City.

Both Google and Apple also changed their U.S. map labels for North America’s highest peak from Denali to Mount McKinley last February. Trump had directed the name change in the same executive order, reversing a 2015 decision that had restored Denali, the mountain’s Alaska Native name, as its federal designation.

MapQuest retained the names of Denali and the Gulf of Mexico, and also offered users the option to rename the gulf as they pleased.

President Donald Trump vowed on Monday that the U.S. will strike Iran “hard” after the two countries exchanged their first publicly confirmed attacks in weeks.

Trump told Fox News’ Trey Yingst that “there will be a response” to strikes Iran launched against U.S. forces in Jordan overnight in retaliation for an American attack on an island in the Strait of Hormuz.

“We're going to hit them hard,” the President said, according to Yingst.

Trump’s threat comes after U.S. forces attacked two Iranian rocket launchers on Larak Island on Sunday, marking a resumption of military action after a roughly month-long pause.

CENTCOM spokesperson Capt. Tim Hawkins confirmed the strike in a statement to TIME, adding that Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) forces “were observed preparing to launch rockets with sea mines” into the strait. 

Last week, U.S. forces finished clearing sea mines from the strait’s international shipping routes. 

“U.S. forces are monitoring the area closely and remain prepared to protect the free flow of commerce through this essential waterway,” Hawkins added.

The Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) issued a statement soon after the U.S. strikes that was carried by Iranian state news agency IRNA, saying that Iran would respond to the attacks on Larak Island “with punishment for the aggressor.”

The IRGC later said in a statement early Monday local time that it had launched ballistic missiles at a U.S. air base in Jordan and warned that “every shot will be met with more devastating responses,” IRNA reported. Jordan’s armed forces said they intercepted eight missiles that entered the country’s airspace early Monday morning.

In a statement, CENTCOM rebuffed the Revolutionary Guards’ claims, describing the Sunday attack as “limited, precise action against IRGC minelaying forces posing an imminent threat” to the strait.

A pause in attacks

Before the Sunday strikes, the last time the U.S. military confirmed targeting Iran was on July 29, announcing a “heavy wave of strikes” on dozens of IRGC targets in Iran, including command centers, missile and drone facilities, and coastal surveillance and defense sites.

On Aug. 1, President Donald Trump said that he agreed to “hold off” strikes in Iran at the request of the U.S.’s regional allies in the Middle East. 

How the U.S.-Iran war began

The strikes mark the latest escalation in the war, which began on Feb. 28 when the U.S. and Israel launched a wave of attacks across Iran. Trump described the operation as a “massive and ongoing” campaign intended to eliminate what he called imminent threats from the Iranian regime and openly encouraged Iranians to overthrow their government.

The attacks came after U.S.-Iranian negotiations over Tehran’s nuclear program failed to produce an agreement and amid the Iranian government’s deadly crackdown on nationwide protests. Trump had accused Iran of rebuilding its nuclear capabilities following U.S. and Israeli strikes on three major Iranian nuclear sites in June 2025. Iran has consistently denied seeking a nuclear weapon.

Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was killed in the opening salvo of the Feb. 28 campaign. Iran retaliated by firing missiles at Israel, U.S. military bases and other sites across the Middle East, widening the conflict throughout the region.

The war also led Iran to militarize and largely close the Strait of Hormuz, one of the world’s most important energy transit routes, through which about a fifth of global oil production typically passed before the hostilities. 

A U.S. naval blockade of Iranian ports was lifted under a June agreement, but Trump reimposed it after that deal and its accompanying cease-fire fell apart.

TIME Editor in Chief Sam Jacobs and Executive Editor Alex Altman sent the following memo to staff on Monday: 

Dear all,

TIME aspires to lead in the coverage of the remaking of the world by artificial intelligence.

Last week, we released our annual TIME100 AI list, led by Ayesha Javed, and an exclusive cover story about OpenAI drawing on unprecedented access inside the company. Today, we're announcing a significant investment in our AI and technology coverage. 

In just a few weeks, we’ll relaunch In the Loop, our AI newsletter, with a new format. Later this year, we plan to expand it to five days a week, giving readers a daily, essential briefing on the industry and the influences shaping it. Next year, we'll build on the success of this year’s AI events in Davos, Cannes, New York and San Francisco by launching our first-ever TIME100 AI Leadership Forum in Washington, D.C. We are exploring additional opportunities to convene the world's most influential AI leaders internationally too.

To support our continued commitment to this work, we’re pleased to announce the following staff changes.

Naomi Nix joined us Aug. 17 as a Senior Correspondent based in Washington. Naomi comes to TIME after four years covering Meta and the broader social media industry for The Washington Post, where her reporting focused on how powerful platforms shape American democracy and global politics. Before The Post, she covered tech lobbying and corporate influence for Bloomberg News, and got her start covering beats including education and City Hall for The 74, The Star-Ledger and the Chicago Tribune. At TIME, Naomi will contribute to In the Loop, write ambitious features and investigations, and report across platforms with a focus on policy, regulation, tech's political influence, and the nexus between Silicon Valley and the nation's capital.

Manisha Ganguly joins us as a Senior Correspondent based in London, starting Nov. 1. Manisha is a decorated investigative journalist and a pioneer in using open-source intelligence to expose war crimes. She joins us from The Guardian, where she was investigations correspondent and led visual forensics; she previously built out open-source investigative workflows at the BBC. She holds the first PhD awarded for research into OSINT's impact on investigative journalism, from the University of Westminster. Manisha is currently writing her first book. At TIME, she will pursue investigations and features on AI and national security, profile key leaders and policymakers, and contribute to In the Loop and our coverage across platforms.

Harry Booth, who joined TIME in 2024, becomes Staff Writer and will relocate to San Francisco in January to anchor our coverage of the world's most important AI hub. Since joining the London bureau, Harry has been a force behind our TIME100 AI, Philanthropy, and Climate franchises and our Best Inventions coverage. He co-authored our March cover story on Anthropic’s rise and its standoff with the Trump Administration, based on reporting inside the company. Harry will lead our beat coverage of the AI boom on the ground in the Bay Area, covering the frontier labs, hyperscalers, and startups defining this moment. 

The additions of Naomi and Manisha, and Harry's expanded role in San Francisco, will strengthen a team that already includes two agenda-setting correspondents on the AI beat: Billy Perrigo, based in London, and Andrew Chow, based in Washington. All will work with Senior Editor Dayana Sarkisova, who has done a terrific job leading our global beat coverage of AI leaders, companies, and their impact on society. Charlie Campbell, reporting to Gemma Fox, will continue to contribute greatly to our AI coverage from Asia.

In recent years, this global team has brought readers inside companies like Anthropic, OpenAI, Google, Nvidia, and Waymo; broken robotics scoops showing what the next wave of automation looks like; and reported on the global data center boom and the political backlash it has provoked, taking readers from a remote valley above the Arctic Circle in Norway to frontline communities in Tennessee and Texas. Last December, we named "The Architects of AI" our Person of the Year.

Assembling this team reflects TIME's commitment to covering the most consequential story of our time with the ambition it demands—across every platform, through access and accountability, and careful scrutiny of AI’s promise and perils. Please join us in welcoming Naomi and Manisha, and in congratulating Harry on his upcoming move to San Francisco.

Sam and Alex

President Donald Trump last week signed an executive order creating a commission to develop plans for the United States Space Academy, which is intended to “educate and develop the next generation of leaders across the space domain.”

The initiative was first announced when Trump visited the Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, on Aug. 28 to present the crew of Artemis II with the Congressional Space Medal of Honor. The crew was recognized for their 10-day lunar flyby in April, which took them farther from Earth than any human had ever traveled.

“Given the rapid growth of the Space Force and the commercial space industry and the expansion of our ambitions to the moon and far beyond the moon,” Trump said while giving remarks at the ceremony, “it’s clear we will need to educate and train an entire generation of skilled service members, engineers, and civil operators.”

The proposed academy is envisioned as serving the military, civil government, and broader space industry. However, the exact admissions requirements for Space Academy—which will help characterize who it serves and how—are yet to be determined. Future Space Force officers currently attend the U.S. Air Force Academy.

Read More: U.S. Says Chinese Hackers Targeted Senate, NASA, Hospitals, and More

“The Nation must prepare the next generation of astronauts, scientists, engineers, operators, entrepreneurs, civil servants, and warfighters and ensure that they are capable of advancing American interests in space,” the executive order said. “Achieving this goal requires us to recruit, train, and retain America’s best and brightest from across the Nation.”

