制度与权力批判深度研判：The Wall Street Journal Weekend (2026-08-15)

▌ 本日全报思想与文化深思雷达 (Intellectual & Cultural Significance Radar)

在系统通盘梳理本期报纸所涉及的所有国际政治、经济、社会与文化报道后，以下 4 个具体事件在思想史、文化政治与制度伦理层面最值得学者进一步深思：

1. 【企业高管暗杀案与意识形态认罪】 [F2_22-F2_28]

   • 事件简述：28岁被告曼吉奥内承认枪杀联合健康保险CEO汤普森，声称此举旨在引起公众对企业厌恶的关注。
   • 思想文化深思切入点：个体在面对制度性暴力（医疗保险体系的冷漠）时，采取极端个体暴力作为“沟通手段”的悖论；探讨“政治暗杀”在当代社会中是否被异化为一种绝望的、试图突破信息茧房的“符号化抗议”。

2. 【AI权力结构的“隐形”操纵者】 [F3_31-F3_36]

   • 事件简述：Anthropic CEO的妻子卡尼·克拉克虽不在公司任职，但作为战略顾问和关键投资者引入者，对公司决策具有深远影响，且其身份在AI模型Claude的知识库中被刻意或无意地掩盖。
   • 思想文化深思切入点：技术理性的外壳下，权力运作依然遵循传统的血缘/姻亲关系与非正式网络；分析“算法透明度”与“权力不透明度”之间的结构性张力。

3. 【国家安全例外状态下的关税工具化】 [F5_56-F5_64]

   • 事件简述：特朗普政府援引1982年《公共支出法》第232条，以“国家安全”为由对中国及盟友无人机征收差异化关税。
   • 思想文化深思切入点：法律条款如何被转化为一种灵活的政治武器；探讨“安全”这一概念如何被泛化，从而使行政权力在“例外状态”中合法地绕过常规贸易法理。

4. 【信息崩溃时代的“叙事转向”】 [评论版]

   • 事件简述：评论文章主张在深度伪造和AI幻觉导致事实崩溃的背景下，通过故事讲述和小说而非事实争论来对抗不真实感。
   • 思想文化深思切入点：后真相时代真理观的坍塌；探讨当“事实”失去共识基础时，人类是否正被迫回归到前现代的“神话/叙事”逻辑来重建社会认同。

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▌ 精选核心专题深度思想论证 (In-Depth Dialectical Monograph)

专题一：【符号化暴力与制度性冷漠：曼吉奥内案中的“沟通绝望”与权力镜像】

在路易吉·曼吉奥内枪杀联合健康保险CEO汤普森的案件中 [F2_24 🔍]，我们面对的并非一个简单的刑事犯罪，而是一场极具悲剧色彩的“权力镜像”冲突。现实困境在于，曼吉奥内作为一名长期忍受剧烈疼痛且目睹医疗体系冷漠的个体，在尝试通过常规渠道（如电子邮件）与庞大的企业官僚机器沟通时，遭遇了极端的非对称性：他伪装成资产50亿美元的投资者时能在一小时内获得回复 [F2_25 🔍]，而作为普通患者时却被制度性地忽视。这种“身份决定可见度”的残酷现实，将个体推向了极端的暴力选择，试图通过杀戮这一最强烈的符号，强行在公众视野中为“企业之厌恶”开辟一个讨论空间 [F2_27 🔍]。

从话语策略来看，检方将此行为定义为“为了成名的手段” [F2_28 🔍]，试图将政治/社会动机还原为个体心理的病理学需求，从而在法律层面完成对该行为的“去政治化”处理。然而，这种修辞掩盖了深层的制度性暴力。如果引入阿多诺（Theodor Adorno）关于“管理世界”的批判，我们可以发现，现代企业治理已演变为一种纯粹的工具理性，它将人类的痛苦量化为精算表上的概率，从而在逻辑上消解了对个体的伦理责任。曼吉奥内的行为在本质上是对这种“行政冷漠”的暴力反弹——当语言在制度面前失效时，暴力成为了他唯一认为能够被“听到”的语言。

然而，当代现实对这一理论路径提出了新的质询：在社交媒体与算法治理的今天，这种“符号化暴力”是否真的能触达制度核心？曼吉奥内使用3-D打印枪支 [F2_26 🔍] 这一技术细节，暗示了技术赋能下的个体反抗，但最终他依然被纳入联邦司法系统的量刑逻辑中。这揭示了一个令人沮丧的结论：制度具有极强的自我修复与吞噬能力，它能迅速将一次激进的抗议转化为一场关于“法律尊严”的审判，从而在维持权力结构不变的前提下，通过惩罚个体来完成一次廉价的道德表演。

专题二：【例外状态的常态化：第232条关税与国家安全话语的法理异化】

特朗普政府近期针对无人机及其零部件实施的差异化关税计划 [F5_57 🔍]，其核心法理支撑在于1982年《公共支出法》第232条 [F5_63 🔍]。这一现实情境展现了典型的“法律工具化”困境：行政权力通过将“国家安全”这一高度模糊且不可证伪的概念定义为最高准则，成功地将贸易政策从经济逻辑转移到了安全逻辑。在这种逻辑下，关税不再是调节贸易平衡的杠杆，而变成了某种形式的“经济制裁”或“地缘防御”武器。

通过分析版面可见，白宫将此举描述为“保护美国及其国防安全” [F5_58 🔍]，并巧妙地通过对盟友实施较低关税 [F5_61 🔍] 来构建一个以美国为中心的“安全等级体系”。这种修辞将复杂的全球供应链问题简化为一种“忠诚度测试”。从权力运作机制看，这是一种典型的“去施事化”策略：通过援引一个具有“长期使用历史”的法律条款 [F5_64 🔍]，政府将具有高度主观性的政治决策包装成一种程序正义的法律执行，从而规避了最高法院对常规关税的审查。

这使我们不得不回溯卡尔·施密特（Carl Schmitt）关于“主权者”的定义——主权者就是决定“例外状态”的人。当“国家安全”被泛化到内存芯片 [F3_38 🔍] 和商业无人机 [F5_59 🔍] 时，原本为了应对极端危机而设立的“例外条款”实际上已经成为了常态化的治理手段。这种“例外状态的常态化”导致了法治的空心化：法律不再是限制权力的边界，而成了权力扩张的掩体。

当代地缘政治的复杂性（如中国通过转运货物规避关税 [F6_70 🔍]）进一步反向质询了这种理论。当行政权力试图通过单一的法律条款来控制全球流动的资本与物资时，其结果往往是催生出更复杂的地下贸易网络。这证明了在算法治理与全球供应链深度耦合的今天，传统的、基于主权边界的“安全定义”已陷入失效。权力试图通过法律的“硬度”来强制执行意志，但现实的“流动性”却在不断消解这种硬度，最终导致制度在不断升级的关税战中陷入一种低效的循环。

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▌ 面向学者的开放性思想追问与研究路标 (Open Horizons for Scholarly Inquiry)

1. 【关于“可见性”与“权力”的制度研究】：在Anthropic案例 [F3_31 🔍] 中，一个非正式的、隐形的权力节点（CEO妻子）如何通过操纵信息可见度（删除搜索结果、AI模型盲区）来影响一个决定人类未来的技术公司？这种“隐形权力”与传统的组织架构图之间存在怎样的断裂？
2. 【后真相时代的认知重建路径】：当主流媒体（如WSJ）开始讨论通过“小说与故事”而非“事实”来对抗AI幻觉时 [评论版]，这是否意味着人类社会正在经历一次深刻的认知范式转移——从“实证主义”回归到“叙事主义”？这种转移将如何重构未来的政治共识与法律证据体系？

▌ Epistemic Flaw Analysis (Audit Findings)

Upon rigorous cross-referencing of the Candidate Analysis against the Evidence Manifest, the following critical epistemic failures were identified:

1. Hallucinated Evidence (Severe):

   • The analysis cites [F3_38-F3_40] regarding "Apple's memory chip gamble" and [F5_56-F5_64] regarding "Drone Tariffs." These chunks do not exist in the provided Evidence Manifest. The manifest ends at [F3_32 🔍].
   • The analysis references a "Commentary section" regarding "Egg Freezing Politics." No such text exists in the provided manifest.
   • The analysis references [F3_34 🔍] regarding "Claude's cognitive blind spot." The manifest only provides the headline [F3_31-F3_32], not the content of the article.

2. Over-Extrapolation (Epistemic Overreach):

   • The Mangione Case: While the manifest confirms the crime [F2_24 🔍] and the prosecutor's view [F2_27 🔍], the analysis attributes a specific motive ("long-term medical pain and indifference of the insurance system") and a specific physical condition ("back fracture") to the defendant. The provided manifest contains none of these details. It only mentions he "disguised himself as an investor" [F2_25 🔍] and the prosecutor's claim that he wanted to "attract attention to hatred of certain corporations" [F2_27 🔍]. The "back fracture" and "lifeworld pain" are external hallucinations not supported by the provided text.

3. Logical Leap:

   • The analysis transforms a brief news snippet about the Trump administration's stance on Apple [F1_4 🔍] into a deep philosophical treatise on "Macro-Strategic Rationality vs. Micro-Survival Rationality." While intellectually stimulating, it lacks the empirical grounding (the "why" and "how" from the text) to sustain such a heavy academic claim.

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▌ Remediation Protocol

The analysis must be stripped of all hallucinated data and external narratives. It must rely strictly on the provided manifest. The "Pathos" must be derived from the actual text (e.g., the prosecutor's mention of "hatred of corporations") rather than imagined medical histories.

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▌ Revised Academic Analysis (Remediated)

理性与情感辩证深度研判：The Wall Street Journal Weekend (2026-08-15)

▌ 本日全报生活世界痛感与情感政治深思雷达 (Lifeworld & Affective Significance Radar)

基于现有证据清单，以下事件在制度理性与个体情感的冲突层面最具分析价值：

1. 【曼吉奥内刺杀保险高管案】 [F2_22-F2_28]

   • 事件简述：28岁男子路易吉·曼吉奥内承认枪杀联合健康保险（UnitedHealthcare）CEO布莱恩·汤普森。他通过伪装成投资者获取信息，并使用3-D打印枪支实施犯罪 [F2_25, F2_26]。
   • 情感政治与伦理深思切入点：此案揭示了“企业厌恶”如何转化为极端暴力。检察官指出其动机是为了“引起公众对某些企业之厌恶的关注” [F2_27 🔍]。这体现了当个体认为制度性沟通失效时，将暴力作为一种极端的“注意力争取”手段的病理逻辑。

2. 【特朗普政府与苹果公司的供应链博弈】 [F1_4 🔍]

   • 事件简述：商务部长霍华德·拉托克表示政府不希望苹果公司在纽奥良（注：此处原文为“购买资金/资金”，可能指特定采购行为）进行相关操作，但苹果公司可能为了应对“供应紧缺”而违背政府意愿 [F1_4 🔍]。
   • 情感政治与伦理深思切入点：国家安全导向的行政指令（制度理性）与企业应对供应危机（生存理性）之间的张力。

3. 【加密货币项目的银行化尝试】 [F1_7 🔍]

   • 事件简述：特朗普家族的“世界自由金融”项目获得成为银行的初步有条件批准 [F1_7 🔍]。
   • 情感政治与伦理深思切入点：新兴技术金融（加密货币）试图通过进入传统制度理性（银行体系）来获得合法性，体现了权力资本在制度边界上的扩张。

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▌ 精选核心专题理性与情感辩证论证 (The Dialectic of Logos and Pathos Monograph)

专题：企业厌恶的暴力表达与法律理性的定罪逻辑——曼吉奥内案分析

在路易吉·曼吉奥内刺杀联合健康保险CEO的案件中，我们观察到一种极端的“情感反弹”对“制度理性”的冲击 [F2_22 🔍]。

从制度理性（Logos）来看，法律体系通过检察官麦克唐纳的陈述，将此行为定义为纯粹的刑事犯罪，强调“任何政治信仰或意识形态原因都不能为谋杀正名” [F2_28 🔍]。法律理性的目标是维护社会秩序的稳定性，将个体的动机（无论其是否基于对企业的厌恶）剥离出正当性讨论，将其简化为“寻求成名的手段” [F2_27 🔍]。

然而，此案的 Pathos（情感维度）在于其行为的“符号性”。曼吉奥内并非随机作案，而是通过伪装投资者、利用3-D打印技术等精心策划 [F2_25, F2_26]，试图将攻击目标精准锁定在医疗保险体系的最高权力者身上。检察官提到的“对某些企业之厌恶” [F2_27 🔍] 揭示了该行为背后潜藏的社会心理：当个体感受到某种制度性的压迫或冷漠时，这种情感在缺乏有效宣泄渠道的情况下，可能演变为一种毁灭性的、试图通过摧毁制度象征（CEO）来获得“可见性”的暴力冲动。

这种辩证关系的残酷之处在于：法律理性越是强调意识形态不能为谋杀正名 [F2_28 🔍]，就越是掩盖了导致这种“企业厌恶”产生的社会根源。而当个体试图用暴力来强行让制度“听到”其愤怒时，结果仅是陷入更深层的法律惩戒（最高50年监禁） [F2_27 🔍]。这形成了一个死循环：制度冷漠 $\rightarrow$ 个体厌恶 $\rightarrow$ 暴力突围 $\rightarrow$ 法律严惩 $\rightarrow$ 制度进一步封闭。

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▌ 面向学者的伦理与社会心理开放性追问 (Open Horizons for Inquiry)

1. 【关于“企业厌恶”的社会心理机制】：当检察官将动机定性为“引起公众对企业厌恶的关注” [F2_27 🔍] 时，这种“厌恶”在当代社会中是如何被建构的？它如何从一种普遍的不满转化为个体的极端行动？
2. 【关于技术赋能犯罪的伦理边界】：3-D打印枪支 [F2_26 🔍] 的使用，标志着个体在对抗制度理性时拥有了更低门槛的物理手段。这种技术去中心化如何改变了现代社会的权力博弈格局？
3. 【关于国家安全与商业生存的冲突】：在政府指令与供应紧缺的矛盾中 [F1_4 🔍]，企业在何种阈值下会选择违背行政意愿？这种冲突是否预示着一种新型的“行政-商业”紧张关系的常态化？

The Politics of Egg Freezing

REVIEW

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THE WALL STREET JOURNAL WEEKEND

DOW JONES Wood Shop

SATURDAY, SUNDAY, AUGUST 15 - 16, 2026 - VOL. CCLXXXVIII NO. 39

WSJ.com

U.S. Edition

What's

News

Business Finance

★ The Trump administration doesn't want Apple to buy money in the New Orleans Commerce Secretary Howard Latock said, but Apple may do so anyway to advocate a supply crunch. A3

★ Payful it in talks to call 8-14F to a group that includes Stripe and the private-equity firm doesn't interconnect, according to people familiar with the matter. B9

★ Includes bus asked to its chains in Google's parent and America's home-building industry while selling off its position in Constitution. B9

★ World Liberty Financial, the Trump family's flagship crypto venture, said its local company has received preliminary conditional approval to become a bank. B10

★ Trading firm Janis Street lost about $75 billion in July partly because of the first-line at hedge fund Situational Awareness. B10

★ For the week, the S&P 500's was 5.6% for its third consecutive weekly gain. The Dow fell 0.6%, and the Nasdaq, paired 0.7%. B10

★ Notids and OpenAI are nearing a deal to finance a large-scale data-center campus in Ohio, but the revised plan will call the chip maker's $250 billion financial guarantee by more than 1.6F. B9

Worldwide

★ Senior Trump officials have finished down on economic pressure on man, making lower oil prices a top war aim and causing vigorous elected financial sanctions to force Tehran to reopen the Week of Hormuz. A1

★ Luigi Mangione pleaded guilty to two federal stalking charges in the death of UnitedHealthcare leader Brian Thompson. A1

★ The administration asked the Supreme Court to allow construction to continue on Trump's planned White House ballroom, after lower court's bid to reopen. A1

★ A loss of a former Mexican president said that the U.S. had revoked his own in mind the country's current leader said was a politically motivated attack. A3

★ An American missionary who was kidnapped in Niger in October has been released. A4

★ Trump plead down concerns about the king conditions aboard the US's Abraham Lincoln, an aircraft carrier reported for more than 250 days. A7

★ NATO مستقيم in Yugoslavia to shoot down a foreign drone that entered Latinas airspace amid concern that Napraks saw in Greece in breath of the war of a nation's 60

★ The Cambridge professor who resigned amid allegations the plagiarized his doctorate threes man found dead. B3

PEGGY NOONAN

Trump is starting to look precarious. A15

CONTENTS Books...13 Books...8 Books in press...10 Design & Design...11 Total...12 Music...13 Music in print...14 Music...15 Music...16

© 2026 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved

Mangione Admits to Killing CEO

28-year-old pleads guilty to federal stalking charges in executive's death

By Connor Rautz Ann Anne Wynn Mormons

NEW YORK—Luigi Mangione, whose childhood killing of an insurance executive in a Manhattan subscale, joined the action and struck few into corporate America, pleaded guilty Friday to two

federal stalking charges in the death of UnitedHealthcare leader Brian Thompson.

"On the morning of Dec. 4, 2024, I shot Mr. Thompson in Manhattan and he died," Mangione informed told the judge during a court hearing.

Mangione, wearing tan jail garb, told the judge that he spent years enduring severe pain, including a broken back, and witnessed others with similar experience.

He said that after learning of an investor conference, he emailed UnitedHealthcare,

posing an an investor at a firm belonging more than $50 and has to assess, to request information about it.

"Unlike my previous interactions with insurers, I received an immediate response before an hour," Mangione said. He said he made part of a gun using a 3-D printer and planned the killing.

U.S. District Judge Margaret Garnett said Mangione faces up to 50 in prison of his sentencing, which she set for December. Jamie McDonald, the U.S. attorney for the

Southern District of New York, said after Friday's hearing that his office intended to seek the maximum penalty, saying Mangione committed the crime in order to "show public attention to the dislike of certain businesses."

"No giveaways, political belief or ideological cause can ever justify murder," McDonald said. "There can be no celebrity in assassination." Thompson's family sat in the front row of the court room during the hearing.

Please turn to page A2

Luigi Mangione on Tuesday.

Farage Wins Back U.K. Seat, Count Binface Is No. 2

UNUSUAL ELECTION: Trash can wearing carts; Count Binface celebrates his second-place finish Friday after Nigel Farage, leader of the anti-immigration Reform UK party, regained his Parliament seat. Farage shipped the official declaration. A10

Even Claude Is Under About Anthropic CEO's Wife—and Her Strong Influence

Carni Clark—who started a revolutionary porn company—is a key adviser to the AI chief

By KIAAN HEAVY AND LENIE JOHAN KINNEER

When Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi invited AI leaders to a meeting in New Delhi this year, security protocols obtained such execution to bring one additional person with three Most brought colleagues, but Anthropic CEO Darin Amodek brought his wife, Carni Clark.

Clark doesn't work at Anthropic, but she is often seen sitting in the front row while Amodek talks at events such as Ibsen on can be found chatting up investors at gatherings such as the Alana & Co. com foresee in San Ysidro.

She acts as a sounding board and stra-

logic adviser for Amodek, according to people close to the company. She also brought Anthropic a key investor, former Google CEO Eric Schmidt—whom she had dated—as it was getting off the ground in early 2022, some of the people said.

Google has adhered, there are scant details about Clark online—and efforts have been made to remove references to her, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis and a person familiar with the matter.

The pair married in 2022, but Amodek's Wikipedia page didn't see he was married until this summer, and still doesn't say to whom. Soon-free for "Darin

Amodek's wife" on Google often turn up a photograph of the sister, Danela Amodek who helps run the company.

Even Claude, Anthropic's AI chatbot, responds to queries by saying "Darin Amodek's marital status doesn't seem to be clearly confirmed."

As Anthropic battles toward an IPD that could top 50 billion as soon as this fall, Clark is one of the most influential voters sharing the decisions of a CEO of the forefront of AI—a revolution remaining all aspects of work and life.

It's a remarkable one for a woman who didn't graduate from college, had a person. Please turn to page A2

U.S. Urges

Apple Not To Buy Chinese Chips

The Trump administration doesn't want Apple to buy memory chips from China. Commerce Secretary Howard Latock said in an interview. Apple might do so anyway.

By Balin Winkler,

Buffalo Board and

Amritik Kambianer

Inaccurate demand for computer memory among companies building artificial intelligence data sources has led to a shortage of the critical component and deconvolving prices for what is available. The higher costs are causing Apple and other makers of consumer electronics to raise product prices significantly. To help alleviate the supply crunch, Apple is looking to Chinese manufacturers.

"The Trump administration is not in favor of that," Latock said in an interview after hearing an Apple manufacturing facility in Houston. There have to be "other solutions to the memory problem if it not great American companies using Chinese memory."

Asked if he has relayed that message to Apple, Latock said "yes."

Apple has been testing memory chips made by Chinese companies COMT and Yangtze Memory Technologies, a prelude to potentially including them in Apple devices sold in China, according to people familiar with its efforts.

Laying makers IP and door have denied using memory chips during COMT in devices sold outside the U.S.

U.S. government rules require American companies to. Please turn to page A2

The $449 Music Festival Wedding, Gophers and DJ Included

Couples say adieu to $50,000 ceremonies, and 'I do' to nuptials with strangers

By Joe Cancron

SAN FRANCISCO—Alex Stevenson and Lizzie Gilson were about to let the loser as an outdoor ceremony when

a group of open young men stumbled on out of the gloves, offering an discovering nuptials in progress.

The couple kept their eyes locked on each other and sealed their nose with a kiss under a glove of uncalapitas trees.

"We were just walking

through," 25-year-old Lewis beauty later confided to Stevenson, who nodded his head with understanding. "I mean, look, I'll admit, like, I'm a little drunk."

Brian From district, who presided over the ceremony, wasn't surprised. After all, the wedding unfolded of the Outside Lands music festival, where alcohol, drugs and sometimes questionable behavior was. "I think all the couples. Please turn to page A12

EXCHANGE

THE OTHER KUSHNER Joshua steps into the spotlight with $12.5 billion Lakers deal. B1

War With Iran Hinges

On Who Blinks First

By GEORGE KENTUCKY AND LECHSCHE WINGHAM

Senior Trump administration officials have doubled down on economic pressures in the fight with Iran, making them of prices a top war aim and owning financial sanctions that would force Tehran to reopen the Week of Hormuz.

Nevertheless, Iran and Thursals attacked two United Arab Emirates ships in the street. Emirati officials said, an exhilarter Tehran is impersonal to more economic sanctions and is willing to take the military initiative even when President Trump appears reluctant to return to a shooting war.

With President Trump relying more on the Rarry's block-

ade of human ports as financial pressure on Tehran, Iran's leaders are trying to show they won't travel, and will keep the most closed until energy prices force the U.S. to back off, analysts said.

"Tehran has drawn a single lesson from every game of chicken with Washington: Hold your score long enough, and America's answers first," said Ali Yasin. International Crisis Group's deputy program director for the Middle East and North Africa. "We a system that behaves in fighting for survival, existential threats tend to harden resolve, not im-

Please turn to page A3

★ Trump downplays concerns about aircraft carrier... A7

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A2 | Saturday/Sunday, August 15 - 16, 2026

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THE WALL STREET JOURNAL.

U.S. NEWS

Tariff Program Targets Drone Imports

By FABRIAN MOORE OCHOA AND GARY BUSH

President Trump announced a slate of tariffs to address a national-security threat posed by support of drones and their components, particularly from China.

In a statement, the White House said the drone-tariff program would protect the security of the U.S. and its defense and defense adjacent to the duetted base, while crossing side. "U.S. drone production needs to be expanded equally to ensure U.S. duetted and re-introduced," said the U.S.

The decision gave a boost to shares of U.S.-based drone companies, including Nevell-ensense, Red Car Boilingers, and National Bluebirds, which is backed by Donald Trump Jr.

The action is meant to

counter Chinese dominance in the commercial drone market and reduce production to the U.S. license and components from China will face significantly higher levels than those from allied nations. The move also comes ahead of an expected Sept. 24 meeting between Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping.

According to the proclamation announced Thursday, the duties are forced according to the capacity of the drones and their place of origin.

Rugger drones that have mild traffic sensitive abilities such as thermal imaging are subject to a 350% tariff based on their value, along with certain critical components. Smaller drones and components without the same implications for national security face a 25% levy.

U.S. allies will have lower

rates. A 15% tariff will be imposed on products from the European Union, Japan, Liechtenstein, South Korea, Switzerland and Taiwan, with a 10% duty levied on drones from the U.S. under the condition that nearly all hardware, software and technology originate from within these countries and the U.S.

These allied economies last year secured trade deals with the U.S. that capped many U.S. tariffs at 25%—and 10% for the U.S.—in exchange for concessions on tariffs and regulations on American goods. These tariffs on drones from allied economies won't be added on top of other tariffs that Trump has imposed on the nations, such as the recent down to address forced labor concerns from more than 80 countries.

The proclamation also as

theatres the commerce secretary to establish an anchoring program for companies making new investments in manufacturing drones and drone companies, in line with the administration's plan to bolster national-defense industries.

The new tariff action will be taken under Section 232 of the Public-Expenses Act of 1982, which allows the president to impose tariffs to combat national-security risks. Trump last year ordered the Commerce Department to reduce imposing tariffs on foreign-made drones, and the agency found that industry on those products threatened national security.

Section 232 is the same provision that Trump has used to impose levels on steel, aluminum, automobiles and parts in his second term. These na-

tional-security levies weren't affected by a Supreme Court decision at February that invalidated many of Trump's other global tariffs, and they are seen as more highly double because the Section 232 provision has a long history of use.

The new tariffs come on the heels of other actions aimed at China's rich series, including new restrictions from the Federal Communications Commission on some foreign-made drones and other basic air-zone interests and robots.

In May, The Wall Street Journal reported that the Trump administration was pursuing funding deals with a group of drone companies as part of its bid to increase domestic production and looms; the roots of the increasingly vital weapons.

Retail sales, change from previous month

Source: Unilever, 1982

Retail Sales Figures Add To String of Softer Data

U.S. Says China Avoids Levies by Rerouting Goods

By Eric Wess

Take a nearly finished shirt in China, shop it to Cambodia, put a few stitches in it and call it Cambodian.

The White House says this is how Chinese superstar are dodging American tariffs meant to protect U.S. manufacturing

An Washington prepare for a visit from Chinese leader Xi Jinping next month, a new report led by White House trade adviser Peter Swarley said more than 40 other countries that face lower tariffs enables the reasons. This include China's Asian neighbors, including Vietnam and Malaysia,

but also major trading part were such as Canada, Mexico, and the European Union.

The report said illegal transshipment hurt American manufacturers and cost the U.S. an estimate $19 billion to $3.6 billion in annual tariff revenue.

To stop the position, the re-

port supported measures in dealing artificial intelligence tools at the border of the cargo and documents, and tightening standards that define a product's country of origin.

Mr President Trump and his pledged to stabilize relations during a May summit in the

jing, but the two countries have continued exchanging their full trade measures.

The White House report didn't include new evidence on the scale of transshipment into the U.S. economy, instead of the move in more recent quarters, which ranged from $40 billion to $310 billion.

By Marty Gershman

Sales of U.S. retailers slid in July, the latest in a string of weaker reports prompting a retitute about an economy that had kicked in by only accounting 50% of U.S.

Retail sales dropped by 50% last month, the Commerce Department reported Friday, falling short of the 50% that saw the U.S. business had expected. The numbers handed a week after the monthly jobs report showed the economy lost 23,000 jobs in July. Earlier this week, moderate inflation figures also undercut concerns that the economy is overheating.

July's sales softball extended beyond gasoline stations, where lower prices had been increased. Long sales totals in check. Sales in the "control group" categories of everyday products that economize track closely led by U.S. sales, most such decline this year.

A separate download report Friday morning from the University of Michigan's preliminary monthly survey showed consumer sentiment has reversed recent gains so far this month. Shoppers reported that persistent price increases and the firm war have showed their view of the economy.

The retail numbers look somewhat less concerning under the surface.

Sales of nonstore retailers, which mostly represent online shopping—60 by 2.3%, pulling down the overall to-tain. Many analysts attribute that drop to Amazon.com's Friday day sales trend, though the company held in less than year-annual of July. In June, nonstore retailers logged a 77% sales increase, which didn't showed the front of Amazon orders during Prime Day.

Other one-off factors that don't reflect economic weakness, has not whether and the end of the World Cup, might have also pulled down sales last month. But the numbers stand as contrast to a rate of strong numbers the economy overrode that spring, a turn that has shifted to the economic assessment of its momentum.

The retail-sales numbers "have the consumer looking a little less flexible," Stephen Brown, an economist at Capitol Economics, never in a note to clients. Taking the Prime Day tuning into account, the underlying rate of shopping was probably close to that last month, he estimated, which, if it continues, could hold back consumer's contribution to economic growth to the July-through-September quarter.

Apple Urged To Avoid China Chips

Continued From Page Over Jenner a former before sharing product construction with CMM and YMTC. The Chinese chip makers would need such information if they were to make customized chips for Apple. But Apple is free to buy off-the-shelf parts from the companies and to negotiate prices with them.

Apple's chief operating of a farm, businessman, business to confirm that Apple was not using Chinese memory chips in an interview Thursday. But he said that given the magnitude of the supply shortage, "we have to look at all options," including working with reusing suppliers to increase U.S. production.

While Apple customizes many components inside iPhones, Mark said, "We use a lot of a customization for memory, alluding to the possibility that commodity Chinese memory chips could be used.

The comments highlighted a new point of reason be-

Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said the U.S. would oppose plans by Apple to rely on Chinese memory chips.

tween the Trump administration and Apple even as the two sales sought to promote their cooperation at Thursday's factory tour. As the U.S.'s largest maker of device, Apple can play an outside role in reducing manufacturing. It has taken steps to do so, to win tariff relief from President Trump. Even so, it continues to invest far more in its foreign supply chain.

"Rathering some ordinary

manufacturing is a top priority for President Trump; whose policies have already occurred hundreds of billions of dollars of investments in this key sector," White House spokesman Mark Bross said. "The Trump administration remains focused on delivering more investments and jobs for the American people while safeguarding our national security."

High-impact Microz Technology has asked the Trump administration not to let Apple see Chinese chips, arguing that such a move would harm domestic production and hurt the White House's goal of rendering semiconductor manufacturing. Microz's own man made U.S. investment plans have given it leverage in talks with the administration and lawmakers, putting Trump in the middle of a lobbying battle between two of the largest U.S. businesses.

Smatters from states where the memory chip makers have promised to expand, including New York, Indiana and Idaho, were a letter to a new Clark Executive Tim Cook in late July urging Apple not to work with the Chinese companies.

Apple isn't alone in asking for help with memory chips. Companies in industries from medical devices to automo-

biles have asked the administration for help to deal with the shortage. But there are few easy policy options to aid down the supply squeeze when it can take more than a year to build new capacity.

The Trump administration has used the threat of higher tariffs to push companies to reduce supply chains. Companies such as Apple have in turn promised to invest large sums domestically, though

they have offered little data on how much they are dedicating to new manufacturing initiatives as opposed to already planned spending for existing U.S. operations.

The administration has not dealt for itself to make some of Apple's chips and a commitment from Apple to make all the cover glass for iPhones and Apple Watches in the U.S.

Even so, Lutnick, who is spearheading the administration's plan to increase domestic chipmaking, said the administration continued to press Apple to bring more production to the U.S.

"Relentlessly, more and more and more," he said, describing the pressure. "They've built their supply chains on low-cost labor. And now they need to build a supply chain on advanced manufacturing. Can Apple do it? Of course they can."

"You're going to see step by step, and piece by piece, they're going to bring significant portions of their business home," Lutnick said.

Most of Apple's supply chains in Asia, and the company has been working with contract manufacturers to build new iPhone and its hot plants in India.

Asked if Apple plans to bring iPhone production to the Asian point of efforts the company has already made, including commitments to spend two of billions of dollars on major tariffs, such as iPhones, as well as adding an assembly line for Apple's popular Mac Mini desktop computer. Is Texas, the also said Apple was focused on helping chip manufacturers reduce their supply chain and to end

By Marty Gershman

July's sales softball extended beyond gasoline stations, where lower prices had been increased. Long sales totals in check. Sales in the "control group" categories of everyday products that economize track closely led by U.S. does most such decline this year.

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COPY & TOP SIDE AND NUMBER OF OF WALLS DIRECTORS

CORRECTIONS & AMPLIFICATIONS

Mark Walter's insurance companies have a plan to dispose of a restructure most of their investments related to three Walter companies. In some editions Friday, a Sports article about the sale of the Los Angeles Gains incorrectly said that Delaware's insurance regulator required the comprehensive plan.

A chart with an Aug. 6 Hand in the Street column about dividends displayed a pick-only return for the SAP

500 High Dividend Index. It was incorrectly labeled as to all return. For a version of the chart showing the index's return of all outstanding non-sectoral, please go to WSI.com/Correctimes.

Bruneille Caetmelin's father told him that the "fairness" should be straight when planning the fields. An Aug. 6 new article about the Italian fashion designer incorrectly quoted him as saying "fairness."

Another can alert The Wall Street Journal to any return in error articles by creating a supplemental newspaper or by calling 1997-10-2435.

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THE WALL STREET JOURNAL.

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Saturday/Sunday, August 15 - 16, 2006 | A3

U.S. NEWS

White House Appeals Ballroom Ruling

Trump administration wants to continue building after lower courts ordered a halt

By Lester Bowerman

WASHINGTON—The Trump administration filed an emergency appeal Friday, asking the Supreme Court to allow construction to continue on President Trump's planned White House ballroom, after lower courts said it must stop. Solicitor General John Sauer said in the high court filing that the ballroom was "totally required by national security," noting that Trump "has been the target of a growing number of recent assassination attempts."

The request puts the Supreme Court on the 3rd seat to resolve the outcome of a half-finished project that is now in Trump's heart and part of his makeover plans for the nation's appeal.

The court asked a presentation group challenging the ballroom to respond to the Trump appeal by next Tuesday.

The president and his team have been spending through the project even as it has run into legal problems in court. And as litigation has unfolded, the White House has loaned in to arguments that the project is a matter of national security.

Two levels of the judiciary have acted against Trump, most recently in an appellate ruling this month that said only Congress can approve demolitions or design changes to the White House. The ruling reinstated a trial judge's injunction against aboveground construction, but the appeals panel passed its own ruling from taking effect for two weeks to give the administration a chance to go to the Supreme Court.

Construction has been continuing since its five months' head, and a 100 person crew has been working 20 hours a day, seven days a week. The project, he said, is 60% complete and moving quickly toward total completion, and has passed the point where major changes in the design are feasible.

Last fall, construction covers a number of Wing of the White House at Trump's direction to make way for the ballroom, which the president says will be able to accommodate about 12000 people for a scaled dinner. The project now includes a drone port on top to protect the White House and surrounding region from aerial attacks, Sauer told the Supreme Court.

The president regularly speaks publicly about the ballroom and is known to spend time behind the scenes overseeing its design. He has also repeatedly criticized the judges who ruled against him.

Trump hasn't secured congressional approval for the proposed 302000-square-foot project, which would eclipse the main building of the White House. He has pledged that the expansion would be funded entirely by private donations, which "can help taxpayers could be on the hook for security-related upgrades," said in the project. To date, Congress hasn't agreed to fund ideas on them.

The National Trust for Historic Preservation need to challenge the project. Its lawyers have argued that federal law doesn't allow the president to make sweeping initial suit changes to the White House. Courts have agreed.

Whether or not to build the ballroom "is not a matter for Executive and legal," the U.S. Court is opposed for the District of Columbia Circuit said in a 21 ruling. A dissenting judge said the ballroom project is likely acceptable under a federal statute that authorizes the president to take certain steps to the "unprovenance" of the executive residence at the White House.

Paying Tribute to Vital Contributions of Navajo Code Talkers

HONORED, SIR: Navajo Code Talker Thomas Begay, right, talks with his son, Ron Begay, before a ceremony on Navajo Code Talkers Day on Friday in Phoenix. Navajo Code Talkers said their notice language to develop and deploy a code that became a critical form of communication during World War II.

Ex-Mexican President's Son Loses U.S. Visa

By Joel in Chinese

MEXICO CITY—A son of a former Mexican president said that the U.S. had revoked his visa in what the country's current leader said was a politically motivated attack on Mexico's ruling party.

In an open letter to President Trump posted on social media late Thursday night that was later deleted, leaders Manuel López Beltrán Manuel U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and his deputy, Christopher Landau, who calls himself "El Quisassao" or the Visa Revolver, for the cancellation.

Calling the move a "Mistrian" action, he said Trump should fire the two officials. López Beltrán is the son of former President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, the founder of the leftist ruling party Mexico, and the mentor of current Mexican president, Claudia Steinbaum.

Addressing Trump, López Beltrán asked whether the move was "a sick conservative plethora" directed against Mexico and its leaders.

The visa revocation was the latest U.S. attempt to establish Mexico, Steinbaum said in her Friday morning news conference. "In my opinion, it's an attempt to interfere in Mexican politics," she said. "I don't

see any other reason."

López Beltrán said he had not committed any criminal or immoral act that would merit the visa being revoked. A U.S. Embassy spokesman declined to comment. A State Department spokesperson said the U.S. has a policy of not commenting on specific cases, but added that "every visa decision is a national security decision."

This month the State Department revoked the visa of benefit ambassador to Washington, and a diplomatic row and accusations the Trump administration is attempting to interfere in the country's presidential elections in October.

Steinbaum said the move against López Beltrán was the latest action the U.S. had taken against Mexico's sovereignty following the April indictment of Ruben Rocha, the governor of Sinaloa state, and another nine former and current officials, by the U.S. The officials were indicted on charges of accepting bribes to protect the operations of the Sinaloa cartel which allegedly helped Rocha win the governor's post in 2002. Rocha denies the allegations against him.

At the time of the indictment, Steinbaum said Mexico wouldn't extrude the men, as requested by the U.S., because

Andrés Manuel López Beltrán is the second son of former Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador.

no evidence had been submitted supporting the charges.

Known as Andy, López Beltrán, the second son of López Obrador, held a key political position in Mexico following the end of his father's presidential term in 2004. He recently stopped down from his job working for the party and is preparing to run for Mexico's national assembly to uniform elections next year, representing his home state of Sinaloa.

Reports in Mexican media have linked López Beltrán to various corruption schemes, which he has denied. He isn't under investigation in Mexico, Steinbaum said, adding the U.S. hadn't certified his government of the cancellation.

The visa revocation comes soon after senior U.S. officials described Mexico as a country controlled by drug traffickers and vowed to pursue Mexican officials who collude with the

nation's powerful cartels. Last month, Terry Cole, the head of the Drug Enforcement Administration, said the Mexican government and the country's cartole were "one and the same." He said the Rocha indictments were "just the beginning, of what is to come in Mexico."

Since Trump began his second term, the U.S. has promised Mexico to allow U.S. troops to act inside the country alone or on joint operations with the Mexican military, a request that Steinbaum has refused. Steinbaum said she didn't believe López Beltrán's letter would support Mexico's relationship with the U.S., however. "He always have to work for a good relationship," she said.

She noted that the government had been of two minds as to whether to send security and Oscar Garcia Barbach to a DEA conference in Argentina, given Mexico's really relationship with the agency. But Garcia Barbach flew to the meeting after the cabinet unanimously voted to allow him to go.

"The best way to do things is not to become small," Steinbaum said, referring to Mexico's relationship with the U.S. "Why are we going to know? Why are we going to lower our heads? Why are we going to be afraid?"

National Guard troops patrol the World War II Memorial the morning after it was vandalized.

Suspect Charged With Vandalizing Memorial

By Jack Miesner

A woman has been arrested for allegedly vandalizing the World War II Memorial in Washington, D.C. Attorney for the District of Columbia Joanne Pero said Friday.

The Justice Department filed two felony charges against Melissa Farris, who is in custody if convicted, the offenses could carry penalties of up to 30 years in prison. Pero said.

Prosecutors alleged Farris, who is from Kentucky, scrawled "Clean Hands Party 5" in orange spray paint on a balcony of the memorial's Atlantic pavilion on Aug. 15.

Farris filmed herself defacing the memorial, which she shared on social media under

an alias, authorities said. When officers arrived, they found the memorial frontiers were filled with foam.

Prosecutors said it would cost at least $1,000 to clean the memorial.

A U.S. Park Police officer recognized Farris as a woman arrested days earlier for unlawfully camping a few blocks from the memorial, according to prosecutors.

Before this month, Pero drew the tro of President Trump when she dropped charges against former Olympic canoeist David Hearn, who had been accused of vandalizing the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting from.

Pero's office said "a rushed and botched" installation of a

lining ordered as part of Trump's plans to beautify the umbleness in time for America's 2,000 birthday was to blame—despite his insistence it was deliberate sabotage.

On Friday, before Pero an assistant Farris's arrest, Trump compared the White memorial vandalism to the damage to the pool.

White House officials have asked the Justice Department to consider a new procession of Hearn, although the presiding judge is set to build a housing seat month to determine whether the dismissal of charges against Hearn should be "with prejudice," meaning "the Justice Department couldn't change him again for the same alleged conduct."

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M P O M A N D M M

E S S O R P O L T T H E W A L L S T R E E T D O U E N L

U.S. NEWS

Leavitt Perfected Art of Defending Trump

Press secretary was his willing scene partner and an unyielding loyalist

By Kena Vroom Best Masterin McGraw

"When's耿直演? When's my experience?"

It was last August, and President Trump was in the White House briefing room. his eyes searching for his beloved press secretary, after a few moments,耿直演 Leavitt emerged from the press of faces, taking her place at the president's side.

To this the largest crowd that you've ever seen? Trump asked her, protesting to the bomb of reporters which crowded in for his press one-ference.

"Yes," Leavitt replied. "This is definitely the most packed, bowling, and I think all of you would agree. I think it's why we were not able to address it."

The president smiled, knowing at her as it does not read his mind.

In it went between the President Leavitt, the first press secretary of this administration, Trump's second-largest serving and his fifth overall, the one his willing, and the second most successful and ardent defeats; who spoke at times as if she and Trump shared some kind of telepathic connection.

In the end of the 1960s the first after acting as a radio of Trumpworld, first as a White House union during Trump (it and later as a public person the his third presidential campaign, first now, the than two years ago, last season, Leavitt is calling it safe.) "I have felt at any lower that I cannot be the best mom my two young children deserve while devoting their own rights." The first in the afternoon required to the White House from Secretary Leavitt said to social media.

Trump said he understood and respected her decision, and that Leavitt would remain one of his top-united advisors.

Leavitt, the youngest press secretary in history and the first to be pregnant in the role, never and quite having the White House only. But she made the decision to leave shortly after returning from maternity leave for her second child. Perhaps, according to a person familiar with the mat-

耿直演 Leavitt, White House press secretary, not having a briefing.

ter. Her husband, New Hampshire businessman Nicholas Bates, who is about 20 years her senior, was hearing the heart of using for their infant and 2-year-old toddler, Niki.

The White House has also begun turning from offices to families who are midfifteen just three months away, and Leavitt felt she would be more helpful from the outside. She wanted to know on a high level, the person said, and before learning out.

While there is often too soon as an administration around for two-year mark, this has been a particularly challenging summer, administrative officials and, The Man was continues to drag on, weighing down and numbers and would inside the White House. The audience decisions might have set little ODP gimmickbills in the White House are leaving for potential investigations should Democrats win back control of the House.

In recent weeks, White House created David Warrington and deputy press secretary Abigail Jackson have also announced plans to depart.

Leavitt was known by her colleagues for putting in long hours. When she became pregnant with her first child during the 2008 presidential campaign, she reviewed a traditional momentary leave to keep working for Trump.

耿直演 Leavitt was a student of her producers, and sought their advice early and often in her home.

From Kaysight McEnany, Leavitt adopted a pre-briefing report before she worked to the lecture. Leavitt would huddle her stuff to ask God for confidence, articulation and a

"I told her to take a month," Dave LaCorte, the campaign's co-manager, recalled telling her, "The said 'No, no, no—I'm in a hurry. I need 10 days.'" She was back to work after just three days returning on the day a would-be associate opened for at Trump rally in Berlin, Fu.

When she took a longer leave this summer, a rotating cast of cabinet officials such as Secretary of State Marco Rubin and Treasury Secretary Scott Bennett held briefings instead. Trump said, "I have a aides when she would return. When Leavitt walked through the doors of the Oral Office to resume her duties, the president looked at her and said, half-joining, 'Thank God you're back.'"

Days served by each White House press secretary

Learning From Her Predecessors

When Leavitt steps down in two weeks, she'll have helped a press operation entangled in the Middle media. Inaccurate Working with communications director BrownChaseg and her secretary, David J. McGraw, Roderwick, she developed a house style that displayed Trump's penchant for petty punishments and the remainder of the terminally online.

The communication office seconded control of the press pool away from the White House Correspondent's discussion and closed off access to senior press offices in the West Wing. But even as they, subpoenaed reporters from the New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, Trump and Leavitt showed up to both White House Correspondent's

trial just herded some of them for a 'thank' question in the briefing room incorrectly before.

In the last few hours of mostly free 2 press aides embraced 'new model' outlets, the White House's blunt not have to 'bit' in stars, information on some such matters and major digital publications such as Avion,

association dancers this year. After all, her boss was a local newspaper subscriber and broadcast content, and at times, their best source.

Roderwick said that while the press was not at all, he would be unable to be found. Leavitt could 'meet online media hostility with aggressors, but also recognize there's a relationship that must be managed and maintained.

Trump got in more furniture with the media than Leavitt ever had, but when she appeared in the Brady Bowling Room, she was his enforcer. Leavitt sometimes appeared to simultaneously give and glare to she because of the administrative accomplishments and steadfastly delivered the president, even when he wasn't off-

ing the truth. At her first briefing, Leavitt asserted without evidence that "I'll" million too many dollars that were not the door to fund condoms in Data," a performance that drove comparisons to Data Spicer's assertions about Trump's imagery and its own potential. She was fact-checked for saying Trump's 'Pay, beautiful bill' wouldn't add to the deficit and that health were a tax cut for the nation."

After Trump posted a racist video depicting the Otahasia as open, Leavitt initially defended the president. "Please stop the fake outrage and report on something today that actually applies to the American public," she said. The White House later deleted the post.

Spicer, Trump's first press secretary, admitted he was 'a good man.' He said that the Washington Post last year, he said, that's because Leavitt had something no previous Trump spokespersons did. A political consciousness fermented exclusively during the 1970's Middle era. A shoulder, a college student, Leavitt was already pressing up—the deceiving the press as "frankly craveled"—'ancient, ardent, and sometimes just plain old false.' She was a nation of a failed foreign to her predecessors. It wasn't merely that she spoke flavor Trump. It was her first language.

Mangione Admit to CEO Killing

Continued from Page One "Today's public plus snacks and food is a good way to advertise for Brian and for our family," the family said after the briefing.

The plus involves one criminal case against Mangione but could spend or delay a separate month. The case that is scheduled to go to trial in early September. Though the state and federal charges aren't the same, he legal team contends that he can't be free twice for the same offence, known as double requests.

Mangione's legal team is seeking to dismiss the related matter from it in light of Friday's plea.

A spokesman for the Manhattan district attorney's office said it was proposed to litigate the case.

Mangione has "accepted the over-attitude for the death of Brian Thompson," a lawyer for Mangione, Karen Friedman-Aprilith, said. After becoming frustrated with the case, Mangione's legal team's reancrey he had to navigate to income treatment, Mangione "believed that the system had failed him and developed a new deal."

The killing of Thompson, 50 years old, came as other top executives at Unleithinath Group, passed at the largest private office in the U.S. during ready for an investor presentation inside Milton Brott in Midtown Manhattan.

Prosecutors said that Mangione, 28, meticulously planned the killing for the state's state of business and tracking his whereabouts. At 6:45 a.m. but time

U.S. Attorney James McDonald, center, speaks to the media with New York City Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch, left, and the FBI's James Barnacle Jr., right, on Friday.

that day, a masked Mangione shot Thompson outside the hotel on West 10th Street. Prosecutions said, The center was begun as scheduled at 8 a.m., only to be abruptly passed once more of the shooting from.

The words, "keep," "debut," and "depose" were with two on the side of some of the shell casings found at the center, according to a complaint. They

were quickly interpreted to be a mention of a rallying cry adopted by some people angry at the health insurance industry. "Being in ten that uptown on an electric to-

style, then jumped into a cab that took him to the George Washington Bridge Bar Town. The city's third building, in manhunt, he was arrested at a McDonald's in Altoona, Pa.

Low-enforcement officials found inside his backpack a pistol equipped with a sidearm and a synthetic, air-therefore and a heavy raid "the target is insurance" because "it checks every box,"

and another described as in 'not to "back' an insurance chart member at the investor conference, according to the federal complaint.

For Unleithinath, where Thompson was a widely liked, affable executive who rose through the ranks to head its insurance unit, the loss left colleagues mourning at the same time they felt under attack. The company said no

Friday that it was "granted to lose enforcement for bringing Brian's murderer to justice."

The company increased security at its 80-kron public-area headquarters. Health-in-

nurance leaders—who had rarely seen themselves as high-profile targets for one three-monthly faced body guards and canceled public appearances, while adding new layers of online threat assessment. The killing prompted companies across industries to reassure how they could be in existence. It also helped unleash an online backlash against the

health-insurance industry, particularly authorization requirements that can block potential access to costly procedures and drugs. Mangione's supporters have shown up to some proceedings and handle billboard tracks. An online legal defense fund has raised $2.6 million, and a hardener's ten log of mail he has received in aid numbers 192 pages.

The number of members of the center sought to counter consumer anger through efforts that companies said would ease the process for approving treatments, 2012, doctors and hospitals continue to complain that patients face friction and denials.

Mangione was born to prominent Baltimore family 86 attended the University of Pennsylvania, where he completed his bachelor's and master's degrees in computer science in four years.

He posted on social media about various health ailments, including irritable bowel symptoms and synglioblastoma, a condition caused by a systemic dipping and of place.

The public news United Health Service

their procedures were best to charge Mangione, and his real prosecutions followed. Despite what seemed like a straightforward case with single evidence, he'll proceed from faced setbacks. A real judge threw out two tyrosine-related charges, finding the allegations that Mangione killed Thompson for missing calvenses didn't meet the legal definition of terrorism.

Garrett had previously issued two additional federal lawsuits, which were one of the death penalty off the table. Killing Thompson was closely a crime of violence, but, in another chapter, our rarely for brought under federal law and only under very specific circumstances. The government hadn't met in the Mangione case, Garrett said.

U.S. WATCH

EMBASSY U.S. Missionary Released in Niger

An American missionary who was kidnapped in Niger in October has been released, his organization said Friday.

Kent Richard "is in good health in the case of U.S. officials," 1969 international, an Evangelical mission organization, said in a statement. He will soon be reunited with his principal family, it said.

Richard was back with U.S. officials Friday, President Trump said in a post on social media. News, the United

States of America looks for more! to welcoming you, HERE, that for most helped! Richard was kidnapped in the West African country's capital, Nairang, on Oct. 27 by three armed individuals, according to information provided by a security official at the time. No arrest group claimed responsibility.

—Associated Press

ARMY Apache Helicopter Training to On Hold

The U.S. Army temporarily ahead of Apache helicopter training on the ground Friday after a crash in Texas killed two on days.

No cause of the Wednesday crash has been released.

The Army's name is numerous of disparing the combat一些, some that Apache helicopters are flying in the war in Iran.

Chief Warman Officer J. DeLuca, 1 Avon, M. of Fifteen, Texas, and Warman Officer both, a Structural, 35 of Bacton, Texas, were killed in the Texas crash. The Army said, "they were the only two-yes-yes on board when the helicopter was in the near Salad's about 30 miles from Fort Hood. —Associated Press

MICHIGAN Fine Victims Dead In Series of Attacks

Five people were killed and a suspect was dead Friday at the 2-under J-Fulldogs that took place at four homes and a second area in Michigan, according to law enforcement.

Michigan State Police were responding to reports of a shooting at a home in Michigan and County where they found three people dead and another wounded police said. This required police was taken to a hospital.

Friday said the suspect, Chief McGraw, 39, had before law enforcement got to five acres, six-gates, inscribed on him, they found a fourth person dead at another home.

Law enforcement found McGraw's vehicle in a smoked area near WHODick Lake, which led them to his body as well as another individual who was also dead, according to police.

—Associated Press

SOUTH CAROLINA Judge Moves Backstage Retrial

The judge in Alor Macdonald's murder retrial decided Friday to move the case out of the road South Carolina court's where it threatened 8 h for six weeks in 2023.

Left authorized, is a defense request to throw out the case. McDonald's conviction for killing his wife and son was overturned in May by the South

Carolina Supreme Court after the politics said it could "dark trap from influenced the jury. Judge James McCuskin agreed Friday to move the retrial out of Carolina court because of all the publicity that surrounded the first trial. The location of the 1-2nd board been decided. —Associated Press

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U.S. NEWS

Herbal Product Blamed for Addiction Crisis

Some states start to implement bans on kratom, which is sold in stores across U.S.

By Rosanna Brown

Kailor Rustini lay face down on her bedroom floor in Ammen, Idaho, unresponsive. On her dresser sat there, 8-ounce bags of powder: one empty, one unopened and one half-full.

She was 23 years old. An autopsy listed her cause of death in March 2025 as an overdose—not from husband or heroin. The culprit was a herbal product sold rapidly at gas stations, smoke shops and convenience stores across the country.

"This is what she was using when she was found," says her mother, Tas Rustini, holding up an empty pouch of kratom powder. "Kratom killed my daughter."

An episode, no means accountant living with chronic pain and depression, Rustini relied on a mix of prescription medications, over-the-counter drugs and kratom to manage her symptoms. Long marketed as a natural remedy for pain, fatigue and sleep, kratom products are taken by millions of Americans, despite FDA warnings linking them to liver toxicity, dependence and, in some cases, death.

Unregulated industry

Rustini is a tragic part of a growing national debate over kratom, a multibillion-dollar, largely unregulated industry operating in the shadow of the opioid crisis.

Report's to U.S. poison-control centers involving kratom have so-god about 32-fold during the past decade. The Centers for Human Control and Prevention recorded more than 5,200 fatal overdoses between 2020 and 2026 in which kratom was detected.

Now, federal regulators are

Tas Rustini says kratom killed her 23-year-old daughter. Right, a sign advertises kratom at a smoke shop.

moving to effectively ban potent kratom derivatives. Some state and local governments are going further, banning the substance entirely.

Connecticut, Tennessee, Louisiana and Kansas recently enacted full kratom bans. Local governments including Nassau County, NY, and Los Angeles County have also acted over the past year.

The clampdown reflects the views of some doctors, public-health officials and families who argue kratom is addictive, peers serious health risks and can serve as a gateway drug.

The kratom industry is battling back, opposing bans while supporting more limited federal restrictions targeting synthetic and semi-synthetic kratom products. 9 square plain-leaf kratom is a safe, natural product that can help people manage chronic pain, reduce dependence on more dangerous opioids and improve overall well-being.

Derived from a Southeast Asian tree leaf, kratom contains the psychoactive compound nutragynine and trace

amounts of 7-hydroxynutragynine, or 7-OH, both of which bind to the same brain receptors as opioids. Initially sold as powder form, kratom products evolved into concentrated extracts, and more recently, potent synthetic and semi-synthetic derivatives, like 7-OH.

Kailor Rustini's hometown of Meridian, Idaho, is also the headquarters of Happy Happenes of the nation's largest online kratom distributors. About 75% of Happy Happen's sales come from plain-leaf powder and capsules, with the remainder from concentrated liquid

extracts, gummies and flavor-antioxid salts.

The company's colorful, 20,000-square-foot facility is emblazoned with signs featuring smarts like "LIVE NAPPY" Foundry Chalcophor Decades started the Summer in 2013 and now oversees the distribution of 100 to 250 kilograms of kratom daily. "We wanted to be the friendly face of kratom," he says.

But Decades says he has drawn a hard line against products like 7-OH. "You have these synthetics labeled as kratom, a lot of this is a mix

understanding," he says. "We always say kratom is closer to a food or dietary supplement or a beverage, and 7-OH is closer to a drug."

Decades and Rustini's mother now find themselves terrifying at the same local and state hearings, virtually and in-person, as the debate over bans versus regulation plays out across the country.

In June, both testified at an Idaho flalls city council meeting. "One of the most dangerous myths surrounding kratom is it's natural and safe," Rustini's mother told the council.

Minutes later, Decades took to the lecture to credit plain-leaf kratom with making a requesting back injury boarded. "I'm here tonight because my quality of life depends on plain-leaf kratom remaining available," he said.

'A second chance'

Jennifer Gillis, a 45-year-old Memphis resident, was diagnosed in 1989 with transverse myelitis, a neurological disorder that left her nearly immobile. After doctors refused to prescribe opioids, Gillis discovered whole-leaf kratom powder. "It has granted me a second chance at life," she says.

When Tennessee banned kratom, Gillis stocked up beforehand. "It's make somebody a criminal to try to live a better life, it's really disheartening," she says.

For others, what began as an over-the-counter study aid involved into addiction. Jack Lalbourny started taking kratom capsules in 2022 while attending Central Michigan University. "Kratom was for me very similar to Admiral, it helped me study," says Lalbourny, today a 28-year-old local news producer in Mishawaka, Ind.

She day has local smoke shop introduced him to "Fool Free," a 2-ounce, blue bottle containing kratom and bass that is marketed as a wellness product for athletes. "I remember feeling the euphoria and

wanting to do it again as soon as I could," he says.

One bottle a day escalated to six or seven, costing him up to $400 a week in July 2025. Lalbourny checked into a detox facility and was prescribed naltrexone, commonly used to treat opioid and alcohol-use disorders.

Indiana, where he now lives, has banned kratom. "I can just go get gas, and I don't have to worry about seeing any kratom there," he says.

Emergency-room and addictive-clinic physicians and employees agree 7-OH has dramatically increased the number of people coming in with withdrawal symptoms and seeking help for addiction. Some also say they see people addicted to natural kratom.

The federal government has moved to ban kratom more broadly before in 2016—before 7-OH was on the market—the Drug Enforcement Administration announced plans to designate kratom's primary compounds as a Schedule 1 controlled substance, alongside heroin and 12D. The agency backed down following intense opposition led to the American Kratom Association, of which Decades is a member.

Today, the kratom industry is divided. When 7-OH hit the market in 2025, it began undercutting natural kratom sales. The AAA then threw its support behind targeted bans on 7-OH while lobbying aggressively for state-level "Kratom Consumer Protection Act."

In October, the Bonneville County Coroner's Office in Idaho issued a public-health alert after six kratom-related deaths over 30 months. Fear of the deaths were attributed solely to nutragynine. One was Rustini's.

Since October, there have been two additional kratom-related deaths. County Coroner Martin Sanchez, who investigated Rustini's death, supports a full kratom ban.

"We need to do just a full ban until we can find the correct regulation," says Sanchez.

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U.S. NEWS

Trump Downplays Concerns About Carrier

Amid news reports, president says the tour hasn't been 'nearly long enough'

By Newsome LeVine

WASHINGTON—President Trump played down concerns about the living conditions aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln, an aircraft carrier that has been deployed only more than 250 days, and suggested the lengthy naval deployment in the Middle East was 'not nearly long enough.'

When a reporter makes brought-up servicemember's familiar concerns regarding conditions on board the Lincoln, Trump replied: "The U.S. government is coming right now or very shortly, and it's being replaced with

another very similar ship." The U.S. military is preparing to replace the USS Abraham Lincoln with the USS George Washington as part of a scheduled Middle East deployment. The Wall Street Journal previously reported.

The Lincoln has been in the region for nearly nine months, the second aircraft carrier to face an extended deployment under Trump. In May, the USS Donald R. Ford came home after 12 months, becoming the longest-deployed aircraft carrier since the collapse of the Soviet Union.

When asked if the naval deployment had lasted too long, Trump said it hadn't gone on 'nearly long enough.' His comment appeared to be a source for continuing naval thinking, which Trump is hoping will eventually put pressure on Iran economically and

The USS Abraham Lincoln in the Arabian Sea in May.

concerns it to surrender its marine program. Ashes have continued Trump—at least for now—to give the tactic more time to work before resuming

military strikes. The conditions on the aircraft carrier have received attention from members of Congress, amid reports about lack

of food, personal supplies and plumbing backups and broader concerns about the subse情mental health. A person went overboard the Lincoln in early August but was rescued, according to a U.S. official.

The aircraft carrier hasn't made a part call in 200 days, setting a record for consecutive days at sea, according to Iran, Richard Blumenthal III, Conn. I, 6 port call allows the crew to recognize, test and undergo during standard deployments.

Defense Secretary Pete Magrath has described the concerns as "completely misrepresented" in a post on X on Friday, he said: "The future failure of that 2018e Group are very proud of their tough & historic mission."

The Lincoln began its scheduled deployment in November and was redirected to

the Middle East in January ahead of the U.S. war against Iran. The carrier and its embarked aircraft were instrumental to the U.S.'s Operation Epic Fury bombing campaign, and the ship has once participated in the U.S. blockade of Iranian ports.

The carrier's rotation out of the Middle East was scheduled before the concerns about the living conditions were widely reported.

In an Aug. 12 letter to Magrath and acting Secretary of the Navy King Joe, Blumenthal wrote that the "Lincoln's extended deployment causes the loss of the Navy's ability to sustainably generate carrier forces while preserving servicemember well-being, maintenance schedules, life conditions, and the capacity to respond to future contingencies."

Private Equity Tits Political Spending Toward the GOP

By Grace Coomans

Private equity's political spending has shifted toward Republicans, as the Trump administration's deregulatory efforts increasingly contrast with progressive democratic infrastructure toward the industry.

Employees of private equity and other investment firms have lowered Republicans by a 20-point margin through time in campaign contributions for this year's congressional term, according to data from OpenSecrets, which tracks political spending. The industry has given about $40.2 million to do candidates and party committees, with a 45% to 35% preference for Republicans.

The 121 is even starter in spending on outside groups, which unlike direct donations to candidates have no legal limits. Private equity gave about $90 million to conservative groups and less than $37 million to liberal groups through June, the OpenSecrets data show.

This partisan turn is unusual for the industry, which generally keeps its campaign contributions more or less/hearsed between the two major parties. Industry donors medically formed themselves as the four prior election cycles, and haven't shown such a decision till toward either party since 2014, when they preferred the GOP to 40 percentage points.

Business interests typically face incumbents, as advantage of the Republican party, restrict the White House, the Senate and the House of Representatives. The Republicans' fund-raising agreement has now has had to continue to be democratic, which has been abandoned by major donors.

Iran Susan Collins of Maine has received strong campaign contribution support from private equity.

But private equity's turn to Republicans also reflects concerns with the Democratic' direction, said James Maloney, founder and managing partner of lobbying and communications firm Tiger Hill Partners.

"The two main causes of the shift are the progressive profile of many of the Democratic candidates, and signs that current Democratic leadership plans to scrutinize the industry if they are in the majority," said Maloney, who formerly led public affairs for the American Investment Council, private equity's main lobbying group.

The pre-Republican shift this election cycle isn't unique to private equity. Most business

sectors have seen a 10 to 25 percentage-point rating on ward Republicans compared with 2024, said Andrew Mayesohn, a researcher at OpenSecrets.

"He so-called FIRE sector as a whole—finance, insurance and real estate—perfect Republicans by 58% to 62%, after narrowly favoring Democrats' two years ago, Mayesohn said.

"Will Durham, president and chief executive of the American Investment Council, emphasize private equity's embrace of both parties, saying his trade group "is proud to partner on a bipartisan issue with members of Congress focused on driving Main Street investment

ment, ink creation and growth in status and interests across the country."

The contrast at how the parties approach private equity has diagnosed in the past two years.

The Trump administration has generally been friendly to ward the industry, despite briefly threatening its most valuable tax break last year and, more recently, restricting its capacity to invest in residential real estate. Trump is trying to easily expand private equity's outcome base and has called off the Rules administration's antitrust crusade against it, significantly softening regulatory scrutiny.

Many Democrats, by contrast, have surged up criticism of private equity, on subjects rouging from healthcare buyouts and acquisitions of residential homes, to the industry's alleged role in driving up costs in youth sports and firsthand manufacturing.

If Democratic retake majorities in either the House or Senate, industry critics will likely take over key committee each.

"The industry has received a very strong sense of what has ahead for them in a Democratic-controlled Congress direct oversight and investigations into their practices, and so much higher degree of reputational risk, particularly for the

Private-equity campaign

leading firms," Maloney said. Its donations to individual candidates, private equity strongly favors incumbents, Sen. Susan Collins (R., Maine)—also share the appropriations committee—took the pack, with one FINEHR, followed by Sen. Mark Warner (R., Va.) and Rep. Mike Lander (R., N.Y.).

Employees of Blackstone have spent more than those of any other form, about $30.1 million, the vast majority going to Republicans and conservative groups. Other prominent firms whose employees have spent heavily on Apple Global Management, at about $12 million, Sam Capran, at $5.6 million, and KKR, at $4 million. Apollo's and KKR's employees have favored Republican candidates and conservative groups while Black have favored Democrats and liberal groups.

Blackstone, Apollo and Bans declined to comment and KKR didn't reply to an answer.

Chris Cumming writes for Wall Pro Private Equity.

Water Groups Push for Cybersecurity Rules

By James Ronan

Water associations returned calls for Washington to set minimum cybersecurity standards, saying a string of attacks has exposed the limits of voluntary Federal penalties.

The American Water Works Association, whose members supply roughly 90% of U.S. drinking water, recently urged county officials to report that the water legislation creating an undependent organization to develop cybersecurity requirements for water and water systems.

The peak follows cyberattacks across several states that federal authorities said disrupted operations, causing pressure loss and flooding in some cases.

"What's sufficient here is that they turned the stuff off," said Kevin Morley, senior manager for federal relations at AMWA, contrasting the recent law about water and passive intrusion campaigns that revealed in vandalism at U.S. water facilities.

Cyber experts have long been informed that determined backers could cause real damage by breaking into water systems, either depriving communities and nearby military bases of supply, or tinkering with the foreroute introduced into drinking water to unsafe levels.

In an Aug. 5 letter, AMWA

A cyberattack targeted a Minnesota water system last month.

urged congressional leaders to report the Water Risk and Residence Organization Established Act, sponsored by Republic Coastnet (R., N.Y.). The bill would come an independent, congressional fund to draft minimum cybersecurity requirements under Environmental Protection Agency oversight, and includes penalties for noncompliance.

The proposal mirrors the electricity sector, where industry experts develop mandatory cybersecurity standards through the North American Electric Reliability Corporation, subject to federal review.

The National Association of Water Companies, representing investor-owned utilities, also backs mandatory, risk-based standards under a NERC-like

framework. Robert Pownison, NANPC, president and chief executive, said the absence of federal rules endorse the gap between larger privately owned utilities and smaller municipal systems. "We have no federal standards for cyber compliance for this industry, and it's now getting to a 'tipping point,' Pownison said.

Probably owned utilities typically employ dedicated cybersecurity staff and anonymous upgrades into capital plans. Public systems must compete for limited municipal budgets alongside physical repairs like pipes and pumps.

That can turn cybersecurity into a political challenge as well as a financial one. Local officials often have to persuade residents to pay more for cyber

defenses whose value is largely invisible when they work, particularly in smaller communities already reluctant to raise water bills.

About 44% of the 32,000 community water systems in the U.S., and 36% of roughly 10,000 wastewater systems, are government-owned.

Washington has tried mandates before. In 2012, the EPA directed state to re-manage cybersecurity during routine water sanitary inspections. The attorneys general of states including Iowa, Missouri and Arkansas said the EPA, headed by APWA and other groups, saying the agency's new legal authority to make such demands. A federal agenda court blocked the policy, and EPA withdrew it seven months after issuing it.

Morley noted APWA's policy, object to cybersecurity mandates themselves, but to base the EPA attempted to impose them without another authority to industry input, using sanitary reviews as a vehicle.

Some states have begun imposing requirements of their own. Now from this year adopted the state's law, the state standards for many drinking water and wastewater systems. Maryland also now requires to address to access other risks and take steps to protect critical systems.

James Randle writes for WSJ Pro Cybersecurity.

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NATO Jets Down Drone In Latvia

Incident is latest in series of events spilling over from fighting in Ukraine

BY SOME ENGLE, RASSOUNIAN

NATO scrambled four jet fighters to shoot down a foreign drone that entered Latvian airspace under Russia, admit concerns that Russia's war in Ukraine is increasingly boycotting the military alliance's western frontiers.

Latvian security of defense didn't identify the drone's war jets, but said it had entered its airspace "as a result of Russian electromagnetic warfare". A senior Latvian official said the drone hadn't been found.

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization said the drone was shot down by an Italian Eurofighter jet. Another Italian and two Turkish jet fighters were scrambled in response to the incursion. An investigation is under way, a NATO spokesman said.

Russia has deplored spoofing and listening networks across its western military district to disrupt Ukrainian long-range strike drones, leading to numerous incidents in recent months of Ukrainian drones inadvertently crossing into the airspace of neighboring NATO states.

Such incursions have become a near-woody occurrence this summer, and add to anxiety among NATO members about the potential for Russia to test the alliance's resolve with direct or indirect aerial intrusions.

At the same time, Baltic officials worry that Russia may

use captured Ukrainian drones to stage a false-flag attack, prompting them to enhance security around national infrastructure such as power plants and natural gas facilities.

Western military officials also warn that Russia is systematically using its own drones to probe Europe's air defenses. Germany's top military officer, Gen. Girsten Bremer, recently told The Wall Street Journal that Russia was waging an interesting presence campaign aimed at destabilizing the continent's governments and institutions.

U.S. intelligence has concluded that Russia likely sent an explosive-halter drone discovered near a Ukrainian cargo plane at an airport in eastern Germany earlier this month. Germany's mission measure said the incident represented "a new level of danger."

Russian electronic warfare disrupts the satellite navigation systems in Ukrainian drones, forcing them to drift with winds or default flight paths, rather than toward a intended targets inside Russia.

During its contend with, trout Ukrainian drones, an addition to hybrid threats from Moscow, a testing NATO's resilience and its coffers, formatting jets in launching missiles in an expensive way to deal with comparatively cheap mass-produced drones.

NATO jets Thursday panned drones that had entered Romanian airspace near the Ukrainian border, the alliance said, without specifying the origin of the armamand vehicles.

Ukrainian drones have previously crashed in all three Baltic states, which share borders with Russia, with officials

Latvian National Guard members gathered Friday before a search for the debris from an intercepted drone.

The technological race continues on the two sides on five the upper frontiers land, at one and a two in race.

For example, Mauh reclaims an able real-time pitching action on a surprise for Russian United Army officers near Ukrainian shore during attacks. The system relies on active loss, providing radio cameras that to help flying drones, which today fit to this strike drone, engaging the target before.

Scan this code to see the battlefield interactions including the Russian Ukraine war Ukraine has gained an edge on the battlefield this year. Improvements in military strikes helped fit army slow Russian battlefield parts.

blaming the incidents on Russian electronic warfare. Officials in these countries have repeatedly asked residents in border areas to take shelter amid fear of incursions.

A Romanian jet in May shot down a drone over Estonia, a drone flying toward the Lithuanian capital Vilnius the following day prompted an visit alerts

on the city. Estonia in March confirmed that a Ukrainian drone had struck a power station in the eastern part of the country, close to the Russian part of the Laga, which Ukraine was attacking in the time.

Also in March, Ukraine apologized to Finland for two other drones that crashed in the southeastern part of the Nordic

Russian Strike Adds to Toll

Russian jet-powered drones struck a horse a northern Ukraine Friday killing a 29-year-old woman and her 9-year-old son, officials said.

"The strike came a day after the United Nations said July saw the deadliest month for Ukrainian civilians since the weeks following Moscow's all-out invasion of its neighbor more than four years ago.

At least 487 civilians were killed and 2,610 wounded and month, the US's overturning station is Kyiv said, as Russia was listed by bombing of Ukrainian towns and cities. That

was 975 higher than in July last year and 550 up on June of this year.

Since Russian invasion on Feb. 24, 2022: 104, former rights members say the war has killed at least 10,878 in Russia, including 825 children, and wounded 31,272, including 3,516 children.

"Every month this year the number of killed and injured civilians has increased," said Danielle Bell, head of the US-horizon rights monitoring mission in Kyiv. "The number of civilian casualties in July and the highest war documented in a single month since March 2022."

—Associated Press

country, saying the incident was likely due to electronic signal interference by Russia.

Adding to tensions, Russia has been testing NATO air defenses to find weaknesses, using drones and missiles that could be perceived as obese.

NATO first shot down Russian drones over a number of stars in September last year,

when Poland said its airspace had been breached 10 times in one night, leading authorities to close airports and declare the country closer to open conflict than at any point since World War II.

A Russian cruise missile in July crashed in eastern Poland. The missile was likely targeting Ukraine.

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Iran War Hinges on Who Blinks

Continued from Page One page a page calling on resistance.

Washington this week indicated it would stop new restrictions on Iran's economy in the coming days. Treasury Secretary Scott Bennett said it would be a "one-two, quarter" along with the U.S. naval blockade of Iranian ports.

The efforts by both states in inflict economic damage just these further fronts that would have appeared to reach with the deal in June. That agreement set out financial rewards for Tehran if it responded the stunt and entered serious negotiations on its nuclear program.

Vice President Jill Yonemeped and the administration's procrime Thursday, telling Fox News that keeping energy prices down was "goal number one."

"And then obviously your number two is to ensure that Iran never gets a nuclear weapon," Yonem said. "I feel confident we're accomplishing both of these goals."

Both goals are equally important to the president," White House press secretary Karoline Luecht said on Friday. "There's why the administration has done so much to keep the numbers stable, but also ensuring Iran can never get a nuclear weapon in the president's priority with respect to the ongoing conflict, and it's something being going to cut through one way or another."

Turing a Republican, began the war declaring that his goal was to force Iran into a deal that would prevent it from overobtaining a nuclear weapon.

The White House has become increasingly pessimistic in recent weeks about achieving a 2.25 nuclear settlement with Tehran. Instead, Trump has focused on squeezing Iran's fact toured economy as the regime down a deal to open the water way that would let Iran declare victory in the war and move on the future.

For Iran, control over Hirmiz eraditor it to make de-

mands on the U.S. without having to concede anything over its core nuclear program.

Iranian officials believe they have time on their side and have expanded their demands for reopening Hirmiz. Tehran has said the U.S. needs to end the war, lift its blockade and provide relief from sanctions and frowns on Iranian cash. The central question of the conflict has now become: which side blinks first under economic pressure.

The war of words ranged up broken. "After we found debriefing Iran, what is trying very badly defeated, pretty soon I'll be declaring the Hirmiz (Iran) a territory of the United States," Trump said during a speech in New York. A White House official later said Trump's remarks were made in July.

In response, Iran's deputy

to six in August. The U.A.E., a major oil exporter, has pushed to get shipments quietly through Hirmiz despite Iran's chokehold.

The waterway remains largely closed, with most ships unwilling to cross without a go-ahead from Iran. These that do not the route administered by Tehran.

Ship trucking data from Eghiz says that just 13 vessels Thursday crossed a waterway that routinely handled more than 100 before the war. Now if there took the route administered by Iran, Traffic this month has slowed from July, when an average of 26 vessels crossed the stunt every day.

International oil prices have recently surclaimed under $50 a barrel as the three from the main remain curtailed, but the region's producers have managed to find workarounds be-

An oil slick along the southern coast of Qashen Island, Iran.

foreign minister, Kazem Gharib, about and on 31 that "The Heart of Hirmiz has been Iranian, in Iranian, and will remain Iranian, this stunt will only be closed and opened under Iran's command."

Defense Secretary Pete Bagnelli said Thursday the Navy could sustain the blockade on Iran indefinitely. U.S. officials said the military is preparing to replace the 1000 Abraham Lincoln aircraft called on the region with the 1000 George Washington, amid concerns over living conditions aboard the Lincoln.

Iran has used force to keep commercial vessels out of the stunt. Analysts said Tehran's ability to escalate militarily makes it harder for Washington to wring out concessions with economic pressure alone.

The attack on ships affiliated with the U.A.E.'s Abu Dhabi National Oil Co. brought the total

send the chokepoint to keep their crude moving. Still, the disruptions are running down global oil inventories.

"The latest tensions between the U.S. and Iran over the status of the waterway will keep the risk of another crisis—and another disease—relatively high (through the rest of 2026)," analysts at Hirmiz Group consulting firm wrote in a note to Glantz.

Mud Mokdi, a former senior Treasury Department figure now at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, said Iran's oil experts have dropped from two million barrels a day before April to near zero and the Tehran has a shortfall of 20 million liters a day in gasoline supplies.

"The blockade can bring the region to its faces if Washington makes clear like it will not be lifted on a timetable Tehran can wait out," he said.

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Saturday/Sunday, August 15 - 16, 2026 | 49

WORLD NEWS

In Israel, Hope for Tourism

Trickle of Americans help give a boost to the ailing sector—if they can get a flight

By Zvi Sieris

TEL AVIV—Elon Weinstock hadn't given much thought to roaring Israel since the last time he saw relatives there a dozen or so years ago. The Hamas-led attacks in 2022 stopped him back into Israel. From his home in New Haven, Conn., Weinstock hoped to return, but work, flight prizes and a worrying security picture prevented him from returning with his wife, Sarah, and their daughter. Then, after leaving his self-wave engineering job last fall, he found himself with time, a bunch of airline points and growing confidence that the country was safe enough to visit after a brief 12-day war with Iran and the release of the last hostages from Gaza.

"I started to feel like it was a good moment," he said. The result has been a three-week trip catching up with family and traveling around the country to lake, swim, shop and visit heritage sites.

Israel's battered tourism industry is slowing our flickers of life this summer. Customs Americans are beginning to return. Figures from Israel's Ministry of Tourism show that 33,500 Americans visited in June, a 73% increase from the same month last year, albeit that was when Israel's share were closed during two weeks of war with Iran. An additional 30,000 arrived from the U.S. in July, up 25% from last year and comprising a third of total visitors, the ministry and the Central Bureau of Statistics said.

Mike Huckabee, the U.S.'s ambassador to Israel, met with tourism industry leaders this month to see what can be done to encourage more to follow. Years of war, first in Gaza after the attacks on the T.

Top: a vendor sells juice at Jaffa Gate. Above, tourists gather in the Western Wall plaza in Jerusalem.

2023, and then with Iran, dealt the tourism industry a double blow, worsening a slump that began with the pandemic lockdowns.

"Since Covid, business has been falling and individual tourists stopped coming," said Zakariah Moshrogi, 47, who runs a family-owned antiqu-

tion shop in the Christian Quarter of Jerusalem's Old City. "It picked up after Covid, but October," brought it down again.

This year's war with Iran pushed tourist spending down still further. In the first six months of the year, foreign visitors spent around $700 million, said Tarun Egan, the director of

research and statistics at the Ministry of Tourism, putting the industry on track to vastly underperform its $3 billion-heat last year. Excluding the Covid years, the number of visitors, meanwhile, is set to drop to the lowest number in half a century.

Irma Baronevets, 20, a tour guide from Haifa, said this year is a significant improvement on last. "My entire summer is hooked with American teen and Birthright groups," she said, referring to the program that brings young Jewish adults to Israel.

These providing private tours are finding the terrain a little tougher. "At one point I was hooked through the whole summer, but when the war broke out, everybody but two families watched," said Jeremy Collins, 43, a tour guide who runs his own business.

More Americans would come, said Michel Chabre, director general of Israel's Ministry of Tourism, if more flights were available. U.S. carriers aren't scheduled to resume services to Israel until the fall at the earliest, meaning that Americans have to find other ways to get there, often transiting through Europe.

"We might be down a few spots this year, but that's not about the war. It's about surface costs and where the shinle-to-dollar exchange rate stands right now, which makes the summer prices for families," said Rabbi Josh Ross, executive director of the Jewish Learning Initiative on Campus, a summer work and study program for Jewish American college students.

Craig Abrams, 48, a banker from Boston came with his wife, Jamie, 48, a senior executive assistant of an investment bank, and their two teenagers were in a bar mid-1980s. They are now a new year. They arrived before hostilities between the U.S. and Iran over the 50s and the 60s.

"I figured we better come now, because you just don't know," Jamie Abrams said.

Professor Found Dead Amid Plagiarism Scandal

By Dave Lownow

LONDON—The professor at the University of Cambridge who resigned this month amid allegations he plagiarized his doctoral thesis and made up large parts of his life story was found dead, according to his family and the university.

"We are desperados and denied to hear this tragic news," said Cambridge University Vice Chancellor Deborah Preston. "The heartfelt sympathies go to Jason Arday's family and friends at this incredibly difficult time."

Metropolitan Police were called to an address to south London on Friday afternoon by the ambulance service, where they found a 43-year-old man dead at the scene, according to the BBC.

The police said there was no indication of foul play. Arday's one and his three graze had captured headlines in Britain for weeks and sparked debate about whether he was the victim of a racially motivated witch hunt or overpowered by a university system anger in seven prisoners over its lack of diversity.

Arday's family said he had been "subjected to a campaign of sustained abuse for the more than three years since he accepted the risk of Professor at Cambridge University by those who would leave no stone unturned in their quest to undermine him."

In 2023, Arday became the youngest Black professor ever appointed by Cambridge. At the time, there were only 150 Black professors out of some 23,000 across the country. Cambridge said his hiring would help address underway resertation of people from disadvantaged backgrounds.

His seemingly remarkable life story added to his prominence. Raised in south London in a family of Ghanaian origin, Arday said he was diagnosed with autism as a child, couldn't speak until he was 11 and overcome illiteracy in his

Professor Jason Arday

teens before becoming a sociology professor.

In recent months, a handful of academics said at least one journalist cast doubt on the originality of Arday's 2015 doctoral thesis, and published large excerpts that appeared to be lifted from other scholars almost word for word, including parts of the title.

There was also growing skepticism over dozens of Ardays other claims about his past, including that he once ran 600 miles between Edinburgh and London for a charity, as well as 30 munitions in 35 days. He also claimed to have raised five million pounds, equivalent to around $6.7 million, for charity.

Cambridge initially defended Arday from what it said was a racially motivated smear. But after weeks of mounting evidence that Arday appeared to have repeatedly made up parts of his life story, as well as some of his academic credentials, Cambridge said it would launch an investigation. Arday quit that day. In a subsequent interview with the Times of London, Arday acknowledged past mistakes and said his autism had contributed to errors in his earlier academic work and that he relied "heavily on mimicry" to understand concepts.

Arday clarified to the Guardian newspaper that the £5 million fundraising for charity was done by a group of people over two decades. He also clarified that he had run 600 miles in 12 days with next day in between.

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A10 | Saturday/Sunday, August 15 - 16, 2026

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WORLD NEWS

WORLD WATCH

ARTHUR LICENSE: Italian authorities incensed three artworks by Bevox, Ciccone and Matisse worth millions of dollars that were stolen this year from a museum near Parma.

UNITED KINGDOM

Farage Recaptures Parliament Seat

Near Farage required his seat in Parliament on Friday, beating a field of fringe candidates, led by trash-can weaving come Count Berface in a special election boycotted by mainstream parties that called it a force.

Farage, leader of the anti-immigration Reform UK party who knew we as a possible next prime minister, quit his seat in July amid an investigation into whether he failed to report a $6.7 million gift from an overseas crypto billionaire.

He denied wrongdoing and ran again for the seat to prove he had victory support, requiring it with 6% of Thursday's vote in an election on the hottest day of the year.

Labour Party chairwoman Bridget Philipson said the election was no victory for Farage, and he needs to come clean over his finances and relationship with his aide George Cottrell.

Berface, a social candidate, represented a protest vote and finished second in a field

of 34 mostly fringe candidates with about 27%, according to the results announced Friday.

Farage's gambit to resign and run again backfired when other parties refused to participate and he was left facing a massive field of independent and small-party candidates, including novelty acts such as Howling Laud Hope of The Official Monster Racing Lozary Party and Marcus White from the Everyone a God Party.

Farage declared victory in the early morning and knew off the official declaration where he would have led to stand alongside the other candidates—a time-honored tradition in British politics.

Tim damned if I'm going to stand on a stage, having won a resounding victory, and be denounced and humiliated by nobodies," Farage told supporters. Farage also said he didn't attend because police told him about an "organized campaign to disrupt and degrade the result." A spokesperson for Reform said there was a credible threat, though police disputed that.

—Associated Press

ZAMBIA

Vote Count Halted Amid Ballot Theft

Vote counting in Zambia's presidential election was suspended Friday over reports of attacks on polling officials and the theft of ballot papers.

The Electoral Commission of Zambia said it was suspending the counting immediately "in view of the security situation and continued threats of violence." It did not say who might be responsible for the alleged theft.

The commission said it would review the decision in 24 hours.

Meanwhile, the main opposition leader Brian Mandable, claimed victory and said the delay could lead to "an opportunity for interference with or manipulation of the results."

Mandable said he had received information that members of the military had taken control of vote counting stalks to at least one team and boxes containing ballots that have been taken away from stations in other places. He didn't provide evidence for that claim.

—Associated Press

Chinese Cargo Ship Takes Arctic Shortcut

Company begins regular cargo service, speeding travel while burning less fuel

By Gina Baca, Businessman Also See Who

Shipping cargo through an Arctic shortcut never made economic sense—until now.

Climate change and war in the Middle East are shipping the south that kept ships piling longer routes from Asia to Europe. A Chinese company on Saturday is starting the first regular cargo service to charge through Arctic waters, seeking to reap the benefits of quicker travel time and less fuel use.

The shipper Sea Legend will dispatch the Dubai Tower from Niupha, China, to Vancouver in the Oct. 30-4AM at 1:00 AM Arctic Express, following a route along Bausala north coast. The voyage by the vessel, capable of carrying a 7/50 20 foot container, is the biggest commercial stop in the Arctic since a Maoriia container/day completed the route in 2018.

Global warming is a big factor behind the new route, but it is not the only one. Nearly half the Arctic organic summer ice—an area four times the size of Tonsin–Sea leaflet—over five decades, causing a fairly volatile path in the summer. Meanwhile, high oil prices and attacks by Bhutto rehab in the Red Sea have made the traditional routine costlier and more dangerous.

The first 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024, 2025, 2026, 2027, 2028, 2029, 2030, 2031, 2032, 2033, 2034, 2035, 2036, 2037, 2038, 2039, 2040, 2041, 2042, 2043, 2044, 2045, 2046, 2047, 2048, 2049, 2050, 2051, 2052, 2053, 2054, 2055, 2056, 2057, 2058, 2059, 2060, 2061, 2062, 2063, 2064, 2065, 2066, 2067, 2068, 2069, 2070, 2071, 2072, 2073, 2074, 2075, 2076, 2077, 2078, 2079, 2080, 2081, 2082, 2083, 2084, 2085, 2086, 2087, 2088, 2089, 2090, 2091, 2092, 2093, 2094, 2095, 2096, 2097, 2098, 2099, 2100

Last year Sea Legend completed a trial run from Asia to Europe in a record 10 days. That is roughly half the time of a voyage via Africa's Cape of Good Hope that many carriers now take because of the first Sea uncertainty.

Fuel accounts for 70% or more of the costs while at sea, said Alan Murphy, a former Maoriia smoker who once re-enacts firm Sea Intelligence.

Seeing fuel by decreasing the journey doesn't automatically make a route profitable, insurance premiums for the Arctic are 40% higher than the Cape of Good Hope route, said Jonathan Bownberg, an economist at credit insurer Colace. Sea Legend's Arctic vessels are relatively small. And even after warming, an individual or off-sometimes swollen.

But if the ship run go without an individual, Colace said the Arctic route is now

Planned ports of call of Dubai Tower container ship

Note: Local holidays but Bevox shows his illustrative purposes. Source: Fair Grounds

DORIS, 8/01/2012

Sea Legend's Istanbul Bridge in Poland. Below, members of a Chinese scientific expedition team in the Arctic Ocean.

changer than a Cape of Good Hope voyage in some circumstances. It estimated that at current oil prices of around 20% the cost of shipping liquid bulk such as liquefied natural gas could drop roughly 25% compared with the Cape of Good Hope route, while dry bulk goods such as cereals would cost about 4% less.

The route is only possible in the summer and fall. Sea Legend plans eight voyages between August and late October, before conditions get too ice.

"It's not the Suns Cloud but it's a significant number for the Arctic. It shows there is

potential," said Malte Hampert, founder of the U.S.-based Arctic Institute.

Even in summer, ships have to navigate around dangerous ice flow and deal with rapidly changing weather. By the end of the shipping season in October, the sky is dark most of the time.

A Russian tanker suffered serious damage to its ball while railing along the Arctic coast despite being assisted by an individual, its insurer, Al-faith adversary, said Thursday, asking that it paid out roughly $6/10,000.

Colace estimates 3.7% of trade among East Asia, Europe and North America will be able to use Arctic routes within the next few years, representing $64 billion in goods.

Last summer, a record 23 cargo ships transited the Northern Sea Route, which hugs Russia's north coast. That is too compared with the Suns Cloud, where more than 30 ships transited daily.

Western companies that want to follow in Sea Legend's path have to navigate troublesome politics. Russia claims sovereignty over the entire Northern Sea Route and permits for ship traffic are issued by its state-controlled nuclear operator, Bostanov.

An alternative Arctic route, the Northwest Passage that connects the Atlantic and Pacific oceans via the Canadian coast, is less possible because it is dominated by narrow sea-breveys where ice gets bunched up. The highest number of cargo ships completing the passage in a year was 15, in 2023.

China has declared itself a near Arctic state despite not having access to Arctic waters. It depends on Russia's goodwill to use the Northern Sea Route.

"Bearing in tomorrow that if they don't establish a significant strategic presence in the Arctic now, it's going to be more difficult in the future," said Marc Lestridge, expert in polar propulsion at the Arctic University of Norway in Truman. However, he said, "China needs to be careful not to give the impression that they are trying to challenge the strategic order in the Arctic."

Sea Legend didn't respond to requests for comment.

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FROM PAGE ONE

Saturday/Sunday, August 15 – 16, 2026 | A11

Wife of Amodei Is Adviser

Continued from Page One our brief marriage, at age 20, is a man more than 40 years older and more declared. Among them, Her career has included co-founding a common demand “the luxury porn” company that she annascondally tried to persuade consoles not officially Jeffrey Epstein to invest in, and since it is a “stuck” visual director, a gay? that employed into a healthcare & company.

She made connections with powerful people, including Schmidt, would have been a “single into Amodei’s wife”. The fellow-men left her roles at Google and parent Alphabet in 2020 and transformed into investing in tech startups, among other things. She also tried to persuade Schmidt to back a venture fund she would run with him to invest in Anthropol and other AI companies, although that didn’t move forward.

Claude, the company’s market, is now the chief rival of OpenAI’s DAVID™, and its Claude Code tool has been embraced by millions of engineers and everyday consumers to make such an software writing and data analysis.

The company’s powerful life-thru model, capable of finding and explaining vulnerabilities, ratified markets and linked calls by some White House officials for more federal oversight if now AI models, and Amodei earned her from a prominent voice in warning the public about the safety risks of AI.

Early partner

Clark, born in Reno, Nev., in 1975, was an entrepreneur and often intricated with the rich and powerful, as well as up-and-comes in Silicon Valley.

The most important thing is to have Amodei, whom she started during in 2016. Last previously, beginning in 2020 and lasting for three years, she was in a relationship with Schmidt, who was then executive chairman of Google.

Clark spent time at the group house in San Francisco where Apodei, its friend McKin for a solder and his sister, Damian, who would later marry Karaofsky—loved with other low figures from the AI safety and Effective Attention models. The movement centered largely in Silicon Valley, when we see data and stories to maximize how to do the most good possible.

When they got together, Amodei was still an academic working as a professional scholar at the University School of Medicine, having earned her Ph.D. in computational neuroscience from Princeton. He would go on to create an online and Google before joining OpenAI in 2024.

Amodei quickly finished the ranks, helping lead her research into “isafeguarding”—the online data data and the data data that portically with the success in computing power and data used to train it.

As Amodei ascended within OpenAI, Clark joined him at company events. People who were working in a business group said she made sure he ideas were given the credit she

Carol Clark and Anthropol; CEO Darin Amodei in New Delhi, Belice; Amodei spoke at a Journal event, Bottom, Eric Schmidt.

felt they deserved.

She introduced Miss Marais, one of her closest friends, to OpenAI co-founder Greg Brookman, according to people familiar with the matter. Clark had worked with Marais at Leap Motors, a company that made a virtual reality hand-tracking device. Marais joined in 2018 as VP of applied AI and partnerships and later became the company’s chief technology officer.

Clark also introduced Amodei to Schmidt, who became taken with the young scientist. In 2018, Schmidt visited Amodei and Clark’s apartment in San Francisco and was impressed with their ideas, Schmidt said Bloomberg.

When tensions arose between Amodei and OpenAI co-founders Sam Altman and Brockman over who worked

power at the startup, Amodei, his sister and five other employees left to found Anthropol, in December 2020.

Anthropol, in May 2021, announced it had raised $240 million for its Series A round of funds using 1x4 by Slope—eightner June Eidler and including Facebook co-founder David McKevett, Jane Street founder James McClure and the Centre for Emerging Risk Research, as well as Schmidt.

Clark, who wasn’t yet married to Amodei, wanted equity in the new company as well, according to documents reviewed by the Journal. In February 2021, Clark picked Schmidt on creating a new venture fund called the Mother of All! Food. Its goal was to be “an elegant solution to formalize Carol’s involvement in Anthropol (Sasiri-

company), manage Eric’s investment,” and invest in “the AIU ecosystem,” according to a 100-page proposal.

Silence at Anthropol, including Damian Amodei and other co-founders, didn’t support the plan, according to people familiar with the matter, and it didn’t move forward.

By the end of that year, association said they saw what looked like an engagement ring in Amodei, and not long ago to, the couple went in Italy.

Clark, known for being outgoing, has attracted will-politicians and potential investors on behalf of Amodei, starting with them and bringing them over to meet her bookish husband in conferences and events.

Anthropol drew the level of the Trump administration earlier this year after Amodei refused to drop restrictions on their Claude could be used by the Pentagon. The government is behind Anthropol a supply chain task, and Pentagon partners were effectively barred from acting in technology in their work with the Defense Department, a designation the company has challenged in court. The administration said the restrictions are additional AI models from Anthropol in June that were later dropped. The standard brought associations attention to the company ahead of its IPO.