At the ceremony, Trump also acknowledged the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, named for one of the forebears of modern space science, which was launched Sunday aboard a SpaceX Falcon Heavy. With surveying capabilities over 1,000 times faster than its predecessor, the Hubble Space Telescope, Roman seeks to explore dark matter, uncharted corners of the cosmos, and questions about the expansion of the universe.

What do we know so far about the Space Academy?

The first step in establishing the new academy is forming a Presidential Commission to develop recommendations for it. NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman will chair the new commission, according to the executive order, and it will also include War Secretary Pete Hegseth and Air Force Secretary Troy E. Meink, or their designees, among other federal representatives.

The commission has 120 days from Aug. 28 to submit its report to the President. It must include a governance framework, an academic and leadership curriculum, prerequisites for students, a service obligation for graduates, and a plan of implementation, legislative and otherwise, for all of the included components to take effect.

The White House also released a fact sheet, which described the proposed Space Academy as a “NASA-led federal academy dedicated to combining rigorous technical education with leadership development, discipline, and a durable commitment to public service.”

The fact sheet organized the administration’s case for the academy under three headings.

“Building the Next Generation of American Space Leaders” covered the convening of the commission and how the commission’s subsequent recommendations will be implemented. 

“Advancing American Space Superiority” established that intensifying competition in space requires the United States to encourage more students to pursue cutting-edge technical fields.

Finally, “Building American Strength and Driving Achievement” explained Trump’s commitment to the space industry, from signing the legislation that formed the Space Force in 2019 to this month’s National Security Presidential Memorandum, which calls for U.S. ranges to support “more than 1,000 launches and reentries every year” by 2030.

“Access to, from, and within space is a vital national and economic security interest,” the Aug. 20 memorandum stated.

The fact sheet also linked the Space Force to the military’s preparation for future warfare, saying: “The Space Force is critical to preparing the Department of War for evolving warfighting conditions and expanding our capabilities.”

Where will the Space Academy be located?

The future location of the Space Academy has not yet been determined. Trump said that the White House would be accepting proposals. At the Congressional Space Medal of Honor ceremony, he said, “I’m going to be choosing a location very shortly.”

Joking that Sen. Ted Cruz was already interested in hosting the new academy in Texas, Trump continued: “Everybody wants it because it’s the hot thing. Space is the hot thing.”

Trump compared his ambitions for the academy to other prestigious military education institutions. 

“So you think of West Point and you think of Annapolis and you think of the Air Force Academy and you think of the Coast Guard Academy. It’s great. They’re all great,” he said. “But we’re going to have now a Space Force [academy].”

Those are based in New York, Maryland, Colorado, and Connecticut, respectively.

“But I said this has to be comparable to [those schools],” he explained. “You know, we don’t want to do it in any other way, and it’s going to be, even architecturally, it’s got to be beautiful. It’s got to be the top. It’s going to be as good as it can get.”

I’m the kind of person who shares a genuine compliment often, telling someone who is standing behind me in the airport line that I love their sneakers or letting one of my daughter’s friends know they have a beautiful smile. I also like to do nice things for people, like bringing the veterans that I work with doughnuts and coffee every Monday morning.

I learned to be kind from my grandfather who raised me. He drove the nuns from my Catholic grammar school to their doctors’ appointments, and he shared smiles and jokes with grocery store clerks, neighborhood kids, and almost every soul whose path he crossed. I wanted to follow in his footsteps and engage as often as I could in my own random acts of kindness. I recognized that being kind and giving selflessly to others made me feel good as well, but it wasn’t until recently, 25 years into my career as a trauma psychologist, that I learned about the science behind random acts of kindness.

Research indicates that engaging in random acts of kindness boosts happiness in both those who give and those who receive. A systematic review of 24 studies indicated that performing acts of kindness boosts the well-being of the giver.

One study on the effects of a seven-day intervention—in which people intentionally tried to do nice things for others—found that it didn’t matter if someone was giving to those with whom they had strong ties (family members or friends), or those with whom they had weak ties (strangers). All had equally positive effects on happiness.

Oliver Scott Curry is the research director for Kindlab, a team of researchers who study the causes and consequences of kindness. The group offers tools and programs to help increase kindness; you can even complete the Kindness Quotient, a research-based questionnaire that takes less than five minutes to fill out and gives you an indication of how kind you are compared to others.

I contacted Curry and asked him what he thought about the value and opportunities for kindness in what feels like an incredibly hostile world. “Humans are naturally kind, under the right circumstances,” he tells me.

Indeed, according to research across diverse cultural and economic settings, from the U.S. and Canada to Uganda, India, and South Africa, the well-being rewards one experiences from helping others appears deep-rooted in human nature. 

Jonathan Passmore, a psychologist and coach in the U.K., has developed a positive psychology coaching technique called CAKE, which stands for consistent acts of kindness and empathy. I asked him how engaging in CAKE can help teach someone how to spread kindness. “The list of possible actions is limitless,” he says. “I advocate for folks to initially commit to a one-week plan—choosing to engage in one act of kindness per day.” On Monday, for example, you can greet the barista at your local coffee shop by name, and wish them a pleasant day, he offers. On Tuesday, “you could write a handwritten card to a colleague and thank them for something they have done.” Do this for a week, and “one often gets hooked and begins to hold an empathic stance towards most they meet.”

You’re never too young to start. Kindlab offers kindness challenges—skill-building, games, and more—for younger family members. One of my favorites is the kindness walk: a map that reminds and encourages kids to smile at someone they don’t know, give someone a sincere compliment, or pick up litter the next time they take a walk. 

Givers often underestimate the positive effect such gestures have on receivers. Undervaluing our kindness may discourage us from engaging in such acts. But engaging in acts of kindness is a straightforward, low-cost, widely available, and valuable tool we can all use with our family, friends, community members, and strangers. 

As a psychologist who cares very deeply about people’s well-being, I see engaging in acts of kindness as a win-win. Whether it’s buying a cup of coffee for the person in line behind you at the drive-thru, holding the grocery store door open for someone whose hands are full of heavy bags, or saying hello to a stranger, you will likely boost your own and others’ emotional well-being.

President Donald Trump announced Friday that the United States has entered a “historic” deal with Venezuela, saying that it gives the U.S. majority control over more than 65 billion barrels of oil reserves. Calling it the “BIGGEST OIL DEAL IN WORLD HISTORY” in a post on Truth Social, he said that the agreement would “substantially lower Gas Prices for all Americans.”

The Trump Administration has long expressed an interest in Venezuela, which boasts the world’s largest proven crude-oil reserves as of 2023—approximately 303 billion barrels, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA).

But the President did not outline how soon, exactly, Americans can expect to feel relief at the pumps. TIME has reached out to the White House for comment on the expected timeline.

Read More: What’s Happening With the U.S. and Venezuela, Explained

The answer is especially relevant amid the ongoing war with Iran. One of the linchpins of the conflict is a Tehran-imposed blockade on the Strait of Hormuz, through which one-fifth of the world’s oil had previously passed. The move has been consequential for the global economy. In the United States, the national average cost for a gallon of gas is $4.08 as of Saturday, according to the AAA, as compared to $3.20 one year ago.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio called the deal a “huge win” for America in a social media post on Friday, saying that it means “lowering gas prices here at home.”

Any eventual decline in gas prices could provide relief at a time when Americans are already contending with persistent inflation, which was the focus of remarks made by Federal Reserve Chair Kevin Warsh at the Jackson Hole Economic Policy Symposium in Wyoming on Friday. 

However, it could be a while before the impact of the new deal with Venezuela is directly felt. 

What we know about Trump’s Venezuela oil deal

Much of what is known about the deal comes from a statement released on Telegram by acting Venezuelan President Delcy Rodríguez late Friday. 

“It provides for the development of 17 strategic fields, with a proven potential of 65 billion barrels of oil, more than $100 billion in investment and more than $209 billion in tax revenue for the state,” the statement said. “These investments will contribute not only to the recovery and modernization of our industry, but also to our country’s economic growth, the energy security of our hemisphere and greater stability in international markets.”

Despite its vast oil reserves, the country only produced about 1.1 million barrels per day in July, according to a secondary-source estimate from the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries. 