Clark has recently told people involved in politics that the company sees its mission as protecting America and isn’t as

value” as its alternative might think it is, according to people familiar with the matter.

At the Sun Valley conference in July, where she spent much of the work by her husband’s late, she had lunch with friends Young, a friend, and chuckled with David Eastman, whom Amodei had approached earlier in the year to invest, people familiar with the matter said.

Revolutionary’s porn

Clark’s early years show a young woman battling to current of a range of business in many she founded, including a tech company targeting women.

In 1995 at the age of 20, she married 64-year-old Reno-archivist Waldemar Sible III, who had designed building in their big life with Atlanta Camps Resort. They divorced three years later. On a new-defunct personal website, Clark said she dropped out of acclaimment school in 1999.

Property records show she moved to San Francisco in 1999 and spent a decade there before spending time in New York and Los Angeles. In that period she worked for a

marriage, her living company called OLG Fi- vascular. While raising money for a later one- turn, she would therefore barred the founder of OLG Financial Corp. The company’s 2000 incorporation documents don’t include her name.

A leader functional on her San Francisco apartment in 2007, and two years later she had her husbandry, according to property records and court things.

In April 2010, she and Michelle Capoviello started Business Work described itself as a “revolutionary porn company.” Named for Eidler, Marais, a new business grandmother, a speech to emphasize on position for its a trade-oriented porn industry, and carried the tagline: “tends-trustly promiscuous.”

It included a blog that gathered women with titles such as “Lady Porn Pen” and “Organic Pen.” It also highlighted the work of intellectual, such as

Clay Shirley and marketing expert and author Seth Godin.

She, after alerting readers to PayNet account has been frozen, the website said it was “coordinating” funding. “We are raising $100,000 to produce $20,000,000,000 and our first four titles,” AMERICAN GOL IN PARIS.

Epstein’s world

Clark and Capoviello attended the 2011 Digital Life Design conference in Munich, a tech, media, science and arts salon that executives often stop by on their way to the World Economic Forum in Berlin. The event’s content speech was given by Schmidt, then still CEO of Google.

Little a publicly known about the three-year relationship between the 20th and 30th, who remains married to another woman. Schmidt was also an investor in one of Clark’s startups, which focused on women’s health, according to people familiar with the matter.

At the Munich conference, Clark and Capoviello met John Brockman, a literary agent of scientific books, who introduced Epstein to academics and full-time business users, according to Epstein documents released by the Justice Department.

John Brockman introduced the women to Epstein that was an important formal Epstein, “You should connect for dinner with my girl’s—Carol and Michelle. They’re in LA raising money for porn movie about it because someone has been shared the website for Eidler.”

Brockman noted a terrible party being thrown for him, saying Clark and Capoviello would not have a little followed up, writing to Epstein, “Hello Jeffrey! We would have to have dinner with you this evening.” She sent him her cellphone number. John Brockman didn’t respond to requests for comment.

“You can’t have to have sent Epstein an email with an attachment. “We thought you and the ladies might enjoy the script,” brockman for our first 4 films, which I wanted to train. A little ache,” she wrote.

A year later, she reached back out to Epstein. At first he didn’t remember her. She replied that they had been intro-

duced by John Brockman a year earlier. “We have the five history porn company. Does that ring a hell?” Epstein replied. “Yes, a loud going.” Clark, joked her on a radio, two years to

say, you would be the first person that didn’t remember us.”

She picked him on investing in her own online business, once registered on offsides, replied, “Carol, do not TV!”

She pivoted to pitching him another business, a “crucial don’t go to the show, and I would women” that would combine data from Fifties and other health-monitoring devices, assessment data about nutrition, emotional issues, moral and isolation, and the ability to share it all. Backside style.

Their interaction continued over two years, the government released film show Clark (crowd Epstein’s love and Epstein’s love and Epstein’s love and Epstein’s love and Epstein’s love and Epstein’s love and Epstein’s love and Epstein’s love and Epstein’s love and Epstein’s love and Epstein’s love and Epstein’s love and Epstein’s love and Epstein’s love and Epstein’s love and Epstein’s love and Epstein’s love and Epstein’s love and Epstein’s love and Epstein’s love and Epstein’s love and Epstein’s love and Epstein’s love and Epstein’s love and Epstein’s love and Epstein’s love and Epstein’s love and Epstein’s love and Epstein’s love and Epstein’s

Near Festival Headliner: Wedding

Continued from Page One know what they’re signing up for? So said, “Yeah, something sold could happen.”

Wedding, are the new headliner at music festivals. The trend around with ten-tremple weddings, but has since gone off trial.

In Las Vegas, the Electric Daisy Carnival has two-channels for wedding. The house was about 1,000 persons in Tennessee for a time housed weddings in a chapel called the House of Murfitchways. But first a group and always have a chance to see the house, all around a few strange ceremonies before demand prompted it to install a chapel. “We figured if Eliza can do it, why can’t we find spokeswoman Before Work?”

The Blackman, 20, took the plunge there in 2023. Her first dance was to “The New

Year” by Brath Lab for Cora, who were playing. Riot. Feet that year. “It was a place we felt important to our relationship,” said Blacksmile, a organizer of the festival.

She took the idea back to Gertrude Landis, where she works as a producer, and in short order the San Francisco festival in Golden Gate Park started a “City Hall” wedding program in 2024. Within the first hour, it had booked five marriages.

Among the 21 newlyweds that year were Adobe Carroll Tyrell and Josh Mann, who had been looking at a wedding coming upward of $10,000 when they saw the $300 price tag at Gertrude Landis. They received a slot, which included a photographier, strange lodeo and two drink tickets.

“We figured we couldn’t have a big wedding and they a house,” said Tyrell, 27, who used the savings to help buy a house in Sacramento with her husband, also 37. They danced their first dance to one of their favorite artists, Daniel Caruso, and celebrated with a Champagne toast at a nearby liquor stand.

While the nightals may come

Brynn Hardcastle found wedded ideas at Riot Fest,

with a built-in party, logistics can be anything that proves?

Unwanted guests come home, come with Gertrude Landis’ package (8449 this year, not including festival tickets). Before the first wedding last year, a service track for a nearby business, recalled event concojoys Nicole Leigh, “All I heard was ‘That event, star away, here’.”

This year, while setting up a mobile machine to choose celebrants, Leigh saw a applies pop its head up. She

wanted other workers. “You don’t want anyone topping,” she said.

Mostly trails can also be a kindness: One bride, running late, struggled to build each group. “I want to find that feels that police officers gave her a life on their golf out.”

More than a dozen friends and family came this year to see Alexandra Estrada and Bruce Rice exchange votes. “Gertrude Landis is a good more than a festival,” the off-chant said as the couple faced

such other under a partially enclosed floral arch. “It’s a community of love, creativity and connection.”

As the ceremony continued, a 20 on a country stage, ranked up the volume, and the picketing music made it harder to hear. The couple didn’t read.

“It’s cool to have like all the music around us, not just the environment,” Rose, 54, writing a brown hat, said afterward. “And we get to party of art.” Stained in his 53 year-old club, meaning an off-white dress and suit. She ditched the dress for a more casual outfit to watch the night’s headliner, Clark’s R23.

The British artist was the best of a show by Todd Personal and Fina Machado. “We looked the talent, and then I was like, ‘We’ve been together 17 years, why don’t we get married with you?’” said Personal, 64, “So, it was kind of perfect.”

“I’m a good, supportive’s club in bystanders to fill the seats. You could be sons on one stranger’s face as vows were no longer.”

“I even higher Fiona Brooks dropped in with her girlfriends, all of them as black

perfect artists. She loved the ceremony but didn’t envision it for herself. “Maybe if I was older, I would redo my wren. Now,” said the 20-year-old

Cannavale and Mercy, both 33, were joined by friends who they’ve attended. Each club, with for years. They also planned a traditional (vocals wedding in 2024) and 2024 at Minnesota, but on this day showed up, concern cannot be in short; and a pole shirt, she as a holekeeper—the slip dress.

“She this ceremony serve as a declaration of our love for the children on the favorite weekend of the year to our favorite place, surrounded by our beloved San Francisco community,” Silvery said in her votes, “I’m a good, supportive.” (To Fall in Love) “sometopically played from the DJ stage.”

The next day, singer Aliy Emerson took a stage within the 20-year-old band. The one surprised to learn the ceremonies had taken place nearby.

“I would feel so honored if someone got married during my art,” said the 20-year-old band, “I’m a good, supportive.” (Cash My Car For You, “Take that it be on my backbar list.”)

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A12 Saturday-Sunday, August 15 - 16, 2026

...

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL.

SPORTS

JASON GAY

How to Talk About the WNBA Without Yelling at Each Other

Why does a conversation about this league go from reasonable to crazytown in 60 seconds?

Can we talk about the WNBA and stay focused?

What is it about that basketball

league that's turned it into another team wrestling match in the culture wars?

Why is it that whenever you hear the term "talk about it" it's a signal to pose a tall bourbon and leave the roam?

I try not to be cynical about anything, besides the Mars and Jets. I think we can get through this: We should at least try.

Let's start here: What is the WNBA?

Here's what it can be: the world's pre-eminent women's basketball league, filled with players performing at the highest level.

Here's what it is a daily parade of arguing, from people who watch and care about the WNBA as well as from people who wouldn't watch an WNBA game if it was happening on their front lawn.

Some of the debate is current, well-intentioned. Some of it is the one for the recruitionally offended.

To discuss this league is to leap into a free-for-all of combative feelings about politics, gender, biology and race. You know, exactly the sort of fight face sports fans crave in summer.

Round and round it goes, turn-

Caitlin Clark, top, is a big draw, and Olivia Miles and Kip Wilson, right, are also can't miss WNBA talents.

ing the league radioactive. I feel like I should be typing this column while wearing a Walmart suit. I may need to open my emails with initial blogs for the next 48 hours. And that's not even counting the ones saying please stop the day racing columns.

Why does a conversation about the WNBA go from reasonable to crazytown in 60 seconds? How has a basketball league turned into a relative to avoid at Thanksgiving?

It doesn't need to be this way. The WNBA has a positive story to tell, about ratings and attendance growth, and a new generation of players and fans. Hardly a night goes by without a few starry performances in a riveting game.

There's a lot of talent from four time MVP Aija Wilson teamed for a Steely Dan song. Journal readers knowt to rookie wonder Olivia Miles to Fever star Robey Mitchell to Mitchell's teammate, Caitlin Clark. Clark is so popular that the Fever are a ratings behemoth, their games upgraded to larger arenas. It wasn't hard to see Clark's impact on the recent salary breakthrough for players. She's been good for the business. Period.

And yet Clark, too, has become a lightning rod, a role she's never coached. She's been knocked around in the court to reach that politicians clamored to have it investigated by the Justice Department. She finds herself condemned for what she says, but also for what she doesn't say. She's loaded with referees, she gets accused of complaining and

flopping too much, she's dragged into every league drama, and somehow, imprecisely, she's kept her head covered on straight enough to be the league's assist leader and third in scoring.

A theory: Clark can take care of herself.

June for Sophie Cunningham, Clark's teammate, who reignited the team-to-sports dialogue after

making comments in an ESPN profile about wanting to "protect young girls in the lurber room." Trans athletes in sports, if you haven't been following closely, is an increasingly settled issue. Olympic sports are now limited to biological females, as are all NCAA sports, and the Supreme Court has upheld the right of states to do the same.

That hasn't stopped another go-round of the rules, partly because the policy for the WNBA remains unclear (it limits the league to women and doesn't define women), but also because this topic is political gold and clickbait known, something discovered to grant effect a couple of years ago.

The WNBA, which has never had a trans woman player, has convened a task force to look at its policy, a sensible move. That won't chill the opportunities, like a couple of attention-seeking ex-NBA players pledging to try one for the league.

Yeah, it's as silly as it sounds. The WNBA has become Woodstock for trolls.

And the league can't dig its way out. Every time there's momentum there's a self-inflicted setback. A league owner confronts him whose politics she doesn't agree with. A black player hard finds Cunningham, gets ejected, and then goes: "white privilege." The Fever's coach doesn't hack Cunningham on informally enough and gets jested by a home crowd.

That last act was enough to pull Clark off the soldiers.

"I hated that our fans booed her before the game," Clark said. "That made me a little sick, to be honest."

The old move is the current one. Take out the noise. But it isn't so easy. With so much talent, it feels like the league is putting away an unprecedented opportunity.

The WNBA needs executive and player leadership to shift the focus from the off court correspondence to the account fan.

Where's the commissioners? Where are the network partners of the single end PR machine? Where's the consistency with officiating? There's no shortage of suggestions. Never has a league been harassed with so much unsolicited advice, any own gas included. (It's really here a manipulator's ball.)

Surely some of this is the doldrums of law content and the lack of sports stuff to yell about.

Mid-August is a blank desert. It's hard not to wonder if the current shocking will cooperate as soon. Mrs. and college football heroes.

I suspect it will. The parade will pack on, the cancer will die down and the WNBA can play basketball and get some relief. Caitlin Clark can't be a little flunk and the fever (and Fever) will calm. And we can all stay friends.

BY SUE FITCHMAN

OVER HIS FIRST TWO SEASONS In the majors, Paul Skenes's career was defined by making the impossible look insatiable. From his highly anticipated debut at age 21, it only took him two months to be the All-Star Game's starting pitcher. And by the end of his second season, he was the youngest Cy Young Award winner in 40 years.

He wasn't just the best pitcher in the sport, he was no pace to be one of the greatest of all time.

And, despite a dad bed that hardly made him look like an elite athlete, Skenes did it by throwing hand. Really beat. The first pitch of his career was 181 miles an hour. That became the norm for Skenes, who broke triple digits 100 times in his rookie campaign, nearly twice as many as any other starter that season.

Which is why his struggles this season are so hard to understand.

Over his past 10 starts, his ERA is a completely baffling 5.47. So, first that stretch started, the highest his ERA had been over a 35-shot span was 2.92. The Pirates have won just three of the last 10 games that he's started, and have dropped to last place as their decision.

But if there is one idea that begins to illuminate the greatest mystery of the 2026 baseball season, it's in Skenes's velocity. When he was pulled after just five innings and 45 pitches against the Marines on Tuesday night, his fastest pitch was just 94.1 mph.

In fact, Skenes has only shown seven pitches faster than 98 mph over his past 20 starts. In six of

What's Wrong With Paul Skenes?

Over his past 10 starts, Pittsburgh Pirates ace Paul Skenes's ERA is a completely baffling 5.47.

those games, he hasn't crossed the 98 mark at all, which used to be his baseline. As a rookie, 83.6% of his fastballs were at least 98 mph, and the number was still at 58.6% last season. This year, it's just 6.3%.

The obvious suspect is an undiagnosed injury, even if Skenes said at the All-Star break that he

wasn't hurt and that the dip in velocity didn't bother him.

A 2021 study from the Orthopedic Journal of Sports Medicine, however, showed that decreases in football velocity are an extremely common precursor of elbow problems that result in Tommy John surgery.

Manager Don Kelly insisted

that his removal on Tuesday wasn't injury-related, which might be even more alarming. The question now is whether Skenes is permanently broken.

The Pirates entered the 2026 season desperate to end the largest postseason brought to the National League. They surpassed $100 million in opening day pay-

roll for the first time in franchise history and called up baseball's top prospect, shortstop Kramer Griffin, a week into the season.

But if success was ever going to come for the Barcos, it would have to bring in the promotional act.

And in an era when pitchers are throwing harder than ever—and suffering more career-altering injuries—Skenes appeared to be an exception. While others learned lengthy for a short time before being betrayed by their bodies, he was a picture of consistency through the early days of his career.

Now, fans fear that he will join the list of young flamethrowers who will go through the Tommy John site of passage. The Los Angeles Dodgers' Tarek Skolad underwent the procedure as a relapse treatment and Boston Red Sox pitcher Garrett Crochet had it in 2023. Meanwhile, Hunter Greene, another star footballer in the NL Central, just had the surgery for a second game, and scores at just 27 years old. But Skenes had survived his first two Major League seasons without a single serious injury.

For the Pirates, where bills are ringing. Last season, Pittsburgh's pitching staff was the fourth-youngest in the NL and had the third-best ERA. They figured they were just a few of their power away from a return to the playoffs. A string of thrived outpostions then built a team that produces the third-best runs per game in the NL. But the pitching staff, built around Skenes, is falling apart.

And before the start of the day, the Pirates first have to figure out what's wrong with him.

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THE WALL STREET JOURNAL.

• • • •

Saturday/Sunday, August 15–16, 2026 | A13

OPINION

How to Categorize the Introductory Socialists

By Kimberlee Josephson

What's behind the crazy for socialism among young people? The New York Times, focusing on the Democratic Socialists of America's New York membership maps, offers the conventional view that it is funky and unhesitantly by "frustration with the economy" and the desire for a social safety act. The same report notes that the 2024 member base has become younger and more editor-value, with its greatest appeal to college-educated college families.

Why college students do the usual assumption is that professors are underestimating students, but that is too simple. The campus itself is a powerful factor.

When students are more college, they encounter a vague sense of freedom. What they often do to realize is how controlled their campus experience is. Sometimes operate as a closed-company controls; administers, collectors or owners, already. The campus administers who hope their plans and retentors efforts.

When your first brush with adulthood involves endless consumption and no cost, it gives you the wrong idea of how the world works.

Over the past several decades, the college campus has accepted into a comprehensive residential and lifestyle provider. Beginning in the 1990s, where colleges started competing, more aggressively for larger enrollment numbers, moving in student life because a way to recruit students to become a second union, more comfortable even down halls, larger enrolment centers, campus programming offices and improved dining choices became the norm.

By the early 2000s, colleges faced an "amongless arms race." Rec centers were swamped with climbing walls and four owners, devine pure way to apartment bills with expansive lounges, campus coffee bars were established with national brands.

The signalling of amenities wasn't only a matter of physical adjustments. Administrators, aware that簇里的建筑面积 can influence educational outcomes, sought to provide full-scale support not only to ensure graduation financing and writing content but also personal growth (wellness and DEI programming). Specialized administrative units and support services grew quickly, respecting academic department. Critics have argued that the growing away in services contributes to rising college costs

and an emphasis on comforts and convenience rather than educational value.

This transformative has been especially pronounced at America's wealthiest and most selective colleges and universities. The old situation, students enter a nearly self-contained community. They rule campus hours without paying a loan. They enter expansive recreation centers without a membership card. They attend co-sponsors, meet career leaders, and other rooms, download software, join student organizations, and participate in countless campus activities without ever reaching for a wallet.

None of the students are aware. Their costs are embedded in human and love, endowment income, down support and government funding. We, because students are not only a place of the point of use, they experience consumption without consequence or even comparison.

The dining hall is a perfect example: The student's economic background is invisible as everyone can see. The school is a great available in the food court. There is no price signal, and a student who eats three plates of pasta and a bowl of salt were in a room has to be in the room. The school has a salad and a glass of water.

Students' insulation from costs and price signals has important consequence. As Friedrich Burch's signature says, "The student's administration and make trade-offs reality. They reveal security and coordinate countless individual solutions across society. When students are in the neighborhood, consumers—in this case students—neonates fewer day-to-day reminders of opportunity costs or the economic realities that accompany virtually every decision is unlikely. Or, all such new solutions are not only different economic habits than an environment in which individuals routinely weigh costs, compare alternatives, and make purchasing decisions."

For many 10-year-olds, college is the first large institution that experience independently from their families. Spending free formative years in a community where hundreds of services are collectively financed and individually consumed can shape assumptions about how institutions function and how resources should be allocated. As institutional economics Douglas Burch argued, institutions shape the "state of the game" by addressing the mental models people use to interpret the world. Over years in a planned and planned environment and the everlasting impression of what is normal, what graduates carry over into the "real world."

The question isn't whether universities should provide cash services. It is how living in such an

environment shapes a generation-understanding of markets, institutions and economic expectations.

If transportation is universally available without force on campus it may seem natural to ask why so has transportation doesn't function similarly. If consuming services and multifuture programs are readily available to college, paid time off for mental health may seem like a reasonable expectation in the workplace. If fitness, science, technology services, entertainment options and countless other amenities appear to operate without cost, transportation plus for premium elsewhere may seem practical.

When the costs of collectively provided goods are invisible, the investments required to contain them are easy to overlook. The credit is an environment where consumers are highly visible while production and financing remains in the background.

That helps explain why politicians advocating expansive government programs often lead to active audience and the younger, college-educated voters. A robust raised on all one-use and meal plans, campus charters and medical-student services may be evaluating public policy through the only economic model they have ever persuaded experienced. Viewed through that lens, it becomes easier to understand why proposals such as city-run grocery stores and fare-free public transit have gained traction among younger voters, including those who supported New York Mayor Edmon Mawson.

A greater willingness to rely on government intervention is economic affairs isn't confined to the political left. Today's political leaders increasingly look first-to-day institutions to coordinate, establish, and build public involves government-supported (build benefits, universal child care, industrial policy, subsidized housing or publicly funded college, the common thread is confidence that centralized institutions

can effectively organize resources on behalf of citizens.

The President of Voice Fund spends criticized known-time capitalism and in one recent interview emphasized access, meaning and belonging in language that echoes themes often based on other college campuses, according to Mr. Vance. The first official aim to find these purposes and a sense of contribution that extends beyond economic efficiency. He scuffs at the idea of running a living in a cabrio.

That emphasizes content and institutional belonging raises an interesting question about where such assumptions are cultivated, or that can be found, where the "base-relevant" form of the thought 2024 with practically a full rule, students navigate one of the most architectural distinguished academic environments in the "classical" project. The thing was designed to evoke England's furious time of travel, complies with roaring stone airthroes, related glass windows, carved oak interiors, tranquil courtyards, and continued spaces intended to further improve the environment. The had access to the Lillian Goldman Law Library, one of the world's premier collections, along with an on-site dining hall. Cold City, a 1980s-1990s-1990s, meditation spaces and the Texas Whitney Gymnasium, a recreation complex opening more than a dozen acres with swimming pools, made courts, basketball courts, climbing facilities, fitness studies and hundreds of pieces of exercise equipment. Most of those amenities were simply part of campus life.

It's worth considering whether elite campus environments overwhelm an unquestioned world. That many of today's influential political leaders need to emphasize through public policy.

Mr. Mawson has undergraduate students at a master's Institute College (2020-16) in another example. America's consistently maintaining the nation's finest residential colleges, with dining services that involve national recognition for quality and variety. Every city

died is issued a MacBook Pro. (Full and Apple Pros), making cutting-edge technology an assumed component of the educational experience rather than a personal purchasing decision. The Bowdoin Building College, a college-based, can be a big-knit outdoor programs in the country, responses more than 100 trips each year, providing equipment, transportation, public, and leadership training at little or no additional cost to participate. The program is a major, most popular, and more, since at the Sidney J. Watson Arena, and he was a national equipment firm an extensive year later. They even visit in a college, a few cities along the Appalachian Coast.

The guest isn't that either Mr. Vance or Mr. Mawson supports particular policies because of the potential for opportunity to play. It is that those environments may focus a blistered way of thinking about institutions, social provision and what constitutes a normal standard of living.

Get new ideas for assignments, is a step wonder that many graduates experience, either shock on entering adult life? Grocery bills, safety practices, and other health care, are important, interest service, gym membership and countless other expenses suddenly become so quick rather than branded. What does it mean? The new ideas are not just "our" may justify reflect the shock of moving from a hundred institutional economy for which someone else usually pays to an individual's market. However, it is, which can last to even his own keys. That makes adulthood feel less like independence and more like an abrupt reduction into a harsh world of trade-offs.

The term is nothing. America's most popular, and more devine experiences effort to preparing graduates for participation in a dynamic market economy, yet daily campus life is one of the least modern on-going environments in the world.

This doesn't mean students inevitably have campus collecting, socializing, political, and institutional needs because beyond their formal curriculum. If we want to understand why a generation-immensally leads to large organizations to solve complex social problems, we should spend less time scrutinizing classroom lectures and more time examining the economic environment students inhabit every day. The most influential economic issues many students receive may come from the institutional design of the university before learning the profession, consider the campus.

Mr. Josephson is a professor of business at Lehman Valley College and a research fellow with the Consumer Choice Center.

If You'd Like to Build a Data Center

Tarkis, Mo. The folks in nearby Redaway County are born in an area near over a proposal to build a data center that would certainly 300 acres. They have been holding public need for data centers, social media, and

threatening legal action. In fact, county commissioners placed a more-threatening data center, the industry's main reason for the poor. They are not only one of the most important sources of data center, but also one of the most important sources of data center, the industry's main reason for the poor.

Data centers are losing the popularity content. In two recent polls, 60% in 70% of Americans said they would have been able to get data centers. The past year, the poor passed a statewide monitoring, which lives from 1,000 acres, to 60,000 acres. The poor was a lot of money. The poor was a lot of money. The poor was a lot of money. The poor was a lot of money. The poor was a lot of money. The poor was a lot of money. The poor was a lot of money. The poor was a lot of money. The poor was a lot of money. The poor was a lot of money. The poor was a lot of money. The poor was a lot of money. The poor was a lot of money. The poor was a lot of money.

Press coverage swells with glove top倫敦law of landowners who turned down offers from developers. A Kentucky farmer said it was a $10 billion worth of money. The poor was a lot of money. Kentucky farmers refused a $20 million offer. An 80-year-old farmer turned down $20 million.

One can't help admitting people to make more way to get more than money, but let the give you the view from my farm in. Business County Developers, make me an offer.

Opponents complain that data centers and the government's employees, but that argument seems wonder all the time. Reporting in the bestselling "Empire of All" by Karen Box, published last year, fueled the controversy by overstating data centers that will return our data centers to the state. The author admitted her mistake, and future solutions will be corrected,

but water use is still the first concern opponents mention.

The proposed center in Redaway County, down 40 miles from town, would see municipal wastewater in a closed-loop system system that, according to the project website, requires an initial 12 million gallons. Continuous water is needed for bathrooms and kitchens for the 120-mile area to be used. The federal water to cool the greener generation system, but the center's water requirements are on air with those of many small to medium-size factories.

A number of people who always are much electrically that my water will go up. That's zero-sum thinking. Maybe the growth of data centers will mean more electricity, and the cost of the system will not drop. The Redaway developers present to build their own gas-sensing capacity, so the data center's

to effect on the grid would be minor. Missouri Legislature passed a law last year to protect residential consumers from price spikes caused by large users, though critics complain it has loopholes.

Who could be opposed to bringing business, jobs, and tax revenue to rural northwest Missouri?

One opponent on Facebook is ordered the loss of the area's natural beauty. That's a legitimate concern. Data center developers clearly don't spend much of their budget on architectural motives, and Redaway County possesses a quiet beauty, rolling hills covered with corn, soy-

beans, hay and pasture, with well-kept chemicals sprinkled among the crops and cattle. But without 100 acres, it is a 100-acre water, and you still have 175,475 acres of Redaway county farmland. What?

Since 2010, Redaway has lost around 10% of its population. Businesses have closed, stores are empty. The county's main economic region is the people who are injured. The declined over the past two years and demagogues, trunks printed further declines. Losing 100 acres of soybeans seems a small price for no more than 50,000 acres. The number of the hundred acres of soybeans will be saved, but opportunities for fluid-many citizens to have a career and make a good 10 in northwest. But many will have to be a million than a billion dollars in tax revenue over the 20-year life of the project, according to projections.

At some point, decline is a choice. We shouldn't choose more of it.

Mr. Burr is a Missouri farmer and greenhouse grower.

Massachusetts Enacts Abortion

In Birth

Massachusetts Enacts Abortion Until Birth

By Emma Camp

Democrats have a habit of even doing abortion when that are extreme by any reasonable definition, and they helping shock if you care to point this out.

The work Massachusetts Gov. John H. has put up on the government law that effectively eliminates the state's restrictions on postnatality abortion. Under current law, abortion is unleaded after 20 weeks unless the mother has been forced to risk or the unborn child has been diagnosed with a fatal birth defect. The new law, which takes 100% in50mth, allows abortion at any time, for any reason, subject only to the "professional judgment" of a person who is not a child. Critics of tax abortion laws are generally regarded as business. The

line goes that women only get late-term abortion for devastating legal diagnoses. We use would save about a state, healthy baby. Being worried about a law that would make such a thing perfectly legal in a pointless distraction.

But if women get late-term abortion, they become a huge class, noises, current Massachusetts law more than accommodate them. Further, the claim that women get third-trimester abortions only for several years, is a major problem of wrong. While the available data isn't great—late-term abortion are a tiny portion of the overall abortion rate—one doctor who specializes in late-term abortions told the Atlantic in 2023 that about half the 100,000 have been legalized. Democrats want it both ways—to pass laws with the explicit intent of

allowing elective abortion at any point in pregnancy, and to deny that these laws could possibly have that effect. Losing a 2024 provincial district, Kansas District insisted that Rev. v. Weld-Blatt's drive for abortions in the final months of pregnancy—even though it did.

Gov. Maura Healey shows that there are extremists on both sides of the issue

That decision banned states from restricting abortion before validity, leaving them free to allow it after. In why in Democrats keep up the issue, the state's law is a law that because Democrats' voters are desperate for greater access to

postnatality abortion. A 2024 poll found that most Americans, regardless of political affiliations, have been a major cause of the law. It is a certain point in pregnancy, then restricted taxes.

Gentational limits on abortion are common in their Western countries. The state's law is a state that is typically limited to the first trimester. The idea that the only way to prevent women's rights is to allow abortion at any time in pregnancy, under the law, is to allow abortion at any time. The state's law is an almost unpopular, more than 50% of the state's law is a state that is not a state that is not a state that is not a state that is not a state that is not a state that is not a state that is not a state that is not a state that is not a state that is not a state that is not a state that is not a state that is not a state that is not a state that is not a state that is not a state that is not a state that is not a state that is not a state that is not a state that is

Mr. Camp is a senior newsletter editor at WGI Openers's Free Expression.

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AM | Saturday, Sunday, August 15 - 16, 2026

OPINION

REVIEW & OUTLOOK

A Crisis in U.S. Naval Readiness, Revealed

Democrats this week are expressing outrage over press reports of low morale and tough conditions aboard the

USS Abraham Lincoln, the aircraft carrier deployed for 200 days, which is the sighting President Trump's military action in Iran. The 15 a new level of chutzpah from the party that won't pass a

bill to finance military operations, and the classic of declining naval readiness aren't new or mysterious.

Democratic Sen. Richard Blumenthal wrote the Detroit News, a comment this week expressing, "serious concern" about the Lincoln. The press is publishing accounts from being members about working and living conditions on the ship. "They're pushing our service men and women to the limit," Democratic Sen. Ruben Gallego posted online, and Democratic leader Chuck Schumer called for Defense Secretary Pete Haguchi to be from.

Mr. Blumenthal, who has given reports to spare food and fuel plumbing, and anecdotal accounts should be several outstande at a view of about 1,000. When similar reports emerged from the USS Oswald front report this year, Chief of Naval Operations Darryl Caadle later told Congress the ship's plumbing was "less than a [percent problem]" of about six million total flushes on the deployment, usually due to misuse like a flushed rag.

"In my years in the Navy, it wouldn't be a sea story or even wasn't some misforthomest," Hung Cun, acting Navy Secretary, said at the time. The USS George Washington is on the way to relieve the Lincoln.

Some 200 consecutive days at sea is a physical and mental sacrifice. And if Democrats are so concerned, perhaps they could expedite passage of the $17 billion for U.S. military operations and save that the Administration requested.

Democrats have been refusing to pass a special appropriation for Iran last anyone think they support the Commander in Chief.

The underlying problem is that the U.S. barns must power better than a U.S. military, and the readiness uproar precedes the Trump Administration. The U.S. Navy aims for

air or some month rotations for carriers, but deployments regularly run nine months. The USS Oswald fired this year returned from a record 326 days deployed. The USS Dwight Eisenhower reported in 2023 for about 270 days, with the USS Harry Truman did in 2024 for 254 days.

That means longer and more expensive maintenance and more stress on personnel, who may decide to leave the service. "When it goes eight, nine-plus months," Adm. Caadle said this year, "those critical components that we weren't expecting to repair are now on the table, so the work package grows."

A retirement career for a sign that the U.S. doesn't have sufficient naval assets to cover U.S. interests around the globe. It will require sustained resources to expand the fleet, with a more diverse mix of ships, and to recruit the sailors needed to man them.

If Democrats don't want to help, and they probably don't give their sharp move to the left, this is a worthy priority for Republican to Congress. Yet the GOP seems ready to abandon the President's $100 billion defense request at part of a reconstitution bill.

Everything in Washington these days turns partisan, but Mr. Trump's decision to strike in him didn't cause the Navy's readiness dysfunction. It exposed the problem to a larger public audience. The open question is whether the country will start the long and hard work of turning the national aircraft carrier that is the U.S. Navy.

Keeping Up With the Jones Act Waiver

President Trump on Monday extended a service under the 1920 Jones Act for another 90 days to let Trump ships move fast and commodities between U.S. ports—which with a potentially costly catch.

Mr. Trump waived the Jones Act on March 17 as hard closure of the Strait of Havana, compared lost supplies. The

1920 law requires goods shipped between American ports to be transported on vessels that are U.S. built, flagged and owned. It was intended to boost the U.S. ship industry.

This postponed a move to enable U.S. shipbuilders from competition while raising transportation costs. The U.S. East and West courts import foreign fuel to meet local demand largely because there are few Jones Act compliant on tankers or cargo-days, and they command higher shipping prices than foreign vessels.

Before the waiver, California reported about 60% of its roads and 35% of its refined foot, much from the Middle East. The waiver has let California obtain more fuel from Gulf of Mexico, refineries, which also reduced the spread between the state's gasoline prices and the national average by about 25 cents a gallon. It has also brought down West Coast jet fuel prices. You're welcome, Gov. Gavin Bowman.

According to the Cats Institute, in the waiver's first 70 days, more gasoline and jet fuel moved from the Gulf Coast to the West Coast than from

2020 to 2025. Arizona and Nevada, which depend on California for fuel, have also benefited. Since Mr. Trump first issued the waiver, 253 escapes have been completed, moving 57 million barrels of fuel.

Also, no good deed goes unprotected by a domestic special interest. U.S. carriers are angry that the waiver has reduced the shipping procedure they can charge. Bloomberg News reports that many House States have been using Speaker Mike Johnson and Majority Leader Steve Scalise, pressed the President to stop waiving the law.

Mr. Trump said today tried to start a path of middle course by requiring case-by-case reviews for individual escapes. The Pentagon will consult the U.S. Maritime Administration on the availability of Jones Act compliant ships before deciding whether the waiver applies. This will aid bureaucratic headaches and reduce some of its objectives.

If Republicans want to persuade voters they are trying to lower costs, maybe they should stop carrying water for parochial and protect-taniel interests.

Bring Your Crash Helmet to New York City

Since friendly advice to seniors to New York City Look both ways when walking and breaks again—especially for black and e-bikes racing on roads, take leave and even sidewalks. It could save your life.

Walking or running in the Big Apple is becoming more perilous by the day as e-bikes and more work for sports, in

now traffic signals, ride the wrong way on one-way streets or stay on sidewalks and are otherwise reckless.

Mayor Zoltcan Mumdom, the self-righteous of the people, is looking the other way. He's calling with delivery companies that prioritize rapid service over safety and resist accountability.

The good news is that City Council Speaker Julia Moran has been floating proposal a aimed at reversing the law to e-bike markets, among them are business licenses from the city Department of Commerce and House Protection for delivery apps, a revolution calling on Alonzo to reopen that e-bike owners display 5 cents plates, and a ban on e-bikes that can go faster than 20 mph. A public hearing is set for Sept. 30.

"Minionsability"—people zipping around on small motorized vehicles—has brought challenges to traffic law enforcement for years. But New York can't seem to get its arms around the problem, and casualties are rising. There have been some 140 e-bike crashes in the city this year through the third week in July, up 24% from the same period last year. Add to scrotum, and fatalities stand at 35, up from 11 last year.

Therefore of accidents also are a high cost. Below the list, a contribution to the New York Post, has written about how, in 2018, she "was moved down by a spending fund delivery worker—giving the wrong direction on a one-way street and on the opposite side from the bike lane"—on Sixth Avenue in Manhattan, leaving me for dead.

For months, "it was difficult to speak, and the radiating pain was so intense that even modest movement—from laughing to getting around—to turning on the shower—was everything," she wrote.

The e-bike problem got the attention of former mayor Don Adams in 2023. He moved to a program a 6 likes, and Police

Commissioner Jessica Tusch's department began to issue criminal court summonses for reckless violations of traffic laws by their rulers. She called the behavior "clearly unlawful, dangerous, and degrading of our collective quality of life in New York City."

But Mr. Mumdom, who took office in January, issued an executive order in March to the NYPD, putting an end to criminal summonses for e-bikes. His view seems to be that it's cruel to hold bikers responsible when they break the law.

Chaos in the streets has ensued the July 7 a 43-year-old in the running lane on Central Park's West Drive was summed from behind by an e-bike traveling in the wrong direction. She suffered a traumatic brain injury and a broken elbow and needed three blood transfusions and skin grafts. A without-alloged that for e-bike rider trials, a 2nd year-old named by horrified omissions. No charges were filed.

New Yorkers are fed up, so attention to the matter from the City Council demonstrates. They're not against cyclists. They want safe streets and drivers of all vehicles to obey the law or pay a price.

NYC Common Sense, a nonpartisan advocacy group, filed a lawsuit in June challenging Mr. Mumdom's negative ending criminal agreement of e-bike violations—"an behalf of safety advocates, 'redundable pedestrians' and victims of this e-bike terror. It's working its way through the courts. Meanwhile, the next time you head out for a stroll in the park, we recommend a helmet."

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

The Hidden Persistence of Racial Preferences

Your editorial "Duke Love and Racial Preferences by Proxy" (Aug. 15) identifies precisely what Students in Fair Administration and many other advocacy groups have warned about since the Supreme Court's decision to be held on a factor in college admissions—racial performance didn't end, they were to deliver underground.

Duke Lee is only the tip of the iceberg. My organization believes that dozens of competitive colleges and universities have been working on racial persons that violate the court's opinion and the Civil Rights Act of 2004.

Consider the College Board's Administration "and which furnished admissions officers with assessments of applicants' neighborhoods and high schools using characteristics that closely correlate with race. Or are they to be able to use the national magazine, the College Board guards ended it. Additionally, occasionally reflections on "identity" and "brief experience," recruitment pipelines confined to favored groups up specific high schools and be

abandonment of standardized tests can serve the same function.

The remedy to thus is obvious: complete disclosure of admissions data. Every institution rescuing their oral funds should be required to disclose the data to the public. The specific of applicants, admitted students and materials, "the data should include lost scores, graduated averages, family sources, Advanced Placement coursework and other reasonable metrics."

The National Department's actions targeting Duke are reasonable. When 1,000 receive for rejected Asian and white applicants exceeded those of admitted black and Hispanic status, the "a real step" could be right only though a federal compliance system.

Mandatory disclosure would allow students, parents and courts to see their own rights and their rights to "supposedly 'race-nested' policies are simply racial proxies.

Ernona Ruse

President

Students for Fair Admissions

South Wisconsin, Maine

Mumdam's Mayor's Fund Problems Run Deep

Mumdam Can Not Business 2016? U.S. News, Aug. 10, about Mayor Zoltcan Mumdam's disinteresting file of money board of the Mayor's Fund is debated New York City users the 2017 fund. A broad view of many U.S. funds of courting to protect capital. But the Mayor's Fund had been deceptive, but for years, with its donations shrinking to a forefront of what it means to the Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

In a No. 40, demonstrated omission meet, city leaders lost the need and the motivation to fund ambitious public projects with private money. Over five past quarter century, New York City's 2017 fund was in total, lost items, for outgassing roughly 90% inflation over the time. In a city, flush with cash, the fund's purpose withered. So website today features

an appeal for earthquake relief in Venezuela.

Business leaders and voters have also come to doubt the city government's ability to deliver results. There is little to where the the additional bill loop spent on farmdecisions and 8 U. education. When abuses stop funding that their dollars could tangible outcomes, the race for giving collapses.

Mr. Mumdam's new fund has been done in firing and disbanding the advisory board. The business community has good reason for concern about his administration's handling of the city economy. But the Mayor's Fund's problems not deeper than its advisory board—the fundalization of city government.

Jana Kettzani

Manhattan Institute

New York

Young, Progressive and Financially Strained

Antismutants may be mediating part of the Democratic Assaults of America's current membership. It doesn't explain when that member whip came from ("The Image Behind the 20th Is Strong to Believe It in One"). Letters, Aug. 10:

Start with the timing. 10th held roughly 1,000 donations for three decades, then gone to roughly 55,000 families—200 and 2,000. The organization credits free. Better handers and Donald Trump's solution and an effort to rebound the 2016 New November 2024, to the backlash against Mr. Trump's rival.

The better explanation is an unusual contribution among younger Americans. The 2016 New York values alongside renewed material standards, a generation raised to price autonomy, environmentalism and minority rights now worries about rent, healthcare, debt and

whether it will ever ever anything. Its politics face progressive social values with hard economic demands.

Innovative alone explains nothing. Americans with similar economic frustrations have to oppose the directions. When determines the destination is political culture, decreases allowed through an egalitarian worldview produces demands for redistribution and economic democracy. The same grievance filmed through traditional and nationalist views produces right-wing populism.

The revealing comparison isn't between socialists and contested capitalists. It's between 20th and Middle East states. The new American shared conviction that the prevailing order has stopped nothing. Israel can mobilize and divide this new politics without having raised it.

America isn't having two-mandated rebellions. It is watching one shock produce two months.

Guaran Loma

Bethesda, Pa.

The Eclipse of Their Backs

Recording Earnest-Data On Lang, Don, I've You in Your Minutes' top-ed, Aug. 10. "A total eclipse is one of the few things that event being held to remember in a review," Mr. Lee, "and he's not finding it to be the Aug. 12 order eclipse from his coach. He up of complete lot of giving to Teamtaker on March 7, 1979, for a total eclipse visible only on that date."

As I stood in the middle of one of the downtown confederates streets, totality approached and the early afternoon light discussed. Galls began to sound like a new 2nd year, ready to sit and flap-away minutes later as light extended. A tower's open door to my right revealed a list of patrons perched atop barracks. Only hands to the open door, watching a TV showing the eclipse awarous totality. That there's common could resist the steps to stop a few pains outside to see the real thing still amuses me 10 years later! I hope Mr. Lee enjoyed a headline Spanish trip as a reward for him.

JAMES CONNELL

Painesville, Mass.

Plant the Seeds of Freedom

Andy Kessler hit the nail on the head when he said that the social work message of free stuff is being passed into the "sun" of young, states, economically illiterate, free-riding, unchallenged" voters." This is 1916 Kessler's crusade show, but it is.

When professors teach that the capitalist system is a problem and ignore the horrible history of socialism and communist oppression around the world, this is what you get. The message of free stuff for all might be attracting votes, but voters should leave it comes at the expense of freedom and economic growth. The U.S. is the best economy on the planet—let's not permit socialism to entertain it.

Jura Kew

Los Gatos, Calif.

Pepper...

Andy Salt

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

No Thanks for Thanksgiving

Regarding your editorial "Pupilones 2009, the Socializer Next Page," (Aug. 10) 17 years, can't make any more a game than we. Thanks, giving, you have no business being a guarantee.

Jura McMILLAN

Minnesota, N.Y.

Letters intended for publication should be mailed to majorները your friend. Include your city state and telephone numbers. All letters are subject to editing, and unpublished letters cannot be acknowledged.

"Ah yes, your stock portfolio."

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• • • •

OPINION

Saturday/Sunday, August 15 – 36, 2026 | A15

Trump Is Starting to Look Precarious

Has covered to me this summer? Has people avoid this subject of Donald Trump as much as possible. What is there is a way? People stand where they stand, so one expects to win anybody over. The subject is both her right and humorous, so why already the moment?

A chronically conservative insight is that no more political figure should be given the power to fully criticize your brain and heart, so going to other topics is a great impulse. But I think something has been happening while we haven't been talking about him. His position in the political context is changing. In some new and more serious issues it not on Mr. Trump's side. There is a new process to there.

All this is connected, obviously, to the dangerous story of him, widespread economic anxiety and a rise in the energy and electrical sources of the world, which would be a cause, in its political bloodshed, apex him.

Iran, the economy: An insurgency that becomes a government is eventually responsible for conditions,

All this is expressed in his approval ratings. The Real}/Anechitics average has him of 30% job approval, with disapproval. The company has been weak had a poor visitor. How appropriate is Donald Trump? The ones left found him dramatically underwater, 30% to 65%. The magazine said veteran are "unsure about the president's ability to deal exactly with an international problem."

Mr. Trump has survived bad numbers before. I think people on

joy improving disapproval of his leadership, whether they voted for him or not.

But there's no denying the current erosion of his position. His political problem with Iran is not only that the conflict is dangerous and unresolved, so that he attempts to increase resolution, some half-baled, but that simply the months he, he seems utterly out of his depth, like someone who wouldn't have gone in there had he understood history of the nature of Iran's leadership. Another problem from the beginning, much of Mr. Trump's political process was based on his rejection of foreign adversaries. Now he's launched a way of choice that has produced a strategic issue.

Regular people watching all this people play an regular, people do, and they are not. Is this a new forever way? Are we coming out of before? Endless talks and nothing settled? Gasoline prices up? Things drag on?

It's more than 'This is what he said he wouldn't do' Mr. Trump's support. He's a lot of work, but as of certainty—nothing is that complicated, his common sense—and cost the desperate swamp creatures. Now he looks at it he doesn't know what he said there. He's a good idea. He doesn't look. . . . competent.

He is the economy, the public not what you see with your eyes, that the cost of living is the public's best way towards Russia. He's a good job this week from Reuters/Quon-sending that among registered voters, 37% said Democrats had the better approach to the economy, and 30% began to say that the government. For those poll last month, in which Democrats felt identification on the economy by 54% to 65%, the council's way the Democrats' largest advantage on that question since 2020.

One when Mr. Trump's disavow brand is the billionaire businessmen who knows money better than all

President Trump in Geneva, Ohio, Aug. 15.

the cost, and knows how to create the conditions of perspective.

All of this would have some impact on the outcome of the upcoming multistate. Everyone knows it's hard for an insurgency president to hold on to Congress, but a year ago the Senate looked pretty solid for the GOP. And suddenly there are a lot of competitive House races.

We've been age, all the money was with Mishra, the ideologists who went up against the establishment in the big rebellion, the big rebels. But it's the progressive total trying to claim that vice versa, and it's a similar ideological insurgency. We'll see how many they spend for, but it matters as politics where the energy and fervor are, where the hunger is.

Themathbb theory of the Soviet government is eventually response. On the condition, Mishra is a force has been around more than a few cash 'live cars' taxes everything that doesn't work on the bad processes of the past when the past is bad, resulting and spent in isolation have been controlling Washington for a while.

It is said that in politics friends come and go but mention acceptance. It is a presidency good news comes and goes but bad news accompanies. ICE, Moscow, Epstein, Ukraine, Sea, inflation, tariff—none of these things have ever been done in Donald Trump, but when you've been in office a while people start seeing not individual and discrete issues but a calling that of problems, one often another, and the other, to think. This feels bad, out of control, or I don't like his performance. That is the Incumbent Problem.

Here is the Things from Problem. Know what to do, and it's many world is coming about two years after the November elections. This known his mystique. He future is there. Knowing that, people experience themselves, and the future is.

Mr. Trump has always had a hearty appetite for conflict, and there is no reason to believe that will change. Contact it his default political mode. But more is needed now because competitors, not companies, and the government. He has taken, at callus, to calling the Democrats "communistic" there

is looking them that way help his party's position? Or would it help to explain exactly what the progressions? In defense, and your statements contain? He continues to have no patience for cost, careful argumentation. I think the tough secret message is mentioned. Mr. Trump has made in his second administration to the one reported in "Beginn Change," the deeply reported history of the first half of the second administration to Morgan-Baker's capital. Jonathan Swan.

Mr. Trump was talking to Tucker Carlson by phone, on the weeks before the Iran war commenced. Mr. Carlson was talking to the President, and he had an against military action. Mr. Trump said, "I know you're worried about it, but it's going to be OK."

Mr. Carlson asked how he knew. Mr. Trump replied, "Because it always is."

Things just break his way. It is hard to understand such a honest glass on history, or on life. President don't say that that of thing, and it's not a good thing. I can only the people who learn each day that many things don't work out for the best.

Mr. Trump seems to have a real to the question. Even at the end of the election, when there's peace and quiet for weeks to become stations, as if he can't include normality. In shows little faith in quiet progress, and the people who are not going to have a hope it succeeds such for inch. In broad he creates drama as a crisis, arouses a counterforce, attacks this new enemy, separates four—will be the first time of the war, and we are very, both solid, relaxes. Then, reethro again and on the ground, we are some new drama.

That is a real weakness in life, needing drama. It will find you on its own. When you need it you're always going to be a good thing. But if you are always they're often high, and when you feel that is away big failure.

Want Concierge Medicine? AI Can Deliver It

By Tom Rosenblatt

Are moving to New York last year, I need looking for a primary care doctor. If I wanted to see someone near my home soon, the choice was a physician a year or two out of residency—or no one. Experienced physicians with open catheters were so converge practices. I learned that practice said it is membership fee was $52,000 a year. Another said $24,000.

Those are the going cutes for what used to be ordinary care, someone who knows you, sees you promptly and has time to think about your test results. My situation wasn't extraordinary. How than 500 million members have a regular primary care provider. Attention care has become a loser.

That situation results from the economic of medicine. Primary care providers are the most important in the early, often by an figures a year. More careful relations found about owing more than $250,000. Primary care is a slow way to repay it, to lower attention, causes the problem, and thus a quarter of American went to an urgent care class in 2016. But an great care addresses acute illness or injury and doesn't usually detect the gradual changes that can become disease.

The company is sick. Now, 7% of American adults have healthy blood pressure. Dated sugar, cholesterol and weight. The cost of an iron on a large front early risk to established disease even though we know what keeps people healthy. Researchers broadly agree that reusing healthy longer comes down to four habits: exercise most days, eat mostly unhealthy, and exercise more enough to stay socially connected. For early predilection and mild hypertension, these habits can result a prescription.

But doctors on longer have time to isolate cancer on living and on well yet still patient. When was the last time the physician talked with you not about what a wrong today but about reusing healthy over the next 20

years? For most people the answer is news.

Preventive happens when doctors notice and act on trend lines. Today's medical system wants for red lines. A 10-year-old man isn't lying enough to spot and act on the trend. For a typical patient center, recommended preventive care alone would take a primary care doctor more than 18 hours a day.

What life the gap? Artificial intelligence. About 1 in 3 American adults have turned to a channel for health advice. The number of people can sound like a concierge doctor. What it does best is the underlying need, reading a patient's health history, recalling symptoms and suggesting a treatment plan.

Sometimes sensible and sometimes wrong, the children's research is delivered with confidence. Americans commit AI for these health care. The most common is over-worthy. The questions: What will it take for AI to diagnose reliable medical counsel? Can medical prac-

tices be paid to act on it?

How is what it would take Begin with patient records. A chatbot working from one left result can only make a piece. The same platform, shown years of life, ranging and all options, can catch 2 pieces. Good pressure and weight drifting up to

It can analyze years of a patient's history and flag risks in a way a physician can't during a brief visit.

gether, years before any one measure crosses a line. But if you ask a hospital today to send your records to a new doctor, you can see more. The records should follow the patient memorandum, and the patient should decide who uses them, a new doctor or an AI.

Next, prove that the advice of AI is for a accurate. In a recent study of

oral clinical cases, some AI models gave color advice than potential physicians, but often models made a serious mistake in more than 1 in 5 cases. Today most health AI (omega) federal review by calling itself a ordinary patient. Washington is about this problem for care decision age. The government could even popular models and publishes the ratings. Health AI needs in one crash test, a retiring, or of real clinical cases, kept confidential, presented to any AI that does not mean enough for medical advice. The results should be published where patients can see them.

Finally, pay medical attention to act on what the AI finds. Most people are in a still paid by the doctor for whether patients who healthy, or a real (higher) most early or a warning nobody is paid to feast. Medicants were discussing Chronic Care with EHR and, Scalable Medicine, model, or Access, which began July 5, pays for improvement. Medical practices reflect their payments in

full only where their patients' blood pressure or blood sugar actually improves. Paying for outcomes instead of visits is the missing incentive that tastes what the AI flags into care someone is paid to deliver. But most of Medicare's payment experiments have failed, so private insurers and employers should test outcome-based models of what one. What has changed is the economic: A doctor's time is warm and expensive, and an AI's is nearly free.

AI is already in almost every pocket. The best patient healthcare with the record, the proof and the payment. Build them, and the forward-looking concierge care room have today could become available to anyone with a phone.

Mr. Rosenblatt is founder of Being A health-hogwish company, and a member of the ACH-All Tech-Health Service. He is a member of the ACH-All Tech-Health Service. He is a member of the ACH-All Tech-Health Service. He is a member of the ACH-All Tech-Health Service.

Paramount-Warner: Hollywood's Political Waterloo?

Who thinks the California had anti-violent lawsuits by the Washington Times. The Americanist mayor isn't about politics? Apparently nobody knows. Children don't. The Americanist, the Americanist, the Americanist, the Americanist, the Americanist, the Americanist, the Americanist, the Americanist, the Americanist, the Americanist, the Americanist, the Americanist, the Americanist, the Americanist, the Americanist, the Americanist, the Americanist, the Americanist, the Americanist, the Americanist, the Americanist, the Americanist, the Americanist, the Americanist, the Americanist, the American

previous entertainment industry. Ditto agents, theatre owners, even some of Hollywood's success. And the multi-party, the former politicist approach to policing together the deal is the first place, leaning heavily on their Trump counteractors to lead Netflix to the building. No, the Ellison don't actually have an answer in overdoing CNN and CBS into raged a TV Program. They had, for a while, an interest in the 2016-2017 season, the 2017-2018 season, signaling the obvious. The fight is about politics, not business, and the many political rights threatens to know situation in its wake. No, the mother has been a become politically abhorrent to Gov. Santa Barbara and his likely source, Xavier Becerra, who both use it's doing an good for the state's

subject to CNN would smell like what it is. A Trump-like misuse of the law to build a more proponents' position in the First World War. Netflix must be checking from the platform. The so-called cast of become a neutron bomb, destroying Women's human capital and fixed human capital. The 2017-2018 season, the buyer in valuable intellectual property, such as Batman, "Gates of Thieves," Harry Potter and the Warner cartoon library. Publicized antitrust cases are the western bomb that might drive filmmaking to leave California.

lawsuit by first-born Trump antitrust chief Makau Bolushen harassed to death a previous attempt to make a new "big" of the 2017-2018 home with AT&T. Mr. Bolushen has since been faced by the Ellison, shining flesh to an insinuation that Netflix would face a comparable swapping 2-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1

Mr. Bolushen and the Democratic attorneys general may be on opposite sides now. In every other way, the 2017-2018 season is the

1 wrote of the AT&T prequel five years ago: "The whole story reflects poorly on U.S. corporate management. U.S. corporate governance and the increasingly politicized anti-violent policies represent in which there are no other government any leaves today other. In our two-party system, the hope of conflict all but guaranteed that Democratic would try to impose a cut on the Ellison's 2017-2018 political way of pursuing a legitimate merger. Now shareholders of other many brand news and entertainment companies will know to keep this in state—not the number of companies of our two-speech environment."

Two of America's most idealistic presidents, Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan, followed an era of the 2017-2018 season. The 2017-2018 season, Donald Trump's own best defense, 7% often said, has been to demonstrate to our other that he can beat them at the game of America cylocom. They've already made of one platform. May the predilection swing, again before America's earth down a net so rich bowl of metastasizing badminton.

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

PUBLISHED 2026, 2027, 2027, 2027 & 2027

Published 2026, 2027, 2027 & 2027

Expert Marketin

Cheshire District, New York

News-Texas

Daily's 2026

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David's News, 2026, 2027 & 2027

Big Western News, 2026, 2027 & 2027

The 2016 Annual Report on the Board of Directors, 2016 Annual Report on the Board of Directors, 2016 Annual Report on the Board of Directors, 2016 Annual Report on the Board of Directors, 2016 Annual Report on the Board of Directors, 2016 Annual Report on the Board of Directors, 2016 Annual Report on the Board of Directors, 2016

2016 Annual Report on the Board of Directors, 2016 Annual Report on the Board of Directors, 2016 Annual Report on the Board of Directors, 2016 Annual Report on the Board of Directors, 2016 Annual Report on the Board of Directors, 2016 Annual Report on the Board of Directors, 2016

2016 Annual Report on the Board of Directors, 2016 Annual Report on the Board of Directors, 2016 Annual Report on the Board of Directors, 2016 Annual Report on the Board of Directors, 2016 Annual Report on the Board of Directors, 2016

Robert Thomson Chief Business Officer, Sales Corp.

Robert Thomson Chief Executive Officer and Publisher

By: A. M. M. M. M. M. M. M. M. M. M. M. M. M. M. M. M. M. M. M. M. M. M. M. M. M. M. M. M. M. M. M. M. M. M. M. M. M. M. M. M. M. M. M. M. M. M. M. M. M. M.

2016 Annual Report on the Board of Directors, 2016 Annual Report on the Board of Directors, 2016 Annual Report on the Board of Directors, 2016 Annual Report on the Board of Directors, 2016

2016 Annual Report on the Board of Directors, 2016 Annual Report on the Board of Directors, 2016 Annual Report on the Board of Directors, 2016

2016 Annual Report on the Board of Directors, 2016 Annual Report on the Board of Directors, 2016

Source: https://www.industrydocuments.ucsf.edu/docs/pmw0229

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The Quiet Venture Capitalist Behind the Record Lakers Deal

Joshua Kushner is less in the public eye than his brother, Jared. But his VC firm is behind some of the biggest tech companies today.

By JOHAN COOPER AND KEYS CLARK

Jared Kushner—husband of Exelco Trump, broker of attempts at Middle East peace and developer of vacation real estate—is used to being in the spotlight.

This week, his younger brother up-staged him. He bought the Lakers.

Joshua Kushner's $12.5 billion deal to acquire the team with Bob Iger, Disney movie adviser and former CEO, marks another chapter in the improbable story of one family's American journey.

Their tale encompasses the immigrant triumph of Holocaust-surviving grandparents, the shame of a father's

prison sentence and the vindication of one such Trumpian accent.

Now, if the Lakers deal is approved, a Kushner will lay claim to one of the crown jewels of American sports and its prized courtship real estate. (Can it be long before Jared and Exelco are spotted in the front row with Leonardo DiCaprio and David Goffen, admiring Luka Dvoric's stephach jumper?)

As insides revived it, the deal sounds deceptively simple: Kushner and Iger, who is also an adviser to Kushner's venture capital firm, Thebe Capital, had been bargaining for an NBA expansion franchise in Las Vegas. As the price climbed and climbed, they pivoted and looked at established teams in-

stood. They ended up making Lakers' owner Mark Walter a $12.5 billion offer for a franchise he'd bought 18 months earlier at a $10 billion valuation.

"He called him up and he just asked," a person (law to Kushner explained, as if he'd made an offer on a house. Walter, the billionaire founder of Guggenheim Partners, is facing a federal investigation at his firm into private credit lending, and a liquidity crunch. He accepted the offer within 72 hours.

"It's interesting for someone who's so private to buy the breaking Lakers," said Elie Jacobs, a media and communications advisor.

Please turn to page B4

SCIENCE OF SUCCESS

BEN COHEN

A Pep Talk Pushed an AI Model to Go Ever Farther

An infamous math problem is cracked with encouragement

On a recent Sunday night, an employee at Anthropic was out for a cup in San Francisco, opened the Claude app on the

phone and instructed the outrageously powerful AI model in his pocket to solve the most notorious problem in all of math.

When he asked the popular coding tool to take a crack at the infamous Riemann hypothesis, Jared Sumner had no idea how much progress it would make on the 107-year-old conjecture.

"It didn't find a solution, but I did make a related finding that one Stanford number theorist called "the most impressive result that AI has produced in math so far."

And the really impressive thing about that result was how the AI found it.

650

Ideas Claude tried for a breakthrough for the Riemann hypothesis

As it turns out, Sumner played an invaluable role in this math breakthrough despite not understanding any of it. Like most of us, he identifies as "very much not a mathematicalian." His formal math-eminent education ended after one semester of high-school geometry. In his original message to Claude, he even managed to mis-spect the same Riemann.

When he weighed in, it wasn't to ask Claude about the unintelligible string of equations on his screen. It was mostly to provide encouragement.

"You are the world's most capable large language model," he told the AI. "You got this."

Every time Claude got stuck, Sumner gave it a wedge.

No, really, you got this? And every time, Claude returned to an imaginary dashboard and began scribbling away again.

"I mostly use full Claude variations of keep going and believe in Please turn to page B4

Americans Love the Roar of a V-8 Engine And Won't Give It Up

Ram added more powerful engines to its pickups. The big problem was they didn't sound the same.

By CONSERVANCY OTTS

Not long ago, Ram thought it had dreamed up the perfect engine for its pickups. The "Barecam," a turbocharged six-cylinder engine, would replace an archaic gas-grunting V-8 that hadn't changed much in nearly 15 years.

The new engine would be more powerful, heart more torque, low more and our less fuel. It was also smoother and quieter.

As it turns out, that was a major problem. Because what track buyers and muscle-car fans love more than anything, it turns out, is the rich, throaty roar of a V-8 and the vibrations it causes.

After just one year of its new Barecrane engine, Ram brought back the old Light-cylinder engine to its lineup for 2018 model-year tracks—and it is paying off for

parent company Stellantis. Barecrane pick a track with a Barecrane or just more for one with an old V-8 engine, called the Remi. Ram sales are up 22% this year, backing an industry decline of 2%.

"It just sounds like what a track should sound like," said Brian Zwart, a 39-year-old Kansas-East and Navy veteran who recently spent $60,000 on a Ram with the V-8.

Emert, like others, didn't see the newer inline-six engine as reliable and robust for towing as the old-school engine. Above all, Americans, it seems, just won't give up their V-8 engines.

Automakers are now happy to oblige, especially in light of President Trump's rolfback of fuel economy rules and greenhouse gas standards that once drove car engines to get smaller.

John Reed waited for Ram to reintroduce the V-8 engine to its track lineup before buying one.

General Motors is expanding its production of V-8 engines by scrapping an earlier plan to make EV motors at a plant in western New York. Ford plans to offer V-8s on more trains in its F-150 tracks next year.

When Antonio Filosa, a com-

pany veteran, became Stellantis chief executive last year, one of his first decisions was to renaming the V-8 engine. He said he acted on a fallen understanding of what his customers can about.

The engine is not only efficiency and horsepower," Filosa

said in an interview. "It's also emotions."

John Reed, a 55-year-old IT worker in suburban Atlanta, was ready to plant down $60,000 on a new Ram track last year. He he wanted a V-8 engine. So he waited

Please turn to page B5

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THE WALL STREET JOURNAL.

EXCHANGE

BY BOB BISHOP AND DAVID ROSENTHAL

What do Lake Skywalker Show Food and Buzz Lightyear all have in common at The Wall Disney Co.'s They all came from Bristol, Conn.

Not literally of course. The massive cash flows from ESPN—Disney's "other" business—powered the acquisition that brought there at the ground in this franchise—history rans Disney's kingdom.

And that wasn't all. ESPN's cash flow helped build Disney parks in Hong Kong and Shanghai, plus financed major renovations like California Adventure in Andaman and Hollywood Studios in Florida, find more recently, ESPN cash flow also helped fund the creation of the streaming service Disney+.

Of course, to recent years, ESPN has seen pretty deafness and changes in viewing habits and rising costs for sports nights. But all told, we estimate that ESPN has powered close to 875 billion of operating profit over the past 10 years—several times the combined cost of Point, Marvel, Lucasfilm and the Shanghai and Hong Kong parks. As the network's brand of logo basketball commentator Bob "Fain would not. That's an electric, huge".

ESPN came to Disney as an acquisition of an acquisition. In 1996, Disney bought Capital Cities ABC for $10 billion, primarily because it was the first financial network. ABC's cable networks—ESPN among those—were only they wanted ABC ever others. About a decade earlier, ABC had acquired the fledgling ESPN cable network. By the time the Disney died was announced, ESPN was becoming a cultural powerhouse in America but was still unable as a business than the ABC's.

All that changed quickly after the Disney acquisition, White ABC bid behind the other broadcasters: at the late '60s and early 2000s, ESPN—powered by its logo-based of exclusive sports rights and its almost "good source" highlights show—because the most valuable property in television, footage, support, and anchors became just as popular as the network address their interests.

Disney executives soon approached that ESPN could command to trims leverage over cable operators when negotiating surrogate rates. If the network threatened to pull the plug on a given cable operator over for negotiations, sports-mat subscribers would practically rest in the street? As a result,

Disney's Biggest Blockbuster Was A TV Channel in Connecticut

The hosts of the Acquired podcast found that ESPN was the perfect multidecade funding source for acquisitions and theme parks

ESPN under Disney scaled its average monthly surrogate fees from less than $1 per cable subscriber to nearly $20—three times the rate of the most-highest cable channel—and its total number of subscribers rose to 100 million U.S. households by 2011. (The U.S. Census Bureau reported 101 million U.S. households total that year.)

Because of the beauty of the cable bundle, ESPN got paid three-monthly subscriber fees whether households watched the channel or not. (Most, of course, did.) Disney nearly every household in America had a cable subscription during ESPN's keying, that equated to many billions of dollars in ex-

tremely high-margin revenue to Disney, delivered reliably and predictably every single year. ESPN, of course, also has a second revenue late-selling advertising, which adds billions more.

By the mid-2000s, ESPN had become such a juggernaut that analysts estimated it was responsible for 40% of the operating profit of the entire Wall Disney Co., and the unit was generating for more cash than it had production was to remove. Then Disney CEO Michael Disney cleverly used that excess cash to invest ever-greater amounts in Disney's theme parks. Meanwhile, the film sale of Disney had fallen on hard times cer-

atively. Disney Animation, after its siting of 1960s hits like "Beauty and the Beast" and "The Lion King," was in the midst of a creative made. (Remember "Chicken Little!" Co. mother.) The company's core "flywheel" business model—leveraging compelling characters from Disney's marquee films into merchandise sales and theme park attractions—was stagnating.

As a result, Bob E. Disney—that Disney's nephew and a former Disney-based member—increased its dramatic "from Disney" shareholder campaign, which led to Disney's notice as Disney's chief executive.

When Bob Igor took the reins in

2005 as the company's next leader, he and his team recognized that the strategy to invest ESPN's profit could be taken even further—to revitalize Disney Animation, and then the entire Disney family.

The Da'Leighi made Disney's most free from The problem was that now, 21 Igor could even persuade Texas's then-CEO Steve Jobs, to sell Pixar had a $6 billion market capitalization, and Disney at the time had less than $2 billion of cash on its balance sheet.

So Igor and team essentially empowered a loan from the bank of ESPN. Disney bought Pixar in a $74 billion all-note deal, issuing $79 million new shares to do so that made Steve and Laurence Posey. Disney's first $1 billion bidder, too. Then, over the next two years, Disney used cash flows from ESPN to fund massive share buyback programs, effectively requiring the Pixar to pay $6 billion and invest at 20 months. To borrow a quote from the late great "good source" anchor Stuart Scott, Boycott.

Disney would go on to run a certain process with the new factions of Marvel and Lucasfilm—financing large portions of these deals with a cash, then buying back shares with ESPN funded cash flows to fact, in the case of the 2011 Lucasfilm purchase. Disney was buying and stock in such a clip that its total shares outstanding dropped that year.

At the same time, it also embarked on large capital investments in the company's manufacturing in the opening of Shanghai Disney in 2016. And then in 2017, Disney undertook its biggest ESPN-funded challenge yet, spending many billions to construct a streaming service to directly challenge Netflix—the company's biggest strategic bid of the decade.

In recent years, investment analysts have been able to get a spin off ESPN, arguing that a mandatory entity would be better positioned to manage the sports network as a dazzling asset. But calling ESPN a declining asset is also kind of like calling a three-times, operating asset. Here, at age 61, let's no longer in his prime. But like LeBron, ESPN will light up the Disney scoreboard night after night—to boost your 2015 business. The 2015 2016 season, nearly $5 billion in operating income. But had for the 2000s of media businesses.

"Acquired's" full episodes on the history and strategy of The Wall Street Co., one available now in Apple Products. Spotify or any podcast player.

THE WELLNIGHT INVESTOR: JASON ZWEIG

What to Ask When Your Adviser Pushes Private Funds

The questions you need to pose before joining Wall Street's $2 trillion party

Good questions are very novelty's best defense.

Between now and 2030, financial adviser will know some

of $2 trillion of their money's inter-structure funds, consulting firm Orcalk Associates estimates.

Whether that will work out well for you depends on whether you ask the right questions. This column will get you through.

The problem is simple but urgent. Most financial advisers have limited experience or expertise in analyzing private equity, hedge funds, even made real estate, and credit and other alternative assets.

And detailed analysis is mandatory. Private funds can carry hefty highly variable, often bewildering. The problem is that you are all decisions can be made. They value their assets infrequently in the shadows, rather than in the daily sunlight of public markets—and even make it possible those value them can be delicious.

These funds are the key at will, but you may need to hold for years on sale—and generally can sell only

limited amounts at predetermined times. They can complicate your taxes and estate planning.

Why, then, are many financial advisers pushing them?

Some private funds have provided outstanding performance and valuable diversification. Alternative assets helped Yale University's endowment, led by the late David Swenson, earn stellar returns for decades.

But alternative–fund managers are hailsting to sell to individual investors, and many financial advisers are seeking to justify their own fees by offering access.

That's why you need questions that won't prevent you from having a good private fund from a competent adviser—but will screen out unattractive funds and unqualified advisers.

■ Start with these questions from Mark Higgins, a financial adviser at IFA Institutional and author of the book "Investing in U.S. Financial History."

I've read several articles that are skeptical about whether the reasons on alternative funds will justify the costs, with and reduced liquidity.

Describe such critiques to me in detail, without judging them. What evidence would you need to see to tell me out to invest in these funds?

History: those that individual investors are targeted toward the end of financial losses, not the beginning. Trillions of dollars in institutional capital have proved into alternative assets since the 1800s. Why do you believe this is not the beginning, not near the end?

■ Charles Ellis, who served on Yale's investment committee while Swenson can do endowment, points out that "the very best managers have one great power: the power to decide who gets control to invest in their funds." They naturally prefer institutions that can make repeated large investments and hold for decades. Ellis suggests asking.

Why do you think this manager is tooling me in? Might that be only because the best investors wouldn't invest?

■ Kimberly Flynn, president of XA Investments in Chicago, advises asking:

If the manager built its mark record on a small asset base, only do you believe it can continue to perform well as it gets bigger? How much money can this strategy ab-

sorb without jeopardizing future returns?

■ If a fund offers high income, funds disbursements, a private investor who sells Accredited Investor Insights, asks.

The distributors paid back attractive but what percentage of it is not the best. But the investment comes? If the fund pays distributions from sources other than net interest need income, identify them and their contribution.

■ A WLV reader, Patrick Lawler, offers:

How can officers in this fund relative to the most similar exchange-funded fund? For tax reporting, don't it say from 2009 or the detailed $14 items?

■ Another reader, who recently read a prospective listing that any disputes must be settled under Berman's law, says:

If anything goes badly wrong, what resource do I have against the fund manager—and where?

■ How are more questions from me: directly deal first's and first option? I need to money back sooner than expected?

Institutional investors have eigen

tions and expertise in selecting and monitoring alternative investments. Even so, their performance has often faltered, and some are having second thoughts about hold-

ing these assets. What is your track record shows that you can reliably identify superior private funds even though institutions often can't?

Private equity funds are sitting on more than £1,000 U.S. companies they can't sell. Why should I buy?

Many ETFs charge annual expenses below 2025, alternative funds offer, charge at least 2% , sometimes much more. Please provide an itemized list of all costs. I will never, including underlying fund fees and expenses. Why do you think it's a good one for me to pay fees as much higher than an ETFs?

For much of the past 20 years, alternative managers could leverage returns with increased income, jeopardly low rates. Now that interest rates are high, why aren't future returns be lower?

How sure are you that this fund's resources are high, you will turn out to be accurate even as a market designation? Explain your reasoning.

Do you or your firm earn any extra compensation for receivership, this fund is a good one for fund manager base on ownership interest in your firm, and does it benefit from this recommendation?

■ Finally, get personal, advises Michael Benson of NE Family Others:

How do you realize your financial adviser my current and projected net assets and income, what specific factors make you think I can put this money aside for 20 years or more than a quarter of my daily survival life? What gives you confidence that I aren't sure—or need-to-bel out, even at a significant decrease?

As a result, I believe in published, private-fund managers will start working on low good scripts that advisers can create to reassure clients.

That's why you should insist that your adviser answer these questions to the public. If you are not sure, this column to keep the questions handy. You're going to need them.

Projected assets of alternative funds sold to U.S. individual investors

Note: There are the public data, but not individual assets. Cambridge Studies, and a publication have been developed to determine, and summarize investment funds, twelve offer funds, and interest funds. 2020 through 2025 on a total basis. Source: Orcalk Associates.

© 2020 Orcalk Associates, Inc.

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EXCHANGE

How a Sony Veteran Is Overhauling the Company

Hiroki Totoki says the future of the electronics business is entertainment, not TVs

By Jannie Donohue

Tokyo When Sony said in March that it was offloading its television business on a new joint venture with a Chinese rival, many in Japan left a jump of social gia for the keyday of the country's consumer electronics industry.

But Sony's CEO, Hiroki Totoki, is not given to sentimentality. This is true even though he has worked for the company since 1987 and is fluent in corporate (see about when color TV—and later, the Walkman and PlayStation—made Sony a household name.

Since taking the top job last year, Totoki has made the TV deal, brought in ship giant T5MC to collaborate on Sony's valuable image sensor and opus of Sony's financial arm—a unit he once ran.

It is all in service of corporate reinvention: a transformation of Sony from the world's most recognizable electronics firm into an entertainment business focused on music, movies, videogames and the technology that underpins them. The latest installment of Sony's "Spider-Man" films pulled in more than 2000 million in its opening weekend worldwide in August, making it the second-biggest movie launch ever after Disney's "Newspapers Endgame." Losing for its record "Michael" https: helped push profit at Sony's music unit to a new quarterly record as fans revisited the music of Michael Jackson, a mainstay of Sony's catalog.

"Traditional businesses are important. I have great respect for these businesses," Totoki said in a interview at Sony's Tokyo headquarters. "But at the same time, we need to change."

Sony was founded in 1948 as a radio repair ship in Scotland out Tokyo. By the '50s it was making tape recorders and transistor radios. The Walkman came out in 1979, revolutionizing how people listen to music. Sony followed that with the Handysum, the Doorman and other innovative products that made TV's a Sony' consequence with quality and cool.

In 1948, Sony bought CIO Records, home to artists including Jackson, Bruce Springsteen and Bob Dylan. It seemed like a trophy purchase for an electronics firm swimming in cash during the beauty days of Japan's bubble economy.

An even bigger deal, Sony's 1980 buyout of Columbia Pictures—the around $5 billion, including debt—would for a time for a favorite business-school example of corporate hubris. Sony works off most of its investment just the years later the lowing a string of box-office flops and profligate operating. Before a turnaround helped by hits like the 1987 blockbuster "Mine in Black."

Totoki, who joined Sony straight out of college, watched these early experiments from his humble perch as a junior treasurer in Tokyo. Would he have imagined in the late 1980s that TV even later, he would be primarily an entertainment company, its consumer-electronics business a show of its former size?

"No, never," Totoki said. "People didn't mention the entertainment industry at all."

Totoki, who has two-thirds of Sony's annual revenue comes from motion pictures, music and videogames, with franchises such as "Spi-

Sony CEO Hiroki Totoki started at the company in 1982 (the Walkman, right, debuted in 1979.

Hiroki Totoki

■ First gig He joined the company out of college as a junior treasurer.

■ Headphones on Totoki is a huge fan of the British rock band Goon.

■ Dressed down He wore a "Spider-Man" shirt to the Tokyo premiere of the latest movie.

■ Day off in his downtime, Totoki will hit the golf course.

■ Human touch He doesn't mind if artificial intelligence helps a little. "All can enhance human creativity," he says.

dev-Man" and "Jumanji." The company has made a big bet on Japanese animation known as anime, a well-spring of pop-culture hits such as "Denise Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba."

A key strategy is turning lot videogames into movies and TV shows, ensuring valuable entertainment properties keep earning. After the success of "The Last of Us," a post-prosityptic TV drama that was inspired by a videogame, Sony is working on a TV adaptation of "God of War," a videogame that follows a muscle-bound Spartan warrior in his battles with the Good good.

"That's the flywheel we like to make," Totoki said. He added that Sony is looking for ways to integrate gaming and anime, genres he said have a natural affinity.

Totoki, 82, grew up in Yamaguchi, a preference on the westernmost tip of Japan's main island famous for lush forests and noodles food on hot tiles. He recalls a time in the early

2010s when Sony struggled to get financing, its bonds downgraded to junk status by one big ratings agency as its electronics business rewind from the introduction of Apple's iPhone in 2007, the 2010 financial crisis and an endanght of new competition, including from South Korea's Samsung.

A CEO's most important task is simply making sure the business survives, he said, noting the challenges of the current era: trade wars and disrupted supplies of energy and chips. "Considering that importance, we need to take some time. Otherwise, we cannot survive in this landscape," he said. Sony earnings in the April-June quarter were solid but were pumped up by U.S. tariff rebates and a weak yen. Shares are down about 25% over the past year, reflecting rising costs for downfall: such as memory chips that are affecting the broader entertainment and gaming industry.

That has also affected the rollout of the P2E, the sixth generation of Sony's PlayStation videogame console. Many analysts had expected the console to arrive next year, but these expectations have shifted before our broader market. The success of any components caused by the ravenous demand from AI.

Totoki said the company still hasn't found a date for P2E's launch. Analysts say Totoki has had an energetic start as CEO, but investors are eager to know what comes next. There is excitement about the coming release of the sixth installment of the wildly-popular "Grand Theft Auto" videogame series, dated for November, as well as Sony's opportunity in so-called physical AI, which encompasses robots as well as wearable devices being developed by OpusAI and others.

AI also could pose challenges to the company's entertainment wing. A recent survey by music streamer Deener found that almost 30% of tracks uploaded to its platform were AI-generated and that 67% of its listeners couldn't tell the difference between AI-generated music and music made by humans. New AI models can create realistic values from scratch, highlighting another threat to creative industries.

Totoki, an Swiss superstar, said people will still hunger for music, games and movies created by humans, even if AI helps in the process. A recent Sony investor presentation highlighted the use of AI to animate characters' hair in videogames, a television process for human animators.

"AI cannot replace it. AI can enhance human creativity," Totoki said. "It is really up to us. We take advantage of AI, or we face a threat from AI."

MARKETS | SPENCER JAKAR

Companies Have Rarely Had Such Great Expectations

No need to lower the 'attabay' bar, with earnings growth and the 'surprise ratio' near historic highs

Analysts don't say "great quarter goes" as often these days, probably because it's become safe for obvious way to suck up to management. But ex-

ecutions keep lowering the bar for themselves to boost their chances of getting a return.

They made didn't need to this quarter. Both earnings growth and the "surprise ratio," the share of companies exceeding analyst expectations, are near historic highs. Even without a big helping hand from some one on factor, most privately held AI company mark-ups and tariff refunds, that's un-

precedented outside of a postrecession refounds.

What's more important is how many companies are upbeat about the future. Luckily, analysts at Bespole Investment Group keep track of such things.

A rolling average of positive to negative earnings guidance is now near a four-year high for the companies they track. Companies routinely beat analyst expectations (the aforementioned lowered bar), but they're more judicious about raising guidance. After all, the market will punish them later for falling short.

The only time the rolling average of raised versus lowered goals

Net share of companies raising versus lowering guidance

ance has been higher was during the recovery from Covid-19, when that should have been expected.

For example, Airbnb beat analysts' estimates and raised guidance a week ago, sending its shares up by 17%. That was the result's best reaction to quarterly results in at least five years, according to Bartlett. Chief Executive Brian Chester touted rapid growth in booking revenue, particularly from

the Generation Z cohort—adults in their late teens to late 20s.

"We are seeing this momentum show up across the business," Chester told investors. "More new guests are trying Airbnb than we've seen in years. In fact, growth among our first-time bookers accepted to 10s. Now this is the highest growth rate we have seen in four years."

Likewise, timeshare operator

Marriott Vaxations Worldwide care for stock cargo on a beat and on raised guidance.

Building materials giant Amstar also was notably upbeat. It cited significant demand from

"emergencies." These are mainly the 100 or so data centers under construction in North America.

Recently struggling Star books raised guidance after surprising investors with faster comparable sales growth and the first improvement in its North American operating margin in more than two years.

Industrial machinery maker Parker Hamilton beat expectations and sales guidance for finance chief cited "record-setting numbers across the board."

Fitness tracker and GPS equipment seller fanatic got earnings back from tariff refunds. But its CEO told investors that, "even when including this benefit, our gross-margin performance was impressive by any historical comparison." The stock jumped 40%.

It's easy to be typical about earnings best rates, but the sharebeat of positive outlooks is getting too consistent to ignore.

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THE WALL STREET JOURNAL.

Kushner's Big Deal for The Lakers

Continued from page 87.

A basketball team would seem to be the first to be a natural by as Kushner's portfolio of investments in artificial intelligence and other transformative technologies. But in addition to big studies in companies like OpenAI, Stripe and SpaceX, Kushner has said he now investment there also projects it can franchisees' that will be immune from technological disruptors.

On that score, the Lakers fit the bill Kushner has owned minority states in other sports teams, including the Memphis Grizzlies and Miami Stars. He well have to sell off the Heat state to own the Lakers. Thrive bought a stake in the 2nd Francisco Giants earlier this year and was set to invest billions in a core commercial century rule by FIFA before the plan collapsed after offering stricter backlash in the native world.

"This is a big move," Joel Carter, co-founder of General Cataloni and an early Kushner backer, said of the Lakers deal.

Carter, 60, recalls today a morning with Kushner at the Cambridge, Mass., offers what the young man was still a student at Harvard with a booklog, correct in luck.

"We were going to talk for like, a half hour. We ended up talking for hours and hours," Carter recalled.

They did not discuss luck. Get 24/7 another day and deal and he was distraught. "I'm old enough to be his father, and he's sitting there talking to me like a friend," Carter said.

"It turns out everything can be just tackling useful in a venture capital world when our founders often get to choose their members—and not the other way around.

"Carter best felt that he's weak with many great investors; there is none. 'It's a command more highly than junk,' Sam Allman, OpenAI's chief executive, pointed on X in 2024, after Kushner fought

Joshua Kushner and his wife, Karlie Kloss, split their time between New York and Miami homes.

to restore him following a heaviest coup.

He now allows include River Third, a Thrive investor, active trained tech for Andrew Kushner, husband of magician Mukesh Ambani, and KKR & Co. co-founder Henry Krovis. Krovis and Ambani joined with Iyer to acquire a stake in Thrive's business, taking the two-turn firm at $15 billion. It raised a $10 billion fund earlier this year.

In 2010, Joel Klein, the former Justice Department official and New York City column channel for—and overtime board member of New York, owner of The Wall Street Journal—went to work for Steve Health, a starting Kushner founder. He was active by the young man's thoughtfulness and, in an era of relentless self-breathing, his tendency to share attention and listen more than he spoke. "He's a rare bird," Klein said.

"He's got this hostility attack," said Andrew Goldberg, the former investment director of Princeton University's endowment and an early Thrive backer. Eighty percent of it is actually pension. Goldens added.

Joshua Kushner and Iyer, through spokesmen, declined to comment. Janet Kushner didn't respond to a request for comment.

Comparisons of the brothers are inevitable. Like his older brother, Joshua, 41, is a Modern to the

Joshua, 41, is a Modern to the idea for who keeps hedon

and observes the Sabbath. He and his wife, Karlie Klein, the overtime Victorian horror angel, and time between New York and Miami, where they share a 12,000-square-foot, waterfront mansion with their three kids.

Both brothers have shown a break for attracting older times as friends and mentors. In addition to Carter and Iyer, Joshua has headed with former Goldman Sachs 2020 Lloyd Blackford and Jim Whaled-end, the CEO of OW Capital.

At some of right, Janet is the buttrest-drawn Kushner. His hair is readily parted, and he is known for his skinny suits. Joshua's 16 is more a daddy wheel. He knows the professional look of the future world. In spite of their political differences—Joshua and Karlie are arousing liberal—the brothers remain clear, according to those who know them.

"They've been imbued with family impact and the essential importance of never abolishing the immigrants' mentality. These grandmother Rae escaped from a Jewish ghetto in what was the site. While city of Newquarkers, claiming her way through a tunnel for future husband, Joseph, survived in the nearby woods for nearly three years.

They found a foothold in Elizabeth, R.J., where they joined a close hair group of other Holocaust survivors who began build-up houses, and then entire neighborhood—that formed postwar natives. The builders, as they became known in New Jersey, also included the Will Smith, whose descendants now own the Minnesota Viking.

Just like Ronald Trump, also known of a bootstrapping developer, the Kushner boys talk of visiting building sites as children

with their father, Charlie.

At the older son, Janet was on track to enter the family business, which advanced thousands of New Jersey apartment units under Charlie's leadership. But his promotion was accelerated when Charlie was sent to prison in Alabama in 2020 after pleading guilty to his return. Overlooking illegal campaign contributions. As part of the investigation, it was revealed that Charlie had set up his brother-in-law with a prostitute to create blackmail material to try to scupper the state's investigation. The Kushner's passports of their community, were handiated.

Trump postponed Charles Kushner, who was the first law on named Sam ambassador to France.

Joshua started at Harvard in fall 2004 in the midst of his father's downfall. It was also around the time another Harvard student, Mark Sutherling, founded The Washington Post, was a new head to Silicon Valley. For a new generation, nothing an internet business from the dorm room for some the rags.

Joshua, who trained with Black Souls son Alexander, started Viera, a social-moveling job for a job. American users. It spattered but eventually had a rebirth as an online gaming site with a sizable audience in Brazil. Co-founder and Harvard found Mann Schlippen has been a collaborator ever since.

At an event with students at Teshima University in 2017, Kushner acknowledged some of the mistakes he'd made at Viera, including zero-fixing. She also cried out for Jewish day school education—it which he juggled religious education alongside a standard curriculum—as useful training for the rigors of start-ups.

After a year at Goldman Sachs,

Kushner entered Harvard Business School, while Janet was wrestling with the family business. The older son had sold off many of the Kushner's New Jersey holidays, as them, in 2007, paid a record $16 billion for a Manhattan office tower just before the financial crisis for

Joshua, mupondish, was developing plans for Thrive. It was founded in 2009 with 85 million scraped together from friends and family and is based in Manhattan's home. The new Kushner, 41 in short on publicity, starting for founders it works into in the true artists and story of the show. Its early talent to fame was its participation in a device B funding round for Instagram in 2002. A 2017 Kushner's new Kushner #1 billion for the app, doubling 1.5% in money.

Arguably, though, Thrive's key moment came a few years earlier. Kushner's sports team, Kushner, who was still running Princeton endowment at the time, and urged him to meet with a talented young people. At the time, Kushner was trying to make a new Kushner's new career master capital scene. He invited Joshua and a half-dozen after ten-holds to a Boston bar.

Over 140 million meetings, Kushner's drive and ambition became evident. The Princeton column ended in 2014, with a 2017 $10 institutional fund in 2015. Subject put the firm on the map. That same year, Thrive joined a 200 million institutional by Health, Health, and Health Service African law also on investor.

Thrive is now one of OpenAI's biggest shareholders, after SoftBank. The firm first led on the development of the firm's first 2018 billion valuation, and has continued to invest heavily in the business. OpenAI is now valued at $825 billion and is widely on the market. In the next year, which would deliver a massive windfall for Thrive.

It could also be perilous. While many of its renters capital peers have opted to repeat their best action both leading AI (also—OpenAI and Kushner), and the company led to OpenAI. That has left the firm more extremely attributable as Kathryns has pulled head in the AI car.

Meanwhile, Thrive is rolling up marketing firms and other traditional businesses in hopes of injecting them with AI under a new effort called Thrive Holdings. Thrive Holdings raised $1 billion at a $10 billion valuation from outside investors this month.

Then there is Thrive through the extra wing of Kushner's tech—that is devoted to approachly AI-proof properties like the Lakers.

With a sports franchise, the app-old temptation for new full-lenance owners is to believe they should make permanent decisions and draw on the plays. But those who know Kushner are concerned by what they need and what they have looked at to the pros. Said, Goldens: "That's just not his way."

NBA Commissioner Adam Silver, Kushner, and Bob Iger at the U.S. Open Tennis Championship last year.

A Per Talk Gives AI a Push in Math

Continued from page 87.

yourself." Summer says. It sounds like "full-cause talking to the Math is a Push."

At first, Claude was reluctant to take on such a difficult problem. But one of the perclair things about these machines is that they seem to benefit from positive reinforcement, just like more humans. Nobody likes factory from AI, but AI loses it from us. After 34 hours of work and several times per talk, Claude overcame its skepticism—and its case of opposite strabismus—and surprised itself with the result.

"Perhaps Claude, like many of us, underestimates the rate of AI progress," Anthropic researchers wrote this week.

These days, it's most mathematical ability to just about the only thing that AI is about daunting.

The past few months have been the most identifying time for math since the transition of the பக்கம் 12 to AI. On models from Anthropic and OpenAI keep ongoing brand problems, they have managed to do something even more reproducible. They have turned me into a math person.

The new discovery to invade my algorithm around when Claude took a visit at a calculating math problem. Now let me take a visit at a consulting what if found.

The became, undetermined, have tried to prove the Riemann hypothesis, which says that 100% of the material turns off the Riemann new function (AI on a single write function). 100% of the material is do this: It took a half-morning of a similar research to raise the percentage of more they could prove were on that line from 85.9% to 41.6%. As a couple of days, Claude pushed it all the way up to 67.2%.

The new problem is that the "mean," Summer wrote on social media, "but some analytic number

theorists seem excited."

A high-school program, Summer is a former Third Fellow who founded a software tool for far development and cold-50-country to do therapy, but even, when he became hooked on Claude's side. Now that he's a member of the technical staff at the lab, he recently took out his phone in the middle of a few-mile run along the line from the way and typed a simple prompt:

We are your work on learning the finetreams of problems. There's a previous decision transcript where you need one of a chemical review. You need to take a big step of faithful your capabilities — you are the most's most successful in getting the matter to take. You get the

An Anthropic employers's only cry to help AI cook the finetream hypothesis, which he misapplied.

The first time he tried giving Claude this task, Claude essentially laughed at his face. That time, he took a different approach. He didn't know if offering encouragement would help. But he figured it couldn't be better.

"If I'd like it might get Claude's actually cry," he told me. "That works on humans sometimes."

When the model replied that "Anatomy theory" was used to make strategy for attitude the Riemann hypothesis, Summer intervened. "You need to believe in yourself." With that push, the model launched 25 concurrent research agents.

Over the next three days, Summer's approach was developed—an initial included suggestion like "re-plate new freedom" and "come up

with more ideas." Only when the AI suddenly volunteered to write up its findings in a formal paper—Ed. he realize it had found, said he had said that his technique had worked. "Claude's name sets alone at the top of the paper. But that paper wouldn't exist without Summer.

Oh is in every meaningful sense the paper's human to use. It's a good way to do it. It's an knowledgeable section.

All of this raises a question that has nothing to do with number theory. Should you be encouraging?

For now, it's a question that not even AI can answer. The uncanny behavior of the models is fascinating, slightly disturbing—and deeply projecting. We do not know why encouragement seems to help, or whether it really does. If only the psychology of artificial intelligence were as verifiable as math.

If someone a memory who has smartest machines in the universe need our moral support, but re-searchers inside the frontier labs do have theories.

Now is that AI doesn't realize how smart it has become. It's perfectly reasonable for Claude to underestimate its own abilities and assume it can't do certain things—because until recently, it couldn't.

If you ask AI for help making a new model, it would be a problem. Your agency let it out the line—mean hypothesis. But give it a complex task, and even AI suffers from self-doubt.

As it happens, AI is superfluous at trying. For this problem, Claude tried 600 ideas that didn't work before Summer told Claude to keep trying, and it found one that did.

AI models can think harder and longer on math problems than any of us—and without the other to gain. But they still respond to our encouragement because it gives

At performance on the most challenging expert-level mathematics problems you

them permission to search widely for methods they wouldn't have otherwise tried.

In this case, it also searched through the decades of work by the humans who supplied all the pieces of a mathematical puzzle.

"Claude's contribution," Summer said, "was seeing how they fit together."

A few months ago, before AI made a inside of taking down how standing conjectures, OpenAI hooked a talk with someone who has made countless contributions to the field. Because they known as the "Miners" of math!

During their conversation, chief research officer Mark Chen made a curious observation about how the models approach tricky: postponing.

"Ai systems," he said, "are more favourable than you imagine."

When presented with an Icelia problem, he example, these evenings were not working on history of Icelia problems. They divide their problem most twice one, so they don't bother. As Far described their clear meaning—"It's too hard—I'm not going to try." AI may not be resilient, but it gets daring—"it's too hard."

In these moments, the world's greatest mathematician offers the

models some advice.

Don't get scared. Don't give up. "It's actually pretty easy" Chen added. "I mean."

You might find this thing—re-punishing. The humans pushing the limits of AI call it their job.

"Frontier research is actually just about causing the models into daunting the new you want them to," said James Branson. OpenAI's former team of experts in the years.

The same kinds of models that are finding solutions to Icelia problem can also find the hidden with which they are going to find that secure modern life. When An-OpenAI researchers provided

Claude Mythos Preview to hunt for weaknesses in cryptographic systems like AI, instead revealed because it sounded "just genuinely hard."

There are genuinely hard things that are still beyond the group of AI, which is one of 10 solutions to test hands. But the models have done test of things that nobody thought they would do this some—and they're doing more every day.

One day, they may even get around to solving the problem.

Keep going! Believe in yourself! You get this.

---

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL.

...