The EIA has attributed Venezuela’s long-term production decline largely to “government mismanagement, international sanctions, and the country’s economic crisis,” which contributed to “a lack of investment and maintenance in the energy sector and a deteriorating infrastructure.” The agency found that Venezuela’s total energy production declined by an average of 8.2% annually between 2011 and 2021.

“The U.S. deal with Venezuela is very important strategically,” says Claudio Galimberti, the chief economist at Rystad Energy. “The new wave of investments that is about to come to Venezuela as a result of this deal will be crucial to turn around the country's aging oil infrastructure. Venezuela will be able to increase its production at a faster rate and unlock barrels that would otherwise have stayed underground.”  

The agreement envisions private operators playing a central role in that effort. Rodríguez’s post explained that the agreement allows Venezuela to increase its oil production “through the participation of private operators,” without further elaboration.

A State Department official tells TIME that Rodríguez has granted a private company, which is “a joint project of the U.S. government and an experienced private operator in Venezuela,” 100-year rights to develop the fields, adding: “This new entity will be the second largest corporate holder of proven reserves after Saudi Aramco.”

The deal would give the U.S. 55% of the new company’s effective output, “split between equity ownership and guaranteed at-cost off-take,” the official says.

Although they declined to comment on the expected timeline for these steps, the official adds: "As the company scales production, the resulting stable supply of at-cost oil in our Hemisphere will go toward filling the U.S. strategic petroleum reserve and fulfilling the supply needs of our Great U.S. Military.”

Other key factors also remain unknown—including how the deal will be financed and whether it includes any target dates for achieving various outcomes.

Why gas prices won’t lower immediately

One of the main reasons that Americans are unlikely to see immediate relief from high gas prices is that the deal is linked to 17 oil fields in Venezuela, not access to 65 billion barrels of already-produced crude oil.

While those fields contain proven reserves, Venezuela does not have the infrastructure in place currently to produce the oil at a rate that would significantly and rapidly affect the wallets of everyday Americans.

Such concerns arose after former Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro was ousted by the United States in January, when oil executives and analysts assessed the viability of developing the country’s reserves.

Speaking at the White House on Jan. 9, ExxonMobil Chairman and CEO Darren Woods called it “uninvestable,” given his assessment of the “legal and commercial constructs—frameworks—in place today in Venezuela.”

“There's an opportunity in Venezuela with all the resources there,” he said. “We don't have that challenge of finding; we have the challenge of developing those resources.”

Patrick De Haan, the head of petroleum analysis for GasBuddy/PDI, provides a similar assessment. He tells TIME, “While the hope of lower gas prices sounds promising, it still will take billions of investment to get that oil.”

In her statement, Rodríguez said the initiative is expected to “facilitate a significant flow of investment aimed at the recovery and reconstruction of strategic infrastructure for the development of our hydrocarbons industry.”

But it remains unclear where that investment will come from, including whether the private operator will provide the financing and how the project will proceed “at no cost to the American Taxpayer,” as Trump said.

De Haan also questioned whether the agreement’s unusual structure could discourage investment. “How can the U.S. lay claim to a sovereign country’s natural resources?” he says, adding that even with approval from Venezuela’s acting president, a 100-year contract could face legal challenges or prove difficult to enforce.

“That may slow down oil companies from wanting to invest in Venezuela,” he explains.

And financing is only one hurdle; the physical work required also shapes the timeline.

“Drilling and pumping that oil will take a very long time. Changes to fuel prices won’t happen overnight or even in months,” De Haan says, adding that global refining capacity is currently constrained, further limiting the speed at which additional crude supply could affect the market.

Galimberti says that consumers should expect a long road between the initial investment and the ultimate production and distribution of oil. 

“You will need to factor in several quarters and, in quite a few cases, years,” he says. “Therefore, it is a deal whose benefits will be seen mostly in the medium-long term.”

“To lower gasoline and diesel prices in the short term, the most effective way by far is by increasing the flows from the Middle East,” Galimberti says. He points to recent successes in bypassing the Strait of Hormuz, including pipelines and ports being developed across the Gulf.

Even without potential legal hurdles from within Venezuela, executing on the promise of the reserves could take years, which means that Americans may be in for a wait before they see the impact at gas stations across the U.S.

Some relationships need to end. 

Years ago, I treated a woman whose husband was deliberately trying to drive her toward suicide while attempting to extract money from her family. What struck me was not only the cruelty of his behavior, but his complete lack of empathy or remorse for the harm he was causing. Leaving him was necessary, and the woman is now happily remarried.

Most troubled relationships look nothing like that. They involve disappointment, resentment, misunderstanding, conflicting needs, old wounds, and people who have never learned how to reconcile after hurting one another. In more than 20 years of clinical practice, that extreme case remains the only time I directly recommended divorce.

Mental-health professionals have become remarkably good at helping clients identify unhealthy relationships. We have a sophisticated vocabulary for boundaries, trauma, toxicity, narcissism, gaslighting, and emotional safety. But I worry that we are far less effective at helping people navigate difficult but meaningful connections.

There is an irony here. Psychotherapy itself is predicated upon the healing power of human connection, yet therapists can be surprisingly quick to undervalue relationships outside the therapy room. Furthermore, relationships themselves teach basic psychological capacities such as regulating emotions, tolerating disappointment, and negotiating differences—skills which therapy is supposed to cultivate.

Too often, we mistake relational distress for relational dysfunction. Wall Street Journal columnist Elizabeth Bernstein recently highlighted this eloquently. She reported on therapists who encouraged adult children to go “no contact” with their parents, often after surprisingly little effort to mend ruptures. In a survey of roughly 7,000 estranged parents, one-third believed their adult child’s therapist had influenced or even recommended the decision to cut ties. That should give us pause.

The issue extends well beyond parents and children. Similar patterns appear in marriages and among siblings, friendships, and other close bonds. Therapists have become too quick to support ending difficult relationships instead of helping people develop the skills to repair them.

In reality, walking away from another person often solves one problem while creating others. Increasingly, my practice sees clients who have ended relationships that took a lifetime to build. The immediate conflict may be gone, but so is the connection. Many become lonelier and less equipped to navigate conflict, disappointment, and repair elsewhere.

Tragically, many who end contact with loved ones also become more distressed in the long run, since close relationships are a foundation of mental health. Maintaining social connection is a form of “fitness” that requires ongoing cultivation. Even when strained or difficult, human bonds provide belonging, support, identity, and resilience. That may matter more now than ever, as many meaningful in-person social interactions are dwindling in the face of digital alternatives.

I learned this lesson the hard way about 15 years ago.

A woman came in because she was deeply concerned about her husband, who had obsessive-compulsive disorder. We eventually got him into treatment. He worked hard, completed difficult exposure therapy exercises, and improved considerably. By the standards I had been trained to use, the treatment was successful. But their marriage was not. His wife remained deeply unhappy, and their connection deteriorated. Eventually he lost most of his hard-fought progress, and she fell into clinical depression. Looking back, I can see the mistake clearly: we treated the patient and his symptoms, but not the relationship itself.

This reflects something larger about how mental-health care is generally structured. Our system is overwhelmingly individualistic. Diagnostics assign disorders to individuals, and insurance reimbursement follows an identified patient and his or her diagnosis. Even family psychotherapy is typically covered only when it is being used to treat an individual’s mental health. That model may make sense in other areas of medicine, such as orthopedics where a fracture occurs within one body. Mental health is fundamentally different. A great deal of flourishing and suffering happens between people, not just within them, because human beings are relational beings.

A second structural problem is that mental healthcare increasingly pathologizes ordinary negative emotions. That can backfire. Excessive focus on distress tends to amplify it. As an anxiety specialist, I know this pattern well. Avoidance may bring immediate relief, but over time it reinforces fear and reduces our capacity to tolerate discomfort. 

Effective treatment does the opposite: it helps people face distress so they become more capable to withstand adversity, not less. Applied to relationships, this becomes especially critical because even the healthiest connections generate some strain. Loving spouses disappoint us, supportive parents fail us, close friends misunderstand us, and even terrific children create enormous stress. If stress itself is taken as evidence that a relationship is unhealthy, the normal difficulties of human interaction begin to look pathological.

Therefore, therapy should do more than help people identify what’s wrong with their relationships. It should build our capacity to sustain connection and repair ruptures: to tolerate disappointment, take responsibility for our own contribution to tensions, set limits without reflexively severing ties, and accept what another person may never be able to give us.

These skills matter beyond any single relationship. Learning how to reconnect with a spouse can make us better caregivers. Learning how to accept a parent’s limitations can change how we relate to our friends, work colleagues, and children. Working through difficult interactions can both preserve meaningful connections and strengthen our ability to navigate other ones.

Mel Robbins captured this idea in accessible language through her book, The Let Them Theory. Her core insight is simple: stop trying to control other people. Let them disappoint you, disagree with you, and make choices you don’t like. Then decide how you want to respond.

That message matters because a great deal of interpersonal conflict comes from trying to force others to change. We want parents to be more emotionally available, spouses to react differently, siblings to finally understand us, and adult children to make choices we approve of. Sometimes change is possible and can be requested directly upon the foundation of a loving connection. But sometimes the wiser move is to stop demanding that another person change as a condition of staying in contact with them.

Unfortunately, some of my academic and clinical colleagues have dismissed this approach. I think they are missing something critical. Leaving is sometimes necessary, but far more often the harder and healthier work is learning how to stay connected to imperfect people without surrendering ourselves, or trying to control them.

Human beings need relationships. Relationships require skills. Therapy should help us build them.

Six months into the war between the United States and Iran, President Donald Trump has turned to economic warfare to force the country into submission and threatened an “Economic D-Day” against Iran. This new American strategy was spelled out by Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent earlier this week: a campaign of U.S. sanctions against countries and financial institutions that do business with Iran or help it evade sanctions. 

The proposed new sanctions go beyond oil exports to target digital assets, gold, and the aviation sectors that help finance the Iranian economy. Bessent described it as a campaign to “collapse every last option for Iran.” Making all this work depends on whether the U.S. can convince Iran’s most important trade partners to cut out the Islamic Republic. China, which buys around 80% of Iran’s seaborne crude oil, has already pushed back, warning that it will “take all necessary measures” to protect its interests should it be targeted by U.S. sanctions. Beijing's response casts doubt on whether Washington’s new gambit can deliver results.

If the aim, as stated, is to deal an economic blow to Iran, the fact is that the country is already under severe strain. A U.S. naval blockade has constrained oil exports, the primary source of revenue for Iran. Ordinary Iranians are facing greater economic pressure as their purchasing power is eroding: food inflation reached 128% year-on-year in July and families are cutting back on meat and other items. The dollar value of the minimum wage has fallen from about $105 to $86 since late March as the rial has weakened significantly. On Monday, Iranian currency fell to a record low of 2.02 million rials to the dollar.

So what is the goal of Bessent’s announcement? Simply put, acknowledging the reality—even if the administration won’t state it in these terms—of avoiding a further, major military campaign as the conflict drags on. For their part, Iran’s leaders have dismissed the threat of intensified economic warfare, insisting the new punitive economic measures would fail. “It is the same movie they keep playing over and over again,” remarked Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi.

Does this mean nothing will change with the American announcement? Put another way, are we likely to see a continuation of the current state of neither war nor peace, with Iran prolonging things until it can secure a favorable deal to end the conflict? Tehran, it is true, has powerful reasons to avoid another major military escalation. A new round of fighting could deepen the damage to Iran’s energy, transport and industrial infrastructure—much of it still under repair from earlier hostilities— and would also complicate reconstruction by further straining state finances, disrupting imports and exposing an already weakened economy to another cycle of destruction.

Yet American economic saber-rattling could alter this calculus. After all, on Aug. 10, Iran’s Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei appointed Brigadier General Ahmad Vahidi, a hardliner with significant experience in intelligence and operational positions, as the commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), instructing him to strengthen capabilities for “powerful offensive operations against the enemy.” That language was echoed on Aug. 22 by Mohsen Rezaei, who was recently appointed secretary of the Supreme National Security Council, the top national security body of Iran. In an interview Rezaei spoke of Tehran going to introduce “changes in the conduct of the war” and bring “new capabilities” into play. He also warned that Iran had so far targeted only U.S. military bases but could begin striking American economic interests if Washington intensified its economic campaign. 

Tick tock, tick tock

If Iran is pondering a possible escalation in the military conflict, the Trump Administration appears to be betting that time may yield what bombs have so far failed to. The naval blockade in the Strait of Hormuz  remains in place, secondary sanctions are being tightened, and pressure is being increased on countries and financial networks that have allowed Tehran to circumvent previous restrictions. On Aug. 19, the United Arab Emirates, which has been a traditional financial gateway for Iran, suspended financial and commercial transactions with the country, a decision that is bound to hurt the Iranian economy.

Iran has declared the Strait of Hormuz closed, but oil has continued to move through the waterway, which is 29 nautical miles wide at its narrowest point. The U.S. military has established a protected route along the southern side of the strait, close to the shore of Oman. The Gulf states have experimented with ship-to-ship transfers and other means of moving crude around Iranian restrictions. Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have been working intensively to reduce their dependence on the strait, building pipelines and investing in storage facilities to transport their oil by other routes.

Precise estimates of oil passing through the strait are not available, but the volume seems to be somewhere between a quarter and half of the prewar flow of 20 million barrels a day. Oil prices remain elevated, hovering around $90 a barrel, but they are still far below the levels Tehran might have expected from an effective and sustained closure. Tehran had hoped that continued disruption in Hormuz would eventually make the economic costs of the confrontation intolerable for Washington and force Trump back toward compromise. Instead, the U.S. increasingly appears to believe that it can keep enough oil moving while allowing the blockade and sanctions to steadily increase the pressure on Iran.

For Iran, that creates a very different calculation. The longer the current situation continues, the greater the strain on an economy already struggling with shortages, inflation and restrictions on trade. Iranian officials are increasingly speaking of the domestic consequences. First Vice President Mohammad Reza Aref has spoken of the danger of economic discontent turning into social instability; the speaker of Parliament, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, has warned that measures such as raising gasoline prices could provide an opening for renewed unrest. President Masoud Pezeshkian has acknowledged that the blockade has restricted the country’s ability to import essential goods, including fuel.

Thus, Tehran is finding it increasingly harder to sustain the condition of “no war, no peace.”

A renewed war would impose enormous costs on Iran, but its leaders might ask a different question: will those costs be greater after months of economic pressure, declining revenues and continued military containment?  If the answer is yes, then waiting ceases to be a strategy of restraint and begins to look like gradual erosion of power and strength. And they could consider escalation as a means of breaking the deadlock before Iran’s position deteriorates further.

From retaliation to initiative

Economic pressure is not the only reason Iran may be more willing to take risks. Tehran’s own understanding of deterrence has also changed over the course of the war. For years, Iranian leaders portrayed military action as retaliatory: Iran would absorb an attack, then impose costs on the aggressor. The experience of the past two years has increasingly called that logic into question. From Tehran’s perspective, repeated attempts to contain escalation did not prevent Israel and the United States from expanding their attacks.

The strategic reassessment is now visible in Iran’s military leadership and practice. After appointing Vahidi as the commander of the IRGC, Khamenei instructed him to pursue “maximum deterrence” while preparing the force for “powerful offensive operations.” The wording is significant. Offensive action is increasingly being conceived as a path to restoring deterrence. Iran has already offered a glimpse of what this could mean in practice. On Jul. 28, the IRGC launched ballistic missiles at a U.S. military base in Jordan, at a time when Trump had paused American strikes to give diplomacy more time.

In a departure from the past, the strike was not a response to an American attack. U.S. Central Command described it as an attempted surprise attack, and Washington subsequently resumed its strikes against Iran. The sequence suggested that Tehran was becoming more willing to initiate military action when it believed doing so could alter the strategic equation, rather than waiting to retaliate. Iranian leaders may also feel they have more room to act than Washington or Israel expected. Despite the enormous damage inflicted on Iran’s military-industrial infrastructure, recent satellite imagery and Israeli assessments indicate that Tehran has been restoring missile bases, production facilities, ports and other military infrastructure at a surprisingly rapid pace.

Iran has not recovered from the war, and its leaders have not become indifferent to the risks of another military confrontation. Yet capability and willingness do interact. The more Tehran believes it can regenerate the military tools damaged during the war, the less compelling a strategy of absorbing economic pressure becomes. The emerging emphasis on proactive military action and sense of military regeneration could establish a lower threshold for Iranian military escalation than Washington assumes.

If Iran considers the current balance as unsustainable, its escalation would have to differ from what it has already tried. Tehran is already attacking commercial shipping, contesting passage through Hormuz and relying on the Houthis to keep pressure on maritime traffic in the Red Sea. Intensifying those actions may raise costs, but it is unlikely to change Washington’s calculation of moving significant volumes of oil through the southern part of the strait.