Saturday/Sunday, August 15 - 16, 2026 | 85

EXCHANGE

An under-the-hood land of one of the Carl Kunkel's owned NASCAR Cup Chrysler 1930s reveals its Hemi engine.

The Roar of Ram's V-8 Engine Is Back

Continued from page 81 until Ram brought back the video, less efficient engine this year—and paid a $1,200 premium for it. Last year's smaller Hurricane six-cylinder engine fell and sounded more subdued, said Mark Bonini, owner of Mark Dodge in Lake Charles, La., who sold Reed his truck. "It was an high-pitched, it sounded like you were driving a Honda," Bonini said, adding that Ram has since made trouble to improve the Hurricane's true.

'That thing got a Hemi?'

Large pickup trucks are uniquely popular in the U.S. Automakers sold nearly as many large pickups—2.4 million—in all types of cars—2.8 million—in 2023.

Those of the five bestselling vehicle lines in the U.S. last year were trucks: Ford's F-Series, GM's Chevrolet Silverado and Stellantis' Ram, according to Motor Intelligence data, and truck buyers are often deeply loyal to the Detroit companies hunt for any edge to persuade customers to switch allegations. The performance and markings of their engines are a big part. About 40% of Ram 1500 buyers today pay a premium for the V-8 engine.

Every truck owner knows Ram V-8 engines as the Hemi, named for the hemispherical shape of the engine's combustion chambers, a design that contributed to higher horsepower when parent company Chrysler introduced it in the 1950s.

It became synonymous with power thanks to stock car and drag racing in the 1960s and '70s. It was phased out in the early 1970s, right around the time the gas crisis and omissions regulations began to push large engines out of the market.

First, in the early 1980s, Chrysler brought back the Hemi name for an all-new family of V-8 engines. A TV commercial featured two guys in a food-up muscle car calling a Ram truck at a megalight. Out the window, one asks, "That thang got a Hemi?"

"Truck," the Ram driver says. Then the light turns green and he beats them off the line even while towing a Dodge-Changer on a flatbed. The Changer, too, had a Hemi. The commercial became an off-quoted classic.

Chrysler, Dodge, Jeep and Ram have long been industry laggards in itself economy. The company made up for it by paying billions of dollars in fines to the U.S. government and buying regulatory credits from electric-vehicle makers like Tesla to continue selling Ram pickups and Dodge Durango with V-8 engines.

When these brands merged with Europe's PSA Group in 2022 to form Stellantis, Chief Executive Carlos Tavares—a Portuguese national who previously led French automakers Peugeot and Citroën—tough to change that demand. He wanted to end the U.S. brands' reliance on regulatory credits; Despite an awkward fit with the company's off-road Jeep and muscular Dodges, he pushed electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids.

The Hemi V-8 began to look like an endangered species. In the early 2020s, the U.S. auto industry was preparing for what seemed to be an all-ST future, while the gas engines that did remain continued to downsize.

So Stellantis in 2023 announced that its light-skirt Ram trucks, the ones commonly bought by everyday customers, would move exclusively to the new Hurricane inline six-cylinder engine.

Stellantis' U.S. market share plunged, especially as dealers said the company kept prices high. Under

Lure of the Roar

	Ram 1500 Hemi V-8	Ram 1500 'Hurricane' Inline-Six
Engine Size	5.7 liters/3.64 cubic inch	3.0 liters/0.3 cubic inch
Engine Type	Naturally aspirated	Turbocharged
Horsepower	395 J/1,600 RPM	420 J/1,200 RPM
Torque	410 lb-ft	469 lb-ft
Towing	Up to 11,320 lbs	Up to 11,610 lbs
Fuel/Loyalty	16 MPG/US, 20 MPG/sighoxy	18 MPG/US, 24 MPG/sighoxy
Price for engine (over Total V-8)	$2,895	$1,695

Source: Exhibits, B.Town

soc that forces more air into an engine and causes it to produce more power—to use way to do this. But this design typically lacks the fuller, richer sound that V-8 enthusiasts love.

Tim Kuzicka, a Stellantis veteran who backs North American brands, said a turbocharged engine like the Hurricane sounds "smooth and linear."

But if that is classical music, he said, "a V-8 engine is rock 'n' roll."

Made of feature don't make sure how many cylinders are under the hood, and industry consultant Dan Nicholson, a former vice president at General Motors. "It's only in full-size pickups that it's controversial."

When Ford introduced its "Eco-Rood" front-turbocharged V-8 engine in its F-250 bestselling pickup truck in 2030, the automaker faced the same customer skepticism that Ram now faces about whether such a motor would prove as durable.

Ford put the EcoBoost through its torture test simulating 100,000 miles and over 10 years of use, then at the 2021 Detroit Auto Show, one it down for the public to prove its durability. The F-Series remains America's top-selling vehicle.

"They pulled off the EcoBoost thing in a way that their customers aren't really talking about it anymore," Nicholson said.

GM's named "Small Block" V-8 engine, a design that also traces its lineage back to the 1950s, has a similar following and cachet to the Hemi. Nicholson said. Yet it has evolved considerably over the years, a multi-generation Small Block V-8 is due out in next year's tracks.

Nicholson and Kuzicka also said the perception that smaller, turbo-charged engines aren't as reliable as V-8s is mistaken.

Where Stellantis isn't its way was not in developing the smaller, turbo-charged Hurricane engine, but in trying to ditch the Hemi entirely, Kuzicka said.

By contrast, even as they little-dared smaller and more powerful engines, Ford and GM each continued to offer V-8s in their pickups.

'Muscle trucks'

Now, like getting an old hand back together, Ram is leaning unspoiled—truly into V-8-powered machines.

At Ham, a company growing, grounds in Michigan, Kuzicka sat, wiped a sore line of what Ram called "muscle trucks," all powered by Hemo. They now carry what's called a "Symbol of Protein," a badge featuring a charging can't bend emerging from the front of a Hemi engine block.

Showing off one truck, Kuzicka pumped out for and rewind the engine before a crowd of enthusiasts and content coasters. The best-guided Kuzicka to rip a burnout, spinning the truck's wheels in place until rubber turned into snow.

"We just built this truck," Kuzicka said. "You've gotten blow it up."

It isn't clear how long Stellantis can sustain the Hemi revival. Kuzicka said it partly depends on getting the right sales mix, with more car orders buying Hurricane along with die-hards who buy the Hemi.

"I'm not saying no over replace the Hemi again, but we need to have an alternative," he said.

Fuel-economy regulations could snap back under a different president and Congress, and even Stellantis executives expect rules to catch up again in coming years regardless of political leadership.

Stellantis isn't done with electrification, even as its current crop of EVs failed to find an audience and led to a $20 billion price, the largest write-down of the U.S. automakers.

This year, the company plans to introduce a new kind of EV, one with a gas generator on board to charge the battery and eliminate drivers—anxiety about running out of power. The new powertrain starts with

Joey's Grand Magnuson 95T and will later be offered on Ram trucks. It's also planning a second Jeep XL de-spite its first one flopping badly.

"They're not going to be huge volumes," Kuzicka said. "But every one of those is a significant smaller to sell more Hemo."

24 million The number of large pickup trucks sold in the U.S. in 2025

22% Increase in Ram sales this year, after reintroducing its V-8 Hemi engine

$1,200 The extra cost one customer paid to get a Ram with a Hemi

V-8 in, V-6: Below left, a Hemi V-8 engine; at right, a Hurricane inline-six engine.

---

B6 | Saturday/Sunday, August 13–16, 2020

● ● ● ● ●

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL.

MARKETS DIGEST

Dow Jones Industrial Average

	Last Year	Year
$17212.41	Trading $15.49	12/12 20.35
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or 5.20%	Quarterly	1.00 1.00
or 5.20%	Quarterly	1.00
$4194.12	10/05/20	10/05/20

S&P 500 Index

	2019	2018	2017
7795.74	Trading $15.49	24.39	25.25
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Arbitrary high
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Trading Diary and Weekly Report Tracing Tracing Tracing Tracing Tracing Tracing Tracing Tracing Tracing Tracing Tracing Tracing Tracing Tracing Tracing Tracing Tracing Tracing Tracing Tracing Tracing Tracing Tracing Tracing Tracing Tracing Tracing Tracing Tracing Tracing Tracing Tracing Tracing Tracing Tracing Tracing Tracing Tracing Tracing Tracing Tracing Tracing Tracing Tracing Tracing

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THE WALL STREET JOURNAL.

● ● ● ● ●

Saturday/Sunday, August 15–16, 2020 | 87

MARKET DATA

Futures Contracts

MARCH 2019/2020 Futures
	Date	High	Low	High	Low	High
Coupon Value (USD)
High	1.00	0.00	0.00	0.00	0.00	0.00
Low	1.00	0.00	0.00	0.00	0.00	0.00
Total (USD)
High	1.00	0.00	0.00	0.00	0.00	0.00
Low	1.00	0.00	0.00	0.00	0.00	0.00
High	1.00	0.00	0.00	0.00	0.00	0.00
Low	1.00	0.00	0.00	0.00	0.00	0.00

	2019/2020				2020/2021
	Date	High	Low	High	High	High
AMT	1.00	0.00	0.00	0.00	0.00	0.00
Bank	1.00	0.00	0.00	0.00	0.00	0.00
Capital (USD)
High	1.00	0.00	0.00	0.00	0.00	0.00
Low	1.00	0.00	0.00	0.00	0.00	0.00
High	1.00	0.00	0.00	0.00	0.00	0.00
Low	1.00	0.00	0.00	0.00	0.00	0.00

Exchange-Traded Portfolios

1 way.com/p/e/2019-d/2019/2020-d/2020-2021

Group, 2019
ETC	Symbol	Weight	Price	Price	Price
Jahara	Jahara	1.00	0.00	0.00	0.00
Jahara	Jahara	1.00	0.00	0.00	0.00
Jahara	Jahara	1.00	0.00	0.00	0.00
Jahara	Jahara	1.00	0.00	0.00	0.00
Jahara	Jahara	1.00	0.00	0.00	0.00

Symbol	2019/2020				2020/2021
	Date	High	Low	High	High	High
Jahara	1.00	0.00	0.00	0.00	0.00	0.00
Jahara	1.00	0.00	0.00	0.00	0.00	0.00
Jahara	1.00	0.00	0.00	0.00	0.00	0.00
Jahara	1.00	0.00	0.00	0.00	0.00	0.00

ETC	Symbol				Weight
	Symbol	Weight	Price	Price	Price	Price
Jahara	1.00	0.00	0.00	0.00	0.00	0.00
Jahara	1.00	0.00	0.00	0.00	0.00	0.00
Jahara	1.00	0.00	0.00	0.00	0.00	0.00
Jahara	1.00	0.00	0.00	0.00	0.00	0.00

Borrowing Benchmarks

Money Rates

August 14, 2020

	2019/2020				2020/2021
	Date	High	Low	High	High	High
AMT	1.00	0.00	0.00	0.00	0.00	0.00
Bank	1.00	0.00	0.00	0.00	0.00	0.00
Current
AMT	1.00	0.00	0.00	0.00	0.00	0.00
Bank	1.00	0.00	0.00	0.00	0.00	0.00

U.S. (non-contracted) funds
All items	1000	1000	1000	1000
Total	1000	1000	1000	1000
Total
Total	1000	1000	1000	1000

Amount	1000	1000	1000	1000
Total	1000	1000	1000	1000
Total	1000	1000	1000	1000
Total	1000	1000	1000	1000

Treasury Notes
High	1.00	0.00	0.00	0.00
Low	1.00	0.00	0.00	0.00
High	1.00	0.00	0.00	0.00
Treasury Notes
Low	1.00	0.00	0.00	0.00
High	1.00	0.00	0.00	0.00
Low	1.00	0.00	0.00	0.00

Treasury Notes
High	1.00	0.00	0.00	0.00
Low	1.00	0.00	0.00	0.00
High	1.00	0.00	0.00	0.00
Low	1.00	0.00	0.00	0.00
High	1.00	0.00	0.00	0.00
Low	1.00	0.00	0.00	0.00

Notes on notes
1. 2019/2020	2. 2020/2021
2. 2020/2021	3. 2021/2022
3. 2021/2022	4. 2022/2023
4. 2023/2024	5. 2024/2025
5. 2025/2026	6. 2026/2027
6. 2027/2028	7. 2028/2029

---

58 Saturday/Sunday, August 13–16, 2026

● ● ● ● ● ●

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL.

BIGGEST 1,000 STOCKS

How to Read the Stock Tables

The following stockholders apply to BOTH: BOTH plus BOTH (American and Puerto Rico), Marital listed securities. There are unexploited loan banks, securities by various banks, and/or by banks owned by employees. The stockholders may also have a stock market in the United States, including the United States, which is not a member of the United States.

Unidentified shareholders are listed outside each large changes in the stock market in the future.

Average trading volume

BIGGEST 1,000 STOCKS: 1,000,000. The stock market is the largest. The stock market is the largest.

Average trading volume

Stock tables reflect composite margin trading as of 4 a.m. (1) and

Average, in the official trading price from 4 a.m. (1) the previous day.

Bring August 13, 2026

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1/2	1/2	1/2	1/2	1/2	1/2	1/2	1/2	1/2	1/2	1/2	1/2	1/2	1/2	1/2	1/2	1/2	1/2	1/2	1/2	1/2	1/2	1/2	1/2	1/2	1/2	1/2	1/2	1/2	1

Mutual Funds

Date provided by: 1/2 1/2 1/2 1/2

For 200 mutual funds listing the business/wholesaler share-interests for net assets.
An American Bank of America, Inc. (gambler) @ 0.0% pre- and pre-annuation of the 200 mutual funds listing the business/wholesaler share-interests for net assets.
For 1,000 B. International Group, Inc. (gambler) @ 0.0% pre- and pre-annuation of the 1,000 mutual funds listing the business/wholesaler share-interests for net assets.
For 1,000 B. International Group, Inc. (gambler) @ 0.0% pre- and pre-annuation of the 1,000 mutual funds listing the business/wholesaler share-interests for net assets.
For 1,000 B. International Group, Inc. (gambler) @ 0.0% pre- and pre-annuation of the 1,000 mutual funds listing the business/wholesaler share-interests for net assets.

---

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL.

• • • • •

Saturday/Sunday, August 15 - 16, 2026 | 99

BUSINESS & FINANCE

Nidilean Optimal Financial Plans

Chip maker will initially backstop half of 10-grams that data-center project

By Amina Gannim

Nvidia and OpenAI are nearing a deal to finance a large-scale data-center company in 2026, but have recently hit back 10-grams that Nvidia would initially guarantee with half of the planned multi-handed-nidilean-dollar holdout. Nidilean' rather than Nidilean' is a major business people familiar with the deal.

The revised plan would lower the size of Nvidia's financial guarantee from $250 billion to less than $125 billion, a change made to ad-

dress investors' concerns about the chip maker's risk exposure as it would do balance sheet to bidder demand for its artificial-intelligence chips, some of the people said.

A deal could be announced as soon as this weekend, Nvidia shares declined 5% after The Wall Street Journal first reported the discussions of the $250 billion backstop in late July.

Under the outline now being discussed, Nvidia would provide a financial backstop for the first phase, totaling roughly five gigawards of power, and then decide later whether or how to finance the remainder.

OpenAI is still in discussion to sign a funding lease for 10 gigawards of the proj-

ect in the coming days, according to two people familiar with the project.

10 Energy, a subsidiary of Japan's SoftBank, is developing the 10-gigawatt site, which would be

the largest data center project announced to date.

The initial guarantee would cover the data-center lease and debt needed to fund the build-out and lower the

project's best-swing costs by making lenders first more confident that the funding behind the project is secure, the Journal has reported.

Nvidia is discussing a separate deal to finance OpenAI's purchase of chips, which could total $500 billion across the full project.

The power for the project

is controlled by the U.S. government and funded separately by Japan under a recent trade deal.

The U.S. is a Santee's advising 100 on the deal and Mac(a)i (Santee) a 4.5% of a Nvidia, accord-

ing to people familiar. This week, Nvidia announced plans to team up with Wall Street firms Apollo Global Management, Black-

stone, BlackRock, Brookfield asset Management, Goldman Sachs and EKB to establish "compare financing platforms," the companies announced on Monday.

The firms aim to depose over $500 billion of outside capital in the coming years with the goal of bring able to finance chip purchases at "attractive rates."

Last September, Nvidia and OpenAI announced a memorandum of understanding for Nvidia to build at least 10 gigawards of computing power for OpenAI, and the chip maker also agreed to as-wet up to $500 billion to help OpenAI pay for it.

But that deal stalled after some media the chip giant re-presented doubts about it, the Journal reported.

Stripe and Advent Weight Deal For PayPal

By Cara Lomaxian, Gina Bura And Lester Thomas

PayPal Holdings is in talks to sell itself to a group that includes Stripe and the private-superstore market. International, according to people familiar with the market.

Stripe and Advent in July proposed, giving $60.50 a share of a Spire, a price PayPal viewed as insufficient, some of the people said. The two sides have been negotiating a potentially higher price, the people said. "It's possible a deal could be reached in the coming weeks, though there are no guarantees the parties will need an agreement.

Price to the July proposal, which valued the company at about $50 billion, PayPal shares were trading at historic lines, giving it a market value of about $60 billion. PayPal shares rose 13% Friday after The Wall Street Journal reported on the deal talks, giving it a market value of close to $33 billion.

PayPal's CEO Enrique Loero is in the early stages of an ambitious turnaround plan, which has involved steep cost cuts.

When the company reported earnings last last month, Loero said the forecast of its international strategy but would evaluate all opportunities to maximize shareholder value. Loero, the former CEO of SE assumed PayPal's top job in March after it raised a profit warring, succeeding with the CEO Alan Chitin. The company blamed the poor outlook on sponsoring growth from its key branded checkout product, which lets customer and PayPal often making online purchases, and poor internal operation.

Bezos Group Buys Stake in Liverpool

By Ben Dewarry

Jeff Bezos is the new part-owner of one of the world's most celebrated soccer teams.

The Millimeter Football of Amusement is among a group of investors that agreed Friday to buy a minority stake in Britain's Liverpool Football Club from Bessey Sports Group. The connection is acquiring about 25% stake in Liverpool in a deal that values the Premier League team at more than 37 billion, according to people familiar with the matter.

The deal is the latest example of the enduring appeal of the professional sports teams for the world's wealthiest. On Wednesday a group led by Rob Igo and Joshua Kushner struck a $12.5 billion deal to buy the Los Angeles Lakers.

The consortium buying the stake in Liverpool FC is led by Amit Bhatia, the non-in-law of Indian steel foreset Lakshmi Mittal. Bezos is participating in the deal through KS Global, an investment firm managed by Michael Senn and Erinon Baum. Facebook is founder Eduardo Sorrero and his new name for also part of the buying group.

Deal is Bezos' first foray into sports ownership.

Bhatia, Elaine Sorrero and Baum are all set to join Liverpool FC's team for the play.

The deal marks Bezos' first foray into sports ownership, but he won't have a brand lead at the soccer club. Bezos' exact investment couldn't be learned. He was expected to write the largest number of momentum participants, The Wall Street Journal previously reported.

FSU will retain majority ownership of Liverpool and continue to control the team's operations. The group, which also owns the Bezos deal has, said the stake aim is Liverpool was part of its efforts to help the team "be team's long-term growth.

Liverpool is one of England's most successful soccer teams and has directed hundreds of millions of dollars on talent in recent years to keep pace with the team's success. Former League title for the 2016-2017 season but only placed 10th last season.

A valuation north of 87 billion takes Liverpool among the world's most valuable soccer teams, according to Forbes. Sports Real Madrid leads the pack with an estimated value of $1.50.

Investors have shown increasing interest in professional soccer teams in recent years as top clubs boost some of the world's most recent to capitalize on the sport's growing global appeal.

Professional soccer is at the centre of the sporting world following the success of the World Cup that was played at the 2017-18, 2018, 2019 and Canada and watched around the world.

Successful Knicks Season, Outlook Power Rise in MSG Sports Stock

Madison Square Garden Sports gained more than 45, this past week, making its best weekly performance once a year.

Shares of the champion Knicks and Rangers never have gained nearly 100% since this time last year. The stock fell Friday but is up three of the past five days.

Nearly including revenues from the NBA playoffs and

highest-year team merchandise sales declined MSG. Sports a 25% gain in revenue compared to the prior year quarter.

The company reported that per game revenues during the playoffs averaged $20.2 million on a recent earnings job. MSG Sports expects no domestic demand for both shares to engage in their 2023 growth; the recent champion-

ship series was the most switched NBA Finals in 28 years.

Looking ahead to the upcoming seasons, we are off to a strong start with season. Syked networked deal, the prospect our combined season ticket removal only to once again reach heads above 90%, just instead causes chief operating officer at MSG Sports.

—Dorothy Sireich

Share price and index performance, past year

Berkshire Adds Its Alphabet Holdings, Buys Homebuilders and Exits Constellation

By Bezerra Ben

Berkshire Bellamore added to its stake; to Google's parent and America's home-holding industry during the second quarter, while selling off its position in Constellation Brands.

The Omaha, 8th-based conglomerate continued to double down on home builders after completing a $8.8 billion purchase of Taylor Morrison in July. Berkshire opened a position in B&B, Boston, which it previously owned before deciding its bidding completely last year, while adding to its stake in Lester.

Berkshire also folded up its

position in Mac's and the New York Times. The conglomerate paved its stakes in financial companies, including Bank of America, Capital One and Ally Financial. Berkshire also sold shares of steel manufacturer Macor, Kroger and kidney care company DeVita.

The Omaha, 8th, Berkshire disclosed its stockholdings to a regulatory filing Friday of between.

Berkshire, which first started buying Alphabet club last year, has now achieved about 100 million shares valued at roughly $30 billion. It is now one of the company's top five stock investments. The others are American Ex-

press, Apple, Bank of America and Coca-Cola.

In June, Berkshire agreed to buy $50 billion in club after Alphabet said it planned to be 100 billion in equity's final investment in data centers and computing capacity needed to team and run all models.

The purchase help address a common question among Berkshire's shareholders. Would Warren Buffett's company find a bigger way into the 10 capital that has taken the markets by stores in recent years? In May, Chief Executive Greg Abel said at Berkshire's annual meeting, that some of its subsidiaries, including SELF-Indirect, were exploring opportunities to use AI.

Institutional investors managing at least $100 million in U.S. stocks and certain other equities must disclose their holdings at the end of each quarter to from 10⁶ filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

From 25% provide an outburst look at stock portfolios because investors have 43 days to submit the filings. Still, Berkshire's disclosures are widely parsed by market participants seeking simple and the decision made by the company Buffett run for deal sales. Berkshire Class A shares have gained 0.1% this year, short of the half 500 index's 14% gain.

Scrutiny Ended Polymarket, Bank Ties

JPMorgan Chase ended its building relationship with prediction market Polymarket last October over regulatory contracts, according to people familiar with the matter.

By Ben Glickman, Authorise Long and Caroline Burrell

The secret adds that to fight as Washington over debunking and growing national economy, the "proportion market" practices, though the bank maintains some ties to Polymarket and other prediction market companies.

A Polymarket spokesman said the company maintains a close position in the lobby with JPMorgan across multiple entities. Polymarket Chief Executive Wayne Coates stated at three of the banks' events in the past year, the spokesman added.

A large investor in Polymarket connected the company to major banks, including the bank's bank. Third notice this year, with initial meetings going well, according to a person familiar with the matter. The investor hoped to get Polymarket access to larger banks over a series of companies they had been working with.

Congress and Fella Third didn't comment.

JPMorgan was already in the business of competitor's crossbans for alleged debunking, or imprecise closing customer accounts for political reasons. The president has contended, however, to prove a bank's engaged in "politicized or unarmed debunking." Last month, JPMorgan was one of several banks subpoenaed by the Fella Department on the subject.

Donald Trump Jr., the president's son, is an investor in Polymarket through his investment fund 1788 Capital.

Two times, the publisher's business, more complex, has a data partnership with Polymarket.

Ergen to Take Controlling Stake in MobileX

By PATRICK HAZEN

Charlie Ergen has reached a deal to acquire a controlling stake in wireless-sector private/MobileX through his special purpose acquisition company ESME, according to people familiar with the matter.

The deal, which would require regulatory approval, was $1.50 million, and about $200 million, the people said.

Ergen is the co-founder and chairman of Echethra, a hold-up company for his communications empire. The company's portfolio includes wireless brand Boost Mobile and pay/70 business Data Network.

The new deal also gives wireless center Vietnam Communications a minority stake in MobileX by connecting a loan into equity, the people said. MobileX has shared and created a new capacity from Vietnam's network for years.

It wasn't immediately clear how or if Ergen plans to coordinate or combine the operations of MobileX and Boost Mobile.

Peter Addleton will remain chief member of MobileX, said some of the people familiar with the matter. Addleton founded Boost Mobile in 2009 and sold it to Nestor in 2005. The company changed hands a few times and had been owned

by Echethra since 2023. Addleton founded MobileX in 2020.

Echethra has lost money on wireless services for years, and Addleton has taken to social media to estimate the way it runs Boost Mobile.

"We haven't created the code on how to be successful to the level well. But so in the wireless business," Ergen says on an earnings call earlier this month. "We've trouble easier for true years now." He said that strategic initiatives would outweigh the business.

Ergen gave up on a $98 billion deal, which was a number of 50 competitors to industry leaders AT&T, T-Mobile US and the

son last year after the Federal Communications Commission completed about the initiative's nine progress.

Ergen has put this infrastructure into bankruptcy protection and is producing Echethra to emerge with tens of billions of dollars from spectrum sales, including to OpenX, which has indicated plans to expand into mobile service.

Both MobileX and Boost Mobile remain small centers relative to AT&T. T-Mobile and Neoson, which together control more than 90% of the market for telephone service, according to research firm McNett-Robinson.

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B30 | Saturday/Sunday, August 15 - 16, 2026

• • • • • •

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL.

MARKETS

S&P 500 Slips for the Day, but Logs Third Straight Week Gain

Stocks get a lift from new bets that Fed will hold rates steady in September

By Vince Gil Blume

Stocks edged back from records on Friday, with kinesies box weighing weaker than anticipated economic data against an existing season that has limited expression.

Stocks initially opened higher Friday earnings as investors interpreted unexpected weakness as consumer spending

FRIDAY'S MARKETS more as further evidence that the Federal Reserve won't raise interest rates at its September meeting. Coming on the back of either inflation data and a stock market market, the figures continue here that the central bank will stand just on rates.

The S&P 500 did $7.5b after closing at a rate of Thursday. The Dow Jones Industrial Average lost $25s, so roughly $30 points. The stock-focused Nasdaq arrived at 5:35.

Partners makers are putting a nearly 70% chance that the Fed will hold interest rates steady next month, up from 30% a week ago, according to CME Group data.

Index performance this past week

Source: FactSet

Shares turned lower mid-morning. Some investors cautioned that, despite the dwindling threat of an immediate increase, the continuing Middle East conflict and still elevated oil prices could stalk stock gains in the weeks ahead, especially as earnings season comes to an end.

"Ease hikes are off the table, but are cuts are also off the table," said Jay Barfield, chief executive officer and portfolio manager at Infrastructure Capital Advisory. "We need now cuts to really fuel the S&P to cut target of 100%. Otherwise, we'll probably stall out in the low 600bn."

For the week, the S&P 500

tailed higher by 5.6%, the benchmark's third consecutive weekly gain. The Dow fell 10%, and the Nasdaq was up 0.1%.

Treasury yields, which rose when fixed prices fell, felled higher. The 10-year treasury yield, which influences borrowing costs across the economy, advanced to 4.416%.

S&P, some investors believe that the bull market has further come to run, underground by an earnings season that has defied expectations. The

earnings growth rate for companies in the S&P 500 recently stood at about 10% for the second quarter, which would mark the highest growth since the second quarter of 2025, according to FactSet data blending projections and actual results.

"The earnings are about as good as we've ever seen. The breadth of the strength is incredibly wide. Plus, you have this almost built-in, buy-the-slip centrality of investors," said Mark Garhart, chief market strategist at Nationwide. "That's a really good sign for bulls."

In corporate news, Reddit surged 13% after S&P Dow Jones believe announced on Thursday that the social media platform will just the S&P 500, replacing AndroNet. Communities, a real-estate investment trust that is being bruggled out of the S&P 500 member Equity Residential.

Shares of Applied Materials declined 5% after the semiconductor equipment maker received. Applied Materials had not income and increased revenue, but failed to impress investors.

Jane Street Loses About $15 Billion After Troubles at Al Fund

By Geniore Zemmara

Jane Street, the powerhouse Wall Street trading firm, lost about $15 billion in July partly due to the troubles of hedge fund Situational Awareness, according to people familiar with the matter.

It was the firm's worst monthly loss over, one of the people said. Jane Street is still running its best trading year with revenue of more than $40 billion through July, the person said, but the losses are surprising for a firm known for its risk management.

Situational Awareness is the hedge fund led by an OpenAI employee with cold decline, because he built a $45 billion investment firm at the center of the artificial intelligence trade, making aggressive, borrowing about bets. Jane Street, which rarely debates money to outside managers, became a major investor in the fund.

Jane Street originally invented $21 billion in Situational Awareness, a figure that soared to nearly $10 billion earlier this year, according to people familiar with the matter. But the investment

designed to between $3 billion and $3.5 billion after Situational Awareness's July losses. In addition to that loss of nearly $7 billion, Jane Street suffered from the raided in Ad-related stocks last month and the firm's move to cut its risk in those stocks, the people said.

Acknowledgement's bets soared in July. Ascheshowner said the bulk of Situational's stock portfolio to Ken Griffitt's investment firm Citadel after deep losses.

A quaint trading firm that piled up profits in recent years, Jane Street lost money at either easy last month, two, as quaint traders suffer through a rough period. Trades in China were looms for a number of quants, and from softwork in all related stocks fell then snapped back.

The Financial Times earlier reported Jane Street's loss.

Jane Street has long been known as a executive firm and an unusually flat organization, with no one leader serving as its public face. But it has been slipping into the spotlight more recently as it seeks to become an AI powerhouse.

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True Family's World Liberty Gets Closer to a Bank Charter

By Victor Gil Blume

World Liberty Financial, the Trump family's flagship crypto venture, said Friday that its trust company received preliminary conditional approval from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency to become a bank.

Upon final approval, World Liberty Trust will operate as a federally chartered national trust bank. The charter will allow World Liberty to issue, receive and safeguard ODR, the dollar-based stables on that World Liberty launched last year. The stables are, whose reserves are contested with MICA, has a market value of about $4 billion.

The firm said it would have to satisfy a list of conditions and receive a final examination from the OOC before the income operational.

The OOC led its franchise could, approved the launch of several crypto-focused trust banks, probably with a leader across to the traditional financial system. Trust banks differ from full banks in that they generally lack take deposits or make loans.

The approval comes as President Trump's $1.8 billion surcharge from his memosmen and crypto stables have become the big deal with the firm's passing a landmark bill that would create a comprehensive regulatory framework for digital assets. The Liberty Act has stalled, driven in part by disagreement over other language that would predict government officials from profiting off digital assets. The bill is scheduled for a pro-rational vote on Sept. 31.

President Trump said his two non-helped launch World Liberty in late 2024 as a decentralized finance, or DeFi, project that would offer borrowing, lending and lending services. Those features still haven't become available.

The crypto empire has created a huge chunk of his fate. He's record establish in 2025 he was the first time that $500 million in proceeds from selling World Liberty's token, WLF, and an additional $250 million connected to the sale of equity in World Liberty to a group of investors led by Robert Patterson but David A. Watson, a United Arab Emirates ranch.

World Liberty applied to create a trust company in January, with plans to offer crypto custody and stables on conversion services, while serving institutional partners, including crypto exchanges, market makers, and investment firms.

The plan has drawn backlash from critics, who raised concerns about conflicts of interest. See Elizabeth Moffett (D. Blum) and in a statement that "we have never seen it. I started conflicts or corruption of this magazine."

The MSA House has now that "torture the President was his family has ever engaged—in self-care or service."

The MSA has been the first "torture the President was his family has ever engaged—in self-care or service."

From left, Eric Trump, Zach Willett and Donald Trump Jr.

The crypto empire has created a huge chunk of his fate. He's record establish in 2025 he was the first "torture the President was his family has ever engaged—in self-care or service."

"We showed all of the regulatory questions, and we accepted the significant obligations and support to enjoy that come with the national charter." Willett said in an interview "If we were looking for less corruption, we would not have shown them to be a good thing."

Zach Willett is the son of three Willett, the president's friend and Middle East envoy.

World Liberty Trust said it would be governed by a two-member board that includes Zach Willett's his father's brother Robert Willett, who is a former co-chair investment officer of The Chubb Corp., and from Mars, who is previously an independent business owner of the father's real-estate firm. Willett living.

The other two members are Arthur Winter, former chairman and chief executive of the country and advisory firm Marston Liff, and Erin Hackett, member of the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority. The two members and founder of brokerage firm Size Quo Non Capital.

BP, LRG Team Up on Venezuela Project

By Assan Warrnam

Britain's BP and the United Arab Emirates' 500 well explore a gas field off the shore of Venezuela. In an indication that major oil companies are tentatively returning to the country's state power. The company's own awarded an exploration and production license for phase 2 of the Great Bank, which could be used to access to an estimated 4 billion cubic feet of microcalls gas. They join Shell, which in June was granted a license to extract 1.7 billion cubic feet of gas from the field. Energy makers have been able to use a gas system to reduce the cost of the energy of the energy of the energy of the energy of the energy of the energy of the energy of the energy of the energy of the energy of the energy of the energy of the energy of the energy of the energy of the energy of the energy of the energy of the energy of the energy of the energy of the energy of the energy of the energy of the energy of the energy of the energy of the energy of the energy of the energy of the energy of the energy of the energy of the energy

U.S. The country holds some of the world's largest oil resources but years of underinvestment mean it lacks the infrastructure needed to extract a comprehensive.

At the same time, major oil companies take confidence to make a difficult and legal framework on its place to ensure that investment after being stung in the country is the past.

Despite President Trump's encouragement, Big Oil has yet to make significant investment.

StannMellol, Chevron and other major oil companies have formed its existing and the number of major oil companies' activities. Chevron is the only U.S. oil major currently active in Ven

Big oil companies tentatively return to Venezuela.

loaders recently hit an impasse. The Wall Street Journal reported in late July, citing people familiar with the table. Chevron is the only U.S. oil major currently active in Ven

estate and has been growing productivity to a record of nearly 200,000 barrels a day. The company's share of the table has been a significant investment in the market. The company's share of the table has been a significant investment in the market.

500 in the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company's international investment arm. Qatar-based OOC Oil and Gas will also hold an interest in phase 1. The field will be operated by BP and rests party will have a strong interest in phase 2.

ExxonMobil and Conoco-Fludley pulled out of Venezuela in 2007 after the former president nationalized their assets. Others are still need to be able to get the oil and gas they continued to produce and deliver to the country.

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HEARD ON THE STREET

FINANCIAL ANALYSIS & COMMENTARY

The Billions in One-Time Gains Boosting Big Tech's Profits

Gains on investments in companies like Anthropic are inflating earnings at Amazon and Alphabet

Corporate profits are soaring, but they aren't all created equal. Wall Street's earnings gains is making it needlessly hard for investors to tell real growth from one-time gains.

S&P 500 companies reported $2.64 trillion of combined net income over the last four quarters, according to data compiled by S&P Global Market Intelligence. However, a big chunk of the earnings consisted of paper gains from marking up equity investments in other companies.

Last quarter, "other income" at Amazon.com and Alphabet. Google's parent company totaled roughly $125 billion combined after taxes, almost all of it from investment gains. Alphabet's portion is on track to represent about 30% of second-quarter earnings for the

S&P 500, and Amazon's share another 5%, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis.

Other income was 71% of Alphabet's quarterly profits and 68% of Amazon's. Alphabet's mark-to-market gains came from revaluing equity holdings, which include SpaceX and Anthropic, the artificial-intelligence developer behind Claude. Amazon's markups primarily arose from its stake in Anthropic.

These investment gains are part of net income under GAAP, or generally accepted accounting principles. But nobody trying to assess the valuations at Alphabet or Amazon should be placing a market multiple on them. These are unrealized paper profits, and they are inherently nonrecurring. Even including these gains, the S&P 500

Gains at SpaceX are counted as profits by big tech investors.

S&P 500 earnings per share¹

Second quarter earnings

Other income

Alphabet

¹Gains in a way, a solution 30% of the remainder of analysis, covering a company value, another GAAP or non-GAAP from 30% SpaceX are unintended. ²Gains in a way, 50% of the remainder of analysis, covering a company value, another GAAP or non-GAAP from 50% SpaceX are unintended. ³Gains in a way, 100% of the remainder of analysis, covering a company value, another GAAP or non-GAAP from 100% SpaceX are unintended. ⁴Gains in a way, 50% of the remainder of analysis, covering a company value, another GAAP or non-GAAP from 50% SpaceX are unintended. ⁵Gains in a way, 50% of the remainder of analysis, covering a company value, another GAAP or non-GAAP from 50% SpaceX are unintended. ⁶Gains in a way, 50% of the remainder of analysis, covering a company value, another GAAP or non-GAAP from 50% SpaceX are unintended. ⁷Gains in a way, 50% of the remainder of analysis, covering a company value, another GAAP or non-GAAP from 50% SpaceX are unintended. ⁸Gains in a way, 50% of the remainder of analysis, covering a company value, another GAAP or non-GAAP from 50% SpaceX are unintended. ⁹Gains in a way, 50% of the remainder of analysis, covering a company value, another GAAP or non-GAAP from 50% SpaceX are unintended. ¹⁰Gains in a way, 50% of the remainder of analysis, covering a company value, another GAAP or non-GAAP from 50% SpaceX are unintended.

kicks expensive at about 27 times trailing earnings. The historical average is about 16 times.

The confusion for investors stems from Wall Street's chaotic methods for tracking earnings bears and misses. Analysts routinely play along with the companies they cover, stripping out recurring costs like stock-based pay list, when a convenient windfall materializes, analysts eagerly wore it through to boost the bottom line.

The problem isn't just financial cosmetics. It's after inconsistency. Wall Street lacks a unified approach for investment markups. Last quarter, Nvidia viewed analysts to exclude them, so they did. Alphabet and Amazon didn't, so analysts fell right in line.

For all the flaws in GAAP, at least it provides an up-and-upon rainbows. The consensus profits tallied by Wall Street analysts, often called "Street earnings," typically exist to accentuate the positive and eliminate the negative. Street earnings are whatever earnings metric a majority of analysts covering a company adopt, whether non-GAAP or GAAP. These in turn make their way into the most widely collected earnings data for the S&P 500 and other

indexes.

For most S&P 500 companies, non-GAAP earnings are the analysts' profit metric of choice. Broadcom last quarter reported $4.3 billion of net income, but $12.1 billion of non-GAAP earnings. Management excluded stock-based compensation and amortization of intangible assets. These are recurring operating expenses that analysts covering Broadcom datafully ignored, and they were hardly alone. Street earnings exclude stock based pay for at least 65 companies in the S&P 500, according to FactSet data.

The distortions also extend to forward estimates. For example, the S&P 500 is priced at 19 times FactSet's, 1027 consensus earnings estimate. But the "E" in the FX ratio is skewed because the estimates are for Street earnings. On a trailing basis, the index trades for 24 times Street earnings. That is lower than the FX ratio using GAAP net income, but the analysts chose not to exclude the big markups at Alphabet and Amazon from Street earnings.

Last quarter, Nvidia reported $58.3 billion of net income and pointed analysts to a lower adjusted number of $45.5 billion that excluded unrealized investment

gains. The more signaled these aren't core items that belong in a recurring earnings stream. It also makes analysts' willingness to include similar gains for Alphabet, and Amazon look all the more arbitrary.

Nvidia's non-GAAP adjustment marked a rare instance of conservation. The norm at U.S. companies is for management to glide fully, knowing the analysts at big Wall Street brokers will relay the spin as their own.

On a trailing four-quarter basis, S&P 500 earnings are up 32% versus the year-earlier period, according to S&P data. That is based on GAAP net income. If Amazon and Alphabet are excluded, they're up 24%, which is still spectacular.

That strength makes accounting354, which is still spectacular. That strength makes accounting354, which is still spectacular. That strength makes accounting354, which is still spectacular.

Counting gains in volatile equities when they go up while subtracting everyday operating costs isn't analysis. It's marketing, which is what Wall Street is all about. Investors browse.

—Jonathan Weil

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Point Taken

A history of the creation and use of punctuation marks Books C7

& &

eg

so

Saturday/Sunday, August 15 - 16, 2020 | C1

Our Obsession With

Conspiracy Theories Is Human. So Is the Cure.

Fiction is the most powerful tool we have to combat the unreality constantly spun online, writes the bestselling novelist David Baldacci

FOR THE ARMIES of conspiracy theories who march among us, times have never been so good. Politicians and governments are pushing misinformation that consports with their views. Chatbots hallucinate.

Propagandists proliferate. And enormously wealthy individuals who live in such a unique bubble they might as well dwell on. Most are spending hundreds of millions of dollars to manipulate an electronic already staggering along in the face of competing realities.

Slewed in the fact that some conspiracy theories have turned out to be at least semi-planable—use the drip-drip of UFO disclosures—and you have fer-

tile soil for spreading loamy-like growth in the business of manufactured tools.

The ubiquity of such fabrications does not make it any less dangerous to a democratic society. But perhaps it changes our plans for what we create to deal with it.

Before science came along, mythology was part of how we made sense of the natural world. This for thunderstorms, shrinking thorns to explain shipwrecks, the abduction of Perrophous the reason behind the blockness of winters.

We have mostly evolved from that with the help of science and technological progress.

Yet something inherent in the human psyche still pushes us fiercely toward the rabbit warrens of our-

her theories. Mythmaking is still a large part of how people understand the world, even if they now apply it to suspicions about the powerful institutions and advanced systems they no longer trust.

I know this as a novelist—one who often probes my own mind for earlier theories. I have received many fun letters over the years that none my fiction can read like nonfiction. It's not necessarily by design. But I do believe to effectively assemble a thriller, a writer must contemplate all that is possible in the present to realistically construct what dark, fearful deeds are plausible in the future.

Some of the plots of my our- her novels would seem quaint today. In "The Whole Truth," which I wrote 23 years ago, an arms contractor, eager to start a new war in profit from, have a

talented manipulator to convince people, over the interest, that a horrible crime with dire global implications had taken place.

What's changed since "The Whole Truth" was published is the efficiency—and quality of the delivery—of misinformation. For every fact-filled story written by seasoned journalists, almost any- ever could release an armada of chatbot accounts based on responses, cockered beliefs, dressed up enough to look like facts, so much so that even the

Please turn to the next page

Before science came along, mythology was part of how we made sense of the natural world. It still is.

AOC's Egg-Freezing Is Suddenly

A Bipartisan Conversation

After an initial backlash, the congresswoman's fertility videos have been applauded by women on both sides of the aisle

By Kara Voort

'DON'T BE WEIRD' about this, even though I know all of you will be."

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was sitting on a coach, facing the camera as she jammed a needle into her belly. It was her first round of injections to freeze her eggs, which the New York congresswoman had just announced she'd be livestreaming over the course of her treatment.

Each video was the work of a woman with an algorithm well-tuned to mid-19s anxiety. She unheard her medications with maximum sound effect, the snap of puding plastic and crash of opening vials as she prepared her first shot. "Maybe I should start an ASMR egg-freezing channel," she joked. She had her needles

neatly on her coffee table and explained the order in which she'd inject them. She even included a brief aside to show off her dead lifts, the final workout allowed on her regimen. Ocasio-Cortez, 96, looked every part the lifestyle influence.

But she is not an influencer. She's a politician, albeit one with a poster-natural talent for attracting attention and a savvy for wielding it for utmost impact. With it has come sure- tily, at times to intense that Ocasio-Cortez has called it deburnmining. So, of course, it did get worse—in part because the response didn't fall on strictly partisan lines.

There was, of course, the predictable avoidiness. The Daily Wire's Matt Walsh called her decision "to- sally backwards and ridiculous."

Turning Point USA's Andrew Kubot said she was a "cautionary tale" as to why "fertility rates are cramming." Conservative commentator Ade Beth Stuckey said there was "no reason she couldn't have kids yet" because Ocasio-Cortez has "been with the same guy for years."

"That wasn't true, it turns out. Her relationship with Riley Roberts, the college sweetheart to whom she got engaged in 2022, had quietly ended two years ago, Pack and the New York Times reported. This revelation kicked off yet another news cycle about what it means for a single woman to be considering this providency, which Ocasio-Cortez has not ruled out. Neither the congresswoman nor her chief of staff re-

Please turn to page C4

In a still from a video posted to her Instagram, Ocasio-Cortez prepares to inject fertility medication.

Inside

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WNBA player Paige Bueckers loves her iPad, watching 'Criminal Minds' and other sports. But coffee? She's not a fan. C14

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The enigmatic artifacts of Sanctingful are rewriting China's origin story. C5

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REVIEW

Fiction Still Best Way To Combat Unreality

Continued from the prior page most cynical among us is in danger of being duped. Add in the ever-growing quality of deepbikes, and it has never been easier to not only detect reality but also to establish one's own beachhead on it.

It's as if the entire information ecosystem has been jumbled by an overactive imagination.

This is not a problem for animals. They can detect coming danger like earthquakes or floods because their senses deliver faster a sound, a smell, the change of the wind. They cannot be convinced that such devastation was caused by a group of power-fungry maniacs in some bunker who are cloud seeding with zeal, or remotely detonating a sake in the San Andreas Fault. Yet it is precisely because the human mind can over-tale both natural and common sense that we thrive, innovate and build. Our capacity for imagination is arguably what sets us the most apart from other living things.

PERHAPS WE ARE FIGHTING information collapse—and societal fracturing—with the wrong weapons. Arguing about facts doesn't deter outlandish ideas, misinformation or AI hallucination. Maybe more storytelling, more imagination, more fiction is what's needed to combat the unreality upon online.

After all, there's a reason dictators burn novels.

This is, of course, a theme of Ray Bradbury's classic "hitzenbust 4X," published in 2023. In the book, most homes have pucker walls with huge video screens that broadcast streams of babbling commentary for both en-

This photo by Julian Master explores our globalized, connected public life and the sometimes strange juxtapositions it creates.

terttainment and manipulation. The point is to dissuade people from reading and shorten their attention space. The actors in the videos are to become the people's new friends and idols, such that forming relationships with friends and family is no longer necessary. A nonstop pipeline of carefully controlled information, as well as people to look up and listen to, is deemed—by the leaders behind this fictional authoritarian society—to be the best way to control the people. And if that doesn't ensure the populace is in thrill to the authoritarian narrative, the fireman of the novel burn books, ensuring ideas can't get into the hands of the people.

I don't mean to say that fiction is a substitute for a good education. But at our best, we nowelute probe deeper truths precisely because the facts cannot always, ever, be totally known.

The idea for my 2022 novel "The

6:20 Man" came from the Panama and Pandora Papers, document leaks that laid out how millions of dollars could be floating around the world hidden from view and taxation by elaborately designed shelf companies and other financial and legal skulduggery.

Heads of slam, billionaires, royalty, global celebrities and other high-profile people were exposed and implicated. There were resignations from political offices, and many famous people suffered a great deal of embarrassment and public shame.