Iran could resume attacks on U.S. bases, radar systems, and other facilities that support maritime surveillance and command-and-control systems that help protect and coordinate shipping through the Strait. More  dangerous still, it could attempt to strike U.S. naval vessels directly. Iran is believed to possess anti-ship missiles that, at least on paper, can threaten American warships operating in and around the Persian Gulf. The harder problem is locating and tracking moving targets with sufficient precision, why is why better intelligence, including potentially from partners such as Russia or China, could become an important variable.

So far, Tehran has generally had strong reasons to avoid inflicting large numbers of American casualties, which could trigger a much larger U.S. campaign against Iran’s military and civilian infrastructure. But that restraint depends on Iranian leaders continuing to believe that avoiding such a confrontation leaves them better off. If they conclude instead that prolonged blockade and economic pressure are steadily worsening their position, the threshold for taking that risk could fall. Tehran has already warned that major U.S. attacks on Iranian energy or civilian infrastructure would be met with strikes against comparable infrastructure across the region, potentially widening the confrontation well beyond Hormuz.

This is also why diplomacy remains the least costly way out for both sides. Washington may believe that time and economic pressure are improving its bargaining position; Tehran may increasingly believe that the same process is closing its window for action. That is a particularly dangerous combination. 

The memorandum of understanding reached earlier in the conflict is imperfect and each side accuses the other of violating it, but it still provides an existing framework for sequencing de-escalation, maritime arrangements, sanctions relief, and further negotiations. Reviving it would require concessions from both Washington and Tehran. The alternative is to allow each side’s strategy to reinforce the other’s worst assumptions until escalation begins to look less like a choice than an inevitability.

As President Donald Trump’s approval rating hit a new low, he turned once again to the art of redrawing the world map. With the stroke of a pen, the President sought to erase over 400 years of cartographic history by renaming Lake Ontario as “Lake America” through executive order. Trump’s unilateral action requires that the U.S. Board on Geographic Names update its databases to “reflect the renaming of the Lake and remove all references to Lake Ontario.”

Trump’s executive order applies to all U.S. federal maps, documents, and other communications. However, experts suggest that Trump can’t force other countries, international organizations, private mapping companies, or even U.S. state governments to use the new name. Canada’s Prime Minister Mark Carney has already responded in no uncertain terms that Canada will retain the original name of Lake Ontario “today and forever.” New York Governor Kathy Hochul also rejected the use of the name “Lake America” on New York state maps.

As two geographers who have spent decades studying political toponymy, or the politics of place naming, in both the United States and Canada, we are dismayed by the careless nature of Trump’s impulsive use of place renaming as a form of political rage baiting. 

Renaming Lake Ontario is part of a larger pattern of using place naming to promote the Trump brand and his “America First” ideology. From the very outset of his second presidential term, Trump launched the so-called “Golden Age of America” by announcing that the Gulf of Mexico would be renamed the “Gulf of America.” This has now been followed with “Lake America,” and Trump even mused about possibly renaming the Atlantic or Pacific Ocean, we presume to something along the lines of “American Ocean” or “Ocean of America.”

Over the past year, Trump’s obsession with naming places has given rise to a new term—toponymic narcissism—which refers to the condition of being obsessed with naming places after oneself.  

In many respects, Trump tends to approach the world map much like the Greek mythical figure of Narcissus viewed a body of water: as an opportunity to admire the reflection of his own self-image.

The cost of this narcissistic approach to controlling and changing place names is that it obscures how these names should be shared symbolic resources that serve the broader public and not just the ambitions, grievances, or political feuds of a single individual.

The conventional process of naming geographical features along the U.S.-Canada border involves bringing a formal proposal to the U.S. Board on Geographic Names and the Geographical Names Board of Canada, along with their state and provincial counterparts on both sides of the border. There is generally an extensive consultation process to ensure all geographical naming authorities are on the same page before moving forward with a name change. Yet Trump has thrown all of this out the window simply to rage-bait a U.S. ally into submission.

While the standard place naming process is not perfect, it at least establishes an institutional procedure for review, consultation, evidence gathering, and consideration of competing claims before a geographic name is changed. By contrast, what we are witnessing under Trump 2.0 is a unilateral naming by decree or whim with seemingly no public discussion or real government consideration of impacts and consequences. 

It is clear to us that Trump’s renaming of Lake Ontario is symbolic political theater aimed at diverting our attention away from the fallout of his trade war with Canada. Yet symbols matter. Place naming is a world-making practice that shapes the very foundations of our geographical imaginations and how we come to know and engage with the world.

There is a risk in dismissing Trump’s cartography of mass distraction as a frivolous symbolic tactic, since it can have real consequences for what is taught in classrooms, reconciliation efforts with Indigenous peoples, and the badly needed repair of relations between the United States and Canada.

If there is any hope to be found in the cartographic carnage that Trump is unleashing on the world map, it is that a future president can just as easily reverse these name changes in an attempt to restore America’s world image.

While the popular GLP-1 medications continue to help people control diabetes and weight, the versatile drugs are also starting to address other health conditions as well.

On Aug. 28, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved Mounjaro to lower the risk of heart events, including heart attack, in people with diabetes. Made by Eli Lilly and Company, Mounjaro is already approved to help manage blood sugar.

Mounjaro affects two of the hormones in the incretin class—GLP-1 and GIP—that have become powerful targets for controlling blood sugar and weight. In the study Lilly submitted to the FDA, researchers compared heart events among people with Type 2 diabetes who either took Mounjaro or another Lilly drug for diabetes, called Trulicity, which targets only GLP-1. People taking Mounjaro had an 8% lower rate of heart attack, stroke, or heart-related death compared to those taking Trulicity. In previous studies, Trulicity helped people with and without a history of heart conditions to lower their risk of having a heart event by 12% compared to those receiving placebo.

“This study was in patients with Type 2 diabetes, in whom the No. 1 cause of death is cardiovascular disease,” says Dr. Rachel Batterham, senior vice president of medical innovation and external engagement for cardiometabolic health at Lilly. “So reducing that risk is critically important.”

Batterham says Lilly decided to compare Mounjaro’s potential in reducing heart risk to an existing drug, Trulicity, that already reduced heart risk to see if Mounjaro would have any additional benefit. “We set ourselves a very high bar,” she says.

But the study design means that the heart benefit results cannot be directly compared to Mounjaro’s competitor drug, Ozempic, from Novo Nordisk. Ozempic, which is approved to treat diabetes, and Novo Nordisk’s Wegovy, approved to treat overweight and obesity, are both approved to lower the risk of heart disease risk by 20%. Lilly is, however, currently conducting a study tracking people who don’t have Type 2 diabetes who take the weight-loss version of their drug, Zepbound, for heart events. In that study, says Batterham, the researchers will be looking at whether Zepbound can prevent second heart events from occurring in people who have already had one, as well as whether the drug can prevent first heart events from occurring.

For now, she says, the new indication means that for people with Type 2 diabetes already taking Mounjaro, doctors can discuss the fact that in addition to controlling their blood sugar, the drug may also help them to lower their risk of having heart events. And for those who don’t have diabetes and are taking Zepbound for weight loss only, “what we could say is that we know people with Type 2 diabetes see this [heart] benefit, but as yet we don’t have the data to say that this same benefit applies in people without diabetes—but we will have those data next year.”

Heart disease remains the leading killer of people worldwide, and one of the key risk factors driving deaths is elevated levels of cholesterol.

In a new article published in the New England Journal of Medicine, researchers report that a gene-editing therapy helped people with increased levels of cholesterol and triglycerides maintain lower levels of these lipids for at least a year. The findings build on earlier results of the therapy, reported last November.

The gene-editing treatment, developed by the biotech company CRISPR Therapeutics, uses CRISPR technology to precisely edit a gene involved in cholesterol regulation. The gene, called ANGPTL3, makes an enzyme that blocks the breakdown of bad cholesterol (LDL) and triglycerides. But scientists discovered a long-lived population in Italy in which people born with a mutation in ANGPTL3—rendering it defective—had low levels of LDL and triglycerides and very little heart disease. The CRISPR therapy mimics this naturally occurring mutation; people who have received it now have this mutation in their ANGPTL3, which means they can now break down cholesterol and triglycerides properly.