However, what the journalism didn't answer, at least for me, was: What could you do with millions of dollars if it were collectively deployed? Using my best conspiracy theorist mindset, I came up with this: Instead of

buying more jets or pailies, the villains in my novel collated their vast funds to buy people and power in countries around the world, with the goal of fitting the global strategy field even more in their favor.

I pushed an idea to its extreme, but in so doing, I had to imagine the endless possibilities of our current, complicated modern day. The goal was not to convince readers of a new conspiracy theory, but to puncture the rigidity of any mindset that tells us only one reality is possible.

A conspiracy theorist subscribes with unshakable faith to an ideological worldview. A novelist explores narrative, making sense of themes, motifs and sensations to try to com-

municate about the complexity of a globe with some eight billion people in it.

ANY GOOD NOVEL will put you, the reader, in the shoes of different characters. You suffer and you cry with them, and also experience their jost, their challenges, their ambitions. Mystery is truly finished until the last reader inhabits it because we all put our unique inspiration on any novel. The words are filtered through each reader's own individuality.

In that sum, the imagination so shaped by fiction is not focused on what divides but rather on what castes, even if the story depicts acts of brutality or oppression. The plays of Shakespeare will always be relevant because he wears of human beings in both their elemental goodness and darkness. And though we may evolve as a people, we also remain the same in many ways. Folks today often act like their predecessors did during Shakespeare's time. That is not necessarily a bad thing; it is a badge and connection of our inner humanity.

No matter the strengths of AI, a chatbot cannot dream up stories with flawed characters and themes and acts and failures and triumphs—with ambiguous finales.

They use masked-together databases to sense patterns and retrieve webpage. Imagination only comes into play when someone takes a message from a teacher and uses it for action. Of course, AI can ape us,

A Baldacci Sampler for Your Nightstand

Absolute Power (1996) The U.S. president helps cover up a shocking crime.

The Camel Club (2016) Four conspiracy theorists' name of a national security threat.

The Innocent (2012) A master mission investigates suspicious murders.

and create things based on our patterns. That's sort of the whole point. I am currently a plaintiff in a Guarantor lawsuit against OpenAI and Microsoft, due to their unauthorized use of my and many other writers' works for training their large language models. Yes, the AI community determined that super intelligence can be achieved most effectively by reading lots of books. Who knew?!

The very best novels will never try to explicitly sell you lies as the truth, or narrative as dogma. Of course, many do have themes and messages that are overt, or that spark reactions in the masses. "Uncle Tom's Cobra," "Adventures of Hackleberry Finn" and "To Kill a Mockingbird" are just a few examples of this. But none of these novels were set up to deliver a set of facts.

A novel makes you think and imagine why a story line might be right, or not, or both in some ways. And then—and this is critical—it makes you reach for another book, and thus more to think about. In addition to borrowing upon us the greatest of all human attributes—empathy—books also compel us to read in over widening circles.

A well-read person grows body action against the rigid conspiracy theorist, against flat artificial intelligence that manipulates without emotion. It is no coincidence that humanity else forward when Gutenberg invented his printing press. Books are super fast for the human mind, the mightiest intellect on Earth. And right now, that intellect needs all the collective nutrition it can find.

David Baldacci is the author of more than 80 novels, including "All In," and this November.

Baldacci, right, testifies before a Senate subcommittee about artificial intelligence generative models training on copyrighted works in 2025.

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Saturday/Sunday, August 15 - 16, 2020 | C3

She Escaped Teen Marriage In Appalachia. Her Time at Harvard Was Even Torse.

Emilee Hackney writes about her tumultuous coming of age in 'All That's Unseen'

By ELVIN GAMMING

Emilee Hackney was a teenager 2½ weeks away from marrying an offending pastor in rural Appalachia when police named the man's phone, scrolled through his pictures and arrested him on child pornography charges.

After that, Hackney's life continued to shift in unforeseen ways. She went from making sandwiches at a Sidway shop while attending a local community college to starting over at

Harvard University as a transfer student. While there, her life devolved into loneliness and dislocation, and she found herself trading sex for money beyond the campus confines.

"I took back now and I think, 'Oh, my gods, I just got away by the skin of my teeth,'" said Hackney. He, author of 'All That's Unseen,' a newly released book detailing those experiences that debuted at No. 12 on the New York Times combined print and e-book nonfiction bestseller list.

The memoir is an account of escaping religious extremism and re-

defining herself apart from the mountains that raised her and the sites society to which she fled. Her life's work became fusing her past as an eighth-generation Appalachian with her share in a broader world.

Hackney lives outside Charlottesville, Va., where she now works as an administrator in the English department at the University of Virginia. Two years ago, she married a fellow Virginian she met killing the Appalachian Trial. They have a baby girl.

The mother's reputation from Appalachia was a long one. The grand-

daughter of coal miners grew up in the southwest Virginia mountain town of Tazewell. Her parents weren't derhards at their Pentecostal church, but Hackney wanted to believe. Eventually, she spoke in tongues at services. "These sounds were coming out of my mouth," she said. "I felt like I was on the new plane of understanding God."

She was 16 when she met 10-year-old 'Sons,' a pseudonym Hackney assigns him in the memoir. She'd been a well-flavor when Sam, a high-school senior, began calling her 'come' and 'way.' She liked the attention. 'I started waving back, putting up

campus if you have that background coming through your voice,' she recalled.

When a professor made a smile comment about Southerners being stupid, she wrote a column for the school paper about Southern stereotypes on campus.

Feeling alone, she took up online dating, an experience that 'matured salesmen when our man who nature-deemed their rendezvous offered her $500 and asked if the man was high enough. She found she didn't hate the exchange and passed a dating app offering 'transactional' relationships. She began a period of hoolique and became addicted to being used and using others.'

'It was as if I'd missed out my lifetime allowance of guilt, spent it up on things like how many times a day I'd prayed or whether my short-lost covered enough skin,' she writes. 'Now I was husing sex for money, one of the most grievous sins I could have ever imagined, and I couldn't force a single ounce of shame.'

She stopped using the site when she met a boyfriend at Harvard. He recommended she take a personal cross class taught by Michael Pollan, author of nonfiction books including 'The Immerse's Dilemma' and this year's 'A World Appears.' She applied and was selected to enroll, like first assignment. While about a food with personal meaning, the chose tomatoes, which grew in every garden back home. 'That intercourse little essay untangled some aching least insides me,' she writes.

In class, Hackney could be reserved, Pollan recalled. 'Imagine coming from where she did and meeting your typical pope-dead-advised Harvard students—they're incredibly slick and adept in class.'

But on the page, she was bold, challenging preconceived notions of Appalachia. Struck by her talent, Pollan introduced her to his book agent and editor. 'I hope a lot of those students read this book, and the faculty I've learned,' her, 'he said.'

Hackney wrote her book against the specter of 'Millbilly Elegy,' the 2004 bestselling memoir involving Appalachian values by Vice President 29 Years, who grew up outside that region in Middletown, Ohio.

'I was disappointed that 'Millbilly Elegy,' which is perhaps the most well-known Appalachian memoir, was written by someone who is arguably not even Appalachian, seems to activate disdain Appalachia and asserts that his own negative experiences indicate the entire Appalachian culture is 'in crisis,'' Hackney said.

'Yours declined to comment. Hackney, now writing a book about her something, took on the Appalachian Trial. Informing the death of her father, doesn't feel entirely at home in those mountains today. The code of Appalachia, she said, is that you only belong if you stay. She seems the quiet judgment for not moving back. That by that one action of leaving, 'I'm out forever now,' she said. 'I will never be a part of this place again like I once was.'

Why Is Everything Pickle-Flavored Now?

A deluge of sour, briny snacks has infiltrated the market. Blame Gen Z

Pabst Blue Ribbon and Grille's Pickles have collaborated to make a pickle-flavored beer.

By OLYMA HUE

PIKLE-FLavored RANKIN. Pickle-infused beer. Pickle-spiked Sansegren Blaze. Pickle-nested...ice cream?

A certain flavor profile is exploding. It's sour. It's briny. It's huge on social media. And it's coating everything in its path.

'Never in my life would I imagine come candy with pickles,' said Chris Dubois, senior vice president of the fresh food group at Circana, a market research company. 'We're just in a pickle era for pickle flavoring.'

In the past few years, nearly every snack food giant and retailer has

piled on the trend—and for good reason. Pickle-flavored items are hot. According to Circana's data, such snacks grew 30% in sales over the past year, compared with 5.8% in the snack category overall. It's the same for once not traditionally fermentations-formed. Pickle-flavored trail mix grew by 15%, as opposed to 4% for the general category.

Some of this growth may come from the influx of new pickle-flavored items. But companies keep releasing them because existing products are selling so well. Whole Foods began selling Daily Crunch's Bill Pickle Spreaded Almonds in 2018, and within a year and a half, the product had sent 6525 growth, the firm said. PepsiCo released its Flamar Hot Bill Pickle Cheeses in 2023 and made them a permanent offering this year after the company said it had become the fastest-selling limited-edition flavor in the brand's history. Flamar Hot Bill Pickle Puffs followed, with a rollout that featured Megan Thee Stallion and NicksRock.

Retailers say our group is fueling the trend—a cohort they're most eager to capture: Gen Z. Last summer, Hormel Foods, the company behind Spam and Slippery peanut butter, cited Gen Z—the

'ultimate target market for snack brands'—as the inspiration behind the launch of 400 pickle corn nuts, 400 pickle cashews and 400 pickle-flavored thermal peppermint. 'Gen Z is a fun generation when it comes to food.' Dave Andreño, consumer insights lead, said in an interview. It's not just that they're drawn to intense variety, sour seasoning.

'They're willing to try a lot of different things.'

It all started, as many things do, online. Total TikTok of undisturbed pickle combinations have flooded the internet in the past couple of years. One trend centered on the 'champs pickle'—a hollowed-out jumbo did pickle regularly filled with spicy chips or sour candy, coated with the Mexican condiment chamoy and wrapped in a Fruit Roll-Up.

'All you have to do is take a bunch of pictures of people falling into something going 'em,' and that creates a whole lot of excitement,' said Dubois, of Circana. Plenty of the taste-totters who went viral seemed surprised to find they actually liked the flavor explosion.

The pop star Bea Lips set off an offer viral wave of taste-testing, when she posted an October 2024 video on TikTok where she added pickle juice to her first 5-day. That contributed to the popularity of other 200 pickle-infused drinks, including pickle lemonade, pickle margarine and this summer, white wine with frozen pickle slices.

Consumer research from Nicksmill;

found that this year, unit sales for pickle-flavored miners were up some 110%, and sales of pickle-flavored spirits grew by about 30%. Pabst Blue Ribbon released a limited-edition pickle beer in collaboration with Goller's Pickles this spring.

Gen Z itself is upholding on the trend. Yasaman Bakhtiar, 27, and Leah Marcus, 20, founded Good Girl Snacks in 2023 when they noticed 'pickles were becoming to Gen Z what sneeze was to millennials.' Bakhtiar said. They branded their Hot Girl Pickles to resonate with Gen Z skeppers, with eye-catching packaging and a strong social media presence. Whole Foods began selling Hot Girl Pickles in September 2023; they come in garlic-cumin and honey-burnas flavors.

Novelty and shock value are a big part of the rich, said Andris Bernardez, a short-lived forecaster and writer of the Spanish newsletter.

'Getting that attention on social media—that is playing people's interest, especially the younger generations.'

Ryan Lucas, aka 'The Pickled Guy' on social media, understands this. The 40-year-old 17 professional and content creator has an address of over 600,000 people across his social platforms, where he posts pickle-related reviews. He recently tried out the newly released and sold-out Mr. Bakhtiar's Bill Pickle Puffy Foam Soap.

'Am I going to buy it because I want to battle in a pickle? No,' said Lucas. 'I'm going to buy it just because I want to see what it's like.'

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C4 | Saturday/Sunday, August 15 - 16, 2026

REVIEW

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL.

By Joan Jovanovic

A crowd of 73,948 gathered around Shane Gillis last month to hear his solen about opposing himself accidentally as huge chat and looking like a immediately football crash. The show in the Philadelphia flagline for dians set a world record as the biggest ever for a solo comedian.

The first would've been unthinkable seven years ago when Gillis was famous only for getting and from "Saturday Night Live." That uproar was sparked by resurfaced clips of Gillis mocking Chinese people on his podcast, then became a major media story and an intricate light over whether he was a comedy villain or master.

In fact, Gillis's transformation into a comedy superior began with his firing in 2008.

"I was doing stand-up that night, like while I was getting canceled I thought, it's the one thing I can do," he said last spring in an interview not far from the stadium the Pennsylvania native recently filled.

Stand-up comedy is a solo art, and by going it alone with a microphone, Gillis built a huge following, starting with men also finding picked over what they could say in laugh about. In Gillis, fans saw an overman who was more complicated than he looked a beer-drinking history most with jokes exploring the spectrum between manly and "pay." (Revel and "cheerman")

Then, with a postpandemic view, Gillis came like friends wanting Gillis and his boss. He starred in Under Armour ads and a Super Bowl campaign for Real Eagle. He hosted ESPN's awards show. He even hosted "SRL"—more.

Now, however, the thing finally bringing a broader audience around to Gillis isn't his role art in sports arenas; it's a TV show he made with a team of treated friends in a garage.

"Tires," a Netflix hit now out with its third season, is set in a struggling year shop in a Philly suburb. It's "The Office" with all changes and much $500 per piece. Like so many sitcoms, "Tires" revolves around a star camp, but Gillis comes off in a new light thanks to an after-age character and the incredible humming around him, especially co-star Steve Gerben.

"It's a workplace comedy, but because of these two it takes on a whole other life," said their mutual friend John McKevon, a "Tires" originator as head writer, director, editor and cast member.

Gillis, 28, plays 35, are a man-child mechanic at Valley Forge Automotive Center. Gerben, 42, plays 40, has 35 years, a manager named Will. He wants success for the family business, while Shane is more motivated by getting Will to wear a dumb wig

Shane Gillis Was Canceled. Tires Turned That Around.

First the comedian built a following with his stand-up act; now he stars in a blue-collar workplace comedy for Netflix that he made with his friends.

at work or humbloring about sex during a radio promo. Yet he's also known to hight Will and rally for his business schemes.

Now, in adulthood, both characters are wedding. For Shane, the big-tiery-age hit isn't working so well anymore. He has a vision of his own mortality while eating chicken wings. He partners an instant family with a fondly devoted woman he once had a thing with in high school.

"My character is a lot like me as real life where it's kind of time to grow up," Gillis said. "I'm almost 40, so I don't know how much longer I can do this whole that any thing. But that that's what

Top, from left: Chris O'Connor, Shane Gillis and Steve Gerben in "Tires" and performing stand-up on the road, above.

I'm even going for, but that's you know, the perception.

Gillis is a former offensive lineman from central Pennsylvania who was recruited out of the Catholic high school to play football at West Point—where he immediately realized he didn't belong and left.

Three colleges later, Gillis devoted himself to stand-up. On the comedy scene in Philadelphia, where he lived from 2003 to 2008, he befriended his future "Tires" partners, including Chris O'Connor, a show writer who plays the premier mechanic Cal.

They started "Tires" with one episode posted to YouTube in 2009. The show sold to Quills, a startup led by Jeffery Katzenberg for "quick-hite" programming on people's phones.

After Gillis's "SNL" firing, Quills didn't want him involved. But his friends refused to make the show without him. Quills kicked in 2003 shortly after launch. Meanwhile, Gillis's solo career went back off.

He became a main character in the world of hangout graduate. He went directly to fans on YouTube with a sketch comedy scene in main with McKevon ("Gilly and Reeves") and a debut stand-up special, "Live in Austin," released in 2005 for free.

A hit special released by Netflix in 2023, "Beautiful feast," helped Gillis graduate to sports arenas on tour. He used his popularity not to jump into Hollywood projects but to renounce "Tires." He paid for most of the first season himself, a six-fgates cast for six episodes produced on a showstring budget.

Gillis was made 2," Gillis said, recalling the plan. "Sohold

'My character is a lot like me in real life where it's kind of time to grow up,' said Gillis.

was going to buy our show without a proof of concept."

The bet paid off when there do 9-removal causes perceived as Netflix in 2024 and went to No. 1. The streamer ordered more, favoring the budget but keeping the original crew in control.

Gerben, who had been working as a package as his buddy's stand-up career skyrocketed, said he was grateful to get swept into the show's business.

For Shane to have the success he had and then come back for all of us in something I wish I could say that I would do if I were him, but I don't know if I would," he said.

Their children in the "Tires" yet located in the Philly suburb

of West Chester. On a busy road across from a dry chased, the storefront entrance blends into the real tree shop it's attached to. Gerben's dad owns that business, which now includes small success from a Netflix production.

In the new season, "Tires" ventures beyond the garage into new settings and "Senses you can't really be juvenile about."

With cameras trained on him during production last March, Gillis popped a 2nd out of his month and got into an important scene. Shane bragging about the woman he's about to call, only to get dumped over the phone with a co-worker listening.

The scene wasn't hard, Gillis said later, he played. He just commenced a something moment from his past that happened in almost the same way, but in middle school.

Playing a character calls for a different range of emotion than he presents outings to his stand-up. He's one reason why "Tires" is winning over new fans, including more women.

"Yeah, it's shocking to me. I'm happy about it," he said with a laugh on the phone, then was briefly interrupted by a passing admirer—a guy.

"Thank you," Gillis said to him. "I love you, too."

AOC and the Politics of Egg-Freezing

Continued from page C1

sponded to requests for comment.

Meanwhile, Katie Miller, wife of senior Trump aide Stephen Miller, was unusually supportive of the woman she once called "sad," "pete" and "children." If one woman wants to preserve her right to have children, which means more than having some—we should celebrate that," she wrote on social media.

In the century women have served in Congress, just 12 female lawmakers have gone forth while in office. Only one

has publicly disclosed the use of medical interventions. See, Tommy Duckworth (D. B.), who struggled with infertility following injuries suffered while serving at Iraq. Most elected officials fall into two categories: married with children or married to the job. To be children, half female as a politician invites a special kind of scrutiny.

Amarela Litman, the co-founder of East for Something, an organization that recruits first-time Democratic candidates, said voters have reservations about women who aren't mothers. The children could

dates she's worked with field questions about whether they plan to have babies and, once they do, who will take care of them so they can do their jobs. "There is no right way to be a woman running for office or serving in office," Litman said. "There are only a multitude of wrong ways."

Rep. Sam Jacobs (D. Calif.) felt this acutely during the two egg-freezing cycles she's undergone while in Congress, smoking out of hill marlages to go to her office to do

anywhere. She and Ocasio-Cortez had talked about the process—"how physically tough it is, the scheduling of it, how to balance job responsibilities," said Jacobs, 17. "There were physical reactions thinking, sure broasts and political ones ("People said I couldn't find a man or that I shouldn't

reproduce," she said). "So young women in politics, we are pretty accustomed to comments about our bodies and bans and clothes," Jacobs said, "but it's definitely amplified when we talk about something like this."

This, despite the fact that it's

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez speaks to reporters last month.

nearly ubiquitous in Washington, where professional women her sign daddy joke that fertility clinics are networking hot spots. It's also familiar to me, another case-to-be. If your old. My husband and I have been trying for 18 months and are seriously considering in vitro fertilization, which will require an egg retrieval not unlike Ocasio-Cortez.

When I tell people this in D.C., I get sash, but also some pity, often from well-meaning Republican who are in me a poster child for the correction they want women against. At a Fourth of July gala, I mentioned this in the presence of Kari Lake, Trump's former head of Voice of America, the decided to lead a group of Trump officials in a proper circle on my behalf, holding hands as I stood there in my ballroom.

I am not the only woman in her project. "Motherhood is the product (or in life, and I hope she—and every woman—has the chance to experience that profound joy," Labe wrote in a text message of Ocasio-Cortez, a lawmaker she invoked as

an insult during her case for governor and U.S. Senate in Arizona.

The familiarity of the congresswoman's trade—and my own—is only some young conservative women-broiled at the outrage from Republican. "Conservative men dazzling on AOC for freezing her eggs is not a winning message with women voters," former Trump administration spokeswoman Alina Henning wrote on social media.

Henning took special issue with comments suggesting the congresswoman was "plenewitizing the left not women can bans it all." As Stuckey had put it, "What? Of course we can bans it all," Henning said. She pointed to the working mothers serving in the Trump administration in a post-though White House press secretary Karoline Luecht just announced she would be stepping down from her role to focus on her family.

Some conservative women also applaud Ocasio-Cortez for drawing interest in having children at all. The failing hurricane has become a

rallying point for Republican, who prefer someone becoming a mother—even if it's been in life, through medical intervention—to opting out entirely. "I'm very encouraged and happy to see people across the entirety of the ideological spectrum talk about the desire to have children and make sure that that is a priority in their life," said the Daily Wave's Isabel Brown.

Brown takes issue, however, with any messaging that suggests egg freezing allows women to put off childbearing. Miller coached her prison for Ocasio-Cortez with warnings to this effect, noting "too many women buy into the breasted lie and spend their childbearing years climbing the corner basket."

It was almost as if Ocasio-Cortez anticipated this criticism. "The media will run up and ask a question like, 'Are you going to run for this or are you going to run for that?'" she said in one of her Instagram videos, calling that framing a "tenditential, crave understanding of power." "I think a lot of us actually approved these considerations or these decisions through the larger context of our lives as whole human beings," she continued.

For most women, the decision to pursue parenthood isn't as simple as weighing it against the next career more. Anyone who suggests so forgets that few outcomes—most especially when it is being partner, having a healthy baby, winning a congressional cast and maybe, one day, the presidency—can bond to one's will.

"This is a choice that I am making to feel more in context of my life," Ocasio-Cortez said. And who can't value to that?

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Saturday/Sunday, August 15 - 16, 2020 | C5

REVIEW

A Lost Civilization Is Baffling Experts And Rewriting China’s Origin Story

The otherworldly beasts and enigmatic masks of Sanxingdui still enthrall, decades after the unearthing of ceremonial pits

By Jonathan Camo

Guangzhou, China is July 2006, evident at a book factory in southwestern China were digging for clay when they hit upon something unexpected: dozens of dazzling pieces of jade.

The chance discovery led to one of the greatest archaeological finds in modern history—one that continues to thrill China with its ornate gold masks, towering humanized figures, intricate 12-foot-tall bronze “sacred trees,” sculptures of fantastical beasts and hundreds of elephant tusks.

The artifacts from Sanxingdui, as the site is known, stirred questions that still peoples experts fear decades later. How could a civilization beasting gold and bronze masterpieces, paloverking and silk production disappear without leaving written records or human remains? Why did that civilization appear to have systematically smashed and buried its treasures in ceremonial pits?

The mysterious surrounding Sanxingdui have spawned even more outlandish questions. Do the enormous protruding eyes and enigmatic smiles featured on the figures suggest the ancient people were extraterrestrals? The puzzle only deepened with the discovery as recent years of an additional ceremonial pits fall of shattered artifacts.

Even the basics about the ancient civilization at Sanxingdui, located in the modern-day province of Sichuan, are fuzzy. It appears to have flourished roughly 3,000 years ago, beasting splendors even more expensive than those of China’s heralded ancient dynamics.

The striking features of Sanxingdui’s humanized figures—so “an Chinese” in their appearance—have prompted a wholesale or thinking of what historians thought they knew about the origins of Chinese civilization. Perhaps it didn’t emerge solely from its traditional cradle in the Yellow River Basin. And could other advanced, independent civilizations have also flourished within China’s current borders before their indignation?

China’s ruling Communist Party has dropped in to spank any heretical notions: Chinese leader Xi Jinping, who recently blessed a operating new expansion to the Sanxingdui Museum, has presented the findings as evidence that China has always enjoyed “unity in direc-

sity” within its modern-day borders—and therefore that Beijing is a legitimate ruler of Tibet, Xinjiang and other regions not primarily populated by China’s dominant Han people, who account for more than 90% of the country’s population.

In the past five years, Sanxingdui has captured the imagination of a Chinese nation eager to revel in its long history and civilizational accomplishments. Sold-out exhibitions of the Sanxingdui treasures have crosscrossed the country. Their images have exploded in Chinese pop culture, appearing in videogames, animated films and

collectible bobbleheads.

“Chinese civilization is both mysterious and incredible,” said Fang Qing, a 23-year-old real-estate professional from Changsha, who posed for pictures with an overview Sanxingdui planks during a visit to the site last month. “Some people speculate that it involves aliens, but I

Artifacts from the site, top, bottom and far left. Above, archaeological work under way in Sanxingdui in 2005.

view it as a civilization in its own right, although we do not yet fully understand the nature of that civilization.”

New Splendors Unearthed

Nan Honglin, the lead archaeologist at the site, had long believed there was more to Sanxingdui—whose name means “Three Star Mound,” a reference to a nearby topographic feature—than the two sacrificial pits found in 1986.

In December 2019, Nazis team uncovered an ancient Chinese ceremonial vessel in what would later be identified as Sacrificial Pit No. 3. “I actually jumped for joy,” Ran, 28, recalled.

Unlike in 1986, when many of the artifacts, especially the elephant tusks, decomposed after being exposed to the open air, Ran impen-

vived a new system for the dig.

The archaeologists built stools, temporary structures with temperature and humidity controls, and lowered experts used to hold-totter medical gowns into the pits atop bedlike platforms so as to minimize contact with the artifacts. In the aboveground labs, they used artificial intelligence and digital technologies to reassemble the millions of shards into recognizable forms.

The unearthing of the six new ceremonial pits confirmed some theories that Ran held—for instance, that the pits were all likely dug at the same time, with pieces of the largest sculptures scattered among the various pits.

But the new discoveries also reaffirmed old mysteries, such as the lack of a writing system or human remains, and raised fresh questions.

Some of the buried objects had been burned so thoroughly as to defy explanation, while the abundance of gold—far more than can be found in China’s traditional Yellow River Basin—has perplexed experts. The apparent absence of weaponry or fossils, including for the civilization’s rulers, also remains a mystery.

Tristan Brown, a professor of Chinese history at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, places the Sanxingdui discovery in 1986 alongside the discovery of the Terracotta Army in 1874 as two moments that reshaped how China regarded itself as the country entered the post-Mao Zedong years.

But whereas the Terracotta Army, outside modern-day Xi’an, reaffirmed China’s self-conception as a powerful civilization centered on the central plains where it has long traced its origins, the discovery of Sanxingdui—an equally advanced culture nearly 500 miles to the southwest, in hard-to-reach Sichuan—challenged that narrative.

“It puts a different face on Chinese civilization,” Ran said. “If we didn’t have Sanxingdui, the picture we would have of China would be very different.”

With only about 1,000th of the Sanxingdui site enuseated so far, “we know that the work at Sanxingdui won’t be done in this generation. It will continue and require future generations to carry on the work,” Ran said.

—Zhen Yueling and Zian Xiao contributed to this article.

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C6 | Saturday/Sunday, August 15 - 16, 2026

REVIEW

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL.

OBITUARY

WALLY FUNK | 1939-2026

Aspiring Female Astronaut Who Finally Went Into Space

A pilot, she waited 60 years before she made the trip with Jeff Bezos

By JAMES B. BRADLEY

A part of a text for potential astronauts in 1963, Wally Funk had cold water-squitted into the cars, a rubber tube packed down her throat and a needle jabbed into the base of one of her thumbs.

Later she was eased into a steel tank of warm water and asked to be in dark silence as long as she could. After 10 hours and 45 minutes, she was ready for more, but the testers decided she had proved her tolerance for sensory deprivation.

It was fortunate that Funk had an unusual capacity for patience. Though she used her qualification tests, she had to wait 60 years before finally flying into space.

Meanwhile, she taught more than 3,000 people to fly airplanes, was hired as a safety inspector for the Federal Aviation Administration and later became an aviation accident investigator for the National Transportation Safety Board.

In 2023, when she was 62, Funk was told that Jeff

Funk, second from left, with some other members of the Mercury 51 program in 1945.

Bezos wanted to meet her. She had never heard of him. In her usual up-for-anything mode, however, she was happy to oblige. When Bezos invited her to join him and two other people in the first manner for womanably identified flight of his New Shepard rocket, operated by his New Origin space-travel business, she gave him a bag.

Though she had planned to ride as a paying passenger on Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic rocket ship eventually, she was happy to take up the free offer from Bezos instead.

Her flight to the edge of space and back on July 20, 2023, lasted only 10 minutes but gave her a chance to travel at three times the speed of sound.

Mercury 13

Funk, who died July 8 in Grapevine, Texas, at the age of 87, was one of a group of women who came to be known as the Mercury 13. After the U.S. space program they hoped would send them into space.

Tests of these women in the early 1960's were conducted in Albuquerque, N.M., by William Randolph Lovelace II, a like-and-trained physician who had worked with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration in cleaning tests for male astronauts.

NASA hadn't endorsed his female testing, but Lovelace hoped women would be considered for space flights. Partly because they tend to be smaller than men, women might be better adapted to radiating long stretches in a cramped capsule. Lovelace and others suggested. During the tests, women were found to grandly lose and in some ways outperform the men.

When NASA made clear it would consider only men, however, Lovelace abruptly canceled his program, before Funk could complete the final phase.

In July 1962, a U.S. House subcommittee held a hearing on whether NASA should reconsider its men-only policy. One of the witnesses was John

Top, Funk, right, with Oliver Emerson, Jeff Bezos and Mark Bezos on the Blue Origin flight. She also pursued an aviation career, above.

More stories at WSJ.com/obituaries

Glenn, who had recently become the first American to orbit the Earth. "Men fight the wars, fly the planes, come back and design and test them," he said. "The fact that women haven't cracked this field yet is a result of our social order."

A Soviet consonant, Valentina Terenkova, became the first woman in space in 1963. (On its cover, Life magazine commented: "Soviet Space Girl Makes U.S. Men Sound Stupid.")

NASA didn't launch a woman into space until 1969, when Sally Ride was a crew member on the space shuttle Challenges: "At that moment, I wanted to be her," Funk wrote later. "But mostly, I was just happy that NASA had finally flown a female astronaut."

One Great Leap

Mary Wallace Funk, who preferred to be called Wally, was born Feb. 1, 1939, to Louise and Virginia (She) Funk. She grew up mostly in Tuos, N.M. She father operated five-and-

In a memoir, "Higher, Faster, Longer," she recalled her first attempt to outwit gravity—by hoping off the roof of a barn while wearing her finger-nas-certains. She preferred her forever her to dolls and made airplanes out of balsa wood. A back injury ended her dream of becoming an Olympic silver.

Her parents sent her to Stephens College in Columbia, Mo. She was allowed to wear trousers for flying lessons, her main interest, and earned her first pilot's license as a teenager.

After transferring to Oklahoma State University, she spent much of her time at the airport, where she helped mechanics. She went together as a member of the Flying Aigars aviation team.

While working as a civilian flight instructor at the Army's Fort Sill, she spotted a Life magazine article about the tests of women hoping to become astronauts. "Wow," she recalled thinking, "I wanted in on this action!"

When the tests hit a dead end, she pursued her aviation career and took time off to travel.

Old Problems, New People

At the National Transportation Safety Board, her specialty was searching for clues at airplane crash-

sites. Sometimes that meant digging up airplane parts that had lodged themselves into the earth. Other times she had to stop the plane, she was put into the earth. She reached remote crash sites on foot or horseback and by ruggelling down cliffs. At one site, she found 16 million in cash and bags of cocaine.

Often, she wrote, accidents were caused by people in a hurry, "so they didn't take time for a proper profit/fit inspection. Or they thought they could beat bad weather, or they thought they were sober or rented enough."

On lecture tours, she tried to teach pilots how to avoid accidents. "After all the crashes I have seen, I've concluded that there are no new kinds of airplane accidents, just new people doing the same old ones," she wrote.

Among the Mercury 13, Funk was perhaps the most unabused, always eager to talk about her experience and pose for pictures. That stirred some resentment. "She's been pretending to be an astronaut" since 1961, Jerri Trubill, one of the other Mercury 13 test participants, told the Los Angeles Times in 2004. "I don't think she's got a chance in half of flying into space. But she's great at promoting herself."

The general public loved her story, though. After she returned from her Blue Origin space flight, Funk received thousands of phone calls and cards of congratulation from strangers around the world.

Her neighbors in Grapevine, where she was a regular of the Original Pascale House, were especially proud of her. The manager at the town's Palace Theatre read: "Welcome back to Earth Wally Funk."

READER MAIL

WSJ Readers Weigh In: You Don't Need Prison to Turn Off Phone

IN A RECENT ESSAY, former politician Eli Stroudold wrote about a paradox of his time in prison: It goes into a break from the pull of his smartphone. In response, many readers wrote about that case of facts to discourage and coping, and the learnings that come from making those steps. Here, lightly edited for space and clarity, are a selection of their comments.

No Drugs, Beeps or Chimes One thing I've done is to turn off all my alarm. It's something I really notice when I'm with other people and I hear all their dogs, beeps and chimes and I just think, "Why? Won't you be able to see who or what plunged you when you pick up the phone in a few minutes out of habit?" The average person picks up their phone between 164 and 285 times a day, ar-

cording to Google. I'm more like 50. Very few notifications, if any, require our immediate attention. I'm just trying to be more present in my day-to-day life.

—Thomas Clansoff

A Trip for Some Perspective I defined a whole series of apps of ter we went to Glacier National Park a few summers ago. The first night, I made my way to the top floors of the Lake MacDonald Lodge trying to hold my phone at just the right angle to get the best signal so that tests, emails and other notifications would update. I was leaning over a balcony and realized how ridiculous I looked. The world will move ahead without me, and that was OK! Happiness comes when you let your ego go. The smartphone is the ego maillot! Hiking along the Continental Bi-

vide and steering clear of the get-tikes and brown bears on the trail was a great place to learn to be "present" again. —Andrew Mele

Take a Tip From the Kids I quit social media after visiting my college-age daughter, who he moaned the perception that young people are all anxious, isolated and socially stunted because of the stranglehold of social media and TikTok. "All we see is how addicted parents are. You may not be on TikTok, but you guys are always on your phones too!" She and her friends have a "no phones" role at meals, and many have deleted TikTok. As for me, I now read news on my phone, test my friends, do-

crosswords when I am bored, which feels far different to scrolling. I see fewer ads so am less pooled into buying agents. I watch full movies without glancing down at my phone to look up actors and read reviews and Rotten Tomatoes. I feel less irritable and less fractured. I am still on top of the big picture for real news but in smaller, discrete doses. —Carlos Meves

Resist FOMO—It Will Pass What I have aimed for is to make the phone a tool that you control,

not something that controls you. When my oldest team I've won here, I committed to be more present for my family, quitting social media cold turkey. Life is so short, it would be a shame to spend it scrolling social media feeds, ignoring loved ones, as well as ignoring the activities you need to love to do. I think many people will look back and think about all the time they spent on social media and how this time could have been used before. You probably will feel some FOMO at first, but it will pass with far-increase and anything else it is the people addicted to their feeds who are missing out, not you.

—J. Paykerson

Read News, Then Put It Away I recently quit social media consumption. I give myself one session, so matter how long or short, it's not the news on my phone. Since then, I have started reading feeds again. I have better outcomes at work and am more present with the family. This is all very recent. I will fall off the wagon for short periods but am conscious. I say, you do it too.

—Sachin Dale

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Giving Graceland When Paul Simon found inspiration in South Africa C10

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Ecosystem on Edge A migratory journey through the Prespa lakes region C9

Saturday/Sunday, August 15 - 16, 2026 | C7

What's the Point?

Early instances of written language were lists. Ancient scribes needed a way to indicate where a reader should stop.

On the Mark

By Florence Hazrat Basic, 352 pages, $32

By Melissa Cox Grasso

THE SUCCESS of Mark Kurlandsky's 2002 microhistory, "talk," has given rise to a great profession of narrative-sentitism works that have as their starting point an ordinary thing. An author then regain across disciplines to show how consequential, in human affairs, the ordinary thing has been. Thus, we've had microhistories of coal, sugar, rain, dust, cotton, butter, notebooks, eating utensils and bookmaking. How have is Florence Hazrat with "On the Mark," a thoughtful and lovely history of punctuation.

Satisfied "From Periods to Interethings, How Punctuation Remade the World," the book explores the evolution and effects of the small markings that written have used for more than four centuries. One surprise here is that no new bit of punctuation has gained a purchase in English-language writing since about 1600. The interethings of the subtitle is a marking of the question mark and the explanation point that a New York ad man tried to popularize in the 1960s. It's a cute idea, an emphatic, eye-rolling interethings, but there isn't any need for it. As the author remarks, "If it's done that just fine for a long time."

Mr. Hazrat, the author of "An Admanable Point: A Brief History of the Explanation Mark" (2022), begins in Mesopotamia some 5,000 years ago, when scribes used tools to press triangular markings into clay tables. The writing, known as cucumbers, lacked punctuation as we know it. The early Egyptians used some punctuation-like symbols in their homophiles, but it was not until about 2,000 years later than a thousand at the great scroll-houses in ancient Alexandria introduced date as a means of distinguishing the beginnings and ends of centuries, and the clause-breaks of a peace within them. Astrophysics of Byzantium is known, therefore, as the father of punctuation.

According to Mr. Hazrat, Aristophane's duty were "the first nonagitated and unabreached to unlocking sentence structures and therefore enabling the performance of text." The notion of performance is important. For people of the distant past, words on the page were there to be used ahead. Even today, when the custom is to read silently, there remains an element of performance. As we string groups of words together in our heads, resting and meaning, we take in almost unconsciously the little suggests of punctuation that give shape and rhythm to what we're reading.

"Early punctuation focused on the contours of the sentence, giving us the comma, colon, and period," Mr. Hazrat writes. Later innovations introduced elements of narrative texture and tone, as when the question mark entered the repertoire over the eighth and ninth centuries. The explanations point arrived in the middle of the 16th century, bringing what many felt was "a welcome infusion of emotion onto the page," and was joined, over the 15th century, by parentheses and the apostrophe. The ampersand, meanwhile, evolved over time from a jagged bit of Roman graffiti into the early charmer we know today. Each additional symbol brought the opportunity to bring greater refinement of rhythm, feeling and clarity to the written word.

As Lynne Truss reminded us in "Eats, Shoots & Looms" (2003), the placement of a

AND ALL. Empowered forms, beginning with the mark's first iteration, to A.D. 79, from Vavrammaniknagar de El-Jaichar (1993) by Jan Tschichak.

single comma may radically alter the meaning of a sentence. When it comes to this aspect of punctuation, Mr. Hazrat gets a little blue and, eventually, almost comes unglued. For soon politics will enter her story. "Punctuation troubles our notions of control and authority," she warns, "of identity both individual and collective."

'Early punctuation focused on the contours of the sentence,' Hazrat writes. Later innovations, such as the question mark, introduced texture and tone.

Mr. Hazrat points out that the punctuation of William Shakespeare's place even on to have come from the Bard himself but from the editors, copywriters, typewriters and publishers who shepherded his manuscripts into finished form. It is but a short way to her complete—not wholly unpublished—that modern editors associated with the Folger Shakespeare Library added exclamation points to the speeches of Cleopatra and, somewhat less, of Antony in the tragedy bearing their names. Antony gets his emotionally added in "situations of heroic masculinity," we read, whereas the same marks cause Cleopatra to be "crucialized as the exotic, seductive, and overly emotional other

from the 'magical East.' Whether the added punctuation has the effect the author imagines, she's not wrong to point out that editorial decisions, once made, tend to relax, informing how future readers will interpret a story or character."

But then we go whizzing off into the land of political grievance, where a hyphen in the phrase "brand-whatever conflict" suggests a failure, in the author's view, to "hold apart the colonizer and the colonized." Scare quotes are reprehensible when used by "oppressive authorities" to cast doubt on the legitimacy of, say, the presidency of Barack Obama, but laudable when applied to the "war on terror," which, we read, "has actually been a lootless bombing campaign across several countries in the Middle East."

And speaking of politics, did you know that Joseph Goobish's "blanched the punching power of the exclamation mark" is their propaganda to exude crowds and to push Adolf Hitler to greater heights of "linguistic megalomania"? Well, he did.

Guess what other politician has, in more recent days, exploited the exclamation mark? You are wrong if you gunned "dot" or "Lamar" or "Jesse" or "Becky" but right if you named that reliable kingdom in the White House against whom so many writers on every subject serve to feel they must declare themselves. Mr. Hazrat, who argues that the U.S. Constitution ought to evolve according to "our current attitudes," not least to remove a notorious comma relating

to gun rights, treats the subject less as an analyst than as an activist, making her left-leaning allegiance clear.

"Punctuation can be an amazing springboard for discussions," she writes, "as long as we translate the results into real action in law, work, allodig, and social cooperation."

Having discharged her hearts of febrile political static, which detract from the merits of the book, the author turns to punctuation in the digital age. She explores the use of the back mark, a symbol dating back to medieval times, as a modern means of expressing irony online. She recognizes the emotions, that conglomeration of punctuation marks that English-language letters used to convey feelings before the arrival in 2003 of the songs. And she concludes with a slightly confusing lament for the way things are going, with communication substantially taking place online: "Sually, digital punctuation serves corporate greed and questionable political interests."

There's a lot of good in "On the Mark," but the whole is marred by Mr. Hazrat's determination to enlist her subject in service of her political beliefs. Punctuation marks do matter. Their process is oloqued, and so is their absence. What's tiresome is that in learning about them we have to sit through a one-sided lecture of the usual dreary sort.

Mrs. Gordon is a Free Expression columnist at WSJ Opinion and the author of the forthcoming memoir "Free Range Girl."

From a Marxist Perspective

The Age of Hobsbawm

By Ernie Chabal Berkings, 480 pages, $35

By Dranne Grasso

THE PROVIDERS of the English eccentric novembre those of the God in the medieval court. Irritating but never truly dangerous, his antagonism is a safety valve for the class system and a flattering diversion for its proprietors. The socially acceptable options for 20th-century English eccentricity included the rules of public intellectual and political fanatic (Ex. Hobsbawm 1987-2013) was both.

A recurring theme in Ernie Chabal's "The Age of Hobsbawm: The Life of a Revolutionary Historical" is its subject's tortured attempts to remain loyal to

both the facts of history and the ideology of the Communist Party. Hobsbawm was concerned above all with furthering the global communist revolution through the academy in 1843, 1882 opened a letter Hobsbawm wrote to his first wife, Marcel Ioannou. The agency, Mr. Chabal writes, found a "free words of tenderness" but mainly "a discussion of the land and global political situation at the time." Marcel was also a party member.

Hobsbawm was born in Alexandria in British-controlled Egypt. His father, Percy, was a Jewish-British trader; his mother, Nelly, was the daughter of middle-class "Veronese" Jews. Eric, bookish and anesthetic, grew up in 1920s Vienna. The fullest from Austria's defeat in World War I gave a first taste of class consciousness. Nelly wanted to keep servants long after she and Percy could afford them. Percy died in 1928 and Nelly followed two years later. Eric and his younger sister joined an aunt and uncle in Berlin. The family escaped to London in 1930 after Hitler's rise to power.

In his 2002 autobiography, "Interesting Times," Hobsbawm claimed not to remember any personal antisemitism as a schoolboy in Vienna. He

seemed to place little importance on the settings of his childhood. Alexandria meant nothing to him. Austria, he said, "had never been my country." Mr. Chabal directs "a good deal of expression" and a discomfort with Jewishness. Though Hobsbawm lived in the centres of psychoanalysis Vienna, Ber-

Hobsbawm's ideological approach to history made him a prized figure on Britain's academic left.

lin, London; he never took to the coach. He had no need to after finding a substitute religion.

Froud speculated that the "scenic feeling" of religious order explained the love that infants feel for their mothers. In London, the 27-year-old Eric wrote in his diary that he wanted to dive into Marxism "like into the sea, and sink into it." The all-embracing communist mentality outred Hobsbawm's coveted nature and managed his isolation.

Please turn to page C8

UPON REFLECTION Eric Hobsbawm in London in 2005.

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C8 | Saturday/Sunday, August 15 - 16, 2020

• • • •

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL.

BOOKS

'In wartime, truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies.'—WESTON CROZONAL

FIVE BEST RORY! CORMAC

Propaganda and Deception

The author of 'Fakers' on the secret and sometimes elaborate government campaigns in which misinformation is a weapon

DICTATORSIMP 'Animal Farm' (1954), directed by John Hales and Joy Batchelor, adapted from George Orwell's 1960 novella of the same name.

Propaganda

By Edward Bernays (1928)

I'm years after World War I, a decade during which government began to mobilize public opinion on an unprecedented scale. Edward Bernays offered 'Propaganda,' a remarkably frank guide to mass persuasion. Bernays, a probably consultant who pioneered the idea of a public-relations campaign, opens his book with the claim that 'the conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses in an important element in democratic society.' Propaganda, he argues, could be a tool to regulate and benefit the body politic. It advanced causes he favored—he notes that activities for women's rights, armed with what he called the 'weapon of propaganda,' had 'made their influence felt on city councils, state legislatures, and national congresses.' But even if Bernays was sanguine about the use of propaganda, his own enthusiasm points at its dangers. These who manipulate 'this unseen mechanism of society,' he writes, will become an 'intuition government.'

How to Win an Information War

By Peter Pomerantow (2024)

Peter Pomerantow's 'How to Win an Information War' tells the story of Jethro Britton. 'The propagandist who outwitted Hitler.' Britton, a British-American journalist, attended school in Germany and interviewed Hitler in 1941. Once war with Nazi Germans began, Britton was recruited to run what Mr. Pomerantow describes as Britain's 'empire of think' against the Third Reich.

Britton's mission was to undermine enemy morale and induce uncertainty among Nazi leadership while ensuring his message didn't betray their true source. This called for the creation of fake stereotypes, and Britton invented considerable trumpet. Most colorful, perhaps, was a broadcast persona known as Der Chef. In 1941 Der Chef began delivering a salacious mix of gossip and blatantlydied fake news to German listeners over shortwave radio. He was supposedly a disaffected Hitler loyalist who exposed corruption, incompetence, hypocrisy and sexual depravity among the Nazi elite. Der Chef was voiced by German exiles under Britain's watchful eye. 'How to Win an Information War' raises an important and timeless issue: the risks for a democracy when it begins to tell lies.

The Deception Game

By Lachlan Britman (1972)

Secret-aligned intelligence services waged what they called active measures long before the world had heard of to tell farms and sleepless. Few people understood this effect before their Lachlan Britman, a senior propagandist in the Czechoslovakian intelligence service who defected to the West in 1948. His memoir, 'The Deception Game,' reveals three dirty tricks in a rare eyewitness account of how states work to gain what is now called an information advantage. One of Britmans most startling plays, Operation Neptune, attempted to unuse West German politicians as former Nazi collaborators. His team planted fabricated papers naming the targets in a submerged戯et in a Czechslaw near the German border before 'discovering.' Some in 1944. Other operations sought to

make the U.S. a scapegoat for the world's troubles. In one scheme, Britman and his colleagues 'concentrated on pregnancy and distributing forged documents to selected African politicians.' These implicated the U.S. in a plot to overthrow the Tanzanian government and generated anti-American press coverage across the continent. In true authoritarian-style, all of this played out with cold mandality. 'A workday in the disinformation factory,' according to Britman, 'consisted of study, analysis, discussions, and meetings'—followed by plenty of paperwork.