In the small study, 15 people with severe forms of high cholesterol and triglycerides showed drops in the two lipids of up to 50%, which the latest results show lasted for at least a year.

“From an efficacy standpoint, it’s a pretty big win,” says Samarth Kulkarni, CEO of CRISPR Therapeutics.

The fact that the people in the study were able to maintain lower levels of LDL and triglycerides for up to a year means that CRISPR was able to edit enough cells in the liver, where much of the body’s cholesterol and triglycerides are produced, to give patients the benefit of having lower levels of the lipids. It also shows that these edited cells continue to produce new generations of cells that carry the CRISPR edit in AGNPTL3. People who received the highest dose of the CRISPR therapy saw levels of the ANGPTL3 enzyme drop by nearly 80%, which contributed to a drop in LDL and triglycerides of about 50%. “This is a really big step for CRISPR to show the durability of the result,” says Dr. Luke Laffin, co-director of the Center for Blood Pressure Disorders at the Cleveland Clinic and lead author of the study.

The CRISPR therapy did not cause significant side effects—and researchers did not expect it to, since people born with the defective ANGPTL3 gene don’t seem to have serious diseases either. That means the one-time therapy could potentially replace the current treatment for high LDL and triglycerides: daily statin pills. While effective, many people don’t take the pills on a daily basis for years, which lowers their effectiveness. “We could look at a situation further down the line where we are able to give people a choice,” says Laffin. In the future, if someone has a serious family history of heart disease or high cholesterol, for example, “this therapy may be an option for them where we could treat them now, edit their [liver cells], and they can continue to have a genetic defect that we know is safe and will control their cholesterol.”

Kulkarni says the company has already begun the next phase of studies and anticipates additional results by the end of this year. That study will continue to focus on people with severe cases of high cholesterol and triglycerides, which affects about two to three million people in the U.S. If that study and further late-stage studies of the CRISPR therapy continue to show positive results, the company might consider conducting studies in people with more average elevations in their lipids.

“The biggest promise of gene-editing in cardiovascular medicine is the notion of a one-time treatment that would be all you need,” he says. “Once you reduce levels of ANGPTL3, it remains durably reduced—presumably for life, but at least for one year. It’s very exciting.”

King Harald V of Norway, a reformer and Europe’s oldest monarch, died Friday at the age of 89. His son, the newly-proclaimed King Haakon VIII, has inherited the Norwegian throne.

Harald passed away peacefully in his sleep at Oslo University Hospital Rikshospitalet at 6:35 a.m., local time, the Royal Palace of Norway said.

“A whole nation is in mourning and the people of Norway are left with a deep sense of gratitude for a long life in the service of Norway,” said Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre. “For more than three decades as monarch, Harald V demonstrated an unwavering faith in the Norwegian people. He helped us to see the best in ourselves—and in one another.”

Harald had been admitted to the hospital on Aug. 17 and placed on sick leave after corticosteroid treatment for haemolytic anemia caused fluid retention that required hospital care, the palace revealed. His son, then-Crown Prince Haakon, 53, served as regent while his father was on leave.

In an update on Aug. 23, the palace announced the King’s condition had worsened and that he would remain in the hospital to receive antibiotics for a bacterial infection in his bloodstream. In recent days, Norwegians had begun to lay flowers in front of the palace in Oslo after the royal household said his condition had become “very serious.”

Harald has been described as a monarch who modernized the institution. His marriage broke with royal convention when he wed the non-royal Sonja Haraldsen in 1968 after a lengthy struggle for permission from his family.

In a widely noted 2016 Palace garden speech, Harald defined Norwegianness as encompassing immigrants, people of different religions, and members of the LGBTQ+ community.

While Norway is a constitutional monarchy, with the king serving as head of state similar to other royal houses in Europe, Norwegian monarchs have largely held symbolic roles, as legislative power rests with an elected parliament.

Stortinget, Norway’s parliament, said Friday that the King’s reign “was marked by closeness to the people” thanks to “the unifying way in which he has exercised his royal duties.”

Norway will observe a period of mourning, with flags at royal residences, government buildings, and military installations set to remain at half-mast.

Church bells rang out on Friday and thousands of people lined the streets as Harald V's coffin, accompanied by a motorcade of black cars, was transported to the Royal Palace in Oslo.

As Norway mourns its long-reigning monarch, thoughts are also turning to his successor, who has been tasked with carrying on his father's legacy.

Here’s what to know about what comes next and how King Harald is being remembered by his peers and European leaders.

What happens next—who has succeeded King Harald of Norway?

When a monarch in Norway passes away, the next person in the order of succession automatically becomes King or Queen, as the country cannot be without a head of state.

While succession was previously restricted to male heirs, since 1990 the Constitution was amended so female and male children would be included on an equal footing in the order of succession. However, for those born before the change, a male child retains precedence over an older female sibling. As such, although Princess Märtha Louise was Harald’s eldest child, the crown automatically passed down to his son, Haakon.

King Haakon VIII’s wife, Mette-Marit Tjessem Høiby, is the new Queen of Norway. The late King Harald's wife, Queen Sonja, will also retain her title. Haakon and Mette-Marit's daughter Ingrid Alexandra is now Crown Princess and heir apparent—the next person in line to the throne.

The Norwegian government convened for an extraordinary cabinet meeting at the palace on Friday at 11:30 a.m., local time, where ministers met the new King.

Haakon announced his royal motto, opting to keep the words used by his father, grandfather, and great-grandfather: "All for Norway."

There will be no formal coronation for Haakon as Norway’s parliament removed the constitutional requirement for coronations in 1908, deeming the ceremony to be undemocratic and outdated.

What to know about King Haakon VIII and his wife, Mette-Marit

As the only son of Harald and Sonja, Haakon somewhat broke with tradition in his younger years when he moved out of the country to attend the University of California, Berkeley, where he obtained a BA in political science in 1999.

Haakon wed Mette-Marit in 2001, a non-royal and single mother of Marius Borg Høiby.

The couple welcomed their first child together, Ingrid Alexandra, in 2004 and had their son, Sverre Magnus, a year later.

Marius Borg Høiby, Mette-Marit’s eldest child, was found guilty of two counts of rape and was sentenced to four years in prison in June.

In recent years, Mette-Marit has suffered with poor health, after being diagnosed with a chronic lung disease—what the palace referred to as an “unusual variant of fibrosis”—in 2018. 

In July, Mette-Marit shared a statement upon being discharged from hospital after undergoing a lung transplant. “It has given me the gift of life, and words fall short when I try to describe how grateful and humble I am for this,” she said of the surgery. 

Mette-Marit has come under scrutiny over her contact with the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

Files released by the Justice Department in January showed she had maintained correspondence with Epstein in the years after he pled guilty on two counts of soliciting prostitution from a minor in 2008.

“Jeffrey Epstein is personally responsible for his actions. I must take responsibility for not checking Epstein’s background more thoroughly and for not understanding quickly enough what kind of person he was,” Mette-Marit said in a statement on Jan. 30 2026. “I deeply regret that, and this is a responsibility I must take. I showed poor judgment and regret ever having had any contact with Epstein. It is simply embarrassing. I want to express my deep sympathy and solidarity with the victims of the abuses committed by Jeffrey Epstein.”

During a TV interview in March, Mette-Marit, while sitting beside her husband Haakon, said she wished she had never met Epstein and again expressed regret over the contact.

How the world has reacted to King Harald’s death

Tributes have poured in from around the world to honor the late King and his legacy.

Britain’s King Charles III, who is a cousin of Harald, said he and his wife, Queen Camilla, had learned of the news with “the most profound sadness.”

“For thirty-five years, King Harald served his people with unwavering dedication, guiding Norway through times of great change with warmth and humility,” Charles said. “As Norway mourns the loss of so towering a figure, my whole family join in remembering a much-loved kinsman and friend whose kindness, compassion and deep sense of duty echoed from across the sea and across the decades.”

Spain’s monarchy said Harald was “an example of responsibility, dignity, simplicity, and tireless dedication to the service of Norway and its people, before and during his 35 years of reign.”

NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte described the late King as a “dedicated leader,” whose “military roots made him a champion of the Norwegian military and a long-time friend of NATO.” Harald's military roots go back to when he attended the Norwegian Military Academy in Oslo as a young royal and went on to be appointed general and admiral in 1977, as part of the royal tradition where the Crown Prince is appointed to the highest rank in the branches of defense at the age of 40.