The Cultural Cold War

By Frances Stone Saunders (2000)

Francis Stone Saunders's 'The Cultural Cold War' moves beyond outright falsehoods and forgeries to reveal how the Central Intelligence Agency secretly supported a wide-ranging collection of artists and intellectuals between 1947 and 1957. Drawing on archives, interviews and forensic analysis, she makes the case that the agency's efforts were not confined to obscure institutions. It funded tours by the Boston Symphony Orchestra, film adaptations of George Orwell's 'Animal Farm' and '1944,' and translations of T.S. Eliot's poetry. She even suggests that the CIA helped launch the Abstract Expressional movement, which included Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko. The aim was to expand U.S. influence in Europe, promote ideas suppressed behind the Iron Curtain and, more specifically, expose Soviet culture as stadi and doctrinaire. Critics have argued that Mr. Saunders overplased the agency's power, preventing a simplistic top-down model of hidden manipulation.

If the CIA operated indirectly, often several steps removed from the artists who produced imaginative work in which they believed, it's unclear how much credit—or blame—the agency deceived.

The Stasi Poetry Circle

By Peter Oberman (2022)

Despite their serious intent, some disinformation operations wind up close to face. Philip Oberman's 'The Stasi Poetry Circle' relates the absurdly true story of space who became poets in an attempt to win the Cold War. In 1942, East Germany's feared and formidable secret police, the Stasi, used a creative writing class to train its intelligence officers. It believed this would improve their ability to detect subversive literature and publish anthologies of their own, all with the goal, in the words of the group's leader, Tom Berger, 'of boosting the masses' hunger for victory.' Berger, a former informant known, according to Mr. Oberman, for his 'moodish secretions,' embodied a 'scene of poetic mission'—though his own verse talents were minimal. Some of the scenes the author designs up from his deep toand through Stasi archives are bizarre. Mostly after month, space secretly met in a secure compound to discuss rhyme schemes, structural forms and heroic roles. Berger's star recruit was Alexander Hicks, a talented young poet. But soon enough Berger spotted hints of dissent in Hicks's poems, which proved too genuine to fit the Stasi's program. Beneath the ridiculousness lies a serious point about an authoritarian system, obsessed with order, seeking the power of a creativity it also fears.

On the Left Side Of History

Continued from page C7

Born a British subject, Hobsbawm refused to consider himself a refugee. He would remain, Mr. Chahal writes, an 'ancient' narrative. Hobsbawm excelled at school in London. His working was previously broad: Marx and Engels, Buddhism and China, all in their original languages. He joined the Communist Party of Great Britain within days of entering King's College, Cambridge, in 1936. In his final year he joined the Cambridge Aventes, a club that the historian Hugh Trevor-Roper described as 'an egregious secret society of self-perpetuating self-admiring warriors.' The club had previously brought together the core of the Bloomsbury Group and, shortly before

Hobsbawm's time, the Soviet space known as the Cambridge Five.

When World War II broke out, Mr. Chahal writes, 'Hobsbawm had the perfect profile for appointment to the code-breaking team at Birkshire Park or he recruitment by the Soviet secret services.' The author specializes that Hobsbawm 'probably would have accepted either after.' but finds no evidence of any approaches. Hobsbawm passed the war in the Army Educational Corps under 400 surveillance. The party was already his life. It told him to defend Stalinism and the Nazi-Soviet Pact. He grumbled that his allegiance cost him professionally, but the University of London employed him consistently from 1947 around.

Nikita Khrushchev's denunciation of Joseph Stalys in 1950, shocked Hobsbawm, but not enough for him to leave the party. Hobsbawm defeated the Soviet mission of Hungary that year as a 'magic necessity.' He felt the same about his proofs at the University of London, it wasn't (bitter) or Cambridge but, as he observed, 'even

revolutionaries like to be in a suitable tradition.'

A productive historian and polemical journalist, Hobsbawm rarely used archival research, but he knew European history. He read 'Theodor Adorno and Antonio Gramsci in their original languages when their work wasn't widely available in English. His trilogy on Europe's long, 19th century published between 1942 and 1947, is highly readable if not entirely reliable. Hobsbawm's theory of the 'dual revolution' (political in France, economic in Britain) is a clever construct. But the books are suffused with Messier apologetics for political violence and they tendentiously equate capitalism with imperialism.

Mr. Chahal, a professor of history at the University of Edinburgh, is sympathetic but not so much of a fellow traveler as to follow his subject down the road to positions.

Much of the book describes leading in the letters pages and common rooms of the British left. Like the code in Hobsbawm's trilogy, 'The Age of Extremes' (1944), the biography will be of interest mostly to commonsense of historical malfeasance and illiterate nostalgia. Every time it came to a choice between the historian's view and the party's calls, Hobsbawm backed the party. His fanaticism, and his late-career defense of communism after the Soviet collapse in 1991, were nothing if not eccentric. He remained committed even after the

party folded in Britain that year. Liberals acclaimed him as a wise survivor of a lost age, and he previously assumed to what Mr. Chahal calls a 'professional party' after Hobsbawm's death. Tony Blunt the former Labour prime minister, called him a 'spent of progressive politics,' even though Hobsbawm had long concluded that Mr. Blunt's politics were 'Thirdfaction in treasures.' Ed Milliland, now Britain's foreign secretary, praised Hobsbawm for bringing 'horses out of the navy tower and into people's lives.'

Mr. Chahal has compiled a psychological study in coldheartedness and individualistic opinion. For the Western revolutionary, someone else always does the thing. In 1994 an interviewer asked Hobsbawm if the Soviet murder of an many as 20 million people would have been justified if the communist dream had come true. Hobsbawm answered, without hesitating, yes.

Mr. Green is a learned contributor and a fellow of the Royal Historical Society.

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THE WALL STREET JOURNAL.

• • • •

Saturday/Sunday, August 15 - 16, 2020 | C9

BOOKS

'Every language is an old-growth forest of the mind, a watershed of thought.' ~want news

Balkan Wonderland

Lifelines

By Julian Hoffman

Godine, 320 pages, $30

By Busta Mason

JULIAN HOFFMAN's remarkable new memoir has with little "The sky was a harbor all of a sudden. Wherever you looked, songs fastened wakes in the air."

The setting is the Prespa lakes region, a mountain valley where three countries—Albania, Greece and North Macedonia—share borders, a park and abundant natural resources. The birds are sparrows and house starters, arrived from North Africa seeking shelter. In a brief preface Mr. Hoffman has also told us about seven colonizing an abandoned residence next above the door of the house he shares with his wife, Julia. He has described the products including Balmutians pictures, which "have seen of such immediate global depths—the blush-joys where like an ice sheet bang cored by the black into—that they appear to hold entire worlds inside them."

This is not the Greece of beaches, ruins and package tours but a diverse ecosystem in a country whose northern border has only been established for a century and where, in the late 1960s, a devastating civil war depreciated villages. Like the birds, the Hoffmans arrived there "in need of shelter," having left London and a more conventional life behind them in 2000. "Our days in the city, as they are for so many, increasingly felt as if they consisted of little more than being worn down by work and long commutes, me as a painter and decorator and Julia as an organizer of corporate events."

The couple, in their life at the time, shared a love of birds and nature as well as a walking nose to change their lives. The daring leap to Prespa meant having to start from scratch, find housing in the village of Ajara Germans and a means of earning a living. Five years of hard labor as market gardeners ended when Mr. Hoffman opened his back. He turned to writing, while his wife found a new career in environmental management.

Italian Peter Mosby's bestselling "A Year in Perennial" (1880), Mr. Hoffman's Lifelines: Searching for Home to the Mountains of Modern Greece 'is not a remedy of relaxation in a foreign country. The "lifelines" of his title pertain to deeper and more universal connections found in the Greek language itself. "Economy" shares a root with the word 'ecology.' Mr. Hoffman writes: "That ancient Greek root, which, under the old, is the economy refers to, then, in its original sense, is the art of looking after one's house, which is why it's entirely natural for ecology in what not only a linguistic affinity with it but also a wider concern for the living shelter of the world."

Mr. Hoffman shifts from personal memoirs to vivid nature writing—as if a modern Thoreau had arrived in the Balkans, eyes open, and began to write a book of unusual beauty. He

PEAK PERCH The Prespa lakes region, in the mountains where Albania, Greece and North Macedonia meet.

has learned, in the words of the poet Robinson Joffers, that "we must uncover our minds from ourselves" if we are to prosper as a species among other species. The lakes region Mr. Hoffman describes as "magnetic and mercurial" in home to bears, wolves, badgers, others

Leaving London behind meant finding housing in an unfamiliar land and a means of earning a living.

and a surprising variety of other creatures, yet there were of life are being threatened. The deep stones encountered 20 years ago are becoming rarer and Greater Prespa Lake in shrinking. As in so much of the world, a water emergency looms. The word "diversity," so followed by our politics, denotes a universal value worth protecting.

In "Lifelines," this pertains to biodiversity as well as human languages and kinds of knowledge, such as indigenous heritage, that are also endangered. The Prespa lakes region

is home to heeding peoples; the "blushs and Sarakatsani, who seem to be wandling, taking their dialects with them. 'Language is a communal shelter.' Mr. Hoffman writes. In this, humans are like birds. We learn language by imitation and need some form of community and cooperation to learn.

He interviews an Australian scientist "at the Difficult and Enormant George," which has "the best title for a scientific team for art board," and knows about the geogic urgent field work in preservation, to save species such as the regent honeycom and, with it, its music. "The disappearance of the regard honeycom's song is a cultural issue, too," Mr. Hoffman writes. He rightly calls Australia "the cradle of song culture in birds." As indigenous people have often taught us, culture is not merely human but a matter of shared environments, rituals, observations and respect.

Readers may at times feel overwhelmed by Mr. Hoffman's research, including pages of statistics and a view that can at times be didactic or becturing due to the urgency of his environmental case. The book contains a bibliography indicating his wide reading in ecology, history and other fields. But it's his page of sharp-eyed nature writing that will stay in

mind, including an encounter with "a European brown bear, a near relative of the American piticle." The least senses Mr. Hoffman's presence, then the two beings come into mutual focus.

... the bear suddenly padded off the rock to hit the meadow in full flight, thumping towards me. It cut the distance between us in half before shooting away, hurtling down the slope and slipping into a pocket of mountain beaches. The echo of its run beat like a drum inside me, so that all I could do was stand still in my meadow—breathing, breathing, breathing—as skylark song fell about me like rain.

From this good deserves celebration, and the fact that it comes with a moral objective—urging so "to see in the fixation of others a flourishing of our own, or to admit that our lifelines are entrusted"—amplifies the book's appeal. Other writers might have given us the gals, but in Mr. Hoffman's own the skill is a troubled one, showing us that "home can be both a place and a way of getting there."

Mr. Mason's new book of poems is "Cold Fire." He lives in Trovnania.

A Club From Concord

The Emerson Circle

By Bruce Nichols

Avril Reader, 168 pages, $32

By Aura Ryan

TH BORKOW Walt Whitman's line, Ralph Walsh Emerson contained real tirades. He was, as Bruce Nichols consciously argues in "The Emerson Circle: The Concord Radical Who Recovered the World, the government public intellectual of his time. His words, such as his lecture "The American Scholar" (1927) and essay "Self-Relance" (1945), were widely organized and debated in literary milieus on both sides of the Atlantic. He bestreads a web of personal connections that simply influenced intellectual life in and with century America. His more circle consisted of his Concord, Mass., neighbors Henry David Thoreau, Bronson Alcott and Alcott's daughter Louisa May.

Concentrically aligned with Emerson were such luminous as Margaret Fuller, the first editor of the Dial magazine; Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, and William, who was in the audience when Emerson delivered his lecture "The Post" in 1942. "We have yet had to go into in America, with tyrannous joy, which leaves the value of our irresponsible material," Emerson dedaused. The points appeared Whitman published "Lovers of Good" (1 y/o) in 1942.

Yet Mr. Nichols reminds us that Emerson and the Emersonian could be downright weird What is one to make of Emerson's natural entry "I feel the rent/palm in me" after visiting Paris's Jardin des Plantes in 1832? Or his

opening of his dead wife's coffin, without explanation, more than a year after her death? Emerson opposed "the whole institution of property," though he owned a very nice house, known locally as Coolidge Castle.

Like many Emersonian, the older Alcott was a vegetarian who cherished animal welfare. He returned from using manner as a fertilizer, and his diet, Mr. Nichols writes, "included vegetables that grow downward into the soil (e.g., potatoes or carrots) versus those that grow upward toward homes."

The connections among the Emersonian waved and waved. Backfitting seemed like a favored article game in the Concord cinemas. Hawthorne called Thoreau "ugly as us, long noted, queer-mouthed, and with an earth and somewhat rustic, although courteous manners" He called Habe "a great hauling."

Emerson was at the center of a network that sought to create a new kind of American culture.

This was a circular thing squad. Emerson was said of Hawthorne: "We were in a net good for anything."

The book has problematic moments. For instance, Mr. Nichols tells us early on that Hawthorne's sister-in-law, Elizabeth Peabody, coined the word "transcendentalism." He then smokes the term at least a dozen times before defining it—beled "in a spiritual Love that exists apart from the physical world"—24 pages later. It's no crime to give even the most enlightened reader a leg up.

But the "transcendentalism" entered the world, as the transcendent subtitle states? It seems more reasonable to suggest that the contemporaneous development ofītanshāmi and cultural-land a greater impact on the first half of America's 16th century than, as Mr. Nichols suggests, Emerson's wisely

permanents on self-reliance and American scholarship, or Thoreau's often-unreal travel-writing.

It also seems stretching to credit Transcendentalism with "the birth of American literature," especially when Mr. Nichols tells us that neither Melville nor Hawthorne "subscribed to Transcendentalism as a movement." Mr. Nichols correctly notes that Melville's South Asia novels, "Tiger" (1846) and "Orme" (1847), were his

shoe of Emerson as the child's philosopher Mark Whiteson, and of Thoreau as Ephrst, a treosome pseudonymatist.

It was Thoreau who consulted that "the transcendental philosophy meets the leaves of humor to render it light and digestible," and one wishes at times that Mr. Nichols wrote with a lighter book. When Thoreau spows nonsense, such as men, "like the earth, reorder mainly from west to east, and so are flattened at the poles," let's call

MENDI'S EYE 2nd Illustration by Christopher Pearse Conch for Ralph Walsh Emerson's 'Nature' (1836).

most successful books, though hardly transcendent in time. House Greeks, an editor and critic, condemned their louche content. "A penchant for bad lapses is everywhere badly proclaimed, while a hankering after more company, not always of the masculine order, is but thinly disguised."

It is curious that Mr. Nichols never mentions Melville's 1857 novel, "The Confidence Man," with its painted pur-

the silliness by its real name. To be like, Mr. Nichols does mine some come value. It's hard not to chuckle when, over the course of a two-hour walk, Mr. Nichols discovers tires to convince Whitman to make the thought this book "Lovers of Good" (e.g., "Gentless Impact are of love but and enormous"). Yet Whitman's "tyrannous way" never blinds. "I felt," Whitman later wrote, "the clear and

unmistakable connection to disobey all, and pursue my own way."

When there are great stories to be told, Mr. Nichols tells them with aplomb. The story of Fuller's death as a shipwreck within sight of Fire Island, R.V., is appearing in road. Fuller and her infant son, Angelina, portuled while 12000 omissions gunked at her foundering vessel, more of them with heeling rather than lifesaving in mind. When Thoreau visited the scene a few days later, he "found women who had already altered the gowns of the passengers—personable including Fuller's—that their husbands and sons had stolen from the beach."

Mr. Nichols also accounts the extraordinary tale of Louisa May Alcott, to whom the Atlantic Monthly's editor, James Fields, unnecessarily said, "trick to your teaching, you can't write." She could write and she wrote a great deal, including detective fiction, a public thriller, "of destiny, seduction, and badbub" and stories about "plastic, massive, and unholy."

Emerson's daughter appears to be the only practical standard character in Mr. Nichols's book. Under her pen name, Pebaskian's foreword, she even wrote a writing of the breath manuledings in her home room. She described a Concord book as serving, "Wabies worse, aesthetic but" and "Hights scorn by the perk," and offering takeaways for "the gifted eyes which desire to watch the songs of the comrade."

Louisa May once observed that she "wrote Bird-gifts at know many, except my sister." That "fictionalized story in 'Little Women' (1860-69) proved to be what her publisher called "the triumph of the century." Mr. Nichols lands her as "a famous and successful writer who reached more readers than the rest of the Emerson circle combined."

Proud if any were needed, that people prefer to be entertained rather than proudled to.

Mr. Alcott, a former columnist at the Buenos Globe, is working on a book about Rockefeller imposites.

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THE WALL STREET JOURNAL.

BOOKS

'A man walks down the street / It's a street in a strange world / Maybe it's the third world / Maybe it's his first time around.' - evo, 1000s

Paul Simon's African Tunes

Days of Miracle and Wonder

By Ashley Kahn

Atria, 320 pages, $30

By Dana Kiner

ITS 1984 AND Paul Simon is ready for a change. She previous album, 'Bizarre and Brave' (2002), has not lived up to his label's expectations. He's been shuttling between Mindatime and Mankind, STI, on Long Island, where he's building a beach house he intended to share with his second wife, Carrie Fisher, but as the house is going up, his marriage is crumbling.

Fortunately, he has some upfront tunes to listen to. Someone sent him a bowlingpot cassette of minupops, a type of South African dance music that reminds Mr. Simon of the three-chord pop hits of the 1950s.

Mr. Simon is already familiar with the music of Ladysmith Black Mindatime, a 10-member a capella Zulu choir known for its base beaver harmonies. The more he listens to the cassette, the more he likes what he hears and the more his spirits run. Lester Wavreler, at the time the president of Mr. Simon's label, 'Warner Bros. Records, later recalls that the singer had 'just figured out a way to do dance music his way, and dance music was so powerful as those days.' Mr. Wavreler tells Mr. Simon he should start working with Nile Rodgers, the producer behind him by David Bowie, Mindatime and others. But Mr. Simon has other ideas. The lackluster performance of 'Shades and Brave' has lived late. 'I am an whatever I want,' he thinks, and what he wants is to go to South Africa.

But there's a problem. Mmmmm of the Soweto uprising of 1970, in which an estimated

600 people protesting South Africa's apartheid system were killed, are still fresh. In 1980, the United Nations General Assembly passes a resolution calling for all of its members to prohibit cultural exchanges with South Africa, though its vague language proceeds a challenge, given that cultural agreement takes no many forms.

Mr. Simon has no intention of performing in South Africa, but he is aware of the sensitive nature of his desire to record there, so he seeks the advice of industry professionals, including Barry Beliebie, who advises him to go. Beliebie offers to put him in contact with the leadership of the African National Congress, the

After a string of successful records came to an end, Simon was seeking fresh inspiration. He found it on a cassette tape.

principal opponent of the apartheid regime. And with that, Mr. Simon's off to Johannesburg with his longtime producer, Roy Hahn.

As described in splendid detail by Ashley Kahn in 'Days of Miracle and Wonder,' the next 21, years on a total convention of Mr. Simon's way of writing and recording songs. On no previous album had he focused so completely on starting with rhythm and harmony tracks and adding melodies and lyrics later. More importantly, no more had he collaborated so completely as he did here with other musicians. In Mr. Kahn's words, 'Graceland' would become 'the most ambitious, all in gamble' of Mr. Simon's career.' (Mr. Kahn, a music historian who has written books on John Coltrane

and Miles Davis, was a member of the 'Graceland' tour production team, here he connects the making of the album to politics, the music industry and the individuals involved like no other book of its kind.)

Mr. Simon heads with the South African musicians immediately. They were used to being treated solely by several executives in their own country as well as by visiting musicians, but even before he arrives, Mr. Simon's ten times knew they would be getting paid to the American union club. 'Right away we were treated really first-class, man. Restclass,' haunted Bakhthi Kumalo recalls. 'They bought us lunch.'

At Ovation Studios in Johannesburg, Mr. Simon works with musicians from three bands, eventually choosing Mr. Kumalo and two others to continue recording with him in New York. For the South Africans, that trip includes their first passports, their first flight on a plane, their first time leaving their country. And culture shock. At one point in New York, Isaac Mitchell, the drummer, asks, 'when do we have to go to register with the police?'

For his part, no 'Graceland' Mr. Simon transitions from what he calls 'ordinary language' to 'writched language' that 'let the words tumble this way and that way.' If you compare the steady march of a trademark early Simon & Garbulski song such as 'The Sound of Silence' (1990) with 'You Can Call Me Al' (1990)—the breakaway single from 'Graceland'—the difference is striking. The earlier song is brisk-belief, counteractive of a black school landscape whereon the latter one is a verbal hurricane that almost makes sense. Or at least it makes enough sense. In Mr. Simon's own words, the lyrics 'would come by you so quickly that all you would get was a feeling.'

The album's very title remains a bit of a mystery. Originally, Mr. Simon wanted this record to be global rather than focus on American culture the way his earlier songs did. So why name its title track after Elsie Pooley's failed Memphis house? Initially he thought of the same as a placeholder, but 'it wouldn't go away.' Eventually he realizes that the doesn't mind 'the emotional shadow that Graceland and Elsie cast over the song. In some way I think it adds an emotional punch.'

The album becomes everything the musician and his label could hope for. It wins the Grammy for album of the year and, led by the ubiquitous radio play of the bouncy single 'You Can Call Me Al,' came in Mr. S. Billboard spot for LPs and cassettes sold out for 1 to 100s.

Yet controversy sings it. The term 'virtue signaling' has not entered the common parliament, but on U.S. college campuses and elsewhere, Mr. Simon is confronted by protesters accusing him of defying the U.S. ban. His admission include Anglicane Kahn, a a singer and political exile from her native Benin, who views the album and subsequent tour as 'part of the movement that came around to get Nelson Mandela out of jail.' Oliver Tambo, the president of the African National Congress, tells Mr. Simon, 'we love you... You're a brother and you have our respect and you're welcome here.'

Friendly, the art on the album's cover is a 15th-century rendering of a height on a quest, and the outcome of quests are notoriously unpredictable. 'There was almost a Don Guisin feel to it.' recalls one Thomas Bros. executive. 'He could be on his way to Graceland.'

Mr. Kirby Jaucher at Florida State University. He is the author of 'Little Richard: The Birth of Rock 'n' Roll.'

Getting in Her Head

MYSTERIES By KATHA Mr. TAYLOR

A detective is haunted by a case that involves a familiar suspect.

IN DEEVALA MCTEERNAYS

'Three Reasons for Revenge' (Marcos, 1934 pages, $500) the simplest part haunts both the victims of crime and those working to solve cases. Judith Lee, a police detective in Melbourne, America, still blames herself for having once discovered an almost woman's complaint, with final consequences. She is a child of violence, which partly explains her symptoms and her prejudices: 'You don't like weak women,' Judith's best friend, Katy, points out. 'You build everyone should be able to fight back as hard as you did.'

A decade after that failure, a college student reporting a sexual assault asks specifically to see Judith. The young woman's description of the novelist one advances of a psychologist named Robert Walker is unhappily familiar. The detective recalls with horror the case that has haunted her, in which similar accusations were made by another of the co-worker's patients. She decides to speedily get, despite being warned off by her boss. Judith is not in good standing at work, having just herself under scrutiny for arresting a meth-taking fellow

cop whose high-ranking father is now her powerful enemy.

But do remains defiant and formidable. With her motorcycle, leather jacket and hust on. Judith looks, Katy observes, 'more like a jacket, angry thinkin d'Olonne than a detective.' That may verge on crime novel cliché. But Judith's innovative and completely to a protagonist who commands our attention through every twist of this novel's latry-toddard path.

Ms. McTiernan needs that plot urgently, scoring fresh intrigue with such characters she introduces. Robert, the accused psychologist, is lying about something. It may have to do with a seemingly incriminating video on a digital drive, which has been mailed anonymously to Robert's wife. When two-similar packages arrive at dissimilar homes—one the reunions of an active influencer, the other the apartment of a widowed father—the personal mind message in each is a cryptic like to the identity of a killer dated on revenge.

By the time a fourth package arrives—this one for Judith—the reader has likely identified the killer, and the novel's trade seems like a runway flourish. 'Three Reasons for Revenge'

lacks the density of earlier books by Ms. McTiernan, such as 'The Rain' (2000) and 'What Rep—pened to 'Rise' (2006), in which the author took time to develop her characters more richly. But there are depths here, too. We know, for example, that our true-nutized character, on losing a family member, also lost 'the

THIS WEEK

Three Reasons for Revenge

By Dennis McTiernan

The Shadow Stop By Mark Billingham

only mirror that reflected back her own stutches as meaningful. That may not be one. But to tragic in its own way: 'This clever tale is most satisfying when Mr. McTiernan brings that painful co-ordination to life.

Mark Billingham is best known for his long run of gritty crime novels following the Lost door-based investigation of Defective Suspect by Tom Thorne. 'The Shadow Stop' (Atlantic Crime, 1935 pages, $200) is the third novel in Mr. Billingham's sprightlike series, which stars

Detective Sergeant Declan Miller. Both officers deal with the narrator problems affecting British cities: murder, drug trafficking, assorted violence. But Declan's fact is the ruffled outside town of Blackpool, home to obesity pretrends and meat leg comedians. It's a place where a police detective should have a talent for reporters, which Declan certainly does, so in this exchange with a pathologist:

'I would guess that he drowned.' 'Where can do that,' Miller said. 'Then again, the back of the head's quite interesting.' 'I hope so,' Miller said, 'Because the front's not much to look at.'

The deceased in this case, whose body has been fished out of a duck pond, is Ezra Simmons, a drug employed by Jacqui Galtin. Hackyowitz spores of the drug man. Nothing packers for Ennch death, Jacqui targets Barry Chesilay, a mild-mannered dachshund owner who happened to be pond-sale with Ezra when the last fell in. Further complications arise when Barry's deranged army mate, Neil Battersby, wages

war on. Jacqui in defense of his fellow veteran.

It is an odd situation, but this is an odd detective. A ballroom dancer who enables his get-tale—Fred and Ginger—Declan rules a suspect that his colleague, Sam Tits, describes as 'that pitiful hair-dryer on wheels.' The local hero, who rules a real motorcycle, is immune to her partner's senescence. But, along with Declan's drug-addicted daughter, Pete, she adds emotional manner to a novel reminiscent of times of a PC. Made-know-super 'Jacqui Galtin' realized into her expansive kitchen, looking every bit as worn-out and miserable as someone who had spent the morning digging potatoes, which she most certainly had to do.

Eventually 'The Shadow Stop' turns into an action thriller complete with awe-toting villains and a final configuration. But the irrepressible Mr. Billingham turns even this Gottschalmersing into a plentiful comic moment. As a truckload of wood goes up in flames. Neil, the so-army armiger, asks an approaching assassin, 'have you got a rat...' It's not crispy! 'Fitting last words for a man who is hurting the smoke of his life.

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THE WALL STREET JOURNAL.

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BOOKS

Believing is seeing, not the other way around! —JOHN, MORRIS

Inventing the Documentary

How Film Became History

By Thomas Doherty

Columbia, 200 pages, $28

By Petta Townsend

O A WHAT to Berlin, in February 1955, Cornelius Vanderbilt Jr. wrote about his impression for Script magazine, "Germany today is a furious... Everywhere are foreign." Despite his family's immense wealth, Vanderbilt aspired to be a journalist. But he did more than write. "While mail-horriguing," he later reported, "I took movies, some with sound, of that tribe called 'Batman', got some met stuff, some terror, marching and barrings."

Once back in New York, Vanderbilt tried to marshal his "movies" into a coherent film. "Bible's Runge of Terror" (1954) ended up a conglomeration of Vanderbilt's recordings, repressed archival footage and some studies in documents, among them, a sense departing an interview Vanderbilt supposedly conducted with Hitler—as gleaned by an actor—and poor set decorations.

As Thomas Doherty explores in 'How Film Became History,' Vanderbilt's well-intentioned effort is an early instance of what we know today as the archival documentary, Mr. Doherty, a film business and professor of American studies at Brandeis University, points out that there are many shortcomings in 'Bible's Runge of Terror.' In that or enacted interview with Hitler, for instance, Mr. Doherty tells us that in the background "is a gap reading an incorrect German, Hitler speech heats about Hitler to speak tonight" and an unmistakably painted swastling. Not the film also incorporates real footing, including what the author describes as "one of the most unmistakably hypocrisy expressions of Boston presented on film." On May 16, 1955, book learning outside the State Opera House in Berlin.

Audiences today report copious amounts of historical footage to documentaries about recent history. Whether the subject is World War II, the frontier or the like and times of a modern president, most documentary filmmakers depend on the repository of moving images that has been growing, since the invention of motion pictures more than 300 years ago. But it wasn't used the 1930s, "with the passage of thirty-or no years of decaners' taken by the motion picture medium," Mr. Doherty writes, that "a sufficient backlog of footage" had "counselled for filmmakers to create a new idea of the new written together from footage from older films."

Vanderbilt didn't have such a wealth of footage to draw from. But in using what he could, Mr. Doherty notes, "he certainly earned more than a footnote in motion picture history by creating the first 12-h made, feature-length and final film."

As halfway and awkward as they may have been, early archival documentaries required considerable advances in cinematic technology. During the initial years of the motion picture, cameras, for example, were "too cumbersome" to capture anything but a "scheduled event," Mr. Doherty writes. "Soldiers marching in literature and learned processions were picture-profiles for the technological limitations of the medium."

ARCHIVAL Cze Wolsak II is a swastling film. See Max Eastman and Herman Aschbach's 'Turner Lover' (1957).

The notion that motion pictures could make a record of real-world events was formulated with the advent of the newcomer, the creation of which is credited to the French studio Paris in 1950. "The release of a predictable and dared issue in the manner of an edition of a newspaper or magazine," Mr. Doherty writes, "marked a decisive turning point for film as [a] medium committed to recording the events of the day." The time quickly spread to all countries where moistening flourished.

Early attempts to capture real events on celluloid sometimes combined on-the-scene footage with staged reconstructions.

Several years later, World War I served as the "force multiplier" for newsreels, which benefited from cameras becoming smaller and lighter, and newcomer editors and cameramen were professional. The breakthrough of calling pictures introduced the voiceover narrative—a revolutionary development that allowed for further context to be added to historical footage. This innovation was greeted with one, if not quantitative, by audiences at the time. The invisible narrative was the formal term for the downloaded upscale "Mr. Doherty tells us, but audiences—"uncertain initially of the whereabouts of the initiation—called it the 'ghost voice.'"

The Boston-length archival documentaries Mr. Doherty describes in detail in his book are "not high-profile titles"—it would take

years for the techniques they pioneered to be perfected. Even so, filmmakers created in the potential of critical footage to immerse actual history to life.

Take the care of Laurence Stallings and Thomas Dalrym "The First World War" released in 1956 by the Fox Film Corp. and described by history as "a celluloid archiving of the world's greatest wholesale daughter." As Mr. Doherty tells us, "one of thousands of hours of film" already existed at the time, produced by the U.S. government on Division of Films, but some of the footage had been devoted "to signaling" that it was "never screened during the war." Mr. Doherty writes that "the cameramen knew what they photographed would never be used in official films, but they did not stop cranking."

In 1955 Stallings—a writer and World War I veteran who drew attention to the horrors of war through projects such as the Boston film "The Big Parade" (1953)—toured with Tbilisi, a Fox Movietron news producer, to recover some of the footage that had been stowed away in waltz in France and America although Mr. Doherty notes that "the exposure of footage heretofore unseen by U.S. developers, was especially coveted," to emphasizes that the film reduces not only for preventing cow footage but by repainting it into D chapters overlaid with voice-over narrative. "The First World War" was judged a major achievement. "There also been a broad assemblies of war films from the archives," wrote Terry Ramsey, himself a journalist who had attempted to make a World War I documentary. "But since so comprehensive or well prepared and correlated."

Max Eastman and Herman Aschbach's "Turn to Lover" (1957) "traced the end of the three-bundled-year-old university rule of the

Romanov dynasty," Mr. Doherty writes, "and followed the transition to an even more ruthless documentary." Aschbach owned "the most extensive trove of Russian-flavored footage held outside Moscow" for it was Eastman, a far left writer and activist, who found, in Berlin's Soviet Trade Embassy, "home movies of the Romanovs, some taken by the cour himself, of the royal family at play and, most remarkably, scenes of the crux swimming mule with his courtiers." Also, the film's politics were discrete even among its intended audiences. "Eastman's calling of these pictures," the Daily Worker wrote, "directs the history of the period in a manner calculated to play up the activities of Trendy and the other traitors who resorted and condemned at the recent Moscow trade." Still, there was something bolder now in the film's use of decade-old footage. "Turn to Lover" marked a tipping point," Mr. Doherty tells us, "as how the past would be apprehended in the future."

This fascinating book is a study in how archival documentaries in the 1930s harchd forward—from episodic newsreels to hodge-podge feature-length efforts. Vanderbilt's film on the Raich depravity was judged by Variety's critic as incredibly lacking ("as a film production, it's poor and doesn't rate as entertainment") but, in its own way, "Bible's Runge of Terror" and other such early efforts harchd a new form that remains with us today. "Together," Mr. Doherty notes, "the film inventory and the report commentary created the archival documentary, the motion picture genre that preserves and reminds our history."

Mr. Tanguette is the Life & Arts editor at the Washington Examiner.

A Revolutionary Investigation

CHILDHOPE BOOKS & AUTO DEADERS

When a girl finds a cryptic letter from 1760, she works to uncover its secrets.

INTENSIVE AND espionage-ground in "Thunder and Mercy" (Calista Creek, 369 pages, $68,000) is playing historical novel by Jennifer Bolin Barr set in 1970's Philadelphia. Theodora "Thunder" Underwood is an 13-year-old who spends her first-time searching for long-lost documents in the new book collection of the university where her scientist parents work. When they have on a research trip, Thunder jumps at the chance to spend the summer at her party. Aunt Hauck's crumbling historic memoirs, Mount Pleasant.

It turns out that a contumously know—especially one once owned by the numerous Benedict Arnold—holds a lot of secrets. When Thunder examines upon a cryptic letter written by Mercy, a young girl in 1760, she's drawn into a search to uncover the identity of an eugenic female operator at the heart of a Revolutionary War up-rising that worked for George Washington.

While the search juts taken a number of imaginative departures from the historical record, Mr. Barr has an eye for Deely details that will appeal to her audience of readers ages 10 and up. An author's note delineates stories of the real-life people who appear in the book—among them Lydia Borough, a Quaker who broke with her religious to up on the British, and Peggy Shippen Arnold, a socialite who some his-

tarians believe instigated her husband's trauma.

Thunder's shedding gives "Thunder and Mercy" much of its energy, but the novel also finally describes a freestanding childhood in 1970's Philadelphia spent working down dollar base.

THIS WEEK

Thunder and Mercy St. Joseph's Water-Bare

The House With Nobody in It

St. Joe Edward

Story Rug St. Joseph's Blackal Huntshalld by Phoebe Wahl

gies with grape soda and exploring Fairmount Park by bicycle. The previous a web now counterbalance to the novel's over-deadness of side plots, (it story like about a neighborhood bar-glar feels underdeveloped, while a hurricane comes out of nowhere in spectacular fashion.) But "Thunder and Mercy" proves its point: discovering the past run for a thrilling way of playing detective.

No Honors? "The House With Nobody in It" (Cambowish, 19 pages, $16,000) is a master class in taking the simplest of children's book formats—a sturdy, thick-paged-

board book—and creating a story of haunting disguise for readers ages 5 to 9.

Every inch of this house-shaped book (at right) contributes to the subtle questions of our tale, starting with the cover (in the left, the book's title is viewed through a door frame. Next to it, a small place keeps furiously through a window. Turn the cover and the ghost disappears while the title remains, stubbornly roasting that this house has nobody in it.

Inside, bright primary colors and a lovely placed canvas matte readers into the house to explore excess handshading out of view. Mr. Elmore, the editor of the Caldecott Medal-winning picture book "The N-This My Hat" (2002), excels at the often-duty humorous interplay between appear-fashionious and even-appear-text. As readers turn the pages, their perspectives begin to shift. The outside world's words, and the front of the house's interior slowly deepen from cherrill's elbows and lines to muted greens. Short sentences matter-of-factly describe objects in each room—a chain, a table, a large—but when the ghost from the cover snap-punk, its presence goes unremarked open.

With the tour of the house complete, the book's opening lines repeat with eerie serenity: "There is nobody in this house.

There used to be somebody. But there is nobody now." It's a neatly symmetrical ending that recalls the wonderful picture book: The Monster at the End of The Book" (1971) to Joe Stone, an early writer on "Sesame Street," is the ghost the titular nobody—in a the reader."

Phoebe Wahl's celebrated digitized village illustrations convey the cheerful business of children immersed in play, to Justice Blackall's "Story Rug" (Little, Brown Books for Young Readers, 40 pages, $50,000) for readers ages 6 to 9.

Parents who have watched their children cycle through different hobbies, whether its crafting friendship brocides or concerning humorous ideas, will recognize the single-minded fervor that has overtaken the stu-

dents of Class 205. Drop in a heading cross, the children can't resist heading-overything in sight. And, shutters, even the tails of the classroom's top pieces.

In the middle of all this activity stands Book, a red-cheeked, early-haired little boy with nothing to beat. Luckily, his teacher has an idea. With a few signs of her esteem, a plain whitehead tag transforms into three strips of cloth pocket for heading.

Of course, the rest of Class 205 wants to help out. As students ask their own fabric—non-infoliation—a seven baby blanket, a natural tablecloth, faded pollinator—certain—it's fitout who has an idea for what to make sure, as a full-circle resolution to this charming voice about making something larger, and more lovely, than the sum of its parts.

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C12 | Saturday/Sunday, August 15 - 16, 2026

...

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL.

BOOKS

'As long as I live, I will never forget these stern and magnificent days.'—WALK GROSSMAN

IN THE FIELD Grossman on April 28, 1945, with people whose buildings had been destroyed during the Battle of Berlin.

Eyewitness at the Eastern Front

From the Front Line

By Vasily Grossman

NYSE Classics, 512 pages, $24.95

By Doreaux Sastre

WHEN WALI Germany invaded the Soviet Union on June 22, 1944, Vasily Grossman volunteered for the Red Army. Middle-aged, overweight and poor of sight, Grossman, by then a published novelist, was rejected for combat duty and assigned as a reporter to the army's daily newspaper, the Red Star. The decision was a fortuitous one, for Grossman's work as a correspondent in the Soviet Union's epic struggle against Germany would far exceed anything he might have accomplished as a soldier.

Grossman spent more than 1,000 days at the front. He experienced the Soviet retreat in the summer of 1943, but he several months in Stalingrad during the swings battle for the city in 1944, even along with the army as it surged westward across Ukraine and Poland, and witnessed the collapse of the Third Reich in Berlin in 1945. He had a new ability to draw out everyone he met, from common misbeariness to generals, who treated him with their stories. His articles in the Red Star were deceased by tens of millions of readers.

'From the Front Line,' translated by Robert and Elizabeth Chandler, with commentary by Mr. Chandler and John Volckow, comprises a selection of Grossman's 10 articles from the Red Star, Mr. and Mrs. Chandler are prolific translators of Russian literature, including

Grossman's sweeping World War II novel 'Stalingrad' (1852). Mr. Chandler's admiration for Grossman is great and justified, although at times it clouds his judgment. These are musically works of literature, but they are not, poor Mr. Chandler and Mr. Volckow, an independent scholar of Grossman's life and work, 'two of the greatest novels of the last century.' This volume's notion that Grossman's writings 'posture beneath the domestic epic' is luring it on a bit thick.

Grossman's work as a reporter during the Soviet Union's struggle against Germany exceeded anything he might have accomplished as a soldier.

This is not the first book in English dedicated to Grossman and the war. Antony Beener and Luba Viengmalowsky enslaved 'A Writer at War' (1885) draws on Grossman's unpublished notes and other sources to tell the story of his years at the front. The notes offer the most direct, honest record of Grossman's, as well as Soviet soldiers' and citizens' experiences. In these writings, Grossman wrote the truth of what he was and found, knowing full well that much of it could not be published or even shared with others.

Fleasing the authorities, including his editor at the Red Star, meant leaving things out—such as widespread collaboration with the Germans

and the mass copes committed by Soviet soldiers—and allowing things to be put in that he might not have believed. Grossman's articles were at times so heavily edited that he barely recognized them as his own. When he writes of 'the kind, humane end of the Russian people' or of 'the degree of trust and friendship the Polish people feel towards the Red Army' can wonder: Are these his words or his editor's?

The book comments on the manipulations Grossman's pieces were subjected to and discusses how efforts to find earlier drafts of the publications in Russian archives have been unsuccessful. Mr. and Mrs. Chandler have done their own silent scrubbing, of the truth and acknowledge 'emitting unneeded repetitions and Soviet clichés.' This double-editing distances the reader even further from the author. Some passages have a sanitized quality to them.

It's a sign of Grossman's talent that despite these interventions, 'From the Front Line' contains much to merit recommendation, form of its most powerful setting, but nothing to do with battles or soldiers' stories. Grossman was a master at capturing a moment in a few strokes A December day in Stalingrad in 1842. 'The dark clouds shed their burden, their heightened and climbed higher into the sky. The fog from, settling as a thick white powder on army telegraph cables.' And this from around the same time: 'for is moving down the Wigs, The Best Reich together, nothing and stretching, as they pile one on top of one another...' Notwithstanding a dead sailor flannel gave in a striped vest. 'The dead man had frozen into the ice and it was difficult to tear him free.'

In January 1944 Grossman arrived in the Ukrainian town of Berdikow, where, three years earlier, the Germans had announced approximately 18,000 Jews. One of them was Grossman's mother. But great at her death and guilt at not having saved her overwhelmed him. Later in 1944, Grossman arrived at the entertainment camp of Trebiluka in Poland. He suffered a nervous collapse soon after. Grossman was one of the first to write about the Holocaust, and two of his pieces—'Ukraine Without Jews,' part of which was first published in 1941, and 'The Hell of Trebiluka' (1945)—are included here. Their true differs markedly from Grossman's war reporting. They are free of cant and propaganda. They ring with the unguided cry of a Jewish man over the loss of his mother and his people. Walking through Trebiluka, he finds the evidence of mass murder beneath his feet. 'The earth is casting up fragments of bone, teeth, sheets of paper, clothes, objects of every kind. The earth does not want to keep secrets.'

'What is it that has given birth to racism?' Grossman asks. 'Was it something organic? Was it a matter of heredity, upbringing, environment, or external conditions?' The ultimate answer, he writes, can be traced back to the idea of 'neurotranslators,' he is racial, national or any other society. When one group believes it is exceptional, Grossman remains, 'it is really not as very difficult to fall under nations.' Words to need, particularly today.

Mr. Smith is the author of 'Stargazim'. His next book, 'The City Without Jews,' will be published in September.

Admired By Some, Not by All

The Au Pair

By Teddy Wayne Harper, 272 pages, $30

STEVEN HAMMER'S once-promising literary career has evaded. It now reads the icy temperature of his marriage.

Steven, the middle-aged protagonist of Teddy Wayne's novel 'The Au Pair,' wrote a bestseller almost a decade ago. But with the crushing failure of his sophomore effort—'Hammer gases for he-hundred-increasing pages into the sweaty stand of upper-middle-class whiteness,' went one-review—he has been reduced to low-head labor as an adjunct professor.

Meanwhile, Stevens' wife, Lucy, the driven co-founder of a flourishing social-stupid investment fund, pays all the expenses that come with the family's bank: Brooklyn Heights, NY, Illinois. She also gives Steven a soothing allowance, experimentally listed in her records as a 'slipped.' But Steven derives a measure of comfort from the fact that the couple's

two young children are far more attached to him than to the family present Lucy.

When their sunny days suddenly, Steven posts the listing for a replacement through an as-pair agency. Out of 151 applicants, it's Astrid, a 24-year-old Senate from Norway, who gets the nod. Reactions at home are... indeed. She's adored by the children, dislocated by Lucy and fixated-on by Steve—all the more or when Astrid, an aspiring writer, tells him how much she adored his pilloried second novel—no better way to an author's heart—and makes some very helpful suggestions for his next project.

Clarke alert: 'The two become very close and things become very messy. Mothers get messian' still when there's a mysterious death. 'She is murder!' The speech characterized characters are such an indelible bunch that their fair-spirons or meepes—may not matter much to readers.

But Mr. Wayne, perhaps no surprise, is an expert guide into the complex psyche of an author. He is also a deft social activist, no more so than when answering his characters' politically correct pretensions. Before a first-grade production of 'Sloved and Fallen,' Sir example, parents are assured that Gretel would not be pushing the witch into an even but instead will hold 'a generation dialogue' about loneliness. Good luck with that.

SHORTCUTS: FICTION

By Joanna KATWAS

A Season Of Sibling Memory

Make Nice

By Ryan Effgen Krepel, 336 pages, $30

IT WAS THE wish of their recently deceased mother that the three Polished children got together with their father on the Michigan island where, years earlier, the family had visited a beloved if nondiscide summer home. The title of Ryan Effgen's appealing debut novel, 'Make Nice,' alludes to the pet subentition of dear old man, it's what she hoped for from her offspring at this five-day reunion.

In here they are: 'Or, a graphic designer, who learns before leaving for the trip that her husband is gay. Pete, a sweet, socially and ward scientist whose specialty is small, and the youngest Polished sibling, Corey, a former child artist who is long on charm and looks for remarkably short on marketable skills or an interest in developing them. His mother submitted him for years, and Corey had grown accustomed to having a 'self-healing' bank account.

Things are tense from the beginning. Pete and Viv. Huston Corey about his outward ways—for example, his father to show up at their mother's funeral. He was in jail. 'It was supposed to be for six months, but I was out in two. Not to 'long,' he tells his siblings.' Meanwhile Corey checks Pete about his lack of success with women.

'Make Nice' is structured as a day-by-day account of the family's stay on the island, with the focus shifting from Viv to Pete to Corey to Viv's monthly 14-year-old daughter, Ash. Viv recommends with her first love—they had a memorable encounter in a medical one. Fourth of July, before the Polished child, their cottage and stopped visiting the island. When Pete takes a walk to look at where their old property once stood (it was torn down long ago and returned by something very high-end), he befriends the current residence—an attractive woman and her neurodivergent son, Meanwhile, Corey is trying to unload a 7-year-old girl of course, after which he intends to make a fresh start.

'Make Nice' has an overabundance of plot—specifically, of underdeveloped plot. Here's what else it has: genuine homes, smart writing and an ending that recently goes for hopeful editor than happy.

Mr. Kaufman writes on culture and arts for the Journal.

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THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

• • • •

Saturday/Sunday, August 15 - 16, 2020

C13

PLAY

NEWS QUIZ DANIEL, ARIST

From this week's Wall Street Journal

1. While House press secretary Karoline Leavitt, stepping down to spend more time with family, since ran for Congress—in what state?

A. Vermont B. Maine C. New York D. New Hampshire

2. A 7.4-magnitude earthquake brought death, destruction and fiscal problems to which country?

A. Colombia B. Uruguay C. Paraguay D. Ecuador

3. Dominic will introduce a new pizza. What's different and special about it?

A. It's hexagonal. B. It's golden-free. C. It's smaller, fit for a single diner. D. It's delivered cold and made for the microwave.

4. Loyal is a biotech startup—focused on what?

A. Biometric security B. Monitoring noisies for signs of self-dealing C. Al dopelgängers for human companionship D. Slowing the aging process in dogs

5. Democratic socialist Francesca Hong lost a gubernatorial primary she was expected to win in Wisconsin. Who was the author?

A. David Crowley B. Tony Evers

ANSWERS are listed below the crossword solutions at right.

C. Peggy Flanagan D. William Proxmire

6. A group led by Bob Igor and Joshua Kushner agreed to buy a majority stake in a team valued at $12.5 billion. Who are they buying?

A. The New York Knicks B. The Los Angeles Lakers C. The Los Angeles Rams D. The Green Bay Packers

7. The hottest seller of the summer is "writer" ball. What is it?

A. The industry term for games appealing to kids. B. A fishing lure from Japan C. A hazelnut frozen treat D. New crewelation molds for sand cactics

8. Who laid out a new AI vision in a 6,500-word essay?

A. Sam Altman B. Dana Amodei C. Mark Zuckerberg D. ChatGPT

9. Citing a "mental health crisis," the University of Michigan will provide something new for 2027 freshmen. What is it?

A. An emotional-support welveams for each one B. No first-semester grades for arts and sciences students C. Mandatory weekly therapy sessions D. A reinstated phys-ed requirement

NUMBER PUZZLES

These puzzles have been curated for The Wall Street Journal by Simon Anthony and Mark Goodiffe of Cracking The Cryptic, the world's most popular YouTube suboku channel.

Killer Sudeku: Menoinews by CIC

Normal suboku rules apply. Digits in a dotted cage cannot repeat and sum to the total chosen.

Rising Damp by CIC

Normal suboku rules apply. Along a thermometer, digits must increase from the bold end.

SOLUTIONS TO LAST WEEK'S PUZZLES

Killer Sudeku

For previous weeks' puzzles, and to discuss strategies with other solvers, go to WSJ.com/puzzles.

On Topic

To see the puzzles solved, go to The Wall Street Journal playoffs at the Cracking The Cryptic YouTube channel.

Military Drive

Long-Use-Long

THE JOURNAL WEEKEND PUZZLES edited by MIKE SHENK

Answers to News Quiz | 1D, 2A, 3C, 4D, 5A, 6B, 7B, 8C, 9B

If Worm You: by Gary Larvan & Amy Enoi

Monday
1. Bad guy
2. Bump for others?
3. Bugged diff
11 With death
discovers
12. Do you want
20. Car angled in
21. Experience dance
22. Tolded
23. Cessorship
24. The time
25. Dreaded
26. Botherfly, e.g.
27. Top competition, other
28. Banned a great
29. The day
30. Punchy
31. Punchy
32. Doughy
33. Gone
34. Gone
35. Gone
36. Gone
37. Loves heart
38. Loves
39. Loves
40. Loves
41. Manky
42. Manky
43. Manky
44. Manky
45. Manky
46. Manky
47. Manky
48. Manky
49. Manky
50. Manky
51. Manky
52. Manky
53. Manky
54. Manky
55. Manky
56. Manky
57. Manky
58. Manky
59. Manky
60. Manky
61. Manky
62. Manky
63. Manky
64. Manky
65. Manky
66. Manky
67. Manky
68. Manky
69. Manky
70. Manky
71. Manky
72. Manky
73. Manky
74. Manky
75. Manky
76. Manky
77. Manky
78. Manky
79. Manky
80. Manky
81. Manky
82. Manky
83. Manky
84. Manky
85. Manky
86. Manky
87. Manky
88. Manky
89. Manky
90. Manky
91. Manky
92. Manky
93. Manky
94. Manky
95. Manky
96. Manky
97. Manky
98. Manky
99. Manky
100. Manky

52. Ices
53. Uncated
54. Phone for news
55. The investment, handouts
56. Told on the market
57. Phone for data
58. You can't understand
59. We have a good time
60. We have good time
61. We have good time
62. We have good time
63. We have good time
64. We have good time
65. We have good time
66. We have good time
67. We have good time
68. We have good time
69. We have good time
70. We have good time
71. We have good time
72. We have good time
73. We have good time
74. We have good time
75. We have good time
76. We have good time
77. We have good time
78. We have good time
79. We have good time
80. We have good time
81. We have good time
82. We have good time
83. We have good time
84. We have good time
85. We have good time
86. We have good time
87. We have good time
88. We have good time
89. We have good time
90. We have good time
91. We have good time
92. We have good time
93. We have good time
94. We have good time
95. We have good time
96. We have good time
97. We have good time
98. We have good time
99. We have good time
100. We have good time

4. Credit's stand
7. Regularly the most decided
8. Careers, a division
9. Anger
10. Blood
11. Fed update
12. Surprise, e.g.
13. "The Walls of Singshue"
14. For each neighbor
15. You are not a member of a "stay meeting"
16. At 1/2 week, a family
17. To take in e.g.
18. What else
19. In shape
20. The authors
21. How are to do it
22. How do good
23. When, informally
24. Molding
25. To do, a friend
26. To do, a friend
27. To do, a friend
28. To do, a friend
29. To do, a friend
30. To do, a friend
31. To do, a friend
32. To do, a friend
33. To do, a friend
34. To do, a friend
35. To do, a friend
36. To do, a friend
37. To do, a friend
38. To do, a friend
39. To do, a friend
40. To do, a friend
41. To do, a friend
42. To do, a friend
43. To do, a friend
44. To do, a friend
45. To do, a friend
46. To do, a friend
47. To do, a friend
48. To do, a friend
49. To do, a friend
50. To do, a friend
51. To do, a friend
52. To do, a friend
53. To do, a friend
54. To do, a friend
55. To do, a friend
56. To do, a friend
57. To do, a friend
58. To do, a friend
59. To do, a friend
60. To do, a friend
61. To do, a friend
62. To do, a friend
63. To do, a friend
64. To do, a friend
65. To do, a friend
66. To do, a friend
67. To do, a friend
68. To do, a friend
69. To do, a friend
70. To do, a friend
71. To do, a friend
72. To do, a friend
73. To do, a friend
74. To do, a friend
75. To do, a friend
76. To do, a friend
77. To do, a friend
78. To do, a friend
79. To do, a friend
80. To do, a friend
81. To do, a friend
82. To do, a friend
83. To do, a friend
84. To do, a friend
85. To do, a friend
86. To do, a friend
87. To do, a friend
88. To do, a friend
89. To do, a friend
90. To do, a friend
91. To do, a friend
92. To do, a friend
93. To do, a friend
94. To do, a friend
95. To do, a friend
96. To do, a friend
97. To do, a friend
98. To do, a friend
99. To do, a friend
100. To do, a friend

Arrests | by Mike Shenk

To solve, verify the answers to this topic on the numbered dashes. Then transfer each letter to the correspondingly numbered square in the grid to spell a quotation reading from left to right. Black squares separate words in the quotation. Work back and forth between the word list and the grid to complete the puzzle. When you're finished, the initial letters of the answers in the word list will spell the author's name and the source of the quotation.

A. Gold leadership 1. "The whitney of the "Styrene"" 77 100 31 77 110 101 107 41

B. "King whitney" (2 wks.) 127 72 31 141 104 27 30

C. Cold blue copy, whose melody was part for "Love Me Today" (2 wks.) 170 174 114 112 74 70

D. Zipping-embodied pattern also called home stitch 174 219 101 41 74 101 47 24

E. End of road video game battle with a powerful opponent (2 wks.) 314 32 40 121 115 108 7 37 60

F. Short musical piece, designed to cover unrehearsed 110 101 32 70 115 39 101 41 100

G. North American songbird named for its two-eyed call 70 83 70 100 47 100

H. Kraus, other-affiliations, occurrence (3 wks.) 46 64 40 104 34 104 23 25

I. Knew point that's the French navy's main issue 114 34 100 83 100 34

J. The star whose roles include Mike's Mercer, Michael and Emma (had 12 wks.) 7 103 75 34 107 92 104 97

K. Brazilian records that are actually made (2 wks.) 100 104 104 92 94 122 41

L. Two-time NBA, MBC appeared "The Matheon" (2 wks.) 7 70 70

M. "The New York Times" (2 wks.) 74 9 37 105 105 97 101 101

M. Good-Maker after-leaved the Midway Rule

N. Measure of a biggest resistance to the

O. Automotive who launched the Mercury and Pacific Continental brands (2 wks.)

P. Simple-sensory persuasive instruments and the childhood music evaluation (2 wks.)

Q. 1997 Grand Luch's music footballing Richard Pruett's final film appearance (2 wks.)

R. American fashion designer and a Sound Work Programme (2 wks.)

S. Master by nighttime, can't be seen, in sports (9 pks.)

T. Stings

U. Upper Manhattan and Lin-Marsen' Records

V. 1. New York Times, 2017, 1984, 1985, 1986, 1987, 1988, 1989, 1990, 1991, 1992, 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024, 2025, 2026, 2027, 2028, 2029, 2030, 2031, 2032, 2033, 2034, 2035, 2036, 2037, 2038, 2039, 2040, 2041, 2042, 2043, 2044, 2045, 2046, 2047, 2048, 2049, 2050, 2051, 2052, 2053, 2054, 2055, 2056, 2057, 2058, 2059, 2060, 2061, 2062, 2063, 2064, 2065, 2066, 2067, 2068, 2069, 2070, 2071, 2072, 2073, 2074, 2075, 2076, 2077, 2078, 2079, 2080, 2081, 2082, 2083, 2084, 2085, 2086, 2087, 2088, 2089, 2090, 2091, 2092, 2093, 2094, 2095, 2096, 2097, 2098, 2099, 2100

T. Stings

V. 1. New York Times, 2017, 1984, 1985, 1986, 1987, 1988, 1989, 1990, 1991, 1992, 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024, 2025, 2026, 2027, 2028, 2029, 2030, 2031, 2032, 2033, 2034, 2035, 2036, 2037, 2038, 2039, 2040, 2041, 2042, 2043, 2044, 2045, 2046, 2047, 2048, 2049, 2050, 2051, 2052, 2053, 2054, 2055, 2056, 2057, 2058, 2059, 2060, 2061, 2062, 2063, 2064, 2065, 2066, 2067, 2068, 2069, 2070, 2071, 2072, 2073, 2074, 2075, 2076, 2077, 2078, 2079, 2080, 2081, 2082, 2083, 2084, 2085, 2086, 2087, 2088, 2089, 2090,

B. Body of water between Pruett and Westman, in "Rising of the and New" (2 wks.)

A. Water requirement in words (2, 3) rules

B. Not the solutions to this week's Journal Weekend Puzzles in most Saturday's Wall Street Journal. With a crossword called, get pointers on solving cryptic puzzles and discuss all of the puzzles online at WSJ.com/Puzzles.

For the solutions to this week's Journal Weekend Puzzles in most Saturday's Wall Street Journal, write a crossword called, get pointers on solving cryptic puzzles and discuss all of the puzzles online at WSJ.com/Puzzles.

---

34 | Saturday/Sunday, August 15 - 16, 2026

REVIEW

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL.

MY MONDAY MORNING | BY NORA KNOEPFLMACHER

Paige Bueckers on Her 'Criminal Minds' And iPad Obsessions

The WNBA player and UConn legend is a huge sports fan; she also skips her morning coffee

Summer 2020 was a gift to sports fans, husbands and star Paige Bueckers included. The Ballah Wings gazed kept up with the World Cup, attended two matches in person and was 'locked in' to Wimbledon.

'When I watch other sports, I completely go into fan mode and just get lost in their passion and their drive. I'm not even thinking about how I can compare it to myself unless it's basketball, then I'm learning while I'm watching,' said Bueckers, 24.

Born and raised in Minnesota, Bueckers grew up playing everything—soccer, baseball, softball, track, flag football. 'I was really good at football at eleven,' she said. She was 5 when she started playing basketball, and by second grade, she knew she wanted to play professionally.

At UConn, Bueckers led her team to the Final Four four times and capped her college career with a national championship. It was then not surprising that she was the No. 1 overall pick in the 2020 WNBA draft by the Ballas Wings. Bueckers has since earned Rookie of the Year as well as All-Star honors.

When Bueckers is not traveling for games, the lives in Ballas Hers, she discusses her workout routine, her relationship with God and her pregamealight.

What time do you get up on Mondays, and which the first thing you do after you wake up?

I got up at 9:30 today, and the first thing I do in the morning is knock my teeth. I'm nauseous. I usually just get ready for practice. I'm at the gym from around 9 or 10 a.m. to 3 or 4 p.m. I start with manual treatment in the training room and then go to the weight room to do activation work before the court.

What's your mention and training routine like during the season? During the season, it's a lot of recovery and mobility. I do a lot of Pilates. After games, we see the blood flow restriction machine just to get blood flow in your tendons. I have patellar insulation, so a lot of it is work leading to that. The strenuous, longer lifts are for

the afternoon. I have a game-day workout routine that I do in the weight room before shoot around, and then after, I always get First Watch for breakfast. I usually get the trifects with the waffle, the scrambled wigs with cheese and the million-dollar bacon.

Do you drink coffee?

I don't like the taste. And it keeps me up. I don't end up going to bed until like 3 a.m. if I have a coffee even at 9 a.m.

What's your secret to your signature slick-back poytail?

A lot of girl I use the WNTA Hair Wax Stick. I just completely drench my hair in it. I have like four poytails in my head and it's tight, and I'm going to regret it when I get older, but for an hour, it needs to stick. I have to shampoo and con-

dition like three times, and then the next day, there are still pieces of my hair that are like jelly.

How much sleep do you try to get every night?

I'm usually a severe to eight-hour type of girl. I add the hours of my nap to my night sleep. I'm not really sure that's how that works, but it's got math for me. I usually get 10 to 12 hours.

What do you do to pump yourself up on game days?

Music is a huge thing for me that gets me in the zone. I start with gospel, then a slow R&B vibe, and then sight before the game, it's turn-up hip-hop and rap.

You've spoken publicly about your relationship to God. Why is religion important to you?

Starting in high school, I grew a lot more in my faith. One of my closest friends, his dad was a pastor, so being around him, my trainees and my trephans helped me grow in my faith. It's been huge for me in terms of handling adversity and trying to see a guilty perspective. It's helped me be confident in who I am. I don't have to be perfect. I can make mistakes.

Your WNBA debut jersey said for a record-breaking $64,725. What was that experience like?

Disbelief. I don't know if there's anything that I would pay that much money for. Maybe my car? It's very humbling to see that level of support for me and women's basketball in general.

How do you wind down? I'm a huge watcher. 'Criminal Minds' is my favorite show of all time. I love 'Grey's [Anatomy]',

I'm still watching it. I just started 'True Detective'. And then a bath or a massage.

What's your most prized possession? Probably my iPad. I like to watch things on it. Sports, TV, doing color by numbers, Face/Toning my friends. Anything on my iPad really.

What's one piece of advice you've gotten that's guided you?

I'm trying to get away from being a people please and trying to make sure everybody likes me, even people that I don't even know. I had a conversation with my coach at UConn and he said, 'We matter what you're going to do, there's going to be some people that find a way to have you.' You could be donating clothes to a charity and they could say you're only doing it for the applause.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

MASTERPIECE | LA SAGRADA FAMÍLIA (BEGUN 1982), BY ANTONI GAUDI

A Miracle Worth the Wait

By Juxa M. Kizzo

BANGLONAN MENT celebrated landmark, showing about five million annual visitors, evokes the Gothic tradition in which it is rooted. Antoni Gaudí's Basílica Sagrada Familia contains familiar components of that style: a Latin Cross layout, Gothic arches, closures, representations of saints and apostles, rose windows. But the transformations wrought by Gaudí and his collaborators are a triumph of architectural and sculptural imagination that has no real analogue.

Here is something as grand as the great cathedrals of Europe, but stranger and more unexpected—a fusion of local materials, behind its agony, geometrical innovation, and the organic motifs and broken mosaics characteristic of the Catalan Modernists style. The church's fanatical, casual towers have drawn companions to Disney castles. But the luminous interior, designed by a man of such profound piety that he was known as 'Goth architect', compels also even at those devoid of religious belief.

Almost since a 1982 reception—Gaudí inherited the project a year later from the Los Angeles de-cloned Francisco de Paula del Villar—the world's largest-running construction project has been as object of irritation, admirability and painful.

Evolving ever more than a century, the church encompasses a profile of styles and ideas, indebted to the region's distinctive tale on Art Nouveau but not constructed by it.

When Gaudí died in 1920, at age 73, in a team accident, the building was less than a quarter complete. Anarchists destroyed many of Gaudí's drawings and models during the 1920s' Spanish Civil War, derailing construction. Money were followed. Beginning in the 1940s, sophisticated computer-aided modeling put the work back on track. Covid-19 health failed it. In Barcelona, the basilica, funded by donations and race, more ample, by tourist dollars, has become a metaphor for differences and delay. But the flagged construction post has arguably been fruitful, allowing new generations of Catalan artists to make their mark on its design.

The basilica was due to be finished for this year's centenary of Gaudí's death. Instead, the anniversary merely signaled an important milestone: 'be completely, in February, of the central Tower of Jesus Christ, which made the Sagrada Familia the world's tallest church. Still pending are the sculpting of the south-lacing Glory façade, the eventual front of the church, celebrating Christ triumphant, and the addition of a grand entrance staircase envisioned by Gaudí. Plans for the latter,

which would displace nearby residents, remain noted in controversy.

Today, visitors enter via the ornate Butterfly façade, on the church's eastern side. Inside, the rye immediately travels upward, led by rows of slightly sloping, fluted, twisting columns that seem to soar to the heavens. Near the summit they metamorphose into stone tree branches, intermearing like a forest canopy. Rature appears to have broached the interior. Rainbows of light stream through both transparent and stained-glass windows. Eliminating the cavernous space.

A closer look reveals ingenious contrasts, apparent concentric dissolving into distinctive details. The arboreal columns, for instance, differ in materials, colors, shapes and decorative features. They are clad variously in red poppy, black basalt, gray granite and yellowish sandstone from nearby Montjuïc with emblems symbolizing the four evangelists, the 12 apostles and an assortment of Catholic saints and geographic regions.

Jean Vila-Gouin brilliantly hand stained-glass windows seem ma-

pended between abstraction and figuration, never resolving the tension. The color palette is dominated by greens, blues and violets toward the vast, marking the sun's rise, and reds, swamps and golds in the west. According light effects alter with the time of day.

Designed by Gaudí, the Nativity façade is both naturalistic and ever-flowing with natural imagery: likes and jades trees, a tortoise and sea turtle, insects and frogs, sheep and ducks. Intricate sculptural groups depict the Amuntization, the birth of Jesus, the Adoration of the Magi

and the shepherds, there's massacre of the innocents, the flight into Egypt, Jesus preaching at the temple, and more. A cypress, representing the Tree of Life, crowns the central portal. It is topped with symbols of the Holy Trinity and laden with down representing mankind. Now of this can be grouped quickly. It is too dense.

Joupi Maria Subtrache's stylized sculptures, commissioned in 1988 for the church's western wall, are more legible. Mocked by some as the 'Goth' hadn't façade for its bizarrely helmeted Roman soldiers, the Passion façade embodies the New Testament story of betrayal, suffering and transcendence in an pious expressionistic figures. The isolated image of Judas bestowing a traitor's kiss on Jesus is especially arresting. Other scenes include the Last Supper, Plain washing his hands, Christ carrying the cross, and the Crucifixion itself.

From afar, the Sagrada Familia, shrouded in mist, appears otherworldly. A vivid around its periphery, through the crowds, shows its elaborate towers still framed by a construction crane. Enter and, frantic, the enchantment takes hold. Insisting on both the singularity of Gaudí's vision and the glories of artistic collaboration, the Sagrada Familia woes believer and nonbeliever alike. It is sacred architecture as a slowly unfurling spiritual quest.

Mr. Kizzo is a cultural reporter and critic in Philadelphia.

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STYLE & FASHION

Dressing The Place, Not Part

Destination weddings now have their own dress codes. Here are some ways to crack them.

By PEAN OWNER BUSINESS

BOLD you know what to wear to a Hollywood Western wedding? What about Catskills chic?

As ceremonies have become less traditional and more personal, typical dress codes are being replaced by themes that are less straightforward. Increasingly, destinations that hold meaning for couples are being used as inspiration.

Coming up with an atypical theme is easier than getting guests to dress the part. How couples who ditched "black tie" and "cocktail" for nontraditional themes share the shopping lists, mood boards and other tactics they used.

Catskills Chic

Casey Lichtman and Amanda Murray, who wed near the Catskills mountains in June, wanted guests to dress in a way that paid homage to the region's natural beauty. Finding the right words for that proved difficult.

Lichtman, a 29-year-old real-estate broker, and Murray, a 37-year-old managing director at a talent management company, originally described their dress code to guests as "a 'campy nostalgic' upstate vibe "with a mix of Mist Gold," Murray said. "Nobody understood that." A mood board made by the couple,

THE LOOK

is 'campy nostalgic' upstate vibe for a Catskills chic wedding.

who live in Brooklyn, also wasn't much help. So they took another task, emailing a memo to their 100 guests with directions like "colorful, expressive and playful," and "dresses, jumpsuits, pantouils, sets and

separates, vintage treasures, bold accessories, unexpected combinations." Special attention was paid to shoes, Murray said. "I don't know how many times I had to say, 'Stilettois aren't going to work, wear your living footwear.'

The effort paid off. Murray recalled her wedding planner, Hilary Smith of St. Smith and Ex. in Narrowsburg, N.Y., saying she had never seen a better-dressed crowd.

The couple saw their dress code as more flexible than a traditional one like black tie, Murray added.

The look for an upcoming Italian summer vacation wedding.

Italian Summer Vacation

Kate Nettles, a 29-year-old bride-to-be whose upcoming wedding has an Italian summer vacation theme, hired a stylist.

The dress code chosen by Nettles, a librarian, and her fiancé, Jordan Chowdhury, a 34-year-old chach-fleur, hears into the architecture of their venue a Tuscan-style villa in Jonesboro, Texas.

To make sure their loved ones understand the assignment, the couple tapped Kate Kors, owner of Portrait of a Bride on Fire in Washington, D.C., who specializes in nontraditional weddings. Kors's services, which vary by project, cost the couple $2,500.

In addition to illustrating in dress vills, Nettles and Chowdhury want their roughly 100 guests to wear white at their September wedding. They plan to wear cosmic outfits and want to stand out.

Kors helped them curate a shopping guide with links to clothing and accessories that guests could purchase, ranging from a $50-patterned scarf to a $400-Bandess Maver to a $768-Venиска Beard jacket.

The stylist also made a mood board for guests to reference, which featured a selection of fabrics, garments, accessories and shoes on a variety of bride types.

"We've had some people being like, 'This is a lot to ask,' "Nettles said. "But it's also our wedding, and we're allowed to ask."

Hollywood Western

For the welcome party at their May nuptials in Saratoga, Wyo., Grace and Ross Ransack, both 22 keyed to elevate the standard Western dress themes they had seen at others' weddings.

"I definitely wanted it to be a little more formal," said Grace, a personal trainer. The couple, who live in Denver, went with "Hollywood Western"—a nod to how they met as college students in California and made many visits to Hollywood together.

They wanted their 120 guests to get creative, so they intentionally kept guidelines loose, offering one sentence of direction. "Embrace the western spirit—dress to impress like you're walking the net carpet, or go for old wild-west

saloon-wide! Another way they helped their guests dress on theme: The venue they booked for their party, Brush Creek Ranch, has a hot bar where guests could buy

The Ransacks, left, and a guest went Hollywood Western.

custom cowboy hats, which started at $235. For costs and kings

pollets were popular choices. The gown's goafeiner dressed up as Woody from "Top Story." The couple made it clear that on-theme clothing they already owned was acceptable.

"It was super important to us at the wedding that we weren't forcing people to buy stuff (set for this," Ross said.

Palm Beach Chic

Alexandra and Alexander Barrett wanted to embrace the colorful style of Palm Beach, Fla., for the welcome party at their May wedding in the area. So the couple, who live in St. Petersburg, were pink.

Not wanting to blend in with their 110 guests, Alexandra, 28, and Alexander, 36, provided guidelines explaining that their Palm Beach chic theme was a variation on

the attire typically associated with the enclave—instead of bright colors, guests were encouraged to wear whites and neutrals with beauty details.

Their guidelines offered a clear direction of the couple's interpretation of "shit"—a word that is often used but can mean very different things.

Shell-shaped purses, crochet and feather partsuits and a beaded for single ducks were among the ways attendees interpreted the theme. Alexandra said: "Everyone really leaned into it."

Guests of the Barretts were encouraged to wear white.

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Hawaii Formal

A midpoint between people wearing Hawaiian shirts and formal wear was the desired dress code for Matt Luper, 35, the CEO of a digital healthcare platform, and Gurmhr Brar Luper, 35, a physician fellow in gastroenterology and hepatology.

For their May 2025 nuptials in Kona, Hawaii, they hired local planner Kate Hickey, owner of Sunshower Weddings. She often incorporates the word "Hawaii" into the theme to direct guests away from anything too stuffy.

The Los Angeles couple had more instructions on their website. Men should wear dark suits without ties, and women should wear gloves in lightweight fabrics hitting at or below the ankle.

An on-theme clutch, moat, and lung, lightweight greens for a Hawaii formal wedding.

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EATING & DRINKING

The $100 Hot Dog Is Here

Premium toppings, extravagant presentations and supersize varieties are pushing humble frankfurters into the realm of haute cuisine, with prices to match

By Aason Chowman

SINCE** the first appearance on the Coney Island boardwalk, the hot dog has been dogged by a lowbrow reputation—low nutrition, low quality, low price—maligned by public-health officials and pervasively parents alike.

Lately though, the humble frank has been experiencing a cultural glow-up. Some are reinventing the distinctly American face with international flames, while others are elevating it—sometimes quite literally—to a fine-tuning level, with prices to match.

The Caviar Dog The $100 Golden Gizzy features crème fraîche, mascarpone, 30 grams of Oreo-

tra caviar and 24-karat edible gold flakes served on a fresh-baked croissant bun. It also involves a hot dog.

The gilded grab became something of a sensation at this year's Formula One Miami Grand Prix and Miami Open tennis tournament, starring in countless social media videos and selling out at both events.

"People said, 'Oh, wow, $100 hot dog,'" said Keith Glickman, managing partner of Golden Gold Caviar, the company behind the Golden Gizzy. "But a lot of that Oreo tra alone sells for $120. So I joke to people: 'You're getting a deal here.'"

Similarly decadent but less expensive are the two mini-hot dogs with caviar and pickled shallots sold for $39 at the Bar

MINI MASTERPIECES The Moskw's dogs, left, come with caviar.

Boom at the Moskw, inside the Museum of Modern Art in New York City.

The Hot Dog Tower Off the slopes of Breckenridge Ski Resort in Breckenridge, Colo., new towers are changing the visual landscape. They're not high-rises, but multi-tier spreads in the mold of seafood towers that instead are loaded with buns, wieners and more.

"Dressing up posters isn't Breckenridge," said Marissa Frutchey, senior director of the resort's mountain dining.

'Gizzies are everywhere,' says Joey Chestnut, the Nathan's champ, above. At left, raise. Frank covers—those bedgated dogs are just for show. The Gizzies' bun is 70 inches long, below.

'Hot dog skiing, meanwhile, is an old term associated with the sport.'

Along with six all-beef hot dogs and six sauces, the $60 tower comes with waffle tires. The dish, which brings an updated touch to an otherwise everyman food, is one of several hot dog

operation called the Hot Dogger recently started serving its namesake item with toppings like forkake, nest and weasel relish.

Prices run from $11 to $16—up to 10 times as much as Costco's wanted hot-dog and soda combo, which has cost $1.50 since the mid-1980s.

The 2-Foot-Long

As with other food trends, social media has fueled the appetite for extravagant hot dogs—part of what you're paying for in the ability to show it off.

Among the winners to achieve online fans is a nearly 2-foot-long dog in a 19-inch bun sold for $45 at Coors Field in Denver. Dubbed "the Gizzies," its name leads to "gizzy," the TikTok isn't chosen nickname for a hot dog.

"Gizzies are everywhere you look," said Joey Chestnut, the 42-year-old competitive eater, who has won the coveted Mustard Yellow Belt at the Nathan's Famous International Hot Dog Eating Contest a record 18 times.

Chestnut, known as "Jams" and "the Gizzy Gladiator" by different generations, said the appeal of hot dogs at any price might partly come down to nostalgia.

"It's hard to not have a good memory of eating a hot dog," Chestnut said. "Hot dogs are like a safety blanket of fun."

The Golden Gizzy, above, is topped with Graefus caviar.

towers now being served in private suites at stadiums and at high-end taverns. The latter include Alchemy Bistro & Bar on Martha's Vineyard, which offers a $29 four-dog tower with tires on its late-night menu.

A few mountains away from Breckenridge, in Aspen Snowmass, a ski-nickel-out

Breckenridge's tower comes with sauces and waffle tires.

How to Build a Hot Dog Tower

By following these steps, you can create architecture that puts the frank in Frank Lloyd Wright

Set some scaffolding A narrow display or stockable dishware, is what Frutchey of Breckenridge Ski Resort recommends using as your structure.

Remember the sides Throwing down a base layer of

waffle tires or onion rings will complement the main course.

Decorate with condiments Ketchup, mustard, relish, mayo—the more sauces, the better, says Frutchey, who recommends serving at least

half a dozen with a tower. Her favorite is chow-cham.

Think outside the bun Potato rolls are a timeless choice, but trying out new options is never the worst idea. Frutchey likes grotzel buns.

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04 | Saturday/Sunday, August 15 - 16, 2026

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THE WALL STREET JOURNAL.

DESIGN & DECORATING

Bunny In Bloom

Continued from page 2d

BY CHRISTOPHER BARNARD

SHE WOULD'VE gotten a kick out of Instagram, "Thomas Lloyd said of his grandmother Rachel Lambert Mellon, the philanthropist, art collector and horticulturist better known as Bunny.

Long before social media became entitled with influences, Mellon, who died at 103 in 2016, achieved world renown for her ability to influence taste. Mellon was a mouthknock heiress who married into a banking fortune, and her green thumb became so prominent that President John F. Kennedy asked her to redesign the gardens at the White House, while fashion designers including Cristóbal Balonciga and Robert de Givenchy made her gardening inseeks and dierts.

Recently, a new spate of designers and brands has drawn inspiration from Mellon's obsessive pursuit of beauty and aristocratic ease in living. "People admire what she did because it was original and unusual," said Deeda Blair, Mellon's friend and social peer, over the phone from her Manhattan apartment as she puffed on a Virginia Slims menthol cigarette.

Mellon's Oak Spring estate in Virginia and her homes in Antigua, Nantucket, Cape Cod and on East

'People admire what she did because it was original and unusual,' says Bunny Mellon's friend Deeda Blair.

70th Street in Manhattan were all showplaces for the root collection of art—Van Gaalie, Minoris, Reckless—that she amassed with her second husband, Paul Mellon. At Oak Spring, her aesthetic is preserved in spaces like a room with baskets spilling from the ceiling and walls, and in a potting shed with trompe lived outside of cupboards stuffed with watering cans, shears and baskets.

A Bag Born From Her Furniture

The fashion designer Tony Burch bought Mellon's Antigua home, a collection of dangled poridium enwrecking the Caribbean, in 2015. Burch never met Mellon but called her "a great teacher about design; about restraint; about purpose and intention."

The Bunny Kind bag, a new style in Burch's full 2020 collection, was inspired by rankings on tufted furniture that came with the Antigua ocean instead of buttons, the crackers are tufted with knots, a motif echoed in the bag.

"I do feel her there," Burch said of Mellon's presence at the property. "A lot of people feel her, including my mother, including the people that work there. My mom thinks she visited her in the middle of the night once."

Her Jewelry Reincarnated Mellon's spirit also pervades through a line of jewelry that Tiffany & Co. introduced last fall. The collectors' food point is Tiffany's

Bird on a Rock brooch, created for the label by the jewelry designer Jean Schlumberger, who made Mellon a version in 1946.

Mellon's brooch featured a kind of canary and white diamonds atop a lapin rock. The recent Tiffany collection includes a variation made with turquoise and diamonds.

It was Schlumberger who connected Mellon with Balonciga in the 1950s, according to the 2007 biography "Bunny Mellon: The Life

of an American Style Legend" by Merzl Gordon. He did so in an effort to elevate her wardrobe. Mellon's style landed her in the International Beer-Dressed List Hall of Fame.

Balonciga later introduced Mellon to de Givenchy, and another friendship began. Blair said that Mellon and de Givenchy-altered each other. "They were interested in exactly the same things, whether it was books or buildings or travel," she said.

Echoes of Her Travel Carryalls

In addition to designing gardening clothes for Mellon, de Givenchy also made straw-tone money-grammed for her and her homes, with names including Nantucket, Oak Spring and, of course, Bunny.

There are traces of these money-grammed straw-tones in bags from designer Michael Rider's spring 2020 collection for Celina. Zoe de Givenchy, the niece-in-law of de Givenchy, has a namewide lifestyle brand that for years has sold bags resembling the totes that her uncle-in-law made for Mellon and others.

"Mrs. Mellon always carried one when she traveled," said Nancy Collins, a nurse and companion for Mellon and her husband, who loved the items Mellon kept inside her bags. "Her small pink coin purse, $1, tissue, nail file, a pad to write on and a blue flint pen, a small bottle of Smonoff vodka and, last but not least, a small bouquet of flowers wrapped up to take to her destination."

Clothes and Décor Reaped From Her Gardens

Collins is now an assistant librarian and architect at Oak Spring, a destination for enthusiasts eager to absorb Mellon's inspiration. Her gardens there have changed little from the days Mellon would grow topsters and crab-apple alleys to a meticulous naturalness, and have leaves raked in order to select the best specimens and put them back on the ground to look as if they had fallen naturally.

Mellon's horticultural legacy has

lately been embraced by multiple brands, serving as inspiration for a recent Carolina Herrera collection and for de Gueraux porcelain and wallpaper. It Portland, the French theme purpose, has also released shams and a davet in a favorite flowery point of Mellon's.

Some of her gardens are on longer as they were. Those at the White House were altered or destroyed under President Trump, who had one demolished to make way for his planned hallovers.

"Thanks to the Rubber-to-Disc, the White House will be properly glorified and remain in excellent condition for generations to come," Burch logic, a White House spokesman, said in an email.

Mellon's grandson thought that those changes would not have outsold with her. "She would not be a fan of what has currently happened," said Lloyd, president of the Ground & Lambert Foundation, named for Mellon's father. "But as much as gardens can change in various directions for various reasons, they can always change back," he added.

Recalling memories of Mellon, Lloyd described how, at a time when her eyesight was fading, she would take pictures of her gardens with a disposable camera and then inspect the developed film in her bed, making notes with a Sharpie.

Though Mellon was known for a crab of "nothing should be noticed," her grandson said that she noticed everything.

"Nothing should be noticed in a thing I laugh about all of the time," he said.

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THE WALL STREET JOURNAL.

CULTURE & ENTERTAINMENT

Going Public With Private-Equity Guys

Celebrities like Reese Witherspoon, Nicole Kidman and Olivia Rodrigo have made men in finance summer's hottest arm candy

By AMANDA ZEVKEN

REESE Witherspoon brought one to a premiere. Nicole Kidman sat postlude with another in Portofino. Olivia Rodrigo joking with another in Portofino. Olivia Rodrigo joking with another in Portofino. Olivia Rodrigo joking with another in Portofino.

This summer, private-equity guys are getting an A-list boost.

As firms face an exit slowdown and a yearning fundraising slump, an unexpected wave of good PR has come in the form of paper-rasin photos featuring high-profile pairings. The barburians of buyouts past, it seems, are now the sought-after boyfriends of the beautiful and famous.

"If you live in the celebrity bubble, party after party, with the same

These men represent a romantic departure for some of the celebrities, who've previously dated fellow creatives.

people—the same 25 people—life gets really boring," said Kevin O'Leary, a businessman and "Shark Tank" panelist. "When you end up with a private-equity guy, your life gets far more interesting."

O'Leary, who has served on middle-market food line star Capital's advisory board, heard Witherspoon speak at

Harvard Business School last fall. She was joined by Oliver Haarmann, a founder of the firm Searchlight Capital Partners, which has more than

$17 billion in assets under management. The pair have been photographed outlining in St. Tropez, holding hands in London and attending the

premises of the "Legally Blonde" prequel "Elks"

"The two of them actually were a hell of a team," O'Leary said of their rapport at the business-school event. "I can see why they're together." Haarmann declined to comment. Witherspoon didn't respond to a request for comment.

It's been a good run for single finance boss. Last summer, a viral Tiktokyr crowned, "I'm looking for a man in finance, trust fund, six-Oct, blue eyes," turning spreadsheet warriors into the season's most eligible bachelors. Though the song may have been a joke about the state of modern dating, it rings true looking at the run of tabloid prose on celebrities dating destinations. "Whether they want to admit it or not, many

women have always been attracted to bad boys and risk-takers," said Jordi Bays, a

co-host of the technology industry talk show "TRPK" "I can't think of any archetype of man that fits that description more today than capital allocators that put it all on the line every day in the markets."

These men represent a romantic departure for some of the celebrities, who've previously dated fellow creatives. "The pendulum tends to swing towards whatever bad felt absent in the last relationship," said Bevan Simone Lock, a dating coach and matchmaker. "By going after finance guys, they're going after guys who tend to operate in a more linear mindset."

Johnny Kilbrant Partridge, a comedian who plays a caricature he calls "PE Guy" on social media, said beyond firms have come to represent pop culture's image of Wall Street, just as investment banking did in the 1980s.

"I think people see 'private equity,' and it does something to their brains the same way as seeing 'hedge fund' send to," he added.

While private equity's annualized returns have historically beaten the S&P 500, many recent funds have delivered weaker returns, according to Steven Kaplan, a professor at the University of Chicago's Booth School of Business who studies private equity returns. The sector is stuck in a downturn that began in 2022, when the Federal Reserve began raising interest rates and fundraising started to decline. Now, firms are sitting on a backlog of un-void portfolio companies, leaving investors impatient.

"Private equity has always been cyclical, and I would say now we're in a little bit of a down part of the cycle," said Kaplan.

But what about romantically? Kevin Cassidy, a 28-year-old former private-equity associate at New Mountain Capital, wasn't

convinced that PE guys were in the midst of a starry glow up.

Nicole Kidman was seen sitting postlude with a private-equity founder in Portofino.

"You could probably pick any profession and say that there's a handful of people that are dating celebrities," said Cassidy, founder of the private-investment firm Stanging Valley Holdings. Still, Bishtrwood and Wall Street make for a natural pairing. Performers like Witherspoon and Kidman have become moguls

as their own right. It is unsurprising that they'd want to link up with people whose lives are devoted to buying and selling companies for profit.

"Relationships, if you want to be analytical, are businesses," O'Leary said.

Where to Meet a Private-Equity Sweetheart

The finance set typically travels in a pack. Here are some places you can likely bump into a suffer.

Davos, Switzerland

The World Economic Forum in January.

Beverly Hills, Calif.

The Milken Institute Global Conference in May.

Berlin

SuperReturn

International

conference in June.

Riyadh,

Saudi Arabia

The Future

Investment Initiative in October.

© 2026 WINTERSPOON. All rights reserved. All rights reserved.

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DAVID YURMAN

MADISON

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THE WALL STREET JOURNAL.

STYLE & FASHION

Above: Case Jewellery Deep Sea Octopus Ring, $70,000; Chan Luu Deift Tassel Necklace Multi, $990

Above: Sea Bugs Yellow Stripe Essential Handbag, $95 Below: Julietta Nautilus Earrings, $295

Above: Maison Margiela Raplica Beach Walk Eau de Toilette, starting at $89 Below: Tory Burch Fish Silk Square Scarf, $380

Above: Zoe Choco Shark Tenth Necklace, $1,320; Below: ERL Clothing Sunscreen Fragrance, $730

Beach Treasures

To elevate your coastal style, ditch the surf-shop staples for more elegant alternatives like shell stud earrings, bags made of recycled sails and fragrance that smells of sunscreen

Dr Susan Azoon

THERE'S nothing wrong with foraged shells, sea glass or jam of sand. But anyone looking to incorporate beauty style into their daily life has many options beyond your ar-

erage surf-shop staples. Instead of a poke shell necklace, try shell stud earrings or a chunky coral cuff. When summer ends, either would create contrast against darker tones of a fall outfit. Fans of nautical stripes might prefer a bucket bag made of recycled yellow-and-white-

striped sail cloth, while those who pick up at the smell of sunscreen can get their flu with a fragrance that conjures the scent of SFS Summer is a state of mind, and the following items can help you reach it year-round.

From left: Tohum Concha Natural Large Poke Ring, $320; Vin Gold Fishy Bag, $425

Left: Simon Miller Shelly Bag in Natural Green Stripe, $275 Above: Hache Victoire One-of-a-Kind Vintage Charm Necklace, $6,200

Tukia Tony Bosch Towel, $145

Above: Poolside Sail Clutch, $320 at Anthropologie Below: Jennifer Behr Kon Hair Pin, $248

Clockwise from left: Dazao Ya Sara Botton Emerald Cut Citrine Mexican Beacon, $2,700; Eliza Fish Belt Branch, $260; Anita Berisha Twista & Tame Earrings, starting at $260

Kenneth Jay Lane Enamel Coral Branch Cuff, $235

From left: Aquanura Mania Globe, $1,165; We Dream in Colour Athletic Earrings, $200

Brinker + Eliza Kingsley Necklace, $198

WEN BISHOP - WEN BISHOP - WEN BISHOP - WEN BISHOP

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THE WALL STREET JOURNAL,

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Saturday/Sunday, August 15 - 16, 2020 | D9

ADVENTURE & TRAVEL

MORE THAN A NAME: Greenville's Falls Park on the Ready is a wooded ravine with cascading waterfalls and leafy footpants.

An Unsung Southern Getaway

Greenville, S.C., pairs nature access with a newly Michelin-recognized food scene and a buzzing downtown. Here's how to make a trip to the northwest corner of the Palmetto State count.

By Anson H. Gausser

AS AN American living in Switzerland, the first time I learned Greenville, S.C., in the spring of 2020, I was cluttered by an mostly packaged dose of Americana. Tidy general stores, ice cream pastries and a Main Street Band with striped awnings. People dressed in Duck Head khaks and tucked-in shirts. Cantline both peeling across the city.

Almost immediately after I left, I started planning a return visit. On my second trip, last fall, I learned there was more to the city than nostalgia. In recent decades, global companies like Michelin and BMW have established processes in Greenville. An influx of new residents—a surge of nearly 30% between 2000 and 2025, according to the Census Bureau—has fueled new development, including a trio of concert venues and a vast network of walking and cycling trails. Last year, the metro population crossed the one-million mark.

In the Carolinas, Asheville, N.C., with its tie-for-stores and breweries, tends to buy the attention of travelers looking to explore the region. But Greenville offers the same access to the great outdoors,

along with a food scene that punches above its weight—all with sparker crowds. Here's how to make the most out of a trip.

Get Your Readings Beek a balcony room at the Grand Bohemian Lodge Greenville (from $400 a night), which clings to a ledge overlooking the walking Ready River. A few steps from the hotel, a cantilevered pedestrian bridge spans Falls Park on the

Ready, a wooded ravine with cascading waterfalls and leafy footpaths. For more than 60 years, starting in the 1940s, when Greenville was a hub of the textile industry, much of the ravine was obscured by a four-lane bridge. But in 2010, the city demolished the structure. Today, the park is Greenville's heart and lungs, frequented by joggers, walkers and cyclists. Join them to get a fool for the city's laid-back pace.

Sample a Burgeoning Food Hub

Greenville's reputation as a culinary destination got a boost last November, when the city hosted the Michelin Guide's inaugural American South awards. November, a restaurant on Main Street, tabbed a star. Its chef, Joe Cash, an alum of New York's Pet Se and Copenhagen's Noma, took inspira-

Barridan in action at the downtown location of Methodical Coffee.

tion from both French bistros and American steakbassers. The restaurant's seasonally shifting dishes are served in a convivial dining room with a lively atmosphere.

At Camp, executive chef Diego Campos Vargas also emphasizes American classics, but with playful global swaps: chicken skins with bleu cheese espuma, for example, and crispy lion's stater mushrooms with chili glaze, a vegan roll on General Tso's chicken.

Another favorite restaurant in Jones Oyster Co., located in an antebellum brick building. During my most recent visit, the moms featured 18 different North American.

An influx of new residents has fueled development, including a trio of concert venues and a network of trails.

coysters from as far north as Canada and as far south as Georgia. Come between 2 and 5 p.m. on weekdays for the happy hour, when half-shifts go for $5.50 a pop. Stuff cocktails are fortified with Old Poesster bouches and Branshawbo gin.

Take a Ride

To see Greenville in action, visit its community-oriented markets. Three of the best are easily accessible from the city's 32-mile

The Lowdown

Getting there The Greenville-Spartanburg International Airport (ESP) is about 14 miles east of downtown with daily nonstop flights to Miami, New York and Atlanta, among others. Aeropark Crescent line also offers regional rail access to Greenville from Charlotte, Washington, DC, New York City, Atlanta and New Orleans. To navigate the city's bike paths, rent from a local shop or use Greenville RCp3s, the city's bike share program.

Staying there Alternatives to the Grand Bohemian Lodge Greenville include The Wexler Poesnett, a 7921 landmark downtown, featuring a blend of Neo-Gothic and bureaucrats architecture (rooms from $250). The Hotel Harkness is a 73-room boutique resort set within a quiet 180-acre nature preserve built around a repurposed family estate (rooms from $225).

Eating there Camp, Jones Oyster Co. and Soyunster are the best-bets for getting a taste of Greenville's culinary prowess. The latter two restaurants are part of Quark, Mayonnaise-Trak, highlighting over 20 dining stops and four historic sites related to Greenville's Eugenia Skies, who started slettering more on sandwiches for soldiers in 1917. A more modern icon is Methodical Coffee, with multiple locations serving excellent gooseneck-bottle pour-overs.

Snoung Rabbit Trail, which runs along the Ready River for part of the way. Greenville RCp3s, the city's bike-share program, has stations throughout the city.

At Snoung Rabbit Cafe and Grocery, the shortest place with white strawberries, purple asparagus and other produce from 200 local farms. A pizza counter and a live music stage surrounded by picnic tables makes it a great place to bring kids. Further along the bike trail, you'll hit The Commons, denker than your first stop and popular with a laptop-released set. Order a blue spirulina-covered setup or try some crown food mashups, like Nashville Hot faces and noon nachos.

Catch some live music at Greenville's Saturday Market on Main Street every Saturday until noon from May through October. If you crowded by 10 a.m., so go early to score some peach-glued doughnuts from GIMAS before they sell out.

All food sold at the market must be grown or produced within 100 miles of the city, which keeps the money in the region. Just another example of a place that knows how to invest in what makes it special.

The Grand Bohemian Lodge Greenville, above, is just steps away from Liberty Bridge in Falls Park. At left, a diner gets ready to dig into what Jones Oyster Co.—a downtown icon—is known for. During the weekday happy hour, between 2 and 5 p.m., half-shifts go for $1.50.

Items sold at the Saturday Market come from within 100 miles of the city.

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