Senior officials within the European Union also offered their condolences, with Norway serving as a close trading and security partner of the bloc.

E.U. foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said Harald was “truly the people’s King, a lifelong defender of freedom and champion of an open Norwegian democracy and society.”

European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen said the late King had brought Norwegians together “in moments of joy and sorrow.” 

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz lamented that Norway had lost “a great personality who stood for composure and unity,” while French President Emmanuel Macron said Harald had “worked tirelessly throughout his reign to strengthen the bonds uniting Norway and France.”

Norwegian soccer player Erling Haaland, who met with the late King in July after returning from the World Cup 2026, said: “Rest in peace, King Harald. Thank you for everything you meant to Norway. It was an honor to meet you."

Warning: Spoilers ahead for The Whisper Man

In The Whisper Man, a film out on Netflix Aug. 28, Adam Scott plays Tom Kennedy, a successful true crime novelist who becomes the victim of a crime when his son is abducted in their sleepy New Jersey town.

An adaptation of Alex North’s novel of the same name, the film is about the search to find the young boy (Acston Luca Porto) alive. Kennedy’s estranged father Pete Willis, a former detective played by Robert De Niro, comes out of retirement to search for the grandson he has never met. As the detective responsible for the conviction and imprisonment of a legendary murderer known as the “Whisper Man”—who targeted young boys—he’s trying to figure out who is doing his bidding.

Here’s what to know about the complicated family dynamics in the movie and its disturbing ending.

Where The Whisper Man gets its title

The original "Whisper Man" is Frank Carter (Michael Keaton), who is serving a life sentence in prison for killing five young boys after luring them from their homes in a whispery voice. According to North, he targeted especially vulnerable children, exploiting those who were neglected or had difficult relationships with their parents, and was known for “whispering outside the windows and drawing them away from their family in order to take them [as a] Pied Piper kind of figure.” 

Twenty years later, Carter’s son Francis Jr. (Owen Teague) is the “Whisper Man” in the film, who lures Tom’s son Jake from his home. The movie suggests that he met his victims working as a child psychologist in a school. 

Complicated father and son relationships

The “Whisper Man” and his latest victim both come from families with sad father-and-son relationships. 

Frank Carter arguably targeted young boys because he was sexually abused by his own father and wanted to do the same to other children as revenge. He would specifically go after children who lived in difficult family situations. His son, Francis Jr., is following in Frank’s footsteps, trying to be like a father he never got to know. “He’s looking for his father’s approval,” says North. 

Tom and his son clash because they are mourning Tom’s wife and Jake’s mother—who died after a long illness—in different ways. For a fresh start, Tom moves the family to a new house and a new school in New Jersey. Jake, on the other hand, is slower to move on, carrying around what he calls a “packet of special things,” filled with doodads and pictures that belonged to his mother. Tom is also frustrated that Jake prefers to play with an imaginary girl in a blue sweater rather than make real human friends, and they get into disagreements in the movie over that.

When Jake is abducted, Tom reaches out to his own detective father Pete in an act of desperation, rather than for support. He’s always thought that his alcoholic father walked out on his family. During the search for Jake, Tom learns that his own childhood imaginary friend “Mr. Night” was actually his father reading him bedtime stories because bedtime was the only time his mother let his father visit him. Pete becomes a detective again, hoping he can finally have a relationship with his son and grandson.

How the “Whisper Man” is caught

The lightbulb moment occurs after Pete visits Frank in prison. Frank tries to get a rise out of Pete by saying his son writes true crime novels so he can be like his father. 

The comment irks Pete, but then he realizes that Frank is sort of projecting that maybe Frank’s son Francis Jr. is trying to be like his own father. Believing the “Whisper Man” who took Jake could be Frank’s son, he works with detective Amanda Beck and her colleagues to track down the young man, who doesn’t live far from Jake. 

A bloody ambush follows at the house where Francis Jr. is holding Jake hostage. Francis Jr. stabs Amanda, but she survives, though her injuries lead to a permanent limp. Francis Jr. stabs Pete to death. Pete’s first and last interaction with his only grandson is telling him to run out of the house as fast as he can.

Tom ends the film with fonder feelings about his father, as the final scenes show him living in Pete’s house. In the film’s final scene, Tom is looking through some photographs of his late wife that his son Jake has been hanging on to. He stops at a photograph of a girl in a blue sweater, realizing that is who his son’s imaginary friend is. 

Francis Jr. is sent to prison, where he gets ambushed in the end, by his own father, who strips naked and strangles his son. 

“Francis Jr. is the final victim of the original 'Whisper Man,'” says director James Ashcroft. And he says it’s natural for viewers to feel “conflicted” after watching the ending: “It’s not a fist bump moment of good guys vanquished by bad guys. That happens to some extent, but it's also a tragic story.”

He adds: “I love the idea of people walking away from a film in a gray space rather than the black and white one…That's what makes you have a conversation after a film. That's when a film exists long after the credits roll.” 

Nvidia has reportedly agreed to buy popular AI library Hugging Face for $12.9 billion. The deal is partly a hedge against an emerging threat: AI companies which consume enormous quantities of Nvidia hardware are increasingly developing chips of their own. In a future where AI becomes centralized in a small group of players with their own chips, those companies could demand lower prices from Nvidia or bypass it altogether.

Hugging Face, an online hub where developers share open AI models and datasets, gives Nvidia a stake in an alternative future, where downloadable AI models allow startups and governments to build systems of their own. Few would have the scale to develop custom chips. (Nvidia and Hugging Face did not respond for comment.)

With roughly 85% of the AI chip market, Nvidia’s share has only one way to go. But a smaller slice of a much larger market could still mean more sales, says Umesh Padval, a Managing Partner at Seligman Ventures. “If the deal goes through, I think it’s a brilliant chess move.”

Nvidia has thrown its weight behind open-source AI in recent months. It successfully lobbied Washington to loosen restrictions on selling its chips to China, which leads in open AI development. More recently, it struck a $6 billion deal with Poolside, to develop an American open alternative. In July, Nvidia helped lead an open letter defending open-source AI and urging Washington not to restrict it. “Open models strengthen safety and cybersecurity, accelerate innovation and diffusion, and enable sovereignty,” Nvidia boss Jensen Huang wrote in his first post on X. 

Meanwhile, Google now exclusively uses its custom TPU chips to train its Gemini AI models. In August, Anthropic hired, Amir Salek, a former TPU team-lead at Google to spearhead a new in-house chip division. The same month, OpenAI shared the first results from its custom chip, Jalapeño. SemiAnalysis, the firm which conducted tests on OpenAI’s chip, said it beat “every Nvidia, AMD, and Google chip we have been able to test.” 

“There’s kind of this two-way strategic battle,” says Richard Clode, a technology portfolio manager at Janus Henderson. “On the one hand, Nvidia doesn’t want to be reliant on just three customers, so [it] is deliberately trying, with financing and allocation of chips, [to] encourage other players and neo-clouds. And then vice versa, those hyperscalers don’t want to be completely reliant on just one compute provider.”

Nvidia’s 75% margin means that other firms’ in-house chips do not need to match its performance to save large customers money. Custom silicon has other benefits, too. Nvidia has previously given smaller cloud providers early access to its newest chips, ensuring that the largest players do not dominate supply. Developing chips in-house reduces exposure to those allocations, Clode says, while allowing AI companies to tailor hardware to their specific workloads.

AI companies are not developing these chips completely alone. Google, OpenAI, and Meta have partnered with Broadcom to help turn their specifications into custom silicon.  

Those efforts are yet to make a dent in Nvidia’s bottom line. In August, Nvidia reported a blockbuster earnings report with record revenue of $96.2 billion, more than doubling year-over-year and beating Wall Street expectations. Companies like Google and OpenAI continue to buy large quantities even as they develop alternatives. They’ve “poured a lot of infrastructure capex into the existing infrastructure,” says Sriram Viswanathan, a founding managing partner at Celesta Capital and a former Intel executive. Moving to a different architecture, he said, is “a huge lift-and-pour-concrete situation. So I think it’s going to happen over a period of time, but not in one fell swoop.” 

He points to Apple as a warning. Apple first developed chips for the iPad and iPhone while continuing to buy Intel processors for Macs. As its expertise matured, its silicon moved into Mac computers and Intel was cut out.

“Nvidia is executing like crazy, so in some ways it’s theirs to lose,” says Sean Lie, co-founder and chief technology officer at AI chip company Cerebras. “But I think we’re seeing a lot of cracks in that armor.”

Recently, three events related to the U.S. Treasury bond markets have drawn public attention. For one, Japan sold some of its U.S. Treasury holdings to support the yen, and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent intervened in the currency/debt markets to negate some of the resulting market pressures. Second, U.S. bond yields, especially at the long end, have risen alongside dollar weakness under the weight of an increased supply of dollar debt and weakening demand for it. And third, Secretary Bessent announced that the Treasury will purchase U.S. bonds, though its capacity to do so is limited.  While most people are inclined to view these as passing events, they are symptoms of a serious debt problem that appears to be progressing into a more advanced stage. 

In my book How Countries Go Broke: The Big Cycle, I laid out a template for understanding what happens when a country continuously spends more than it takes in, accumulating debt and debt service payments that rise relative to incomes. My perspective is that of an experienced global macro investor, and my understanding of this dynamic, which I will now explain, was what led me to anticipate the 2008 Great Financial Crisis and the European debt crisis that followed. 

Because I am now at a stage in life in which I want to pass along what I have learned, I wrote the book and am sharing this article in the hope that it will help people and policymakers deal with this issue well. 

How the mechanics work 

The debt dynamics of governments are analogous to those of individuals and companies with two important differences. First, when the demand for debt falls short of the supply, governments can create money through their central banks and hand it out to make it easier to pay debt (which also lowers the value of their money). Second, governments can get money from others through taxes. 

Throughout history, governments have tended to accumulate more and more debt until one or both of the following classic big debt cycle dynamics occur, leading to bad returns of debt assets and financial market crises.

First, debt service payments grow relative to incomes until they crowd out spending. Think of credit as being like blood in the economy's circulatory system. When credit circulates well and is used productively, it generates income that can service the debt that created it, which is healthy. But when debt service grows faster than the income needed to pay for it, debt-service costs accumulate like plaque in arteries, gradually crowding out other spending until eventually there is a financial heart attack. That is now happening in the U.S., but the U.S. isn’t alone. The United Kingdom, the European Union, China, and Japan all face too much debt relative to income and fiscal imbalances their governments haven’t solved.

Second, the supply of debt to be sold becomes much greater than the demand for it. As a country’s debt-service burdens grow, those who already hold a lot of the debt become less willing to buy the large amounts of new debt being offered and/or to roll over their maturing debt. Some holders even become more inclined to sell their debt holdings. At the same time, in cases when there are big capital and trade wars resulting from big geopolitical conflicts, history shows that fears of financial sanctions can hurt demand. When demand falls while supply is rapidly increasing, that causes interest rates to rise and credit growth to be curtailed. Credit and economic problems also typically occur, and there is often the "printing " of money and credit, which devalues it. In either case, that is bad for bonds. All these things are now occurring for the U.S., which adversely affects its government supply-demand balance.

The Big Debt Cycle degenerative process that follows these dynamics can easily be seen and understood by studying historic cases across many countries and is as predictable as demographic changes. Anyone who has studied monetary history should know that all monetary orders have eventually broken down, and it was this dynamic that led to the declines of previous reserve currencies and the empires behind them, most recently the British and, before that, the Dutch. Yet the process is not well understood and typically ignored until it is too late because, like unhealthy practices such as smoking and eating fatty foods, it takes place over a long time—typically over about a lifetime of around 80 years. The exact timing of the financial/economic heart attack is not easy to predict until the final symptoms appear. In my 2025 book, I estimated that it would take place in 2027, give or take two years. So far, the progression has been consistent with my estimates. It is certainly time to understand and pay attention to these dynamics. 

Just like the progression of symptoms with a disease, this degenerative process is observable and measurable. Rising debt burdens, weakening debt demand, increasing monetization, and deteriorating central-bank balance sheets can all be used as indicators of where in the cycle the process is and what is likely to happen. 

More specifically, the key red-flag indicators to watch out for are:

1. Government debt-service costs rising relative to government revenue to unacceptably squeeze out spending. 

2. The supply of government debt becoming too large relative to demand for it, causing long-term interest rates to rise faster than short-term rates.

3. The government treasury shortening the maturity of its debt sales to reduce the supply of bond sales.

4. The currency weakening, particularly relative to hard asset storeholds of wealth such as gold.

5. With a further lag, higher interest rates hurting the prices of other investment assets like stocks and real estate, and, after another lag, hurting the economy and creating credit problems.

6. Central banks "printing" money and credit, purchasing bonds, and guaranteeing debt. 

7. Central Banks incurring large losses and monetizing their own debt. 

8. Late in the cycle, governments adopting more extraordinary measures to manage the growing mismatch between their debt offering and debt service obligations and their available financing. These measures can take the form of: shutting down banks or forcing bank mergers because the banks' losses and lack of liquid funds make fully paying their depositors' withdrawals impossible; unusual financial supports for systemically important companies; the establishment of capital controls to prevent money from leaving the country; and the outlawing of hard asset monies such as gold.   

9. The process reaches a breaking point when debt service crowds out essential spending, bond supply overwhelms demand and pushes interest rates higher, or central-bank money creation becomes excessive and undermines the value of the currency. 

In all these scenarios, bondholders do poorly until debt and currency values are devalued enough to restore demand or the debt is restructured. Quite often these cycles end with a return to hard currencies and hard monetary policies to reestablish confidence in debt as an attractive, real-returning asset.  

That is the typical Big Debt Cycle. 

The U.S. situation in a nutshell 

To understand the U.S. position today, imagine that you are running a big business called the U.S. government.

This year, revenue will be roughly $5.5 trillion, while expenditures will be approximately $7.5 trillion, resulting in an anticipated deficit of nearly $2 trillion. Spending therefore exceeds income by roughly 40%. At the same time, federal debt held by the public is approximately $32 trillion, or about six times annual revenue and $240,000 per American household. Interest expenses alone are approaching $1 trillion per year, roughly 20% of revenue and about half the annual deficit.

In addition to interest payments, roughly $10 trillion of maturing principal must be refinanced. As a result, total debt-service requirements today amount to roughly $11 trillion, or about twice annual revenue.

That’s the current situation.

Looking forward, it appears most likely that things will get worse, and I estimate that projected deficits will cause the federal debt to rise to roughly $55 to $60 trillion over the next decade, requiring an additional $25-$30 trillion of debt sales. If that occurs, debt-service burdens will continue rising while increasing pressure is placed on investors to absorb ever-larger supplies of government debt assets. In addition, similarly large increases in debt and equity in supply in the U.S. private sector and in other countries that have to fund their increasing military and other expenditures will greatly add to the overall supply of debt and other financial assets.   

My 3% three-part solution

The proposed solution that I laid out in my book was to stabilize the government's debt and debt ratio to roughly 3% of GDP through a balanced combination of spending restraint, increased tax revenue, and lowered real interest rates (which would happen naturally with improved debt fundamentals). All three changes are necessary because relying excessively on any one of them would create severe and unnecessary economic pain because the adjustment would be too great. Based on my analysis, spending reductions and revenue increases of roughly 5% relative to current plans, combined with interest rates approximately 1% to 1.5% points lower than otherwise expected, would substantially reduce future debt-service costs from current projections. Lower financing costs, stronger asset prices, and improved economic activity would also support government revenues.

History shows that this kind of solution is possible. The most comparable U.S. example occurred between 1991 and 1998, when the budget deficit was reduced by roughly 5% of GDP while economic outcomes remained favorable. But because of the lack of dealing with this debt issue earlier and the resulting current level of indebtedness, plus the increased needs for capital to fund AI and military expenses, we may be past the point of no return. 

What this means for investors 

For investors, the lesson is not to try to predict the exact timing of the next debt crisis. Timing such events is a challenge for even the most experienced investors. Instead, what’s important is to recognize the long-term implications of excessive indebtedness and to diversify broadly across countries and asset classes, favoring balance-sheet strength, and be cautious about concentrating heavily in long-duration debt assets. Assets that are not government liabilities, such as gold, can provide useful diversification when governments are monetizing debts and depreciating their currencies.

Even though these debt dynamics have occurred repeatedly throughout history and are logical, they still surprise people. The key is recognizing them early enough to act before they become unmanageable. The warning signs are measurable, and the necessary adjustments are obvious based on the lessons of history. The question is whether political leaders and policymakers will understand this and act while they still can—and whether you and others will protect yourselves if they don't act.